Death on a High Floor (50 page)

I had the distinct pleasure, months later, of watching the murder trials of both Spritz and Stewart. As a spectator.

First I watched the trial of Spritz. Jenna did a brilliant job of defending him. That trial ended halfway through, though, when Jenna persuaded Spritz to turn state’s evidence against Stewart. Which earned him a plea deal for first-degree manslaughter—six years with good behavior.

Then I watched Stewart’s trials. There were two. One for killing Simon and one for killing Harry.

I learned a lot from listening to Spritz rat him out. I learned that it was Stewart and Harry who had cooked up the idea to make copies of my original
Ides
and then sell them. Not so much for profit, I was given to understand, as for the sheer fun of screwing people.

It seems that after Simon got my
Ides
, he entrusted Harry to take it to the photographer to be photographed for his catalogue. Harry had it photographed all right, but then arranged to send it to Shanghai to be copied by an expert forger who worked with Chen. To cover their butts in case they were caught, they used the firm’s DHL number, charged to me personally, to send it. And they used Spritz, Harry’s old friend from the days of Harry’s covered-up drug arrest, as the courier to bring back the copies. In exchange for handling that and other logistics, he was going to get a cut and retire. For helping later with the cover-up and the framing of me, he had apparently asked for a still larger share.

When the copies of the
Ides
came back, Harry and Stewart had an idea that turned out to be too smart by half. They persuaded Simon he ought to get an appraisal of the
Ides
from Serappo. Harry and Stewart then sent Serappo one of their copies to appraise instead of the original. They figured if the copy could pass muster with him, their fakes were going to sail through any challenges to their authenticity. Unfortunately, the copy didn’t pass Serappo’s muster, and that’s when it all began to fall apart.

At that point, the original was still in Shanghai, and it was too late to hide Serappo’s appraisal of the fake from Simon. Initially, Simon believed it was me who had cheated him. Then, a week before the murder, he somehow figured out what had really happened and was threatening to turn them all over to the police. So it turned out that Stewart had testified truthfully about the reason Simon was killed. It’s just that he and Harry did it instead of me. With Spritz looking on in order to, in his words, “make sure those amateurs planted the evidence”—against me—“properly.”

In his trials, Stewart didn’t make out as well as Spritz had. Stewart was tried for Harry’s murder as a special circumstance. Killing a witness. He’s now on death row. The DA’s theory of the case was that Stewart got worried they were going to be caught and so killed Harry as the first step in a plan to get rid of all the witnesses to Simon’s murder, one by one.

My conversation with Spritz at the
DownUnder
,
where he had tried to rat out Harry, would probably have nailed Spritz as a co-conspirator in a plot to murder Harry. But no one ever called me as a witness.

As for the other conspirators, Harry was dead, and Susan Apacha, who had had only a small role in the thing, had turned state’s evidence, too. She got off with only two years. A real plus was the discovery, during a “routine” federal tax audit of the firm and certain of its senior partners, that Caroline Thorpe—the interim managing partner who had tried to get me fired—had filed falsified personal tax returns. She was charged with tax evasion, got two years, and was disbarred. Which made it a tad difficult for her to continue as the firm’s managing partner.

As for me, I took a long vacation in France, visited an old girlfriend there, and then returned to the firm. I even got my old office back. And since there weren’t any other grey hairs around who could do it, I agreed to be the managing partner again. But only for a year. Or so I have told them. My first task had been to stop the exodus of lawyers who thought the firm’s reputation was going to suffer from the whole thing. With the help of a good P.R. firm, we managed to turn it into a plus to get the firm more national name recognition, and the hemorrhage of lawyers stopped.

Today was a special day, though. After the trials were over, Jenna had been invited to rejoin the firm. As a partner. We had just had a small, late-afternoon firm party to celebrate her return, and the two of us were in my office for a private celebration. It was really the first time we’d had any serious one-on-one time together since the trials began.

It was almost five o’clock. Jenna was standing by the window, watching the sun splash its glow on the mountains as it set. She turned to face me.

“Robert, did you ever ask Oscar if he would come to M&M and join us in opening our criminal defense department?”

“Yes, I did.”

“What did he say?”

“He said it was too high up.”

We both laughed.

“Even without him, it’s time for a toast,” I said. I poured two glasses of
Cristal
, handed one to Jenna and raised my glass.

“To a great career for you,” I said.

“And to a great managing partnership for you, Robert. Second time around.”

We clinked glasses and drank down the contents.

Jenna put her glass down on the small coffee table, next to the silver
t
etradrachm of Athens
in its Lucite cube. She picked up the cube and turned it in her hand. “This is such a nice way to display things,” she said. She put the cube back down.

“Jenna,” I said, “there are some things I’ve been wanting to ask you.”

“Such as?”

“Was there ever any drug dealing in the firm?”

“Nope.”

“None at all?”

“None at all.”

“Well, why did Harry go to the Big Island then?”

“He went there every year in December. Had an interest in a time share there. Something he started when he retired.”

“Oh. So they were just scamming me about the drugs, trying to throw me off?”

“Something like that. But don’t feel bad about it. Your meeting with Spritz in the bar is what led to our learning about the tea bag and got me to thinking about the alternate uses of tea bags.”

“Okay. Another question then. Did you ever learn from Spritz what Harry and Stewart were really planning to do with the fake
Ides
?”

“Just sell them, so far as I know.”

“That’s never made any sense to me,” I said.

“Why not?”

“You couldn’t move seven or eight newly discovered
Ides
. Everyone would want to know where they came from, and there’s no logical explanation.”

“So what’s your theory, Robert?”

“Remember that Stewart went to Macedonia on an archaeological tour?”

“Sure,” she said. “But I never made anything of it.”

“I think they were planning some kind of fake discovery of a hoard of
Ides
. Just like the Black Sea Hoard.”

She shrugged. “Could be. I wouldn’t put it past those guys. But what would that get them? I thought you couldn’t move discoveries like that out of the country, that they’d belong to the Macedonian government.”

“If they could believably fake finding the hoard, it would get them on the cover of
Coin World.
They’d be famous in certain circles.”

Just then, Gwen popped her head in. “Your visitor is here, Mr. Tarza.”

“Send him in,” I said.

“Who is it?” Jenna asked.

“You’ll see.”

And then Serappo Prodiglia walked through the door.

“Good afternoon, Robert,” He reached out and shook my hand, then turned to Jenna. “Ah, the courier,” he said. “I don’t believe I ever learned your name, Miss . . .” He cocked his head, as if waiting to learn her identity.

Jenna smiled, almost shyly, and extended her hand. “Jenna James. Nice to see you again.”

Serappo picked up her hand and kissed it in the European manner. “The pleasure is mine,” he said.

“Well,” I said, “I assume you came for something.”

“Indeed, I did,” Serappo said.

I went to my desk drawer, opened it, and took out the real
Ides
, which I had placed in a small glassine envelope. Simon’s estate had retrieved the original from China, and I had bought it back from the estate for the same $500,000 Simon had paid me for it. I handed it to Serappo. “Here it is,” I said.

He took it from me, removed it gently from its envelope, and, holding it carefully between thumb and forefinger, lifted it up to the light. He gazed at it for a long time with what can only be called a beatific smile.

“I really own it,” he said. “Finally. Thank you, Robert, for honoring your contract. And for fulfilling an old man’s wish. I know you could have sold it for much more to someone else. It’s doubly infamous now, and that adds value.”

“You’re welcome,” I said.

“I trust that the money I wired to your bank account was received.”

“Yes, it was.”

“May I ask,” Jenna said, “what you are going to do with the
Ides
?”

“Well, Miss James, in the manner of coin collectors everywhere, I will look at it a lot at first. Then I will no doubt place it in a long, red cardboard box, and put the box on a shelf. I doubt I shall ever sell it, though. When I pass on, the
Ides
will move to other hands, continuing on its own journey.”

“That’s quite romantic,” Jenna said.

“Yes, I suppose in a way it is,” he said.

“Serappo, will you join us for some champagne?” I asked.

“Thank you, Robert, but I’m afraid I must decline. I came only to pick up the coin, and my flight back leaves shortly.”

“All right,” I said. “Have a safe flight.”

He shook each of our hands, said, “Adieu, my young friends,” and left.

“An intriguing man,” Jenna said.

“Yes, he is. But I’m glad he has gone and taken the
Ides
with him. I needed to be rid of it. It ends it.”

“I can see that,” she said.

“And now that it’s over-over, Jenna,” I said, “I have a little end-of-the-case thank-you present for you. A souvenir of a puzzle you solved.”

I went back to my desk, opened the large bottom drawer, and pulled out a small box wrapped in red paper. I handed it to her.

“Oh, I love presents!” she said.

She unwrapped it and held it up. “Oh my God, a tea bag in a Lucite cube. How perfect! Thank you!” She walked over and gave me a kiss on the cheek. “Didn’t work to fix Stewart’s shiner, but I’ll keep it nearby in case I ever get one myself.”

“Good. You never know what can happen to you in a law firm. But you know, Jenna, there was one other puzzle I never did solve.”

“Which one was that, Robert?”

“Who the second woman was in the firm that night, the one that Boone saw.”

Jenna shrugged. “I don’t think there was one, Robert. At least Spritz and Susan Apacha swore there wasn’t. And Boone, well, you know, he has a screw loose a bit.”

“I guess we’ll never know for sure, then,” I said.

She leveled a gaze at me—half way between ‘oh, brother, here we go again’ and ‘I am so sad.’

“You think it was me, don’t you?”

“The thought has crossed my mind. I admit it. But I figure if it had been you, Stewart would have ratted you out while trying to trade it for something.”

“Right. Like life in prison instead of death by injection.”

“Makes sense to me. What say we forget about it and have some more champagne?”

“I’d love some, Robert.”

I refilled her glass, and then mine.

Eventually, we finished the bottle.

THE END