If I Should Die Before I Die (2 page)

Bob III had five surviving children, four sons, one daughter, ranging in age from forty-nine to twenty-nine, and a train of grandchildren behind them. Two of the sons and the daughter ran Magister companies and sat on the board. One of them, it had always been assumed, would succeed their father as chairman, but which one?

The answer, at least for the moment, might be: none of them.

Some three years earlier, while traveling in Europe, Bob Magister had suffered a stroke, a mini-version, say a four on the Richter scale, compared to the one which later took him for the count. He had convalesced in a house he owned on the Riviera, attended by an Alsatian nurse. When he came back to New York that fall, the nurse had graduated to “companion,” and about a year and a half later, over the vocal objections of his children, she became Margie Magister.

That was Margie with a hard
g
, Margarethe von Heidrich Magister. Bob III had left her fifty percent of his estate, including the bulk of his shares in Magister Companies. The balance had been divided into fifths and left not to the children but to a series of trusts for their benefit. In other words, the will treated them as though they were still children. Worse, at least for the three who held executive positions in Magister Companies, it made their stepmother their boss.

The challenges, predictably enough, hadn't been long in coming. Several of the children, each represented by a different attorney, had already filed suit to contest the will. Then the siblings—maybe this was also predictable—had begun to squabble among themselves, in full view of the media, and most recently Margie, after spending the summer “in seclusion” and represented by yet another attorney, had countersued two of them for slander.

At first the media, by one of those weird choices which maybe aren't even choices but are dictated by what sells the most papers or gets the most people switching the knobs on their TV sets, had tended to make Margie their heroine. They depicted the children as silver-spoon types, independently wealthy no matter what happened in the courtrooms, whereas the French widow had been born in the aftermath of World War II, in one of the most war-ravaged parts of Europe, of simple origins, had plied her honorable profession in some of the most respected hospitals of Europe, then had devoted herself and her energies, while still young, to a sick and elderly man. That the sick and elderly man happened to be rich couldn't belie the fact that he had loved her, or that she had loved him. Etc., etc.

It was a Cinderella story of sorts. To put it another way, it was as though Margie Magister had won the lottery, the biggest lottery of all. And clearly she deserved it. And now “they” were trying to take it away from her.

Recently, though, the pendulum had begun to swing the other way. Maybe it was the end of her “period of seclusion” that did it. Once Margie was back in the Magister penthouse duplex on Fifth Avenue, the media all but camped out across the street. They criticized her when she wouldn't talk to them, made fun of her accent when she did. She was pictured getting into a limo on Fifth Avenue, “a diminutive figure, her dark and sulky expression half-hidden by bangs,” and her clothes were reported, identified, priced, also that the limo was owned by Magister Companies, and where she went for lunch, who with, what she ate, drank, what it cost. Once the media found out that the “von” in her name was a fake, even though she'd added it over a decade before, they wouldn't let her, or anyone, forget it. And when, after the Magister kids had announced their suits, she hired Roy Barger to represent her, it was—you could feel it—time to take the gloves off. Roy Barger may have been a streetfighter by reputation, but he was also, or had become, a street-fighter for the rich, and his relationship with the media was strictly love-hate.

By the morning I'm talking about, you'd begun to hear people say that Margie's shadowy past had to be hiding something, didn't the fake
von
prove it? Wasn't Alsatian half-German anyway? Maybe she was a Nazi; maybe she was Jewish. In any case, she was foreign, and who knew what she'd been giving Bob III all that time along with the prescribed medication? Whereas the Magister kids, all right, so they'd been born with the proverbial silver spoons, but they were at least Americans, weren't they? Their father's children, weren't they entitled to something?

Evenly divided, maybe even tilting toward the kids.

And either way, the Firm was caught squarely in the middle. And trying hard to duck.

Which is what brought the Counselor into it.

Douglas McClintock, senior partner, was clearly steaming.

“What in hell can we accomplish if Charles isn't here?” he asked, still standing behind his desk.

“Do you want me to leave?” I said, starting to rise from my chair.

“No, I didn't say that,” McClintock answered, waving with one hand as though to brush away the suggestion. He is a small, humorless Scotsman, more or less contemporary to the Counselor and absolutely impeccable. Steel-rimmed glasses, thinning gray hair that looks lacquered to his skull, economical gestures, blue serge, conservative tie over a white and cuff-linked shirt. Every bit the high-level corporate attorney, in sum, with the polished no-nonsense manner to go with it.

“No offense, Revere,” he went on. “This isn't directed at you. But how can we have a strategy session without Charles?”

“I thought the strategy had already been decided,” I said.

“Oh?” he said. “Then you tell me what that is.”

He sat down, steepling his hands on the desk top.

“Do you want it straight?” I said. “Or beating around the bush?”

“Straight, please,” glancing at his watch.

“All right,” I said. “The Magister situation has you—the Firm—caught in the middle. You're counsel to Magister Companies, but you also represent Robert Magister's estate and are one of its executors. The companies are without a head right now, the estate is being sued, you … the Firm in any case … are going to have to testify in court as to the circumstances in which the will was drawn up, and you can't afford to take sides because if you pick wrong, you risk losing one of your biggest clients, which is Magister Companies.”

“In point of fact,” McClintock put in, “the companies aren't without leadership.”

“Sure,” I said. “The board's appointed Young Bob acting chairman.” Robert Worth Magister IV, the oldest son, seemed to be stuck with “Young Bob” even though he was closing in on fifty. “But the board only serves at the whim of the stockholders, and if there's ever a stockholders' vote, you, as executor, are going to have to choose.”

“Unless we resign as executor.”

“Unless you resign as executor,” I repeated. “But I gather that's one option you don't want. It's too bad Magister named you.”

“I always advised him against it,” McClintock said, “but he insisted on us taking care of his personal affairs. He told me that if we wanted to keep the companies as our client, we could damn well draft his wills out of our retainer.”

Maybe, as they say, that's how the rich get richer: by stiffing their attorneys. I'd have bet the Firm had never once dared bill him for personal services.

“I see you understand the situation,” McClintock said. “But what we do about it is another question.”

“The strategy, in other words,” I said.

“Yes.”

“Mr. Camelot tells me you want a settlement. Any settlement will do, you don't care what it is as long as there is one.”

“I never told him that!” McClintock retorted angrily. “We want a fair and equitable solution. Our position is one of strict neutrality.”

“Whatever,” I said, getting a small pleasure from his reaction. “But some kind of settlement. Only you can't go directly to either side, because whichever one you go to will think the others put you up to it. Actually, Mr. Camelot says you already know of a proposition the family's ready to accept.”

“
Some
of the family,” McClintock corrected. “And it's a range, not a proposition. Did he tell you what it is?”

“In substance, yes. Mrs. Magister gets to keep all her personal property. She gives up her shares in the companies. She's guaranteed no less than a million dollars a year. For life.”

“After tax,” McClintock added.

And not bad pay, I thought, for three years' work.

“Only nobody believes she'll accept it,” I said.

“We don't know that,” McClintock said. “It's a start, a point of departure for further negotiation.”

The problem was that nobody was volunteering to take it to Mrs. Magister, not the Firm, not Young Bob's attorney or any of the others representing the family members.

And that, the Counselor guessed, was because of Roy Barger.

McClintock denied this that morning. The Firm wasn't afraid of Roy Barger. What made everybody cautious was that
any
offer taken to Mrs. Magister, no matter what restrictions were put on it, was going to be leaked to the media as long as Roy Barger was involved, and once it was known publicly that the children were ready to settle, the psychological tide would start working against them. Roy Barger, at least by reputation, was a master of manipulation.

Enter Charles Camelot. A like master.

There was a further problem, though. I knew it; McClintock did too. Before the Counselor could talk settlement with Barger, he needed bargaining chips. Leverage in other words, something that would make Barger think twice before he went the route with the case. As if right then, Barger had nothing to gain by getting his client to settle and nothing to lose by going to trial, which would mean a ton of publicity and a fat fee at the end whether he won or lost. We needed something either on Margie Magister or, less likely, on Barger himself. As of right then we had nothing.

Which is where I came in.

A little later, McClintock passed me on to Henry Rand, a tall associate with a prominent Adam's apple who was in his early thirties and well up the ladder toward success in the Firm. Chances seemed good he'd make it the rest of the way: he'd graduated from the right schools, had the right social connections, and had hitched his career to the right star, meaning Doug McClintock. Meanwhile, while he sweated out his progress toward partner, which would give him a cut in the Firm's annual profits, he did most of McClintock's dirty work.

Hank Rand and I spent much of the day going over the Firm's files on Margie Magister. We worked in one of the smaller conference rooms, allegedly so that we wouldn't be interrupted but really, I guessed, because Hank's office was several notches below McClintock's in size and appointments. Hank's secretary, an eager damsel with a big polka-dot bow tie, brought us the papers we needed, plus sandwiches and coffee, plus a Perrier for Hank and a beer for me.

As executors, the Firm had at least formal approval over Margie Magister's expenditures, and from what Hank Rand showed me, the bereaved widow had been spending as though tomorrow would never come, or just in case it didn't. Bendel, Gucci, Cartier, Mark Cross, all of them were there, and art dealers, antiques dealers, and many of the watering holes and eateries around town which survive, or don't, on the largesse of the rich and famous. None of them was going out of business that season, thanks to Margie, and you could say Bob III's death was the first good thing that had happened to New York's pleasure merchants since Imelda Marcos lost her credit cards.

In addition, the Firm controlled Margie's payroll, or “household staff,” the maids and housekeepers and gardeners and cooks and chauffeurs and “personal secretaries” without whom, you had to assume, the bereaved widow couldn't so much as get out of bed. There'd been a heavy dosage of young male employees, I noted, plus a lot of turnover; apparently Margie was hard to satisfy. In addition to names and dollars, to which they were entitled, the Firm had a lot more, and I was glad to see my sometimes accomplice, Bud Fincher, had been making an honest living. Bud runs a medium-sized private investigations agency, one of the better ones around town, and as far as I could tell, he'd done a pretty thorough work-up on the Magister staff, past and present.

“So much for strict neutrality,” I commented to Rand as I went through the paperwork.

He looked at me with a quizzical expression.

“That's what McClintock told me,” I said, quoting: “‘The Firm's position is one of strict neutrality.'”

“Well,” he said huffily, “that's substantially correct. What other position could we take?”

“In that case,” I said, “why aren't we going through the same material on the rest of the family? You've got it, haven't you?”

He hesitated, like he wanted advice on how to answer. But then he thought better of it.

“Off the record?” he said.

I nodded.

“The answer is no,” he said. “But that doesn't mean we couldn't develop it if we wanted to.”

“Of course you could,” I agreed.

The point, though, was that they hadn't. Margie Magister, the Firm had clearly decided, was their target and Roy Barger their enemy.

I took some notes on items I thought could use further investigation, and Rand's bow-tied secretary photocopied some of the documents for me, but the message I took back uptown that afternoon, clear as it was, was one I knew the Counselor wouldn't want to hear.

“Essentially they've got nothing,” I told the Counselor. “They know she's been on a spending spree, that she's got some good-looking young studs on her payroll, also that she's been chasing around with a pretty fast-and-loose crowd recently, but that's about it. Some smoke, but nothing you could light your pipe with.”

The Counselor was in one of his fouler moods. He sat behind his desk, a massive figure in the usual late-afternoon working costume of shirtsleeves, bow tie, and suspenders. He chewed on an unlit pipe while I gave my report, his jawline gleaming in the light. The air-conditioning unit and his pipe smoke had been fighting for control of the atmosphere when I got there. The unit had won, but only temporarily, because when I finished, he kept me sitting there while he fussed with matches, then, failing to relight the old pipe, discarded it and found another, which he stoked with tobacco, then lit. The usual ritual, I thought, but I noticed one detail that wasn't: the bow tie and the suspenders didn't match. In fact, they clashed. The Counselor's Wife, I thought, would have a fit.