Authors: Hillary Bell Locke
Collar Robber (11 page)
Cynthia Jakubek
Back in my office at six-thirty I read the list of proactive steps for Willy's case that I'd spent fifteen minutes jotting on a legal pad:
ALMA VON LEUTHEN?
TRANSOXANA/SHIFCOS/DAVIDOVICH?
Not much to show for three-tenths of a billable hour (rounded up).
Further effort, though, would have to wait. The time I'd spent holding Willy's hand during execution of the search warrant was ninety minutes that I'd planned on using to put the finishing touches on my Sovereign Citizen
et cetera
brief. I couldn't let anymore grass grow under my feet on that one, so my vision of stir-frying vegetables in my wok at home had pretty much evaporated. I needed food I could eat at my desk.
Downtown Pittsburgh offered a decent array of healthy options. And my scale this morning had insisted that I was two-point-eight pounds over my target weight. Screw it. I called for a pizza anyway.
I had the finish line for my brief in sight when the guard at the delivery entrance in the building's basement finally called to let me know that someone there had a pizza with my name on it. Clock-check: fifty-four minutes since my call. About time. Telling myself to deep-six the grumpiness, I headed for the elevator.
The man with his back to me standing at the guard desk seemed a little overdressed for a pizza delivery guy. Before I could draw any useful conclusions, he turned toward meâand I did a double-take right out of a seventies sit-com. Phillip Schuyler, assistant United States attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania, offered me a sheepish grin and a medium, thin-crust cheese pizza.
“Mischievous impulse,” he said. “I happened to see the delivery truck pull up as I was headed back to my place. I confirmed that it was for you and talked the driver into letting me take it the rest of the way.”
I'd recovered a little by the end of his speech, but I was still a liter or so short of aplomb.
“You went to all that trouble just to talk to me? I mean, you could have phoned.”
“The last time we talked you said that it wouldn't be fair to me for us to start seeing each other because you were in the first few months of starting your practice, you wouldn't have time for anything but your work and your clients for a while, and you'd end up treating me like crap, which I didn't deserve.”
“That does sound familiar.”
“Well, you were probably right.” Tenderness and a charming timidity warmed his voice. “But I've had several months to think it over. I'm a big boy. I've been around the block. Walking into this with my eyes wide open, I'm willing to take the thorns with the rose.”
I didn't need ten months to think that one over.
“Let's go up to my office. The guard is blushing.”
Next thing I knew we were sitting on the carpet in front of my desk with the open pizza box between us. I practically had to get a court order to get him to take a slice of pizza for himself. His next words came around a gentlemanly nibble.
“So, how's the solo practice adventure going?”
“First nine months I lost money and lived on borrowed funds. Worked my rear end off, but mostly on client-development stuff that I couldn't bill. Next three months I basically broke even and took a little draw. Lot of work on spec or at a discount or for capped fees. I started my second fiscal year this month, and I'm actually going to make some money.”
“Here's to success.” He raised a plastic bottle of water that I'd scrounged.
“A relative term.”
“You got that right. Why did you do it? Leave a top Wall Street firm paying you more than federal judges get, trade the bright lights of Manhattan for provincial Pittsburgh, give up work on billion-dollar securities cases for the kind of bread-and-butter stuff you can do here? I know Calder and Bull is a sweatshop, but you're probably working even more hours here than you did there. Why?”
“Hard to explain. Now or never kind of thing. Had a client offer me enough business to cover my rent because he liked me, and Calder and Bull had pissed him off. I wanted to help clients instead of just doing assignments for partners. Bottom line, I guess, I wanted to star in my own movie, even if it's a barebones indie flick, instead of work as an extra in a big-budget epic.”
“âI'd rather be the first man here than the second man in Rome.'”
“Julius Caesar, right?”
“Yep.”
“Who ended up catching a shiv from his fifteen closest friends.”
“But you can't say he didn't get the point.”
Settling back a little on my fanny, I dabbed cheese from the left corner of my mouth, where it had dribbled while I was laughing at Phil's line. I felt a happy, comfortable warmth flowing through me. How many months had passed since I'd just had fun like this? Not professional satisfaction, not winning a negotiation or a motion. Pure fun.
Too many.
I got a kick out of being pursued, having a good-looking guy with wispy, straw-colored hair and perpetually curious Alice-blue eyes compare me to a rose. A guy who could bat around allusions from ancient history. In New York, recreational sex is easier than smoking but real intimacy is as rare as a feminist rapper. And once I'd opened my own shop in Pittsburghâforget it. By now I was as hungry as hell, and not for pizza. Our lips began moving toward each other.
The phone rang. Burred, actually, in a politely insistent way. Phil looked toward it.
“Should you get that?”
“Not a chance.”
He didn't need any more than that. Shoving the pizza box across the rug, he reached me in one heroic knee scoot. Supporting my back with his right arm, he gave me a kiss like I hadn't had since the last presidential election. I kissed him right back. Clutched his shoulder and back with the arm I'd used to keep Willy from the cop. Let him know I meant it. We kissed through four rings and past the voice-mail beep.
He could have had me right then and there, rug burns and all. Off the pill for well over a year, no condom, I didn't care. I could tell he knew it. But he didn't take me. He pulled back from the kiss, breath coming in brief pants, eyes alive with fierce desire.
“I don't want to cheap this out. The first time we make love, I want us to do it right. I want you to feel as wonderful about it as I will.”
What
I
wanted was to slap him and tell him not to do me any favors. He was probably right and I hated that. I didn't slap him.
“You're a gentleman,” I whispered instead. “I'll take the thorns with the rose.”
He smiledâand it's a good thing for him that he did.
Ten minutes later, after another deep kiss and an exchange of fanny pats, I closed my office door behind him, returned to my desk, and retrieved the voice-mail message.
“Hi, this is Abbey Northanger. Tally bit.”
Jay Davidovich
“Look at that.” I'd finished scanning the headlines so I clicked off my iPad. “Putin hasn't massed troops on Ukraine's border for two whole days now.”
“It's great having a foreign policy expert in the family.” Rachel murmured this without looking up from her own iPad. “But if they make you secretary of state and we have to move to Washington, I'll need a new dress.”
“I only know three things about foreign policy: Israel has a right to exist, don't go to war by mistake, and Russians are assholes.”
“Jews should know better than to traffic in ethnic stereotypes.”
“Maybeâbut don't pick a fight in an Irish bar.”
“What's with the blood-is-thicker-than-water stuff all of a sudden?”
“Not sure, to tell you the truth.”
Actually, I knew exactly where it was coming from. It was coming from Dany Nesselrode. Keeping a magnificent painting out of the hands of the Jewish family it rightfully belonged to (maybe) was a cultural tragedy, gnawing at his guts. For me it was business as usual, interfering with my enjoyment of the NCAA Basketball Tournament. That's why he'd cussed me out. That bothered me. So I chalked it up to displacement, or whatever the shrinks are calling it these days.
I put my left hand on Rachel's belly. I knew I didn't have much chance of feeling anything yet, but it just seemed right, somehow. Sitting here in the Ob/Gyn's waiting room like some regular guy who worked in an office and didn't encounter thugs and Tasers on the job. What would that be like, having a real office job? Ten-fifteen, time to grab some more coffee! Ooh, quarterly budget report due in three daysâpressure-city, baby! No whiffs of electrically burned human flesh. No wondering whether I'd get iced before the tyke in Rachel's womb had his first Little League game or her first Suzuki recital.
A woman in nurse duds appeared at an internal doorway on the other side of the waiting room. She called Rachel's name. Planting an affectionate peck on my forehead as she rose, Rache strode off in response to the summons.
Just in time, because my mobile phone started to vibrate. Pittsburgh number. Shysterette? Yep. I stepped out into the elevator lobby to take the call.
“What's up?”
“You guys can't close your
Eros Rising
file until the Museum decides for sure that it won't return the thing, right?”
“Not my call, but that makes sense. Why?”
“I have a name you might want to check out. Alma Von Leuthen. She could have something to do with the excitement in Vienna just before we closed the deal.”
I couldn't see playing dumb. After all, unless I missed my bet, her client had been there. I decided to ask a pertinent question instead.
“What can you tell me about Alma whoever?”
“Not much. Spent most of her life in Vienna. Probably late fifties, early sixties by now. Not clear where she is at the moment, except probably not Vienna.”
“And what do you think she might contribute?”
“Maybe nothing. But if some kind of wheels-within-wheels thing is going on with that painting, the way her name came up makes me think she probably has her fingerprints on it somewhere.”
“And just how
did
her name come up?”
“Can't tell you.”
I mulled that over.
Some kind of wheels-within-wheels thing?
Yeah, that thought had crossed my mind, for sure. The snatch attempt on the elevator meant that Ertel's surviving chum, or Nesselrode, or Szulz, or somebody else wasn't going to give up just because we signed some papers. Plus, Nesselrode was Transoxana's collaborator and Szulz was shysterette's client, so we both still had skin in the game. Shysterette not telling me where she'd gotten this Alma character's name probably meant she'd gotten it from Szulzâand Szulz was a walking red flag.
“I'm guessing that you're calling me with this,” I said, once my mull had run its course, “because you and Szulz don't have the wallet to do a proper work-up on Miss Alma, so you'd like Transoxana to do it for you.”
“Pretty much.”
“What's in it for us?”
“Oh, I don't know. Maybe after your adventure in the elevator there are some things you'd like to learn from people who value my good opinion.”
Boy, that was subtle
. No way around it, I liked the shysterette. Couldn't help it. Just did.
“Can you guarantee delivery on that?”
“Don't know yet. By the time you have the work-up done, though, I will.”
“Okay, I'll run this up to the next level.”
“All I ask. You have my number.”
I called Proxy with the pitch.
“I'll have to give that some thought,” she said.
Translation:
Only if it's on someone else's budget
. So
twelve to five the answer was no. I shrugged.
Cynthia Jakubek
“He said he got the idea from you, Cindy.” Abbey said this to Sean and me in Sean's personal office, which is only a little smaller than the floor space for my entire suite. “A hundred thousand up front and guaranteed, with the remainder vesting on the day Sean and I are married.”
“Well, at least we know what he is.” Sean favored us with an impish, tight-lipped smile. “Now we're just negotiating.”
“No doubt about it.” Abbey nodded. “He's a whore.”
“He's not just a whore,” I said. “He's a whore in a hurry.”
That got me Sean's full attention.
“Why do you say that?”
“He's scarily close to proposing an explicit
quid pro quo
. He could be putting his license at riskânot to mention his job. He wouldn't be doing that this early unless he suddenly decided that time wasn't his friend anymore.”
“Isn't that what we wanted?” Sean said. “Hasn't he fallen into our trap?”
“He's either fallen into our trapâor he's called our bluff.” Looking from Sean to Abbey and back, I could tell that they both knew exactly what I meant.
“You're right.” Sean's tone suggested more reluctance than I like to hear when I'm right. “So what are our optionsâother than just, uhâ”
“Bending over and enjoying it,” Abbey suggested, completing her prim lover's thought. “Yes, other than that one, because I don't like it very much.”
“Option two,” I said, “is I come on like Sister Mary Hardnose with a ruler. Send him a nastygram about how I have a duty to file a complaint with the bar unless he tells me that, on reflection, he realizes how inappropriate his proposal was. Best case, he responds with a
pro forma
denial but feels that he has to back the denial up by cooperating truthfully with the annulment process.”
“What's worst case?” Sean's question.
“Worst case, he says that Abbey fabricated the whole thing, dares me to go to the bar with a complaint, and backs it up by turning his back on the annulment procedure for good.”
“High risk/high reward.” Sean's expression took on a sudden calmness as I imagined him absorbed in mental mini-max exercise. “How about Option 3?”
“We bluff right back.”
“Love the sizzle.” Abbey grinned. “What's the steak?”
“Give him an appointment to make his presentation about how he's worth four hundred thousand dollars. Suggest sometime late next week and see if he pushes hard to do it earlier. If he does, agree. Have him submit his CV. Hear him out, with a couple of colleagues who aren't tone-deaf.”
“Get to the bluff part.” That was Sean in no-nonsense mode, but I could tell from the gleam in his eyes that I had him hooked.
“Make some encouraging noises after he's finished. Tell him you'll get back to him promptly. Then, as things are breaking up, take him aside privately. Tell him you liked what you heard, but there's someone offering the same services for fifty thousand instead of four hundred. Suggest that he think things over and get back to you. Youânot Abbey.”
“Yes!” Sean's eyes lit up like a batter's when he spots a hanging curve. “Odds are he panics, comes back to Abbey with an explicit proposal, and we'll have him right by the, uhâ”
“Throat,” Abbey said sweetly.
