Fatal Reaction

by Hartzmark, Gini

  I read through the various communications intently. There were requests for details about their proposed itinerary and politely worded inquiries as to when they would be receiving the financial information they had thus far requested. All the faxes were still personally addressed to Danny. Stephen had yet to settle on a strategy for breaking the news of Danny’s death to Takisawa.

  The last fax in the pile was the shortest, but I still had to read it through twice. Its contents were so disturbing that they got me on my feet and propelled me down the hall to Stephen’s office. The door was closed, but I didn’t even bother to knock.

  “We have to tell Takisawa about Danny,” I said.

  “I’ll have to get back to you,” Stephen said quickly to whomever he was talking to on the phone. Once he had hung up the receiver I handed him the fax.

  “It’s marked personal to Danny,” I told him.

  Stephen read it quickly. It was a short personal note from Takisawa’s son-in-law, Hiroshi, saying that he would be traveling to New York on business before coming to Chicago and asking whether Danny might be free to meet him for dinner in New York later in the week. He would be staying at the St. Regis and had an extra ticket for Sunset Boulevard.

  “We have to tell them,” I said. “But more important we have to tell Hiroshi.”

  “I don’t know,” said Stephen.

  “What do you mean you don’t know? What if Hiroshi calls him here? Do you want him to hear that Danny’s dead from whoever happens to be covering the switchboard that day? Or maybe you’d prefer to instruct all the secretaries that if anyone with a Japanese accent happens to call to speak with Danny they’re to lie and say he’s in a meeting.”

  “You’re right. I’ll write them.”

  “I’ll draft something formal for you to send to Takisawa,” I said. “But I had something else in mind for Hiroshi.”

  “What?”

  “I think I should go to New York and tell him in person. I’m sure he’ll appreciate being told privately,” I said, thinking of the regrettable way Tom Galloway was dealt the news. “It’ll also give me the opportunity to ask for his continued support for the deal.”

  “You mean you’re planning on blackmailing him,” said Stephen, vastly amused.

  “Absolutely not,” I replied, genuinely shocked. “I am merely going to explain to him how much I admire the finely honed Japanese traditions of loyalty and honor.”

  * * *

  I didn’t speak to Elliott until the end of the day. He was being deposed in an insurance-fraud case and had spent the day being grilled by a phalanx of defense attorneys. I wanted to tell him about what I’d learned about Tom Galloway and Danny, but he had other news that he was eager to share and that he managed to get to first. It turned out that despite his being otherwise occupied, someone from his office had managed to track down the tape from the surveillance camera in Danny’s building. He suggested that we get together to have a look at it.

  We agreed to meet at my office downtown at seven. When I hung up the phone I called Cheryl and asked her to please make sure that she set up a TV and a VCR in my office before she left. Driving back to the city I felt guilty. There was a mountain of work sitting on my desk in Oak Brook and I was leaving it undone in order to spend time with Elliott Abelman.

  Back at Callahan Ross I stopped in the ladies’ room long enough to brush my hair and put on fresh lipstick. As I pulled the pins out of my French twist I looked at myself in the mirror. Never quite beautiful under even the best of circumstances, today the face that looked back at me was tired and preoccupied. I wondered what Elliott saw in it that attracted him.

  I knew what my mother would have said; I could even imagine her tone of voice: It wasn’t my face he was interested in—it was my money. Having the Millholland family name was like wearing a bankbook around your neck. No one could look at you without attempting to calculate your net worth. Growing up I’d endured endless sermons on the subject of what men were really after. Girls with my kind of background were taught to protect their inheritances as assiduously as maidens in other centuries safeguarded their virginity.

  Elliott arrived right on time, the videotape tucked under his arm like a box of chocolates. It had started snowing and the dark wool of his topcoat was dotted with melted flakes. As we walked back toward my office I asked him how his testimony had gone and he just rolled his eyes. Back in my office I took his coat and waved him into the same seat Tom Galloway had occupied that morning. Not wanting to change my mind, I immediately plunged into an account of Galloway’s relationship with Danny.

  “I was wondering what the story was behind the cup you sent over,” he replied. “You’ve got to admit he’s got one hell of a motive. He’s gunning for a partnership, he’s married with little kids, and his father-in-law is up for reelection. If he was the one in the apartment he wouldn’t want to be anywhere near Danny when the paramedics showed up.”

  “He says Danny was alive when he left him.”

  “You wouldn’t happen to have a picture of this guy, would you?”

  I rooted through my desk drawers until I found a copy of the firm directory, which was known around the office as the face book. In addition to names and phone numbers it also contained head shots of every attorney at the firm. Callahan Ross had gotten so big and had offices in so many cities that I’d had to use the face book more than once just to make sure I’d know who was on my side when I walked into a meeting.

  “He’s a good-looking son of a bitch, I’ll give you that much,” mused Elliott, studying the picture. “That’s probably why she married him, don’t you think? Women are always suckers for looks.”

  “And men aren’t?” I countered, trying to pretend he wasn’t talking about Stephen.

  “He sure matches the description of the guy who was seen with Danny at Kamehachi. Do you mind if I borrow this long enough to have some copies made?”

  “Keep it. I’ll get another.”

  “We’ll have to see if we can get Joe to find out if his footprints match.”

  “You can’t tell Joe.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because what Tom told me about his relationship with Danny is protected by attorney-client privilege. What I just told you is off the record.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding. This guy is lying to his wife, he’s lying to his partners, and you’re worried about giving your word?”

  “Wouldn’t you be?”

  Elliott Abelman stared at the ceiling as if seeking divine guidance. It didn’t matter. We both knew I was right.

  “Let’s take a look at the tape and see if it puts him in the building around the time of death,” he suggested. “With any luck we’ll spot our friend leaving the building. That way we can go to Joe without sullying your reputation.”

  Elliott handed me the tape and I slipped it into the machine. The film was taken by a fixed-location camera mounted on the ceiling of the lobby and aimed at the front door of the building. It captured almost the entire area of the lobby with the elevator doors in the extreme left of the picture. There was no furniture, only a meaningless abstraction in a frame hung above a pillar-style ashtray on the wall opposite the elevators and a large ficus tree on either side of the doors which I strongly suspected of being artificial. The images were grainy and in black and white. A digital readout of the time appeared in the lower right-hand corner of the picture.

  Elliott adjusted the tracking and explained that the tapes were automatically changed every six hours. The one we were about to see conveniently spanned the hours between eight A.M. and two P.M. the Sunday that Danny died. We watched the tape at regular speed for a minute or two, but it was so tedious that Elliott reached for the fast-forward button. Even speeded up it was like watching paint dry. People went in. People went out. But mostly the lobby stayed empty. At six minutes after nine a man in spandex shorts and a tank top struggled to get his bicycle through the door. At nine forty-three a woman in jeans and a T-shirt dropped an a
pple out of her grocery bag without noticing, and it lay untouched until a man in coveralls who looked like a building engineer picked it up, rubbed it on his sleeve, and took a bite as he walked out of the picture.

  Tom Galloway stepped out of the elevator at ten twenty-six, well within the window of time that the medical examiner had given during which death had occurred. I reached across Elliott’s lap and pushed the button to slow down the tape. In the picture Tom was dressed in chinos and a denim shirt. He wore a sweatshirt draped over his shoulders with the sleeves tied loosely across his chest. His hair looked wet and freshly combed, but there was nothing in his demeanor that spoke of any urgency or agitation. Indeed, his body language had seemed much more tense this morning when I’d found him waiting for me in the hallway outside my office door.

  Elliott pushed the rewind button and we watched Tom walk backward across the lobby and back into the elevator. Then we watched the section of the tape again in slow motion but noticed nothing new. I shook my head.

  “Maybe Tom left by the front door and then came back later,” I offered.

  “Let’s see who else comes to pay a call,” said Elliott, pushing the fast-forward button. An elegantly dressed woman with a mane of blond hair walked into the lobby at ten thirty-six, consulted a piece of paper in her pocket and left again, presumably having come to the wrong address. Two men arrived a couple of minutes later, one carrying a box from Dunkin’ Donuts and the other a copy of the Sunday paper. While they waited for the elevator I could read the banner headline announcing Sarrek’s sixty-three victims.

  At ten fifty-one a large bald-headed black man with arms like a stevedore came in followed immediately by a tall woman in a bandana and sunglasses. They were immediately followed by a family with two toddlers who had to practically wrestle their double stroller through the door. It looked like the husband and wife were yelling at each other and both children were crying. We fast-forwarded through another twenty minutes of vacant lobby. I found myself wondering why I was doing this.

  Then suddenly Elliott hit the pause button. “There!” he exclaimed. “This must be who the neighbor saw.”

  He hit the slow-motion button and we watched a figure in a gray Armani raincoat with a baseball hat pulled low over his face walk quickly through the lobby. The time in the lower right-hand corner of our screen read eleven twenty-seven. On one shoulder was slung an athletic bag, which looked as though it was filled to near bursting. The tape was black and white, but even so the bag was distinctive—two colors, one dark and one light, dappled in what looked like a zebra pattern. In the other hand, the person carried a Marshall Field’s shopping bag, large but apparently not heavy. Whether by accident or design, he kept his head down and turned away from the camera as he walked quickly through the lobby and disappeared out the door and into the street.

  CHAPTER 17

  Elliott rewound the tape and we looked at it again. I wish I could say we saw something new. But every time we viewed the tape, which we did dozens of times— backward, forward, in slow motion, and in freeze-frame—every time it was exactly the same. The figure of a man wearing Danny’s raincoat and a baseball cap, with an athletic bag slung over one arm, darted quickly through the lobby and out into the street....

  By the time we finally gave up I had a headache from squinting at the grainy images on the video screen. I was also starving. The dinner the firm brought in every night for people working late had long ago been served. From long experience I knew that by now only the picked-over dregs remained. There aren’t many restaurants that stay open for dinner in the loop, so I suggested we grab something at the Union League Club.

  Outside the temperature had dropped and the wind roared through the canyon of office buildings, gathering speed, and seemed to drive right through us. It was literally too cold to speak. I clutched my coat around me and leaned into the wind. LaSalle Street was completely deserted except for the man huddled over the newspaper machine across from the Board of Trade, filling it with the next day’s edition. It was hard to miss the headline that announced in ten-point type that the body of Sarrek’s first victim had been identified. They were running what looked like a high school graduation picture beside the now familiar head shot of Stanley Sarrek. I thought of Joe Blades. One down, sixty-two left to go.

  We arrived at the Union League with the relief of refugees. Shedding our coats in the cloakroom we made our way up the club’s graceful central staircase to the main dining room. At that hour there were only a half-dozen diners lingering over their brandy. Louis, the maître d’ wished us a good evening and ushered us to a quiet table by the window.

  The Union League Club is a bastion of emphatic political incorrectness. After all, it had once boasted General Philip Sheridan—he of “the only good Indian is a dead Indian” fame—as a member. Women were a very recent concession and our presence had in no way altered the deliberately staid gentleman’s club atmosphere.

  Tonight I didn’t care. I just wanted food. A few seconds later a waiter appeared in response to my telepathic summons and deposited a basket of fresh rolls. I helped myself as Elliott watched me, grinning.

  “What?” I demanded, greedily tearing one in half. “Nothing.”

  “Oh, come on. What?”

  “I just get a kick out of watching you eat.”

  “You can’t possibly mean that.”

  “You don’t understand. Most women are afraid to let anyone see that they’re hungry. They tell the waiter to take the butter away and order their salad dressing on the side.”

  I was curious about these breadless women of his acquaintance but realized that by asking I would be opening myself up to questions I did not intend to answer.

  “Well, tonight I’m so hungry that I’m thinking of ordering a glass of salad dressing as an aperitif,” I announced.

  “I’ve missed you, you know.”

  I shook my head in warning. “Don’t,” I said, meaning it. I looked at him across the table and wished I didn’t want to sleep with him so badly. I was just being a spoiled little rich girl, I scolded myself, wanting what she knew she shouldn’t have.

  The waiter came and we ordered steaks for both of us and a very nice cabernet to wash it down with. Like many clubs, the wine cellar at the Union League was generally much more reliable than the kitchen.

  “So,” ventured Elliott. “Tell me about this guy Galloway. Do you think he’s our bad guy?”

  “How can he be?” I countered. “We both saw the tape. He left the apartment just like he said.”

  “He could have come back in another way, maybe from the garage.”

  “For that matter so could the guy we’re looking for.”

  “Tell me about Galloway anyway.”

  “Well, up until this morning I’d have told you he was a star. You know the type—top of the class without breaking a sweat, good-looking, socially poised. The kind of charmed young lawyer who comes along every couple of years and makes it all look easy. He’s popular with his peers, the partners are falling all over themselves to help his career, and the secretaries are all in love with him.”

  “Good lawyer?”

  “Whatever else he may be Tom Galloway is a crack litigator. He’s equally good in a courtroom or a settlement conference. He made a splash with a couple of big wins with very complicated cases in front of a jury. That’s why I recommended him to Azor for the lawsuit involving Azor’s new antischizophrenia drug.”

  “Is that how he and Danny met?”

  “Apparently.”

  “Now that you know about the two of them what’s your opinion of Galloway?”

  “Beneath contempt pretty much sums it up.”

  “Because he’s secretly gay?” Elliott inquired.

  “No, because he’s a liar,” I replied. “I don’t think I’d feel any differently if he’d been sleeping with his secretary. Come to think of it, as far as I know he could be sleeping with her, too. When a man is not who he says he is then he could be anybody. It op
ens up whole vistas of deception.”

  Elliott laughed.

  “What is so funny?” I demanded.

  “You know what you sound like?”

  “No. What?”

  “A partner in a large and prestigious corporate law firm.”

  “Your point?”

  “You realize that your reaction is exactly what he’s afraid of, especially since you say he’s up for partnership soon. That kind of fear is a powerful motive.”

  “Motive for what?” I countered. “Danny died of natural causes. Joe’s right, no matter what we find out about what happened in that apartment it’s not going to turn out to be legally actionable.”

  “Then you tell me,” replied Elliott, “why are we doing this?”

  I thought for a minute. The answer I came up with surprised me.

  “Because Stephen is a scientist,” I said.

  “Meaning?”

  “Before I started working at Azor I don’t think I could have told you what that meant. I had always assumed that being a scientist was just another kind of job, like being a teacher or an airline pilot. But on some level being a scientist means operating in the world in an entirely different way. A scientist is someone who embraces a much more rigorous and demanding view of the world. Scientists can’t just accept that something happens. They spend their lives relentlessly asking why things happen. They are driven to know, to explain, to understand what makes things work.” I thought about Michelle Goodwin’s tearful flight from her lab when her crystals failed to diffract. “I never realized it before, but their obsession with finding out can be a terrible thing. With Stephen it’s more than just wanting to know what happened to Danny. I don’t think he has any choice. He won’t be able to stop asking questions until he does know.”

  “What about you?” asked Elliott. “Do you care about what happened to Danny?”

  “Of course, I care,” I replied. “Of course, I’m curious. But I’m a lawyer. Intellectually I live in the gray spaces, somewhere where there are shades of meaning. I want to know what happened to Danny, but on some level I can accept that I might never know what happened in that apartment that day. Stephen can’t.”