The shooting of my client was not mentioned in the paper, but at Alabama, recruiting seemed to be going well. Around here, people had their priorities straight.
I ate breakfast slowly and drank three cups of strong coffee. I needed the coffee. Sleep had eluded me after I returned to the hotel.
So far, I hadn’t been paid, my client was dead, and I had no idea where to look for his missing daughter. This case was looking like a real winner.
The Homicide Division office on First Avenue North occupied the second floor of police headquarters.
Grubbs’ personal space was an eight-by-ten glass cubicle in the corner overlooking a dozen cops’ desks in a bullpen. Grubbs was sitting in there behind his desk.
Despite the fact that he’d been up investigating a homicide the night before, Grubbs appeared to have showered and shaved, and he was wearing a starched blue oxford-cloth shirt, a plaid tie, and pressed khakis.
He also wore a Colt’s Government Model .45 semi-automatic pistol in a belt holster.
I tapped on the glass and opened the door. Grubbs nodded. “So what do you know about this Kramer?” he said.
“Good morning to you, too, Captain.”
“Yeah, right. Pleasantries, et cetera. So what do you know? Were you working for him?”
“Not much and yes.”
“The girl?”
I smiled a little. Pleasant. Innocent. “What girl, Captain?”
Grubbs lowered his eyes and slowly, almost imperceptibly, shook his head. “Not a good first inning for you, Slate.”
“Captain… .”
Grubbs looked up. “Nobody likes a smart ass, Slate. Stop this ‘Captain’ shit and let’s talk straight.”
I leaned over the desk, palms flat on the corners, my eyes inches from the top of Grubbs’ head.
“A client is dead. Last night you asked me to identify the body. As though you didn’t already have him identified. This morning you ask about the girl. I agree with you. Let’s talk straight. But maybe you should go first.”
To his credit, Grubbs held still.
“All right, Slate,” he said. “Point made. Now unless you intend to kiss the top of my nappy head, sit down over there and let’s see if we can do each other any good.”
I sat in the vinyl and chrome chair in the corner and folded my arms.
Grubbs said, “I assume, since he was your client, you know about Kramer.”
I shrugged. “Lawyer. Downtown firm. Used to be assistant AG.”
Grubbs shook his head. “You don’t know much, Slate.”
I heaved a sigh and sat forward, elbows on my knees.
“Kramer came to see me Saturday in Gulf Shores. We talked for ten, fifteen minutes. He hired me to look for his daughter. I visited the house yesterday and met his wife and two agents from the Bureau. I was planning to spend some more time with him and his wife today. What else should I know?”
“Nothing, considering it’s you. No reason to expect much.”
“You’re right. I live on a boat and run a bar. You have the vast resources of the government at your disposal. What is it you shouldn’t expect me to know?”
Grubbs shook his head again as though he were having trouble hearing. “You still planning to talk to Mrs. Kramer?”
I nodded. “Not a very good time, but I think I have to.”
Grubbs nodded. “That would be my view.”
He stood, came around the desk and opened the door. “I have a few more things to do before mid-morning. I’ll pick you up at ten-thirty at your hotel. I’ll tell you what I can on the way out to Mountain Brook.”
I followed him out the door. “Isn’t Mountain Brook out of your jurisdiction, Captain?”
Grubbs dismissed me with a flick of his hand. “We still make house calls,” he said.
CHAPTER SIX
Building security at Park Plaza would not have met New York standards.
The first time I visited a New York lawyer’s office after 9-11, security in the building lobby outpaced the TSA at LaGuardia. But here, an elderly fellow in a green blazer with a nifty gold identification badge on the left breast pocket sat inside a circular cubicle a few steps from the revolving doors, reading the sports section of The Tuscaloosa News.
After I stood at the counter for a few seconds, he looked up reluctantly. “Help you?” he said.
“I think so. I’m looking for Woolf White Waldstein.”
“They got three floors. Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen. Reception on seventeen. Take the elevator there,” he pointed backwards with a thumb.
“Thanks.” I smiled, tapped the counter for emphasis, just a regular Joe, another lawyer, another suit among the hundreds who came and went around his desk every day, trotting up to the main tenant’s office with a Glock strapped under his arm and a lockblade knife clipped to his right trouser pocket.
On the seventeenth floor, the elevator opened to a marble lobby with closed double doors on the right and a large reception area on the left. A brass and wood spiral staircase that must have cost more than the Anna Grace connected the law firm’s two main floors.
In front and to the right of the stairs sat a blonde receptionist wearing a headset and a neon smile. She spoke into the headset and managed to continue that conversation while conveying attentiveness to me as though I were far more important than the caller.
Despite her efforts, it didn’t look as though the call would end soon. I strolled over to the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the courthouse square and, beyond, the hills of North Birmingham.
“Sir? Sir, may I help you?”
I turned around. The receptionist had removed her headset and had taken a couple of steps in my direction. “Yes,” I said. “My name is Slate. I’m here to see Mr. Woolf.”
“Senior or Junior?”
“I didn’t know both of them were still practicing,” I said. “I’m here to see the Mr. Woolf who is the managing partner. Is he in this morning?”
“I can check with his assistant, sir. Did you have an appointment?”
“No.” I shook my head. “No appointment.”
“Well – and it’s Mr. Slate? May I tell her your full name?”
“Just tell her Slate. I need to speak with Mr. Woolf about Don Kramer.”
“Oh. Yes. I’m sorry sir. Just one moment.” She replaced the headset and spoke into it. Thirty seconds later, a woman in her fifties, wearing a blue wool skirt, white blouse, and plaid pullover sweater, her white hair pulled into a tight chignon, materialized in the elevator lobby behind me. “Mr. Slate. Katherine Richards. Mr. Woolf’s secretary. Follow me right this way, sir.” She turned and we went through a door beside the elevators that opened with an electronic key pad into a corridor lined with filing cabinets and interspersed with secretarial workstations.
Woolf had the southwest corner office. The office was adequate for a managing partner of a fifty-lawyer firm, the cherry wood furniture slightly worn, solid but understated.
In one corner were stacked half a dozen file boxes with case names in black marker on the ends. A couple were open, and documents were half-pulled from some of the files. Legal pads filled with notes were lying on the floor in a pile next to the boxes.
It looked as though Woolf might be a real lawyer.
Woolf was standing behind his desk. He wore a white shirt with the sleeves rolled halfway to his elbows and a blue scroll-pattern tie pulled loose.
Woolf reached across the desk to shake my hand. It was not a stretch for him. He must have been six-seven and had arms to match.
“Mr. Slate, Bill Woolf. Ms. Richards told me you wanted to see me about Don Kramer. What is your interest in my law partner?”
“I met him last Saturday, and I identified his body for the police last night. I think you may want to spare me a couple of minutes.”
Woolf didn’t say a word. Just nodded a couple of times, looked me over for a second, walked over to close his office door, and returned to sit down behind his desk.
“Sit down,” Woolf said. “Let’s talk. I’ve got about fifteen minutes.”
I sat in one of Woolf’s leather client chairs and crossed my legs. The chairs were a little nicer than mine, but his desk lacked a view of the Gulf of Mexico.
Woolf leaned toward me, his elbows on the desk. “Why did the police call you?”
“They found my business card in your partner’s shirt pocket.”
Woolf nodded. “I see. So, I could ask, why was your business card in my law partner’s pocket? But this is not a deposition, and you came to see me. So why don’t you just tell me why you’re here? If this is about money, I can tell you, I’ve never heard of you, so this law firm owes you nothing as far as I know.”
Lawyers, especially litigators, experience more confrontations in the average week, just in the normal course of business, than the average person does in a lifetime. Most lawyers are comfortable with confrontation, and some learn to seek it out, to initiate it, some because they learn to need it, others because they see it as the shortest way through life.
Woolf, I figured, was in the short-way-through group. Sometimes, so was I. “I don’t need your money, and I never heard of you before yesterday either.”
“Fair enough, Slate. So why are you here?”
“But I had heard of Don Kramer before he came to see me in Gulf Shores. He brought this.”
I laid the picture of Kris Kramer on the desk in front of Woolf.
“She’s missing, and he asked me to find her. Now he’s dead, but I intend to do what he asked me to do. That’s why I’m here.”
Woolf looked down at the picture of Kris Kramer and nodded several times as though he had confirmed something.
“Do you have a business card?” he asked.
I placed a card on the desk beside the picture.
Woolf glanced at the card, looked up at me and nodded again. “All right. What do you want to know?”
“Did Kramer talk to you about Kris’s disappearance?”
“A little, yeah. I knew he was going to see a new investigator he’d heard about from one of his law enforcement contacts. I knew he was going to Baldwin County, so that must have been you. He was frustrated with the local police, especially the campus cops. Not sure why; I would assume they couldn’t find water in the river.”
“Do you think the girl’s disappearance and Kramer’s murder could be connected?”
Woolf shrugged. “Who knows? Kramer was working night and day trying to find her. We relieved him of all his duties here. If you knew Kramer or his reputation, you would know he’d charge hell with a bucket of ice water if he thought it would help bring Kris back. Maybe he had arranged an exchange with the kidnappers and it went badly.”
“Is that what you think happened?”
“Again, Mr. Slate, I just do not know.”
“What was Kramer working on before she disappeared?”
Woolf leaned away from the desk and crossed his fingers behind his head. “Well, that. I don’t think I can speak with you about legal matters the firm may be handling. Sorry. Our clients are off limits. Privilege.”
I nodded. “Right. But still, it’s possible, isn’t it? Was Kramer working on any cases where he was getting any threats, any matters with criminal involvement?”
“Can’t tell you, Mr. Slate. Won’t tell you. Our clients expect their business to remain privileged. It’s one of my jobs to see it stays that way.”
“Does the name Godchaux mean anything to you? Michael Godchaux of New Orleans?”
Woolf shook his head slowly. “No. I don’t think so. But if it’s a witness or even a client, I would not necessarily have known details about what Kramer was working on, and even if I did, I could neither confirm nor deny that the name means anything to me.”
Woolf’s face was absolutely blank. He probably played poker well.
I stood. “Well, I hoped this would be more helpful.”
I picked up the photograph and gestured at the card. “Call if you think of anything that might be useful.”
He was already out of his chair and showing me to the door. He had me by seven inches. I hate having to look up at people.
“I wish I could help,” he said. “I’d like to see Kris safe and sound, too. Known her since she was a baby. Let me know if there’s anything I can do. Except opening client files of course.”
“I’ll see myself out,” I said. I was saying that too much, lately.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The sky was still gray and overcast, and the temperature was in the mid-40s. Cold when it’s damp.
Leon Grubbs picked me up at the rear entrance of the hotel in a black Ford LTD without markings. There was a portable blue light suction-cupped to the dashboard and a stubby antenna on the back window. We took Twentieth Street headed south. At least Grubbs let me sit up front.
“I miss the old cop antennas,” I told Grubbs after I got in and fastened the seat belt.
“You miss what?”
“You know, the old cop antennas. You knew for sure that black Ford sedan was a police car when you saw one of those twelve-foot whips tied down to the bumper.”
“Hmmph. Progress, Slate. I’ve heard some cops in the big cities even know how to turn on a computer now.”
At the Fifth Avenue intersection, Grubbs turned left. At the end of the block, he pulled up to the fire hydrant and handed me a five.
“Safari Coffee,” he said.
I looked down at the money.
“Right there on the corner.”
I didn’t move.
“So I’m addicted,” he said. “Go in and get two coffees. For me, tall regular coffee, skim milk, one Equal.”
I got out of the car without taking the bill.
“Your money’s no good here,” I said.
I could smell the coffee from the sidewalk. In a corner near the front window sat a polished brass coffee roaster. The place was decorated in a jungle theme and featured Kenya AA dark roast. There was a line, and I didn’t have a badge to show. Grubbs would have waited too. He might park on the hydrant, but he wouldn’t cut in front of a line of citizens.
I paid for the coffee, mixed in the milk and sweetener at a little bar in the corner, and snapped plastic lids on the cups.
Grubbs drove north on Twenty-first Street and then took Abraham Woods Boulevard past Linn Park and the Birmingham Museum of Art and down to the cloverleaf onto Highway 280 East.
I tore the little strip off the plastic top and sipped the coffee. It wasn’t just good and strong. It was good and hot.
“So how did you know?” I said.
“Know what?”
“When you called my cell phone just after midnight, you said you were not far from my hotel.”
Grubbs inclined his head an inch.
“So how’d you know I was there?”
Grubbs glanced at me, then back to the street. “I’m a trained detective,” he said. “But, Slate, tell me something I don’t know, for once. Did Kramer tell you whether he’d been contacted by anyone holding his daughter? Kidnappers? Could he have been making a ransom drop without telling anyone?”
“He told me there had been no contact. And if he was making a ransom drop, he didn’t tell me.”
Grubbs nodded and drove in silence.
In spite of the cold and the damp air, shoppers were rolling into the parking lot at Brookwood Mall in their Mercedes and Jaguars and Range Rovers, suburban women in leggings and leather jackets and Hermes scarves ready for a tough day hitting the spa, a boutique clothing store, an Oriental rug dealer.
Mountain Brook was Alabama’s toniest suburb, a spiderweb of hilly residential streets connected loosely at three hubs called “villages” by the locals. In the “villages,” – English Village, Mountain Brook Village, and Crestline – just Crestline to the locals, no “Village” — there were hair and nail salons, specialty groceries, trendy bars and bake shops, and investment managers.
Grubbs drove and sipped coffee as though he ha
rdly needed to see the road. He seemed to know the way, so I saw no point in guiding him over the route I’d driven on Sunday.
Grubbs rang the doorbell, and we waited a minute. I leaned around and rang the bell a second time.
Paul Kramer answered the door, looking sleepy, his eyes swollen and unfocused. Grubbs offered him a business card. The kid took it and studied as though it were covered in hieroglyphics.
“I’m Captain Grubbs, Birmingham police department. This is Slate,” Grubbs said. “We know this is not a good time, but we need to speak with Mrs. Kramer. Is she available?”
The boy looked up from the card at Grubbs, then peered under his hair at me.
“I’ll see,” he said, and shut the door in Grubbs’ face.
I had to give the kid credit. Not many fifteen-year-olds would have closed the door on a police captain, even in mufti. But the family had been through a rough time, and he was, after all, Kramer’s kid.
Thirty seconds later, the door was opened again by Susan Kramer. Today she wore a soft gray pants suit. She wore her hair up and pinned in back, and she appeared to have applied very little makeup. Aside from the gold crucifix, still in its place on a heavy gold chain, the only jewelry she wore was a wedding ring. Her eyes were red-rimmed, but that was the only outward sign of grief.
“Captain Grubbs.”
Grubbs took the proffered hand for a moment and gave her a tiny nod that managed to convey sympathy and respect.
“I am Susan Kramer. I apologize for Paul. We’ve had a difficult night here. I suppose we should talk. But the police sergeant and lieutenant were here for several hours. I really don’t know what else I can say.”
Grubbs nodded. “This is Slate,” he said.
“Mr. Slate,” she said, extending her hand. She looked at Grubbs. “We have met.”
We shook. Her hand was warm and dry.
“That’s all right, Mrs. Kramer,” I said. “I understand. We wanted to speak with you if you had a minute. Just a few questions.”
I gestured toward the threshold. “May I?” I asked.
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