Death Benefits (17 page)

I turned. It was Rafe, up at the cash register paying the bill. “Can we talk some more later?” he called.

“Sure,” I yelled back over the traffic noise.

“Dinner?”

I nodded happily.

“Tonight?”

I nodded again.

He smiled broadly. “I shall call you later.”

I waved good-bye. When the light changed, I practically skipped across the street.

I felt positively dazzled, the same way I had felt back in my sophomore year of high school when Bobby Hirsh, the varsity quarterback—a senior, no less, with dark blue eyes, dimples to die for, and a
mezuzah
around his neck—had casually dropped by my locker on his way to class to ask me out on a date for after the game on Saturday. I had leaned against my locker, hugging my notebook against my chest, my heart pounding, as I watched him amble down the hall, averting my eyes as he turned to nod at me before ducking into his classroom.

This time, however, the dazzled feeling lasted only until I reached the elevator bank inside the Boatmen's Tower. It took me until then to remember.

Melvin Needlebaum.

I had already agreed to go out to dinner with Melvin Needlebaum.

“Oh, shit,” I groaned.

I spun around and ran to the exit, pushing through the revolving door. But by the time the traffic light changed and I dashed across the street, Rafael Salazar was nowhere in sight.

“Oh, shit,” I moaned as I turned back and trudged toward the building.

Things are going just great for you, Rachel. Couldn't be better. First the
National Law Journal
turns you into the hanky-panky angel of death, the infamous black widow of litigation—a surefire way to meet guys. Hey, fellas, remember me? You pat hers, I'll sue yours. And then you join the search for a gold cast of a dead Aztec's humongous erection. What could be a more normal pursuit for a single woman in her thirties? And now, at last—just when the Cherokee version of Prince Charming happens along—you get to turn him down for an evening with Melvin Needlebaum. Perfect. What girl in her right mind would want to have dinner with Paul Newman when she can dine with Don Knotts? Who would want to spend an evening with Mel Gibson when you could spend it with…Mel Needlebaum?

Chapter Sixteen

I was in a foul mood when I stomped off the elevator into the lobby of Abbott & Windsor.

When I reached my office, my message light was flashing. There was a returned-your-call message from Portia McKenzie, the “live” paralegal in trusts and estates. I tried her line. Busy. I left a message with her secretary and banged down the receiver.

Okay, calm down
, I told myself.
Tonight's not the only night. Meanwhile, you've got things to do here. Worry about Rafe later
.

I checked my watch. It was 10:50 a.m. I was supposed to meet with M. Salvatore Donalli (aka the Missing Link) in forty minutes. After that meeting I was supposed to drop my car off at a body shop on Kingshighway and pick up a loaner car for the weekend.

The upcoming meeting with the Missing Link reminded me of the life insurance matter, which certainly wasn't going to solve itself. Today was Friday. People might be leaving the city for the weekend. I checked my watch again and reached for the list.

From Stoddard Anderson's appointment calendar and telephone message slips I had compiled a list of close to forty people to contact. Nancy Winslow had typed up the list of names, along with an address and two telephone numbers (home and office) for each. I had about ten minutes to work the phones before I had to leave for the meeting.

I started with Dr. Jacob Bernstein, the physician Stoddard Anderson had seen during the last week of his life. If there was any witness out there with an opinion about Anderson's mental condition—especially an opinion that might be admissible at trial—the most likely candidate was Dr. Bernstein. With any luck, he was Stoddard Anderson's personal physician. With more luck, he was Stoddard Anderson's psychiatrist. With lots more luck, Dr. Bernstein was to straitjackets what Dr. Scholl was to corn plasters.

“Dermatology Consultants,” the receptionist cheerfully answered.

“Doctor Bernstein, please.”

“I'm afraid the doctor is with a patient. Is this about an appointment?”

“No, I need to talk to him about a former patient. Please have him call Rachel Gold. Tell him I'm an attorney. Tell him I represent Mrs. Stoddard Anderson.” I gave her the phone number at the office and also the number at Ann's house. “Please tell him it's important we talk.”

I hung up confused. A zit doctor? Stoddard Anderson was seeing a zit doctor?

I returned to the list of names. I was able to get through to three more names: (1) a “headhunter” named William Aronson, who had called Anderson about a lateral associate looking to leave a firm in Des Moines; (2) an occasional golf partner whom Anderson had called to cancel out of a match three days before he disappeared; and (3) an attorney at Gallop, Johnson & Neuman who was on the other side of a loan closing. None of them had any relevant information about Anderson.

I checked my watch. There was enough time. I dialed the Chicago office of Abbott & Windsor. When the operator answered I asked for Tyrone Henderson. He answered on the third ring.

“Hey, Ty. This is Rachel.”

“What's happening, girl?”

“That's ‘woman' to you.”

“Shee-it. I'll call you woman, girl, when you finally come to your senses and become
my
woman.”

“How'm I supposed to become
your
woman when you still haven't converted to
my
religion?”

“Hey, baby, you ain't talking to Sammy Davis, Jr.”

“And you ain't talking to one of your honkie bimbos. Listen, Ty, I'm in A and W's St. Louis office and I need you to work some magic with your computer.”

Tyrone and I had been buddies back at Abbott & Windsor. He had joined the item as a messenger in the mailroom. He took night-school courses in computer programming and eventually applied for an opening on the firm's
In re Bottles & Cans
computer team. By the time I joined the firm after law school, he was the head programmer for the entire
Bottles & Cans
defense steering committee. Over the years he helped design many of Abbott & Windsor's computer systems, including the network link-up with all of the offices.

“Okay,” he said. “What's up?”

“I've got three quarterly statements of account from the trusts and estates department down here.”

“Deads or undeads?”

“Two deads, one trust.”

“Go on.”

“All three show a payment to some outfit called ParaLex. That's one word, capital
P
and capital
L
.”

“Got it.”

“I need to find out what's going on with this ParaLex outfit. Are these the only payments? Is it a regular vendor? How long has it been going on? Is there any pattern? That sort of thing.”

“I'll do some ParaLex searches,” Tyrone said. “From up here I can access the last three years in the St. Louis files.”

“That ought to be enough.”

“What should I do if I find anything? I can output it on one of the laser printers down there or I can fax it to you or I can mail it.”

“If it's short, fax it. If it's long, can you send it to the printer my secretary down here uses?”

“No problem. What's her name?”

“Nancy Winslow. I'll tell her to look for it. Thanks, Ty.”

“No problem, Rachel.”

On my way out, I put in a call to Ferd Fingersh. I was hoping I could reach Rafael Salazar through Ferd, since I didn't even know where Rafael was staying in town. The Customs receptionist told me that Mr. Fingersh was out of the office. So was Mr. DeWitt. She didn't know whether Mr. Salazar was with either of them. I left my name and a message for Mr. Salazar to call me.

***

Lurleen had big round glasses and straight brown hair. She looked like a shy student teacher. She looked nothing like the secretary who placed Salvatore Donalli's calls on the telephone and his penis in her mouth. But then again, she probably didn't think I looked like the hanky-panky angel of death.

She brought me a cup of coffee and led me to the doorway of Salvatore Donalli's ornate office. Donalli was talking on—correction, shouting into—the telephone.

“What are you talking, twenty seventy-five, you fuck!” He followed that with an Italian curse. “You tole me twenty-five even on Monday. Don't try to yantz me, you guinea bastard.”

He was short and he was dark. His skin was dark, his hair was dark, his eyes were dark. He had black hair on top, going silver on the sides, cut close and slicked straight back. Everything about him seemed compact and thick and hairy. He was wearing a white short-sleeve dress shirt, no tie, top button open, exposing a thick growth of black and gray chest hair. His arms were hairy, the backs of his hands were hairy, and the clock for his five o'clock shadow was set on Greenwich mean time.

The gold-plated telephone was cradled between his neck and shoulder. His head bobbed as he listened to someone's spiel. He reached for an enormous cigar that was resting in a marble ashtray. It was unlit and well chewed.

“Yeah?” he growled, as he jammed the cigar into his mouth. “Bullshit.…You heard me, Vinnie. Bullshit. Wha?…C'mon. You think I just got off the fucking turnip boat, Vinnie?…So what?…You think maybe I don't got no overhead neither?” His face was flushed and he gestured with both hands. “Hey, don't talk about your Teamsters. Your Teamsters got nothing on my Teamsters, so don't start pulling that shit on me.…Let me tell you something, Vinnie, my goddamn Teamsters make Saddam Hussein look like Mr. Rogers, okay?”

He noticed me in the doorway and waved me in. With the cigar he pointed to a seat across from his shiny black desk, which was roughly the size of the main deck of the USS
Missouri
, He had diamond rings on both pinkies. Behind him on the wall was a portrait of the Virgin Mary hung in an elaborately carved gold frame.

He put his hand over the mouthpiece. “I'll be with ya in a minute, miss. My brother-in-law. He's selling me carpets for a building we're putting up out near Chesterfield Mall.” He rolled his eyes heavenward and shrugged, his hand still over the mouthpiece.

Then his head snapped back down and he frowned in response to whatever Vinnie had just said. “Hey, Vinnie, read my fucking lips. Forget twenty seventy-five, that number don't even reside in my vocabulary.…Right. That's what I said.…Yo, Vinnie, you're talking industrial grade, this ain't no fucking Persian rug.…Yeah.…Now you're talking, you fuck.…Right.…Friday, and no excuses.…Yeah, I know.…I know, Vinnie, it's breaking my fucking heart.…You, too.…
Mangia mio gots
, Vinnie.”

Donalli replaced the receiver and shook his head. “Take my advice,” he said to me as he pointed the cigar for emphasis. “Family and subcontractors don't mix. Fucking guy tries to nickel and dime me every fucking time.” He leaned back in his chair and jammed the chewed cigar back in his mouth. “So you're Rachel Gold. What are you, twenty-five?”

“Over thirty.”

“Get out of here, thirty. You look like a kid. I'll tell you one thing: You don't look like no lawyer.”

“Thanks.”

“Hey, I'm not jerking your chain.”

“I'm not jerking yours, Sal.”

“Yeah?” He chuckled as he removed the cigar and studied it as he picked a piece of tobacco off his lip. “Hey, you hungry?”

I was. I hadn't eaten breakfast that morning, and I'd been up since four-fifteen. “I'm starving.”

“You like Italian beef?”

“So long as there's lots of grilled onions and peppers.”

Donalli's smile broadened. “Hey, you're okay.” He leaned forward and punched the intercom button with a fat finger.

“Yes, Sal,” said a voice over the speaker.

“Make it two, Lurleen. Extra onions and peppers. Aw, make it three, kid. Have one yourself. Unless you got some hot date tonight,” he said with a chuckle, winking at me.

“Sal!” she whined over the phone.

Thirty minutes later, Lurleen brought in two huge Italian beef sandwiches, two cans of Coke, and two cannolis. By then, I had explained my involvement in the estate of Stoddard Anderson and had briefly sketched the ins and outs of the insurance issues.

Unfortunately, he wasn't much help on Stoddard Anderson. Sal had talked with him frequently during the last couple months, mostly about one or more of the five construction projects Donalli Construction had going at the time. Legal issues kept popping up on each job site.

“Especially with that River Des Peres project,” he said. “Between the U. City bureaucrats and the pencilnecks from the MSD, I was probably on the fucking phone with Stod once a day.”

Mention of the Metropolitan Sewer District reminded me of Albert Weidemeir. Did Donalli know him?

“Weidemeir? Don't ring no bell. I know Stod did some work for the MSD. Had some contacts. Told me a couple times he'd try to get them off my back on that River Des Peres project. But I don't recall any names.”

“What about the last week or so before he died?” I asked. “Did you notice anything unusual?”

“Unusual? Like what?”

“Did Mr. Anderson's personality change? Did he seem like a different person? Distracted? Jumpy? Depressed? Anything like that?”

Sal put the cigar back in his mouth and turned toward the window. Leaning back in his chair, he chewed on the unlit cigar, rotating it between his thumb and forefinger.

“He seemed to have trouble focusing,” Sal finally said, still looking out the window. “He'd kinda fade in, fade out.” He turned to me. “Old days, I used to shoot the shit with him, know what I mean? Not that he was a real cut-up or anything. The guy was a WASP down to the end of his…end of his toes. Still, he used to get a charge out of when I yantzed him. But not the last couple times we talked. I tried to. I even tried a trick that used to shake him up a little, but it didn't work.”

“What was the trick?”

“Aw,” Donalli shrugged and waved his hand dismissively. “Just a private thing. Not important.”

I watched him. His face reddened as he pretended to study his cigar.

“You mean that private thing between you and Lurleen?” I said.

He winced. “Who told you that?”

“Sal, these are the nineteen-nineties. If Lurleen gets a good lawyer, do you have any idea what it's going to cost you? Per blow job? She's going to own your company.”

“Hey, whoa. C'mon. You don't think I really had her do that, do you? For chrissakes, Rachel, she's my niece. What kind a man you think I am? Jesus Christ, you mean Stoddard Anderson thought she was—that we were—that I actually made her do it?”

I nodded my head.

“Hey, I'm no saint, but I got my limits. Lurleen, she's a good kid. My niece. I'm going to do that to her?” He turned and gestured toward the portrait of the Virgin Mary. “Right under you know who?” He shook his head. “Those fucking WASPs, a school kid could fool them. You ever meet my wife, you know I'd be crazy to try that. For chrissakes, she'd hang my balls from the chandelier.” He shuddered, and then he leaned forward, pointing a pudgy finger at me. “You tell that goddamn Nancy back at the office that I never done that to Lurleen. Never. I swear on my mother's life. On the life of my six kids, you understand?”