“At least one.”
“Well, whatever you do,” Ben said, “don’t give him my cell phone number. Tell everybody. Just be civil to him and offer him my voicemail. But don’t, under any circumstances, give him my cell phone number unless I tell you to ahead of time. I want to be in control of when I talk to him, not the other way around.”
Ben listened to his voicemail messages even before he took his jacket off. The only message on his system was one from Joseph Cavallaro, who was indeed belligerent and berated Ben for not returning his calls in a timely fashion. He also said that he needed to see Ben as soon as possible. Ben deleted the message, took off his jacket and threw it over the bench opposite his desk.
A few minutes later, Nancy joined him. “Well, was he an asshole or what?” she said.
“Of course. I’m sure he got worse every time he called.”
“What does he want?”
“I think he wants me to cater to him more and he’s probably pissed off that she hired me at all. Oh, and I’ve been summoned.”
“Summoned?”
“Yeah, he wants to see me at his office.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to go.”
“Are you going to call him first?”
“No, I’m just going to show up. If he wants to see me that bad, he shouldn’t complain when I show up unannounced.” Ben rubbed the side of his nose. “I’ve got to call Mark and Ken and talk to Funk and Conlon,” he said. “In the meantime, print me two copies of the Retainer Agreement. Put them in a manila folder.”
Both Mark and Ken were in Court so he left messages. He met Dan Conlon and Brad Funk in the garage for a quick update on their research projects. Ten minutes later, after putting on his jacket and stuffing the Retainer Agreement into his briefcase, he headed for the door.
The SUV cut through the remaining snow and slush with relative ease. Cavallaro’s office was located in a mid-story office tower downtown that overlooked the Chicago River. Ben found a parking garage down the street and parked. He eased through the revolving doors at the north end of the building and strolled up to the automated information screen in the center of the lobby and punched in CAV at the prompt and touched Enter. A second later, Joseph Cavallaro & Associates, Suite 2050, lit up the screen.
Ben picked his way through the growing crowd of office workers on their way to lunch and located the correct elevator bank. A bell rang and an instant later, the middle door opened, releasing two men and three women to the corridor. Ben stepped on, hit the number 20 and the doors closed in front of him. He had considered his course of action carefully while driving downtown from Ithaca. The elevator reached the 20th floor and the doors opened. Ben stepped into a small lobby area and looked to his left, then back to his right. There, on the other side of an intersecting hallway, stood two ornate wooden doors on which the words “Joseph Cavallaro & Associates, Ltd., Attorneys and Counselors at Law” were emblazoned in gold letters.
Ben pulled the door open and walked quickly inside. A pretty blond girl in her early-twenties sat at a reception desk and looked up as he entered. “Hi, can I help …” was all she got out before Ben interrupted her.
“I’m here to see Mr. Cavallaro,” he said without breaking stride. He turned to his left and strode down a long hallway with secretarial stations and offices on his right.
“Hey, you can’t go down there,” the blond said from behind him.
“That’s okay,” he said over his shoulder as he kept walking, “he’s expecting me.” Ben reached the end of the corridor and found another blond sitting at a secretarial station. This one was maybe ten years older than the first, but no less attractive. Seeing Ben coming and hearing Blond #1’s attempt to slow him down, Blond #2 stood up and made a weak attempt at blocking his path. He quickly stepped around her and said, “Excuse me,” as he grabbed the doorknob, opened the door and stepped inside.
There he found Joseph Cavallaro holding court behind a large, ornately carved mahogany desk the size of a small boat, his feet propped up on the stern and a telephone receiver wedged between his left shoulder and left ear. He was filing his nails. Cavallaro looked dumbstruck. Ben fixed him with a firm gaze, his green eyes blazing. After a moment, he looked down to his immediate right, where a bookish-looking brunette sat on a black leather sofa with a yellow notepad and a gold Cross pen. This one was a lawyer, Ben thought to himself. He looked at her and said, “You can leave now.” She neither moved nor replied, a shocked, mouth-open look on her face.
Right then, Blond #1 and Blond #2 stumbled through the door behind him. Sensing a pending disaster, Blond #1 stuttered as she tried to compose herself. “I’m, I’m sorry, sir. But this man just, just went right by me.” Ben gave her a deadly glare. Cavallaro, still on the telephone, waved her off with his right hand, still holding the nail file as he sat up. The two blonds didn’t know whether they should shit or take notes until Cavallaro mouthed the words, “Go, Go” and again waved them toward the door. The two blonds stepped back outside and closed the door behind them.
The bookish brunette didn’t move. Ben looked down at her again and she stared back, eyes transfixed. He lowered his head until it was almost at her level and said in a much louder voice as though he was talking to someone who was hard of hearing, “I said you can leave now.”
He turned back toward Cavallaro, who was still on the telephone, although paying more attention to Ben than he was to the person on the other end of the line. Ben took two steps in his direction and said, “Hang up the phone.” At this, the brunette rose slowly from the sofa and slipped quietly from the room. Ben ignored her. He continued to stare directly at Cavallaro, whose expression morphed from shock to disbelief to confusion to anger in a matter of seconds.
Getting no response, Ben moved to the front of the desk and leaned over and pushed the button on the receiver, disconnecting the call, never taking his eyes from Cavallaro’s. He repeated, much softer than before, “I said hang up the phone.” Ben turned and walked slowly back to the couch as Cavallaro slammed the handset back down on the telephone.
“Who the fuck do you think you are coming in here like this?”
Ben ignored him and sat down, crossing his legs and putting his hands in his lap as though a priest patiently awaiting the report from one of his altar boys. Cavallaro rose to his feet, a fury building within him. “I said, who the fuck do you think you are?”
Ben didn’t say anything for a moment and Cavallaro appeared to struggle to find stronger words with which to make his point. Ben continued to look directly into his eyes. “I believe you summoned me,” he finally said. A knock came at the door and a tall man poked his head in. “Apparently they’re worried about you, Joe,” Ben said with a sly smile.
Now Cavallaro was embarrassed in addition to angry. He tried to compose himself. “It’s ah … it’s okay. We … ah … have an important meeting here that we need to attend to. I just … ah … I just didn’t know that Mr. Lohmeier was coming right now. That’s all. That’s all. You can leave us now. Thanks.” Cavallaro waved the man out, while Ben continued to smile at him.
“Now that you’ve summoned me and I’ve come,” Ben said, “what is it that you’d like to talk about?”
Cavallaro, all five-foot six of him, attempted to pump himself up like a third world dictator, his reddening face a marked contrast with his thick gray hair. Ben always thought Joseph Cavallaro looked like Eddie Arcaro, although he had never seen the famed jockey in such a state. “I don’t know who the fuck you think you are,” Cavallaro said, “but I’ve got a god damn wife on death row practically and you stroll in here and pull this bullshit? I should come around this desk and kick your ass.”
The smile vanished from Ben’s face and he continued to look Cavallaro straight in the eyes. “I would have thought,” he said finally, “that you would be too busy allowing your wife to speak with the authorities without the benefit of counsel to kick my ass. Particularly an experienced advocat
e like yourself. I would have thought that the mother of your youngest son would have merited a bit more concern from the great Joseph Cavallaro than to allow her wade helplessly into a thicket with the police and perhaps even implicate herself in a capital murder. Nevertheless, I’m quite sure that you had your reasons for what you did. But never mind, we’re beyond that now. Thankfully, we have extricated Megan Rand Cavallaro from those people who appear more interested in implicating than exonerating her.” Truth be told, Ben couldn’t really hold Cavallaro responsible for Megan’s conversations with the police. They had appeared out of nowhere with questions Megan couldn’t comprehend. Not much damage was done. Since Cavallaro had never practiced criminal law, Ben thought he could use that fact to his advantage.
“Who do you think you’re talking to?”
“Oh, I know full well who I’m talking to. But I can’t imagine that this is why you brought me down here,” he said, gesturing at the wide expanse of Cavallaro’s office, “to discuss your apparent proficiency in helping the police gather evidence against your wife. So I repeat my question, what is it that you want to talk about?” Ben continued to remain perfectly still.
This contrasted sharply with Cavallaro’s ranting and raving, something not lost on the older man. Uncomfortable with Ben’s placid demeanor, Cavallaro smoothed his pants and sat back down. He seemed to consider the possibility that he had not served his wife well. “What I want to know,” he said trying to regain his footing, “is what you’re going to do to keep my wife from being charged with a murder she didn’t commit.”
Ben nodded slightly as though weighing his answer carefully. “The unfortunate truth of it,” he responded, “is that I’m not going to do anything to prevent that. There’s nothing I can do to prevent that. The police are under the serious impression that they have enough evidence, or are about to have enough evidence, to bring her in and charge her with Daniel Greenfield’s murder. In fact, I’m a bit surprised they haven’t done so already. But rest assured, the day is coming, and soon, probably.”
This news seemed to hit Cavallaro hard, and he slumped in his chair. “Then what do we do now?” he rasped.
“We wait, and we start preparing for the things we have to do after she is arrested. For example, we’ve already begun researching and preparing a brief to be used at her bail hearing. We’ve also discussed surrendering her to the authorities so as to avoid your son having to witness his mother being led off in handcuffs and the ensuing media circus that would undoubtedly follow. I’ve also visited the crime scene.”
“The crime scene?” Cavallaro interrupted. “What do you know about the crime scene? What do you know about how he was killed?”
“He was bludgeoned,” Ben said. He watched Cavallaro closely as he said these words. Cavallaro exhibited no visible response. If the manner of Greenfield’s death surprised him, he didn’t show it. Feeling Ben’s eyes upon him, Cavallaro swiveled in his chair and looked out the back window of his office at nothing in particular, his right hand slowly rubbing his chin. “So what am I supposed to do?” he asked without turning back, “Just sit here?”
“No, you need to prepare for when the call comes. We should get a heads-up, but you still should prepare for having your son stay with you for a while.” Cavallaro nodded in apparent agreement, still looking out the window. Ben continued. “The two of you should come up with some sort of story - Mommy has to take a trip, that kind of thing. But you’re not going to shield him from this forever. He’s got to go to school and, as you know, kids hear things and then they talk about them. You don’t want some snotty-nosed kid spilling the beans in the middle of the cafeteria one afternoon.
“Hopefully, we’ll be able to get bail. We should be able to, but you never know. Some judge might think that you’re rich and more than able to skip town, perhaps even leave the country. At least that’s what the prosecutors are going to tell the Court. You can bet on it. If things go well, we should have her out of there pretty quickly. If things go well.”
Cavallaro turned back to him. “So you’re convinced they’re going to arrest her,” he said as a statement rather than a question.
“Yeah, I am,” Ben answered. “Detective Nelson as much as told me that it’s coming. I don’t see any reason to doubt him.” Ben pointedly didn’t ask Cavallaro about any possible connections between Megan and Daniel Greenfield. He knew he couldn’t trust anything Cavallaro would tell him.
“So what else am I supposed to do,” Cavallaro asked with a sarcastic edge in his voice.
“What are you supposed to do?” Ben asked as he opened his briefcase and grabbed the manila folder inside. “What you’re supposed to do is play the dutiful, supportive husband at all times and make sure all the expenses are properly paid. Toward that end, here’s a Retainer Agreement,” he said tossing the manila folder down on the desk in front of Cavallaro, who lowered his eyes to look at it, but did not touch it. “I’ll give you forty-eight hours to review it, sign it and get it back to me with the retainer check. And another thing, you better start thinking about arranging for the bond. It will probably be a big one if we get one at all.”
“Just like that?” Cavallaro asked looking up at Ben who stood impassively above him.
“Just like that. And one more thing,” Ben said slinging his briefcase over his right shoulder, “don’t summon me again. If you do, or if you continue to treat my staff like dirt under your five hundred dollar loafers, I will wait until this case is over and Megan is freed and then make her divorce from you my life’s work. And I’ll succeed.” He turned and headed toward the door. “I’ll see myself out.”
Cavallaro didn’t respond.
All eyes were on Ben as he walked back down the hall past the receptionist’s desk and out the wooden doors. He reached the elevator doors just as two people got off. As the doors to the elevator closed leaving him alone, he shook his head and said, “What a prick,” under his breath.
Rather than go directly to his car, Ben decided to go for a walk and grab a char dog at Gold Coast Dogs on State Street. It wasn’t too cold outside and the exercise would do him good. As expected, the hotdog hit the spot. On his way back to the car, at the corner of State and Kinzie, in front of Harry Caray’s Restaurant, Ben’s cell phone buzzed. Ben extricated it from the clip on his belt and looked at the display. He didn’t recognize the number. He flipped it open. “Benjamin Lohmeier,” he said.
He immediately recognized the voice on the other end of the line. “Ben, this is Scott Nelson.”
12
As soon as she answered, Ben started right in. “Nance, it’s me. I just got off the phone with Nelson. D-Day is here,” he said all in rush.
“Oh, no,” she said, “I was hoping …”
“Yeah, me too,” he interrupted, “but we’re hoping for other things now, I guess. We’re going to work the surrender at eight. I want to be back down here by seven, seven-thirty.”
“Where are you?” she said. “Are you outside? What’s all that noise?”
“Yeah, I’m on my cell phone. I’m walking over to Meg’s office.”
“You mean you haven’t told her yet?”
“No, I just found out. I’m going to walk over and talk to her in person.”
“Okay,” she said, “what do you want me to do?”
“I’ve talked to Mark already, and he’s going to call Ken, and they’re going to meet over there later this afternoon. Mark’s going to have some motions and stuff to put on the system so we can get them ready and on file ASAP. Dan should be working on the brief for the bail hearing. That should take place tomorrow morning.”
“Yeah, I think he’s already working on that. He’s got a draft pretty well done. Dianne is already typing it.”
“Good. I’ve got to stop back at the house after I talk to Meg so I can change into a suit. I don’t know what the fuck I was thinking dressing like this today, but I’ve got to have a suit on later. I should be back there sometime this afternoon. Put me through t
o Conlon.”
“Oh, by the way, how did your meeting with the asshole go?”
“Kind of fun actually. I’ll fill you in later.”
Nancy transferred Ben to Dan Conlon, who said that the first draft of the brief had indeed been completed and was being typed at that very moment by Dianne Reynolds. Conlon also pulled copies of the key four or five cases cited in the brief and would make extra copies for the Court and the prosecution. Convinced that things were under control back at the office, Ben signed off and continued over to Meg’s office.
Ben found her in a hallway on her way to the bathroom. They both stopped in their tracks when they saw each other. She knew instantly why he had come and her shoulders sagged. Tears welled up in her closed eyes as she fought to compose herself. Without saying a word, Ben went to her, took her softly by the arm and led her to a small conference room at the far end of the corridor, closing the door behind them. They sat in silence for several minutes before Ben relayed the details of his brief telephone conversation with Detective Nelson. Nelson would be coming by the townhouse around eight to pick her up. She would then be transferred to a local stationhouse on the near north side for processing before transferring to the main lockup at the Cook County Jail.
Their entire conversation lasted only a few minutes and Ben rose to leave. “I’m sorry. I have to get going. I have a lot of things to do before I get back to your place.”
She nodded. “I’ll be alright. Just get going. I’ll see you later.”
“Would you like me to take you home?” he asked.
“No. No. I’ll be okay. I’m just going to sit here for a little bit and get myself together. Then I’m going to talk to Joe. You go ahead.”
She got up to say goodbye, and he put his arms around her in a long embrace, an uncharacteristic move for him. “Trust me,” he whispered into her ear. “We’ll get through this. We’re going to beat this.”
Final Exam: A Legal Thriller Page 7
