Murder for Lunch

by Haughton Murphy

  “He’s a little young for that, Dwight,” Bannard replied. From Draper’s comments, it was clear he didn’t know much about selecting a lawyer. The late Graham Donovan and Mike Phelan, two years out of Columbia Law School, simply were not comparable. Was Draper really too unsophisticated to know the difference? Or did he want someone naive and inexperienced, but with the protection of being able to say he had relied on Chase & Ward, his general counsel? In view of recent developments, the latter view was probably correct. But didn’t Draper realize that “young Phelan” was the one who had uncovered Draper’s deception of his lenders?

  “He worked with you on your proposed public offering, did he not?” Bannard said.

  “That’s right. And he did a very fine job. Very good boy, Phelan.”

  “What’s the status of your offering, Dwight?”

  “Oh, we’ve decided to put it off. The underwriters say the market isn’t right. I wanted to go ahead, but the underwriters said wait to get a better price, so I have. We’ll probably go next month,” Draper said.

  Confronted with this bald lie, Bannard decided to proceed with the business at hand and surreptitiously pushed the call buzzer on his telephone.

  “Dwight, I’m afraid I didn’t get you over here to discuss your future relationship with Chase & Ward,” Bannard said gravely. Draper looked puzzled and took a long drag on his cigar, but remained silent. “This is Detective Luis Bautista of the New York City Police Department, who has a few questions for you,” Bannard explained, nodding toward Bautista, who had entered the room and stood beside Draper.

  “Good morning, Mr. Draper,” Bautista said, without shaking hands.

  “What is this, George? Some kind of joke?” Draper said, looking from one to the other. “I come over here to discuss my legal business and all of a sudden I’m talking to a policeman. What’s going on?” Draper started to rise in his chair, as if to leave because the joke was not to his liking. Bautista did not physically restrain him, but moved his six-foot frame in front of Draper’s chair.

  “Mr. Draper, as Mr. Bannard says, I have some questions to ask you. You are perfectly free not to respond and I want to warn you that you have certain rights.”

  Bautista flipped a celluloid-covered card from his pocket. One of the “Directions to Police Officer” contained on its reverse side was an instruction that the card was to be read to any person subject to “custodial interrogation,” meaning questioning after a person “has been taken into custody, or otherwise deprived of his freedom of action in any significant way.” Bautista conservatively judged that moving his impressively developed, muscular body in front of Draper, who was now sitting back and looking nervous, might fit the “significant way” category, and began reading to Draper the prescribed ritual—not the centuries-old responses to the priest’s Latin Bautista remembered mumbling from an embossed card in his days as an altar boy, but a secular ritual derived from a generation of Supreme Court decisions.

  “Mr. Draper, you have the right to remain silent and to refuse to answer my questions,” Bautista read. “Do you understand?”

  “Understand? No, I’m afraid I don’t understand,” Draper said, attempting to remain calm. “As I said, I came here to discuss private legal business, and instead I have a policeman reading me my constitutional rights. I don’t understand at all!”

  “Let me continue, Mr. Draper. Anything you do say may be used against you in a court of law. Do you understand?”

  Draper was silent.

  “Do you understand, Mr. Draper?”

  “Really, Officer, this is very silly. Won’t you please stop reading from that card and tell me what it is you want?”

  Unperturbed, Bautista continued the ritual. “You have the right to consult an attorney before speaking to me and to have an attorney present during any questioning now or in the future. Do you understand?”

  “Officer, if I may say so, my attorney is sitting right next to you. Won’t you—or can’t you—understand that?” Draper attempted to put ice in his voice, but there was a slight tremor that damaged the effect.

  Bannard, cowed by the whole proceeding, thought of speaking up and pointing out that Chase & Ward’s loyalties were to Draper Chemicals, not to the very nervous individual before him. But this was perhaps not the time to deal in niceties.

  “If you cannot afford an attorney,” Bautista plodded on, following the letter of his Miranda warning card, “one will be provided for you without cost.”

  “That would be cheaper than Chase & Ward,” Draper said. “But let’s cut the comedy. If you won’t let me out of here, at least let’s get to the point.”

  “If you do not have an attorney available,” Bautista continued—this guy was not going to get off because he had not been advised of his constitutional right not to incriminate himself—“you have the right to remain silent until you have had an opportunity to consult with one. Do you understand?”

  “Officer, I really am going to stop answering these ridiculous questions,” Draper said.

  “Now that I have advised you of your rights, are you willing to answer questions?” Bautista persisted.

  “I have said so about five times, I believe,” Draper replied.

  “Good. Now that we’ve had the preliminaries, it’s time to dance. Dwight Draper, I’m putting you under arrest—”

  “Arrest! What the hell are you talking about? You are loco, boy, straight, raving loco!” Draper said, his icy politeness now giving way to hostile anger.

  “Let me explain, Mr. Draper. Then you can say whatever you want to say,” Bautista said evenly and calmly. “I am going to arrest you for the murder of your lawyer, Graham Donovan—”

  “Loco! Loco!” Draper shouted.

  “May I go on? On Friday afternoon, September eighth, Mr. Draper, you and Graham Donovan had a quarrel in his office over whether or not you had committed fraud in your dealings with the lenders to your company. You returned to the Draper Chemicals plant in New Jersey, where you obtained from John Barlow, the production supervisor, a quantity of a highly poisonous digitalis derivative used by your company in making the drug Pernon.”

  Draper and Bannard were utterly silent as Bautista spun out his narrative.

  “Three days later, on Monday, September eleventh, you made an appointment to see Graham Donovan again, at two P.M. You arrived at one-thirty, confident that Donovan would be at lunch but that you were well enough known that you would be allowed to wait in his office. That’s what happened, and while you were waiting, you poisoned the water in Donovan’s water carafe.

  “Do you want to hear more, Mr. Draper?” Bautista said. Draper, who had slumped in his chair and let his cigar go out, was silent.

  “You thought you were safe. You had been present in Donovan’s office several times in the last month working with him on your company’s registration statement. You knew his daily habits—when he went to lunch, for example, and the peculiar morning routine with his iced tea. You knew that he would use the poisoned water from his carafe the next day, when you were safe back in New Jersey. You knew that he wouldn’t detect the slightly bitter taste of the poison in his iced tea. And you further knew that the poison would have a delayed reaction, reducing the likelihood that Donovan would die in the vicinity of the poisoned carafe.

  “So that’s why I’m arresting you, Mr. Draper,” Bautista said quietly. He and Bannard both looked at the sagging figure sitting before them. Draper sat without speaking, as if struck dumb by the ruinous detail of Bautista’s narrative. He gripped the arms of the chair he was in and looked straight ahead with a glassy-eyed stare into nothingness. Neither Bautista nor Bannard interrupted the long silence before he spoke.

  “I had to do it,” Draper finally said, in a strained, unnatural voice. “I had spent my whole life building my company. I never took anything out of it, just enough to live on. I had just one dream ever since engineering school—to have a public company, with its stock listed on the New York Stock Exchange and
its management, me, respected in the business community. I wanted more than anything to be perceived as a clever and successful entrepreneur, not just a run-of-the-mill engineer from a second-rate school in Pennsylvania. That was my dream, and that was what I was working to make real.”

  Draper wiped away a tear and tried to control himself. “Then this thing happened over my loans. I ran into a bad cash squeeze two years ago—just temporary, but I was running out of cash. I knew Freedom Mutual would take forever to approve a new loan, so I went to Multi-bank and hocked my receivables. It was a new account for them and they didn’t ask any questions. It was all a technicality anyway; Freedom would have let me borrow the money if I’d asked them. And I’ll be out of the Multi-bank loan in another couple of months. But Graham, my old friend Graham, was on my back. He said I’d violated some federal law about debtor disclosure, that the public offering had to be postponed, all kinds of things that would have ruined my company and ruined my dream. So I did what I had to do. Yes, I poisoned him. I had to. I couldn’t let my dream—my dream of thirty years—fade away over a legal technicality.”

  Draper covered his eyes as he finished speaking. Soon his entire body was shaking as he began sobbing—huge, rending sobs like those of a young child. It took several minutes before he was able to go on.

  “And there was more, gentlemen. Here I was, after a generation of friendship with a man I thought was my brother, being accused by that man of being a crook. I simply couldn’t go on with my life—my nice, respectable life—as long as there was someone out there who thought, who knew, that I had cheated. I’m sorry, George. Sorry about Graham. But sorry also that my whole life’s work has gone for nothing.”

  Draper broke into sobs again. Bautista signalled Bannard, who in turn pressed the telephone buzzer. The two other police officers came in at once.

  “Shall we go now, Mr. Draper?” Bautista asked gently.

  Draper, still crying, nodded. The two officers with Bautista unobtrusively flanked him and led him toward the door. No handcuffs, just a firm but gentle hand on each arm. Bautista lingered behind.

  “I guess that’s it, Mr. Bannard,” he said.

  “I guess so. How can I thank you for what you’ve done?” Bannard said.

  “Not necessary. I was just doing my job. Except you might mention it to the Mayor the next time you see him.”

  As the posse went down the hall toward the elevators, Bautista unobtrusively lagged behind and went into Reuben Frost’s office.

  Frost pretended to be fully occupied with the document in front of him. Neither man was fooled by this pretense of concentration.

  “Well, Reuben, it’s over,” Bautista said.

  “He confessed?”

  “Yes. With lots of tears, but he admitted the whole thing.”

  “What can I say, Luis?”

  “Nothing. You don’t need to say nothing,” Bautista answered, the emotion of the encounter eroding his usually correct, school-learned grammar. “I’m the one—or I should say, the Police Department is the one—that should be thanking you.”

  “Well, Luis, all I can say is that it was an interesting collaboration.”

  “Yes. Yes, it was.”

  “Will we meet again?” Frost asked, realizing after he had spoken that he sounded like a mindless ingenue in a dreadful play.

  “Who knows? Maybe. The air up here on the fifty-first floor is pretty rarified for me, though. But maybe. We’ll see.”

  “My wife wants to meet you,” Frost said. “Perhaps you could come and have dinner?”

  “Sure. I’d like that. You’ve got my private number.”

  “I’ll call you.”

  “Okay. Take care.”

  The detective left and Frost’s small office seemed doubly empty without his bulk.

  Dinner? Why not? Cynthia would be fascinated. But was there a Mrs. Bautista? Or a girlfriend? Children? Frost realized that he really knew next to nothing about his newfound collaborator and friend. But that could be fixed, he said to himself as he sat down at his desk. That could be fixed.

  CLEANUP

  23

  Once detective Bautista had left, Bannard called in Mrs. Davis to tell her what had happened.

  “Don’t tell anyone else for the moment, Margaret,” he said. “I want to make an announcement to the partners at the weekly lunch today. Tell MacMillan’s to serve champagne—Dom Perignon, too—at the end of lunch. But no glasses on the table beforehand. It’s all to be a surprise. And ask Reuben Frost to come in.”

  “Reuben!” Bannard called out minutes later when Frost came into his office.

  The man actually seems glad to see me, Frost thought to himself.

  “Have you heard the news?” Bannard asked.

  “Yes. Bautista stopped to tell me on his way out.”

  “Thank God it’s over. I should have suspected Draper all along. I’ve never liked him.”

  “I know.”

  “Well, it was some experience, let me tell you. Who knows what he might have done? He was clearly desperate,” Bannard said.

  “I’m sure there was enough firepower in and around your office to take care of any emergency,” Frost said.

  “I don’t want anyone to know until firm lunch.” Bannard paused for a moment. “By the way, Reuben, could you come to the lunch today? You should certainly tell the firm your part of the story.”

  “Of course, George, if that’s what you want.”

  “Yes, it is. We’ve all been through a lot, and I think we all ought to celebrate a bit.”

  “Fine. But just this once,” Frost said, heading off Bannard before he could make a gauche remark to the same effect.

  “I suppose we have some loose ends to tie up. One is Grace Appleby. I guess I must call her in and fire her. I want to have that done and over with before our lunch.”

  “I have a couple of loose ends to tie up, too, George. So I’ll see you at lunch.”

  “Good. And thank you, Reuben. You really have been a great help to me.”

  “Glad to oblige, George. Any time.”

  Frost went back to his office, amused at the prospect of returning once more to the partners’ lunch. But what would he include in his side of the story? Merritt’s dreadful tax dilemma, now solved? Tyson’s irrational outburst at Frost’s house? He would tell about the latter and not the former, he thought, unless something could be worked out in the meantime.

  With that in mind, he took the elevator up two flights and went to Tyson’s office. He entered unannounced.

  “Reuben. What a surprise!” Tyson said from behind his desk. All traces of the irrational anger displayed less than two days earlier had disappeared.

  Uninvited, Frost took a seat. “I thought you ought to know, Arthur, that Dwight Draper has been arrested for Graham’s murder.”

  “My God. Tell me!”

  “No, Bannard wants to keep it a surprise and unveil the details at lunch. But I thought you should know that you are no longer a suspect.”

  “I guess I never really was,” Tyson said, laughing nervously.

  “That’s not how you were acting at my house Tuesday night.”

  “I guess I was a little hot under the collar.”

  “Yes. And that’s really why I’m here.”

  “I apologize, if that’s what you’re after,” Tyson said sulkily.

  “No, Arthur, I want more than that. I’m now retired and so Chase & Ward doesn’t mean much to me financially anymore. But it is the firm where I spent my active life and I don’t want to sit by in my old age and watch it fall apart. I love the people here too much.”

  “I don’t follow you.”

  “Then let me be very explicit. George Bannard retires as the leader of this firm in two years. Graham Donovan, as the senior corporate partner, would by tradition have been his successor. But he is gone. It’s also no secret, Arthur, that you would have liked the job, and I assume you still do.”

  “Oh, I don’t know, Reuben. I’ve though
t about it. I won’t deny it. But who knows what may happen?” Tyson said.

  “That’s always true, Arthur. But I’m here to get your assurance that at least one thing won’t happen.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I want your ironclad assurance that under no circumstances will you become the next Executive Partner of Chase & Ward,” Frost said, slowly and deliberately.

  “Why should I agree to any such thing?”

  “Because, Arthur, you are temperamentally unsuited to run this firm. You’ve demonstrated that once to my satisfaction in recent days, and, I understand, once again when I was not present. You’re a fine lawyer, Arthur, everyone concedes that. But with your temper this place would be torn apart.”

  “And if I don’t give you the assurance you want?”

  “I will include in my narrative of recent events, which Bannard has asked me to give at lunch, a meticulous account of your behavior at my house Tuesday night. After which I suspect you might not even be head of the trust and estates department, let alone a candidate for Executive Partner.”

  Tyson angrily swiveled his desk chair away from Frost. After staring out the window for a moment, he turned back.

  “You’re a clever old bastard, Reuben. And you certainly give me a lot of choice,” Tyson said.

  “Does that mean I have your word that you will never accept the Executive Partnership?”

  “Never is a big word, Reuben.”

  “I know. And I use it advisedly.”

  “Then never it is. You meddling bastard.”

  “Thank you, Arthur. I’ll see you at lunch.”

  Frost was pleased and relieved as he returned to his office. Pleased because he had neutralized Tyson, relieved because he had not had to withstand another torrent of rage. As he came to his office, he asked his secretary to call in Perry Griffith. For the fourth time in a week, Griffith answered the summons.

  “Well, Perry, these little sessions are getting to be a habit,” Frost said.

  “Yes, they are. What is it this time?”

  “I just wanted you to know that Dwight Draper was arrested for the murder of Graham Donovan about an hour ago.”