Hostile Witness (25 page)

THE NIGHT BEFORE RUFFING’S
cross-examination I was in the offices of Talbott, Kittredge and Chase, sitting at the long marble conference table, drinking one of those free Cokes, enjoying the luxury of it all. But I wasn’t there to work on the Concannon case. The Bishop brothers had insisted we spend that very evening going over the paperwork for their Valley Hunt Estates deal, so I was once again reviewing the documents that we would be putting into the prospectus, spreadsheets, pro forma projections, performance data on prior Bishop Brothers deals, a list of limited partners who had already committed to purchasing shares. I was sitting there alone at that conference table, drinking my Cokes, when a secretary opened the door and ushered Beth into the room.

She looked around. “Fancy,” she said. “Like a mausoleum.”

“Never been here before?” I asked when the secretary had left. “Look at all this stuff. Pens with Talbott, Kittredge and Chase embossed in gold, all the yellow pads you could ever want. Why don’t you take some back to the office in your briefcase? You want a soda?”

“No, thank you,” she said.

“It’s free. Come on, have one. Diet Coke?”

“Doesn’t this place give you the creeps, Victor?” she asked. “How many trees had to die to panel these walls? How many deserving plaintiffs were screwed to pay for all
this? I don’t like it here.” She shivered. “I feel like I’m in a wax museum after hours.”

“We should get ourselves a marble conference table,” I said. I pointed to the antique prints of Philadelphia landmarks, City Hall when it was still young and clean, Independence Hall, the Second Bank of the United States. “And some artwork just like this. What do you say?”

She sighed. “I have enough faith in you, Victor, that if you ever got any of this you’d hate it all too much to keep it. Rita told me you were here. I came over because I thought I could help you prepare for Ruffing tomorrow.”

“That’s not what I’m working on. It’s this Valley Hunt Estates prospectus.”

“What about Ruffing?” she asked.

“I have my instructions, and my instructions are to do nothing. How can I justify billing for preparing to do nothing?”

She sat down across from me and sighed again. I was beginning to fear her sighs. She looked around. “Is this place bugged?”

I shrugged. “Probably.”

“Well, screw it,” she said. “Victor, if Prescott is going to point the finger of blame on Chester he’s going to do it tomorrow.”

“He won’t,” I said. “He told me he was going to get Chet off.”

“Like his old boss Nixon said he wasn’t a crook. You should be preparing just in case. Prescott’s whole defense is based on the legality of asking for political money, right? If he tries to distinguish Concannon’s meetings with Ruffing from the phone conversations between Ruffing and Moore, Chester could be in serious trouble. Prescott could claim that what Moore was doing was perfectly legal but that Concannon extended it to the illegal.”

“Concannon was Moore’s top aide. No one would believe that.”

“Remember about the missing money? A quarter of a million that never ended up at CUP? Money like that can erode anyone’s loyalty and don’t think the jury won’t believe it. If Prescott can pin the missing money on Concannon, then Chester is going to take the fall for his boss.”

I took a sip from my Coke. It was in a tall glass, filled with ice cubes I had lifted with pewter tongs from the ice bucket sitting on the marble credenza. “There is no missing money,” I said. “Ruffing’s lying about the numbers to get a bigger tax deduction.”

“Who told you that?” asked Beth.

“Prescott.”

“So it must be true.”

“You know what I think,” I said, suddenly angry. “I think you’re jealous. I think you’re worried that I might just make the big time here and leave you behind, that I might pull a Guthrie. And frankly, it pisses me off that you would think that of me.”

She stared at me for a long moment. I thought I might have seen something terribly sad in her face but then was sure I hadn’t because she was too tough to let me see anything she didn’t want me to see. “What I think of you, Victor, is that you’re drunk on this marble conference table and these fine prints of Old Philadelphia and these free Cokes. And that when you sober up, you’re going to be very sorry for all that you did while under the influence.”

She stood and stared down at me. “Morris wants you to call him,” she said coldly before she left, stranding me with the embossed pens and piles of yellow pads and antique prints. I took another sip of soda.

I turned back to the Valley Hunt Estates papers and read again the list of limited partners who had already agreed to buy into the deal. There was an entry that puzzled me, a partnership purchased by one set of initials for the benefit
of another. I was still looking it over, trying to figure it all out, when Jack and Simon Bishop came into the room.

“How’s it all looking, Victor?” asked Simon.

“Great,” I said. “There’s only one thing that troubles me.”

“I don’t fancy the numbers in the five-year pro forma, either,” said Jack, holding in his hand the financial projection prepared for the prospectus. “The numbers are too high.”

“It’s not that,” I said. “The numbers look fine.”

“They look smashing to me,” said Simon. “We’ll sell out within a week.”

“And be sued within a year if things don’t work out,” said Jack.

“They’ll work out, Jack,” said Simon. “They always do. But let’s deal with it later. Right now we’re off to dinner. You coming, Victor?”

I looked at them, their round faces as open to me as an invitation, and whatever concerns I might have had disappeared in the warmth of their generosity. “Sure,” I said. “Dinner sounds great.” I followed them into the elevator for the ride to the parking garage and their Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow.

They took me to a fine French restaurant, a small place in a fancy suburb. It was a long drive but Simon told me it would be worth it and it was. The place was full, a mob of swells waiting at the bar, but the man at the door knew the Bishops and led us right to an empty table by a window. They were actually a jolly pair, these Bishops. I had first thought them to be very stiff and very formal, but that was just their surface manner. Underneath they were great fun, full of rollicking appetites and a taste for fine wines. Halfway into our second bottle I excused myself to make a call.

“Victor, is that you, Victor?”

“Yes, Morris. It’s me.”

“You have a cold or something, Victor? You don’t sound yourself.”

“I’m just a little tired, but I wanted to return your call.”

“You must take care of yourself, Victor. That’s number one. What I do when I’m
oysgamitched
from all the work, I pick up a bottle of Manischewitz that’s good and thick like a medicine, I lie in bed, turn on the news, drink the wine, fall asleep to Peter Jennings, and when I wake up I’m the old Morris. You should try it.”

“What about chicken soup?”

“Forget what they tell you. Chicken soup in bed it creates such a mess, all that splashing. News I have for you, Victor. Mine son, the computer genius, he has a phone right in his computer and he pulls out a register of marinas and starts looking for our man.”

“Any luck?”

“Calm your
shpilkehs
and let me tell you. So first he looks under the thief’s name. Stocker. Plugs it in, the search takes an hour, more, the cost of the call is so high I don’t want to say it over the phone.”

“We’ll cover it.”

“Of course. I’m in this business to lose money to AT&T? So word finally comes back, no Stocker. So I think that our friend the accountant might not have sold his boat so fast so we looked up
The Debit,
and sure enough we get the listings of five boats called
The Debit.
Five accountants with the same idea, a conspiracy of accountants. So we check them all and, what do you know, there is only one thirty-foot sloop. I still couldn’t tell you what a sloop is, but mine son, he says he knows, and
The Debit
anchored in a marina just south of St. Augustine, Florida, is a thirty-foot sloop. Owned by a man named Cane. So I happen to know that cane in German is
stock.
”

“You happen to know?”

“I just happen to know, so I think maybe it’s the same man. So I call the marina and they get hold of our Mr. Cane.”

“And it’s him?”

“Accht, let me finish.”

“Morris, you’re a genius.”

“Victor, so you’ve finally caught on. Yes, with all modesty, I confess that I am. But no, Mr. Cane was not Mr. Stocker. He’s Mr. Cane, Nathan Cane, his father was a Cantowitz. He sells real estate and he sold a big house or something so he says he splurges and buys this boat,
The Debit.
”

“From who?”

“Funny, that’s exactly what I asked. He says he bought it from a Mr. Radbourn, a little
pisher,
he tells me. All the papers were in order. So I ask him who Radbourn got it from and he looks on the bill of sale and it turns out Mr. Stocker sold it to Mr. Radbourn, and if you ask me, from the description, Mr. Stocker and Mr. Radbourn are one in the same. He transferred it to himself to make it harder to find him.”

“So what we have now, Morris, is the boat but no Stocker.”

“Exactly right. You’re very quick there, Victor.”

“So what do we do?”

“Well, of course, I figure our friend the thief he likes boats too much not to have one, and he has the money, so I figure he bought himself something else, and this time something bigger.
A chazer bliebt a chazer,
right? So we check the marina records again for a Mr. Radbourn.
Gornisht.
We check the records for the sale of a boat larger than thirty feet at around the same place and time and you know what we found?”

“What?”

“Hundreds. Too many to check. To check them all would take us six months.”

“So we’re done.”

“Not yet, Victor. We talk again to our friend Mr. Cane, a nice man, really. He promised to set me up with a condo
deal if I decide to move south for mine retirement. When it gets colder like it is now I start thinking that maybe
shvitzing
is not the worst thing in the world. So he seems to remember Mr. Radbourn mentioning something about going across the state and buying something on the west coast of Florida, where he heard prices they might be cheaper.”

“So what does that tell us, Morris?”

“It narrows it down. Our friend Mr. Stocker, I tell you with much confidence, our friend Mr. Stocker is right now, right this instant, in a boat larger than a thirty-foot sloop, living under some other name, docked in a marina somewhere on the Gulf of Mexico.”

When I returned to the table, the Bishops were laughing loudly at something. The laughter died slowly when they saw me. “Who died, Victor?” asked Simon. “You look like the plague.”

“It’s nothing,” I said. “Everything’s fine.”

My veal was on the table now, three delicate medallions in a light lemon sauce. I finished the wine in my glass and Jack quickly filled it again. For a moment I felt a slight sense of disappointment. I had almost believed that the strange and mystical Morris Kapustin could do anything he put his mind to, and his finding Stocker would have opened a different door for me, more difficult yes, confrontational yes, but also less reliant on the
them
that had always disappointed me before. It had been a nice belief, Morris as savior, warming in its way, like a Jimmy Stewart movie, but Stocker was lost somewhere on the Gulf of Mexico and that door was closed and I was here at this prime table in this exclusive restaurant with two of the richest men in the city buying me dinner. The future was shaping up with great clarity. I would settle out
Saltz
and follow along sheepishly in
United States v. Moore and Concannon.
I would avoid all bullets aimed at rear windows of imported cars. I would placate the paranoid
Norvel Goodwin and the suspicious Chuckie Lamb with my inactivity. I would keep screwing Veronica in secret and write my opinion letters for Valley Hunt Estates and collect my fat fees and step into my future and all would be right with the world.

But still.

“What say we do the town tonight?” said Simon.

“Find us a high-class knocking shop,” said Jack.

“Just a pleasant night out with the boys,” said Simon.

“I noticed something curious in the partnership list,” I said. That got their attention fast. “That’s what was troubling me before. There were two partnership shares held in trust by W.P. on behalf of W.O. Any idea what that is all about?”

“A old friend of Prescott’s,” said Simon. “A prep school mate, being hounded by some cackhanded fool for a million dollars or so. Something to do with his divorce, I think. Seemed to be a sad story, actually, when Bill told it to me. It’s always sad to see a sot being chased for his money. Prescott owed him something so he bought two shares to be held in trust, until the legal problems settle.”

So that’s the way it was, I thought. William Prescott and Winston Osbourne, friends from the start, prep school mates, one helping the other hide his money from me. Well, now I knew where to find a little bit more for my twenty-five percent share. But all of a sudden I wasn’t hungry for the last of Winston Osbourne’s dollars. I was tied up with William Prescott in a very real way, which meant I was tied up with Winston Osbourne too. And I guess that was the price for joining the club, that we all help each other out, even the destitute. I could be munificent, sure, if that was what was required of me, I could be munificent as hell. Simon was right, it was so sad to see a sot being chased for his money. I had taken enough from him, I figured. Whatever he offered in final settlement after the car
would be enough. Good. My first case as a lawyer would finally be over. It was time to move on.

“Well, what do you say, Victor?” asked Jack. “Boys night out? A few cigars, a few cheap thrills?”

“Or maybe not so cheap thrills,” said Simon.

“Sure,” I said with a shrug, shucking off all concern that Beth had raised about the Ruffing cross-examination, ignoring the worries about the connection between W.P. and W.O. that should have been hammering at my consciousness but were instead only tap, tap, tapping there, tapping so lightly they couldn’t break through the spell of the alcohol and fine food and rich company. “Why not,” I said. “I’ve got nothing better to do.”