“Russ Townley told me the wife helped him out through law school and then was dumped when they got to New York,” Reuben interrupted. “An old story, that.”
“Not quite the usual story in this case. She was the one who initiated the divorce when she found out he was carrying on with a young lady lawyer from the Lenox, Ashford firm. But she was not entirely blameless. She was a Brazilian—how he met her at the University of Alabama I don’t know—and I suspect she married Joyner to get a green card. I also think they had grown tired of each other by the time of the divorce. But the adultery part infuriated the wife, and she was determined to make the whole thing as painful as possible for her philandering husband, financially and otherwise. And she did.”
“Was it ultimately settled peaceably? Without litigation?” Reuben asked.
“Yes, after months of Mickey Mouse by her damnable lawyers. The striking thing to me was Joyner’s attitude. He always acted like he was God’s gift to mankind and had a self-righteous outlook on the whole proceeding. He never, never acknowledged his own misconduct. A real shit, in other words, dressed in rather flashy Paul Stuart tweeds. He also had a slight mid-Atlantic accent—rather strange for a white-trash boy from Alabama.”
“What happened to the wife?”
“No idea. May have gone back to Brazil, for all I know.”
“Well, muito obrigado, Eskill,” Reuben said.
“Where the hell did you learn that?”
“Rio. Many years ago. It means ‘many thanks’ in Portuguese.”
“Mille grazie, I never would have guessed it.”
Twelve
A Respite at the Club
Reuben decided that, before questioning Jerry Gilbert, as he had told Russ Townley he might do, he needed a break at his favorite haunt, the Gotham Club—or, as his wife called it, his “tree house.” He had come to use the Club at Fifty-Sixth Street and Fifth Avenue more and more in his retirement years. Despite his crack about the food there being “tripe,” it had in fact improved considerably with the installation of a new chef. It was now much more appealing for lunch.
Bowing to civic pressure and the sentiment of most members—but by no means all—the Club had also begun admitting women, for the first time in its hundred-year-plus history. This had not troubled Reuben, who did not share the apocalyptic vision of some of his fustier club mates. Yet the new regime was a far cry from the day when the Club did not even have a ladies’ room. “If we install a lavatory, they’ll be here every chance they get,” one old party had thundered when this radical proposal had first been made back in the 1970s. These days, any current member’s retrograde views, assuming such still existed, were held in silence.
The decision to admit women did not really alter the customs of the club that mattered to its regular users, like the carefully prepared martinis of Renato, the bartender. Or the greetings of Jason Darmes, the doorman, who grew both more portly and more genial year by year.
“How are things, Mr. Frost?” he asked as Reuben entered, energized by a walk from his office in bright midday sunshine.
“Just fine, Jason,” Reuben answered, knowing full well that the things that now concerned him most were far from being “fine.”
Once at the tiny second-floor bar, Reuben ordered a martini.
“A Gotham?” Renato asked, meaning a martini with a “dividend” on the side, which made it two martinis by any rational reckoning.
“You keep tempting me, Renato. But my doctor says strictly normal size and only one.”
“Coming up.”
Reuben was pleased that there was one Gotham martini drinker at the bar, albeit a female foundation executive elected in the first wave of women members. By contrast, he saw that the three men present were sipping on white wine—a spritzer in one case, he noted with particular contempt. O tempora! O mores!
Drink in hand, Frost headed at once for the dining room, avoiding conversation with the other drinkers. He was not being antisocial but, given the imbroglios in which he was entangled, he was not eager to make small talk about what he was up to.
He sat down at the common table, reserved for those members lunching alone. Sitting there was often a perilous enterprise, since there were two or three extraordinary bores who appeared at the table with distressing regularity. He noticed one of them there today, with an empty chair beside him, so he quickly moved to the only other vacant place at the opposite end of the table.
But Reuben was wary when he took the vacant seat next to a woman he did not know. His apprehension proved to be unwarranted as his luncheon companion turned out to be Amanda Bretton, the dean of the faculty at a nearby suburban college. Conversation with her was easy, as it was with his other companion, Peter Day, a magazine editor he had known for years.
While the three were talking, Reuben heard Daniel Courtland’s name mentioned by someone farther down the table.
“Awful thing about his daughter,” Reuben heard.
Ms. Bretton caught the reference, too, and asked the speaker if he knew Courtland. The man said no.
“He’s quite a case,” Ms. Bretton said to the group. “When I was a dean at Indiana University, he revoked a pledge for five million dollars to our religion department because they wouldn’t hire a professor he had handpicked. A very conservative and somewhat eccentric preacher with very little in the way of academic qualifications.”
There were mild sounds of disapproval within the group and then the individual conversations resumed.
“I’m interested that you know Daniel Courtland,” Reuben said to Ms. Bretton. “He was a client of mine for many years and is still a client of my old law firm.”
“Should I say lucky you or poor you? I’m sure there’s an immense amount of legal business. But our experience was not too pleasant.”
“We have always had a tacit agreement—we never discuss politics or religion. I’m reasonably sure our views would be quite divergent.”
“You’ve been wise. What about his daughter? Was she of the same persuasion as her father?”
“I’m not sure. But I should think not. The people at the publishing house where she worked seemed to think the world of her. I don’t think that would have been true if she went around trumpeting her father’s views.”
“Well, anyway, it doesn’t matter now, does it?”
“Sadly, no.”
Reuben, having finished a quite decent club sandwich (he shuddered to think of the creamed chipped beef and other such fare that used to be available), excused himself and left the Club. The luncheon encounter had left him with two thoughts: Marina Courtland may have used her pseudonym not only to conceal her wealth, but also to prevent being identified with her father’s opinions. And, while he knew that Dan Courtland was volatile, Ms. Bretton’s evidence made it all the more necessary to handle him with care—or at least to handle the investigation of his daughter’s death with care.
Then, as he reached One Metropolitan Plaza, he began thinking about his upcoming meeting with the Executioner.
Thirteen
The Executioner
He may never have heard the epithet himself, but Jerry Gilbert was known among the Chase & Ward associates as “the Executioner.” Legend had it that if a partner felt that an associate should be fired, but didn’t have the courage to do the job himself, he would arrange to have the victim assigned to Gilbert.
This myth credited the partners with too much efficiency in handling their personnel matters. It did, however, reflect the basic truth that Gilbert was a stern and difficult taskmaster: laconic in explaining assignments, sarcastic when ripping apart written work submitted to him (nearly always returned bleeding with editorial corrections and queries), and stingy with compliments and words of encouragement.
Those who survived their assignment working for Gilbert felt like combat veterans. In the case of some, the experience dev
eloped them into tougher lawyers, but a few left as shell-shocked, nervous wrecks, including the ones “executed.” At age fifty, Gilbert had a long career at the firm ahead of him; associates had hopes of avoiding his rough tutelage only through the luck of the draw, not because of the man’s retirement or early demise.
Reuben knew of Gilbert’s nickname, but had never been certain how accurate the popular wisdom was. All he knew was that he did not especially like the man—nothing personal and he didn’t deliberately try to avoid him—but Gilbert was pretty stony and humorless, and thus not to Frost’s taste. A good lawyer? Absolutely. A lovable person? No way.
“How are you, Reuben? Haven’t seen you upstairs at the Hexagon Club recently,” Gilbert said once Frost was comfortably seated on the office’s sofa. The Executioner took a seat in a chair opposite and put his feet up on the coffee table in front of him.
“I don’t go up there as much as I used to. I feel a little bit in the way when I do. All the active partners discussing current business. The last thing they need is an ancient crock like me reminiscing about the good old days.” Or about the day Graham Donovan dropped dead at the firm’s table at the Club, Reuben thought.
“Nonsense. You’re always welcome, you know that,” Gilbert said, giving Reuben a narrow, pinched smile—the closest he came to camaraderie. “To what do I owe the pleasure?” The pinched smile a second time.
“I understand Edward Joyner—the late Edward Joyner—worked for you. “
“Yes.”
“I assume he was assigned to you to put him to a final test to make sure the firm was right to fire him.”
“Not at all, Reuben. Joyner came to me with a decent reputation. He was a pretty good lawyer, just a little too much self-confidence. That was the verdict when he started with me.”
“And?”
“And he was good—not outstanding, but good—until his divorce unstrung him. You know about that?”
“I think so.”
“He started being consistently late for work, not that that’s a capital offense …”
“Agreed. Only Russ Townley favors the death penalty for late starts in the morning, as I believe you, and surely I, know.”
“Yes. But lateness was the least of it. His work became more and more careless, and he consistently missed deadlines. My discreet inquiries told me he was leading the club life. I don’t mean the Gotham, Reuben, I mean those all-night coke joints downtown.”
“I’m glad you don’t think the Gotham is a drug den,” Reuben said. He suddenly remembered with some embarrassment that Gilbert had been proposed for membership—and been blackballed.
“Quite the playboy, man-about-town, I understand. He had a messy little affair with a lawyer at …”
“I’ve heard about that.”
“And, if the grapevine is right, at least an attempted fling with Arch Tanner’s wife. I never delved too deeply into that.”
“I’ve heard something about that, too,” Reuben said. In fact, Cynthia, after a luncheon with several other Chase & Ward wives at their club—also not a drug den; a good Protestant, thriftily priced Muscadet being the strongest stimulant available there—had reported on a rumor that Isabel Tanner was seeing something of an unnamed associate at the firm. Reuben realized it did not have to be Joyner; there had been other social occasions during which Isabel’s feminine hand had been a bit too careless up against an associate’s brow or cheek—or even thigh.
In the name of discretion, Reuben did not make any comment about Mrs. Tanner’s propensities; he was sure Gilbert, like everyone else (except, presumably, Arch Tanner) knew about them.
“So, Jerry, Mr. Joyner fell apart on you.”
“Yes. He became completely useless. Though the extraordinary thing, Reuben, is that it did me absolutely no good to tell him so. I told him as directly as I knew how that he had no future here. He simply refused to take this in. Said he’d been through a bad patch and all would be well in the future. I told him point-blank that it was too late—too many marks against, but without mentioning specifically the hanky-panky stuff—and that he should be looking for ‘other opportunities elsewhere,’ as the saying goes.”
“You really gave him an ultimatum?”
“Yes. Only about three weeks ago. I told him he had three months to find another job, then he was out.”
“How did he react?”
“With the greatest self-confidence, he said that he would prove himself in those three months. He knew he was partnership material, he insisted, adding that he was sorry about recent difficulties. He would not only be a partner but one who would make us all proud.”
“Whew! You sure you didn’t kill him, Jerry?”
“No, Reuben. I had no interest in ending his life. I just didn’t want this wildly self-assured son of a bitch around anymore, for the good of the firm. Can you blame me?”
“From all I’ve heard, I think not. You didn’t exactly execute—I mean, fire—him without real cause.”
After carelessly using the word “execute,” Reuben made a quick exit as soon as decency allowed. Afterward, he thought that after his sessions with Townley, Lander, and Gilbert, they and Detective Muldoon could handle the Joyner case. He had a hunch he would be busy enough with the Courtland murder, which seemed more significant to the future well-being of the firm than the death of a horny, less-than-stellar associate with a giant ego and an unrealistic view of his own abilities.
Fourteen
Darcy Watson
When Reuben returned to his own office, there was a message from Bautista.
“I was calling to tell you that we’ve found a copy of the 1938 Collier’s story by Gere Dexter. It matches the underlined passage in those galley proofs we picked up at Marina’s apartment pretty closely.”
“Great work, Luis,” Reuben said enthusiastically. “But where does that leave us?”
“I decided we’d better see Ms. Watson. See what she knows, if anything. I had to struggle like hell to get her address and phone number out of the Gramercy House people, but I finally did. She lives outside Philadelphia but comes to New York often. In fact, I got hold of her just before she left to get the train to the City. She’s staying at something called the Cygnus Club. Do you know it?”
“Lord, yes. It’s an old-line women’s club. Cynthia’s a member and I get dragged there every so often.”
“Good. Maybe you can protect me. I’m meeting Ms. Watson there at eight thirty tomorrow morning. You up for it?”
“As long as she doesn’t want to read to us from one of her dreadful novels.”
Late that afternoon, Bautista called Reuben again.
“I’m afraid you’ve been disinvited to our party tomorrow morning.”
“What do you mean?”
“Ms. Watson just called to check to make sure she would be seeing me alone. She didn’t mention you specifically, but said she didn’t want to deal with any ‘outsiders.’”
“I suspect she had a little talk with my great friend John Sommers.”
“That’s what I think, too,” Bautista said. “So I guess I’ll be on my own. Is there anything you can tell me about her?”
“I’ve already passed on to you what Cynthia told me, that the Cygnus Club seems to be her home away from home. Nobody seems to know much about her personal life. Never married, Cynthia thinks. I’ve seen a couple of gossip-column references to her being with Sommers at some social event or another. But that’s about all I can tell you.”
“Maybe I should try to read one of her books.”
“Spare yourself that, Luis. God knows I’ve never read one, but she’s supposed to be ‘uplifting,’ with novels upholding ‘family values.’”
“I guess I can skip them.”
“She also wears salwar kameezes,” Reuben said mischievously.
“What?”
Reuben took delight in explaining his recently acquired knowledge about Indian fashion and then wished Luis good luck. “Call me when you’re finished with her. I’ll be curious to hear what she has to say.”
Bautista was not put at ease by his fellow Latino doorman at the Cygnus Club. But having gained admission, he was directed to a large reception room that looked like the lobby of a Caribbean resort with its light pink walls, pastel-covered furniture, and tall rubber plants in each corner.
Alone in the room at the early hour, he heard the elevator out in the corridor open and heard Ms. Watson approach even before he saw her. When he did, he immediately understood what a kameeze—in this case a bright yellow one—and a salwar—bright green—were. In fact, the tall woman, with her upswept black hair, looked like a giant sunflower.
“Mr. Bautista?” she inquired as she approached and shook hands. “Good morning. As I told you on the telephone, I suspect this little meeting is a waste of your time as well as mine, but of course I’ll help you in any way I can.
“I should also warn you though that I must leave here not later than nine thirty. I have a class—my creative writing class—at Hunter College at ten.”
“I’m sure we can meet your schedule,” Luis said as the two sat down in chairs facing each other. Taking out his notebook, he asked her if she was familiar with the Marina Courtland case.
“Of course, but only indirectly through her father. You undoubtedly already know that I’m currently seeing him. Needless to say, the death of his daughter has preoccupied him of late. The poor man.
“To answer your question, I didn’t happen to be present when the evil deed occurred,” she said sarcastically. She shifted her weight impatiently and stroked her upswept hair.
“Did you ever discuss her with Mr. Sommers?”
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