Death Of A Dream Maker (10 page)

“What's it to you?”

Auntie Lil was at a loss for an excuse, so she
offered the truth. “I came down to see what might have happened to
Max. He was on his way to see me when he died.”

“Indeed? I was not aware that the two of you kept in
touch.” Joyce stared at her, eyes narrowed. “Curious that he never
mentioned you to me. As his comptroller, we were very close.”

Auntie Lil merely shrugged and inched farther in the
door.

This territorial encroachment did not go unnoticed.
“I'd love to stay and chat,” the comptroller announced
sarcastically. “But I have a date for lunch and do not wish to be
late.” She stood up abruptly, smoothing her skirt down over her
stomach.

She had starved herself into birdlike form, Auntie
Lil noticed with disapproval. What in heaven's name was wrong with
a healthy figure these days?

She was also rude, brushing past without an apology
and waiting in the hall until Auntie Lil followed. She shut the
door to her office with a bang and gestured for Auntie Lil to exit
through the reception area.

How dare she?
Auntie Lil thought.
Who had
appointed this scrawny bookkeeper Queen of Max Rose
Fashions?

“Thank you, but I'll wait here for the others to
return,” Auntie Lil said firmly. “You go on ahead.” She stared the
woman straight in the eye and willed her determination to show.

It worked. Joyce Carruthers shrugged and tottered
down the hall on her high heels.

The second she heard the old elevator doors creak
shut, Auntie Lil scurried back down to the crabby bookkeeper's
office and tried the door. It was locked. But Joyce had not stopped
to double-lock it. That meant it could be slipped with a credit
card. Auntie Lil checked the hallway. It was empty. She pulled out
her
Macy's
charge card and went to work, sliding the plastic
between the door and the jamb and expertly applying pressure to the
left. The lock clicked open easily and she scurried inside, closing
the door behind her.

She heard a door open at the far end of the hallway
and held her breath. Had Joyce forgotten something in her
office?

Within seconds, a pair of voices passed by. “What was
that all about?” an unseen male was asking. “Did they make you feel
guilty or what? I felt like dropping to my knees and confessing
when I haven't done a damn thing.”

“If you ask me, the one they ought to have questioned
is Davy,” another male replied.

“Yeah. Except he's dead,” the first man pointed
out.

“Which is unfortunate for the cops. But lucky for Max
Rose Fashions. He'd have run us into the ground within a year.”

“True,” the other voice agreed. “But my hands are
clean. And my head is clear. I'm looking for a new job starting
tomorrow.”

“Shhh...” his companion warned him. “Here comes
Brody.”

“So what? He'll be the first one out the door.”

Auntie Lil heard a door slam and the nonsensical
murmur of executives greeting one another for the tenth time that
day. Soon, their voices faded down the hall and Auntie Lil went to
work searching the comptroller's office. She didn't get far. When
she tried to access the computer, a password request popped up and
she was forced to return to the main menu. The files and desk were
just as unproductive: Joyce kept every drawer and credenza
compartment carefully locked.

How irritating,
thought Auntie Lil,
how
utterly suspicious of the woman.
What was she supposed to do
now?

The phone on the desk rang, sending a jolt of
adrenaline pumping through Auntie Lil's heart. She picked up the
receiver slowly, adjusting her voice to a higher octave.

“What?” she asked crabbily, knowing that Joyce was
not the kind of woman to waste time on pleasantries.

“I'm going to be a few minutes late,” a male voice
announced gruffly. “Listen, I need to know right now if the cops
asked about V.J. Productions.”

“What?” she snarled back, coughing to disguise her
voice.

“Don't get cute,” the voice warned. “Did they ask
about V.J. or not?”

“No!” Auntie Lil barked, slamming down the phone. She
would not push her luck.

Her heart was pounding. When the phone rang again,
she did not touch it. If it was the same man, that meant she had
aroused his suspicions. Let it be. His confusion would buy her
time.

She scurried to the elevator, looking over her
shoulder though not quite sure whom she was looking for. The man on
the phone had sounded so... mean. So cold and efficiently cruel.
What was Joyce Carruthers doing talking about the investigation
into Max's death to someone like that? She pondered this question
as the old elevator creaked down toward the lobby. It stopped on a
lower floor to pick up a janitor dragging a damp mop and wheeling a
bucket of soapy water. As he loaded his equipment on, she caught a
glimpse of the sample-cutting-room floor. It was as empty as a
stage waiting for the actors to take their places. The sewing
machines, cutting tables and hanging racks of clothes brought back
old memories of Max surrounded by the chaos of designers shouting,
seamstresses laughing, and cutting machines humming behind it all.
She could almost see his face and sturdy figure in the center of
the enormous floor as he effortlessly choreographed the chaos, his
energy radiating out like the sun, commanding all to whirl around
his power.

Tears sprang to her eyes at the memory. She dabbed at
them furtively with the tip of one white-gloved finger. The janitor
stared straight ahead, stony-faced, his mop held at rigid attention
by his side.

“Have a nice evening, ma'am,” he called out kindly as
Auntie Lil hurried out into the afternoon crowds.

It felt odd to be wearing a suit and riding the
subway down to Sterling & Sterling once again. If T.S. closed
his eyes and listened to the hum of the train, it felt as if the
last few years had never happened, that it had all been but a dream
and he was only now waking to find that he had never retired from
the bank at all. Having tortured himself with this thought, he
shook himself back to reality with profound relief. Sterling &
Sterling's formality and old-fashioned ways were fine if you didn't
know any better. But once you experienced freedom, it was difficult
to return to the stuffiness without feeling suffocated.

He was worried about his welcome. His departure,
planned as a normal retirement, had turned out to be a rather
spectacularly devastating mess for the firm. No matter. Today he
had legitimate business, and so far as he knew, no dead bodies
preceded his visit this time around. As he neared the Wall Street
corner where the venerable and still very private bank stood in
polished granite-and-brass glory, T.S. squared his shoulders and
did something he had never dared to do before: he used the clients'
entrance.

He did not recognize the guard on duty but received a
respectful nod nonetheless. If you came in the clients' entrance,
you were given the benefit of the doubt. This was a safe gamble on
Sterling & Sterling's part because Effie, the receptionist,
could sniff out impostors no matter how well cut their clothing.
Or, displaying an aptitude even more valuable in these modern
times, she could discern an heiress or computer company president
no matter how tattered and worn the blue jeans.

She recognized T.S. at once. “By gum!” she cried,
snapping to attention and rising from her chair smartly, despite a
plump physique. Her headset wires crisscrossed her chest as if she
were a matronly jungle guerrilla equipped for telecommunications
warfare. “This is a red-letter day indeed. A five-star event!” She
held out a pink, rounded hand and nearly wrung T.S.'s arm from his
shoulder. Despite her grandmotherly bearing, Effie was a fervent
war-movie buff. Her hobby had permeated every aspect of her
existence, from her jargon-peppered vocabulary to her ramrod
posture and her marinelike approach to greetings and farewells. The
one thing she did not do was salute, and for this T.S. was
profoundly grateful.

“Effie, how lovely to see you. I can rest easy
tonight knowing that the citadels of Sterling and Sterling are so
competently guarded.” He was teasing her and she loved it. Many
people took Effie for granted. She basked in whatever attention she
could get.

“Thank you, sir.” She sat down smartly to dispatch an
incoming call, then looked up at him with bright eyes. “Things are
going very well here, sir. Very well indeed. That young Mr. Freeman
knows just what he's doing. My bonus was up ten percent last year.
Just imagine! Perhaps they should have cleaned out the old partners
a long time ago.”

T.S. agreed silently. “It's actually Preston Freeman
that I've come to see. Without an appointment, I'm afraid.” He gave
her his best smile. Even as an old friend, he was pushing his luck
to ask to see the managing partner of America's oldest and largest
private bank without an appointment.

The smile worked. “I'll call Helen and see what we
can do.” Effie set to work briskly, and within a few minutes T.S.
was being ushered by an elegantly groomed partner's secretary to
the
sanctum sanctorum
itself: the Partners' Room of Sterling
& Sterling. Stepping inside was like entering a past century.
Rolltop desks were lined up in homage before a huge marble
fireplace topped by an enormous oil painting of the firm's founder
and his four myopic sons. The silence was profound. Not even the
soft clatter of fingers on computer keyboards broke the hush—the
only modern accoutrements allowed in the room were telephones.

Not that it mattered. The rolltop desks were empty.
They always were these days. Modern finance had intervened and the
partners were always gone: gone to Geneva, Tokyo, Luxembourg, São
Paulo, or somewhere beyond. Barring a trip, they were usually
upstairs in a department where they had access to computers and
could get some damn work done. Thus, with a thin veneer of
pretense, had Sterling & Sterling dealt with the march of
time.

“Mr. Freeman converted Conference Room Three into his
office,” the secretary explained briskly. T.S. recognized her but
could not recall her last name. How profoundly life could change in
a matter of months.

No wonder the new managing partner needed more room.
The trim middle-aged man sat behind an enormous desk, engrossed in
paperwork. The desk was a huge, leather-topped affair given to the
firm by an Indian prince one hundred and fifty years earlier. Its
stuffed elephant-feet legs had finally been replaced in the late
seventies, when client outrage at the endangerment of species had
reached its peak (and Sterling & Sterling had landed the
Save Our Animals
account). Surrounding this traditional seat
of power were computer terminals, so numerous that T.S. felt as if
he were part of a multimedia display. Each computer scrolled
constant information on one of the world's major financial markets,
interspersed with local news for whatever country was being
tracked. Preston Freeman literally did not have to lift a finger.
All he had to do was raise an eyebrow to check events in any
potentially profitable corner of the world.

T.S. stood before the preoccupied man and gently
cleared his throat. The partner looked up in surprise. He was
perpetually trying to figure out a way to make a job bigger, a
transaction greater, a deal more luminous than it at first
appeared. He was the king of cross-selling financial services and a
genius at it, too. Even more rare, he was an honest genius. In
fact, everything at Sterling & Sterling—always—was aboveboard.
The bank's reputation was its single greatest asset.

“T.S.” Preston Freeman rose from his chair and
extended a hand. His smile was genuine, as it should have been—T.S.
had once saved his bacon and was largely responsible for his being
head of the firm today. “What can I do for you? It has been a
while, hasn't it?”

T.S. agreed and settled down in the visitor's chair,
a lush green-leather contraption with brass studs peppering its
surface and carved horn armrests. Everything at Sterling &
Sterling reeked of animal sacrifice, he realized suddenly. Didn't
anyone ever just give the firm a nice set of silver?

“I need some information,” T.S. explained without
preamble. Preston Freeman was too busy and too astute to appreciate
being bushwhacked from behind. “It's about a friend of my aunt's.”
He explained the situation, including Max's death. Freeman nodded
—he'd read about it in the news section of his computer information
network. “I think there was a representative from Sterling and
Sterling at the funeral,” T.S. continued, acutely aware that he had
suddenly snagged the managing partner's undivided attention. He was
also uncomfortably reminded that he was perilously close to asking
Freeman to commit the ultimate indiscretion: betrayal of a client's
confidence.

“It's a personal matter,” T.S. hurried on. “Hard to
explain. My aunt is obsessed.” He spread his hands and shrugged,
hoping that Freeman remembered Auntie Lil. It would render an
explanation unnecessary.

“I've met your aunt,” Freeman agreed amiably, and
nodded for T.S. to continue.

“I'm wondering if Max Rosenbloom or Max Rose Fashions
was a client here,” T.S. finished. “No details, of course, I could
never ask you to”—he coughed nervously—“betray any client 
confidences.”          

Oh hell, he was out of practice when it came to
discreet conversation, a side effect from hanging out with Auntie
Lil. He let his words trail off and waited uncomfortably to be
rescued by Freeman.

“I'm certain he was a client,” the partner admitted.
“I see no reason why that should not be public knowledge. We
handled a number of transactions for his firm in our corporate
finance area when I was there full-time.” Freeman swiveled in his
chair to a nearby terminal and moved his fingers rapidly over the
keys. Screens faded, new ones appeared, instructions were typed,
and lists of names began to scroll with a greenish glow. “We did
work for his firm several years ago and— ” Suddenly he stopped and
sat up straight. He briskly shut off the computer and turned back
to T.S., his friendly manner a shade cooler. “I have erred. There
may be a confidential matter involving Max Rose Fashions currently
in play here at the firm. I must ask you to respect the
confidentiality of that information. However...” Freeman's eyes
shifted to the telephone and he hesitated, curiosity batting with
discretion. But even financial geniuses are human. Curiosity
won.