Cold Winter Rain (12 page)

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Woolf White did not give me a corner office.

They didn’t give me Kramer’s former office, either.  Instead, I got an ancient desk with a linoleum top in a corner of the file room, where I waited while a runner wheeled in boxes of files and stacked them in my vicinity.

One group of file boxes bore on their sides the label Oil & Gas Well Litigation in heavy black lettering.

It didn’t require a Philadelphia lawyer to confirm, through the contents of these files, what I had guessed when I reviewed the files Kramer gave me -- that Kramer had been working on a possible class action lawsuit on behalf of Alabama landowners who claimed certain oil companies had underpaid gas royalties through under-measuring and through overpayments to affiliates for marketing, gathering, compressing, and transporting gas, for deducting unrelated expenses, deducting gas that was diverted to their own use, and “producing condensate that was sold to third parties but failing to report such sales and pay royalties on those sales.”

I knew nothing of the facts, but I did know enough law to appreciate the elegance of a simple breach of contract action brought on behalf of a class of plaintiffs with identical contracts and against a group of defendants as toxic, in the public’s view, as oil companies.

The case should pose little difficulty on the merits, or no more than any other good plaintiffs' case, though I knew the defendants would argue that class certification would be inappropriate because audits of each well would have to be performed, and, in the jargon of class actions, individual issues would predominate over common issues, thereby precluding class certification.

But even in the absence of class certification, the cases were probably, nevertheless, worth pursuing on an individual, plaintiff-by-plaintiff basis.  Pursued one-by-one or as a class, the legal fees could run into millions of dollars, even though most of these oil and gas companies were miles below the majors in size and scope of operations.

In one subfolder were DVDs with labels referenced to the paper files I had already seen.

I chose one at random and slid it into the drive of the desktop computer that appeared to be shared by everyone with file room access.  The contents were what I expected -- a list of pdf files, all accessible, no encryption.  Standard law firm practice.

I ejected the disk and pulled the thumb drive Kris had entrusted to her friend Akilah out of my pocket.  I plugged the stick into the USB port and clicked on the icon that appeared on the monitor.  The login and password screen appeared.

In the top desk drawer, I found a list of law firm employees with extensions.  I picked up the phone and punched in the extension of Woolf’s legal assistant.  In another age, I would have thought of her as a secretary.

“
Mrs. Richards,” she said, her voice a half-question.

“
Hi, this is Slate, down in the file room.  I have a little situation here.  Would you see if Don Kramer’s paralegal could help me for a few minutes?”

“
I think Amber is just going through Mr. Kramer’s other files.  I will ask her to join you right away, Mr. Slate.”

A few minutes later, while I looked through the paper version of the Notes file, a heavy young woman with short black hair and no makeup appeared from the other side of my stack of file boxes.  “Mr. Slate?” she said.

I stood.  “Just Slate,” I said.

She nodded.  “I’m Amber.  I’m -- I was Mr. Kramer’s paralegal.  May I help you with something?”

“I hope so, Amber.  Did you know Mr. Kramer’s logins and passwords?”

“
You mean the server login?  We all have our own login name and password for the server.  I wouldn’t have needed to know his.  I have my own.  But for most of us, the login is just the first initial and last name.  Mine is ALand.  Land is my last name.  So Mr. Kramer’s login was probably DKramer.”

“
I don’t know whether that’s what I need.”  I pointed to the thumb drive.  “To access the files on this device, I need a login and password.”

“
I probably can’t help you with that, Mr. -- Slate.  Where did the thumb drive come from?”

I pointed – ambiguously, I hoped – to the Oil & Gas file.  Amber shrugged.  “That drive could have some documents on it, or it could be a draft pleading that Mr. Kramer worked on from home or on the road.  Hard to say.  You may want to talk to one of the IT guys.  Let me see if Jacks can help you.”

“Jacks,” a tall blond man in his late twenties with spiky hair and heavy glasses, whose actual name, he admitted, was Michael Jackson, held network administrator privileges for the firm’s computer systems and, therefore, had access to every Woolf White employee’s login and password information.

Jacks worked on the computer while I read through a file of notes on under-measurement of natural gas production, but after fifteen minutes he looked over at me and shook his head.

“I’ve tried every combination of login id’s and passwords I can come up with,” he said.  “Are you sure this came from a file of ours?”

I told Jacks I might have gotten the drive confused with another case, thanked him for the effort, and sat back down at the desk with the Notes file.

By five-thirty my brain was moving like syrup in the winter, and I needed a break.  I picked up the phone on the desk, swallowed hard, punched 9 for an outside line, and called Sally Kronenberg’s cell phone number.

“Hey!” she answered.

“
Hey yourself,” I said.

“
Oh.  Hello.  Who is this?”

“
It’s Slate.  Were you expecting someone?”

“
Oh, hi.  No, I just, I thought for a second it was someone else.”

“
Well.  I’ve been elbows deep in documents for hours, and I need some air.  Would you like to have dinner with me?”

“
Hmm.  Yes, but on one condition.”

“
What’s that?”

“
Allow me to choose the restaurant and make the reservations.”

“
You got it.  Just text me the when and where.”

“
Will do.  Thanks, Slate.”

I straightened the documents on my desk before walking out to the elevator lobby, out of the building and down the street to the Tutwiler to get ready for dinner.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Ninety minutes later, I sat at a tiny marble-topped table in the bar at Highlands Bar & Grill, nursing a Rob Roy and waiting for Ms. Kronenberg.

Around me a well-dressed and well-watered portion of the membership of the Birmingham Bar Association, sprinkled, no doubt, with real estate brokers, investment advisors, and a CPA or two, exchanged war stories and eyed the young women who clustered in twos and threes, bright and lively as small songbirds.

Through the glass partition separating the bar from the restaurant, diners studied menus and exchanged nods of pleasure at the food placed before them.

I watched out the window as Sally Kronenberg stepped out of a Jaguar XK8 and tossed the keys to one of the valet parking attendants.  She wore a beige silk dress that flowed around her body like wings, matching stilletos on her feet, in her hand a small bag that looked as though it might be worth a month’s rent.

A Skate and expensive clothes on the salary of a small college women’s soccer coach; this woman could surprise me.

I picked up my drink and moved toward the maitre d’s stand as Sally entered through the restaurant door.  I overheard the maitre d’ address her before she spoke.  “Ms. Kronenberg, it’s a pleasure to see you again.  Will you be meeting someone for dinner this evening?”

“Yes, George, the gentleman standing just behind you.”

The maitre d’ turned, gave me a quick once-over, then raised his chin a fraction.

“Good enough for her?”

“
You’ll do, sir.”  He managed only the slightest smile.  “Follow me please.”

We sat at a table near the back.  The plaster walls, hung with French bistro posters, were painted in an ocher so light it looked more like a wash than paint.

I ordered another drink.  Sally Kronenberg ordered a Grey Goose martini, up, lemon twist.

I swallowed the last drops of my first Rob Roy.  “So, tell me again, how did you manage to get us reservations here?”

She shrugged.  “I know a guy.”

“The maitre d’.”

“
Yes, well, George too, but I know Frank and Pardis Stitt a little.”

“
The owners.”

She nodded.  “Yes.”

The waiter returned with her martini and my second Rob Roy.  She picked up her glass by the stem.  “Better days.”

“
And all our yesterdays.”

We clinked glasses; our eyes met until we both looked away at other diners, the walls, the waiters.  I thought I’d seen a glimmer of moisture in hers, but when I looked back, it could have been a reflection from her glass.

Our waiter saved us from more eye contact by swooping in and recommending the stone-ground baked grits for an appetizer.  Sally ordered the grits; I went with the fried quail imported from Georgia, accompanied by a scrambled egg salad with spinach and bacon vinaigrette.

The description reminded me of my mother making a salad for me when I was maybe ten with fresh spinach drizzled with bacon drippings.

I’m an agnostic with regard to fine dining.  Back in my lawyering days, I used to say if I never again set foot in a restaurant, I not only wouldn’t miss it; I wouldn’t realize it.

But, immersed in food at a place like Highlands, I’m capable of enjoying every moment.  It’s like playing golf well but despising golf as a game.  Playing or not playing, eating well or not, you’ve got both options covered.

We ordered off the dinner menu, for me seared and braised duck on a bed of quinoa and wild rice with carrots, young turnips and Appleton Estate rum, for her grilled black grouper served over a root vegetable puree with black truffle and mushroom relish.

We ate without many words, the room’s conversational drone providing background, nothing but an occasional exclamation from us at the surprising flavors.

And after the eating and drinking, too sated for dessert, there was finally nothing left to do but the leaving.

So we walked out of the restaurant in a tentative sort of way, awkward, pausing outside the door on the sidewalk, looking across the little plaza at Highlands United Methodist Church, its mission-style clay tile roof rising incongruously above Birmingham’s Five Points South. 

After a few moments, Sally leaned into me, grasped my upper arm, looked up and said:  “I’m not ready to be alone yet tonight.  Wait for the valet to bring my car, then follow me to my place.  It’s not far.  We can talk there.”

I followed the coach’s Skate to a ten-story condominium on Birmingham’s Southside in a neighborhood near Highland Park.  A gate on the ground floor admitted her to the underground parking deck; I parked on the street and met her in the lobby.

Sally Kronenberg lived on the tenth floor of the building.  On the entire tenth floor, I learned, when the elevator opened inside her apartment.

Lightly varnished blond floors, Scandinavian furniture, large-scale contemporary art.  Miele coffeemaker, Bosch and Woolf appliances.  “You are a woman full of surprises, Sally Kronenberg,” I said.

She reached behind her, and the silk dress puddled at her feet.  “Surprise!” she said.

I reached to cup the small of her back with one hand.  “That was no surprise,” I said and kissed her.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Saturday January 28

When I woke up, I was alone.  I found my boxers on the other side of the nightstand and found Sally in the living room sitting with one leg tucked under her in the Morris chair in front of the big windows.  She was drinking something out of a steaming mug, and the room smelled of fresh coffee.

“
Hey,” I said.

She looked up.  “Hey yourself.  I thought you were going to sleep through the weekend.”

“Hmm.  Coffee smells good.  What’s for breakfast?

“
Coffee is around the corner in the kitchen.  There’s a mug for you above the coffeemaker.  But I have to warn you; I’m no cook.”

“
That’s fine.  If there’s bread, I’ll make toast, if there’s a toaster.”

“
There’s bread and a toaster.  There’s even orange marmalade and yogurt and strawberries if you want that.  I said I don’t cook, not that I don’t eat.”

I started on a mug of coffee while I toasted two slices of bread, smeared marmalade on them, sliced three strawberries into a bowl, and covered them with vanilla yogurt.  I placed the food on a tray and carried it into the living room while Sally sipped her coffee.  We sat that way for a few minutes before I asked Sally a question that had floated into my head as I awoke.

“Why did you say ‘them’?”

“
What?”

“
Back there in Akilah’s room.  You said ‘We have to get them.’  Why ‘them’?  Why ‘we’?”

Sally sipped her coffee and stared out the window so long I decided she must not have heard me.  Finally, she looked back at me.  “I suppose I should tell you.  I knew Don Kramer pretty well.”

“So you knew what he worked on?”

She nodded.  “About three years ago, when Kris was a sophomore, I attended three of her high school soccer games and a few practices.  Kris was not the reason I first began to attend games there.  I was recruiting a couple of senior girls on the team who ended up playing soccer at North Carolina.  We have a good program at Southern, but I can’t compete with an ACC school.”

She was silent for a moment, sipping her coffee.  Having little to say myself, I raised a palm in a half-shrug.

“
So.  Don was always very involved in Kris’s soccer.  He would help prepare the practice field, cut the grass, mark lines.  I guess he was a soccer dad.

“
Of course, I began to see that Kris had potential, and I made it a policy to talk to all the parents anyway.  Don and I would stand on the sideline and talk soccer and women’s sports.  Then one day after practice, he asked me if I’d like to get coffee at a little place he’d discovered in the Lakefront District.”

She looked out the window again.  This time I knew not to speak.  After a while, she said, “Don and I became lovers that afternoon.”

Into my silence, Sally said, “You’re not saying anything.”

“
You noticed,” I said.

“
I did.  Notice.  Are you all right?”

I drank some coffee.  “I’m fine.  Might be better if this coffee had a little bourbon mixed in, but I’m okay.”

She swung around to look at me.  “I do hope so.  I’m not a teenager nor a Mormon nor a Baptist.  Not that being one of those would stop anyone from having a sex life.”  She reached out to touch my hand, still holding the coffee mug.  “Listen, I’m not perfect.  I’m flawed.  I’m a woman.  I like men.”

“
I’m pretty sure neither of those conditions qualifies as a flaw.”

Almost a chuckle.  “I hope you’re right.”  She shrugged.  “I liked Don Kramer.  Cared about him.  And I like you.”

“So you brought Kramer here. . . .”

“
Off and on until about six months ago.”  “Oh,” she said.  “Not
here
here.  Not then.  Another place closer to campus.  I moved to this building about fifteen months ago.  Don didn’t want me in that part of town anymore.”

She touched my hand again.  “Oh,” she said.

“You say that often.”

“
Hmmph.  No I don’t.  Just when I’m explaining an old relationship to someone new.  I meant to say, Oh, if you were thinking, Don and I had a one-night stand, or a ‘fling,’ no, it wasn’t like that.  That’s not my style.  And it wasn’t his.  No.  We were together almost three years.  I miss him.  He, uhh, he broke off with me about six months ago.  He said he wanted to try to make his family closer.  I haven’t been around him, really, since then.  Still.  I’m going to miss him for a long time.”

Into my silence, she said, “Maybe I should have told you last night.  But I didn’t want last night to get complicated or . . . truncated.  That was hardly a time for a history lesson.  And after all, I didn’t ask you to describe your entire past.”  She took the mug from me, placed it on the floor, and this time took my hand.  “What can I say?  I don’t want this to be a problem for us.  Please tell me it won’t.”

Kramer was a good man.  I knew this for a fact.  Sally’s relationship with him would cost me nothing.  I told her so.  We did not speak of it again.

After breakfast Sally and I spent another hour or so deepening our acquaintance.  After which, I faced one of life’s existential decisions:  shower now, put on yesterday’s clothes and change at the hotel, or wait to shower after returning to the hotel.  I opted for a modification.  Shower now, dress commando-style in yesterday’s clothes, drive back to the Tutwiler, and change there.

The police department’s daily press conference on Kris Kramer’s disappearance had been aired by a local television station every day since the day after Kris disappeared.  I hadn’t watched. Inane questions, stock responses.  Unfortunately, although Sally knew a few facts about the cases Kramer worked on, she said she knew nothing of a New Orleans connection and that she had never heard Kramer mention a client or a witness named Godchaux.  In short, Sally knew less then I knew, and that wasn’t much.  I was back at the hotel alone, there was a television in the hotel room and it was time for the press conference, so before changing clothes, I turned on the TV and sat down to watch on the lumpy swivel chair near the window.

Leon Grubbs stood ramrod straight behind a lectern, looking like an actor playing a police captain, his perfectly-shaven face appearing almost blue under the lights.  As Grubbs began to read a statement, my cell phone rang.  I hit the mute button on the remote.

It was Leon Grubbs.  “Slate,” he said.

“I’m pretty busy now, Captain.  Watching your media performance.  I’m guessing it was taped.”

“
7:00 sharp this morning, every morning.  I think I look my best early, don’t you?”

“
Always good to make the best of a bad situation.”

“
Yeah.  Thanks.  Look, Slate, I wanted to let you know something before you heard it through the media or somewhere else.  My colleagues in the white coats down in forensics tell me Kramer wasn’t killed down at the tracks.  The body was moved there and dumped.  Just thought you should know.”

I watched Grubbs’ image on the television screen mouthing silent syllables into the microphones.

“Slate, you there?”

“
Still here.  Watching you speak without sound.”

“
What?”

“
Nothing.  I appreciate the call.  And the information.  Anything else new?”

“
No sir.  Any time you know something, unlikely as that seems, feel free to share.”

“
Will do, Captain.”

“
Right.  See you around, Slate.”

I turned off the television, undressed and hung up yesterday’s coat and trousers.  I fetched a towel from the bathroom, spread it over my cushion, and sat with a clear mind for ten minutes, then got up to get dressed.

I had just knotted my tie perfectly after only the second try when a man’s booming voice announced:  “Room service!”

Said announcement accompanied a heavy knock on the door.  When I checked the peephole, I could not see a thing, though the device had worked fine when I checked in.

Like many hotel rooms, the closet in mine, with mirrored sliding doors, occupied a space adjacent to the hall door.

I slid the closet door farthest from the hall door open quietly so I could not be seen standing in the bathroom across from the closet, unlocked the hall door, and stepped just inside the bathroom.

As I expected, for about twenty seconds nothing happened.  I waited with the little Ruger in my right hand, my mind still, my diaphragm moving quietly in and out.

The doorknob turned slowly, then the door burst open and a heavy figure in a black sweatshirt and jeans charged in like a fullback trying to make the first down on third and short.  As he passed the bathroom door, I accommodated him with a shoulder to the midsection and a leg whip.

His head slammed into the mirrored closet door, shattering the glass and spraying fragments over both of us.  Under his right hand was a nickel-plated Bulldog forty-four.

I wanted to think he’d lost his grip on the stubby gun from my ferocious assault, but his sudden loss of strength could have been the result of the six-inch shard of glass protruding from the back of his hand.

I kicked the gun away and put a knee hard into his left kidney.  The kick sent the gun skittering across the floor and dislodged the glass.  The back of his hand began to spurt blood.

Since he wasn’t holding a gun anymore, I showed him mine by sticking the barrel in his right eye.  “Room service?  Didn’t anyone tell you I’m a lousy tipper?”

He grunted but did not move.  “Don’t get up,” I said.

I stood up and pointed the Ruger at him, pulled my cell phone out of my jacket pocket, and dialed 911.

In five minutes or so, the room filled with cops, if you can call “filling” the sudden presence of two uniforms who must have been in the neighborhood eating doughnuts and drinking coffee.

It seemed longer, but I didn’t really count, since I didn’t often look at my watch, obliged as I was to keep pointing the gun at my guest, and his snappy repartee, consisting of variations of grunts and shakes of the head, caused time to creep by in its petty pace.

“
What’s going on here?”

The bigger and older of the two cops, a black man with graying hair, thick arms and shoulders, and a belly that his service belt didn’t hide anymore, pointed his Glock at me and told me to put my gun down.

The other cop, younger, with crewcut blond hair and an angular face, had come in behind and to one side and pointed his gun at Mr. Room Service.

I tossed the little .380 on the bed and told them my name and described what had happened.  “And, for what it’s worth, Captain Grubbs bought me a cup of coffee last week.”

“You know Captain Grubbs?” the younger cop said.  “Leon Grubbs?”

“
That’s the one,” I said.

“
Just a minute,” he said.  He spoke into his radio, and we all listened to the static; then my cell phone rang.

“
Slate?  Grubbs.  I don’t want to talk to you.  Hand the phone to the officer.”

The younger officer identified himself and listened for thirty seconds.  “All right, sir,” he said and tossed the phone back to me.  “We’re going to take this guy down to the station and book him for B&E and assault.”

The older cop holstered his gun, pulled on a pair of latex gloves, and snapped handcuffs on the man on the floor.  He looked up at me.

“
Make yourself useful, Slate.  Give me a hand towel so this guy doesn’t bleed all over this fine hotel.”

The cop took the hand towel and tied it expertly around the bleeding hand.  He got Mr. Room Service to his feet and headed out the door.

The younger cop started to follow, but at the door stopped, turned back and said, “Oh, yeah, Grubbs said to tell you to call him in an hour.  And he told me one other thing.”

“
What’s that, officer?” I asked.

“
Please leave Birmingham and never come back.”

He said it with a smirk.  I was in no position to take offense.