Due Diligence
A Rachel Gold Mystery
Michael A. Kahn
www.MichaelAKahn.com
Poisoned Pen Press
Copyright
Copyright © 1995 by Michael A. Kahn
Copyright © 2015 Poisoned Pen Press
First E-book Edition 2015
ISBN: 9781464204456 ebook
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.
The historical characters and events portrayed in this book are inventions of the author or used fictitiously.
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Contents
Due Diligence
Copyright
Contents
Dedication
Epigraph
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
More from this Author
Contact Us
Dedication
For Jake “Shaq” Kahn
Epigraph
A special thanks to Dr. Leonard B. Weinstock and
Mark Zorensky—excellent tour guides through their
respective fields of expertise. Thanks, Lenny.
Thanks, Mark.
Prologue
Down in the darkness it waits. Down in the subbasement of the Gateway Corporate Tower. From its open maw comes the stench of rotting flesh. Its single eye glows red.
The tenants of the Gateway Corporate Tower include lawyers and accountants, architects and insurance agents, advertising executives and business consultants. None have ever ventured down to the subbasement. None have ever imagined what is down there, waiting silently.
The trash chute of the Gateway Corporate Tower is essentially a 240-foot stainless steel tube that runs from the subbasement to the top floor, eighteen stories above Olive Street. It drops through fifteen floors in a straight perpendicular near the north elevator shaft, veers north at a forty-five-degree angle through two levels of the aboveground parking garage and then makes a final, two-story descent, emerging at a steep angle through the ceiling of the subbasement near the northeast corner of the building.
Motionless, it waits beneath the open end of the trash chute. By any standard, it is huge. Twenty-four feet from end to end, nearly eight feet wide, just shy of seven feet at its tallest point. It weighs at least fourteen tons, although, for obvious reasons, no one has ever tried to maneuver it onto a scale for a more precise measurement.
The night cleaning crews cherished that chute. There was access to it on every floor, usually in a utility closet around the corner from the elevators. Better yet, the building’s designers had specified access doors large enough to accommodate just about any form, shape, or quantity of trash that the office tenants and the ground-level restaurant and newsstand were likely to produce during a busy day. As a result, there was never need for a time-consuming trip down the freight elevator from the upper floors to the subbasement to unload a cumbersome cloth hamper. Just shove the trash down the chute and get on to the next office.
It is squat and massive, with all that weight resting upon four small legs. Those legs seem almost dainty in contrast to the bulk they support.
The eight-person night crew from Ace Office Maintenance arrived each weekday shortly after 5:00 p.m., started on the lower floors and gradually worked their way up, usually reaching the top floor a little after midnight.
The consulting firm of Smilow & Sullivan, Ltd. occupied the entire ninth floor. Those at the firm who regularly worked late knew that the cleaning crew reached their floor around nine o’clock and left before ten. The pattern held that night. The first two members of the night crew (Darlene Washington and LaTisha Forest) got off the elevator on the ninth floor at 9:06 p.m. The last departing member of the night crew (Yao-Wen Hsieh) boarded the elevator for the tenth floor at 9:45 p.m.
The police eventually interviewed all eight members of the crew. All remembered seeing him up there, as did Cynthia O’Malley (who saw him in the hall) and Mr. Sullivan (who poked his head in his office on his way out). According to the night crew, he was definitely alive and hard at work when they left, and by then Cynthia and Mr. Sullivan were definitely gone. Yao-Wen Hsieh was in the firm’s lobby vacuuming the carpet at 9:15 p.m. when Cynthia boarded the down elevator carrying her purse and jacket. Three members of the crew saw Mr. Sullivan. He arrived in his tuxedo straight from the Barnes Hospital fundraiser around 9:30, picked up a few papers from his desk, and left ten minutes later. The time of Cynthia’s departure and Mr. Sullivan’s brief visit were both confirmed by the guard downstairs, who saw Cynthia sign out when she left and watched Mr. Sullivan sign in and out.
In short, according to the eyewitnesses and the sign-in sheet, there should have been only one person left on the ninth floor at quarter to ten that night. He was definitely up there.
Unfortunately, he was just as definitely not alone.
Although it has stirred only once in the last twenty hours, it is ready. Day or night, summer or winter, it’s always ready. It is, quite literally, programmed for vigilance. Its single red eye, hard-wired into its tiny brain, never closes. And that brain—assuming that something so limited can still be called a brain—is primed to issue the one command that defines its existence.
The command—like the command issued from any brain—is just a weak electronic blip that travels quickly from brain to receptor. Here, that blip means “GO!” And here, the receptor is a crushing jaw, technically known as a power wedge. The power wedge is hidden within the open maw and aptly named: it can exert more than 122,000 pounds of force. Under that kind of pressure, a man’s skull will crumple like a soft-boiled egg beneath the wheels of a Mack truck.
He often worked late. It had been his style ever since joining the firm as the hotshot boy wonder out of Purdue seven years ago. His promotion to manager last winter had not diminished his capacity for long hours. He typically stayed late two or three nights each week. On Saturdays—true to his nickname FILO—he was usually first in and last out.
Looking back, Mr. Sullivan told the police, the young man had seemed a tad jumpy that night, although, he cautioned, his observation was based on a convers
ation that lasted less than sixty seconds. Nevertheless, Mr. Sullivan was on target. The young man had been a tad jumpy. More than just a tad. Distressed was a better word.
At 10:20 on the night in question he was standing at the worktable just outside the copy room collating a stack of documents to make a working copy to take home with him that night. The hallway was carpeted, he was agitated, he hadn’t been sleeping well, and the document on top of the pile was clearly the most troubling one—all of which may explain why he didn’t hear the approach.
The attack was swift, professional, and nearly painless—a powerful arm grabbing from behind, a sharp pressure on the side of the neck, and then fade-out.
Echoing down the steel tube comes the sound of an access door opening.
It doesn’t hear the sound.
It doesn’t hear a thing. Unable to hear, or to even detect the presence of sound waves, it remains unaware of the noise above, unaware that something is about to come sliding down the tube.
But that doesn’t matter. It’s programmed for vigilance. It simply waits. Patiently.
Unconscious, he plummeted down the chute in total darkness. The medical examiner surmised that he may have stiffened just before his body hit the forty-five-degree bend, which would have only made it worse. The impact shattered both ankles and splintered his right tibia, jamming shards of bone through the skin of his lower leg. If he was unfortunate enough to regain consciousness during that descent, he surely lost it upon impact.
It took a full five minutes for his limp body to work its way through the bend in the tube. The blood helped lubricate the passage. Once through the bend, his body started sliding, feet first, down the tube, which passed at an angle through the two levels of the aboveground parking garage. His body gradually accelerated as it approached the final drop-off. Unconscious, he slid over the edge and plunged the final fifteen feet, landing facedown on top of several large bags of trash.
The single red eye detected motion. The falling body briefly broke the narrow beam of red light when it dropped into the open maw—barely a flicker, far too quick to trigger the countdown.
Perhaps it was the stench. Perhaps it was the pain. Perhaps it was the thud of yet another bag of trash landing on his back. Whatever the cause, he regained consciousness inside the chamber, according to the medical examiner.
It was pitch-black, the air heavy with the stench of putrefaction. The large bags beneath him felt like bunchy, crinkly cushions. When he opened his eyes, he saw the eye. It was directly in front of him, about two feet above his head. There was a thin beam of red light emanating from the eye.
He would have been confused, of course. In the total darkness, the red beam would have seemed almost unearthly. He may have reached up to pass his hand through the beam. It would have made a fuzzy red dot on his palm.
The interruption is long enough to trigger the countdown: ten…nine…eight—
He let his hand fall forward onto the bag of trash.
—seven. The countdown stops. The timer resets.
Somehow, despite the excruciating pain, he managed to pull himself into a sitting position. It took a long time, and the effort left him shaking and drenched with sweat.
The sensor triggered the countdown: ten…nine…eight…seven…six—
As he waited for his jagged breathing to return to normal, the intense pain muddling his thoughts, perhaps he looked down at the beam. The red dot would have been centered on his chest.
—five…four…three—
According to the medical examiner, he probably lunged toward the front wall, toward the single red eye.
—two…one…zero.
The brain fires its one command: GO!
Exactly 2.5 seconds later, the power wedge system responds, precisely in accordance with the manufacturer’s specs.
He was leaning against the wall when the 35-horsepower engine kicked on with an electric growl. The noise came from somewhere just beyond the wall. At first he would not have realized the deadly relevance of the sound.
And then the lurch.
It would have seemed as if part of the wall was moving toward him—which is precisely what was happening. The lower half of the wall was actually the business end of the power wedge ram system, pressing toward him at the rate of two inches per second.
As the power wedge slowly shoved him backward into the bags of trash, he must have strained for the answer. The stench, the bags of trash, his plunge down the metal chute. Where am I? What the hell is happening?
Based on his final body position, he must have tried to shove the power wedge back, grunting and gasping, struggling to hold it at arm’s length. But the trash behind him began to compress, to solidify. His arms strained against the advancing metal. Perhaps he screamed for help. The increasing pressure would have constrained his voice.
Eventually, his arms buckled.
As designed by the mechanical engineers at the Vanguard Trashpacker Corporation, the compacting cycle on the Model 7800 lasts 42 seconds. The power wedge ram is designed to push forward 84 inches into the receiving chamber without stopping. That distance, in the industry jargon, is known as the “ram stroke.” With 122,000 pounds of pressure supplied by the latest in hydraulic cylinder technology, the Model 7800’s ram stroke is as close to unstoppable as modern engineering techniques can achieve.
On this occasion, the power wedge performs as designed. When it completes the 84-inch journey forward into the chamber, the gears shift and it slowly retracts until flush again with the rest of the front wall. The electric motor shuts off with a metallic shudder.
Other than the occasional crinkling sound of a bag of compressed trash expanding, there is no motion and there is no sound inside the compactor.
Bags of trash continued to plunge down the chute from higher and ever higher elevations within the Gateway Corporate Tower. The mound grew closer and closer to the red beam until, around 12:30 a.m., a falling bag came to rest in the middle of the beam, triggering one last compacting cycle for the night.
The cleaning crew left the building at 1:05 a.m.
Down in the darkness it waits. Down in the subbasement of the Gateway Corporate Tower. From its open maw comes the stench of rotting flesh. Its single eye glows red.
Chapter One
Friday the rabbi slept late.
He was sleeping peacefully when I awoke a few minutes after seven o’clock. I glanced over and smiled. He was on his back, his chest bare. An arrow of curly black hair started at his navel and disappeared beneath the bedsheets, which were low on his slender hips. This was definitely not your grandfather’s rabbi. He looked like a male model in one of those sexy ads for men’s jeans. I turned on my side toward him, careful not to disturb his sleep. He had a delicious musky smell. It made me want to growl.
Rabbi David Marcus. My brilliant, gorgeous expert witness. He had been wonderful and masterful. In court, that is. Well, last night, too. I still couldn’t believe that we’d known each other for less than a month.
I had called him three weeks ago because I needed an authority on the Holocaust to serve as an expert witness in a probate case on the trial docket for the following week. The decedent was Yetra Blumenthal, a survivor of Auschwitz who’d lost her husband and children in the death camps. She’d come to America after the Allies liberated Auschwitz, never remarried, and died childless and alone. In her will, she left her entire estate to the State of Israel. Unfortunately, the original document was never found—only a photocopy of the will. Under Missouri law a photocopy isn’t enough. I represented the State of Israel, which was the party trying to reinstate the missing will.
In my final trial preparations, I decided I needed an expert witness on the psyches of Holocaust survivors. A friend at the Jewish Federation told me to call David Marcus, the new assistant rabbi at Temple Shalom, a huge reform congregation in the western suburbs. “He’
s written a book on Holocaust survivors,” she told me, “and he’s a doll.”
I had called him later that day. He was polite and low-key over the telephone and agreed to meet me the following afternoon. I offered to drive out to the synagogue, but he insisted on coming to my office in the city, explaining that he would be in the Central West End earlier that day anyway. I had assumed that he was coming to the city for the usual rabbinical visit with ailing members of the congregation who were in one of the hospitals along Kingshighway; it was only later that I learned that Wednesdays and Saturdays were his days to work in the shelter for battered women that he had helped establish.
I must confess that my preconceived image of Rabbi David Marcus was based in part on his profession, in part of his soft-spoken manner over the telephone, and in part on my grandfather’s rabbi. I assumed he was short and overweight, with thick glasses (probably horn-rimmed, probably crooked), a wrinkled black suit, a baggy white shirt, an unkempt beard, and pudgy fingers.
Well, that was not the Rabbi David Marcus who arrived at my office that Wednesday afternoon. He was tall and good looking, with gentle brown eyes, dark hair, a strong nose, and large, powerful hands. The few points of overlap with my grandfather’s rabbi were actually points of contrast. Both wore yarmulkes, although David’s was small and embroidered. Both wore white shirts, although David’s covered broad shoulders and a slender waist. Both had a slightly rumpled look, although David’s look was rugged rumpled, as if he had paused at a playground on the way over to shoot some hoops. The image fit. Despite a slight limp, he moved across the room with the grace of an athlete.
I was strongly attracted to him from the start and had to force myself to remain in my professional role as attorney interviewing a prospective expert witness. It was quickly obvious that he not only possessed impressive credentials for the task but had a calm reassuring manner that would make him a compelling witness. Money was no issue, since he didn’t want to be compensated for his testimony. And best of all, I told myself, given that the trial was just a week away, if I retained him as my expert witness we would have to spend many hours together between now and then.
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