I returned to the list of names. I was able to get through to three more names: (1) a “headhunter” named William Aronson, who had called Anderson about a lateral associate looking to leave a firm in Des Moines; (2) an occasional golf partner whom Anderson had called to cancel out of a match three days before he disappeared; and (3) an attorney at Gallop, Johnson & Neuman who was on the other side of a loan closing. None of them had any relevant information about Anderson.
I checked my watch. There was enough time. I dialed the Chicago office of Abbott & Windsor. When the operator answered I asked for Tyrone Henderson. He answered on the third ring.
“Hey, Ty. This is Rachel.”
“What’s happening, girl?”
“That’s ‘woman’ to you.”
“Shee-it. I’ll call you woman, girl, when you finally come to your senses and become my woman.”
“How’m I supposed to become your woman when you still haven’t converted to my religion?”
“Hey, baby, you ain’t talking to Sammy Davis, Jr.”
“And you ain’t talking to one of your honkie bimbos. Listen, Ty, I’m in A and W’s St. Louis office and I need you to work some magic with your computer.”
Tyrone and I had been buddies back at Abbott & Windsor. He had joined the item as a messenger in the mailroom. He took night-school courses in computer programming and eventually applied for an opening on the firm’s In re Bottles & Cans computer team. By the time I joined the firm after law school, he was the head programmer for the entire Bottles & Cans defense steering committee. Over the years he helped design many of Abbott & Windsor’s computer systems, including the network link-up with all of the offices.
“Okay,” he said. “What’s up?”
“I’ve got three quarterly statements of account from the trusts and estates department down here.”
“Deads or undeads?”
“Two deads, one trust.”
“Go on.”
“All three show a payment to some outfit called ParaLex. That’s one word, capital P and capital L.”
“Got it.”
“I need to find out what’s going on with this ParaLex outfit. Are these the only payments? Is it a regular vendor? How long has it been going on? Is there any pattern? That sort of thing.”
“I’ll do some ParaLex searches,” Tyrone said. “From up here I can access the last three years in the St. Louis files.”
“That ought to be enough.”
“What should I do if I find anything? I can output it on one of the laser printers down there or I can fax it to you or I can mail it.”
“If it’s short, fax it. If it’s long, can you send it to the printer my secretary down here uses?”
“No problem. What’s her name?”
“Nancy Winslow. I’ll tell her to look for it. Thanks, Ty.”
“No problem, Rachel.”
On my way out, I put in a call to Ferd Fingersh. I was hoping I could reach Rafael Salazar through Ferd, since I didn’t even know where Rafael was staying in town. The Customs receptionist told me that Mr. Fingersh was out of the office. So was Mr. DeWitt. She didn’t know whether Mr. Salazar was with either of them. I left my name and a message for Mr. Salazar to call me.
***
Lurleen had big round glasses and straight brown hair. She looked like a shy student teacher. She looked nothing like the secretary who placed Salvatore Donalli’s calls on the telephone and his penis in her mouth. But then again, she probably didn’t think I looked like the hanky-panky angel of death.
She brought me a cup of coffee and led me to the doorway of Salvatore Donalli’s ornate office. Donalli was talking on—correction, shouting into—the telephone.
“What are you talking, twenty seventy-five, you fuck!” He followed that with an Italian curse. “You tole me twenty-five even on Monday. Don’t try to yantz me, you guinea bastard.”
He was short and he was dark. His skin was dark, his hair was dark, his eyes were dark. He had black hair on top, going silver on the sides, cut close and slicked straight back. Everything about him seemed compact and thick and hairy. He was wearing a white short-sleeve dress shirt, no tie, top button open, exposing a thick growth of black and gray chest hair. His arms were hairy, the backs of his hands were hairy, and the clock for his five o’clock shadow was set on Greenwich mean time.
The gold-plated telephone was cradled between his neck and shoulder. His head bobbed as he listened to someone’s spiel. He reached for an enormous cigar that was resting in a marble ashtray. It was unlit and well chewed.
“Yeah?” he growled, as he jammed the cigar into his mouth. “Bullshit.…You heard me, Vinnie. Bullshit. Wha?…C’mon. You think I just got off the fucking turnip boat, Vinnie?…So what?…You think maybe I don’t got no overhead neither?” His face was flushed and he gestured with both hands. “Hey, don’t talk about your Teamsters. Your Teamsters got nothing on my Teamsters, so don’t start pulling that shit on me.…Let me tell you something, Vinnie, my goddamn Teamsters make Saddam Hussein look like Mr. Rogers, okay?”
He noticed me in the doorway and waved me in. With the cigar he pointed to a seat across from his shiny black desk, which was roughly the size of the main deck of the USS Missouri, He had diamond rings on both pinkies. Behind him on the wall was a portrait of the Virgin Mary hung in an elaborately carved gold frame.
He put his hand over the mouthpiece. “I’ll be with ya in a minute, miss. My brother-in-law. He’s selling me carpets for a building we’re putting up out near Chesterfield Mall.” He rolled his eyes heavenward and shrugged, his hand still over the mouthpiece.
Then his head snapped back down and he frowned in response to whatever Vinnie had just said. “Hey, Vinnie, read my fucking lips. Forget twenty seventy-five, that number don’t even reside in my vocabulary.…Right. That’s what I said.…Yo, Vinnie, you’re talking industrial grade, this ain’t no fucking Persian rug.…Yeah.…Now you’re talking, you fuck.…Right.…Friday, and no excuses.…Yeah, I know.…I know, Vinnie, it’s breaking my fucking heart.…You, too.…Mangia mio gots, Vinnie.”
Donalli replaced the receiver and shook his head. “Take my advice,” he said to me as he pointed the cigar for emphasis. “Family and subcontractors don’t mix. Fucking guy tries to nickel and dime me every fucking time.” He leaned back in his chair and jammed the chewed cigar back in his mouth. “So you’re Rachel Gold. What are you, twenty-five?”
“Over thirty.”
“Get out of here, thirty. You look like a kid. I’ll tell you one thing: You don’t look like no lawyer.”
“Thanks.”
“Hey, I’m not jerking your chain.”
“I’m not jerking yours, Sal.”
“Yeah?” He chuckled as he removed the cigar and studied it as he picked a piece of tobacco off his lip. “Hey, you hungry?”
I was. I hadn’t eaten breakfast that morning, and I’d been up since four-fifteen. “I’m starving.”
“You like Italian beef?”
“So long as there’s lots of grilled onions and peppers.”
Donalli’s smile broadened. “Hey, you’re okay.” He leaned forward and punched the intercom button with a fat finger.
“Yes, Sal,” said a voice over the speaker.
“Make it two, Lurleen. Extra onions and peppers. Aw, make it three, kid. Have one yourself. Unless you got some hot date tonight,” he said with a chuckle, winking at me.
“Sal!” she whined over the phone.
Thirty minutes later, Lurleen brought in two huge Italian beef sandwiches, two cans of Coke, and two cannolis. By then, I had explained my involvement in the estate of Stoddard Anderson and had briefly sketched the ins and outs of the insurance issues.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t much help on Stoddard Anderson. Sal had talked with him frequently during the last couple months, mostly about one
or more of the five construction projects Donalli Construction had going at the time. Legal issues kept popping up on each job site.
“Especially with that River Des Peres project,” he said. “Between the U. City bureaucrats and the pencilnecks from the MSD, I was probably on the fucking phone with Stod once a day.”
Mention of the Metropolitan Sewer District reminded me of Albert Weidemeir. Did Donalli know him?
“Weidemeir? Don’t ring no bell. I know Stod did some work for the MSD. Had some contacts. Told me a couple times he’d try to get them off my back on that River Des Peres project. But I don’t recall any names.”
“What about the last week or so before he died?” I asked. “Did you notice anything unusual?”
“Unusual? Like what?”
“Did Mr. Anderson’s personality change? Did he seem like a different person? Distracted? Jumpy? Depressed? Anything like that?”
Sal put the cigar back in his mouth and turned toward the window. Leaning back in his chair, he chewed on the unlit cigar, rotating it between his thumb and forefinger.
“He seemed to have trouble focusing,” Sal finally said, still looking out the window. “He’d kinda fade in, fade out.” He turned to me. “Old days, I used to shoot the shit with him, know what I mean? Not that he was a real cut-up or anything. The guy was a WASP down to the end of his…end of his toes. Still, he used to get a charge out of when I yantzed him. But not the last couple times we talked. I tried to. I even tried a trick that used to shake him up a little, but it didn’t work.”
“What was the trick?”
“Aw,” Donalli shrugged and waved his hand dismissively. “Just a private thing. Not important.”
I watched him. His face reddened as he pretended to study his cigar.
“You mean that private thing between you and Lurleen?” I said.
He winced. “Who told you that?”
“Sal, these are the nineteen-nineties. If Lurleen gets a good lawyer, do you have any idea what it’s going to cost you? Per blow job? She’s going to own your company.”
“Hey, whoa. C’mon. You don’t think I really had her do that, do you? For chrissakes, Rachel, she’s my niece. What kind a man you think I am? Jesus Christ, you mean Stoddard Anderson thought she was—that we were—that I actually made her do it?”
I nodded my head.
“Hey, I’m no saint, but I got my limits. Lurleen, she’s a good kid. My niece. I’m going to do that to her?” He turned and gestured toward the portrait of the Virgin Mary. “Right under you know who?” He shook his head. “Those fucking WASPs, a school kid could fool them. You ever meet my wife, you know I’d be crazy to try that. For chrissakes, she’d hang my balls from the chandelier.” He shuddered, and then he leaned forward, pointing a pudgy finger at me. “You tell that goddamn Nancy back at the office that I never done that to Lurleen. Never. I swear on my mother’s life. On the life of my six kids, you understand?”
Chapter Seventeen
Nancy Winslow handed me a thick computer printout when I returned. “Tyrone Henderson up in Chicago printed this out for you,” she said.
I took it in my office, closed the door, and settled down behind my desk. The first page showed the start of his search through the St. Louis files:
INQUIRY MODE : NAME SEARCH
KEY WORD(S) : PARALEX
OFFICE : STL
DATE RANGE : 3 YEARS TO PRESENT
SEARCHING…
RESULTS: PARALEX SUPPORT SYSTEMS, INC.
THE NAME PARALEX APPEARS IN
FOLLOWING FILES:
1. VENDOR FILE
OFFICE: STL
2. TRUSTS & ESTATES PAYEE FILE
OFFICE: STL
So the first search had yielded the news that the name ParaLex appeared in the vendor file and the trusts and estates payee file of the St. Louis office of Abbott & Windsor. The following page described the next search.
NEW SEARCH?
YES…
INQUIRY MODE : VENDOR RUN
KEY WORD(S) : PARALEX
OFFICE : STL
DATE RANGE : 3 YEARS TO PRESENT
SEARCHING…
This was a search through the vendor files, which were the files for the companies that sent invoices to the St. Louis office of A & W. The vendor files would include everything from A & W bills (for law books, desks, paper, electricity, periodicals, typewriter ribbons, coffee filters, etc.) to client expenses that A & W paid and then charged back to the client (such as court filing fees, court reporter fees, travel expenses, licensing fees, etc.). I flipped the page to see what the computer found:
RESULTS:
VENDOR: PARALEX SUPPORT SYSTEMS, INC.
PO BOX 23127
ST. LOUIS, MO 63125
TOTAL CHECKS: 602
TOTAL AMOUNT: $108,450
FOR DETAIL, SEE TABLE BELOW
I was surprised. Over the last three years, A & W had cut 602 checks to ParaLex for a total amount of $108,450.00 The chart detailing those payments ran on for twenty-two pages and looked like this:
The next page of the printout described the final search:
NEW SEARCH?
YES…
INQUIRY MODE : TRUSTS & ESTATES PAYEE FILE
KEY WORD(S) : PARALEX
OFFICE : STL
DATE RANGE : 3 YEARS TO PRESENT
SEARCHING…
RESULTS:
PAYEE: PARALEX SUPPORT SYSTEMS, INC.
PO BOX 23127
ST. LOUIS, MO 63125
TOTAL CHECKS: 196
TOTAL AMOUNT: $35,220
FOR DETAIL, SEE TABLE BELOW
Set out below was a chart, similar but not identical to the vendor chart. This one covered seven pages and showed all payments to ParaLex out of trust funds administered by Abbott & Windsor:
Unlike the vendor chart, which included the Abbott & Windsor check number for each payment, this payee chart didn’t have that information. Presumably, that was because each trust fund had its own checking account and thus paid its bills directly.
The two charts showed a similar pattern: hundreds of payments to ParaLex, each in the $175 to $200 range. By looking for matches in the client matter column, I was able to determine that a typical estate or trust fund was making an average of four ParaLex payments per year, spaced at regular intervals of three months, each payment in the $175 to $200 range.
The printouts showed a St. Louis address for ParaLex. I reached for the white pages and flipped to the business section. No listing for ParaLex. I picked up the phone and dialed 411. They had no listing either. That was strange.
I buzzed Nancy Winslow on the intercom line. “Hey, Nance, could you check with the Missouri and Illinois Secretaries of State to see if they have a listing for a company called ParaLex?”
“Sure.”
I stared at the address for ParaLex in the computer printouts:
PARALEX SUPPORT SYSTEMS, INC.
PO BOX 23127
ST. LOUIS, MO 63125
I remembered the bill that Stoddard Anderson had received for rental of a post office box. I found it in the desk. Nope. Different box number, different zip code.
I sat back in my chair and frowned. This made no sense.
I leaned forward and dialed the Chicago number of Abbott & Windsor. I asked for Tyrone Henderson.
“Thanks, Ty.”
“My pleasure, Rachel.”
“Can I ask one more favor?”
“At your service, girl.”
“You know the client/matter column on those two charts? Can you find out who the originating partner for each of those clients is?” Under the Abbott & Windsor system, the originating partner is the partner who brought the client into the firm.
“Hang on. Let me retrieve one of the charts.” As I waited I could hear hi
m humming an old Temptations song. “Okay,” he said. “It’s coming up on my screen.”
“What’s it show?”
“A lot of names. There must be twenty different lawyers on the list.”
“Really? Any names more than others?”
“Well, got four, five, six, seven, eight—got a bunch here for Stoddard Anderson. Let’s see. Got a bunch for Reed St. Germain. Five, six, seven—got a bunch for Prentice Ellebrecht, got some for Taylor Randall. Those four dudes have the most clients on the chart, but there’s still lots of other lawyers with one or two clients on there.”
“How about the responsible partner?” I asked. The responsible partner is the one in charge of handling the matter once it is brought into the firm.
“Hang on. Let’s see.”
“I bet it’s Reed St. Germain for every last one of them,” I said.
“Damn, girl. You’re right. How’d you know that?”
“He’s head of the department here. Ty, you came through for me again. I owe you a dinner when I get back to Chicago.”
“It’s a deal, Rachel. Take care of yourself down there.”
***
“Portia’s in Mr. St. Germain’s office,” her secretary told me.
Reed St. Germain’s door was closed. His secretary wasn’t at her desk. I knocked on St. Germain’s door.
“Come in,” he said.
As I pushed open the door, the first person I saw was Reed St. Germain, seated behind his desk. Then I saw a stunning woman in a white dress. She was on the couch along the side wall, facing St. Germain, her legs crossed, lots of leg showing. She had a pen in her hand and a yellow legal pad on her lap. Presumably, Portia McKenzie.
And then I saw Remy Panzer, seated in the chair across from St. Germain’s desk. He turned toward the doorway and our eyes met. He nodded and smiled.
“Hello, Rachel,” Reed St. Germain said, adjusting his managing partner mask. “I think you already know Mr. Panzer.”
“I do.”
“What can I do for you?” he asked.
“I was looking for Portia McKenzie,” I said. “I didn’t realize you had a client in here as well.”
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