A St. Louis County jury awarded Eagle Valley Storage Corporation $4.1 million as compensation for the taking of a pair of warehouses on the north side of Bulger Road. The warehouses are located on a parcel of land that Brookfield city planners hope will one day be the site of a restaurant, theater, and shopping complex. The properties had been condemned under eminent domain authority by the Brookfield Land Clearance Redevelopment Authority, a municipal authority established by the city as part of its ambitious plans for transforming its aging industrial park into an entertainment and shopping district.
The award exceeded the city's appraised value by $950,000, making it the second time in less than a month that Eagle Valley Storage Corporation has obtained a jury verdict for Brookfield warehouse properties that significantly exceeded the city's valuation of the properties.
The article quoted a Brookfield alderman who claimed that the combined jury verdicts had so far exceeded the city's condemnation budget that the entire redevelopment project was in jeopardy. There were several paragraphs describing the origins of the redevelopment project, the performance of similar projects in the region, and the used of eminent domain powers to achieve those goals. More interesting for Hirsch was the description of certain courtroom events:
Courtroom observers noted that the most critical portion of the trial took place outside the hearing of the jury. Attorney Guttner objected to the testimony of appraiser Lawrence Gallagher, the city's expert witness on valuation of the properties. Judge McCormick excused the jury and conducted a mini-hearing on the admissibility of Gallagher's opinions. In a ruling mirroring his ruling in the prior condemnation case, he excluded large portions of Gallagher's testimony, including the expert's opinion as to the valuation of the properties.
As a result, the jury heard valuation testimony only from the property owner's expert, Harlan Reston. Moreover, Monroe's cross-examination of Reston was severely restricted when the judge sustained objections to several of Monroe's questions.
After the jury verdict, an obviously frustrated attorney for the city, Mitchell Monroe said, “This is a verdict that cries out for reversal on appeal.”
The last article ran three weeks later. It described a hearing before Judge McCormick in which attorneys for the city and the property owner announced that they had worked out a global settlement of both cases for a compromise amount. The resolution, according to the city's attorney, would save the redevelopment project. The article quoted both attorneys on the subject of their clients' satisfaction with the results, and also quoted the mayor of Brookfield, who said he was thrilled that the project could once again move forward. But it was the final sentence of the article that caught Hirsch's attention: “The good spirits seemed to be shared by everyone in the courtroom except the judge, who angrily chided attorney Guttner for ‘wasting the court's time with matters that should have been settled before trial' and then abruptly left the bench.”
Hirsch had pondered that final sentence. In his experience, a judge was often the party most satisfied by a lawsuit settlement. The plaintiff might feel he'd settled for too little, the defendant might believe he'd overpaid, but the judge was always delighted, since it meant another case off his docket. Hirsch thought back to McCormick's comment in Judith's November 12 memo: “Hey, Marvin, these aren't the Brookfield warehouses. What's done is done.”
The comment still made no sense.
Cassie looked up from the final article and nodded. “I think these were the cases she was interested in.”
“Do you remember why?”
“Oh, my.” She closed her eyes as she tried to remember. “The best I can recall,” she said, eyes still closed, “is she wanted to know about the relationship between the judge and one of the lawyers.”
“Which lawyer?”
She opened her eyes and shook her head. “I don't recognize any of the names in the article.”
“Do you know what kind of relationship she was interested in?”
Cassie gave him a puzzled look that faded into an amused grin. “I've never been an investigative reporter, Mr. Hirsch, but I did spend four decades living with one. You pick up a few things over time, and one of them was that when someone came to see my brother about a relationship between a government official and a lawyer, there's only one kind of relationship they're talking about.”
“Had he ever talked to you about that judge?”
She glanced at the article. “McCormick? Not specifically.”
“What do you mean not specifically?”
“The name doesn't ring a bell.” She paused. “These articles you copied, that was back when my brother was covering the county courts for the Post-Dispatch. I've heard things have changed out there since then. Changed for the better. But back then, well, my brother had a pretty low opinion of some of those judges. Real low. He told me a joke among the lawyers back then. It went like this. What's the definition of an honest judge in the circuit court of St. Louis County?”
“What?”
“When you fix him, he stays fixed.” Her smile faded. “He may have met a lot of bad men over the years, but he never did lose his sense of humor.”
They talked some more about the articles and the condemnation cases, but it was clear that she didn't remember any of the specifics.
She did recall that Judith met several times with her brother, sometimes during the day, once or twice at night. And she was certain that Judith had “passed the test.”
“What test?” Hirsch asked.
Cassie Markman smiled. “He gave her a tour of the pyramid. My brother was a tough judge of people, Mr. Hirsch. If he gave that little gal the tour, it meant she was special. It meant she was okay in his book.”
“I'm afraid I'm lost,” he said. “What pyramid are you talking about?”
She stood up. “Stay there. I'll be right back.”
She headed toward the back of the house and reappeared carrying a quarto-sized book entitled An Illustrated Journey to the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. She opened the book on her lap and looked up at him.
“Do you know where the word mausoleum comes from?” she asked.
“No idea.”
“From a king named Mausolus. He was one of the provincial kings of the ancient Persian empire.”
She started leafing through the book as she spoke. “He had a small kingdom along the Mediterranean coast. He ruled over it from the city of Helicarnassus.” She looked up. “It's called Bodrum today. It's on the Turkish coast. Mausolus had a queen named Artemisia, who happened to be his sister, too.”
She gave him an impish grin.
“Sounds weird, I know, but my brother assured me it was the custom for kings in that region to marry their sisters. He claimed the marriage was purely ceremonial, and he better have been telling the truth, because he nicknamed me Artemisia. Especially after I started showing my paintings.” She gestured toward the paintings on the wall. “He used to call me the Artist Artemisia.”
She smiled at the memory. Her eyes seemed to go distant, but only for a moment.
“Anyway, when King Mausolus died, his sister was heartbroken. She decided to build her brother the most splendid tomb in the world. She brought in the top artisans from Greece. The result was a spectacular tomb on a hill overlooking the city. What's sad is that Artemisia never lived to see it. She was killed in battle before the tomb was completed. The city buried her and her brother side by side inside it. The tomb of Mausolus became the most famous one in the ancient world—so famous that all fancy tombs came to be called mausoleums in honor of Mausolus.”
She handed him the open book. “Take a look. Tell me if it looks at all familiar.”
He stared at the artist's rendering of the Tomb of Mausolus at Helicarnassus. It consisted of a Greek temple topped by a stepped pyramid topped by a sculpture of a four-horse chariot holding a man and woman standing side by side.
Hirsch looked up with a tentative smile. “The Civil Courts Building?”
“Very g
ood, Mr. Hirsch. My brother was an ancient history nut. That's why he had a special place in his heart for that crazy building. Especially after he got back from Turkey the first time.”
“Is the tomb still over there?”
“Wouldn't that be divine? I'm afraid not. An earthquake knocked it over in the thirteenth century. Then an army of crusaders called the Knights of St. John built a fortress on the spot. They used materials from the tomb as building blocks. The fortress is still there—right out on that same finger of land in the bay. You can actually see the polished stone and marble blocks from the tomb inside the castle walls. That's all that's left of it in Turkey. The rest is in the British Museum. It's all on display in the Mausoleum Room. My brother was there.” She pointed to the book. “Turn the page.”
He did. The next page had photographs from the British Museum, including sections of the friezes that had decorated the walls of the structure, fragments of the colossal sculptured chariot and horses from the roof, and the damaged statues of the king and queen, each in tunics.
“They didn't completely duplicate the tomb when they built the City Courts Building,” she said. “They left off the horses and chariot and statues. Even so, Pat said they did a pretty fair job.”
She stood. “Come on back. I'll show you his photos.”
He followed her down the short hall to a room on the right. She opened the door and turned on the light.
“This used to be Pat's room. I've changed it around some, but I left his photos on the wall.”
He stepped into the small bedroom, which looked more like an artist's workroom. There were art supplies arranged on wall shelves, three paint-splattered easels neatly stacked against the near wall, a bookcase filled with art books, a desktop with papers, pencils, and pens in tidy order, and a daybed against the far wall.
Framed and hanging in a row above the bed were three twelve-by-sixteen black-and-white photographs of the Civil Courts Building, each taken from a different angle. The photographer shot the first one at street level from about a block away. In that shot, the Greek temple, topped by the four-sided pyramid, loomed high atop the massive structure. In the second photo, taken with a telephoto lens from several stories aboveground, the Civil Courts Building dominated the left foreground, the Old Courthouse just to its right and centered beneath the parabola of the Arch, the left leg of which disappeared behind the temple portions of the tomb, the whole scene foreshortened by the telephoto lens. The third photo had been shot from above, perhaps from a helicopter. It was a bird's-eye view of the tomb replica with an excellent view of the sculptures of the two sphinxlike figures seated back to back atop the stepped pyramid.
He leaned in close, squinting. “What's on the chest of those things?”
“That's the fleur-de-lis of St. Louis.”
Hirsch stood back. “These are remarkable photos.”
“Pat took them.”
“Really?”
“Oh, yes. Photography was his hobby, and that building was his favorite subject. He took dozens and dozens of photos of it. These were his three favorites.” She smiled at the memory. “My goodness, he just loved going up there. If he thought you were special, he'd take you up there for a tour.”
“I didn't realize they gave tours.”
“Oh, they don't. But he knew how to get in.”
“Did he ever take you?”
“He sure did. We went up there one beautiful spring day, climbed up those zigzag ladders inside the pyramid and out onto the roof. It was quite a view.”
“You said he took Judith on the tour?”
She nodded. “He told me how much she enjoyed it.” Her smile faded. “He was a good man, my brother. He had a fine opinion of your client.”
Fifteen minutes later, he started the car engine and pulled away from Cassie Markman's house. As he glanced in his rearview mirror, he saw a pair of headlights come on farther down the street on the opposite side.
The route back to Highway 40 included several side streets and a main boulevard. He kept checking the rearview mirror as he drove. The same set of headlights was behind him the whole way, although by the time he reached the highway entrance ramp the headlights were three cars back.
When he pulled into the flow of traffic heading west on the crowded highway and moved into the center lane, the several sets of headlights in his rearview mirror all looked the same.
He gripped the steering wheel, his thoughts racing.
CHAPTER 32
Nevertheless, they met as planned at nine that night at Dulcie's office at the law school. Now that she was out of the closet, so to speak, there didn't seem need for a clandestine meeting. Indeed, with her semiofficial role in the case, any effort at concealment might actually create suspicion, especially, as Hirsch realized, if there was a factual basis for his sudden paranoia.
He described his meeting with Cassie Markman earlier that night.
When he finished, Rosenbloom said, “I'd say the fix was in on those warehouse cases.”
“Does Monroe agree?” Hirsch asked.
“Monroe?” Rosenbloom snorted. “The guy is a schlemiel.”
While Hirsch had been meeting with Cassie Markman, Rosenbloom had met with Mitchell Monroe, the former Brookfield city attorney. Their professional paths had crossed occasionally over the years, and they vaguely knew each other. Monroe, now in his late sixties, shared a suite with several other attorneys in a suburban office tower.
“What did he say?” Dulcie asked.
Rosenbloom shook his head. “He remembered the cases, of course. You don't forget that kind of ass whooping. But he mainly remembered the happy ending. I asked him about McCormick's exclusion of all of his evidence. He thought the rulings were wrong, but he said it wasn't the first time he'd had things go wrong in one of those cases.”
“That's all?” Hirsch asked.
“That's all. He's fucking clueless. I asked him whether he thought there was anything funny going on in the case, and he gives me this baffled look and says, ‘What do you mean by funny?'” Rosenbloom shook his head in disbelief. “Talk about your goyishe kup.”
Rosenbloom reached for another biscotti and took a bite. Dulcie had brought a tin of homemade biscotti and a large thermos of coffee for the meeting. Rosenbloom closed his eyes in bliss as he crunched away.
He gestured toward Dulcie. “My God, Samson, this woman is unbelievable. On top of everything else, she's a gourmet pastry chef. If I ran this law school, I'd give her tenure based solely on these biscotti.”
Dulcie laughed. “Let's hope they make you dean. More coffee?”
“Sure.” Rosenbloom held out his mug. “And while you're at it, how about marrying me?”
“I don't know, Seymour. I'd always wonder if you were marrying me only for my pastries.”
“I may be shallow, my dear, but I'm not that shallow. Rest assured that I'd be marrying you for your body as well. I'll even swear out an affidavit to that.”
“Such a romantic.” She turned to David with the thermos. “Coffee?”
He was smiling. “Sure.”
Dulcie asked Rosenbloom, “Did you give Monroe a reason for why you were asking him about those old cases?”
“I gave him some bullshit story about representing the owners of one of the restaurants out there who were getting hassled by their lender over the value of underlying property. I told him I was trying to use those two verdicts to justify a higher value. He seemed to buy it, but that schmendrick is so clueless I could have told him I was representing an equity investor from the planet Neptune. We're talking about a guy who spent his career as a city attorney. That puts him one step up the evolutionary ladder from a Shetland pony.”
“If the fix was in,” Hirsch said, “it certainly gives McCormick and Guttner an interesting prior connection.”
Dulcie asked, “But how can you fix a jury verdict?”
“Actually,” Hirsch said, “it's easier and safer than fixing a judge's verdict.”
“How
so?”
“Fixing a jury trial is like fixing a basketball game,” Hirsch explained. “You don't need to corrupt everyone. All you need is the key player. In a jury trial, the key player is the judge.”
Rosenbloom said, “The judge can have a huge impact on the outcome of a case merely by what evidence he lets the jury hear.”
Hirsch nodded. “And there are other ways he can influence the outcome. Judges will make comments about certain witnesses or certain evidence or even certain lawyers. Happens all the time, and often in ways that are invisible.”
“Invisible?” she asked.
“Juries pay special attention to what the judge says, and they're very attuned to tone of voice. But trial transcripts don't pick up tone of voice. Especially sarcasm. As a result, the transcript reads one way, but the jury hears it another way. All of which means that fixing a jury trial is less risky than fixing a bench trial.”
“Absolutely,” Rosenbloom said. “Remember, people have no trouble believing that juries do wacky things. So if one jury happens to come in at four million instead of three in a condemnation case, who's gonna raise an eyebrow when the week before another jury awarded some douche bag twenty million dollars because he claimed McDonald's french fries made him fat?”
“If that's so, though,” Dulcie asked, “how are you going to prove anything?”
Rosenbloom smiled. “Good question, Professor.”
“We'll just keep digging,” Hirsch said. “We've made some progress. We've found a few pieces of the puzzle.”
“Or what you hope is a puzzle,” Rosenbloom added.
“Or what you hope are pieces to the same puzzle,” Dulcie said.
Hirsch nodded. “All we know for sure is that Judith thought she found something troubling, and whatever that was, it all started on the afternoon she overheard her judge's telephone conversation with Guttner.”
“Speaking of Jabba,” Rosenbloom said, turning to Dulcie, “tell us about your settlement meeting today.”
“He's quite good at what he does,” she said.
“How so?” Hirsch asked.
The Mourning Sexton Page 20
