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Nine

Dinner Dance

The annual Chase & Ward spring dinner dance for the firm's partners was usually an event to be dreaded—it could be awfully boring—and yet Reuben now welcomed it as a possible diversion from the Courtland case.

At seven Saturday evening, the Frosts set forth for Cipriani 42nd Street, a catering hall that was formerly the headquarters of the Bowery Savings Bank. It represented the effort to import the Bellini (a drink of peach juice and Prosecco) and the unconscionably high prices of Harry's Bar in Venice to the Americas.

“If my late mother were still alive, and I told her I was going to a dinner dance in an old bank, she would have said I'd lost my mind,” Cynthia said to her husband on the way.

“Especially if you told her they served drinks by the old teller windows and, I'll bet, use the vault as a wine cellar,” Reuben added. “Or, more likely, to store the stacks of money the Ciprianis make in New York.”

After arriving, Reuben and Cynthia moved toward the bar. The next forty-five minutes were spent greeting old acquaintances and meeting new ones. Reuben had been retired long enough that he was not familiar with many of the younger partners. Curious as always, he was glad to meet them and their significant others. He also noted that the firm had moved into the twenty-first century: There were three examples, two male and one female, of same-sex companions. Quite a change from the day when there were no women partners, let alone one with a female cohort. It quietly amused him to think of Judge Winkleman,­ a late federal judge and former partner, who looked down on Jews, Catholics, homosexuals, and immigrants and minorities of all colors and varieties, being asked to marry one of these couples.

Reuben, as a Venice devotee—if not exactly a fan of the Harry's Bar empire—liked Bellinis, even if they lacked the kick of his usual martini. So he downed perhaps more of them than he should have during the cocktail hour.

Needless to say, the crowd was abuzz with talk about Marina Courtland's murder. People assumed that Reuben, as the firm's sometime amateur detective, would be a source of information. He was quizzed repeatedly but managed to stonewall his questioners.

At the end of the pre-dinner socializing, Reuben and Cynthia found their table and discovered, to Reuben's dismay, that he would be sitting next to Irene Lander, Eskill's wife. (Years before, it had been decided that seating at the dance was too clannish and that the only way to mix people up was through assigned seating. Spouses, though at the same table, were not permitted to sit next to each other for the same reason. Reuben didn't know who did the seating arrangements, but once he had looked at the place card at the place adjoining his, he wished he could have had words with him or her.)

Mrs. Lander duly appeared, giving Reuben his first opportunity to view the facelift he had heard so much about. He almost didn't recognize her. The consequences were severe, tightening her face into an almost expressionless mass. Two other younger partners and their wives, the Wakemans and the Sterns, completed the table.

From past experience, Reuben knew that Irene Lander was obsessed with population control, contraception, and abortion, and that it was almost impossible to shift to other topics. She had even been known to discuss these matters with nonplussed young associates. Before he had eaten even two bites of his antipasto, Mrs. Lander began her spiel.

“Reuben, are you aware of what the FDA has ruled about the morning-after pill?”

“Irene, I can't say I am.”

“It's disgraceful. The fundamentalists have taken over.”

“I'm afraid Cynthia and I are beyond the age where below-the-belt issues are of much concern,” Reuben said with a smile. “The only morning-after pill that interests us, or at least me, is an Alka-Seltzer tablet.”

“That's ridiculous!
Everyone
must be concerned about these issues, about reproductive rights, about the population explosion around the world. If thinking people like you and Cynthia aren't involved, the right-wingers will take over. A disaster for women! A disaster for the world!”

As she went on, almost shouting over the very loud band, Reuben saw Cynthia wink at him from her place on the other side of the table. Glancing at Mrs. Lander, he uncharitably thought that she, with her newly tightened face, would probably not be able to wink at Eskill, sitting next to Cynthia.

Irene's apocalyptic preaching would have gone on over the veal scaloppini had Reuben not, as politeness demanded, turned to his other neighbor, the attractive young wife of Allen Stern, a young litigator that Reuben scarcely knew. They were able to discuss child-rearing, a subject of which the childless Reuben had no direct knowledge but did have a lifetime storehouse of remembered conversations. It was also a relief to discuss parenthood rather than its prevention.

Then it was back to Mrs. Lander. In a preemptive strike, Reuben asked her about the state of the stock market and the view from her firm. She immediately launched into a lengthy explanation of her recent experience with derivatives, a subject Reuben barely understood.

Reuben wanted to get away. Perhaps he could excuse himself for a cigarette break, even though he did not smoke and guessed that Irene Lander may have known this. So he listened, or at least half-listened, to her demand to write the two New York senators about proposed legislative restrictions on Medicaid payments for abortions.

When Mrs. Stern returned, Reuben turned to her with relief and initiated a conversation about current movies. Then, as soon as dessert and coffee were finished, he said good-bye to Irene Lander and the other guests at the table. Just as he and Cynthia left, the band music changed from “old-fashioned” show tunes to a rock beat as unfamiliar to Reuben as the mazurka. (Cynthia could have handled it but, after all, she'd had a lifetime of dance experience.) The younger generation's notion of “music” now prevailed. Reuben was almost glad that Cynthia's ankle problem had kept them off the dance floor.

In the taxi on the way home, he began complaining about Irene Lander.

“I don't understand how Eskill puts up with her. She's a monster!” he told his wife. “She's like a broken record. All that Planned Parenthood stuff. Even if you're sympathetic, as I am, her harangue—which I've now heard at least half a dozen times—certainly puts you off. I tried to change the subject, but that got me into a worse trap.”

“How?”

“I asked about her business and was treated to a lengthy discussion of her latest financial toy—called LEAPS.”

“LEAPS?”

“Yes. Believe it stands for ‘Long-Term Equity Anticipation Securities.' LEAPS.”

“What do they do?”

“That woman talked so fast and with that band playing full blast, I'm not sure I can tell you exactly.”

“Excuse me, did I hear you mention LEAPS?” their taxi driver asked from the front seat.

“Yes, I did,” Reuben said.

“Greatest thing ever invented. Three-year options on stocks—puts or calls, you pick. Lets you get the upside from stocks without tying up all your money.”

“There's your answer, Cynthia,” Reuben said. “A better explanation than I could have given you.”

“Yessir. I'm doing real well with my LEAPS on Merck and Walt Disney.”

After looking at the driver's ID card in the window of the divider—for one Ahmed Jabbar—Reuben said, as he paid the fare, “Good for you, Mr. Jabbar. My congratulations.”

“Best thing that's happened to me, sir. And thanks.”

As he unlocked their front door, Reuben said, “That's the American way for you. Irene Lander and Ali Jabbar getting rich on LEAPS. What next?”

Ten

Gino Facini

Cynthia, in her grant-making role at the Brigham Foundation, visited far-out performance venues searching for new talent. Reuben often accompanied her and patiently endured the privations involved. Invariably the works were performed in lofts up several flights of stairs. And these spaces always had the hardest wooden benches or chairs to be found anywhere. The pieces normally included angry rock or rap lyrics, performed at a volume rendering all but four-letter obscenities incomprehensible. There also always seemed to be the obligatory nude offering, with little lost ewes and lambs baring all to make a statement, though it was not always clear what the statement was.

Then there might be a genuinely funny skit, usually about a gender issue and frequently performed in drag.

“When it comes right down to it, I don't know why we're doing this,” Reuben told his wife on their way to the Dockers' loft Sunday evening. He was having second thoughts about the wisdom of their venture. “It's not exactly as if I could go up to this fellow and say ‘Aha! You murdered your sister!' ”

“I don't think it does any harm to look over one more prospect—if you can call him that,” Cynthia said.

The Dockers' loft was up only three flights, but that was enough to bother Cynthia. Once inside, on the predictably hard benches, Reuben was well aware that he and his wife were far and away the oldest members of the audience. Their presence was even more noticeable because the assembled crowd was small, not more than twenty people.

“I should have worn a backward baseball cap,” Reuben whispered to his wife.

“And I suppose my midriff should be bare.”

“A ring in your nose would have been better.”

A girl led off the evening's program with a monologue about multiple orgasms, a heavenly state she declared she only occasionally achieved.

“I learn something new every day,” Reuben exclaimed, again whispering.

“
Sssh
,” came Cynthia's reply.

Then another girl, wearing a detachable pig's snout, a costume made of tinfoil, and illuminated fingernails that flashed on and off, sang an incomprehensible song that was either about animal rights or the joys of being a pig; perhaps both.

Eventually, without intermission, the finale, featuring Gino Facini, was reached. An emaciated young man draped in a bedsheet took the stage. He moved about very slowly, apparently in physical agony—and, judging by his expression, mental turmoil as well—as a recording of dissonant electronic music played in the background.

Reuben was sure he understood what was being presented to him: Facini's agonizing movements and the looks of pain and despair on his face were manifestly signs of grief, possibly for friends, perhaps a lover, who had died of AIDS. But Reuben was not as hip as he thought: The act turned out to end comically as the actor dropped his bedsheet, did a handstand, and revealed the true source of his distress—a fairly good-size carrot sticking out from his rear end. He pulled it loose to laughter and applause from the group around the Frosts.

“Pretty incredible,” Reuben muttered.

“Agreed,” Cynthia whispered back.

The Frosts went backstage with some trepidation, given Gino's reputation and what they had just seen of him—all of him—on the stage. But they felt that their scouting mission would not be complete without meeting the young man. They picked their way down the corridor that they thought led backstage and soon came to a ragtag room filled with discarded clothes, shoes, backpacks, stage lights, and a less than pristine bedsheet. Facini was in the middle of the mess, chewing out, in very angry terms, the fellow who had apparently been the lighting person for his act.

“Dammit, why did you sabotage me? The light at the end goes on my ass, not my face! Everybody's seen my suffering—now they must know
why
—the symbolic carrot—the Establishment, Jerry Falwell, Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, all of them, giving it to me up the ass! How can I do the
symbolism
if you don't get the lights right?” He let loose with a stream of curse words that Reuben had not heard since his military days many years before. As for Cynthia, not at all unsophisticated herself, many of the epithets were novel.

“A new insight,” Reuben muttered to Cynthia, as they overheard the outburst. “I thought it was all about AIDS, not right-wing politics.”

“That's because you are sometimes behind the times, Reuben.”

“Take a carrot and … No, no, that's too vulgar, forgive me.” Reuben had almost gotten swept up in the volley of obscenities.

Facini interrupted his tirade to the hapless lighting person when he saw the Frosts. His look said, “Who the hell are you?” But his words did not. Being “ageist” would not have been correct behavior for a member of the Dockers—not that there was much occasion to be deferential to the elderly in their loft.

Reuben introduced himself and Cynthia. Facini understandably seemed puzzled. What were these ancients doing at his performance?

“I should explain that I'm a lawyer,” Reuben said quickly. “My firm, and sometimes I, myself, represent your stepfather. And this is my wife, Cynthia.”

“I see. Pleased to meet you.” He smiled and held out his hand; the change in his demeanor was dramatic. “Thanks for coming,” he added. “Hope you're not allergic to carrots.”

The trio laughed, and then fell silent. Gino finally broke the silence by suggesting they go next door for a drink. The Frosts accepted and they were soon seated at an outdoor table at the Café Treviso. Gino had an iced latte and the two Frosts had glasses of Merlot, Reuben having discovered that the place had only a wine and beer license, which kept him from the stronger drink he really desired.

“I suppose you're here about my half sister,” Gino said.

“That's a fair statement,” Reuben replied.

“Well, I haven't a clue about what happened. All I know is what I read in the newspapers, as they say.”

“I gather you weren't close to her.”

“To put it mildly. Haven't seen her in, oh, at least five years. You probably know all this. After my mother died, I left Indianapolis for good, in part because I wanted to become an actor here, but also in part because my stepfather couldn't stand me. And I guess in part because I couldn't stand him.

“The final straw was when my mother killed herself. If that's what she did.”

“Do you have any doubt about that? That it was suicide?”

“I prefer to think my stepfather killed her. Which he certainly did, indirectly if not directly. He was horrible to her.”

Reuben was not entirely surprised to hear that Daniel had been less than an ideal husband. But he couldn't let the implication stand that the man had murdered his wife.

“You don't really think your stepfather killed your mother?” Reuben asked.

“No, I guess not. But I'm convinced he drove her to suicide. Which is just as bad. And which I absolutely do believe. He was always dissatisfied with her, critical of everything she did, the clothes she wore, the money she spent on the household. And he sure let her know it.”

“I've always been told that Daniel Courtland never forgave you for not taking his name when you were adopted,” Reuben said, shifting the subject to somewhat less contentious territory.

“That's right. My name's Facini, thank you. I was not about to change it, but my mother pressed him to adopt me anyway. He did—but you know about the financial settlement for Marina and me.”

“I do. A trust fund: one third for you, two thirds for her.”

“Correct. I can't complain. That trust money has kept me alive—more than alive, actually—while I'm trying to break into the theatre. But I can't forgive him for favoring Marina.

“You know, I talked to a guy at your firm about the legalities of what old Dan had done. He wasn't any help and I didn't find him very sympathetic.”

“That was Eskill Lander, I believe.”

“That's right. Who can forget a name like Eskill?”

“None of that matters now,” Reuben pointed out. “The trust fund is entirely yours.”

“Yeah, I suppose it is. Lucky me!”

Reuben ignored Gino's rather tasteless bravado. “Even if you weren't close, do you have any idea who might have killed your half sister?” he asked.

“None. As I say, I wasn't in touch with her.”

“Does the name Hallie Miller mean anything to you?” Cynthia asked.

“Nope. Should it?”

“Your half sister used that name sometimes,” Reuben explained.

“You're kidding. Why the hell did she do that?”

“Apparently, so people wouldn't know she was the Courtland heiress.”

“I'll be damned.”

“Maybe you'll start using the Miller name, now that you're the sole beneficiary of the Courtland trust.”

Facini made clear that he did not think this was funny. Cynthia deftly changed the subject to gossip about the downtown theatre scene, but the coffee hour was soon at an end.

“Thank you for your time, Mr. Facini,” Reuben said, after paying the check, thinking, with some amusement, that young Facini was now in a better position to pay it than he was. “And here is my card in case anything occurs to you that might help us find Marina's killer.”

Reuben also took down Facini's cell phone number.

“Nice to meet you.
Ciao
,” Facini said as they shook hands and parted. He crossed the street and, to the Frosts' surprise, unlocked a bright blue Jaguar and drove off.

“A struggling actor,” Cynthia said to her husband.

“Yes. With a very comfortable trust fund,” Reuben answered.

Reuben and Cynthia sat down over drinks once they reached home—a martini this time, not the Café Treviso's “so-called Merlot,” as Reuben put it.

“Another interesting downtown evening,” Reuben said. “But more important than the artistry, what did you think of Signor Facini?”

“He's a clever young man,” she responded. “Not that it takes much inventiveness to wear a bedsheet and stick a carrot where it doesn't belong. But he's got the skills of an actor.”

“How do you mean?”

“Let me get us something to eat and I'll tell you. Sandwiches all right?”

“Don't have much choice, I expect.”

Then, over grilled cheese sandwiches and non-merlot, Cynthia explained herself.

“Start with the proposition that young Mr. Facini is supposed to be difficult, with a chip on his shoulder and a bad temper. At least that's the way both his stepfather and Eskill Lander describe him. And we saw evidence of that the way he was abusing his lighting man. He was prepared to treat us in the same rude way until he found out who you were. Then it was pretty much charm and sweetness.”

“So? Where does that get us?”

“Probably nowhere, but he was eager to make a good impression.”

“So we wouldn't think he'd murdered his half-sister in a jealous fit of rage? And driven her in that blue Jaguar out to the edge of the East River?”

“Maybe.”