“A man who dies seated in a chair—unless he’s strapped to a spaceship on the way to the moon—ya gotta expect the body fluids to settle in the lower extremities, at very least in the buttocks and posterior of the upper thighs.” He makes the last word sound like it has a dozen i’s in it. “So …” Coop pauses to strike a match to his pipe. The flame flickers out and he takes another, strikes it, and cups the bowl with his hands. The odor of tobacco, a special aromatic blend, mixes with the smell of formaldehyde.
“So …” He takes several shallow draws on the pipe. “When you find such a body, seated in a desk chair with what’s left of the head tilted back against the headrest, but lividity shows all the fluids have settled evenly along the posterior portion of the upper torso and legs—somethin’s wrong. The man died layin’ down, and from all appearances stayed flat on his back for some time after death.”
“Potter was moved after he died?”
Coop nods, dropping the charade of hypotheticals. “It gets less abstract from here on.”
“Whadda you mean?”
Coop returns to the Bunsen burner and examines the vile black fluid that now produces a froth on the surface as it boils. A sickly white foam leaches from this substance to float on the surface. He lifts the beaker with a long set of tongs, turns toward me. “Coffee?” he asks.
I shake my head, still looking at the stuff. Coop continues with his scenario.
“Whoever did it never heard of forensic science. Either that or they weren’t terribly concerned about details.”
The expression on my face is a neon question mark.
“It wasn’t well planned,” says Coop. “I mean, we walk into this guy’s office and find him reclining in a slick leather executive desk chair with the top of his head gone. There’s a twelve-gauge over-and-under convincingly on the floor by the chair, one round gone.
“There were no prints on the gun,” he says. “Whoever dropped it there wiped it clean—not just their own prints but Potter’s too. I can tell ya, a man who’s about to do himself sweats like hell. Unless he’s the coolest thing since Newman, he’s gonna leave little tracks all over the gun. But not Potter.”
I’ve seen massive head shots before. From Coop’s description I can conjure up the image—what remained of the countenance I had known as Ben Potter.
“Then we find traces of blood—B-negative, same type as Potter’s—in a freight elevator down the hall. Not a lot but enough. Whoever moved him used that elevator.”
“Who owns the piece?”
“Potter. Used it for hunting. Gun’s an Italian make, heavy thing with lots of tooling—and expensive.”
“Where did he keep it, the gun?”
“Wife says it was usually in a locked case in Potter’s study at their house.”
He takes a coffee mug from the shelf, the pipe clinched tightly in his teeth, and pours himself a little of the thick brew. The stuff flows like Arabian crude. He replaces the beaker over the burner and takes the pipe from his mouth—brier in one hand and what passes for coffee in the other.
“So they’re operating on the theory it was a homicide?”
Coop makes a face of indifference, tilts his head back, and expels three perfectly formed smoke rings toward the ceiling. He smiles. The Southern warmth breaches the professional veneer, if only for an instant.
“That’s where the smart money is.” He pauses for an instant and takes a sip from the mug. I wait to see if he has to chew the stuff.
“There is another school—another theory,” he says.
I look at him, waiting for this latest.
“That Potter died in some compromising situation, either by his own hand—maybe an accident, somebody else pulled the trigger? Maybe a little passion, another woman involved—who knows? So you got a prominent lawyer, partner in a powerful law firm. There are reputations to protect. There might be a lot of people who would move quickly to cover that kind of embarrassment.”
“What do you think?” I ask.
“I’d be lookin’ for a killer.” He says it like the second theory is just a big red herring.
“Why?”
“Whoever it was went to a lot of trouble to put him in the law office—took some real chances. Would have been a lot easier, and in the end more plausible, if they’d taken him out into a field somewhere, dressed him in hunting togs and left him there alone on the ground.” He winks. “Victim of a hunting accident. Still wouldn’t of worked, you understand. I’d have sniffed it out.” He smiles. “But it’s gotta be a better cover if all you’re worried about is a little embarrassment. No, whoever put him in that office was tryin’ to cover their own tracks. And”—he pauses for an instant—“maybe start the cops thinkin’ about somebody else, a little misdirection.”
“Have the cops narrowed it to any suspects?”
“They haven’t talked to you yet?” he says. Suddenly there’s a broad grin on his face. Then he chastises. “You know better than to ask that. If they had, I couldn’t tell ya.” He chuckles to himself as he turns and pulls a clean pair of surgical gloves from the drawer behind him.
Coop arches an eyebrow and winks. The pipe again clinched tightly in his teeth, the mug on the shelf behind him, he snaps the glove on his left hand. He turns and walks toward the door. He’s made his last statement on the matter, at least for the moment. But his parting expression conveys volumes, for if I place any confidence in the professional acumen of George Cooper, and I most assuredly do, the last scintilla of doubt has now been purged from my mind. I now know that Ben Potter was murdered.
CHAPTER
10
IT’S just before nine-thirty on Tuesday morning. I’ve returned from court to find a stack of telephone messages in the center of my desk, a pile of grief. A client wants a continuance; Nikki has called and wants to know if I will be by to see Sarah this weekend; the DA won’t deal on a plea in a small drug case. Tucked in the stack of slips is a note that Tony Skarpellos has called. He wants a meeting—his office, two this afternoon. Curiosity gets the better of me.
This afternoon there’s an alien air about the offices of Potter, Skarpellos, more formal, subdued. I attribute it to a proper demonstration of mourning for the founding partner.
Before I left the firm, the offices of P&S were always a familiar place. I would breeze past the receptionist stationed like a concierge at the ornate mahogany counter outside the elevator, past Ben’s office and the inner reception area held by his secretary, to my digs down the hall.
The firm occupies three floors of the Emerald Tower, the most prestigious commercial address in Capitol County. Caught up in financial scandals for more than three years during its construction, the building is a mammoth curved monolith, its translucent green-tinted windows rising toward the clouds on a site beside the broad meandering river at the west end of the Capitol Mall. It’s become the architectural and political counterbalance to the state capitol building situated at the opposite end of the mall. While the capitol houses two branches of the state legislature, the Emerald Tower has become the bastion of the legislature’s “third house,” an army of lobbyists who regularly ply their trade seeking favor with legislative committees and government agencies. Potter, Skarpellos is the first law firm of any consequence to venture into the building. I have, on more than one occasion, weighed the relevance of this location and its significance on the future direction of the firm.
As I approach the receptionist—her name is Barbara—I smile. It’s a grin of familiarity. Today it’s met by cool efficiency.
Her greeting is stiff, her smile plastic. The seeds of insecurity have begun to germinate among the staff. Corporate transitions in modern America, from the multinational down to the corner shoe store, now resemble a changing of the guard after a coup in a banana republic. The firm’s employees have begun to dwell on their own personal fates. The king is dead, but the dust of uncertainty that clouds the fortunes of those affected has not yet settled. Barbara offers me a seat in the rece
ption area and assures me that she will inform Florence that I have arrived.
In the far corner of the reception area are two deep-cushioned sofas that spread like twin dark clouds across the broad expanse of wall. Here the visitor feels the need to check his briefcase in favor of a machete and pith helmet. The furnishings are lost in a jungle of ficus, philodendrons, ferns, and rubber plants, all rooted in hip-high planter boxes. A faint odor of moist earth permeates the area. I decline a seat on the sofa and instead muse about the spacious reception room, examining the rich wall hangings and two modern ceramics set on pedestals near the center of the room. They are new, since I left P&S, the usual symbols of commercial affluence used to set the stage for what routinely follows in the private inner chambers of any large firm. They are employed like some artistic emetic to lubricate and ease the disgorging of substantial fees by clients who at times might wonder if they are receiving full value for their money.
As I stand gazing out of the window at the panorama of the city spread before me, there’s a rippled reflection in the glass. Someone has walked up behind me.
I turn.
“Hi,” she says.
Talia has a small box in her arms filled with books and memorabilia. I recognize the marble pen set from Ben’s desk. Given all of my most turgid fantasies of Talia, this is one role I could never have conjured—the widow performing the wifely duty, removing Ben’s personal items from the office.
“Hello.” My voice is flat, empty.
“Just a moment.” She walks back to the reception station, places the box on the counter, and issues instructions to Barbara. There are more boxes in Ben’s office. They are too heavy. She will need help. I make no effort to move away. Finally she turns and looks directly at me standing there, lost in a philodendron. For an instant we simply look at each other. It’s like ice cracking around our feet on a frozen pond. Each waits for the other to make the first move. I win the contest. She comes closer again.
“How have you been?” she says.
“Good.”
Her hands are clasped neatly together just below the waistband of her very tight, brightly colored skirt. With Talia, at least in private, mere will be no pretense of mourning. This woman who bedded me for the better part of a year under the nose of her husband is now the picture of polite reserve. We stand here eye to eye, staring in silence at each other. Barbara, the epitome of clerical servitude, appears oblivious to the tension that fills the room.
“Here for a visit?” she asks.
“To see Tony.”
“Lucky you.”
“How are you holding up?” It’s all I can think of to say, the obligatory caring question.
She makes a face. “Making out,” she says. “It’s difficult.”
I nod.
“The police just allowed us back into Ben’s office yesterday. I guess it takes a long time for them to finish whatever it is they do after something like this.”
“Sometimes.”
“A lot of unanswered questions,” she says. “I suppose we’ll never fully understand it.”
I flex an eyebrow in inquiry.
“Why he did it? Ben had so much to live for.”
With anyone else I would be surprised, but knowing Talia as I do, I have no doubt that she will be the last to hear that her husband’s death is in fact now the subject of a homicide investigation. I do not shatter the illusion.
“I suppose,” I say.
“I’ve turned it over a million times in my mind. A friend who lost her son to suicide a year ago keeps telling me to stop asking the same question over and over again: “Why?’ She says it gets worse every time you ask it. I think she’s right.”
It’s a true measure of the difference in how each of us perceives life that before I was told that Ben’s death was attributable to another person, I had asked the same question of myself, only once, and had had little difficulty arriving at a single and unassailable answer: This was no suicide.
As she speaks, I listen. There’s not a hint of reticence in her manner, though her eyes wander, taking in nothing in particular. This is the Talia I know, standing here in a public place, speaking unbridled with a former lover, her partner in adultery, unable to muster even a single theory as to why her husband might have taken his own life. Talia has a gift for viewing reality through a torpid haze, like a film shot through gauze.
We stand, she speaking and I forming a listless audience. A face from the past approaches in the hallway behind Talia. I’ve seen this face but can’t place it.
“I need your help with some papers in the desk. A decision on what to do with …” He cuts it off in mid-sentence as he sees me.
Talia turns.
“Oh, Tod.” Her voice becomes brighter. “I want you to meet an old friend. Paul Madriani, Tod Hamilton. You remember, I told you about Paul.”
He extends a hand. I give it a quick shake. There are knowing glances exchanged between the two. A kind of psychic titter invades the conversation as Hamilton looks for something to do with his hands. It’s clear that at some point I’ve been the topic of conversation between the two. I sense that perhaps Talia has not extolled my virtues. Tod, it seems, is my most recent replacement. Then I remember. The cleft chin, Wong’s. Tod was at Talia’s table the night I talked to Ben.
“Tod’s been helping me go through some of Ben’s things. He’s been a lifesaver, my rock to lean on during this period.” Her hot-pink mourning attire and the fact that she is here with her latest flame speak to Talia’s total lack of concern for the social constraints that rule other, less self-possessed souls.
“I see.”
She looks back at him, over her shoulder, and smiles. He has a confident grin. The kind that says I’m no competition. The glazed look of lust in Talia’s eyes confirms his assessment. While I can’t explain it, this hurts. I carry no torch for Talia, and yet my middle-aged ego is crushed. Seeing the two of them standing there, virtually oblivious to my presence, lost in this glow of mutual infatuation, somehow feeds a primeval yearning within me. I stand here mired in this quicksand of social discomfort.
Silence spawns a crusade for small talk—Talia’s latest real estate venture, Tod’s tennis exploits. Talia has pushed the conversation to the domestic side, asking about Sarah. She chides me until I reach for my wallet and pictures. I’m saved by Florence, Tony’s secretary, who has come to retrieve me for the meeting.
Florence Thorn is a tall, stately woman on whom social pleasantries appear a lost art. She’s all business.
“Mr. Madriani, if you’ll follow me. They’re waiting for you.”
The acid begins to churn in my stomach when I hear the plural pronoun. Skarpellos is ganging up on me.
Tod looks at me and smiles. “Nice to have met you.” For all of his looks there is a disarming sincerity, a kind of country honesty under the polished virility. Talia could have done worse, I conclude.
Tony’s secretary sets a brisk pace down the hall. We turn the corner and there—it hits me like an iced dagger. For a moment I break stride, staring in silence at the walnut-paneled double doors leading to Ben’s office. One of them is open. Police tape, a single band of canary yellow with busy black lettering, clings to the paneling near the door frame.
The secretarial station across from Ben’s office is vacant and dark. Jo Ann, Ben’s secretary, is not in. And then it strikes me. She was not at the funeral either. For as long as I had known Ben, Jo was a fixture, always at his elbow.
“Where’s Jo Ann?” I ask.
“Oh—Mrs. Campanelli is no longer with us.” She offers nothing more man a pleasant smile. That’s it—fifteen years with the firm and Jo Ann’s epitaph is covered in four words, “no longer with us.”
Florence taps lightly on the rich black walnut. The door to the spacious corner office is opened from the inside. Tony Skarpellos rises from behind an immense pedestal desk, its base formed from polished redwood burl. Tony’s waste basket is the hollowed foot of an elephant. A seamle
ss horn of ivory is mounted on the wall above the window. In this, as in so many other ways, the Greek is tasteless. To Tony social disfavor is a badge of honor. He would nail Bambi to the wall if Disney would sell him rights.
“Paul, come in,” he says. “Please come in.”
“Tony.” I greet him, not warmly, merely a statement of fact.
The surface of his desk is a slab of polished black granite. It picks up the reflection of Tony’s mendacious smile. To reach him I traverse yards of carpeted expanse, taupe in color, and deep as sand on a dry beach.
He extends his hand. I give it a quick shake. Then behind me I hear the catch on the door as it closes. I turn to find Ron Brown standing there—playing doorman. This is not a warm reunion.
Tony clears his throat. Left with no recourse, he does the honors. “Ron, I think you know Paul Madriani.”
Brown glides across the room like a purebred Arabian steed skimming the sand. “Sure. Paul and I are old friends. It’s good to see you again.” He thrusts his hand in my direction as if it’s spring-loaded and pumps my arm like the handle on a hydraulic jack. Brown excels in such settings. Today he’s playing the enthusiastic corporate lackey—all teeth, beaming from beneath a meager pencil mustache.
On first blush, Ronald Simpson Brown is a difficult man to dislike. He’s personable and outwardly affable. Like corroding metal, his oppressive insecurity doesn’t become apparent until stress is applied. During my stint at Potter, Skarpellos, Brown and I discovered our mutual coefficient of friction at an early stage. From that point we maintained our distance.
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