Firm Ambitions (6 page)

“And Rachel…”

I turned at the door. “Yes?”

She looked distressed. “They have more pictures.”

“Of you?”

She nodded, her lips quivering.

***

As I walked through the lobby of the police station, I spotted Charles Kimball on the sidewalk outside. He was deep in conversation with Deb Fletcher, his arms crossed over his chest. Standing next to Fletcher was a heavyset man in tight gray slacks and a white crew-neck sweater. The sweater was snug enough around the chest to show the outline of a pack of cigarettes in the breast pocket. He looked vaguely familiar.

Kimball spotted me as I pushed open the glass door and stepped out into the glare of the midday sun. He waved me over. “Well?” he asked when I reached him.

“We need to talk,” I said. “Alone.”

“Of course.” Kimball turned to the other two. “Gentlemen.”

The heavyset guy was staring at me. “This her lawyer?”

“That's her,” Deb Fletcher said.

“I apologize,” Kimball said. “I didn't realize you two hadn't met. Tommy, this is Rachel Gold. Rachel, this is Tommy Landau.”

Eileen was right. He'd really put on weight since I had last seen him. Indeed, he looked as if someone had inserted an air hose into his midriff and inflated him to about 30 percent over the recommended pressure. But there was nothing soft or cuddly about this Michelin Tire Man. Tommy Landau had a thick neck and meaty hands. He wore his straight brown hair combed at an angle across his forehead. He had dark, squinty eyes, a full walrus mustache, and a thick porcine nose. His eyebrows joined along the ridge at the bridge of his nose. If you dressed him in a white full-length apron, put a cleaver in his hand, and posed him stiffly behind a meat counter, Tommy Landau could pass for a south St. Louis German butcher in one of those nineteenth-century daguerreotypes.

“Hello, Tommy,” I said coolly.

“Your client's got a lot of nerve,” he said. His voice was flat and slightly hoarse.

“Pardon?” I said with a touch of annoyance.

He snorted as he shook his head. “She sues
me
for divorce, and all the while she's fucking that scumbag camel jockey.”

I turned to Fletcher. “Control your client, Deb.”

Fletcher chuckled. “What can I say, Rachel? My client's got feelings.”

“Genital warts, too, according to his wife. Tell him to save his speeches for the witness stand.” I turned to Kimball, pointedly ignoring Tommy Landau. “Can we go somewhere to talk?”

He gave me a conspiratorial wink and turned to the other two. “Gentlemen, we'll finish our discussion later.”

Kimball moved through the police with the easy assurance of a man on familiar turf. He greeted clerks and officers by name as we passed them in the hallways, and each gave him a smile and a hello in return. He ushered me into an empty office. I sat behind the desk and he stood near the door as he filled me in on what he had learned about the status of the homicide investigation.

“Cyanide?” I repeated when he finished.

Kimball nodded. “I'll have the police get you a copy of the autopsy report.”

“How was he poisoned?”

“Through his daily vitamins. Apparently, he carried around a big bottle of the damned things. A real potpourri of pills and capsules and tablets—megavitamins, calcium tablets, powdered seaweed, flower pollen, powdered egg protein, mineral supplements, amino acid capsules. He took several different ones each day.” He gave a bemused chuckle. “Supposed to keep him healthy, make him live longer. The police found the bottle in the hotel bathroom. It had fallen behind the toilet. According to the inventory, there were twenty-nine capsules in the bottle, along with various pills and tablets. The lab report showed that twenty-one of the twenty-nine capsules were filled with powdered sodium cyanide.”

“How many did he swallow?”

“Just one, but one was enough to kill five men.”

I leaned back and crossed my arms. “Is Eileen really a suspect?”

Kimball squinted and shook his head. “Not much of one. I spent twenty minutes with Detective Israel. He's the homicide dick on the case. Frankly, I think the police are more peeved with Eileen than suspicious.”

“Peeved?”

“Based on the evidence, Andros clearly had a visitor in that hotel room. When the police figured out that Eileen was the one—indeed, that Eileen and Andros were having an affair—Poncho was furious that she hadn't come forward on her own.”

“Who's Poncho?”

“That's Detective Israel. His first name is Bernard. But except when he's on the witness stand, most folks call him Poncho. In any event, he's cooled off. He's been running down other leads.”

“And Tommy's a suspect, too?”

“Again, not much of one. That's my sense. Frankly,” he said with a wry shake of his head, “I am a little surprised. In a pill-tampering case, one would think Tommy would be more of a suspect than his wife, at least at the outset.”

“Why?”

“Because of Tommy's prior experience—or, more precisely, his alleged prior experience—in the, shall we say, pharmacological area.”

“But where's his motive?”

“The oldest in the book, Rachel: the jealous husband.”

“Tommy knew?”

Kimball raised his eyebrows and shrugged. “Attorney-client privilege.”

I nodded. “If you're relying on that privilege, Charles, how can you represent Eileen when the police still suspect Tommy? You have a conflict of interest.”

“I agree, Rachel. For that reason, I've given her no legal advice and have told her to confide nothing in me. I've merely shielded her until you arrived. Although I hope neither will be charged, I certainly cannot file an appearance on behalf of Eileen until, if, and when the police confirm that her husband is no longer a suspect.”

“Fair enough. What made the police so sure she was having an affair with Andros?”

“The autopsy report revealed that he had sex shortly before he died. In addition, the medical examiner recovered several pubic hairs from his body that were not his. Witnesses placed Eileen in the hotel, and probably in the room, at the time he died. For that reason, the police were already considering a warrant for a medical examination of Eileen. But that was before they searched his apartment last night.”

“What did they find?”

Kimball studied me. “Wait here, Rachel,” he said as he placed his hand on the doorknob. “Let me see if Poncho will let you see it.”

Kimball returned a few minutes later with Detective Israel. I had assumed Detective Bernard Israel was Jewish, and perhaps he was. When I heard his nickname, I thought perhaps he was a Sephardic Jew, and perhaps he was. But he certainly didn't look Jewish. Bernie “Poncho” Israel was black as coal and built like an offensive tackle. He seemed to fill up the doorway. He was holding what looked like a photo album.

“Rachel, allow me to introduce Detective Israel.”

“Hello, Detective,” I said as we shook hands. “Nice to meet you.”

“Same here, Miss Gold.” He had a Fu Manchu mustache and sad eyes.

“Call me Rachel.”

He smiled. “And call me Poncho. Charlie said you'd like to see this.” He held out the photo album.

I took it from him and set it on the table. “You found it in his apartment?”

Poncho nodded. “We've already checked it for fingerprints. They all belong to Andros. As you will see, it's clearly his album.”

“It's an album full of suspects,” Kimball said. “I should think it will keep Poncho and his posse busy for quite some time.”

I looked down at the album cover. I knew what was inside, but was reluctant to open it with the two of them watching me. I looked up. They both got the hint.

“I'm down the hall to the left,” Detective Israel said as he backed out of the room. “Just drop it off when you're through.”

I nodded.

“If it's okay with you,” Charles Kimball said to me, “I'll go bring Eileen up to date while you look through the album. I think Poncho may let her go home after she answers a few questions. I'll check back here before she talks to him.” He closed the door behind him.

I opened the album.

It was not the type that Mom, Dad, Junior, and Sis leafed through while seated before the fireplace in a Hallmark Christmas card scene. There were close to thirty pages of Polaroid photographs neatly mounted in the album. Eileen was the star of three pages near the front—ten color shots of her in total. The photos left absolutely no doubt about the nature of her relationship with Andros. She was naked in every shot but one, and in that one she was wearing black panties and a black pushup bra. In most of the shots she was alone and posed in classic homemade porno positions: on her hands and knees with her legs spread wide; looking over her shoulder; licking a nipple; squeezing her breasts; etc. In two pictures, she and Andros were together. The shots were off-center, as if he had placed the camera on a chair facing the scene, set the timer, and joined her for the pose. In one she was kneeling on the carpet in front of him and licking his semierect penis; in the other she was on top of him, her back arched as his hands squeezed her breasts. In both pictures Andros was staring dully into the camera, detached from the performance.

I slowly flipped through the photo album. Page after page of women. Each posing for him the same ways Eileen had posed. I studied the faces. I recognized several women from the aerobics class. Here was one I had stood next to the night the aerobics class was canceled. I think someone had called her Judy. Or Julie. When the class was canceled, she had called home using a cellular phone she took out of her purse. I had heard her talk to one of her kids about piano lessons. Here she was in the album, leaning back in a chair, her legs wide apart and hooked over the chair arms, her fingers pulling herself even farther apart. I looked for Christine Maxwell but didn't find any pictures of her.

I grew more and more depressed as I slowly turned each page and saw yet another naked woman frozen in an explicit pose under the plastic covering. It reminded me of that musty room in the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago—the room with display case after display case of dead butterflies skewered on pins. For the sake of these women, I just hoped Andros hadn't shown his butterfly collection to anyone.

I was so disheartened that I didn't even recognize her pictures at first.

“Oh, no,” I groaned when I realized who it was. “That bastard.”

Chapter Six

“Oh, no,” Ann groaned. “That bastard.”

We were alone in my mother's living room, just the two of us. I had tried to reach Ann when I got back to my office from the police station. I left a message on her machine that I needed to see her as soon as possible. Between her carpools and other commitments, Ann couldn't come over until after her daughter's dance class, which ended at 8:00 p.m.

By the time Ann got to the house, however, I was even more disoriented. That was because she arrived twenty minutes after my mother left.

With a state court judge.

On a date.

Her first since my father had died.

My mother broke the news just a few minutes before her date arrived. I had been sitting alone in the den trying to decide how to break the news to Ann when my mother walked in, fastening one of her earrings.

“Don't sit in the dark, sweetie,” she said as she walked over to the lamp. She fastened the earring and turned on the light.

I looked up. It took a moment to come out of my reverie and notice how pretty she looked. “You look great, Mom.”

She shrugged. “Halfway decent.”

She was wearing a burgundy wool jersey cardigan over a white ribbed cotton turtleneck sweater. The cardigan was unbuttoned. Below she had on black, high-waisted, stretch stirrup pants with a black patent-leather belt.

“You going out?”

She nodded. Her smile seemed almost too buoyant.

“Where you going?”

“Miniature golf.”

I was surprised. “Miniature golf?”

She blushed. “Miniature golf.”

“With Aunt Becky?” Her sister Becky was also a widow.

“Not with Becky.” She paused, as if choosing her words carefully. “I'm going with a man.”

It took a moment for it to register. “You mean a date?”

“A date.”

“Really?”

“Maybe you know him. He's a judge.”

“A judge? You're going out on a date with a judge?”

“Rachel, sweetie, relax. He's not married. His wife died of cancer a couple years ago. He seems like a nice man.”

“Where did you meet him?” My emotions were swirling.

“At the store.” My Aunt Becky owned a gift and card shop in Clayton, and my mother helped her run it. “He came in last week looking for a birthday gift for his secretary. And…” She shrugged and smiled.

I forced a smile. “That's nice.”

The doorbell chimes sounded. We looked at each other, momentarily flustered. When my dates rang the doorbell in high school, my mother would send me upstairs before she answered the door. She would usher my date into the living room and give him the once-over. What was proper etiquette when the man at the door was going out on a date with your fifty-six-year-old mother?

She took control of the situation. Smoothing her cardigan, she said, “I look okay?”

“Beautiful. Which judge?”

“Maury Bernstein.” She turned toward the door.

Tex Bernstein
? He had been the judge in one of my divorce cases.
My mother is going out on a date with Tex Bernstein
?

His Honor stepped into the foyer with one hand behind his back. Sure enough, he was wearing snakeskin boots and a string tie. “Howdy, Sarah,” he said in that unmistakable twang. He brought his hand out from behind and handed her a long-stem red rose. “This here's for you.”

Good move
, I conceded. I'm a total sucker for flowers. Still dazed, I smiled as I watched my mother take the rose from him.

“Thank you, Maury,” Mother said. “It's lovely.” She turned toward me. “This is my eldest daughter, Rachel. She's a lawyer from Harvard. Rachel, do you know Maury Bernstein?”

“She most certainly does,” he said, stepping over to shake my hands. “Mighty fine to see you, Counselor.” Tex gave me a radiant smile. He had large protruding ears and a bulbous nose. His bald head was gleaming, as if he had stopped on the way over to have it waxed and buffed.

“Hi, Judge,” I said, still slightly dazed.
My mother is going out on a date with Tex Bernstein
?

“Come on, Rachel,” he said, pretending to be peeved. “In your mama's house I'm jes' plain ole Maury.”

The three of us struggled through a few minutes of overly animated small talk. I noted a fresh shaving nick on his chin and the scent of Old Spice after-shave lotion. I was pleased that he had shaved a second time that day for my mother, but I was also aware that my father's brand had been Mennen.

Maury turned to my mother. “Well, Sarah? Ready to saddle up and hit the trail?”

My mother gave me a kiss. “I'll see you later, sweetie.”

“Bye, Mom. Goodbye…Maury. Have fun.”

I walked back into the den shaking my head in bewilderment.
Judge Bernstein
. All the lawyers called him Tex. Behind his back, of course. Maury Bernstein was born and raised in a small town in the bootheel of Missouri. He came to St. Louis for law school, landed a job as an insurance claims adjuster after graduation, got active in Democratic politics, paid his dues, and eventually ascended to the bench. At that point, depending upon your view of the man, Maury Bernstein either dropped all pretense or became all pretense. Regardless, he traded in his wing-tips for boots, installed a Remington bronze sculpture in his chambers, put up a framed
Lonesome Dove
poster, hung a ten-gallon hat on the peg by the door, and became St. Louis County's first Yiddishe cowboy circuit judge.

There's nothing “wrong” with him
, I told myself as I heard his car pull way.
After all, he's got a reputation as a hardworking, honest judge. Not particularly bright. Actually
, I admitted as I recalled the last motion I argued before him,
sort of dense
.

But don't forget
, I reminded myself,
he brought your mother a red rose
.

It was hard enough dealing with my mother going out on a date. Going out with a judge, however, made it seem even stranger. And having that judge be Tex Bernstein made it surreal. Back when I was ten, I was in the supermarket with my mother one day and saw my third-grade teacher selecting a head of lettuce in the produce section. Up until that very moment it hadn't even occurred to me that my teacher had an existence outside the school. Same with Tex Bernstein. Now he was on a date with my mother.

***

And then Ann arrived.

I told her about Mom's date. She seemed only mildly curious, but that was probably because she was much more concerned about why I was so anxious to see her. So I told her.

“I feel like such a fool,” she said, more to herself than me.

I didn't say anything. I was keenly aware that I was the big sister. She was sitting on the couch across from me, her head turned toward the fireplace, her arms crossed in front of her chest, her legs pressed together. She frowned at the fireplace. “I feel like one of those sluts back in high school. A total loser.”

I wanted to say something comforting, but it seemed that anything I could say would only make it worse. In the Gold family mythology, I was the smart one and Ann was the flighty one. Back when I was little, my mother put me to bed every night with fairy tales about college and medical school. “Someday you'll be somebody,” she would whisper as she kissed me good night. “Not a doormat like your poor father. ‘Dr. Gold,' they'll all say. ‘Please help us, Dr. Gold.'” Ann was allowed to be the girl of the family, the one my mother sent to the Barbizon School of Modeling. She went through high school with a C average and dropped out of the University of Missouri after her sophomore year to marry her ZBT boyfriend, who was graduating that year.

“Ann,” I said gently, “you're probably going to be contacted by the police. I assume they'll talk to every woman in his photo album.”

She looked at me with a frown. “What?”

“I said the police are going to talk to every woman in his photo album.”

She nodded dully and turned back toward the fireplace. “Is Eileen in there, too?” she asked without looking at me.

“Yes.”

She shook her head in resignation. “Who else?”

“I don't know any other names. I recognized some from the aerobics class.”

“God, how many girls are in there?”

“A lot,” I said.

“What's a lot?”

“Twenty. Maybe thirty.”

She looked at me. “All the same?”

“What do you mean?”

“Naked. Posed like hookers. Squeezing their tits. Sucking his cock.”

I nodded.

She squeezed her eyes closed for a moment and took a deep breath. “And now the police have them.” She looked at me and shook her head. “Talk about humiliation—a bunch of cops drooling over those pictures. Jesus Christ.”

I moved over to the couch. I took her hand and held it in both of mine.

After a while she sighed. “I really did it this time, huh?”

She looked at me. We shared a pair of sad smiles.

“Look for the silver lining,” I said. “That's what Dad always told us.”

“There's no silver lining here.”

“Well,” I finally said with a sheepish look, “all things considered, I'd rather be you than Andros right now.”

“I guess,” she said with a reluctant smile.

“And I'd rather be you than Eileen Landau, too.”

“Was she really there when he died?”

I nodded.

She shuddered. “Death by cyanide. Totally gruesome.”

“That's the way it sounded.”

“Was Christine Maxwell in the album?”

“I didn't see her in there. Why?”

She shrugged. “Just curious. Are you going to the funeral tomorrow morning?”

“Probably. Benny wants to go, too.”

She smiled. “Benny? God, that'll be perfect for him.”

I nodded. “He told me he felt himself, quote, duty bound as a warm, sensitive New Age man to be available at the funeral home to succor any woman looking for consolation, close quote.”

“Succor, eh?” It made her laugh. “Sounds like Benny thinks he might get lucky.”

“Probably. Hey, you want some tea?”

“I need something stronger than that.”

“How about grain alcohol and an IV tube.”

She smiled. “It's a deal.”

I stood up. “Come on in the kitchen.”

***

Ann took another sip of wine. “I was so upset when I found out Eileen was having an affair with him.”

“How did you find out?”

“Debbie told me.”

“When?”

“One night in Las Vegas. We were up in the room alone. The men were down in the casino and Janet was off getting a massage. Debbie had no idea about Andros and me. None. She's just a gossip. She was telling me about her lunch date with Eileen at the Ritz the day before we all left for Vegas. Eileen had started off telling her about the divorce. They got to talking about husbands, about men, you know, the usual. That's when Eileen told her about her affair with Andros. She swore Debbie to secrecy. She told Debbie that she was meeting him in a hotel room after lunch that day. Oh, Rachel, I was totally devastated. What made it even worse was that I knew exactly what I had done the day before we left for Vegas. I had spent the morning in bed with that goddamn son of a bitch. Can you believe it? He screwed me in the morning and screwed her in the afternoon. I bet he fed us both the same line of bullshit.”

“Did you say anything to Debbie?”

Ann shrugged helplessly. “What was I going to say? I was dying inside, but I didn't let on. When she went to the bathroom I poured myself a glass of vodka, downed it in three gulps, and vowed that I'd never have anything to do with that bastard ever again.” She closed her eyes and shook her head. “That's why this stuff with the photo album is such a nightmare. It's like having someone dig up a corpse right after I buried it.”

I nodded sympathetically, although the lawyer side of my brain was clicking away. “So you were still seeing him back when you took me to his class.”

“Oh, yeah. We were in the middle of a hot and heavy love affair, or so I thought. He was probably screwing three other girls from the class at the same time. Jesus Christ.”

She finished her wine and poured another glass. I took a sip of tea and watched her. “He didn't seem your type,” I finally said.

She gave me a sharp look. “And what's my type?” There was an edge in her voice.

I shrugged. “I kind of thought Richie was your type.”

“Well,” she said with a glum smile, “Andros certainly wasn't Richie. That's for sure.”

“When did you start seeing him?”

She leaned back in her chair and brushed back a lock of curly hair. “Three weeks after Dad died,” she said.

I waited, sipping my tea.

She had a wistful look. “I started thinking about having an affair the week we sat
shiva
at my house. Isn't that terrible?”

Sitting
shiva
is the Jewish version of an Irish wake, except it begins after the funeral, lasts for seven days, and is held in the home of one of the family members.

“Death triggers strange thoughts,” I said.

Ann frowned as she tried to remember. “Actually, I probably started thinking about it at the end of the funeral service. Richie was one of the pallbearers.” She stared at her wineglass. “I remember it so clearly. I was watching him carry Dad's casket out. All of a sudden I realized how much Richie and I were like Dad and Mom. I don't mean that he acts like Dad, or even looks that much like him, which he doesn't. It was just that—I don't know, it sort of struck me how much our marriage was like Mom and Dad's. ‘My God,' I said to myself as I sat in that chapel, ‘we're going to be just like them.'”

She took a sip of wine. “Let's face it, Rachel, Mom and Dad didn't exactly have the most exciting marriage in the world. I mean, Dad was sweet and all, but you've got to admit, he wasn't Warren Beatty.” She sighed. “Dad was more like—well, he was like Richie: predictable, reliable, predictable, dependable.” She leaned back in her chair. “Totally predictable.”