Chapter Twenty
“Isn’t chardonnay kind of wimpy for an after-work drink?” Sal Brentano aimed this gibe at me.
“Hey, at least I don’t smoke Marlboro Lights.”
“You don’t smoke anything.”
“When I smoked I didn’t smoke Marlboro Lights—and I started at fifteen.”
“These are for my girlfriend.” Sal fingered the pack that the waitress had brought along with his Harvey Wallbanger.
“Likely story,” Mendoza joshed.
“She might as well quit,” I told Sal. “Marlboro Lights are the same thing as not smoking, except carcinogenic and more expensive.”
“You better give up now, chico,” Mendoza told Brentano. “You keep going back and forth with Jake here and you’re gonna lose your amateur standing.”
Meeting for drinks after work wasn’t the usual thing with Mendoza’s crew. Unlike the clerks’ group in my Judge Mercado days, the Mendozistas weren’t mainly single twenty-somethings. They had families or significant others they wanted to get home to, or in a couple of cases they were on the make for someone to share a bed with that night.
But this evening was out of the ordinary. Cesario was due back from New York. When word reached the office around 4:30 that his flight would be delayed, Mendoza had told him to meet us at The Bigger Jigger. The Bigger Jigger wasn’t a sports bar or a gay bar or a theme bar. It was just a regular saloon. No televisions, no piano, and no line drawings of B-list celebrities on the white-painted walls in between its rough oak supports. Mendoza, Brentano, Becky, Ricky Waters, and now me.
Becky was the first to spot Cesario. He came strolling in, bundled up like a yeti but swinging a battered brown leather trial bag that, in addition to all of his private investigator stuff, no doubt carried the socks and underwear he’d gone through on his trip. Cesario travels light.
He milked the entrance. I mean milked it. He stopped at the empty chair by the table and dropped his trial bag on the floor with a solid thud. He took off a black Cossack hat and tried to smooth the wreck it had made of his dark, curly hair. He unbuttoned what looked to me like a Navy bridge coat—heavy and, from the musty-damp smell it gave off, wool. He loosened a gray muffler from around his throat. He got the waitress’ attention and asked for a vodka gimlet. He took the coat off and draped it over the trial bag, then dropped the hat and muffler on top of it. He cupped his hands in front of his mouth and blew on them.
“For crying out loud, Cesario, it’s twenty-eight degrees outside,” Mendoza said. “That’s not exactly arctic. Did you manage to get frostbite walking from the curb to the door?”
“I had to park a block away, man.”
He took his sweet time sitting down. He shot the cuffs on what looked like a long-sleeved mechanic’s shirt without the grease stains. He smiled. At last, he spoke
“The buildings the four apartments are in are owned by four separate corporations. The listed headquarters for each of those corporations is the same lawyer’s office in Dover, Delaware that’s also the official address for Ars Longa.”
We all kept our mouths shut. After the buildup there had to be more. Cesario made eye contact with each of us, going methodically around the table and smiling benignly.
“The phony bar reception invitation was faxed from a Kinkos four blocks from the Hilton,” he said then. “Which was very efficient because it was also composed, laid out, and printed there.”
Mendoza perked up. “By Vera Sommers, by any wild chance?”
“No one there had ever heard of anyone called Vera Sommers,” he said. “No one there could quite remember who had brought this little piece of business in, or what this cash-paying customer looked like or one single distinguishing physical characteristic.”
“But what?” Brentano prompted.
“But when I showed Vera Sommers’ picture to the counter-boy, he came in his pants. He had definitely seen her before, if you know what I mean.”
The waitress hustled up with Cesario’s drink. He sipped it, closed his eyes, and leaned back with the contentment of someone who’s enjoying a little bit of heaven.
“There’s one more thing.”
“Spill already,” Mendoza said.
“Well, I got to thinking about how multitalented this Delaware lawyer is. Corporate, real estate—seems like sort of a legal mini-conglomerate. So I thought I should check her out.”
“‘Her’?” I shouldn’t have bitten but I couldn’t help myself.
“Seventy-three-year-old lady. Solo practitioner. Widow. Never goes to court. Not listed in Martindale-Hubbel or any of the other standard law office directories. No list of representative clients.”
“Niche practice,” Mendoza said. “Interesting.”
“No, that’s not interesting.” Cesario shook his head and favored us with a broad grin. “I’ll tell you what’s interesting. What’s interesting is that sixteen days ago this seventy-three-year-old shysterette became the registered owner of a military surplus Colt .45 automatic. First time in her life she’s ever packed heat.”
Now Cesario really had me. My sister attorney in Dover had chosen to acquire a piece of handheld artillery shortly after Tyrell Washington found himself with a shiv inserted between his second and third ribs.
“The bullet that killed Bradshaw was forty-four or forty-five caliber,” Mendoza said.
“Yep,” I said.
“Have the cops found the weapon yet?”
“Nope,” Becky said. “Not as of four o’clock this afternoon.”
Mendoza settled back. He took a nice, slow sip of bourbon and sweet. Then he looked directly at me.
“Drop by my office first thing tomorrow, Jake. Gotta job for you.”
“Sure thing.”
Everyone at the table knew what the job was: talk to Caitlin Bradshaw. And everyone understood why: in Mendoza’s opinion, I had the confidence of our client.
Chapter Twenty-one
At 9:03 a.m. on the sixty-ninth anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, I left a message on Caitlin’s mobile phone, asking her to call me. At 12:17 she texted me back: “what?” That pissed me off, but I swallowed hard and texted her back: “need2tlk. 4 today?” It went back and forth like that through three more exchanges, raising my blood pressure each time, but I finally pinned her down to 4:30 Thursday afternoon at her place.
In between the fourth and fifth texts, Sal Brentano stopped by my cubicle. I wondered if I’d unintentionally cut a little too deep during our Monday evening banter, but he was bouncy and friendly. As he damn well should have been. After all, he’d started it.
“I was just thinking of something,” he said. “Who does your dad’s legal work?”
“His accountant.” Sal laughed—all accountants think they’re lawyers these days.
“Do you think he’d mind if I spent a day riding with him on his route? Just to wrap my arms around the business model?” Translation: Hustle Dad as a client.
“I’ll ask him.”
“Thanks. I’d really appreciate that.”
A professional colleague had just asked me to help him get some potential business. In other words, after more than ten months, I was finally one of the boys.
Chapter Twenty-two
“An agent? You’ve got an agent?”
“I’ve got a line on an agent,” Paul said. He was trying to be calm but I could tell he was even more excited than I was. “Bradley Nance. He’s pretty well connected. He’s the one who sold that account of the Lewinsky scandal that’s coming out next year.”
“I heard about that. The Making of the President 1997.”
“Or something like that.” Even over the phone I could picture Paul’s grin.
“So how did you manage this?” I pushed the quote Vince had prepared for Allegheny County Community Coll
ege’s starter tool set deal across the table. “I thought it took most writers years to come up with agents.”
“Harvard College guarantees you two things: attitude and contacts. I used both of them. Hey, you aren’t multitasking on me by any chance, are you? I just heard papers shuffling.”
“That’s a quote Vince wrote up for a government purchase. He asked me to look it over, but I’ve put it aside for the duration of our call.”
“So you’re billing your own father for legal work? That’s cold.”
“Yeah, but I’m giving him a rate: zero dollars per hour. I’ll do the same for you when Bradley Nance gets you a contract with Random House.”
“Remember, he’s not on board with me yet. He liked the concept and the sample chapters, but I still have to meet him up in New York on Friday so that he knows I’m coachable and not a total closet case.”
“Well watch your language, lover,” I said. “If he’s gay, slang like ‘closet case’ might offend him.”
“Seriously? You think that might turn him off?”
“No, lover, not seriously. It was a joke.”
“I get it!” By now Paul was approaching manic. “I absolutely get it! I’m gonna get that pun into Henry Widget’s mouth if I have to write a whole extra chapter just to do it.”
“Don’t do that, honey. It wasn’t that good, and even if it were, you can’t write a whole chapter for a one-liner.”
“Watch me,” he said. “Just watch me.”
He was no longer approaching manic. He was there. And I couldn’t blame him.
Chapter Twenty-three
The first things I noticed in Caitlin’s bedroom were the pillows. Three of them, one piled on top of the other two on her spacious queen-size bed, in perfectly-matched pillowcases that weren’t fussy but somehow communicated that they’d cost a lot of money anyway. And I thought, Why three? Why not two or four, instead of an odd number? So I added that to the list of things I’d never understand about rich people. It’s a long list.
Caitlin politely offered me the only real chair in the room, a sleek, comfortable, exposed steel and twill-fabric number at her desk. No, “desk” doesn’t really do the thing justice. Try “work station.” It had three shelves for books, a six-slot paper sorter, a plastic drum for CD-ROMs, and enough workspace to war-game the Battle of Stalingrad.
No computer though, I noticed. Caitlin must have been reading my mind.
“Dad wouldn’t let me have a computer in my room.” She parked herself on the corner of her bed. “And mom agreed with him. I guess they were afraid I’d get seduced by some creepy, bald fifty-year-old on the net pretending to be Justin Bieber.”
“So you have to make do with the family computer downstairs?”
“Technically, that’s my computer. Mom has her own laptop, and so did Dad. And to be fair, they were always pretty good about respecting my privacy.”
“No PAW when you’re on IM?”
“Not very often.”
In instant-messaging code, “PAW” means “Parents Are Watching.” Since most parents know that by now, I’m not sure that coding it accomplishes anything. But I thought that mentioning it might remind Caitlin that I was closer to her age than her mother’s.
“So.” Caitlin did a little hair-flick with her left hand. “What did you want to ask me?”
“Let’s start with what I need to tell you.”
I gave her a rundown of everything since her father’s murder, hitting the highlights but skipping colorful details like my close encounter with a room service cart. I ended with Walter Learned’s recent presumptive purchase of a .45 automatic, which is a lot more handgun than you’d need to plink tin cans on the back forty of your gentleman-farmer acreage.
The .45 got her attention. I could tell because she whispered the entire phrase holy shit instead of swearing in IM code. I gave her about six seconds, then used the same interviewing technique my mom had with me at fifteen after she noticed three Salems missing from her pack.
“So, Caitlin. Is there anything you’d like to tell me?”
“What do you mean?”
I managed to suppress a sigh before it passed my lips.
“I mean there’s a good chance your father was killed because bad people thought he knew something about where the loot from the biggest art heist in history could be found. Walter Learned might be one of those people. Or not. Maybe he picked up the gun because he was afraid he was on the same list your father was. Whatever, other people might be in danger now—including your mom, and even you.”
“You’re right.” Caitlin bowed her head for a moment, then raised it and looked directly at me with those tough-but-not-hard gray eyes of hers. “I was telling the truth when I told you that I didn’t think there were any problems with my parents’ marriage. But I figured something out on Thanksgiving Friday. I went out on the deck for a cigarette, and it came to me.”
“What?”
“Mom and Learned were having an affair.”
“You ‘figured that out’?”
“It’s not like I barged in on them when they were doing it or anything. But I was out there smoking, and that was my first week of smoking openly around the house without sneaking around or anything. And I was thinking about that whole business I’d told you about never seeing Mom smoke before. Which was true. I realized that that had to be because she didn’t smoke before. I mean, maybe once in awhile at parties or something, but not an everyday thing where she bought her own cigarettes.”
“I’m not following you.”
“A change in smoking habits is one of the signs of an affair. I read that in mademoiselleonline or someplace. It said people will change brands or even go back to smoking after years of not doing it as a subconscious sign of intimacy if their lover is a smoker.”
“I never heard that, but it makes sense, I guess. Still, even though Caporals aren’t a common brand in this country, I’m not sure seeing a carton of them in Learned’s attaché case is enough to convict him of adultery.”
“Mr. Learned smokes a pipe. I figure he gets the Caporals for Mom because they’re a lot easier to come by in New York than in Pittsburgh. But I’m thinking she went back to smoking because he smokes, which Dad never did. Which explains why I never noticed it before. But I’m not going just on that. I’m saying that’s just what started my train of thought. I went back over things I’d seen when they were together, little snatches of conversation, vague talk about where she’d be on afternoons when he happened to be in town, and it all adds up. I know it sounds kind of dumb, but…”
“It doesn’t sound dumb at all,” I told her. “It makes all kinds of sense.”
“But I don’t want to tell this to the police. They might think it makes Mom look like the killer.”
“Next to saying it to a priest in confession, telling it to me is as far as you can possibly get from telling it to the police. But here’s the money question: Did you ever actually see Learned with any kind of a firearm?”
“Not exactly.”
I did not ask her what “not exactly” was supposed to mean. I sat there, patient and expectant, just as I’d seen Mendoza do with a dozen clients. Finally, after she looked away and fidgeted so much that I halfway expected her to suggest a smoking break out on the deck, she spoke again.
“The last time Mr. Learned was here before Dad got killed, the first thing he did was go into the bathroom. Always before he’d just drop his attaché case by the computer desk in the great room, but this time he took it into the bathroom with him. When he left, same routine in reverse. I don’t know why I was paying so much attention to it, but I was. When he was getting ready to leave that time, he went into the bathroom with the attaché case and still had it with him when he came out. Except when he came out I was looking right at him, and there was a bulge underneath h
is suit coat that could certainly have been big enough for a Colt.”
I thought it would be pretty tactless to ask her to spell her theory out in greater detail, so I left it unspoken: Learned didn’t want mom to notice that he was carrying a gun when he started doffing his squire-togs in the heat of passion, so he transferred the cannon from a shoulder holster to the attaché case when he got there, and then moved it back just before he left. In Judge Mercado’s court, that would have been speculation and she wouldn’t have let it into evidence. But then, Judge Mercado wouldn’t have seen Learned’s attaché case land on the passenger seat of his Prius without triggering the seat belt sensor. I had.
“I can see that,” I said.
“So, is there, like, anything else?”
I had to think about that for a second. There was one other thing, all right. Mendoza hadn’t gotten the truth about Caitlin’s crack that her dad had killed her brother. No way that was some meaningless babble from a shock-addled adolescent. It would be nice to pin that one down. I looked at my client: cool, interested, impatient but not nervous. She wasn’t going to tell me until she was ready, and I sensed that if I tried to force the issue now she might never be ready.
“Tell you what, Caitlin. If you think of anything else that might help, give me a call.”
“You got it.” She said this in a bright, captain-of-the-pep-squad voice. Also an if-that’s-all-then-please-get-out voice. I might have the confidence of my client, but I was still hired help.
We both stood up and she walked me downstairs to the door. I did the goodbye thing on automatic pilot. I walked out to Vince’s Chevy the same way. It wasn’t deferring inquiry on the killed-my-brother crack that was bothering me. I was pretty sure I’d made the right call on that one. What was nagging at me was that I’d told Caitlin that Learned had acquired a .45 caliber pistol—not a Colt. She came up with the Colt part all by herself.
But Remember Their Names Page 14
