If I Should Die Before I Die (35 page)

In this, Intaglio was right on the money.

In Memoriam.

I remember us standing on the sidewalk with our coat collars up, and feeling the cold air on my skin but warm in the belly. We'd been talking about what made people like McCloy and Halloran, who'd been born with everything, kill strangers for kicks. But we'd run out of answers, and I had a meeting to get to that afternoon—the full-scale one at the Firm, a follow-up to our tête-à-tête with Roy Barger.

“Thanks for the meal,” I said. “Hell, thanks for the feast.”

“Don't thank me,” Intaglio said. “It was the least I could do. Remember, you gave us the case, pal.”

What case?
I thought. I didn't say it, but I didn't have to.

“What's the matter?” Intaglio said.

“Nothing. It's sort of depressing, that's all. All of it.”

“Depressing? Come on, Phil, you weren't born yesterday. We'll come out a lot better on this one than we usually do. It's the same old story: most of the time people with money don't pay for their sins. What more can I tell you?”

Nothing more, I guessed.

“Besides,” he added, grinning, “there are the fringe benefits.”

“Like what?”

“Like you and I got to know each other. Like maybe you found out we're not all of us plastic and polyester down here.”

I started to protest but then grinned back at him instead.

We shook hands.

“Keep in touch,” Intaglio said.

CHAPTER

19

Roy Barger, as I've mentioned, had already been in to see us. He'd asked the Counselor for a one-on-one meeting and the Counselor had agreed, except that his “one” had to include me.

“Congratulations, Counselor!” Barger had said with a broad smile, hand outstretched, as soon as Ms. Shapiro ushered him in.

“Congratulations for what?” the Counselor replied, standing to shake hands.

“Why, I read in the papers that you're going to be a father. I think that's marvelous! It's not your first, is it?”

“Thank you,” the Counselor said while Barger turned to shake hands with me, “but it is my first. I suppose I'm a late starter.”

“Nonsense,” Barger said. “It'll keep you young.”

“That's just what my wife says,” said the Counselor, smiling back benignly.

I should put in that, whatever had gone down between them or hadn't, the Counselor had returned from Thanksgiving in high spirits. Nora had stayed in the Hamptons. She was fine, he'd said. More important, she'd been to her gynecologist and all was well on that score. As for the media, well, the headline
PREG SHRINK THWARTS KILLER
pretty well summed it up, and from everything I'd seen, they'd swallowed Nora's version whole.

“I've come with hat in hand, Charles,” Roy Barger said, sitting down and gesturing with his manicured hands. “My client wants out.”

He wasn't, for the record, holding his hat or anything else, but I guess his hands were up in the air to show that everything was going to be aboveboard this time.

“Who're you representing these days?” the Counselor asked.

“Why, Margie Magister. Who else?”

“Well, Phil tells me you've had a very active client list lately.”

“What …?” Barger didn't seem to get the point at first. But then he shifted in his chair and, reaching across, touched my arm. “Oh that,” he said. “You mean Halloran?”

“Yes, Halloran,” I answered.

“Well, look, I only got involved with Halloran for the family's sake.”

“Is that so?” I said. “Margie told me she didn't know anything about it.”

“Well, but it's what they would have wanted. Look, Phil, Charles,” glancing from one to the other of us, “if what you want is an act of contrition, then you've got it. I apologize to both of you. I made the mistake of believing Vincent, strange as that may sound now. It's a tragedy, a terrible tragedy for the family. Well, we all make mistakes, don't we?”

For Roy Barger to admit that he'd ever made a mistake in his career chalked up one for our side. At least that's what the Counselor said later.

“To business,” Barger said. “Gentlemen, my client is prepared to sell her entire interest in Magister Companies to the brothers at a reasonable price to be negotiated, and to settle all outstanding differences between them.”

The Counselor worked at a pipe and, rare event, got it lit on the first try.

“The word ‘reasonable' is yours, Roy,” he observed.

“What do you mean?”

“You said ‘a reasonable price.' When Margie called me this morning, she gave me to understand that what's happened has been such a shock to her that she wants out … at any price.”

Barger struggled with it. He said nobody could expect Margie to sell at “any” price. The price ought to be reasonable; it ought to bear some relationship to value. The Counselor asked him if he had a figure in mind, knowing full well, as did Barger, that Margie had said she'd accept any figure the Counselor himself thought was fair.

Barger suggested market plus a premium. When pressed, he mentioned $60 a share. This, he pointed out, represented quite a significant sacrifice from the figure his client had originally put on the table.

The Counselor said he could just as logically defend market
minus
a premium. The stock, which had peaked at just below 50 the day of Raffy Goldsmith's semi-raid, had since trended downward to the low 40s.

Roy Barger suffered in silence—another first. Then, clearing his throat:

“So, Counselor. Name your price.”

“It's not for me to set a price,” the Counselor answered.

“Well? What's your recommendation going to be?”

“All I'm going to recommend is that a meeting of the principals be convened as soon as possible. Let's get on with it. Also that Bob Magister come to the table with an offer, his best and only one, and that it be submitted on a take-it-or-leave-it basis.”

Barger waited for more, but there was no more. He didn't shake hands when he got up to go, which may also have been because his palms were sweating.

“One other thing,” he said at the door. “You should know, Charles, that I no longer speak for Sally.”

“I know that, Roy,” said the Counselor.

The main conference room at the Firm, I've always thought, would make a fine argument for socializing the legal profession. The art which hangs on its walls is, I understand, worth a hell of a lot more than most of us working stiffs can expect to earn in a lifetime. The room contains a full-scale film projection unit, a bar which would rival the Plaza's, and heavy mahogany furniture with leather and brass trim which can be arranged in various configurations, depending upon the event.

They'd decided on a horseshoe arrangement for the Magister meeting, so Hank Rand had told me that morning, with Doug McClintock and the Counselor presiding, as informal co-chairmen, from the closed end. Margie, Hank Rand expected, would be there. They weren't sure about Sally, who'd been in seclusion since the shooting.

It turned out differently.

By the time I got there, the room was already more than half-filled. Lawyers mostly, and their staffs. A lot of commotion and paperwork and handshakes and huddled conversations. Then the Magister brothers came in, escorted by Doug McClintock and a retinue of advisers I mostly recognized, and the Counselor motioned to me to come sit next to him at the head of the horseshoe.

But still no Margie, no Sally.

Then Roy Barger stood up.

His client, he said, had chosen not to attend the meeting, but she had empowered him to act in her behalf with respect to all matters.

“I have here,” Barger went on, “a power of attorney which grants me said rights. I apologize for the fact that I only have two copies but—small confession—my copier broke down this morning.”

This brought laughter from the room, and the Counselor, leaning toward me, said: “He's decided to play the poor relative in the midst of luxury. I doubt it'll work.”

A staff member disappeared with one copy while another worked the center of the horseshoe, showing the document to whoever wanted to inspect it.

I saw Doug McClintock bend over the Counselor, wearing a worried expression.

“What do we do about Sally?” he asked in low tones.

“Find out if her attorneys are similarly empowered.”

“I don't think they are.”

“It never hurts to ask,” the Counselor said.

McClintock straightened, but he never got to put the question. Just then a door opened and Sally Magister herself was ushered in.

A far cry, I should say, from the frizzy-haired redhead in coveralls who'd once showed me the door of her Tribeca duplex, even from the press conference at Margie's. She had on a tweed suit, predominantly wine-colored and severely tailored, the skirt short and the jacket long, high heels, and a little hat, with veil, of the same material as the suit. She carried a black leather portfolio under one arm. The heels made her seem even taller, and the face beneath the veil looked chiseled, intense.

The Magister brothers rose, three as one, and encircled her. Somebody said it was her first public appearance since the tragedy. Somebody else said it was the first time the family members had seen her since then. I watched her lift the veil over the front lip of her hat and allow each of her brothers to kiss her, but her lips never touched their cheeks. Then there was some confusion about where she was to sit. Her attorneys were on the far side of the horseshoe, near Barger, but Young Bob wanted her with him. He insisted on it. Finally, several of the brothers' lawyers changed places with Sally's, making room, and then McClintock called the meeting to order.

“I think it appropriate,” he said in a somber voice, “given the circumstances, that we take a moment to thank Ms. Magister for joining us and that we express our deepest sympathies to her.”

I heard a couple of hear-hears, but Sally Magister herself cut them off.

“Thank you, Douglas,” she said, staring hard at him, “but that's not necessary. I learned a long time ago, in this family, that when an animal goes bad and betrays its breeding, you have no choice but to put it down. That I didn't succeed in this regard is what's truly reprehensible. Now let's get to our business, please.”

A conversation-stopper, needless to say. A hush fell over the room. I studied the Magister faces, all in a row, and thought about something Intaglio had said, to the effect that self-defense would play as long as Sally Magister stayed off the witness stand.

Amen.

“Very well,” McClintock said, recovering. “The purpose of this meeting is for Robert Worth Magister, Jr., president of Magister Companies, Inc., and with the approval of his board of directors, to put forth an offer to buy the outstanding shares in the corporation held by certain members of his family or which would accrue to said members under the terms of the will of Robert Worth Magister, deceased. Bob?” McClintock looked up from his notes and found Young Bob. “It's your show.”

Bob Magister's lawyers then worked the horseshoe, distributing copies of the so-called deal memo, while Young Bob summarized its contents.

“Putting aside all the fine print,” he said, “our offer is for market value, whatever that may be, at the end of trading today on the New York Stock Exchange.”

I glimpsed the look of relief on Roy Barger's face as he listened and skimmed the memorandum. Market value was a far cry from 72, even from the 60 he'd ventured in our office, but it could have been worse. In fact I'd expected it would be.

“Was that your number?” I wrote on a scratch pad, which I then handed to the Counselor.

He shook his head, leaned over and whispered at me, cupping his hand by his mouth:

“No. I recommended market less five. But they said they didn't want to hurt Sally.”

I looked at him in surprise.

“Does she already know the number?” I asked him softly.

He shrugged.

“What do I know?” he whispered, cupping his hand again. “But it's their money.”

McClintock was asking Roy Barger if he was ready to respond, but Barger wanted Sally to go first. Ms. Magister, he said, was a member of the family after all, whereas he was just a simple attorney. But, Sally's attorneys argued back, Barger represented the larger stockholder. They went at it across the horseshoe until somebody suggested the Counselor arbitrate.

“You've made your point, Roy,” the Counselor said. “Now let's have your answer.”

“Do I understand,” Barger shot back, “that if I choose not to respond, the offer is withdrawn at the end of this meeting?”

“Come on, Roy,” the Counselor answered. “You agreed to this meeting. You knew it was going to be take it or leave it.”

“Right,” Barger said. He paused, his eyes scanning the room, like he couldn't resist a small moment of suspense. Then: “I want it known that I personally have strong reservations. But on behalf of my client … I accept.”

Even two seats away, I could hear Doug McClintock's sigh. Of relief, presumably.

Then it was Sally's turn.

One of her attorneys tried to say something, but she shut him up.

“Well, I don't accept,” she said peremptorily, fixing the Counselor with that determined, chiseled gaze. “It's not the money. I leave it to you men to argue dollars. But I've made my position clear from the beginning. The only way I'll sell is if you'll sell me the magazine division.”

A moment—a long one—of stunned silence. Apparently nobody, much less her own lawyers, had known this was coming.

Then Young Bob was standing, his brothers with him, looking down at his sister.

“You realize, Sally,” he said, “that this means the break-up of the family?”

She didn't stand, didn't so much as shift her gaze.