Firm Ambitions (28 page)

Chapter Thirty

Detective Israel was true to his word. All charges were dropped, and the official announcement was made in time for the five-o'clock news. My mother, my sister, and I went out to celebrate. It was Girls' Night Out, with Richie staying home to babysit.

I awoke the next morning with an all-world hangover and a tongue made of tree bark. The three of us had had way too much to eat and way too much to drink. My last clear memory of the evening was around two in the morning in a smoky, funky dance club somewhere down in the Soulard area: Ann and I had been leaning against each other, laughing and swaying our hips and clapping our hands in time to the reggae music as we watched my mother out on the dance floor getting down with a three-hundred-pound black man in a gold lame jumpsuit and storm-trooper boots. “Stick with the judge,” I told her when she rejoined us after the song ended.

By noon the hangover fog had started to lift from my brain and I struggled into the office. I felt like I could have used one of those aluminum walkers. As I came into my office my secretary told me she had Harry Raven on the phone.

He was charming and somewhat apologetic. “Jes' to tie up any loose ends,” he told me, “I got Mrs. Maxwell to make a copy of her files on that dead fella. There ain't much of interest in there, but Mrs. Maxwell's gonna messenger 'em over to you today. Don't want there to be no hard feelings, Miss Gold. You still have questions after looking at them documents, you jes' feel free to give me a call, you hear?”

Later in the afternoon, my mother called from Ann's house, where she had ordered Ann and Richie to go somewhere romantic for the weekend. We agreed that they needed some time alone after all the strain and craziness and hurting—time to start the healing process. The night before I had given Ann the name of a romantic bed-and-breakfast inn an hour's drive outside St. Louis in the Missouri wine country, and she had made reservations for the weekend.

“I told them you and I would take care of the children,” my mother said. “I've already packed my bag. I can move in tonight.”

“I can, too. After work. It's supposed to be a beautiful weekend. Maybe we can take the kids on a hike in the country.”

I spent the rest of the day trying to bring order back to the chaos of my practice before the weekend began. There were letters to answer, court papers to prepare, clients to call, depositions to schedule—two weeks' worth. My secretary stayed late. I signed the last letter at eight-thirty that night. Leaning back in my desk chair, I called my mother at Ann's house.

“I'll be there in a couple hours, Mom. I've got to stop by the house, pack some clothes, get Ozzie—”

“I have Ozzie here. I brought his food, but I forgot his bowls. I left them on the front porch.”

“I'll bring them. Kiss the kids for me.”

***

For two weeks I had been running on a high-octane mix of tension, worry, and adrenaline. For the past twenty-four hours, beginning the moment Poncho Israel told me that the charges against Ann were dropped, I had felt myself winding down. The last two hours in my office had been a real struggle. By the time I got out of my car in front of the house, I was almost numb from exhaustion.

Ozzie's two bowls were on the front porch. The house was dark. I clicked on the light in the front hall, hung my purse on the closet doorknob, heaved my briefcase onto the couch in the living room, and walked toward the stairs. Out of habit, I glanced into the breakfast room on my way past. Sure enough, the red light on the telephone answering machine was blinking. I looked up the stairway for a long moment and then back at the blinking red light. It could wait. I clicked on the hall light and trudged up the stairs.

I can usually pack my overnight bag in under five minutes, including toiletries. This time it took almost a half hour. I seemed to keep finding myself shuffling between the bedroom and bathroom, once carrying a toothbrush, the next time carrying one jogging shoe.

As I packed, my mind wandered back again to Charles Kimball and his mystery client, John Doe. The story sounded more credible to the police than to me, but that was because I knew something the police didn't, namely, the key-man life insurance policies. That fact gave others a motive to kill Andros. Then again, it was always possible that the insurance policy was literally that—insurance in case Andros happened to die rather than insurance for when they killed him. If legitimate operations could buy key-man life insurance for entirely prudent reasons, surely illegitimate operations could nevertheless buy key-man life insurance for entirely prudent reasons, too. For all I knew, there was a multimillion-dollar key-man life insurance policy on Don Corleone himself.

I shook my head, trying to clear my thoughts. The charges against Ann had been dropped. She was free. That's what counted. Whether John Doe was telling the police the truth or a story Kimball cooked up didn't really matter as far as Ann was concerned. If and when Kimball and I had our dinner, I could decide whether to push the issue with him. Right now I had barely enough energy to push my closet door closed.

I clicked the lights off one by one as I left my room, came down the stairs, and reached the front door. Then I remembered the blinking red message light. With a weary sigh, I set the overnight bag on the hall floor and walked back to the breakfast room. The answering machine was on the counter that separated the kitchen from the breakfast room. I pushed the replay button and sank into one of the chairs at the breakfast table.

The first message was from my mother: “Rachel, darling, I forgot my slippers. I'm telling you, if my head wasn't screwed on I'd have left that, too. Thanks, sweetie.”

The second was from Benny Goldberg: “Hey, my first day of testimony and now I think these wusses are going to settle. The judge adjourned for the weekend right in the middle of my direct. The lawyers have been talking settlement ever since. You would have been proud of me, Rachel. I was awesome on the stand—a combination of the Shell Answer Man, Mr. Wizard, and Phil fucking Areeda. Call me at the hotel tonight.”

There was a beep, and then the next message started: “Ma'am, this is Donny from Ace Thermal Windows. We'll be in your neighborhood this weekend and wondered if we might stop by….”

As Donny rambled on, I noticed that there was light shining through the space at the bottom of the basement door. I had gone down to the basement that morning to get something out of the dryer. Had I forgotten to turn off the light? Maybe my mother had gone down there later and left it on.

I forced myself to stand and walk into the kitchen as the message from Ace Windows came to an end. There was a beep and then another message started as I reached for the basement door:

“Hey, Rachel, Bob Ginsburg at Bear Stearns. I tried calling you at the office, but you were already gone. I'm leaving on vacation tomorrow. I'm going on one of those backwoods fishing trips up in Canada—flown in by plane, Indian guide, no phone, the works.”

I opened the basement door. The light at the bottom of the stairs was on. It was the kind with a pull cord. I started down the stairs as the message continued:

“I'll be gone for ten days, and then things'll get hairy when I get back. Anyway, I finally got that information you were looking for. You owe me big-time, woman. We're talking dinner for two at Lutèce,
on you
, next time you're in New York. Don't even ask what I had to do to get this info. I deserve an honorary membership in the CIA.”

I was halfway down the basement stairs when the floor creaked above me. I spun around just as Tommy Landau stepped into view at the top of the stairs. He had a large handgun and he was pointing it at me.

The voice on the tape continued as we stared at each other:

“Here's the scoop. There are four shareholders of Capital International Limited. Three of them are islanders—a lawyer down there, his secretary, and his paralegal. They each own one share. That's typical. Local corporate laws and all. Anyway, the rest of the ten thousand shares are owned by a guy from St. Louis. His name is Thomas Landau. Hope it means something, Rachel. Give me a buzz next time you're in the city so I can collect on my dinner. Take care.”

The tape beeped twice and clicked off.

Tommy Landau shook his head. “Come up to the top stair,” he ordered as he backed toward the kitchen counter.

I obeyed.

With the gun still trained on me, he pushed the eject button on the message machine and removed the cassette tape. He was wearing surgeon's latex gloves.

“Took you long enough to spot the basement light,” he said with irritation. “I was afraid I might have to do you up here.” He slipped the cassette into his front pocket. “Go downstairs,” he said.

He followed me down to the basement. I heard him close the door behind him.

“Over there.” He gestured with the gun. “By the washer.”

I moved to the washer, which was in the corner to the right of the stairs. I stood with my back to the washer. Tommy had stopped at the foot of the stairs. There was a table along the wall between where he stood and I stood. My mother used it to sort and fold clothes from the dryer. The clothes had been pushed to the side to make room for a stack of papers.

Tommy noticed that I was looking at the papers.

“Interesting stuff,” he said. “All your notes and papers on your investigation. I found them up in the family room. I read them while I waited for you.” He sat on the edge of the table. “Charlie Kimball told me about your meeting at the zoo. He said you needed a fall guy for the murder. He said you've got incriminating evidence on him that gets released if anything happens to you. Is that so?”

I nodded, my mind racing. The sole light was a naked bulb above the table where he sat.

Tommy grinned. “I like that. I like that a lot. All we do is make sure something bad happens to you, and then—abracadabra—poor old Charlie become the perfect fall guy, doesn't he? Case closed, eh?”

“Assuming Kimball doesn't turn on you,” I said.

“That's the beauty of it. Charlie Kimball doesn't know enough to turn on me. He's never known the whole story. Shit, you probably know more than he does. This is
my
operation, not his. All he did was put me in contact with some of his clients—the fences, the B-and-E boys. He got a cut of the action, but that's it.”

“Did you have them do your own house, too?”

He shook his head. “Pure coincidence, the bastards. But it sure helps point the finger away from me, eh?”

I had to keep him talking. “How far back did Kimball go? All the way to Arch Alarm Systems?”

Landau whistled in admiration. “You have been digging, haven't you? No, he got involved with the second one, after one of my guys got arrested. I asked Charlie for the name of a good B-and-E man. He gave me one of his clients. After that, I started using more and more of his clients. I paid Charlie a commission on each job. A couple years after I finally got rid of that fag interior decorator, Charlie brought me Andros. Talk about the perfect candidate. I had leverage out the wazoo on that camel jockey. He was scared shitless. Anyway, by then, Charlie was almost a full partner.”

“Including the insurance end?”

He smiled and shook his head. “No way. He didn't know dick about that.”

A plan was forming in my head. It might work. “So the mob didn't kill Andros?”

Tommy laughed. “Hell no. Charlie fed them that bullshit and they swallowed it whole.”

“I don't get it,” I said. “Why did you do it? You didn't need the money.”

He gave a snort of disbelief. “After you and my wife finished carving up my estate in divorce court? Deb Fletcher filled me in on you. I knew exactly what kind of bloodsucker you are. You'd have squeezed me for every penny.”

“I still don't get it. You made enough the first time. Why do it three times?”

He thrust his chin forward defiantly. “Because I'm not a chump. My father's a chump, and so was my grandfather—a pair of social-climbing schmucks. The only one who ever knew the score was my great-grandfather. He was one nasty motherfucker. But guess what? They named a grade school after him, for chrissakes. Treated him like one of the goddam founding fathers.” He stood up, his brows furrowed. “All the time my father spends brown-nosing important people, and you know what? I'll be the one people remember.”

“For killing Andros?”

He laughed. “Like the world is any worse off without that piece of camel shit walking around.”

“Why my sister?”

He gave me a puzzled look. “What?”

“Why pick on my sister?”

He chuckled and shook his head. “Bad timing on her part. Her letter was perfect. I had them plant the cyanide and take those pages from her magazines during the burglary. Her letter was the icing on the cake.”

Darkness was the key. It was the only way to even the odds. I knew the basement and he didn't. I glanced around. There was a mop leaning against the wall to my right. It was long enough to reach the light bulb over his head. I needed to distract him long enough to get to the bulb.

“Why me?” I asked suddenly.

“Why you? You did it to yourself, you dumb bitch. You set Charlie up, and then you set yourself up. Nice going.”

“Not this,” I said. “I mean back when he died. He was supposed to die with me, wasn't he?”

Tommy Landau's stare turned icy. “What are you talking about?”

I gave him a look of disgust. “You're really twisted. You ordered him to schedule one of his home workouts with me, right? Even told him to set the appointment for three in the afternoon, didn't you?”

He feigned indifference. “So what?”

“The session would last for forty-five minutes. Then he would take his vitamin pills. Every day at four o'clock, right?”

Tommy said nothing.