Suspicion of Guilt (34 page)

The firm got another kick in the ribs from the "Legal Notes" column in the business section: " 'Unfortunately, the management committee saw an easy win and high fees with this case,' stated one source. Associate Gail A. Connor, who brought the case into the firm, refused comment."

Gail didn't know if G. Howard Odell was behind this, but he had to love it. He had arranged a meeting for two o'clock today, Monday. He would arrive in the company of Sanford Ehringer's personal attorney from Palm Beach, along with local counsel from a scorched-earth litigation firm taking over the probate from Alan Weissman. Gail could only assume that Alan Weissman was busy getting drunk.

The meeting would be held in Paul Robineau's office, with Jack Warner and Larry Black in attendance. It would be worth it, Gail thought, just to see the bared teeth, if she herself were not in danger of being set upon like a cat in a pack of wild dogs.

At noon Gail would meet with Paul, Jack, and Larry. Three pairs of eyes fixed on her, waiting for her to explain what she had been doing and why. She could already hear their questions: Can we force the beneficiaries to settle or not? If not, will we get our asses whipped in court?

Gail glumly dropped the newspaper into the trash can under her desk. She had not been able to recognize Patrick in the article she had read. Odd how the truth could get skewed like that. She had to keep reminding herself what it was.

Patrick had been released from jail on $2,500 bond. Anthony Quintana would appear at the arraignment in three weeks. Meanwhile, he would try to plea-bargain the charges down to misdemeanors. He would send Hartwell Black and Robineau his bill—$300 per hour.

Anthony's phone call on Saturday morning, conveying all this, had been in lieu of seeing her over the weekend. He apologized, but had a trial in federal court to prepare for. Gail said she certainly understood; she was busy too. And then there came a silence, and it continued one beat too long. They rushed to fill it with banalities, but neither of them mentioned Friday night on South Beach.

He hadn't called since, nor did Gail want to speak to him until she had decided what to say. The right words had to be sent out like strands of a spider's web. Connections between men and women were that fragile sometimes.

The hotel had been on Ocean Drive, four stories high, painted like a birthday cake, with pink neon around its name. Now Gail couldn't remember the name. She had gone inside with her head down and Anthony's jacket hiding the rip in her dress. The lobby was Art Deco, but the room was Motel 6: cheap, framed prints of palm trees over the double bed, tourist brochures on the dresser, a refrigerator that charged ten bucks for a split of domestic champagne. She found plastic glasses on a tray in the bathroom and unwrapped them while Anthony unlaced his shoes and set them beside a Danish modem chair with a cigarette bum in the cushion.

People came and went in the halls, talking in foreign languages. Mariachi music from the restaurant next door was occasionally drowned out by the bass throb of a car stereo, somebody cruising with the windows down. The champagne, too sharp to drink, went flat in the plastic glasses. Was it the place that was so off? Or their mood? By nine o'clock they were heading back across the causeway toward Miami. At one point she took Anthony's hand, but couldn't think of a damn thing to say that wouldn't ring with falsity.

She didn't want to be so ungrateful as to tell a man who had just whisked her to a hotel room, bought champagne, and kissed the bruises on her backside that she didn't have a perfectly delightful time. It would have been rude. And the truth was, she didn't know how she felt until later, when she was at home staring at the ceiling. She finally slept, but her dreams were fitful, and she awoke crying out, her nightgown twisted and soaked with sweat.

Saturday afternoon, Patrick came over to thank her and stayed to fix her roof. It cost four hundred dollars for lumber and roofing paper and white concrete tiles. He let Karen help, and they had a good time getting filthy. Gail cooked hamburgers on the grill. Patrick came back early Sunday, and Gail went up there with them, sawing and hammering and setting in the new tiles. She broke a fingernail and worked the pain out of her derriere, and wondered if it would be better to jump off the roof headfirst then, or wait till after the meeting with Paul Robineau on Monday.

Gail looked up when she heard a salsa rhythm tapped on the door. It opened and Miriam Ruiz came in, raising one shoulder, then the other. Her hair was in a ponytail, and it bounced and swung. She bumped her little fanny against the door to close it, then cha-cha'ed across the room. She carried a stack of pages from a yellow legal pad. "You're cheerful," Gail said.

Miriam stopped, looked down at her. "Gail, are you okay?"

"I have a headache, that's all. What did you bring me?"

Smiling, she dropped the papers on Gail's desk. They were notes handwritten in four shades of ink, with doodles, cross-outs, and arrows pointing this way and that. Gail turned a few pages. Lists of property, legal descriptions, dates, addresses—

"It's my research on Easton," Miriam announced.

Gail remembered that she had wanted to know what real estate the Easton Trust owned, although now she couldn't recall why. She rubbed her forehead. "You want to just cut to the end? I'm getting ready for that meeting at noon."

Miriam plopped into a chair, her ponytail bouncing. "Okay. Here it is. I found out who owns the company Carla Napolitano worked for. And also the company that owns the nightclub. It's another company, called Biscayne Corporation. Biscayne owns both of them. And guess who's an officer in Biscayne Corporation?"

Gail shook her head.

'Take a wild guess."

"Miriam, please."

She grinned, a wide red smile. "Howard Odell."

"No."

"Yes."

"How in the world—"

"Mira."
Miriam stood up and spread her notes over the desk, then ran around to see them better, standing beside Gail's chair. "Okay. I was checking the property records for the Easton Trust, like you said. I went back to the Sixties, which is as far as you can go on computers. There were fifty-six transactions. Easton acquired most of it from estates, people leaving it in their wills. Easton sold a bunch."

"Who signed the deeds, Sanford Ehringer?"

"Sure did. He was the only real person that I could find. Sanford V. Ehringer, as Trustee. And here's a list of property that they still own, for investment, I guess."

There were a shopping center, upscale apartment buildings, vacant land. All of it prime, worth millions. Gail tapped one of the entries with her pen.

"Lincoln Road, numbers 801 to 839. The Tillett Gallery is in that block. The night I went to the gallery, Howard Odell was there. He said he knew Rudy from the Art Deco League, but this could be the real connection. I'll bet the Tilletts pay rent to the Easton Trust."

Miriam shuffled through her notes. "One of the properties Easton sold—here it is—1470 Drexel, Miami Beach. It's where you met Frankie Delgado."

"Easton used to own that dump?"

"Somebody died and left it to them, and the Trust sold it in 1982 to the Biscayne Corporation. So I was wondering who owns that building now, so I ran the legal description and came up with—
voila!
—Atlantic Enterprises."

"Which also owns Wild Cherry."

"And then I go, well, as long as I'm on the computer—" Miriam took two sheets from near the bottom"—let's see what else Atlantic owns. So I find five pieces of property, and Atlantic bought every one of them from Biscayne Corporation in 1982 and 1983. So then I start wondering about Biscayne. I found twelve more properties. Biscayne still has eight of them, but it sold four to Seagate, also in the early Eighties." On a blank sheet of paper she drew a circle, two lines coming off it, and a box at the end of each line. She labeled the circle
Biscayne
and the boxes
Atlantic
and
Seagate.
"Seventeen pieces of real estate. Biscayne sold five to Atlantic, four to Seagate, kept eight for itself."

"When were Atlantic and Seagate incorporated? Do you remember?"

"1979 and 1981."

"And Biscayne?"

"I don't know, but look what else I found. You'll like this." Miriam produced a computer printout. Between the scrawls and the phone numbers and scratch-outs, was a list of names. Two of them Gail didn't recognize. The treasurer, she did. G. Howard Odell.

Gail sat up straight in her chair. "Howard!" She read the address. 19 West Flagler Street, with a telephone number. "Did you call this?"

"It's an answering machine," Miriam said. "A woman's voice. 'You have reached the offices of the Biscayne Corporation, please leave a message, blah blah.' I called four different times and always got a recording. I could go over there and knock on the door if you want."

But her voice was trailing off. She snatched a sheet out of the stack and held it with both hands against her chest. "Ready for the juicy part? I said to myself, wow, Biscayne sold that office building on Drexel to a company that owns a nude nightclub. I wonder what the other properties are?"

She gave the page to Gail. Her rounded handwriting covered the yellow sheet and ran to the other side. "You can't tell what's on a property from the legal description, so I got the street addresses and checked with Dade County Building and Zoning."

Gail drew her finger down the page. Seagate had purchased from Biscayne three properties on Miami Beach, on which were placed three businesses: Sun Goddess Escorts, Magic City Liquors, and Gateway Travel.

"Well, well. The travel agency."

In North Miami Beach, Seagate owned a clothing store, of sorts: Naughty 'n' Nice Apparel Shoppe. Biscayne had sold five properties to Atlantic Enterprises, businesses scattered around Dade County—in Hialeah, the Aphrodite Motel. Next door to that, Carlito's Cleaners. Gail turned the page over and saw the Sans Souci Health Spa and Wild Cherry in North Miami. Then she laughed at the next one on the list. "The Reel Stuff? I don't believe it."

"What's that?"

"It's an X-rated movie theater on Biscayne Boulevard, a few blocks from where Patrick lives."

"The only thing that doesn't fit," Miriam said, pointing, "is that cleaner's. See? It's a dry cleaner's on Okeechobee Road, next door to the Aphrodite Motel."

Possibly it did fit. Anthony Quintana had once represented an acquaintance of Howard Odell's, a dry cleaner charged with selling pornography out the back of his shop. This could be the same dry cleaner.

Miriam broke into giggles. "Aphrodite Motel? Maybe they have vibrating waterbeds."

"Oh, Howard," Gail murmured. "Are these
yours
?
Dare I hope?" Her heart leaping in her chest, she got up and paced across the room, back and forth, thinking of how to play this.

Miriam turned a few pages. "Speaking of Howard Odell—In 1988 he and his wife bought a house on Star Island from Easton."

"Nice neighborhood." Then Gail remembered something and picked up her phone, dialing Eric Ramsay's extension. No answer. Another ring and his secretary answered. Gail asked her where he was.

He'd left a message; he had to deliver some papers to the federal courthouse in Fort Lauderdale.

Gail said to have him call as soon as he came in.

She hung up and looked back at Miriam. "Howard Odell sold a house last year. It was part of a divorce settlement. It could be the same house on your list. Eric might know, because Odell asked him for some legal advice concerning the sale of some real estate. If I'm upstairs with Paul Robineau when Eric comes back, tell him to call me. Interrupt if he has to. First, is it the same house, and second, how much did Odell make on the deal?"

"Why do we want to know that?"

"Because G. Howard Odell might be ripping Easton off. Sanford Ehringer may be chairman of the board, but Odell runs it. What if he bought this house for nothing, then turned around and sold it? If so, did he tell Ehringer? Odell could have a lot to hide, Miriam. And the more a man has to hide, the easier he is to maneuver."

"Into a settlement of Patrick Norris's claim."

"Precisely."

Miriam glowed. "You see? This is why I want to be a lawyer someday. Isn't this exciting?"

"Oh, Miriam." Gail sat on the arm of a chair and exhaled a long, weary breath. "Don't you know what's really going on here? We're running scared. We're afraid we can't prove forgery in court, so we're taking the easy way out. A settlement. Except it isn't that easy or that nice. We're finding dirt on someone, and we're going to threaten him with it if he doesn't go along with us. Call it exciting if you want to, or glamorous, but see it for what it is."

Miriam nodded.

Gail smiled. "You did a tremendous job, you know. I do appreciate it." She reached out to squeeze Miriam's hand, then stood up. "All right. Go find out as much as you can about the Biscayne Corporation. Who are these people listed as president and secretary? Who founded it? Cross-check the names with Seagate and Atlantic, and look up the addresses and phone numbers. Do a summary and make me a copy."

"You want this now?" Miriam asked.

"I want it before my meeting with Robineau, if possible. When Eric gets back, make him help you. And something else—" Miriam, who was just closing the door, came back in. "Did you find anything on Easton? Who the current members are?"

"Nothing. The county has no records, and I didn't see anything in the library, either." In her tight skirt, Miriam rotated one leg back and forth on the high heel of her pump. "It makes sense there's no record. I mean, Sanford Ehringer said Easton doesn't exist. Like they made him up."

"Maybe." Gail nodded slowly. "Maybe they did. What if he wasn't a man at all. Easton. Back in '37, was there a town named Easton? East Town, East—"

"East of Nowhere," Miriam added. "Easy Town—"

"Did you see anything like that? East Something?"

'"It could be initials, like when you make a word up?"

"An acronym. Why not? Sanford Ehringer's little puzzle. The way he said it ... such a smug old fart. 'Easton is no one. So now you won't have to go looking for him.' "