Murder.com (6 page)

Eleven

A Surprise

Monday morning, the receptionist at Chase & Ward called to Reuben when he stepped off the elevator and told him that Russell Townley, the firm's new Executive Partner, wanted to see him “immediately.”

“It's an awful shock, Mr. Frost,” she said.

“What's a shock?”

“Young Mr. Joyner's death.”

“Who?”

“You know, our associate, Mr. Joyner.”

“I don't know anything about it.”

“He was found dead in his apartment last night. At least that's the word going around.”

“How terrible,” Reuben told her as he went off to Townley's office as ordered, even before his morning coffee. A feeling of dread came over him as he walked down the corridor; if there had been foul play within the Chase & Ward family, the purpose of the Executive Partner's summons was surely to get him caught up in dealing with it.

He vaguely recalled Joyner—Edward Joyner he believed his name was—from one of the firm's annual outings for partners and associates. He guessed that he had met the fellow, but he had left no strong impression. If Reuben had the correct person, Joyner was a three- or four-year associate in the corporate department, too young to have been discussed for promotion at a partners' meeting.

Frost reached Townley's magnificent corner office—the traditional quarters for the firm's Executive Partner—and went in without knocking. He was amused, as he had been on previous visits, by the way the office had been redecorated to Townley's specifications—staid, proper, and uninteresting furniture and prints of Olde New York on the walls. Perhaps, Reuben thought impishly, to make clear to the world that Townley was of Olde New York stock.
Boring
was the word that came to Reuben's mind; the decor was totally unlike the sleek, Italian-modern furniture in his own office when he had been an active partner; the grandfather clock in the corner would never have been found in his quarters.

Townley, a rather small man in his late fifties, wearing a vest despite the balmy spring weather, jumped up from his desk to greet Frost.

“Thank God, you're here, Reuben,” he said. Since assuming the post of Executive Partner from Charlie Parkes, the previous incumbent, three months earlier, Townley had seemed rather nervous and flighty. Those qualities were abundantly evident now.

“I have some terrible news—”

“I think I've already heard it,” Reuben said. “The Chase & Ward jungle drums are already beating.”

“Good grief, I only learned about this Joyner thing thirty minutes ago, when the police called.”

“Russ, you know a secret can't be kept around here for more than a microsecond. Tell me what you know.”

“A detective named Muldoon called me and said that our associate Joyner had been found stabbed in his apartment. That's it. No other details. However, he warned me that the police would probably be around to question people here. What do I do, Reuben? You've been through this before. Give me a clue.”

“Yes, long ago and as recently as two weeks ago. You recall that Dan Courtland's daughter was murdered then.”

“I suppose you're involved in that, you being Courtland's old buddy.”

“I don't think ‘buddy' is precisely the right word, but Courtland's certainly been a friend. And yes, I'm involved in the investigation of Marina's death. Peripherally, I hope.”

“You're the firm's expert on murder. Vast homicide experience. We've got lawyers who know about tax shelters and suck-up mergers and document dumps and every other lawyer thing. But you're the homicide authority.” He fluttered his hands as he spoke.

“I'd like to think, Russ, that my reputation at Chase & Ward has more to do with substantive matters other than random slaughtering.”

“Of course, Reuben, of course,” he replied, his hands still fluttering.

Reuben, given his long-retired status, had not had a voice in selecting Townley as the new Executive Partner. Partners over seventy-five did not have a vote, like cardinals over the age of eighty who did not have a vote in selecting the pope. He had, however, agreed with the choice, though the man's nervousness under stress was beginning to give him doubts. (His only other reservation had been Townley's lack of deference to Reuben and his other retired colleagues. It was paranoid to think so, but he had wondered whether Townley didn't perhaps wish that the oldsters would disappear—i.e., die—thus easing the burden of payments under the firm's generous retirement arrangements.)

“All right, all right, let's just say that your crime experience has been a
sideline.
What do we do? Help me out!”

Reuben tried to order his thoughts, as he always had over the years when confronted with any firm crisis.

“I take it we don't know any of the circumstances of this fellow's death. No idea who the perp—a word I've picked up in my ‘vast homicide experience'—might be.”

Townley gave a hollow laugh. “I know nothing other than what I've already told you.”

“I assume there's no reason to think that anyone here at the firm had anything to do with this,” Reuben asked.

“No, thank God. At least not anybody that I'm aware of.”

“Did he leave a wife, a family, what?”

“I've got his personnel file here,” Townley answered as he reached for the green manila folder on his desk and opened it.

“As near as I can tell, he has no relatives other than a father in Tucson. He did have a wife, but they had a very messy divorce two years ago. You know about that?”

“No.”

“It was his personal fight, his personal business, but we had to get involved a little bit when the divorce mavens representing his wife tried to garnish his salary here. Eskill Lander—as you know, he's the closest thing we've got to a domestic affairs attorney—had to step in and fight them off.”

Reuben was silently amused. Eskill, as the firm's preeminent trust and estates lawyer, had dealt with several prominent multimillion-­dollar divorces, but always with immaculately clean hands, and never at the pedestrian level of garnisheeing a person's wages. It must have been quite a confrontation with the “divorce mavens.”

“He'd married his wife before law school. Maybe you met her at one of our social events. Nice girl, as I recall. Foreigner of some sort.”

“Not that I remember.”

“Well, it seems like the classic case: Wife supports husband through law school, then gets dumped when hubby hits the big-time.”

“What else does that file show?”

“Let's see. Young Joyner was born and grew up in Montgomery, Alabama. Public school there, then the University of Alabama and Tulane Law School. Did well there, which is why he ended up with us. Not exactly a law school on our A-list, but he came here four years ago when, you may recall, we had to reach out for new recruits. That goddamn article.”

Townley was referring to an
American Lawyer
piece that named Chase & Ward as one of the nation's top three law office “sweatshops.” It had put a temporary chill on the firm's recruiting efforts, but with the recent shrinking of legal openings, it was ignored—or never known—by the current crop of job prospects.

“He was assigned to the corporate department, and has not been a particularly distinguished citizen, I gather. I'm trying to get the scoop from Jerry Gilbert, for whom he most recently worked, but Jerry isn't here yet. One of our late-arrival gang.”

“There is such a gang,” Reuben agreed, having always been a member himself. The point was lost on the punctilious Townley.

“Where did he live? Where was the body found?”

“His address in the office directory is in Tribeca. Probably one of those lofts our overpaid associates can now afford. The file shows a change of address, which would indicate he moved there after his divorce. So much for the background. I go back to my original question: What do we do?”

“First thing, Russ, is get ready for the press. It's not every day that an associate of what they insist on calling a ‘major white-shoe law firm' is murdered. Send out a memo that no one is to talk to the press except you.”

“Why me?”

“Because, my friend, you are the Executive Partner.”

“What do I say?

“Stick to the facts. When he was hired, what department he was in. Nothing about who he worked for. Nothing about the clients he did things for. And for God's sake, nothing about his ability or lack of it. He was an associate here, period. Not a good associate, a bad associate, a promising associate, just an associate. And a junior one at that.”

“And can I count on you to do some sleuthing?” Townley asked.

“You'd better not. You forget how ancient I am, and I'm busy enough holding Dan Courtland's hand and assisting, as best I can, the police in the investigation of Marina's death.”

Townley looked disappointed.

“Of course, just as a matter of my own curiosity, I may talk to Eskill Lander and maybe the partner Joyner worked for. Jerry Gilbert, was it?”

“Yes. I'll be grateful to learn anything you find out. And, Reuben, couldn't you be our liaison with the police? You know all the people down there.”

“Again, no. I know one detective, who I doubt, from what you say, has anything to do with this case. I have no idea who this Muldoon fellow is. I simply can't devote time to this. But I assure you you'll be the first to know if I find out anything. And please feel free to call me at any point.”

“Thank you—I guess.”

“Just one other thing, Russ. I assume you can't see any connection between Marina Courtland's murder and this one?”

“Good Lord, no. What a strange idea!”

After a delayed cup of coffee, Reuben called Bautista to report on the encounter with Gino Facini the night before. The detective told him that there were not any new developments on his end, other than a nasty crack in a tabloid gossip column wondering why Marina's—the “moneyed Marina's”—killer had not been tracked down.

“I think we'd better have our own look at Mr. Facini,” he told Reuben. “Where do we find him?”

Reuben gave him the address of the Dockers loft, along with a warning, which mystified Luis, to “watch out for carrots.” Then he told the detective about Edward Joyner's murder.

“Homicide seems to be spreading over here like Asian flu,” Reuben said. He told Luis that the case had apparently been assigned to a detective named Muldoon. Luis said he was actually in the next office; he'd talk to him and get back.

Within the hour, Bautista called. Joyner's body had been found in a pool of blood in the living space of his loft apartment, with multiple stab wounds to the chest. No sign of struggle, no sign of robbery or theft, no sign of breaking and entering. No obvious clues; the only theory was that the deed had been done by someone who knew the young lawyer.

“I'll keep in touch with Muldoon,” Bautista promised.

Reuben paid a call on Eskill Lander once again, explaining that he wanted to inquire about Edward Joyner's divorce.

“You getting involved in this one, too?” asked Lander, in an exasperated tone that again implied that he thought that Reuben was a meddler. He complied, however, and got up and paced his office as he filled in the details.

“What a mess! Dealing with the divorce bar. Not a pretty bunch. Joyner had his own lawyer, but when his wife's attorneys wanted to garnish his wages and try to attach his assets under our firm's 401(k) plan, Charlie Parkes asked me to interfere. Digging into the facts, it seemed quite clear to me that Joyner was in the wrong.”

“Russ Townley told me the wife helped him out through law school and then was dumped when they got to New York,” Reuben interrupted. “An old story, that.”

“Not quite the usual story in this case. She was the one who initiated the divorce when she found out he was carrying on with a young lady lawyer from the Lenox, Ashford firm. But she was not entirely blameless. She was a Brazilian—how he met her at the University of Alabama I don't know—and I suspect she married Joyner to get a green card. I also think they had grown tired of each other by the time of the divorce. But the adultery part infuriated the wife, and she was determined to make the whole thing as painful as possible for her philandering husband, financially and otherwise. And she did.”

“Was it ultimately settled peaceably? Without litigation?” Reuben asked.

“Yes, after months of Mickey Mouse by her damnable lawyers. The striking thing to me was Joyner's attitude. He always acted like he was God's gift to mankind and had a self-righteous outlook on the whole proceeding. He never, never acknowledged his own misconduct. A real shit, in other words, dressed in rather flashy Paul Stuart tweeds. He also had a slight mid-­Atlantic accent—rather strange for a white-trash boy from Alabama.”

“What happened to the wife?”

“No idea. May have gone back to Brazil, for all I know.”

“Well,
muito obrigado
, Eskill,” Reuben said.

“Where the hell did you learn that?”

“Rio. Many years ago. It means ‘many thanks' in Portuguese.”

“
Mille grazie
, I never would have guessed it.”

Twelve

A Respite at the Club

Reuben decided that, before questioning Jerry Gilbert, as he had told Russ Townley he might do, he needed a break at his favorite haunt, the Gotham Club—or, as his wife called it, his “tree house.” He had come to use the Club at Fifty-Sixth Street and Fifth Avenue more and more in his retirement years. Despite his crack about the food there being “tripe,” it had in fact improved considerably with the installation of a new chef. It was now much more appealing for lunch.

Bowing to civic pressure and the sentiment of most members—but by no means all—the Club had also begun admitting women, for the first time in its hundred-year-plus history. This had not troubled Reuben, who did not share the apocalyptic vision of some of his fustier club mates. Yet the new regime was a far cry from the day when the Club did not even have a ladies' room. “If we install a lavatory, they'll be here every chance they get,” one old party had thundered when this radical proposal had first been made back in the 1970s. These days, any current member's retrograde views, assuming such still existed, were held in silence.

The decision to admit women did not really alter the customs of the club that mattered to its regular users, like the carefully prepared martinis of Renato, the bartender. Or the greetings of Jason Darmes, the doorman, who grew both more portly and more genial year by year.

“How are things, Mr. Frost?” he asked as Reuben entered, energized by a walk from his office in bright midday sunshine.

“Just fine, Jason,” Reuben answered, knowing full well that the things that now concerned him most were far from being “fine.”

Once at the tiny second-floor bar, Reuben ordered a martini.

“A Gotham?” Renato asked, meaning a martini with a “dividend” on the side, which made it two martinis by any rational reckoning.

“You keep tempting me, Renato. But my doctor says strictly normal size and only one.”

“Coming up.”

Reuben was pleased that there was one Gotham martini drinker at the bar, albeit a female foundation executive elected in the first wave of women members. By contrast, he saw that the three men present were sipping on white wine—a spritzer in one case, he noted with particular contempt.
O tempora! O mores!

Drink in hand, Frost headed at once for the dining room, avoiding conversation with the other drinkers. He was not being antisocial but, given the imbroglios in which he was entangled, he was not eager to make small talk about what he was up to.

He sat down at the common table, reserved for those members lunching alone. Sitting there was often a perilous enterprise, since there were two or three extraordinary bores who appeared at the table with distressing regularity. He noticed one of them there today, with an empty chair beside him, so he quickly moved to the only other vacant place at the opposite end of the table.

But Reuben was wary when he took the vacant seat next to a woman he did not know. His apprehension proved to be unwarranted as his luncheon companion turned out to be Amanda Bretton, the dean of the faculty at a nearby suburban college. Conversation with her was easy, as it was with his other companion, Peter Day, a magazine editor he had known for years.

While the three were talking, Reuben heard Daniel Courtland's name mentioned by someone farther down the table.

“Awful thing about his daughter,” Reuben heard.

Ms. Bretton caught the reference, too, and asked the speaker if he knew Courtland. The man said no.

“He's quite a case,” Ms. Bretton said to the group. “When I was a dean at Indiana University, he revoked a pledge for five million dollars to our religion department because they wouldn't hire a professor he had handpicked. A very conservative and somewhat eccentric preacher with very little in the way of academic qualifications.”

There were mild sounds of disapproval within the group and then the individual conversations resumed.

“I'm interested that you know Daniel Courtland,” Reuben said to Ms. Bretton. “He was a client of mine for many years and is still a client of my old law firm.”

“Should I say lucky you or poor you? I'm sure there's an immense amount of legal business. But our experience was not too pleasant.”

“We have always had a tacit agreement—we never discuss politics or religion. I'm reasonably sure our views would be quite divergent.”

“You've been wise. What about his daughter? Was she of the same persuasion as her father?”

“I'm not sure. But I should think not. The people at the publishing house where she worked seemed to think the world of her. I don't think that would have been true if she went around trumpeting her father's views.”

“Well, anyway, it doesn't matter now, does it?”

“Sadly, no.”

Reuben, having finished a quite decent club sandwich (he shuddered to think of the creamed chipped beef and other such fare that used to be available), excused himself and left the Club. The luncheon encounter had left him with two thoughts: Marina Courtland may have used her pseudonym not only to conceal her wealth, but also to prevent being identified with her father's opinions. And, while he knew that Dan Courtland was volatile, Ms. Bretton's evidence made it all the more necessary to handle him with care—or at least to handle the investigation of his daughter's death with care.

Then, as he reached One Metropolitan Plaza, he began thinking about his upcoming meeting with the Executioner.