The Sirena Quest (2 page)

Chapter Two

Two hours later, Lou handed Brenda Harris his marked-up final draft of the Donohue brief.

“If you have any questions,” he told her, “call me at home. I'm coaching a Little League game tonight, but I'll be home by nine. If you need me before then, you can try my cell phone. I'll have it with me at the game.”

She nodded solemnly and reached for the draft. Brenda was a second-year associate from the University of Chicago—frizzy red hair, wire-rim glasses, thin, intense. Like many younger associates at Rosen & O'Malley, she worked late most nights and was down at the office at least one full day each weekend.

She looked up from the draft as Lou turned to leave. A moment later, she leaned back in her chair with a wistful expression.

It was an expression Lou tended to evoke in women, and not just those who knew about his situation. He was a tall, good-looking guy who kept in shape by running four miles each morning and playing basketball in the bar association league. During a rowdy secretaries-only gathering after the firm's Christmas party last year, they voted his the best butt in the firm.

Butts aside, women loved his boyish smile and his intelligent brown eyes and the way his thick dark hair was tousled from a habit of running his fingers through it as he concentrated. But what charmed many of them the most was the vulnerability they sensed beneath that superlawyer persona.

As Lou reached the main reception area, he heard the unmistakable chortle of Ben Schwartz. The silver-haired partner was standing by the elevator with Cindi Shields, one of the firm's paralegals. She was giggling at something Ben had told her.

“Ah, Louis.” Schwartz gave him a wink. “I was just imparting the wisdom of the ages to our lovely young Cynthia.”

With his white handlebar mustache and bronze tan, Ben had the look of a well-groomed satyr.

“What's Ben's gem tonight?” Lou asked her.

She giggled again. “He is
so
bad.”

Cindi had permed blonde hair, blue eyes, a perpetual tan, and a wardrobe selected to highlight her full breasts and long legs. Tonight she had on a short black skirt, a silky white blouse, black suspenders, and spike heels. The suspenders ran directly over the center of each breast.

Ben was grinning. “A riddle worthy of the Sphinx, Louis. Why do you need one million sperm to fertilize just one egg?”

Lou shrugged. “No idea.”

Ben looked at Cindi. “Enlighten him, my dear.”

She leaned toward Lou, brushing her right breast against his upper arm as she put her hand on his elbow. “Because none of them will ask for directions.”

Lou smiled. Yet another from Ben's anthology of cornball dirty jokes.

Ben Schwartz had been at Rosen & O'Malley for almost fifty years. Now the firm's oldest partner, he was the polar opposite of Sidney Rosen, the founding partner.

Sidney Rosen, a brilliant Russian immigrant, arrived in St. Louis penniless in 1916 and worked his way through college and night law school. From the Depression years until a heart attack felled him in his office in 1967, Rosen had crafted corporate structures and estate plans of Byzantine complexity for his Jewish merchant clients. In the photographic portrait of him hanging in the firm's large conference room, Rosen stares into the camera, a thick cigar clenched between his teeth, his scowl amplified by the dark bushy eyebrows that joined above a tomahawk nose. The Sidney Rosen you saw was the Sidney Rosen you got: a shrewd and fiercely puritanical man who married late in life, never had children, and devoted his evenings and weekends to work on behalf of numerous Jewish philanthropic organizations.

By contrast, Ben Schwartz's principal “community service” was his term as president of Briarcliff Country Club back in the 1960s—back when it was
the
exclusive Jewish country club. Back before, as he once told Lou, “we shamelessly lined our coffers with initiation gelt from real estate developers, shoe peddlers, and other
Galitzianers
.”

Though brilliant by even Sidney Rosen standards—between his Yale undergraduate days and his law degree from Columbia University, Ben Schwartz had spent two years at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar—he had long since decided that having the law as your mistress was far less appealing than having a mistress as your mistress. He entertained clients at the horse tracks and casinos, kept a stocked bar in his office, had been named co-respondent in the celebrated Singer divorce, and had s
htupped
Judge Milton Abrams' wife Peggy every Wednesday afternoon in Room 402 at the Chase Park Plaza while handling a lengthy will dispute before His Honor.

Even in his self-described dotage, suffering from bourbon-induced impotence, Schwartz continued to escort the lovelier young paralegals and secretaries up to his secret “bachelor pad” at the Mansion House apartment complex overlooking the Mississippi River.

His erectile problems had not dampened his ardor. “I may not always have a hot dog,” he once told Lou, “but I can still lick the mustard jar.”

His wife Beatrice—a plump regal presence at charity balls around town—affected ignorance of her husband's philandering.

As Lou and the other two stepped onto the elevator, Schwartz explained that Cindi was joining him for dinner at Faust's in the Adam's Mark, just down the block.

And just across the street from your place at the Mansion House
, Lou added to himself, remembering the weight of Cindi's breast against his arm. The younger lawyers hung around her office like dogs in heat, jostling for position and getting nowhere, failing to grasp that her target demographic was at least ten years older and several hundred thousand dollars a year beyond them.

Schwartz checked his wristwatch. “Louis, my boy, you calling it a night so soon?”

“Got a game in a half-hour.”

“Ah, yes.” Schwartz turned to Cindi. “Coach Solomon. The Connie Mack of the Little Leagues. Did you know that Louis named his son after his boyhood hero, Ken Boyer?”

Cindi flashed her 200-watt smile at Lou. “Really?”

Lou shrugged, willing to bet his next mortgage payment that she'd never heard of Ken Boyer.

They said their good-byes on the first floor. Lou headed toward the front exit while Schwartz and Cindi headed toward the side entrance. Her giggle made him turn back. She was leaning against Schwartz as they walked, her high heels clicking on the marble floor. Schwartz placed his arm around her, and his hand came to rest on her swaying hips. As she passed through the revolving door into the sunlight, her breasts were silhouetted through her blouse.

Lou walked south along Broadway past the Old Courthouse and Tony's restaurant. The Arch shimmered in the early-evening sun. Ahead to his right stood Busch Stadium. The Cardinals were in town tonight, and most in the arriving crowd wore something red—red shorts, a red baseball cap, a shirt with the birds-on-the-bat logo.

He walked up several flights of stairs at the Stadium East Garage, brushing past the fans coming down, mostly families.

Lots of mothers.

Mothers with kids. Mothers with husbands.

Everywhere, mothers.

He paused on the stairs, leaning against the rail, vaguely aware of people moving past him. It was as if a locked vault somewhere in his mind had sprung open. He started up the stairs again, forcing the vault closed.

Five minutes later, he was turning onto the entrance ramp to Highway 40. He checked his watch. The Little League game started in thirty minutes. Kenny would be there already. Another parent was bringing him.

Lou smiled as he loosened his tie. No time to change, but that was okay. He could feel the day's tensions ease as he began putting together the starting lineup in his head. He unconsciously reached for a pen in his shirt pocket, and when he did he felt the crinkle of the folded message slip. He pulled it out of his pocket, unfolded it, and reread Ray's message. Glancing at the telephone number, he punched it up on his Motorola cell phone, hoping he had reception, which tended to be iffy with these portable phones. Ray's secretary answered and put him on hold.

Just as Lou passed under the Science Center walkway that spanned the highway, Ray came on the line.

“Hey, Solomon, you got any trials the next two weeks?”

Lou squinted as he tried to remember his calendar. Two Little League games, a deposition, several client meetings, no trials.

“Nope.”

“Excellent. We got a slight change of plans, buddy.”

“Oh?”

“I'll fill you in tomorrow night. We're catching the morning flight to St. Louis. It gets in around five.”

“Who's we?”

“I'm bringing Brandi along. We're staying at the Marriott downtown. She's going to go spend some time with her family in Peoria after we're through.”

Lou changed lanes as he approached the I-170 exit.

He asked, “What's happening in St. Louis?”

“Got to meet some money boys about refinancing one of the shopping malls, but that's just a tax excuse for Uncle Sam.” Ray paused, and when he spoke again his voice was low. “I may have a lead.”

“On what?”

“Sirena.”

Lou drove on in silence for several seconds.

“Really?”

“Maybe.”

Ray said something more, but his voice broke up in static.

“Say that again,” Lou said.

“Been sitting on it for about a year. Then I saw that thing in the alumni magazine. About all that money. You see it?”

“Yep.”

“Two mill for the finders. And then
People
magazine put up another mill for the story rights. Got me thinking. Had one of my people do some calling around. Could be just a wild goose chase, but I figure what the hell? It's worth a shot.”

Lou asked, “What did you find?”

“I'll tell you tomorrow. Meet you in the hotel bar around six-thirty. Gotta go, buddy.”

Chapter Three

Lou let the cat out around midnight and made his final rounds. Kenny was scrunched against the wall, the bed sheets tangled around his feet, a Calvin and Hobbes book on the bed near his pillow. Lou straightened the sheets, put the book on the nightstand, and kissed his son gently on the forehead.

“Beautiful catch tonight, champ,” he whispered.

Kenny shifted in his sleep and scowled.

Lou glanced around the darkened room. Kenny's backpack hung from the closet doorknob. He carried it to the hallway and searched through it for school announcements and Kenny's work papers. He found some of each, stepped back in the bedroom, re-hung the backpack, and moved back in the hallway to see what Kenny had brought home:

There was a permission slip for a field trip to the Missouri Botanical Gardens next week, along with a note from Kenny's teacher seeking parent volunteers. Lou had helped chaperon Kenny's field trip to the zoo—the only father among a group of mothers—but Kenny had been pleased.

Next was a lunch card reminder:

Your child has only $2.35 on his/her lunch account.
Please send a check for $20.00.

Lou folded the reminder slip and put it in his pocket.

There were three math work papers, each with a happy face and a 100 at the top. A spelling test. Kenny had missed two words: Europe (Europ) and Portugal (Portugle). He hadn't mentioned the test results to Lou, but he must have been disappointed. He was so excited when he got a perfect score. Lou felt a pang of guilt. They usually practiced Kenny's spelling list the night before the test, but Lou had been working late on the Donohue appeal and hadn't gotten home until after Kenny was asleep.

Next stop: Katie's room.

She was asleep on her back, her arms folded neatly over her stomach. Lou looked closer in the dim light. Her arms were actually folded over a large book, which was open and face down on her stomach. Lou carefully slid the book out from beneath her hands and held it so that the cover would catch the light from the hall.

He smiled.

One of his high school yearbooks. He closed it, using his index finger to keep her place until he could find a bookmark. He kissed her softly on the bridge of her nose.

On the floor by her door was her social studies textbook, open to what appeared to be a unit on France. He could make out a photograph of the Eiffel Tower and another of an elderly man in a beret carrying two baguettes under his arm. Lou picked up the textbook and slipped it into her backpack, which was resting against the back of her desk chair.

He paused in the doorway for a moment to look at his daughter. As he did, he remembered back to when Katie was an infant, back to that night he awoke in the wee hours for no particular reason. Unable to fall back asleep, he'd gone into Katie's bedroom to stand over her cradle. As he watched his tiny baby girl sleep, he'd had a sudden vision of her as an old woman, bent with age, standing at a busy street corner as traffic whizzed by, confused and afraid. When Andi came into the room looking for him, he was still standing at the crib, tears streaming down his face, grieving over the vision of his baby girl grown old and helpless and without a father to protect her.

She was in fifth grade now, her final year of elementary school. Last Tuesday night he'd gone to parent orientation for the middle school. As he listened to the principal, he'd suddenly realized that this phase of Katie's years was coming to an end. Life in middle school would be much closer to life in high school—changing classes every hour, hall lockers, homeroom. He'd left the orientation session gloomy. His baby daughter was growing up.

As Lou walked down the hall toward the master bedroom his mind drifted from the Eiffel Tower in Katie's textbook to French cooking to Julia Child to Faust's restaurant to the elevator ride with Ben Schwartz and Cindi Shields. Schwartz's licking-the-mustard-jar joke metamorphosed into a steamy image of Cindi naked on Schwartz's bed, knees raised, hands cupping her full breasts, nipples taut, back arched, as Schwartz, leering in anticipation, placed his hands on her knees and lowered his head between those firm tanned thighs.

He shook his head, trying to clear the image as he sat on the edge of his bed. More than once since she'd joined the firm, Cindi had given him an obvious hint that she was his for the asking. He'd passed. His life was complicated enough without adding sport fucking to the schedule, especially with a coworker.

There were women, of course, including two—an in-house counsel at Monsanto and an anesthesiologist at Barnes Hospital. Both were at an age (twenty-eight for the lawyer; thirty for the doctor) and stage of life where they were interested in dinner, a movie, and sex—especially sex—but not commitment, which was okay with Lou, at least for now.

As he sat in the dark, his thoughts drifted to Ray's arrival tomorrow night.

He smiled.

A welcome complication. Although Ray's lead was probably a dead end, that was okay. It was a good excuse for them to see each other. After all those years, any excuse was good enough. Last fall they'd ended more than twenty years of silence, dating all the way back to their sophomore year.

Lou looked forward to spending time again with his freshman roommate—even if it was for some dead-end clue.

Then again, he reminded himself, it was always possible that Ray had stumbled onto a real lead. Just because hundreds of others had searched in vain for Sirena didn't mean that she'd never be found. Presumably, she was still out there somewhere.

He glanced over at his nightstand, where the special issue of the Barrett College alumni magazine laid face up. That was the issue Ray had mentioned in the phone call. The cover was the last known photograph of Sirena—the famous black-and-white shot taken at the senior class banquet in June of 1956. Sirena is seated in front of the upperclassmen, all of whom are dressed in black tie and standing at attention, staring solemnly at the unseen camera. She is, as always, seated and gazing into the distance.

As Lou stared at that photograph, he realized that he was still holding the yearbook with his finger saving Katie's place. Last year Katie had found a box in the basement filled with his high school memorabilia: yearbooks, student newspapers, clippings, varsity letters that had once been sewn to his letter jacket, report cards, photographs, SAT scores, programs from various high school sporting events—all stuff his mother had meticulously packed and stored when he left for college. When his parents sold their house eight years ago and moved to Florida, his mother made him take that box (and, to Kenny's delight when he discovered them last year, a shoebox filled with his old baseball cards). Although Katie was still years from high school, she loved looking through his high school mementos. Every few weeks or so she'd scavenge through the box and return from the basement with a new treasure.

He clicked on the reading light on his nightstand and looked at the black cover of the yearbook. The University City High School
Dial
. 1970. His senior year. He smiled. Probably hadn't looked at it since graduation, almost a quarter of a century ago.

In his nightstand drawer he found a bookmark and opened the yearbook to Katie's place. The first thing he saw was the white dress. He took a breath. His vision blurred for a moment before the rest of the photograph came into focus: the girl in the white dress, her escort in the white tuxedo and black bow tie. The girl's dark hair gathered on top of her head. Not even the institutional quality of the photograph could dull her Mediterranean beauty. She had a white corsage on one wrist. Her escort's dark hair flared out into wide sideburns that ended at his jawline. He wore a MAKE LOVE, NOT WAR button on the wide lapel of his tuxedo. They stood side by side, his arm around her waist, both of them smiling into the camera. Behind the couple was a large hand-painted banner: THE JUNIOR PROM COMMITTEE WELCOMES YOU TO “THE LOOK OF LOVE”! Lou read the caption under the photograph:

Junior Prom Queen Andrea Kaplan and her
escort, senior class president Louis Solomon.

At the bottom of the page, beneath the caption and the description of the prom, was a handwritten message in blue ink:

Dear Lou - I'm so glad I got to know you this year!! You're such a groovy guy.

2 Good

2 Be

4 Gotten!

Love ya forever,

Andi XOXOXOXOXOXOX!!!!!

The “i” in Andi was dotted with a daisy.

***

When Lou finally looked up, it was raining. Coming down hard. He placed the bookmark on the page, closed the yearbook, and placed it on the floor next to his nightstand.

He lay awake, listening to the sound of the rain, a steady drumroll against the roof.

It had rained that first night, too. He'd arrived in a thunderstorm, located James Hall on a campus map, slogged across the quad, lugged his footlocker and suitcase up the stairs, and, after a moment's hesitation, knocked on the door to Room 305. No answer. He'd unlocked the door, flipped on the light, and peered around. The outer room consisted of four bare desks and chairs on a scratched linoleum floor. On the far wall were two windows overlooking the quad. A door to the right opened into the bedroom, which consisted of two bunk beds and four banged-up dressers. There were four bare mattresses and no sign of anyone else's luggage. He was the first arrival.

He'd spent that first night alone, turning off the light after he finally finished the letter to Andi that he'd started on the Allegheny Airlines three-stopper from St. Louis to Bradley Airport. He'd lain in bed in the dark, the raindrops thrumming against the window, the muffled sounds of people in the hallway. The room had suddenly been illuminated by a bolt of lightning followed by a crash of thunder that rattled the window panes.

He'd squeezed back tears that first night.
Who was he kidding?
he'd asked himself.
A Jewish kid from Missouri? A public school graduate from the Midwest in this New England enclave of preppies?
What was he doing there?