Grave Designs (4 page)

Chapter Three

The law firm of Abbott & Windsor occupies the top six floors of the Lake Michigan Bank Building, one of the many modern skyscrapers on or near LaSalle Street that have transformed the less-is-more catechism of modern architecture into a more-or-less blight of steel and glass.

I took the express elevator to the forty-first floor and stepped out onto the beige carpeting of the main reception area. Everything looked familiar except the receptionist behind the large oak desk. When I left Abbott & Windsor, the receptionist was a former Playboy bunny. The senior partners eventually decided that her provocative torso clashed with the subdued decor of the reception area. No such problems with the bunny's replacement: Her gray hair was wrapped tightly in an unforgiving bun, and her breasts were bound and gagged beneath the protective camouflage of a suit jacket the same color as the carpeting.

Graham Marshall's secretary had apparently left word with the receptionist that I was to be sent down when I arrived. I had called her from the pet cemetery, explained that I was working for the firm, and told her I needed to take a look through Graham Marshall's office. The receptionist buzzed her to announce my arrival, and then waved me on after I said I knew my way around.

I walked down the long, carpeted corridor past the secretaries in their little cubicles. Some of them smiled at me with vague recollection. One of the partners—Hamilton Frederick—came out of his office as I walked past.

“Ah, Miss Gold,” he said, pausing to light his pipe with a gold Dunhill lighter. “I haven't seen you on our floor for some time. I've been meaning to speak with you.”

“Really?” I said. “About what?”

“It's that Carter case.” He took the pipe out of his mouth and tamped it with a gold pipe tool. He'd put on a few pounds since I last saw him: the middle button on his navy-blue vest had already given way. “You'll be quite interested to know that we've decided to move for summary judgment on the fraud count.” He obviously thought I still worked at Abbott & Windsor. “I'd like you and another associate to start working on the brief right away.”

“Summary judgment?” This was fun. “That case is a loser, Ham.” He hated that name. “Why don't you quit churning the file and settle that dog? Give the client a break.”

“What!”

One of the secretaries giggled.

“Gotta run, Ham.” I left him standing there, sputtering.

I rounded the corner and headed toward Marshall's corner office. The corridor walls were hung with the usual collection of abstract paintings, art show posters, and Andy Warhol ripoffs that have become
de rigueur
for corporate law firms.

Helen Marston was standing in the doorway of Graham Marshall's office. A tall, angular widow with short gray hair, she had been Graham Marshall's secretary for at least twenty years.

“Hello, Rachel.” Helen smiled at me. Although she looked like the stern elementary-school teacher who patrolled the lunchroom with a ruler clenched in a bony fist, she was actually quite nice, in a formal sort of way.

“Hi, Helen.” I paused. “I'm awful sorry about Mr. Marshall.”

“Thank you, Rachel. You're very kind.”

I looked around. “It's been a while.”

“That it has. We miss you.”

“I was afraid I wouldn't get here before five. I was out on the southwest side.”

“I would have been willing to wait for you. I've stayed down late over the years more times than I care to remember. Come on inside. I'm afraid his things are already packed in boxes.”

We went into Marshall's office. I walked over to the large window behind his oval glass-and-chrome desk. The sidewalks below were jammed with commuters and the streets were clogged with fat yellow cabs.

“Can I be of some help, Rachel?” Helen Marston stood by the couch.

“I'm working with the firm on some estate matters for Mr. Marshall. Very confidential, Helen. Something to do with a pet called Canaan. Do you remember anything like that?”

She frowned in concentration. “Canaan? I'm not aware that Mr. Marshall ever owned a pet. I believe his wife is quite allergic to them.”

“That's what I've been told. Maybe it was a friend's pet.”

“Perhaps. He certainly never discussed any pet with me.”

I glanced at the credenza. “I see they've already taken his computer.” The dark outline of the terminal base was still visible on the wood surface of the credenza.

“They removed it three weeks ago.”

Graham Marshall had been an early convert to the value of computer-based litigation support and had helped pioneer the law firm's use of computers in complex lawsuits. His own terminal had been tied in directly to the main Bottles & Cans computer. One of my stronger memories of the countless late nights I had spent at Abbott & Windsor during my years with the firm is the image of Marshall's terminal screen glowing green in his empty, darkened office.

“Who has it now?” I asked.

“I'm not sure. So far as I know, Calvin Pemberton has the only other terminal linked to the Bottles and Cans computer. Perhaps they'll give Mr. Marshall's terminal to Mr. Charles.”

“Did you pack his things?” I asked.

“Yes. It was really quite sad.” She sighed. “All those years.” She ran her hand across the comer of his empty desk.

We were silent for a few moments.

“Would you mind if I looked through the boxes, Helen? Maybe there's a clue.”

“Certainly.”

“I promise to put everything back in order.”

“Oh, you needn't worry. It's been a bit slow here. I'm just wrapping things up.”

“Will you stay on?” I asked. I couldn't imagine her working for anyone else.

“I don't think so. I've been asked to stay on, but I can't imagine starting all over again with someone new.” She smiled. “Mr. Marshall was more than enough for one lifetime.” Helen moved to the door. “Well, I'll be out at my desk, Rachel. At least until six o'clock.”

“Thanks, Helen.”

“Did you find anything unusual while you were packing?” I asked.

She turned. “No. It's all there except for a few items. I found a few motions, some correspondence, and a draft of that brief he was working on the night he…the night he passed away. I sent them on to other lawyers who were working on the cases with him. His correspondence hasn't been unusual. He wasn't one for saving things. Very neat and orderly. He was quite proud of that.”

“I remember,” I said.

She left the room, and I sat down on the couch before the cardboard boxes. There were seven of them. I pulled open the first box. It was filled with framed photographs. There was one of Marshall, tuxedoed and grinning, shaking hands with Richard Nixon; it was signed, “To Graham Marshall—a fine American and first-rate attorney—Dick—3/15/70.” In another photograph Marshall and Gerald Ford were huddled in conversation: Marshall was wearing a dark suit, and Ford, pipe in hand, was in shirtsleeves with his tie loosened. There was a recent family portrait: Marshall and his two children in tennis whites, grinning and holding rackets; his wife in a lavender sundress and gold necklace, looking vaguely attractive and very expensive. There were other photographs—Marshall shaking hands with Chief Justice Warren Burger, toasting Senator Charles Percy, playing golf with Congressman Daniel Rostenkowski. Not a hint of a pet.

The next five boxes contained books—law books, history books, books of quotations, a dictionary. I flipped through several. Nothing unusual.

The final box apparently contained the contents of his desk: pencils, pens, a tin of Dunhill pipe tobacco, three pipes, scissors, stapler, legal pads, letter opener, and the like.

As I sorted through the boxes, I thought again about that peculiar gravestone: “A Nickname for Providence.” And that name. Canaan? Promised land? An odd name for a pet. I reached into the second box and pulled out Marshall's dictionary, an old leather-bound edition. I flipped to the entry for “Canaan”:

Canaan (Kā n
ə
n). 1. The fourth son of Ham and the grandson of Noah. 2. In biblical times, the part of Palestine between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea; the Promised Land. 3. A small village in Massachusetts, founded in 1679 by Reverend Winthrop Marvell and disbanded in 1698.

I copied the definitions onto a sheet of yellow legal paper, folded the sheet, and put it into my briefcase.

“Rachel?” Helen Marston was at the door.

I gestured at the boxes. “Not much help here.”

“I've been sitting at my desk,” she said, “trying to remember.”

“And?”

“I still don't remember a pet, but I think Mr. Marshall had a client named Canaan.”

“Really?”

“Perhaps. I can't seem to recall who it was. But I remember working on something involving something called Canaan.”

“What do you remember?” I asked.

“Almost nothing. This was a few years back. Let's see…1984 or 1985, I believe. Mr. Marshall devoted many hours to it. There were evenings, weekends.”

“Is there a file on it?”

“I have no idea.” She studied me. “There was something about that project that seemed fishy.”

“In what way?”

“Mr. Marshall handled
everything
on that matter himself. If there was a file, he kept it in his office. I may have typed a few things for it, but everything went back to him. He specifically instructed me to keep no copies of anything pertaining to Canaan.” She paused. “Mr. Marshall always was high-handed. As you know, he made his own rules. But these Canaan procedures were quite irregular even for him.”

“Is there a way to check if there's a file on this Canaan?”

“I'll ask the Inactive Files Department tomorrow. A file that old is probably in the warehouse. But they should be able to locate it with the computer. I'll ask first thing tomorrow.”

“Terrific, Helen. I'd appreciate it. But try to make your inquiries sort of vague. Ishmael Richardson told me he wants this investigation confidential.”

“Of course, dear. I should have an answer by noon.”

“I'll check in then. While you're at it, Helen, ask them to look for a file on Maggie Sullivan. There might be a connection.”

Helen nodded and went back to her desk. I stood up and took one last look around the large office. No doubt the next partner in line was packed and ready to move in. The death of a senior partner was the starting signal for the Abbott & Windsor version of musical chairs. Several lawyers below the rank of the dead partner would lurch one space closer to the goal: a corner office with a view of the lake. By the end of this week some mid-level associate would be leaving his windowless “inside” office and moving into an “outside” office with one narrow window facing the dull tangle of expressways and warehouses of the west side of Chicago. That “outside” office would have been vacated by a senior associate or junior partner in favor of a slightly larger office with two windows facing the north side or south side. And that office, in turn, would have been vacated by a senior-level partner who would now lay claim to the treasured corner office of Graham Anderson Marshall, to have and hold until death do them part.

It was a nice office, with a view of Lake Michigan and Buckingham Fountain. I moved to the large window. From forty-one stories up, the giant Calder sculpture down in Federal Plaza looked like a discarded rusting paper clip.

Chapter Four

I left Graham Marshall's office. On my way down the hall I passed Calvin Pemberton's office. Kent Charles was standing by the door.

“Well, look who's here,” he said with a smile, “the Miss Illinois of the American Bar Association.”

“Hi, Kent.”

“Haven't seen you for a long time, Rachel. Not since you left us. How you been?”

“Not bad.”

“Cal and I were just talking about your favorite case. Bottles and Cans. You have a minute?”

“I guess.”

I followed Kent into Cal's office. Cal Pemberton was sitting on the couch.

“Hi, Cal.”

“Hello, Rachel.”

I sat down on the chair facing the desk and scooted it around toward the couch.

Cal Pemberton was wearing a brown three-piece suit, vest buttoned, and a dark bow tie. Kent had his suit jacket off and his club tie loosened.

“So you two are going to run Bottles and Cans?” I asked.

“We're going to give it a try,” Kent said as he walked behind the desk and sat against the credenza. He rested his arm on top of Cal's computer terminal. “Cal and I were just going over some strategies for the next round of depositions.”

Kent Charles and Cal Pemberton were the two young heavy-hitters in the litigation department. Both specialized in antitrust litigation, although Kent also had a growing practice in white-collar crime. Kent was in his early forties; Cal was in his late thirties. Although paired together under Graham Marshall on the Bottles & Cans litigation for more than a decade—long enough for people to think of them as a unit, like Siamese twins—they were an odd couple.

Kent Charles was a dark and athletic study in aggression. He had played linebacker for the University of Illinois football team. He was first-string his junior and senior years, even though his height and weight-six feet, 195 pounds—made him one of the smallest linebackers in the Big Ten. Illini fans at Abbott & Windsor claimed he had been a ferocious hitter with a reputation for head-spearing running backs and clothes-lining receivers.

He had that reputation in his law practice too. Kent thrived on combat, and sought it out even in otherwise friendly lawsuits—by noticing motions to be heard on the day after Thanksgiving or Christmas (thereby ruining his opponent's holiday), by objecting to routine requests for extensions of court deadlines, by overwhelming opponents with interrogatories and document requests, by antagonizing witnesses and attorneys during depositions. He was savvy enough to pull it off—no easy task considering the number of lawyers in Chicago who were just waiting for the chance to get even with Kent Charles. Most would never get the chance. Kent Charles combined a total commitment to trial preparation with an uncanny ability to find his opponent's jugular vein in a lawsuit while disguising his own. Clients, of course, loved him—as clients love any litigator who provides a vicarious outlet for their own aggression. Kent Charles was the quintessential hired gun.

By contrast, Cal Pemberton was the crafty schemer. If Kent Charles went for the jugular with a switchblade, Cal Pemberton dissected capillaries with a surgical laser. To Cal Pemberton, a lawsuit was a game of chess. He could sit alone in his office for hours, staring out the window, idly twisting a lock of his unkempt hair as he plotted moves and countermoves months and even years into the future. He rarely explained the purpose behind the obscure research assignments he gave to younger associates; as a result, the confused and frustrated associate would spend days in the firm's library researching an issue that seemed to bear no relation to the lawsuit. But then, two years later, during the fourth day of a deposition, while Cal's opponent stifled a yawn and checked his watch for the tenth time that hour, Cal would elicit a series of answers from an unsuspecting deponent which, when coupled with the earlier research project, would permanently alter the course of the lawsuit, and always to the advantage of Cal's client. It took clients a long time to warm up to Cal Pemberton and his labyrinthine strategies, but once they did they insisted that he handle all of their cases.

Like any good commander, Graham Marshall had exploited the best that Cal and Kent had to offer. To Cal Pemberton, the bespectacled and brilliant loner, he assigned the byzantine litigation strategies that turned on subtle points of law and seemingly insignificant facts. To Kent Charles, the poor boy from Joliet who had battled his way into the rarefied atmosphere of the large corporate law firm, Marshall assigned the toughest depositions, the nastiest motions, the angriest clients. Kent Charles was clearly Marshall's favorite, his loyal and enthusiastic disciple. Batman and Robin, the firm's pundits called Graham Marshall and Kent Charles—never to their faces. If Cal Pemberton was jealous, he never let on.

Their personal lives were a study in contrasts also. Kent Charles played handball every day at the Union League Club; Cal Pemberton played bridge Wednesday evenings at the Tavern Club. Cal lived in the western suburbs with his shy, plain housewife and his shy, plain son. He was twenty pounds overweight and his curly brown hair was receding on top and usually in need of a trim everywhere else. Kent Charles lived alone in a highrise on the Gold Coast. His second wife—a stewardess—had been killed three years before in a midair collision over San Diego. After a remarkably brief period of mourning—which included according to the firm's rumor mill, intimate ministrations from the wife of a tax partner who was out of town for a few days after the funeral—Kent had become again one of Chicago's most eligible and active bachelors. That he was a widower seemed to make him even more alluring.

And Kent was, I had to admit, a hunk: dark blue eyes; thick black hair combed straight back; tanned face; dark mustache; even, white teeth. As I turned toward him, I felt—as always—that I was in the den of a charming but hungry carnivore.

“I hear you're working on Graham Marshall's estate,” Kent said, glancing at my legs.

“And I hear you're dating the weather girl on Channel Nine,” I answered quickly, trying to mask my surprise. How did he know about my assignment already?

Kent grinned. “Rumors. I've never even met her.”

“Guess you can't believe everything you hear these days,” I said.

Cal squinted. “Is there a problem with Mr. Marshall's estate?”

I shrugged. “Not that I know of,” I said, glancing at Kent.

“Let me explain,” Kent said. “Someone saw you today at lunch with Ishmael Richardson over at the University Club. Four hours later you're here in Graham's office looking through his personal belongings.” Kent smiled and raised his hands. “We're not spying on you, Rachel. It's just that Hamilton Frederick stormed into my office thirty minutes ago demanding that I—how did he put it?—demanding that I reprimand you for failing to show proper respect to a partner. He claims you refused a drafting assignment from him. Worse yet, he said you were insolent.”

I feigned shock. “Me? Insolent?”

Kent chuckled. “That pompous clown thinks you still work here. Since I'm on the associate compensation committee, he wanted to register a complaint. I'm afraid you're no longer within my jurisdiction.”

“Be sure to tell Ham that I'm sorry I can't help him on that case,” I said with a smile as I got up to leave.

“If you have any questions about Graham,” Kent said, “give either one of us a call. Graham meant a lot to both of us.”

I walked back toward the main reception area. A few secretaries were still at their desks, earning overtime. Most of the lawyers were still in their offices. Like most large law firms, Abbott & Windsor never closes down. There are lawyers there at all hours of the night and day. The word processing department and the copy center run on three shifts around the clock. A special typing pool starts work at eight o'clock at night. In a closet off the coffee room there are five rollaway beds. There is a private shower on each floor, stocked with shampoo, deodorant, shaving cream, disposable razors, and fresh towels. I was glad to be leaving.

While waiting for the elevator I studied the piece of metal that “graced” the forty-first floor entrance to Abbott & Windsor. Art dealers in Chicago view senior partners of law firms as easy marks; over the years they have solemnly unloaded their garbage on them at exorbitant prices. Walk into any big Chicago law firm and you will find a large piece of tortured stainless steel, complete with bronze plaque, squatting in the lobby.

“Hey, gorgeous!” The voice was unmistakable.

“What are you doing loose?” I said, turning around. “Don't tell me you made bail on that morals charge?”

“Bail? Shit, Rachel, you think that sheep is going to testify against me? Believe me, she felt the earth move.”

We were both grinning.

“How are you doing, Benny?” I asked.

“Same old shit, Rachel. You know the story.”

“I know.”

“Where you going?” he asked.

“Back to my office,” I said.

“Wanna grab a bite to eat?”

“Sure. Let me just stop by my office for phone messages. You never know. General Motors may have finally seen the light and decided to hire a good lawyer.”

“I'll keep you company. This place is driving me crazy,” he said.

“I know the feeling.”

“And anyway, I got some weird info on Graham Marshall that might interest you.”

“Not you too. I thought everything was hush-hush.”

Benny gave me a big grin. “Rachel, the omnipresent Benny Goldberg knows all. How do you think I've survived with these goyim? And anyway”—he winked—“I've got something on Marshall you're gonna love.”