Bitter Truth

by William Lashner

  “This isn’t big enough yet to bring in Morris.”

  A brown Chevette cut in front of me on the expressway and I slammed my horn. The guy in the Chevette swung around into a different lane and slowed to give me the finger. I gestured back. He shouted something and I shouted something and we jawed at each other for a few moments, neither hearing a word of what the other was yelling, before he sped away.

  “So tell me about the new client. Who is he?”

  “She is Caroline Shaw. Her sister, one Jacqueline Shaw, killed herself, apparently. Caroline doesn’t believe it was a suicide. She suspects one of my clients and wants me to investigate. I’m certain it’s nothing more than what it looks like but I figure I can keep her out of trouble if I can convince her. My clients don’t like being accused of murder.”

  “That’s rather noble of you.”

  “She gave us a ten-thousand-dollar retainer.”

  “I should have figured.”

  “Even nobility has a price. You know what knight-hoods go for these days?”

  A maroon van started sliding out of its lane, inching closer and closer to the side of my car. I pressed my horn and accelerated away from the van, braking just in time to avoid a Cadillac, before veering into the center lane.

  “It’s not the sort of thing you usually take up, Victor. I didn’t know you had an investigator’s license.”

  “She paid us a ten-thousand-dollar retainer, Beth. If the check clears, I’ll buy a belted raincoat and turn into Philip Marlowe.”

  The First Mercantile Bank of the Main Line was a surprising choice for Caroline Shaw’s checking account. It was a stately white-shoe bank with three discreet offices and a huge estates department to handle the peculiar bequests of the wealthy dead. The bank’s jumbo mortgage rates were surprisingly low, the rich watched every penny with a rapaciousness that would stun, but the bank’s credit checks were vicious, kicking out all but those with the littlest need for the institution’s money. It catered to the very wealthy suburban crowd who didn’t want to deal with the hoi polloi when they dug their paws into their piles of gold and laughed. The bank didn’t discriminate against the not very rich, of course, but keep just a few hundred dollars in a checking account at the First Mercantile Bank of the Main Line and the fees would wipe out your principal in a breathtakingly short time. Keep a few hundred thousand and your Yves St. Laurent designer checks were complimentary. Wood-paneled offices, tellers in Brooks Brothers suits, personal banking, ads in The Wall Street Journal proclaiming the soundness of their investment advice for portfolios of two million dollars or more. Sorry, no, they didn’t cash welfare checks at the First Mercantile Bank of the Main Line and the glass door was always locked so that they could bar your entry until they gave you the once-over, as if they were selling diamond tiaras.

  Even though I was in a suit, and Beth was in a nice print dress, we had to knock twice and smile gamely before we heard the buzz.

  “Yes, can I help you?” said a somberly dressed young man with a thin smile who greeted us as soon as we stepped inside. I guessed he was some sort of a concierge, there to take the rich old ladies’ coats and escort them to the tapestry chairs arranged before willing and obsequious personal bankers.

  “We need to cash a check,” I said.

  “Do either of you have an account here?”

  I looked around at the portraits of old bankers tacked onto the dark walnut of the walls, gray-haired men in their frock coats staring solemnly down at me with disapproval. Even if I was a Rothschild I don’t think I would have felt comfortable in that bank and, believe me, I was no Rothschild.

  “No,” I said. “No account.”

  “I’m sorry, sir, but we don’t cash checks for those without accounts here.” He whispered so as not to embarrass us, which was very considerate of him, considering. “There is a Core States Bank branch down the road a bit, I’m sure they could be of assistance.”

  “We’re being sloughed off,” said Beth.

  “It’s policy, ma’am,” said the concierge. “I’m sorry.”

  “I’ve been sloughed off by worse places than this,” I said. “But still…”

  The concierge stepped to the side and opened the door graciously for us to leave. “I hope we can be of service another time.”

  “But the check I wanted to cash,” I said in a loud voice, “was drawn on this very bank.” And then I raised my voice even louder, not in anger, my tone still kindly, but the voice high enough and the syllables distinct enough so that I could have been heard in the rear of the balcony, had there been one. “You don’t mean to say that you won’t honor a check drawn on this bank?”

  Heads reared, a personal banker stood, an old lady turned slowly to look at me and grabbed tightly to her purse. The concierge put a hand on my forearm, his face registering as much shock as if I had started babbling in Yiddish right there in that gilded tomb of a bank building.

  Before he could say anything else a wonderfully dressed older man with nervous hands and razored gray hair was at his side.

  “Thank you, James,” the older man said, his pale blue eyes fixed on my brown ones. “I’ll take it from here.” The young concierge bowed and backed away. “Follow me, please.”

  We walked in a column to a desk in the middle of the bank’s dark-carpeted main room and were seated on the tapestry seats of claw-and-ball chairs. Atop the desk was a bronze name plate that read: “Mr. Jeffries.” “Now,” said the impeccably dressed Jeffries with an impeccably false smile, “you said you wished to cash a check drawn on an account at this bank?”

  I reached into my jacket pocket and Jeffries flinched ever so slightly. Not the main man in this bank, I figured, if he was flinching from so minimally an imagined threat. From my jacket I pulled out Caroline Shaw’s check, unfolded it, read it once again, and handed it over.

  Jeffries’s eyes rose in surprise when he examined the check. “And you’re Mr. Carl?”

  “The very same. Is the check any good?”

  There was a computer on his desk and I expected him to make a quick review of the account balance, of which I hoped to grab a peek, but that’s not what he did. What he did instead was to simply say, “I’ll need identification.”

  I dug for my wallet and pulled out my driver’s license.

  “And a credit card.”

  I pulled that out, too. “So the check is good?”

  He examined my license and MasterCard. “If you’ll just endorse the check, Mr. Carl.”

  I signed the back. He compared my signature to the license and the credit card, making some notations beneath my signature on the check.

  “And how would you like this paid, Mr. Carl, cash or cashier’s check?”

  “Cash.”

  “Are hundreds satisfactory?”

  “Perfectly.”

  “One moment, please,” and then with my license and credit card and check he stood and turned and walked out of the room to somewhere in the rear of the building.

  “Your Miss Shaw seems to be known in this bank,” said Beth.

  “Yes, either she has a substantial account or she is a known forger and the police will be out presently.”

  “Which do you expect?”

  “Oh the police,” I said. “I have found it is always safest to expect the worst. Anything else is mere accident.”

  It took a good long time, far too long a time. I waited, first patiently, then impatiently, and then angrily. I was about to stand and make another scene when Jeffries finally returned. Behind him came another man, about my age, handsome enough and tall enough and blond enough so that he seemed as much a part of the bank as the paneling on the walls and the portraits in their gilded frames. I wondered to which eating club at Princeton he had belonged.

  As Jeffries sat back down at the desk and fiddled with the paperwork, the blond man stood behind him looking over his shoulder. Jeffries took out an envelope and extracted a thick wad of bills, hundred-dollar bills. Slowly he began to count.r />
  “I didn’t know cashing a check was such a production,” I said.

  The blond man lifted his head and smiled at me. It was a warm, generous smile and completely ungenuine. “We’ll have this for you in just a moment, Mr. Carl,” he said. “By the way, what kind of business are you in?”

  “This and that,” I said. “Why do you ask?”

  “Our loan department is always on the lookout for clients. We handle the accounts for many lawyers. I was just hoping our business loan department could be of help to your firm.”

  So that was why they spent so much time in the back, they were checking me out, and he wanted me to know it, too. “I believe our line of credit is presently sufficient,” I said. “Miss Derringer is the partner in charge of finances. How are we doing with our loans, Beth?”

  “I’m still under my MasterCard limit,” said Beth.

  “Now you’re bragging,” I said.

  “It helps if you pay more than the minimum each month, Victor.”

  “Well then, with Beth under her limit, we’re sitting pretty for the next month at least.”

  “How good for you,” said the blond man.

  Jeffries finished counting the bills. He neatened the pile, tapping it gently first on one side, then another, and proceeded to count it again. There was about Jeffries, as he counted the bills with the blond man behind him, the tense air of a blackjack dealer with the pit boss looking over his shoulder. They were taking quite a bit of care, the two of them, for ten thousand dollars, a pittance to a bank that considered anything under a million small change.

  “What type of law is it that you two practice?” asked the blond man.

  “Oh this and that,” I said.

  “No specialty?”

  “Not really. We take pretty much whatever comes in the door.”

  “Do you do any banking work? Sometimes we have work our primary counsel can’t handle due to conflicts.”

  “Is that a fact? And who exactly is your primary counsel?”

  “Talbott, Kittredge & Chase.”

  “Of course it is,” I said. Talbott, Kittredge & Chase was the richest, most prestigious, most powerful firm in the city.

  “Oh, so they would know of you?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Very well.”

  “Then maybe we can do some business after all.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. They had checked me out all right, and it was interesting as hell that they were so interested, but their scouting report was old. I might have gone for the bait one time or another, given much to garner the business of an old and revered client like the First Mercantile Bank of the Main Line, but not anymore. “You see, we once sued Talbott, Kittredge & Chase and won a large settlement. They hate me there, in fact a memo has been circulated to have their lawyers harass me at every turn, so I don’t think they’d agree to your giving me any work.”

  “Well of course,” said the blond man, “it’s our choice really.”

  “Thank you for the offer,” I said, “but no. We don’t really represent banks.”

  “It’s sort of a moral quirk of ours,” said Beth. “They’re so big and rich and unkind.”

  “We sue them, of course,” I said. “That’s always good for a laugh or two, but we don’t represent them. We sometimes represent murderers and tax cheats and crack mothers who have deserted their babies, but we will only sink so low. Are you finished counting, Jeffries, or do you think Ben Franklin will start to smile if you keep tickling him like that?”

  “Give Mr. Carl his money,” said the blond man.

  Jeffries put the bills back in the envelope and handed it to me. “Thank you for banking with us, sir.”

  “My pleasure,” I said as I tapped the envelope to my forehead in a salute. “I’m a little surprised though at how much interest you both seem to take in Miss Shaw’s affairs. She must be someone very special.”

  “We take a keen interest in all of our clients’ affairs,” said the blond man.

  “How wonderfully Orwellian. Is there anything about Miss Shaw’s situation we should know?”

  The blond man stared at me for a moment. “No. Nothing at all. I hope we can be of further service sometime, Mr. Carl.”

  “I’m sure you do,” I said, certain he never wanted to hear from me again.

  James, the young concierge, was waiting at the door for us after we left the desk. As soon as we came near he swung the glass door open. “Good day,” he said with a nod and a smile.

  Beth was already through when I stopped in the door frame. Without turning around, I said, “Thank you, James. By the way, that man standing behind Mr. Jeffries, staring at me with a peculiar distaste right now. Who is he?”

  “Oh, that’s Mr. Harrington. He is in the trust and estates department,” said James.

  “With a face like that I bet he’s got a load of old lady clients.”

  “No sir, just the one keeps him busy enough.”

  “One?” I turned around in surprise. As I had expected, Harrington was still staring bullets at me.

  “The Reddmans, sir. He manages the entire Reddman estate.”

  “Of the Reddman Pickle Reddmans?”

  “Exactly, sir,” said James as he urged me out the entranceway.

  “The Reddmans,” I said. “Imagine that.”

  “Thank you for banking at First Mercantile,” said James, just before I heard the click of the glass door’s lock behind me.

  5

  DRIVING BACK INTO TOWN on the Schuylkill Expressway I wasn’t fighting my way through the left lanes. I stayed, instead, in the safe slow right and let the buzz of the aggressive traffic slide by. When a white convertible elbowed into my lane, inches from my bumper, as it sped to pass a truck in the center, I didn’t so much as tap my horn. I was too busy thinking. One woman was dead, from suicide or murder, I wasn’t sure yet which, another was paying me ten thousand dollars to find out, and now, most surprisingly, they both seemed to be Reddmans.

  We all know Reddman Foods, we’ve been consuming its pressure-flavored pickles since we were kids—sweet pickles, sour pickles, kosher dill pickles, fine pickled gherkins. The green and red pickle jar with the founder’s stern picture above the name is an icon and the Reddman Pickle has taken its place in the pantheon of American products, alongside Heinz Ketchup and Kellogg’s cereal and the Ford motor car and Campbell’s soup. The brand names become trademarks, so we forget that there are families behind the names, families whose wealth grows ever more obscene whenever we throw ketchup on the burger, shake out a bowl of cereal, buy ourselves a fragrant new automobile. Or snap a garlic pickle between our teeth. And like Henry Ford and Henry John Heinz and Andrew Carnegie, Claudius Reddman was one of the great men of America’s industrial past, earning his fortune in business and his reputation in philanthropy. The Reddman Library at the University of Pennsylvania. The Reddman Wing of the Philadelphia Art Museum. The Reddman Foundation with its prestigious and lucrative Claudius Reddman grants for the most accomplished artists and writers and scholars.

  So, it was a Reddman who had pointed a gun at me and then begged me for help, an heir to the great pickle fortune. Why hadn’t she told me? Why had she wanted me to think her only a poverty-struck little liar? Well, maybe she was a little liar, but a liar with money was something else again. And I did like that smile.

  “What would you do if you were suddenly stinkingly rich?” I asked Beth.

  “I don’t know, it never crossed my mind.”

  “Liar,” I said. “Of course it crossed your mind. It crosses every American mind. It is our joint national fantasy, the communal American wishing for a fortune that is the very engine of our economic growth.”

  “Well, when the lottery was at sixty-six million I admit I bought a ticket.”

  “Only one?”

  “All right, ten.”

  “And what would you have done with all that money?”

  “I sort of fantasized about starting a foundation to help public int
erest law organizations.”

  “That’s noble and pathetic, both.”

  “And I thought a Porsche would be nice.”

  “Better,” I said. “You’d look good in a Porsche.”

  “I think so, yes. What about you, Victor? You’ve thought about this, I suppose.”

  “Some.” A radical understatement. Whole afternoons had been plundered in my fervent imaginings of great wealth acquired and spent.

  “So what would you do?”

  “The first thing I’d do,” I said, “is quit.”

  “You’d leave the firm?”

  “I’d leave the law, I’d leave the city, I’d leave my life. I’d cocoon somewhere hot and thick with coconuts and return as something else completely. I always thought I’d like to paint.”

  “I didn’t know you had any talent.”

  “I have none whatsoever,” I said cheerfully. “But isn’t that the point? If I had talent I’d be a slave to it, concerned about producing my oh so important work. Thankfully, I am completely talentless. Maybe I’d go to Long Island and wear Gap khakis and throw paint on canvas like Jackson Pollock and drink like a fish every afternoon.”

  “You don’t drink well.”

  “You’re right, and I’ve never been to Long Island, but the image is nice. And did I mention the Ferrari? I’d like an F355 Spider in candy-apple red. I hear the babes, they love the Ferrari. Oh hell, who knows, I’d probably be miserable even so, but at least I wouldn’t be a lawyer.”

  “Do you really hate it that much?”

  “You see the law as a noble pursuit, as a way to right wrongs. I see it as a somewhat distasteful job that I’m shackled to by my monthly credit card bills. And if I don’t get out, and soon,” I said, without a hint of humor in my voice, “it’s going to kill me.”

  The car in front of me flashed its rear red lights and the car beside me slowed and I braked to a stop and soon we were just sitting there, all of us, hundreds and hundreds of us, parked in the largest parking lot in the city. The Schuylkill did this every now and then, just stopped, for no apparent reason, as if the King of Commuting, in his headquarters in King of Prussia, simply flicked a switch and turned the highway off. We sat quietly for a few minutes before the horns began. Is there anything so futile in a traffic jam as a horn? Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were in such a hurry, in that case maybe I’ll just ram the car in front of me.