Sheer Gall (14 page)

“I understand that's what you told the Disciplinary Commission's investigators,” I said.

“And it's what I'm telling you,” she said, her chin thrust forward defiantly. “And it's what I'll tell any other asshole who wants to ask. I never drove no accident victim to that lawyer's office, and I sure as shit never collected no fee. Period. End of sentence. Understand?”

“Sit down a moment, Annie,” I said, aiming for a soothing tone. I took a chair.

She looked down at me with a sneer. “No need to. We're done. I'm outta here.”

I gazed up at her. “I have the payment records,” I said calmly.

There was a pause. “What payment records?” Sounding a shade less cocky.

“For the clients you brought Sally. She kept them in her safe deposit box. Nine hundred dollars for Ramon Valdona. Remember him? Five hundred from someone named Javier. And so on. But I'm not here to build a chaser case against you, Annie. I don't care about that stuff. I want to talk to you about Sally Wade. We can do that in private, just the two of us, or we can do it in public, in some courtroom.” I shrugged. “Your choice. If you'd like, I can meet you after your shift ends.”

I could almost hear the gears turning inside her head. It took her a long time to respond, and when she did her tone was subdued. “You got a business card?”

“Sure.” I pulled one out of my briefcase and held it toward her.

She snapped it out of my hand and swiveled to leave. “Maybe,” she said, her hand on the door, her back to me. She opened the door. “Maybe not.”

She walked out.

I watched the door swing shut. Slowly, I stood up. I felt exhausted.

***

I dropped by the office before heading over to my self-defense class. Jacki had left a nice surprise in the center of my desk: a photocopy of the society column from the Style Plus section of the Sunday, August 16, edition of the
Post-Dispatch
. Jacki had highlighted the middle paragraphs, which described the Carousel Auction Gala at the Ritz-Carlton put on by the Friends of the St. Louis Children's Hospital:

Guests gathered at 6 p.m. on a Friday night under the carousel in the smaller of the two ballrooms at the Ritz, where a bar had been set up in the center of the room with bartenders serving on all four sides. High above the bar was a carousel horse, and at each of its four corners was a smaller gilded carousel horse dressed in burgundy and teal blue. Waiters and waitresses passed silver trays of delicious hot hors d'oeuvres to guests as they signed up for the silent auction items displayed around the room.

Chairwoman Cynthia Barnstable said the event netted more than $450,000, including $145,000 from the auction itself. The 350 guests paid $150 and up for their tickets to the event. The money will be used for the Neurorehabilitation Unit at Children's Hospital.

I read the excerpt again, nodding pensively. The article included a photograph of two women standing in front of a carousel horse. The caption identified them as Cynthia Barnstable, chairwoman of the event, and Prudence McReynolds, president of the women's auxiliary of Children's Hospital. The photo credit named Charles Morley. I circled his name and drew an arrow to the margin, where I jotted a note to Jacki:

We need to serve this guy with a subpoena.
Let's talk in the morning
.

***

The special tonight was groin-stomping, with a little face action thrown in for variety. I was pumped.

“Assume the position,” Faith ordered.

I was there already: feet at shoulder width, toes pointed forward, knees flexed, hands at my sides.

We started with foot-heel strikes, first in slow motion. I pulled my right leg up, inverted my heel, toes pulled back, and then kicked. Ten with the right leg, ten with the left. Then full speed, with our yell of spirit. We sounded awesome—eleven high-kicking women shaking the room with martial-arts screams.

We paired up to practice heel strikes to the knee in slow motion. Because there were an odd number of us, Faith took turns pairing up with each of us. Tonight she picked me.

“Stay low in your stance, Rachel,” she said. “That's it. A little lower. Good. Balance is key. If your stance isn't firm, your kick will be weak. Yes. Aim for the top of the knee. Right there.”

Another ten minutes of that, and then it was time for some stomping.

“A stomp is a heel strike,” Faith explained, “except your target is on the ground. You can kill a man with a face or a throat stomp. You can incapacitate him with a stomach stomp.” She paused, her stern features relaxing into a smile. “But tonight we'll start with my personal favorite: the groin stomp. This works especially well when you're wearing heels. Pair up, gals.”

“Oh, for chrissakes, Rachel, forget that stomping bullshit,” Benny said on the phone. “Let's have a reality check here. Your attacker is on the ground, right? Option number one: try to do a Mexican hat dance on his body while you're screaming like a banshee. Option number two: reach in your purse, pull out a .357 Magnum, and blow his fucking head off. I'm telling you, Rachel, you want protection, dump the martial arts and buy yourself a gun.”

I was lying on my back on the living-room rug with the phone cradled between my neck and shoulder. My bare feet were propped up on the couch and Sam Cooke was crooning “You Send Me” on the stereo. Whenever the world gets too snarled for me, Sam Cooke helps restore my harmony.

“Actually,” I said, “we start on weapons next week.”

“Oh, great. No doubt something highly practical, eh? Like nunchakus.”

“New subject, please.”

“Okay. What's the latest, Sergeant Friday?”

Staring up at the ceiling, I wiggled my toes and sighed. “I feel more like Inspector Clouseau.”

Ozzie, my golden retriever, came padding in from the kitchen and plopped down on the rug beside me. I scratched him behind his ear.

“No suspects yet?”

“None?” I said glumly, shifting the phone to the other ear. “How ‘bout too many? My head is swimming.”

“Tell me,” he said.

I described my meeting at Cherries with Junior Dice and Jo-Jo and my subsequent encounter with Officer Annie McCarthy.

“I don't know,” Benny said when I was through. “It's not much money to kill for.”

“People have killed for a lot less.”

“Maybe. The woman cop had plenty at stake, but where'd she get the semen?”

“From her boyfriend.”

“Well, I suppose.”

“Not his, Benny. He works at the county hospital. It wouldn't be that hard for him to grab a test tube or two from the urology department or the fertility clinic or wherever they store that stuff. Match it to Neville's blood type and you're off and running.”

“Where'd he get Neville's blood type?”

“Medical records. All that stuff is on the computer network these days.”

Ozzie moved his head onto my stomach with a contented grunt. I hugged his neck.

“So what's Junior's stripper girlfriend like?” Benny asked.

“I'm going to go back and see her alone. Maybe tomorrow afternoon. She knows something. Also, her looks are driving me crazy.”

“Huh?”

“Every woman I meet seems like a possible Sally Wade impostor. Whoever hired me had blue eyes, brown hair, and nice average features, and so does Jo-Jo. Actually, Officer McCarthy does, too.”

“So what's on the agenda tomorrow?” Benny asked.

“I'm seeing two more guys. Probably both creeps.”

“Oh? More morticians?”

“Worse. An environmental lawyer and—”

“Excuse me?”

I had to smile. One of Benny's pet peeves was the Orwellian names of legal specialties: “labor lawyers” represent management; “antitrust lawyers” represent monopolists; “tax lawyers” help clients avoid taxes; “product liability lawyers” fight product liability. As for “environmental lawyers”…

“I beg your pardon, Professor,” I said. “I meant a pollution lawyer.”

“That's better. Who's the other creep?”

“Wait.”

“What?”

“My song.”

“Huh?”

“‘Cupid.'”

“Oh, God, are you listening to Sam Cooke again?”

I started to sing along, “‘Soooo, Cupid, draw back your bow—'”

“Puh-leeze, Rachel.”

“Shush.” I hummed along. “Oh, Benny, he's the best.”

“Let's get back on track here, girl. Who's the other creep?”

“The head of a slaughterhouse.”

“Ah, so you've got a ransacker and a meatpacker.”

I smiled. “That's not bad.”

“Better yet, a rainmaker and a steak maker.”

“That is bad.”

“Wait, wait. How about, uh, a lawmaker and a bone breaker?”

“Good night, Benny.”

“Wait. Uh, an hourly biller and a cow killer?”

“Good night, Benny.”

“Okay. Good night, Rachel.”

I replaced the telephone receiver as Sam Cooke began singing “Only Sixteen.”

I scratched Ozzie's head as I closed my eyes and tried to remember back to when I was sixteen.

It seemed another lifetime ago.

Chapter Fourteen

The ransacker was Bruce Napoli. He was a partner at Tully, Crane & Leonard who had been appointed interim managing partner in the wake of Neville McBride's arrest. The meatpacker was Brady Kane, the plant manager of the Douglas Beef packinghouse in East St. Louis.

The ransacker was first on my list. His secretary ushered me into his spacious, tastefully appointed office at nine thirty-five that morning.

“Hello, Rachel,” he said in a soothing tone as he came around the antique mahogany desk to shake my hand. He had that polished, low-key, self-assured manner that clients love. Gesturing toward the large, comfortable couch against the side wall, he said, “Please take a seat.”

Bruce Napoli had the look and style of a managing partner, and with good reason. Prior to joining Tully, Crane, he had spent six years as chief of staff for Senator Richard Bartlett of Missouri, two years as counsel to the Republican National Committee, and three years as assistant general counsel of the Environmental Protection Agency. Those eleven years inside the Beltway were excellent training for the position of law firm managing partner, a task closely akin to that of herding cats.

Five years ago, Tully, Crane had lured him back to St. Louis with the promise of money and the challenge of creating a national environmental law practice. It was, as those consultant gurus like to say, a win-win situation. Within three years, Bruce had parlayed his legal expertise, his A-list of government contacts, and his personal magnetism into a thriving practice group of eighteen lawyers, seven paralegals, and more than eight million dollars in annual billings.

It earned him a position on the firm's powerful executive committee, simultaneously delighting the younger partners and discomforting their elders. Before long, the Wednesday-afternoon meetings of the executive committee, once as courteous and affable as afternoon tea at the Ritz (where, in fact, they occasionally were held), degenerated into a lawyer's version of
Beyond Thunderdome
. On one side stood Bruce Napoli, leader of the Young Turks, staunch advocate of high tech and high realization (those twin gods of modern law firm management theory), and—in the prayers of many of his admirers—the icy executioner of the Old Guard. Facing him across the great divide was the increasingly implacable Neville McBride, viewed by the restive Young Turks as the very personification of a cautious stewardship that had allowed Tully, Crane's average profits-per-partner to slip below those of the other major firms in town, viewed by the older partners as the last centurion standing guard against the bloodthirsty hordes of bottom-line lawyer barbarians.

Neville McBride's obsession with his law firm nemesis had caused him to compile an extensive dossier on the man, which Jonathan Wolf had passed on to me before my meeting. As a result, by the time I settled into the couch in Bruce Napoli's office, I already knew that he deserved a prominent spot in his law firm's Book of Firsts. Specifically, he was the first managing partner at Tully, Crane (1) whose name ended in a vowel, (2) whose specialty was something other than corporate or tax, and (3) whose wife, during an otherwise dull dinner party, spent a furtive quarter of an hour bent over an easy chair in an upstairs bedroom with her dress above her waist, her panties at her ankles, and her eyes clenched tight while an unzippered Neville McBride jabbed and thrusted from behind. Unfortunately for Patty Napoli, and for Bruce, she was discovered
flagrante delicto
, the moment of truth occurring while the hostess was conducting an otherwise eye-glazing tour of the upstairs. As the lady of the house droned on about the strain of trying to coordinate valances and light fixtures, she opened the guest-bedroom door on a scene that was, quite literally, reaching a climax.

The only mercy shown by fate that night—and thus the only secret regret of the other dinner guests—was that Bruce Napoli was downstairs at that very moment, innocently refilling his tumbler of Cutty Sark. In the aftermath, some of the firm's wags found a delicious Freudian irony in Neville's clandestine backdoor invasion of Napoli's high-tech domain with the ultimate low-tech gadget, an erect penis.

Nevertheless, the stalemate continued until Neville's arrest forced him to relinquish the title of managing partner. Bruce was the unanimous choice to replace Neville McBride. It was an extraordinary ascent for a poor Italian-American boy, the sixth of nine children of Marcello and Gina Napoli, raised in a cramped apartment over the M. Napoli Bakery on Shaw Avenue and shadowed throughout his legal career by rumors of mafia connections that stemmed from his great-grandfather's role as a lieutenant in the Chicago mob under Al Capone.

Since his arrest, Neville McBride had been consumed with suspicions that Bruce Napoli, embittered and vengeful over his notorious cuckolding, was somehow connected to the murder. While Neville's suspicions, at least standing alone, weren't enough to put Napoli high on my list of possible suspects, they were enough to make me want to talk to him.

As I studied Bruce Napoli, his wife's liaison with McBride seemed even more incongruous. The two men couldn't have been more dissimilar. Whereas Neville resembled the bulky, sixtyish grocer from the Kiwanis Club, Bruce Napoli reminded me of a sexy Al Pacino in one of the later Godfather movies. Dark hair, dark eyes framed by long, black eyelashes, olive skin, strong nose, dark double-breasted suit. He was in his early forties and looked fit and healthy. I noted a Nike gym bag in the corner of the office with a squash racket sticking out. Although he was short—we were at eye level—he more than compensated with an aura of control.

“How can I help, Miss Gold?” he asked once I was seated.

I had my pretext ready. “I'm wrapping up Sally Wade's estate,” I explained, “and I was hoping you could fill in some of the gaps.”

It turned out he couldn't, but he gave an impressively disarming performance in the process. Leaning against the edge of his desk, his arms casually crossed over his chest, he conceded at the outset that he and Neville had been rivals within the firm.

“I'd describe us as philosophical rivals,” he explained. “If I can draw an analogy to my Senate years, Neville McBride represented what I'd label the ‘traditional wing' of the party while I tended to side with the ‘next generation.' We had vigorous debates.” The memory triggered the glimmer of a smile. “But at all times we remained loyal members of the same party. I had, and continue to have, great respect for Neville's legal skills. I rarely agreed with him,” he said, pausing to chuckle and shake his head, “but I never came away from one of those encounters without having learned something of value. He is a formidable advocate, and I am proud to call him my partner. We're all pulling for him, Miss Gold.”

It was a convincing performance. It almost made me forget that the man Bruce Napoli was speaking of with grudging fondness was the same man who'd been caught doing it doggie-style with his wife.

As for Sally Wade, Napoli said he barely knew her. “I'm certain that we spoke, albeit briefly, at a few of the firm functions during their marriage, but I have no clear memory of that.”

“Did you ever have dealings with her on a professional basis?”

He seemed to weigh the question. “Oh, I suppose I couldn't rule out the possibility, although again, I have no clear memory of any dealings.” He stood and moved around to the chair behind his desk. “It's not likely that we would have had any professional encounters,” he said with a smile. “After all, she was a personal injury lawyer.”

As he took a seat, I glanced around the office. It was festooned with plaques, autographed pictures, and other mementos from his years in Washington. There was a gold-framed photograph of his wife on the front of the desk. I frowned at her image, trying to imagine her face with a pair of sunglasses, hoping I'd be able to eliminate her at the outset. I couldn't. I silently groaned. Yet another blue-eyed brunette with pleasant, undistinguished features. The world seemed to be full of them.

On the credenza behind him was a scale model of an armored truck. It was painted Kelly green and had the words NAPOLI SECURITY stenciled across the side in gold letters. That Napoli was a sibling. Although he was the only lawyer among his siblings, they were a diverse group and included a nun, a priest, a baker, a nurse, and, ironically enough, a bank swindler and a bank protector. Bruce's eldest brother, Anthony, was serving fifteen years for bank fraud arising out of a condo development in the Lake of the Ozarks. Bruce's younger brother John supplied local banks and other institutions with a variety of security services—everything from bodyguards to security guards to armored truck deliveries—through his company, Napoli Security Systems, Inc.

I checked my notes and asked, “Did Neville McBride ever say anything to you to suggest the nature of his marital problems?”

He gave me a patient smile. “Neville was careful to avoid saying anything in my presence that would suggest anything about his personal life.”

I spent ten more minutes dancing around the touchiest subject, hoping he'd give me an opening. Finally, I decided the only way in was to take a breath and dive headfirst.

“Mr. McBride is convinced you hate him,” I said.

Bruce Napoli gazed at me pensively. After a moment, he said, “Hate is a strong personal emotion.”

“Well, he believes you have a strong personal reason to hate him.”

Napoli nodded calmly. “He's right about the reason. He's wrong about the emotion. In our professional lives, we're partners. My relationship with my partners is one of trust and respect.”

“He wasn't referring to your professional life.”

“But I am.” Napoli's expression remained unchanged, although there was a hint of displeasure in his voice. “Neville's private life is his own business. Mine is mine. He took advantage of someone at a psychologically vulnerable moment in her life, and that was regrettable. But it was also part of the past. My concerns are the present and the future. I certainly don't wish him ill in his private life, and I certainly don't wish to discuss his private life. Neither his nor mine.” He stood up. “I have a busy day, Miss Gold. On behalf of my firm, I can assure you that we are eager to get this unfortunate controversy concluded. Call me if you have any other questions.”

***

Brady Kane was on the phone when his secretary ushered me into his cluttered office. She stood by my side as we waited for the call to end.

“Don't feed me that low-margin horseshit, huh?” he told his caller in a gruff voice. As he listened, he paced back and forth behind his desk, trailing a long, tangled phone cord.

Although the ransacker and the meatpacker were about the same age and had both come from working-class backgrounds, the stark differences in their professional lives were underscored by the portrait each featured in his office. Bruce Napoli's office, with its Persian rug and its commanding view of the Mississippi River, had several framed photos, but the largest by far, taken several years ago, showed him standing in the Oval Office next to a beaming Ronald Reagan. Brady Kane's window-less office, with its fake wood paneling, metal desk, and cheesy desktop nameplate (“Mr. Kane, Plant Manager”), had three bare walls and one photograph—a poster-size shot mounted directly behind his desk. In the picture, a much younger Brady Kane was wearing a bloody apron and standing in front of a blood-splattered tile wall. He had a big grin and was gripping a huge carving knife. Hanging upside down from a meat hook at his side was a decapitated cow.

In the photo, Brady Kane seemed almost as large as the cow. In person, he seemed even larger. He was at least six feet six, with a massive bald head, broad shoulders, powerful arms, and a large gut. With his sunken eyes, crooked nose, and lantern jaw, he reminded me of a professional wrestler—one of those hulking hoarse-voiced giants who glare into the camera during the pre-match hype interview and snarl out their threats. But instead of a gold lame robe over wrestling briefs, he was decked out in a typical plant manager outfit: a white short-sleeved shirt with a pocket protector jammed with pens and pencils, green work slacks, and black leather round-toed shoes with thick rubber soles.

He ended the telephone call by making a counteroffer that expired in twenty-four hours. Slamming down the receiver, he turned to me, his eyes moving from my face on down to my shoes and back up. The meat market metaphor had never seemed more appropriate or more threatening, especially with that gruesome photo on the wall behind him.

Glancing at his secretary, Kane growled, “Who's the girl?”

I introduced myself. He reluctantly shook my hand, which virtually disappeared in his callused paw. I explained my connection with Sally Wade, which didn't make him any friendlier. He sat down heavily behind his desk.

“What do you want?” he asked coldly.

“I'd like to wrap up some loose ends,” I said.

He frowned. “What are you talking, loose ends?”

Amy Chickering was right: this was a guy I'd never feel comfortable around. “Sally's phone records show that she called you direct several times a month. I'd like to know why.”

He grunted but said nothing. I waited, glancing from the glowering, weathered face in front of me to the younger, grinning face in the photograph behind him. The years and the work had taken their toll on Brady Kane. If ever there was a job with bad karma, this had to be it.

“Well?” I finally said.

He tried to stare me down. When that didn't work, he said, “None of your goddamn business.”

“Actually, Mr. Kane, it's most definitely my business. As I explained, I'm here as counsel to Sally Wade's personal representative.”

“Yeah?” He crossed his arms over his chest. “Big deal.”

“That's exactly what it is.” I tried to control my irritation. “At the time of her death, she was handling eight pending claims against your company.”