Grave Designs

by Michael A. Kahn

  “How so?” he asked.

  “One of them had the coffin returned with a dog’s skeleton in it. Let’s let him think it worked. You should leak word that I’ve finished my investigation. Tell Harlan that he can go ahead and break the trust if the family agrees.” I paused. “Finally, we have to bring Cindi Reynolds in out of the cold. Secretly. Whoever did this thinks she’s dead. We need to have the police protect her and keep things quiet for as long as possible.”

  Richardson seemed to perk up some. He leaned forward and pushed the intercom button.

  “Yes, Mr. Richardson,” said the voice over the speaker.

  “June, tell Earl Woods to come down here right away. And then see if you can get Fred Daniels from the mayor’s office on the telephone.” Richardson turned back to me, growing more animated as he spoke. “Earl is the firm administrator. I will inform him that we are trying to wrap up Marshall’s affairs and that we need to determine whether the time these four attorneys spent on Marshall’s personal matters back in 1985 can be billed to any client. I’ll have him provide me with a written report by tomorrow. Earl will realize on his own that we should speak with each one of them. We will see what he discovers.”

  Richardson’s secretary buzzed to tell him that Fred Daniels was on the line. Richardson picked up the telephone and immediately re-assumed the mantle of managing partner of Abbott & Windsor. He worked the conversation gradually around to the point, and—after calling in a few chips and reminding Daniels about the mayor’s tough stand on white-collar crime and how the FBI loved to horn in on Chicago police matters and steal the limelight—asked Daniels if he could help out with a delicate investigation involving attorneys with ties to the Democratic party. Daniels agreed to talk to the chief of police about assigning a special investigator to the matter.

  Richardson hung up. “I will call the chief in about thirty minutes,” he said. “That should give Daniels enough time. Do you have a preference as to an investigator?”

  I thought about it. “How about Kevin Turelli? He’s a homicide detective now down at Eleventh and State.”

  Richardson nodded and jotted Turelli’s name on his legal pad. “I shall have Mr. Turelli contact you directly, Rachel. You will have to keep me advised of everything from here on. I am determined to keep this matter under tight control.” He looked at his calendar. “Are you free tomorrow afternoon around two?”

  “I think so.”

  “I shall arrange for a private room at the Mid-Day Club. Let’s meet there.”

  Chapter Thirty-six

  I spent the rest of Monday afternoon at my office catching up on other cases and working on my trial brief. Paul had called while I was over at A & W that morning. I tried his number twice, but no one answered. I remembered that he had said his big paper was due on Monday. I wondered what was important enough for him to call me at the office.

  Kevin Turelli called that afternoon to inform me he had been assigned to the Canaan matter. Ishmael Richardson clearly had pull down at City Hall. We spoke for almost an hour about the case. At the end of the conversation Kevin decided to get an arrest warrant and pick up Rossino late that night.

  Harlan Dodson called at 5:30. “I assume you’ve been told that the Canaan investigation is terminated.”

  “Yes. Once the coffin turned up, Mr. Richardson decided that enough was enough.”

  “Good.” Dodson’s breath rasped in the telephone receiver. “I’d prefer to keep all copies of your notes in my own file on the estate.”

  “Fine.”

  “Should I send over a messenger today to pick them up?”

  “Give me some time to put them in order, Harlan. I’ll drop them off at your office.”

  “How long?”

  “A few days.”

  “Can’t you get them here sooner?”

  “No. They’re a mess and I’ve got lots of deadlines to meet in other cases. I’ll get them to you, Harlan. Don’t worry.”

  I could hear him breathing. “Fine,” he finally grunted.

  “What are you going to do now?”

  “I don’t follow you.”

  “The Canaan legacy. Are you going to try to break the trust?”

  “I’ve conferred with Mrs. Marshall and the probate judge. I’m certain we’ll find a satisfactory resolution. That need be no concern of yours anymore, Miss Gold. We’ll handle the details.”

  “Okay.”

  “Be sure to deliver all of your notes. The firm appreciates your efforts in this matter.”

  Mary had waved good-bye while I was on the phone with Dodson. She left her Sun-Times in the wastebasket. I took it with me and scanned the personals section during the cab ride home. No entries for Canaan.

  Cindi had been to the grocery store that afternoon. By the time I got home she had made a tossed salad and pasta with pesto sauce. I told her Detective Turelli would be picking her up in the morning to get her story.

  After dinner we watched the Cubs play the Cardinals on television. The Cardinals lost in eleven innings. Both of us were exhausted when it was over. My answering machine had two messages from Paul and one from Benny. I was too tired to return them. Cindi and I were asleep by 10:30.

  Tuesday morning was uneventful. August is a slow month for Chicago’s lawyers. Most of the judges are on vacation, which means trials generally don’t start until September, and motions frequently are reset to be heard when the judges return. Depositions are difficult to schedule—particularly in cases involving several lawyers—because of conflicting vacation schedules. I spent the morning catching up on correspondence, drafting a few discovery requests for one of my trademark cases, reviewing two videotapes (Exhibits 1 and 2 in an upcoming copyright trial), and running down some points of law at the Chicago Bar Association’s library for a brief due in one week in an appeal of a preliminary injunction.

  Mary had finished typing my dictation tapes on my Canaan investigation, which were now current through yesterday. The typed version was close to two hundred pages long. She left early for lunch to drop off one copy in a special box at the post office. We kept the original and the other copy in my office safe. If anything happened to me, she was to send one copy to Ishmael Richardson and one copy to Detective Turelli. My level of paranoia had been rising steadily.

  Cindi called from my apartment at noon.

  “How’d it go?” I asked.

  “Grueling. I spent the whole morning with two police detectives downtown. They interviewed me about everything. I guess my dental records hadn’t arrived yet, though they’d already identified the dead man. And they had received a missing-persons report on Andi Hebner.”

  “What are they going to do?” I asked.

  “They asked me not to make any public statements for the next couple of days. They want to do some poking around without letting anyone know I’m still alive. One of the detectives—that Turelli you told me about—he’s acting real fatherly. He called my insurance company and explained everything but told them that he wanted the matter handled discreetly and kept in strictest confidence for the next several days.”

  “So what’s going to happen?”

  “One of the detectives drove me back here to pack my clothes. It’ll take at least a month to fix up my condo. The insurance company’s paying for all that. The police are putting me in the Park Hyatt under an assumed name and they’re going to post a couple of plainclothes cops in the hotel for the next few days.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “I’m checking in this afternoon. I’ll call you with my room number as soon as I have it.”

  “Please do.”

  “Rachel, I can’t thank you enough for all you’ve done.”

  “I’m going to miss having you as a roommate. So will Ozzie.”

  “Listen, as soon as I get settled in the hotel I’ll figure out how to sneak out and help you on thi
s Canaan thing.”

  “Don’t even think of it, Cindi. The best thing we can both do is just cooperate with the cops. They’re taking over the investigation. Call me tonight.”

  Just as I hung up there was a knock at the door to my office. It was Detective Kevin Turelli.

  He held up a McDonald’s takeout bag. “I brought us lunch,” he said. Kevin Turelli was a stocky man of medium height. He had a round, ruddy face and thinning gray hair.

  “Great. I’m starving.”

  He sat down and started pulling stuff out of the bag. “Quarter-pounder with cheese…regular fries…chocolate milk shake…and an apple pie.”

  “You trying to fatten me up, Turelli?”

  He grinned. “Nothing wrong with a zaftig woman. Mamma thinks you’re all skin and bones.”

  When I had briefed him yesterday, we had both agreed that the first step should be to arrest Rossino, the man from the el.

  “We got the arrest warrant yesterday and picked him up at his apartment last night,” Kevin said. “Charged him with murder and extortion. I let him stew in jail overnight and started grilling him this morning.”

  “And?”

  Kevin wiped his mouth with a napkin. “He started singing. When it was clear there was a lot he knew, I dropped some hints about working out some sort of deal maybe giving him immunity. I’ve got a dick and an assistant state’s attorney with a stenographer taking a statement from him right now. He waived counsel.”

  “What did he tell you?”

  “He admitted stealing the videotapes from Reynolds’s safe. He’s a little vague about the explosion, but I think he’ll come around on that too. Yesterday Bomb and Arson found some sort of timing device behind the stove in Miss Reynolds’s apartment. As near as the bomb squad boys can tell—and they may know more already—the timer was triggered when someone opened the front door. Thirty minutes later, boom.”

  “Who hired Rossino?”

  “He claims he doesn’t know. He told me about an elaborate communications system, with alternating blind drop points. He says he never met with the person or persons at the top and wouldn’t know how to contact them if he had to.”

  “What about the ones he works with?” I asked.

  “Well, there’re apparently four of them. Rossino thinks there used to be six, and that the others dropped out, or died, or just moved on. Rossino doesn’t know. He doesn’t even know the names of the other three operatives, even though he’s worked with them in the past on other Canaan projects. That’s one of the rules. No names.”

  “How long has he been doing it?”

  “Since about 1985. Two or three times back then. Once or twice a year since then. He gets paid four or five grand each time. In cash. It’s part-time work for him. Like I told you, Rossino is a small-time hood with a string of priors.”

  “How do the four of them communicate?” I asked.

  Kevin removed the lid from his drink and took a big sip. “Rossino says the initial contact point changes each time. Sometimes it’s a post office box. Sometimes it’s a locker at the Greyhound station. Sometimes it’s a mailbox in an abandoned apartment building. Each time Rossino acts as the messenger, the next contact point is in the package he gets. The package includes a description of the job and the identification number of the Canaan person who is supposed to do it. Let’s say the job is to tape an envelope of cash to the bottom of a drawer in a filing cabinet in an abandoned warehouse. Honest to God, Rachel, that was one of Rossino’s jobs. Well, that time one of the other Canaan operatives acted as the messenger and picked up the package. The instructions were to give the package to Canaan Six. So the messenger put a personal in the Tribune directed to Canaan Six, telling him to meet at an el station at a certain date and time, usually after midnight. That’s another rule: Communicate through the personals column and exchange the package on the el trains.”

  “Why the personals?”

  “Maybe so the head guy can monitor what they do. Anyway, that guy meets Canaan Six—which is Rossino—at the el station and gives him the package. Then the messenger goes back to the drop point to pick up his money. Rossino takes the package, which includes instructions for the job, the envelope he’s supposed to tape to the filing cabinet, and—in that case—the key to a post office box at one of the post offices in Uptown. Two weeks after Rossino completes the job his money is waiting for him at the post office box. Then he’s supposed to check the post office box at least once a week. He keeps doing that till there’s another package. It could take months. When he gets the next package, he becomes the messenger and one of the other Canaan operatives gets the package up on an el platform.” Kevin paused to finish his milk shake. “Pretty clever, huh?”

  “What have they done for Canaan?”

  “Rossino claims he doesn’t remember most of his jobs. But he’s had some weird ones. Last year he had to mug a certain trial lawyer. Beat him up and rob him. He remembered another one from late 1986. He had to break into the law offices of Bentley and Singer, remove an entire file drawer of documents, and plant two phony memos in one of the firm’s correspondence files.”

  “My God, you mean that was a setup?”

  “What was?” Kevin asked.

  “Don’t you remember that big scandal? Judge Henley ordered Bentley and Singer to produce some expert’s reports in the middle of trial. It turned out the documents had been destroyed?”

  Kevin said, “Oh, yeah. I remember now. Didn’t they haul Bill Bentley up before the Illinois Supreme Court on disciplinary charges?”

  “Suspended his license for six months,” I said. We were both silent for a moment. “Does Rossino know where the next drop point is?” I asked.

  Kevin nodded. “He’s not supposed to, but he peeked in the envelope. It’s a locker at Union Station. We’ve got it staked out.”

  I thought about it. “It could take months,” I said. “Whoever’s running the show probably doesn’t do this more than three or four times a year.”

  “What about the Joe Oliver situation?” Kevin asked. “Won’t they make another move on him?”

  “Maybe. But our blackmailer might want to let Oliver squirm for a while. Can you imagine what kind of wreck Oliver would be if he’d gotten that videocassette and extortion note?”

  “It almost makes you feel sorry for Oliver.”

  “The poor guy,” I murmured. “What do we do now?”

  “The ringleader is the target. We don’t want to spook him, or he’ll walk away and never be heard from again. We’ll keep the Rossino arrest quiet for as long as we can. But word is gonna get out before long. Rossino has mob ties. He’ll probably bring in some mob mouthpiece who’ll start raising hell in a couple of days, even if we do give him immunity. We’ve got Miss Reynolds under an assumed name over at the Park Hyatt with round-the-clock security. But that can’t go on forever, either. We gotta do something in the next few days, Rachel, or the big fish is going to swim away.”

  I checked my watch. “I have to meet Ishmael Richardson and see what his investigation turned up. I’ll call you later, Kevin.”

  “Okay. But be careful, Rachel. This is a kinky case. Remember, you don’t know for sure who your friends are.”

  “I’ll be careful.”

  Walking across the Loop, I prayed that Ishmael Richardson’s investigation had identified the blackmailer. I wouldn’t feel safe again until whoever it was had been stopped

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  “The police don’t know who it is,” I said to Ishmael Richardson. I had just finished briefing him on what I had learned from Kevin Turelli. We were sitting across the table from each other in a small private room off the main dining area of the Mid-Day Club. “What did Earl Woods find out?” I asked.

  Richardson reached inside his suit jacket and pulled out a folded sheet of paper. “His notes show a correlation between what each o
f the attorneys did and one of those newspaper articles. When did those people discover the money in the filing cabinet?”

  “Around September twelfth,” I said. By now I had memorized the dates of the four newspaper articles.

  “Mr. Goldberg did a research memo in August 1985 for Graham on the rights of the finder of treasure trove.”

  “Oh,” I said softly. Treasure trove is an ancient legal term that originally referred to buried treasure discovered by someone other than the original owner of the treasure. Over the years the term has come to mean any gold, silver, or money that’s found in a concealed place. To qualify as treasure trove, the money must have been hidden for so long that it seems likely that the original owner is dead. For example, money taped to the bottom of a drawer in a filing cabinet in a long-abandoned warehouse in Evanston. “What did the memo conclude?” I asked.

  Richardson looked at the notes. “Apparently, Mr. Goldberg found an Illinois statute governing the matter. The finder has to file an affidavit in court and then the county clerk has to cause a notice to be published for three weeks in a newspaper. If the original owner fails to claim it within a year, the finder becomes the owner.”

  “Finders keepers, losers weepers,” I said. “So Graham wanted to be sure that the couple who bought the cabinet would be able to keep the money. Benny’s memo told him that they could.”

  Richardson nodded. “So it would seem.”

  “What else?” I asked.

  “Kent Charles had several meetings with the accounting firm of Barnaby and Lewis to go over their security procedures for the beauty pageant.”

  “Beauty pageant?”

  “Barnaby and Lewis tabulated the votes of the judges at the Ms. United States Pageant in 1985. Kent Charles said he wrote Graham a memorandum setting forth all of the security procedures.”

  “Clever,” I said.

  Richardson smiled. “Earl Woods was proud of this one, because Barnaby and Lewis was one of Graham’s clients. Earl thinks we can bill them for Kent Charles’s time.”