“You’re right. I’m no saint, and I’m not saying my motives are pure. But I’m not just doing a psycho-bitch revenge fantasy. I’ve thought this through.”
“Why don’t you share those thoughts with me?”
“The affair isn’t just a possible motive for Ariane. If the cops start playing what-if, they could use it to focus some unpleasant attention on Caitlin as well. She’s not just a spoiled rich girl. In her own way, she can be a pretty tough cookie. And don’t forget her ‘killed my brother’ line. I don’t have a legal duty to invite suspicion on my own client.”
Now Mendoza nodded, and now he smiled.
It was still a grind after that—facts are always a grind—but it was just tedious, slogging work. No strategic issues. When Port left around two in the afternoon, she seemed confident that we were set for my appointment with Schuyler at eleven o’clock Monday morning.
After her exit, I told Mendoza that I needed to talk about a delicate subject with him.
“Delicate? You mean like more delicate than murder and obstruction of justice and playing look-but-don’t-touch with the federales?”
“Much more delicate than that. Calder & Bull deferred me until September. I need a job through August.”
“You got one. No brainer. I’m making so much money off you I should be ashamed of myself.”
“Thanks. But when I say I need a job, I mean I have to start getting paid. I need to become a net producer in the Jakubek household.”
You know that startled/dismayed look you sometimes get from a guy after you slap him for copping a feel? That What was that? I can’t believe that happened! look? I got that from Mendoza. Two or three seconds later an agonized expression replaced it. My heart sank and my belly churned.
“Man, do I feel like a schmuck for that crack about all the money I’m making off you. What a way to start negotiations!”
“It won’t be much of a negotiation. You have all the cards. Just make me an offer.”
He folded his hands on his desk. He lowered his head and shook it. His body language screamed I’m going to have to say something really, really hard, and I hate it! I braced myself for bad news.
“Here it is, Jake. You’re worth two thousand a month. Easy. But I can’t pay you two thousand a month, because I got a kid I hired six months before you started and I’m only paying him twenty thousand a year. I can’t give him a raise because he’s not even worth what he’s getting now, and I don’t want to fire him until I’ve given him at least two years to make good.”
“I don’t want you to fire anyone.”
“Of course you don’t. I’m just saying. Anyway, I can’t pay you what you’re worth, but on the other hand, I don’t want to insult you. So that’s a problem.”
“Insult me.”
“Thousand a month.”
I was about to say yes when he shook his head again, this time with a little body twist, as if he’d had a mini-spasm.
“No,” he said then. “That’s just not right. Not gonna do that. I’m better than that. How about fifteen hundred a month?”
“We’ve got a deal.”
“You’re one hell of a negotiator.”
“A better one than I was when I walked in here,” I said.
It took me until four o’clock to track down Sal Brentano. He’d pulled his sport coat on and was reaching for his overcoat. But I knew how to reverse that attitude in a heartbeat.
“How would you like to start 2011 with a new client?”
He stopped reaching for his overcoat. His eyebrows went up and a smile split his face. He pointed at a mate’s chair in front of his desk.
“Who’s the client?”
“My father. Or, actually, my father’s tool business.”
“So you’re here with the consent of the client?”
“No.”
“Well, that’s kind of a technicality anyway. What’s up?”
He sat down behind his desk and watched with obvious interest as I fished my checkbook and pen from the right-hand pocket of my jacket.
“I’m not looking for a professional courtesy,” I said. “I want to give you a twenty-five hundred dollar retainer so you can charge your standard rate against it and work up an action plan to deal with a problem.”
“What’s the problem?”
I told him. He whistled.
“I’ll dig up Dad’s franchise agreement and bring it in on Monday so you can get started.”
“No need to. I can pull up Pro Tools’ UFOC online and get it out of that.”
“What’s a ‘UFOC’? It sounds kind of dirty.”
“Uniform Franchise Offering Circular. Most of them are indeed kind of dirty.”
“Should I check in with you Monday afternoon then?”
“Sounds like a plan.”
I wrote the check and handed it to him, giving him twelve-and-one-half percent of the bribe Calder & Bull had given me to hang loose until September. Interesting being on the client side of something like this. Handing him the money hurt. But when he accepted the check I felt a little thrill of relief. I had someone else on my side, and if he was taking my money it must mean he could help somehow. I wondered how I’d feel when I was the one getting the check and making that implied promise to the client.
Chapter Thirty-four
The room Phil Schuyler showed me into at 11:00 sharp Monday morning wasn’t a conference room but a litigation workroom: Spartan trestle tables instead of polished mahogany, mismatched, straight-back chairs, and walls lined with metal shelves groaning under the weight of banker’s boxes stuffed with documents. If you triple-billed the government for Medicaid work or put a little too much fiction into your application for a loan from a federally insured bank, this was where Schuyler came to put you in prison for forty-two months or sixty-seven months or whatever the pitiless sentencing matrix called for.
Waiting at the head of the table we found a man in his early forties whose hair was as black as mine except with tiny gray specks here and there. He was wearing a navy blue sport coat, charcoal gray slacks, and a dark green tie over a shirt with broad, blue stripes. When he stood up to shake my hand, I guessed his height at about five ten—well over mine and just under Schuyler’s. If you’d seen him, you probably would have thought he was an accountant or maybe the kind of lawyer who handles loan closings and draws up an occasional will.
Schuyler introduced him as Ben Underhill, and said he was “a lawyer with DOJ in Washington.” Schuyler is an old-school gentleman, and an old-school gentleman’s blush tinges the tops of his ears when he makes a misleading statement. I spotted the pink, rather vivid against his straw-colored hair, as I shook hands with Underhill. I also saw the once-over Underhill gave me, focusing on my face and head, and looking like he absorbed every millimeter of them. His handshake was dry and formal. The vibe I got from wasn’t hostile but firmly neutral: We are not enemies; we are not friends; we are dealing with each other at arms’ length.
In other words, while Mr. Underhill presumably had a law degree and no doubt worked in D.C., Schuyler’s technically accurate description of him was functional bullshit. Ben Underhill was a cop.
We sat down. I handed Schuyler two copies of my draft declaration. He gave one of them to Underhill. I sat there silently, trying to look serene and composed while they took their time reading through the draft. It described in full but deliberately non-vivid detail my adventure in Learned’s suite. When Underhill looked up, I braced myself for probing questions into how I happened to find myself in the middle of a knock-down, drag-out fight with my then fiancé.
“You’re sure the thing that came off the flagpole was gold?”
“It was gold-colored, and Learned acted as if it were very valuable.”
“It was an eagle?”
“Yes. But n
ot like the eagles you usually see on American flagpoles, with the wings folded. The wings were partially spread.”
Underhill shifted his eyes toward Schuyler. If Schuyler responded in any way, I missed it. Then Underhill reached into a briefcase at his feet and pulled out a brown, civil-service routing envelope. He extracted three eight-by-ten pictures of sculpted eagles. He spread them out on the table in front of me.
“Did it look like one of these?”
“Definitely not this one.” I put aside a picture of an eagle with its wings spread to full horizontal, like the one on the U.S. seal.
I took a while studying the other two. The wings on both were spread a bit, but with a fullness and roundness suggesting that the bird could spread them more if he wanted to. In different ways, they both looked a bit like the picture of the Gardner Museum’s L’Aigle finial that I’d found on the web.
“It could have been either of these. More likely this one, on my left.”
“‘Could have been’?” Typical lawyer/cop follow-up.
“I’m not going to kid you. I saw the thing from about four feet away, and it’s not all that big. I’d say there’s a sixty to seventy percent chance that it was this one. If someone told me this wasn’t it, then I’d put slightly better than even odds on the other one. But I’m not going to sit here and pretend to give you an absolutely positive identification.” Because you don’t need one for a search warrant, so why should I?
Underhill and Schuyler exchanged glances. Apparently I’d passed the picture test. Now what?
“If you don’t mind, Ms. Jakubek,” Underhill said, “why don’t you just run over the whole incident in your own words? Just a little play-by-play.”
I did. This was why we’d spent all that time slogging through facts on Friday. I had it cold, and I gave it to them with the kind of concrete details that someone who was making stuff up would trip over. I got as far as “…so then Paul grabbed that flag I’d seen” when Underhill interrupted.
“You’d noticed the flag when you came into the suite?”
“Pretty much.”
“Because the finial drew your attention to it?”
“Not really. It was the flag itself. I mean, I’d swear it had bumblebees sewn on it.”
“What was that?” Underhill posed the question with a trace of excitement. “Bumblebees? You’re sure about that?”
“Yeah. I know it sounds odd, but—”
“Was something like that stolen from the Gardner?” Schuyler asked.
“No,” Underhill said. “But the bumblebee was one of Napoleon’s favorite symbols. It stood for industriousness and accumulation of wealth for the common good. It was fairly common to put bumblebee designs on Empire tapestries and furnishings.”
“So this flag could be the real deal,” Schuyler said. “Something authentic that Learned picked up from another source, and then he matched the finial up with it.”
Underhill nodded. I shrugged. Schuyler hopped up to find a secretary to scan my draft into his computer so that the three of us could punch it up with some bumblebee stuff.
I was there for ninety minutes longer than I’d planned, but when I headed back to Mendoza-land I left behind me a declaration dated, witnessed, and signed under penalty of perjury. I’d done my bit for Caitlin Bradshaw and for the cause of law and justice. Also for Cindy Jakubek, who walked out of the Federal Building with a bloody knife and a clear conscience.
Chapter Thirty-five
I made my report to Mendoza a little after two. I set my plastic bowl of Stouffer’s Lean Cuisine pasta and sauce on the corner of his desk. Now that I was getting paid I thought it would be bad form to talk to him with my mouth full.
“Underhill was almost panting while he waited for me to sign the revised version of my declaration. I wouldn’t be surprised if the FBI drops by the Hilton sometime this week.”
“Don’t count on it. On fifteen-year-old cases, the United States Department of Justice moves at the speed of the average glacier. Underhill will have to get a sign-off from at least two layers of bureaucrats. Then he’ll have to get a magistrate’s attention. If he manages that much, his next job will be to beg the FBI’s New York field office to pretty please find time for Learned. I’d be looking for a search more toward the end of this month than the end of this week.”
“Even so, as long as Underhill even starts the process, doesn’t that mean the Feds aren’t working with Learned?”
“That was my bet when the game started,” Mendoza said. “After this morning, I’m doubling down.”
“So either they were working with Bradshaw before he passed away, or Learned and Bradshaw were working together and the Feds just lucked onto them.”
“Feds sometimes just stumble over crooks, but that’s not the way it usually happens. Bradshaw is the Pittsburgh connection in a case that doesn’t have any others. If I had to guess, I’d speculate that he got a little bent somewhere along the line, hustling art from dubious sellers here and there. That made him vulnerable to federal persuasion. Let’s say they set up a two-year operation with him—feeding him information, helping him with starter deals, and so forth.”
“Then Bradshaw mentions l’aigle finial on a phone that state cops have tapped,” I said.
“Right. Some bright state trooper makes the connection, sends it up the line, and the attorney general thinks, ‘Man, this could make me governor!’”
His theory held together, except for one nagging coincidence.
“How did the state cops happen to have Bradshaw’s line tapped in the first place? Why would they care about fine art stolen two states north of here?”
“They wouldn’t. They care about taxes. Under-the-table deals mean under-the-table income that didn’t show up on his tax returns. Pennsylvania cops will put a whole task force on some chain of service stations that’s gypping them out of eighty thousand bucks. They could have suspected Bradshaw of being into them for half-a-million.”
I nodded. I finished the Stouffer’s. I caught Mendoza’s eye and held it.
“Learned did it, didn’t he? He killed Bradshaw. He figured out that Bradshaw was trying to trap him in a federal sting, and he blew his dear old friend away—conveniently making Ariane Bradshaw a rich widow in the process.”
Mendoza looked at me like he had two pairs showing in seven-card stud.
“You remember that huge brouhaha several years ago about who leaked word to the media that Valerie Plame was a CIA agent? The one they just made a movie about?”
“Sure.”
“Well, right in the middle of that, a New York Times columnist named Maureen Dowd took her Pulitzer Prize onto the David Letterman Show and pinned the leak on the vice president of the United States. Her exact words were, ‘Cheney did it.’”
“But it turned out Cheney didn’t do it.”
“No, he didn’t. And I don’t have a Pulitzer Prize. So I’ll hedge my bets until they find Learned’s gun and a ballistics test matches it to the bullet that had Bradshaw’s name on it.”
I checked in with Brentano about an hour later. He had a grim-but-game expression.
“Pro Tools is pretty clean, as franchise operations go. One to two settlements over fifty thousand per year, and that ain’t bad.”
“Can we make them adjust Dad’s territory?”
“Not just to make up for losing Minelli’s. Businesses open and businesses close. That’s a risk of going into the marketplace.”
“It’s not just Minelli’s.” I frowned, reminding myself not to shoot the messenger. “I spent most of the weekend going over Dad’s books. He’s had four other shops close in the last six months. The others were just two- and three-mechanic operations, but it adds up. Plus, over forty percent of his installment sale customers have been slow-pay or no-pay this year. Weekly installment payments ar
e his basic cash flow. He’s running a forty-thousand dollar balance with Pro Tools, and half of it is more than thirty days past due. For the last two quarters he’s been living off his equity without realizing it. He’s two big hits from being upside down.”
Brentano nodded.
“If there’s been significant shrinkage he can ask for a census of his route. Unless the territory is just flatlining, though, they don’t have to give him more stops. After all, any shop they’d give him would have to be taken from some other Pro Tools dealer, and they’re all in the same boat.”
Ouch. Not a surprise, but still, ouch. I know, I know: ‘Tough times don’t last, tough people do.’ But you can only take so many punches.
“Okay,” I said in my best spunky-little-gamer voice. “Sounds like we need a game changer.”
“I’ll try to think of one. But game changers can be hard to come by.”
Chapter Thirty-six
“Hello, this is Cynthia Jakubek. I will not be in the office this weekend because I have a life. Unless you’re an insurance salesman or a broker making cold calls, though, I would like to speak with you. If you’ll leave a number where you can be reached, I’ll get back to you as promptly as I can.”
Beep.
“Uh, hi, Ms. Jakubek? This is Caitlin? Caitlin Bradshaw? I was just—”
I picked up the phone with my left hand while I clicked Westlaw off my computer with my right.
“Hi, Caitlin. What’s up?”
“Oh, you’re there.”
“I’m here. The voice mail prompt I recorded last night turned out to be a little optimistic.”
“Oh. I guess you were, like, screening your calls.”
“What’s up?”
“Well, Mom had a couple of long calls with Sam Schwartzchild last week and earlier this week, so I was wondering if, like, maybe something was happening? On Dad’s case?”
But Remember Their Names Page 20
