No One Rides For Free - Larry Beinhart (8 page)

"Good Christ, no!"
 

"What's all the emphatics for?" I asked.

"That name," he laughed, "at Choate,
Winkler, Higgiston, Hahn & Moore, that name is like Leon
Trotsky's name at a D.A.R. meeting or Ronald Reagan's at an S.D.S.
meeting. Is there still an S.D.S.? Something like that, anyway."

"Really?" I prompted.

"Really. Wood is . . . a traitor to his class. A
worm in the apple, the serpent in the garden and socialized legal
services all rolled into one. Associates who worked for him go
around  telling anyone who'll listen how much work they did for
other partners. And partners, they say things like 'Edmund Who? Oh,
you said Edward, natural mistake, I hardly knew the man.' The guy who
had the space next to him wants to change his office. We're not
talking even guilt by association here, we're talking guilt by
proximity."

"So all your work is straight and safe.
Administering the allowance of profligate children four generations
down from robber baron forebears, doling out the treasured assets of
sweet old biddies from Park Avenue."

"Actually, no."

"No?"

"There can be drama and excitement in Trusts and
Estates."

"Yes! You would never guess who retained us to
put his financial affairs in order and to care for the financial
future of his family, now that he is in the slammer for life . . .
Ricky Sams."

Ricky was hot stuff. There was a semipermanent space
reserved for him on page five of the
New York
Post
. With photo. He got almost as much
coverage as Hero Cops. Once the kingpin of heroin in Harlem, he was
now the finest federal witness since Joseph Valachi. In the world of
canaries, Ricky was the Diva.

"Tsk, tsk, all that dirty money."

"Not," Chip said calmly, "the way we
handle it. Taxes and back taxes are paid. Actually the IRS is being
remarkably fair about penalties and such. I suspect they prefer this
to having everything disappear into the Caymans, Panama and
Lichtenstein. Of course," he said with deep and abiding virtue,
"if that was what Sams wanted, we would not be involved."

"Of course," I grinned.

"Actually," he mused, "it's kind of
funny, I guess, just how straight everything is. On the up-and-up.
Which reminds me, everything I've said is a matter of public record.
I have divulged nothing protected by the attorney-client privilege. I
am no Edmund Who."

"Right. You're a good guy," I said.

"And I would have
beat you if it weren't for that goddamn new racket."

* * *

Like something shipped up on a riverboat from New
Orleans, there is a section of buildings on the south side of Tenth
Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenue, connected by an ironwork
balcony. The north side of the street, where Christina Wood lived,
was all big, impressive, well-cared-for brownstones, with fancy
doors, stone and ironwork. All in all, one of the prettiest streets
in a city that often lacks for prettiness.

I rang her bell. There was no answer. My watch said
3:03. Well, I had been warned. I leaned against the stoop and opened
my
Times
, passing the
time like any well-bred New Yorker.

At 3:08 she showed up. She wore headband, sweatshirt
and shorts. She glowed with fresh sweat, youth and health. A tall
woman, vibrant with energy and muscle tone.

"Christina Wood?" I inquired.

"Oh, damn, I'm late. I'm sorry, I really am.
Come on up."

She opened the mailbox with a key tied to her running
shoe, took the apartment keys from the mailbox and opened the inner
door to the building. She lived on top and it was a walk-up. I
followed her, watching all the way. Her shorts rose over her cheeks.
I gave thanks to sportswear designers and the inventor of stairs.

"I'm really sorry, I just had to go out and run
. . . this is embarrassing. Do you mind if I take a quick shower?
Would you like a drink while you wait? Juice? Beer? Anything?"

"Beer," I said.

I sat down and said beer thinking scotch and there
by God
Was my woman just as I had
always known she would be
And I went
over to her and she said come home with me

Like that . . .

Climbing the stairs behind her,
watching . . .
Wondering how God
could have gotten it all into this little tail . . .
(
He
Was Alone
(AS IN REALITY)
Kenneth Patchen
Collected Works
All
following quotes the same.)

There was no reason for resonance, but the chord was
struck, and it echoed down the corridors of my life, plucking out the
poem that I read to the girl with black hair and blue eyes on the
hill above the river when I was nineteen and moonstruck and life was
blueberry pie.

I drank my beer and hoped the ringing would die down.
She came out of the shower in jeans that were not too tight, with a
bra beneath a plain cotton shirt, without makeup, and her hair
toweled dry. There was no attempt to be provocative, but the ringing
went on.

"Miss Wood," I said.

She said "Christina," and there by God was
my woman. . ."Fine," Isaid, "I'm Tony" . . .just
as I had always known she would be.

She said my name, and I was glad to hear it in her
mouth.

"Your attorney, Mr. Haven, asked me to look into
your father's death."

"After he was forced into it. Do you know that?"

"How was that?"

"They didn't want to do it. To them I'm just an
hysterical child. I hired another law firm. They claimed that there
was a conflict of interest; I knew there was a conflict of interest.
They persecuted Daddy, not prosecuted, persecuted. Now they represent
the estate and they 're blocking an investigation into who killed
him. I still think it's not right for them to represent the estate,
but as long as they do what I want in the important things, then I'm
willing to let it go."

"Legal battles are expensive."

"They sure are, and until the estate is settled,
which could be years and years, I can't really afford that either, "
she said.

Her eyes were green, soft green, sea green.

"I'm glad that the estate is paying then; I feel
better if my clients can afford me."

"I'm not sure I am," she said with real
suspicion in her voice. "Who are you working for, them or me?"

"
For you." Forever and always.

"So where do we start?" she asked in a
businesslike way. It was only the two of us in that room there, and
it was only doing business that could save us. So we did.

"We've both seen the police report," I
said. "It's straight-forward; they did their job. Autopsy and
forensics are pretty complete, very complete. They questioned who
there was to question and came up empty. Now we need a reason to look
past that, to look for more." Just because she had a beautiful
bottom was not supposed to be sufficient reason, but sometimes it is.

She asked me if I knew the circumstances that had
brought I her father to Virginia.

I did, and I said so. "But do you know of any
specific reason, any motivation, any place to start?"

"
Everyone wanted to be rid of him."

"Who is everyone?"
 
"Everyone, dammit, all of them. All those
senior partners, at that high-and-mighty stuffed-shirt law firm.
Someone had besmirched their sacred name. Sacrilege, sacrilege. Or
maybe he didn't steal all that money by himself. It was a lot of
money, it went on a long time without anyone noticing. Could Daddy
have done all that alone? Yes, I admit it, it's part of the record.
He was innocent until proven guilty and they did prove it and my
father was a thief." She tried to hold her face rigid. She
swallowed. "Poor man. He always, always tried too hard."

She got up and rushed to the bathroom. I did not hold
her while she cried her eyes out. I sipped my beer and waited while
she washed her face.

"I'm sorry," she said when she came back.

"Don't be, it's OK," was all I said. There
had to be men in her life to say everything I wanted to say. Had to
be. I had finished my beer. She went into the kitchen and brought out
two more, one for me, one for her, and I had had her figured for
designer water with a twist of lime.

"I'm ready," she said after she took a
swallow.

"Good, go on."

"I started to say, maybe he had someone else. I
mean, it must be hard to steal eight million dollars all by
yourself."

She almost giggled. Her moods were shifting fast.
Somewhere between the grief-stricken daughter and the business-like
young lady, waiting behind them both, was the wayward child who could
not be located in Ibiza. And she was delicious. "I mean, think
about stealing that much money, and all by yourself."

"Anyone else, besides this unknown party?"

"You don't think much of the idea, do you?"
she said resentfully.

"I think that if there was someone else, he
would have traded him in, used him to plea-bargain. I mean this is a
guy who tried to save himself by testifying to the SEC."

"Maybe, but maybe not. He only turned on the
people who turned on him."

If she wanted to preserve a thread of decency in her
father, that I didn't think he was capable of, all I could do was
admire her loyalty.

"Anyone else?" I asked.

"Goreman," she said, "Charlie Goreman.
Daddy hated him at the end. He owed Daddy a lot. He owed Daddy
everything, and he didn't lift a finger to save him."

"How's that?"

"I don't know the details, but I know that Daddy
saved him during the war; he said that Uncle Charlie wouldn't even be
alive today if it weren't for him."

"Uncle Charlie?"

"That's what I called him when I was growing up.
He doted on little girls or something. And he was close to the
family."

"That makes it sound like he would be the last
person to . . ."

"I don't know. If you think about it, Charles
Goreman went awfully far, awfully fast. Can anyone get that far that
fast and be totally legitimate? Maybe Daddy knew something about him.
I heard he threatened him at the trial."

"
Were you at the trial?"

"No," she said, and drank her beer quickly.

"
How come?"

She leaned away from the question and said, "And
it could have been almost anyone of that top group over at Over &
l East. Daddy knew almost everything about everybody. [ Maybe someone
else had a big dirty secret that they were afraid my father would
talk about. There are so many people it could have been."

"
Maybe you're just trying to make his death
meaningful," I said.

"I thought about that—I'm so angry, I want to
blame somebody or something. I had an uncle who died, and my aunt
kept saying it was the doctor's fault, that the doctor screwed up;
and I've heard people talk about it was God's will, but they never
sound like they believe that ....

"
But if he really was killed on purpose, to keep
him quiet, then it would be a smart thing to do to make it look like
a mugging. If I were going to kill someone and I don't think I could
and I wanted to be smart about it and not get caught, a good way
would be to make it look exactly the way this did, the way this does.
Sometimes paranoids have real enemies."

"
The last time I thought there were people out
to get me," I said, "there were."

"Thank you," she said.

"But what I still need is a place to start
looking for a motive."

"When he was arrested, and during the trial, and
particularly when they sentenced him to that place, he was making
statements, threats .... "

"Yeah, I know about that. And a lot of people
have said a lot worse about me, and it's not something to worry about
unless the guy who makes the threats has the goods and the guts to
back it up. So if someone was worried enough to kill your father, it
was because your father had the goods and they believed that he had
the will to use it. And nobody seems to know what that could have
been."

"I'm sorry, I don't know. I'm sorry."

"By the way, " I asked, "was your
father involved in anything in South America? In Colombia?"

"Not that I know of. Why?"

"What about cocaine?"

"Daddy! Cocaine!" She sounded as
incredulous as Choate Haven had. "Oh Lord, no way."

"Not even strictly as a money thing?"

"Why are you asking?"

"Would he?"

"I can't, I guess I'm not allowed to say no."
Her lovely face broke again and she turned to the bathroom.

"I'm . . . sorry," I said to her retreating
back.

I heard the splash of water as she rinsed her face.
"Why? Why did you say that?" she said when she came out.
"Is it to finish, finish destroying what's left of him?"