The Mourning Sexton (9 page)

“What did she say?”

“Nothing really. She mostly just listened and thanked me. Then the elevator doors opened, we stepped off, and we never talked about it again.”

She thought back. “That was like our last conversation. Ever.”

CHAPTER 12

H
irsch leaned back in his office chair, laced his fingers behind his head, and stared out his office window into the night. Silhouetted against the dark sky to the north were the factories and warehouses along the Mississippi River, smokestacks pointing to the stars.

So what had he learned?
he asked himself.

And where exactly was he now?

He'd spent the last three hours dialing the thirty-eight telephone numbers in the 423 area code—the numbers that had begun showing up on Judith's phone bills in March of the year she died. Eight numbers were disconnected. Twelve were picked up by answering machines, and on each he'd left a short message: his name, telephone number, and a request that they call him collect. Four other numbers rang and rang until he hung up. Three were answered by people who'd had the telephone number less than three years, and thus not at the time of Judith's call. The final eleven were answered by someone who'd had that telephone number back at the time Judith called it. Seven of them had been employees of the Peterson Tire Corporation back then. The other four were wives of employees.

None of the four wives remembered Judith's call, but each promised to ask her husband that night. Five of the seven employees he spoke with remembered the call; the other two didn't. Of the five who did, none recognized the name Judith Shifrin. Three of them couldn't remember any name, but two recalled that the woman had identified herself as—and Hirsch had written it down to be sure—“Esther Summerson.” All of the five remembered that she had told them she was a private investigator looking into matters surrounding the handling of the Turbo-XL litigation. Not into matters surrounding the litigation itself, but into matters surrounding
the handling
of the litigation. He wasn't sure whether the distinction made a difference, but the last of the five, and one of the two who'd specifically remembered the name Esther Summerson, insisted on the distinction. His name was Ralph Kindle.

“No, sir,” Kindle told him, “the lady said she was investigating the
way
the case was being handled. That was why she wanted them other names.”

Hirsch leaned back in the chair and mulled over what Kindle had said. Off in the distance, beyond the factories and warehouses, he could make out the lights of a towboat pushing a double row of barges upriver.

“What the hell are you still doing here?”

He turned from the window as Rosenbloom wheeled himself into his office. He had on his overcoat, unbuttoned, and his fedora was resting on his briefcase on his lap.

“Working,” Hirsch said.

“Something profitable, I hope.”

Hirsch gave him a shrug. “Maybe some day.”

“Not that goddamn Shifrin case again. Talk about pissing up a rope.” He gave him a jaded look. “
Nu?
You making any headway?”

“Hard to say. I spent the afternoon calling people in Knoxville.”

“Tennessee?”

Hirsch explained about the phone bills and Missy Shields and his thirty-eight calls.

“What do you think she was she looking for down there?” Rosenbloom asked.

“Sounds like she was trying to find someone in the executive offices who could talk to her about the tire case. None of the five who remembered her call worked in that area. They were all in sales or marketing or production.”

“Isn't Peterson a publicly held company?”

Hirsch nodded. “New York Stock Exchange.”

“So why would she bother calling those people? She could find that information on her own. The head honchos are listed in their annual report and in their ten-Ks.”

“She wasn't looking for head honchos. She wanted to talk to the people who worked for the head honchos. Secretaries, file clerks, office personnel.”

“Why?”

Hirsch shrugged. “She didn't say—or at least the ones I talked to don't recall her saying.”

“Did they give her any names?”

“Only one of them did. Guy named Kindle. Retired last year. He was a sales manager when Judith called him. She promised to keep his identity confidential if he would give her some names. He did.”

“How many?”

“Two. His secretary was friends with the CFO's secretary. A woman named Ruth. He couldn't remember her last name. The other was a guy on the accounting staff named Ron Gammons. Gammons had been Kindle's fraternity brother at the University of Tennessee.”

“Did you try to call them?”

Hirsch shook his head. “Gammons is a dead end. Literally. He died of a heart attack about a year ago. As for Ruth, I don't have a last name yet. I'm hoping her telephone number is one of the others on Judith's list. If not, maybe one of those people will know.”

Rosenbloom scratched his neck. “There could be a completely innocent explanation to her phone calls.”

“Such as?”

“Maybe there was a pending discovery motion in the case. Something having to do with getting access to documents at the company's headquarters.”

“I checked the court docket. No such motions.”

“The whole time?”

“There were motions. Lots of them. But none that would have caused her to make those calls.”

“Nothing's easy, eh?”

Hirsch nodded wearily.

“Hang in there, Samson. You're my man.”

Hirsch felt a surge of affection. The bond between them was as intense as it was illogical, and even without the age difference. They had nothing in common but three luminous summers in Minnesota as Sancho and Samson. Hirsch had grown up in the comfort of a middle-class Jewish family of the 1950s—father a mildly successful optometrist, mother a housewife, little sister an annoying presence in the background. Rosenbloom had grown up on the fringe—the only child of a struggling accountant who committed suicide when Rosenbloom was nine, forcing his mother to get a job at the perfume counter at Famous-Barr to put food on the table. Hirsch had a car at sixteen; Rosenbloom rode the bus until he was twenty-five. Hirsch's high school class voted him “Most Likely to Succeed.” Rosenbloom's high school class remembered him as the fat kid with the infectious laugh who couldn't do a single pull-up in gym but who regularly corrected errors Mr. Kohler made at the chalkboard while writing out solutions to calculus problems. Hirsch went to Princeton with a monthly allowance from his father. Rosenbloom went to Washington University with a scholarship and a night job. Hirsch was the golden boy of the law, a Harvard grad who became the youngest chairman in his law firm's history. Rosenbloom, despite an honors degree from the University of Chicago Law School, was deemed “too Jewish” by the major St. Louis firms. Like other brilliant lawyers of his generation deemed “too ethnic,” he fashioned a remarkable career handling collection matters and bankruptcy cases, often on referral from the very firms that had rejected him.

Hirsch glanced at his watch. Quarter after seven.

“Me? What are you doing here so late?”

“I was talking with Nathan. It's his birthday.”

“Mazel tov
.” Hirsch felt a pang. “How's he doing?”

Nathan was Rosenbloom's only child—a florist living in Seattle and sharing a condo with his boyfriend, an architect named Todd.

Rosenbloom beamed. “Life is good for my little boy. The shop is doing well. He's playing the piano again. Jazz, God bless him. Even gets an occasional gig at one of the coffeehouses. He and Todd are going up to Vancouver this weekend to celebrate his birthday.”

“That's wonderful.”

“Oh, he's a good boy, Samson. A good boy.”

The mere mention of Nathan's name made Rosenbloom smile. For Hirsch, though, the mere mention of Nathan's name made him wince with shame. He'd skipped Nathan's
bar mitzvah
to attend the
bar mitzvah
of a prominent real estate developer whose business he'd been hustling at the time. He'd missed Nathan's high school graduation party to attend a fund-raiser for a state senator who'd agreed to help his riverboat casino client.

And the neglect extended beyond Nathan. The year the bankruptcy bar honored Rosenbloom as man of the year at their annual banquet, he'd bought a ticket and sent a telegram but hadn't attended. On the morning of the funeral for Rosenbloom's beloved wife, Sarah, dead of breast cancer just two months before their twenty-fifth anniversary, he'd been in a hotel room in the Central West End fucking a lissome paralegal named Stephanie. He showed up on the second night of
shiva,
and assumed that his reliable secretary had made the appropriate donation to an appropriate charity in memory of Sarah.

“She didn't use her own name?”

Hirsch looked up. “Huh?”

“Judith. You said when she made her calls she used another name.”

“Oh, right. She told people her name was . . .” he paused to check his notes, “Esther Summerson.”

Rosenbloom chuckled. “Nice touch.”

“You know her?”

“In a way. You ever read
Bleak House
?”

“No.” He remembered his conversation with Dulcie. “It was one of Judith's favorite books.”

“Makes sense.”

“Why?”

“
Bleak House
is Charles Dickens's version of a legal thriller—and believe me, Charles Dickens could kick John Grisham's ass. Then again, Dickens could kick just about any writer's ass. At the heart of
Bleak House
is this massive lawsuit—a humongous probate matter called Jarndyce and Jarndyce. By the time the novel opens, the case has been pending in chancery court for decades. It's so complex that none of the lawyers or litigants is even sure what it's about anymore. Esther Summerson is this sweet innocent girl who finds herself trapped somewhere in the middle of the case.”

“Just like Judith.”

“I suppose.” After a moment, Rosenbloom added, “An ugly, messy case.”

“Peterson Tire?”

“No, Jarndyce and Jarndyce. Lots of waste and corruption.”

“Happy ending?”

Rosenbloom smiled. “It's Dickens, man. He loved happy endings.”

“Must be nice.”

Rosenbloom nodded. “Yeah, to have that kind of control. You don't get that in real life. Bummer, eh?”

CHAPTER 13

T
he Family Justice Legal Clinic occupied a storefront in an older brick building along Delmar Boulevard about a mile east of Skinker. If you stared hard at the faded letters chiseled into the concrete slab above the storefront, you could just make out the words
C
HOSID
K
OSHER
P
OULTRY
. This area had once been the heart of the Jewish business district. David's father grew up in a three-flat just a few blocks away, went to services at the synagogue around the corner, and met his mother at nearby Soldan High School.

Since then, the three-flat had been razed to make way for public housing, the synagogue became a Baptist church, Soldan hadn't graduated a Jewish student for more than half a century, and his parents were dead.

He stepped into the small reception area of the clinic. Seated behind the metal desk was a heavyset young black woman with braided cornrows. She was on the phone.

“We're open Tuesday through Saturday,” she was saying.

He nodded at her and she smiled back, holding up the thumb and forefinger of her free hand to show that the phone call was almost over. Behind her spread the main office area of the clinic, which had been divided into a half dozen cubicles, each large enough to accommodate a desk and three chairs. He could see the tops of heads in several of the cubicles.

A baby was crying. A phone rang in one of the cubicles. A cell phone sounded in another. A mother scolded a child: “Put that down, Demetrius.”

On the right side of the room along the storefront window was a law library with several low bookshelves and a rectangular table with four chairs. On the other side was a row of filing cabinets. Along the back wall was a conference table with seating for eight. He could see Dulcie back there, seated alongside a young Hispanic woman who was taking notes on a yellow legal pad. A student, he assumed. Dulcie was paging through a file and making comments to the Hispanic woman, who was jotting them down.

“Can I help you, sir?” the receptionist asked.

“I'm here to see Professor Lorenz. My name is David Hirsch.”

A warm smile. “Just a moment, Mr. Hirsch.”

She got up and walked toward the back of the office. The front door opened, and Hirsch turned to see a slight black woman in her twenties enter. She was holding the hand of a little black girl, maybe three years old. The woman glanced up at him with tired eyes and then averted her gaze. She took one of the seats in the reception area, pulled the little girl onto her lap, and began unbuttoning her coat as the girl squirmed. In the back of the room, the receptionist was leaning over talking to Dulcie. Then she turned toward the front, and both of them looked at Hirsch. The receptionist gestured for him to come back.

Dulcie stood as he approached. She was wearing brown corduroy slacks, a tan turtleneck sweater, and hiking boots. The colors contrasted nicely—well, strikingly—with her dark curly hair and dark eyes. The look was academic but alluring. Very alluring.

“Welcome to our clinic,” Dulcie said.

There was a drop more warmth in her voice today, although just barely.

She turned toward the student, who was gathering her things. “Gloria, this is Mr. Hirsch. He's an attorney in town. Gloria is a third-year from Chicago.”

They shook hands. The young woman excused herself, explaining that she had to get back to school to work on a paper.

“Make yourself comfortable,” Dulcie said, nodding toward the chairs around the conference table.

He took a seat across from her.

She opened her briefcase. “I was able to match several of those names,” she said, “although I doubt whether I found anything worth a special trip to the clinic.”

“I had a meeting in Clayton this afternoon,” he lied. “Since I was already in the vicinity, I thought I'd drop by.”

She was sorting through her papers. “I had the alumni office run your list of names against their lists.”

She pulled out a few sheets of paper.

“You had twelve names. There were nine hits. Four were in law school with her. Five were in the same undergraduate class. The alumni offices had current addresses for all nine.” She shrugged. “Not much else.”

“It's a start. Maybe one of them knows something.”

“Something?” She frowned. “Something about what?”

As he weighed his response, he noticed her gaze shift above his left shoulder.

From behind him a young woman said, “Professor Lorenz?”

The voice was familiar. As he started to turn toward the speaker, he made the connection—and the room suddenly seemed to tilt.

He struggled to his feet. She followed him up with her eyes. He took a small step backward as he gazed down at her—at those big green eyes, at the freckles sprinkled over her nose and cheeks, at that red curly hair.

He'd thought about this moment for years. Yearned for it. Worried about it. Wondered how he should handle it if ever given the chance.

“Lauren,” he said finally, his voice hoarse.

She lowered her eyes.

He gazed at his baby girl, nearly grown now.

He wanted to hug her to him, to tell her how much he loved her, to apologize. But he didn't. He knew it would startle her, maybe upset her, definitely embarrass her, especially here.

She looked toward Dulcie, her lower lip quivering. “I'll talk to you later.”

Turning away, she hurried toward the front, head down. He watched her grab her coat off the rack and push open the front door, stepping into the winter air with her coat only half on, moving now at almost a jog.

He watched her disappear into the night.

And then he turned back. Dulcie was staring at him.