Clamour of Crows

by Ray Merritt

  “I’ve often asked myself the same question.”

  The repartee again seemed to put her at ease and she launched into what would turn out to be a fascinating profile of Ben Baum’s family.

  To gain a modicum of privacy, we moved from the Palm Court into the main reception room, overlooking Bergdorf’s. The court was never empty and the tables were too tight. Heads would be leaning to hear this tale. The reception room was perpetually Christmas. The high-back chairs were decorative, if not comfortable. She preempted a part of the southeast corner. The large room was in constant motion with guests and sightseers. Lots of little Eloises posing on the stairwell for their adoring mothers, a blush of boys not far behind.

  “I suppose we should start with Leo. Technically he is my only patient in the Baum family. He is what we call a midspectrum autistic. He has difficulty forming friendships. He’s often nonverbal and oversensitive to stimuli. He has limited interests. He loves a consistent routine, gets upset at change. As you may have learned, he is hyperfocused on medieval sorcery, for which he has savant skills. At his core, he is a true prince of a person. Several years ago, we all mutually decided it was best to bring him to Paris. You know about the Argos problem?”

  “I only know what Terry told me.”

  “Well, perhaps I should add to that. Leo has a very big heart. His three big loves were Ben, Dorothy, and Argos—and in all fairness, Terry too. She did her best with him. After he accidentally poisoned the dog, Dorothy and I convinced Ben it was time for Leo to leave New York. We never mentioned the poison. But it was clear to us that Leo could not be left alone.

  “He is now bigger and stronger and at times becomes violent. With Ben gone so often and Dorothy almost always in Paris, Terry wasn’t up to the task any longer. She had a full plate as Ben’s personal assistant. So Dorothy’s place in Paris seemed best—at least for the time being. She has room, two male assistants, and me. Ben begrudgingly agreed, with the proviso that we bring Leo over to stay with him whenever he visited London or Paris. It seemed a fair compromise.

  “Leo has had a difficult life. His mother’s and brothers’ deaths alone were quite traumatic. Being homeschooled and without contemporary friends, all his formative life references were based on children’s literature. So he evolved into a kind of Harry Potter, going through the wardrobe, down a brick road, without any idea where it might lead. And his father, for all of Ben’s doting, was often more harmful than helpful. Candidly, Ben proved wanting as a parent—for both his children—due in my opinion to his overarching obsession concerning a male heir. He lost three boys with his first wife, and Tremaine has been unable to conceive, leaving only Leo surviving. The same Leo that Ben found so ‘defective’ that he had him neutered!”

  She caught my lower jaw dropping.

  “I gather you didn’t know that. He allowed Leo to be circumcised when he was a teen, but added a vasectomy to the procedure without informing him. He feared that any child of Leo’s might also be challenged and not fit to be groomed as a proper Baum successor. You can’t make this stuff up!”

  “Let me interject, if I may,” I said. I sensed that this was going to be a long session.

  “Do you think Leo is capable of killing his father?”

  That brought her up short.

  “Well, that’s a difficult and highly speculative question.”

  After she unclenched her jaw, clearly annoyed at the interruption, she continued. “Leo is an intensely caring and loving person. He worships his father. I do not believe he would be any more inclined to hurt or kill his father than would a normal, loving son. In fact, the instances of autistic patricide are the same as nonautistic patricide, although some argue it’s less detectable. But the Argos incident was a wake-up call. And now he is being medicated to take the edge off his anxiety.”

  “I understand that Leo and his father had an argument in London?”

  That brought her up short again.

  “Well, Ben and I argued too, but that doesn’t make me a suspect, does it?”

  Maybe I was pressing too hard.

  “Of course not! I’m sorry if that sounded adversarial. It wasn’t intended to be.”

  I wasn’t sure that satisfied her.

  “Leo was chafing at his ‘house arrest’ both in New York and in Paris and he was lobbying for more freedom. He wanted to go out on ‘dates,’ but his father would not hear of it. Leo was blooming sexually. Helping to navigate love for a person on the spectrum was alien to Ben. I think he was afraid the vasectomy might have worn off. Even though he knew the chances were exceedingly slim, Ben’s fear of an unplanned heir from an unknown mother and Leo haunted him.

  “Unfortunately my assessment of Ben, from a psychological standpoint, is also dark. In my opinion, Ben suffered from Narcissistic Personality Disorder. His relentless need for adoration from all those around him was evident. The real clue was his excessive self-absorption. Ben was admittedly intriguing, charming, and even charismatic. Yet he insisted that all roads lead back to him.

  “Dorothy felt the constant need for his validation. Yet Ben’s approval of her accomplishments was rarely given. Surprisingly the literary Dorothy’s journey through Oz is an apt metaphor. She believed the Wizard was the only person who could help her find her way home, but when she sized up the man behind the curtain, she realized she would have to get there on her own. And that’s what is happening here. Dorothy finally came to see her father as the imperfect mortal that he was—a visionary business genius, a self-made man of letters, and, in no small part, a humbug. Remorse and guilt had no meaning to him. They were feelings, emotions—not ideas. Ben put a blindfold over his feelings.

  “Here I am on the most sensitive ground because of Dorothy’s and my personal involvement. Dorothy had witnessed the essential ‘primal scene’ when she secretly observed her father and Terry having sex. However, she eventually came to understand that she had to come to terms with her own sexuality.

  “And yet she has never quite satiated her ‘father hunger.’ There was a lot of King Lear in Ben’s life. To a large degree, he abandoned Dorothy for his business while at the same time demanding of her excessive flattery and testaments of love. The more he tried to control her, the more she rebuffed him. Yet he was the only light in her heaven. Yes, she adored him. It is a classic Cordelia complex.

  “Don’t misunderstand. Dorothy is not just another dysfunctional. To the contrary, she is highly functional. Witness her success in a man’s world. She has quickly and efficiently quieted the doubters. She proved that she is much more than the boss’s daughter. It took Dorothy a long time—peering through the looking glass of life, so to speak—to realize that there was no Oz. There was no Wonderland. She is just now coming to terms with the child she was and the woman she has become. She has finally stopped looking for herself in those books. She now realizes that she can in fact take over the empire, not as regent to Ben’s grandson but rather as Ozone’s Queen Victoria.”

  “That’s quite a story. The family dynamics are complicated.”

  Lame, but it was the best I could come up with.

  She paused and leaned forward and smiled. “And they are going to get more complicated. Dorothy and I have decided to have a child. We are convinced that for her to come full circle as a person, she has to stop being the perpetual child and become a mother. That is the best way to close the book on the past.

  “The plan is for me to carry the child. Dorothy felt a familial obligation to tell Ben. To our amazement, he was elated and supportive—particularly after I signed a tight prenup.

  “Then to our utter surprise, he volunteered to be the sperm donor. His genes, my gender, a successor to Dorothy finally assured. Once we got over the ‘ick’ factor, we agreed. The prospect of happy endings carried the day. Ben rushed off and made deposits in a New York sperm bank. He was anxious to do it before he started chemo, which he knew was inevitable, although not immediate.

  “The day he died, Dorothy and I went to s
ee him at his hotel to complete the formalities. Leo was with us. Ben had by then consumed more than his fill of his favorite ‘Hemingway highballs.’ It was late in the afternoon. He was agitated at something and was awaiting the arrival of his banker friend. He announced that there was one detail he hoped Dorothy and I understood. His participation was conditioned on our agreement to abort if the child was female. Obviously for us that was unacceptable and just plain evil. Typical Ben, especially when he’s tipsy.”

  She paused.

  “That’s what the fights were about. First with Dorothy and me, then with Leo, who had pieced together what was happening. His father wanted to make another boy! One that wasn’t broken. He lost it. ‘You want to get rid of me and make a better son!’ Luckily, Emir, one of our house assistants, had come with us. It took both of us to subdue poor Leo.

  “And yes, on that day, there were at least three people who wanted to kill Ben Baum.”

  33

  “We’ve got a lot to talk about!” I alerted Dixie and Drew as they made their way to the round table. Actually it was a rectangle, but Ben’s antique desk now served as our conference table. Dixie and Drew were having a hard time balancing their iPads, iPods, MacBooks, and notepads while sitting in Victorian high-back chairs.

  “And we do too,” Drew responded with a tinge of the dramatic in her voice.

  I went first and gained their attention quite quickly. Terry’s love story, Leo’s sad saga, and Eloise’s revelations were even more riveting in the retelling. Glancing at each of them, I could see that they were enthralled. This was, in associate parlance, “good stuff.”

  “The plot just got a lot thicker, eh?”

  “And we have a few more facts that will make the poutine thicker yet,” Dixie added, matching my Canadian slang.

  “My turn,” said Drew. “I just received some info from the police officer I spoke with in London—the one the London office put me in touch with. Seems he’s dug a little deeper. Kati’s brother is apparently even more sinister than he appears. He heads a gang of Eastern European thugs. They are loosely aligned with the Mafia Shqiptare—not sure how to pronounce it. They have taken over the sex trade in Soho. Their trademark skills are blackmail and murder—particularly assassinations and usually by poison. It’s the preferred method for settling disputes, I’m told. They are the killers of choice for Russian oiligarchs. Also, seems Kati has been hauled in for questioning several times on suspicion of blackmailing johns. They have not been able to make a case yet. Her alleged targets aren’t talkative, much less cooperative.

  “And,” Drew continued, “I’ve done some snooping on Jeremy Lerot and Patrice Lapin, Abelard’s tea party guests. I have a friend who works at the Tate Museum in London. My friend checked them out with a number of big-time dealers. Seems the boys are not held in high esteem. Some questions have surfaced about their integrity. He won’t elaborate, but did suggest we stay clear of them. So I decided to do diligence on the prices of some of the art acquired by Tremaine and also by the foundation. I don’t remember Peter’s mentioning the foundation’s being a buyer of art. I got the invoices from Terry and checked Artnet. That’s a website that gives you access to auction results. The prices for the art Ben bought for Tremaine are more or less in line, but not the foundation’s purchases. The ones I could get comparables on were over on the buy-side by 60 percent! More than half of the art that the foundation bought was owned, at least according to the invoices, by the boys—Lerot and Lapin. Nice work if you can get it. Then, just for the fun of it, I searched some social image sites looking for them.”

  She pulled out a dozen image printouts for us to view. They were all couple pics—Abelard and Patrice, Jeremy and Abelard, and several of the boys together.

  “I presume that each took turns with the camera. The most interesting was one of Jeremy and Abelard arm-in-arm beaming a thumbs-up sign in front of a building in the Caribbean with a discreet but readable sign—Royale Development Banque. The metadata file on that photo embeds info on the images you take with a digital camera. It gives you a lot of stuff about any photo you take. For me, all I wanted was the date and the place. It confirmed that the image was taken on Saint Kitts a MONTH after Ben’s office overpaid for the art Abelard bought for the foundation.”

  “Interesting,” I said. “OK, Dixie, your turn.”

  “Well, my story doesn’t have the salsa that Drew’s does. I’ve been working with Frank Mack, the head of Terry’s geek gang in the back carriage house. They’re quite a crew. I’m pushing them beyond their comfort zone. And they are cool with that and so is Terry. They’ve been able to trace some deposits that relate to the companies that Luc’s goons are stonewalling me on. Cerberus and two others that they noticed had identical activity—Chimera and Hydra. I’ve become intrigued by them. They’re all references to Greek or Roman mythology. Cerberus, as you know, is a three-headed hound and referenced in the prec letter, spelled with a “k.” Chimera is a fire-breathing creature and Hydra is a water beast with many heads. Happy little family of monsters.

  “They are three foreign corporations whose ownership is unknown, but they appear to have all received funds wired from various ClearAire clients, service providers, and unknown third parties. So far our info shows that they all in turn wire-transferred these funds to unknown banks. What caught Frank’s attention was that at a point about a year ago the transfer amounts for each account were about the same. Those companies are all incorporated and registered in Madeira. Then Frank hit a dead end. So far there is no way for us to further access those accounts. Seems that the transfers of funds out of each of those corporations can be effectuated only in person by the holder of its bearer shares, and we have no idea who that is. There is another name that appears from time to time in e-mail chatter—‘Typhon.’ In mythology, he is the Father of all Monsters. We suspect that entity or person is somehow connected.”

  “Help me—I’m lost,” begged Drew. “Madeira? I thought that was a cheap Portuguese wine.”

  “It is, but I’m talking about the country, which is southwest of Lisbon, near Morocco. Its capital is Funchal, and it’s an autonomous region of Portugal. It has very advantageous tax benefits—minimal annual taxes, under 2 percent, and minimal accounting formalities. A perfect tax evasion environment. Each of the companies is incorporated by a single shareholder, which in this case was a Spanish sole proprietorship with a local law firm listed as its address and agent. There is no requirement that the beneficial owner be disclosed in its filings. So far, it’s a dead end as to who owns these companies or who has the bearer shares.”

  “How does all this relate to us?” I asked.

  “Well, not sure it does, but it’s an unexplained anomaly. It seems that the wire transfer deposits—as well as we can trace them—emanate from either ClearAire itself or clients or subcontractors of ClearAire. And it’s too coincidental that these three entities each get virtually the same monies and that they are all named after mythological gods. And I suspect Typhon is the godfather of them all—sort of. What all this is about, we just don’t know, but it doesn’t pass the smell test. As you’ve said yourself, Tuck, coincidences don’t happen twice. Here it happened three times.”

  “OK, Dixie, I agree. Stay on that and see where it leads.”

  Drew’s head was spinning and mine was too. I ran my hand through my hair trying to dislodge whatever was colonizing in my brain and suggested that we take a break and regroup in fifteen minutes. We would need clear heads to survey where we were.

  34

  “Now is not a bad time to assess where we are. We have pulled back the curtain on those closest to Ben and we have found things a bit darker than we started with. Natural causes, accidental, self-inflicted, or foul play—all are still on the table. We should not count on being lucky and we’ve got to guard against overanalysis. Incongruities are part of everyone’s life, including Ben’s, so don’t obsess about them. And remember, we are not district attorneys; we are not judges. We’re
more like a grand jury. All we need to determine is whether there is sufficient cause to suspect foul play. Then it’s the Executive Committee’s job to decide what to do.

  “Looking at things objectively, we have no forensic evidence as to what caused Ben’s death. No autopsy. The doctors at the hotel and at the coroner’s office both fobbed it off as a coronary event. Perhaps more a guess than an opinion, although that would seem logical. His New York doctor is more skeptical. Ben had no history of heart issues, and other than his recently discovered cancer, which admittedly was potentially serious, he had few health problems.

  “And suicide, at least to me, doesn’t seem probable. The Precatory Letter, at best, mildly suggests it as a wistful option, but a man who was about to finally get the perfect male heir—mothered by an intelligent, highly educated descendant of a well-regarded author of kid-lit classics, married to his daughter, and who by written agreement, I am told, ceded sole custody and control over any children to Dorothy—doesn’t seem a suicide candidate.”

  “Perhaps that’s not as pat as you think,” Drew said. “I’m not so sure. All this talk about heir creation could be academic. Is it all right for me to talk to Charlotte? I’d like to see Eloise’s agreement and check the law as to whether that child—or children—would have any rights to the estate or the Trust at all, and, if so, whether a parent could bargain it away.”

  “I’m not sure Charlotte or Evan even know about this proposed agreement,” I allowed. “The agreement was done by another law firm. You could check with Terry to see if Ben had a copy and any correspondence from that firm and I will check with Eloise. She would certainly have one.”

  “While I’ve got the floor, I want to make one thing clear,” Drew announced. “I am changing my opinion about the deceased. It’s appearing more and more that he was a plaster-cast hero . . . and a self-absorbed humbug, and I’m not buying the splendor of polyamory if all you get is an occasional call to service and a potted plant.”