Death on a High Floor (4 page)

When I woke up, it was morning, early. I was in my bed, under the white duvet, naked. The smell of bacon and coffee was coming from the kitchen. I felt good. A bit groggy, but good. Then I remembered. Simon was dead. I was a suspect. And, oh yeah, Jenna was Simon’s lover. Maybe it was all a bad dream.

Jenna stuck her head in the bedroom door. She was wearing black jeans and a white T-shirt that said
LAWYER
in red letters. “Good morning. You look much better.”

“Is it the next day?”

“It is. You slept more than eighteen hours. Some of it drug induced, I might add. Dr. Donald thought it would improve things. You know, ‘Sleep that knits up the raveled sleeve of care’ and all that.”

I was feeling word-grounded again. “Shakespeare didn’t have drugs in mind when he wrote that.”

She laughed. “Only because he didn’t know about drugs. Well, other than alcohol. Anyway, you taught me those lines.”

“I did?”

“Yes. You don’t remember?”

“No, I don’t.”

“It was when you interviewed me at Harvard. I had been up all night, studying. I must have looked sleep deprived. I said something about needing a good night’s sleep. You quoted that to me.”

“Jenna, you hadn’t been up all night studying. You had been up all night fucking, to use your term for it.”

“The morning seems to have brought your old self back. Which is good, Robert. You’re going to need your old, snotty self to get through this.”

“I didn’t do it.”

“I’m sure you didn’t. There are dozens of people at M&M with better motives than you.”

“I don’t have any motive.”

She just smiled. “Robert, some people might think you did. But we can talk about that after you formally ask me to be your lawyer in this.”

“You?”

“Yes, me.”

“You don’t know shit about criminal law.”

“I don’t. But I’m a very fast study. And I do know a lot about you, sir. Maybe more than you realize. We’ve never been sexually intimate, but we’ve been intimate on a lot of other levels. I know you well enough to help you a lot. Help you to . . . what’s that old phrase? Oh, yeah, ‘Keep your head about you.’ We can hire some crim-head to front the thing.”

“Jenna, I don’t think I need a lawyer. Once the cops really get into this, it will blow over. In the meantime, I can just lie low.”

“Well, when you get out of bed and go look out your front door, you may feel differently about it.”

“What’s outside my front door?”

“A couple of reporters. But you should check it out for yourself.”

“Okay, I will.”

“Oh, and you might also want to know that Simon’s murder is the right-hand lead in today’s
L.A. Times
. You’re mentioned.”

“Mentioned how?”

“I think it would be better if you read it yourself.”

I needed to see what Jenna was talking about. I started to swing my feet over the edge of the bed when I remembered I was naked. Jenna was still looking at me, with a smile on her face. I slid my feet back under the duvet.

“Jenna, how did I get to be naked?”

“Your doctor undressed you and put you in bed.”

“Somehow, I don’t believe you. But let’s not go there.” She continued to smile, but she hadn’t budged. Was she planning to just stand there like that, while I got out of bed, buck naked? I tried to recapture my dignity.

“Jenna, please leave. I need to get dressed.” As I listened to my voice echo inside my own head, it didn’t sound all that authoritative really. But it seemed to work. Jenna flashed me one more smile that was somewhere between a dazzle and a smirk, turned and left.

I got out of bed, walked into the master bath, and turned on the shower. The newspaper could wait.

The shower stall was oversized, resplendent in turquoise tile with a motif of leaping dolphins. I’d had it built to mimic one I’d seen in some palazzo in Sicily. Stupid, really. I got in and the water flowed out on me in its usual thin, unsatisfying stream. I do hate low-flow showerheads. I’ve thought about sneaking in a real showerhead from some water-flush place like Ohio. Still, the hot water felt terrific. Showers invigorate you. Every man feels like a king in his shower.

As I soaped up, I began to think about the whole dumb thing. Why should I give a shit that some asshole detective thought I killed Simon? I didn’t. Why did I give a shit that there were a couple reporters outside my door? Didn’t. Why did I give a shit what the
L.A. Times
thought? Didn’t care about that, either. Anyway, the
Times
was now owned by people in Chicago.

I emerged from the shower determined just to ignore the whole thing. It would blow over.

I dried off, padded over to the walk-in closet in the bedroom and stopped dead in my tracks. It was Tuesday. A business day. Every business day for the last thirty-six years, unless I was on vacation or sick, I had showered, walked to that closet, taken fresh underwear from the wooden drawers to the side, unhooked a nice blue pinstripe suit from the rack, picked out a crisp white shirt, selected whatever color tie was
de rigueur
that year, put it all on and gone off to work. It was a uniform that made me feel like I was officially part of a big important world, all governed from the tops of tall buildings.

Now it was a business Tuesday and I wasn’t sure whether it was going to be a business day or something else. Screw it. I was going to make it a business day like any other. I was going to have some coffee and go to work. I got dressed. Maroon tie.

When I got to the kitchen, Jenna was sitting at the small round table in the breakfast nook, reading the newspaper. I stood in the doorway and looked at her. She seemed not to notice I was there. She was wearing a different T-shirt than an hour earlier. This one said
MARBURY MARFAN SOFTBALL
.

“You changed your T-shirt.”

She still didn’t look up. “Yeah. I went home while Dr. Donald was here last night. Brought some stuff back and moved it into one of the spare bedrooms. The one that looks out over the fishpond.”

“You moved in? Just like that?”

“Yeah, just like that.”

“For how long?”

“Just for a few days.”

I was feeling jocular. “Will the Jenna-muffin cook and clean, too?”

“The Jenna-muffin’s already cooked for you. Sit down and have some eggs. When you’re done, we need to talk seriously. Because you are seriously in a lot of trouble.”

I took up her invitation and sat down at the table, but I wasn’t inclined to talk seriously about anything. The shower high was still with me. “Look, Jenna. I didn’t kill him. I don’t know who did kill him. And I hate to say it, but I don’t really care who killed him. I’m going to finish these eggs, walk out that door, get in my car, and go to work. I thank you for making the eggs.”

Jenna just looked at me for a moment and then went back to reading the paper, which she had folded to an inner page. We ate our respective eggs in silence. Part of me wanted to reach over, grab the paper from her, and see exactly what was in it. The other part of me desperately craved a perfectly normal Tuesday, and I had the sense that looking at the newspaper would not be helpful to that desire. So I just finished my eggs. It was going to be a perfectly normal Tuesday. I was going to insist on it.

I got up from the table and walked to the front door, ready to go to work. Then I opened the door. I have trouble even now describing what was out there. The word “blob” comes to mind. A large, pulsing blob of boom microphones, TV cameras and at least a dozen reporters screaming questions and leaping at me like I was prey.

I shut the door.

When I turned back around, Jenna was standing there, in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room, sipping a cup of coffee. “Still going to work?”

“Maybe not.” Normal Tuesday had vanished.

“Just as well. Your car’s still in the garage downtown, remember? Surrounded by yellow tape? And even if it were here, it would be in the garage, not out front.”

I continued to stand there, facing her, my back to the front door, frozen in place. I felt like an idiot.

Finally, Jenna spoke. “So
now
do you want to see the
L.A. Times
?”

“I guess.”

“It’s in the kitchen.”

When I got back to the kitchen, the paper was lying in the middle of the table, headline up. I saw instantly what Jenna meant for me to see—the right-hand lead:
Prominent Lawyer Stabbed to Death
.

Below it was a color picture of Simon Rafer, dead on the carpet, with the dagger in his back.

“How did they get that picture?”

“Cell phone camera. One of the people who stepped off the elevator probably snapped it, sold it to the
Times
.”

“Who?”

“No clue. Check it out below the fold, too.”

I flipped the paper over. There was my own picture, pink windbreaker and all. I leaned closer and read the first few sentences of the article:

Police confirm that Robert Tarza is a person of interest in the stabbing death of Simon Rafer. Rafer was the socially prominent managing partner of powerhouse law firm Marbury Marfan and was honorary chairman of the Los Angeles Opera. Tarza is a senior partner in the same firm.

I collapsed into a chair. “Oh my God.”

Jenna said nothing.

“I need coffee,” I said.

Jenna walked over to the coffee pot, poured the coffee, and brought it back to me. I raised the cup toward my lips, but couldn’t quite get it there.

“Robert, your hand is shaking.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Do you want me to call Dr. Donald?”

“No. I’ll be okay. And I’m really sorry.”

“Well don’t be sorry. It’s normal in this kind of situation.”

“This kind of situation isn’t normal for me.”

“I know.”

My hand started to shake even more violently. I tried to set the cup down without spilling. It didn’t work, and a large amount of coffee slopped onto the table.

Jenna gazed at me across the table. A look that was somehow part caring and part cold appraisal. “Robert, do you get it now? The trouble you’re in?”

“Yes. But I still think it will be straightened out.”

She got up, took a sponge from the counter, and started to sop up the spilled coffee. “If they discover your possible motive, it’s not going to straighten out.”

“I don’t have a motive.”

My denial had come out in a croak, even though my brain had instructed my mouth to say it firmly.

“Why don’t we go sit in the living room and talk this through?” Jenna said.

“Okay.” Talking the whole thing through with her seemed like a good idea. She was, as I had told the Associate Evaluation Committee only a month ago, on her way to being a great lawyer, even though she’d been practicing for only seven years.

Jenna was already moving toward the conversation pit. A big design feature in the seventies, when my house was built, it’s a semicircle of couches built-in over red tile, the whole thing a step down from the main floor, facing a white brick fireplace. Ugly and dated, but a good place to talk. Jenna sat down on one of the couches, and I placed myself carefully upright on the one across from her. I stuck my right hand under my thigh in hopes it would stop shaking.

Jenna looked more serious than I had ever seen her look.

“When I mentioned motive just now,” she said, “I said
possible
motive.”

“I don’t have any kind of motive.”

“I think you might.”

“Like what?”

She scrunched her fingers into the pocket of her jeans, took out a tarnished silver coin about the size of a dime, and held it up between thumb and forefinger. “Like this one. Here, catch!” She tossed the coin to me. Overhand.

I managed, barely, to jerk my hand out in time to snatch it out of the air. It was a close call.

“Jesus, Jenna. I could have dropped it.”

“Well, it’s already lasted since before Jesus. I didn’t think a quick three-foot toss would bother it all that much.”

“They crystallize inside. It could have shattered if it had hit the floor.”

I still couldn’t believe that she had shown such . . . disrespect. I placed the coin ever-so-gently on top of a copy of
The
New Yorker
, which was sitting on the table.

“Your hand has stopped shaking,” she said.

I ignored the comment. “Where did you get it?”

“At Simon’s condo, yesterday morning. After I left Starbucks.”

“It’s incredibly valuable. Precious, really. It should be stored in an archival coin envelope, not sitting out on a table, naked.”

“Maybe so,” she said. “But when I picked it up, that’s where it was. Sitting out on a table. Simon’s kitchen table, to be exact.”

“You must be kidding.”

“No.”

“Simon left it out on a table?”

“I don’t know who left it there,” she said. “But that’s where it was.”

I shrugged. “Well, he bought it, so I guess he could do whatever he wanted with it.”

“How much did he pay you for it?”

I hesitated. “Five hundred thousand dollars.”

Her eyebrows went up. “Jeez, I had no idea.” She seemed genuinely shocked.

I was staring at the coin. I couldn’t stand to see it sitting there, unprotected. I pictured it somehow sliding off the
The
New Yorker
and shattering on the floor.

“Excuse me a moment.” I got up, went back to my study, and returned with a small, transparent vinyl coin flip. I picked the coin up off the table and placed it in the flip, which is about two inches square.

Jenna just watched.

“Jenna, do you understand what this coin is?”

“Sure,” she said. “Simon was like a small kid when he first got it. Couldn’t stop talking about it and showing it off. I must have heard its little history twenty times: ‘The
Ides denarius
. Minted by Brutus in 42 B.C. to commemorate his assassination of Caesar. Double daggers and the Latin words
Ides
of March
on the back. Most famous coin of the ancient world,’ blah blah.”

She smiled at the “blah blah.” It was a phrase she had picked up from me.

“Why did you take it?” I asked.

“So you could say you were in the process of unwinding the deal.”

“Why would I have wanted to unwind the deal?”

“To avoid having the police think that your motive for killing him was a fight over the coin.”

“What fight?”

Jenna reached in her back pocket and extracted a piece of paper that had been folded in quarters. She handed it to me. "This fight."

I unfolded it. It was an e-mail Simon had sent me about ten days before he was killed.

Subject
  
Forged Coins

Date
      
11/25 4:03:37 PM PDT

From
     
[email protected]

To
          
[email protected]

Robert—

Quit pretending that your Ides is anything other than a clever Becker-like forgery. Take it back and return my money.

I’ll be out of the office the rest of the day and the rest of this week and next. Your worthless fake will be in the top drawer of my desk. Pick it up while I’m gone. Don’t bother to leave a check. Just wire the $500K to my offshore bank account in Shanghai. Name on the account: Simon S. Rafer. The bank name, routing number and my account number are on a sticky on top of the coin.

This is my final offer. Accept it and I’ll forget the whole thing. Stall any longer and it’s going to get very public and very ugly. I think that at the very least you knew all along that it was a fake and I’m going to say so. Maybe you won’t go to jail. But no one is ever going to buy a coin from you again and it won’t exactly be good for your legal career. Here or anywhere else. Assuming you can find a job somewhere else.

The only reason I’m not going to the police right now is in deference to our long professional relationship.

Do the right thing, Robert.

Simon

First I tried humor. “You have a lot of interesting stuff in your pockets, Jenna.”

She just sat and looked at me.

“Okay,” I said, “where did you get this e-mail?”

"Printed it out. Right after I read all of Simon’s e-mail exchanges with you."

"Why were you reading his e-mails?"

“Let’s come back to that. Right now I’d like to learn some more about your dispute. It’s important.”

It hit me that Jenna was starting to interview me as if I were a new client. Facts first. I also recognized a specific technique I’d taught her. Don’t let the person you’re questioning change the focus to you. The focus is on him, not you. Keep it there.

I gave in. “What else do you want to know, Jenna?”

“Who is Becker?”

“Was. Carl Wilhelm Becker. Perhaps the greatest counterfeiter of ancient coins who ever lived. Swiss. Died in 1830. As you saw, Simon claimed the coin was a Becker forgery.”

“Is it?”

“Can’t be. There are only fifty-eight of them in the world, and a new one showing up would have attracted too much attention, even back then. Becker enjoyed his quiet life in Geneva, peddling flawless counterfeits to coin rubes. Why would he have risked it all by forging such a famous coin?”

“Why did Simon think it was a fake?”

“He had it appraised.”

“By whom?”

“I’m not sure. But it doesn’t matter. This coin”—I leaned over and tapped the vinyl flip—“is real, damn it. I’ve owned it myself for more than fifty years. I know who owned it before me and where it came from before that.”

“So you never went and picked up the coin from his office?”

“Shit, no.”

“Well, now you’ve gotten it back in a different way. I brought it back to you. I suggest you keep it and send Simon’s estate a check for five hundred thousand dollars. Pretend you agreed to undo the deal before Simon was killed.”

Maybe I was still in shock. But what Jenna was saying made no sense to me.

“I’m sorry, Jenna. I’m not getting it.”

“We don’t want the police to think you killed Simon so you could keep the 500K.”

“Why would anyone think that? I’m not the a lowlife who would kill someone over money—not for that amount or any amount.”

“If there’s some other piece of evidence that links you to the crime, a lot of people are going to think that.”

“It’s ridiculous.”

“Robert, do you remember what you told me right before we did our first jury trial together?”

“I told you a lot of things.”

“One of the things you said was to keep in mind that the average juror in Los Angeles makes less than $50,000 per year.

“Yeah, I remember that.”

“How much did you make last year, Robert?”

“Sixty hundred fifty thousand dollars.”

“So five hundred thousand dollars is what? About seventy-five percent of what you pull down every year and ten times what they take home? A lot of jurors are going to think that’s worth killing over, even for you.”

“Okay, okay,” I said. “I get it. I get it. But I still can’t do what you’re suggesting. You’ve tampered with evidence.”

“If you didn’t kill him, the coin isn’t evidence of anything and, therefore, no evidence has been tampered with.” She said it with a wry smile. We both knew it was an utterly horseshit argument.