the water and the smell of salt in the air. There are no lights visible on the upper floors here either, but I see what appears to be the front entrance about fifty yards up the street.
I turn the collar up on my suit coat, put my hands in my pockets, and walk as the wind whips the cuffs on my pant legs.
As I approach I see the street number over the front door, the same number that Nick entered in his memo pad. There is no mistake. It’s the right address. But whoever Nick visited is gone. The place is empty. A large sign taped to the inside of the glass double doors in front reads:
AVAILABLE FOR LEASE
CHAPTER TWENTY
It is mid-morning, Thursday, and as I pull into the underground structure at Susan Glendenin’s downtown office, I recognize the large, dark blue, sixties-vintage Lincoln parked a few spaces away.
This car, the size of a boat, once belonged to Nick. Actually it would be more accurate to say that the car possessed him.
The Lincoln convertible with a folding hardtop that slipped into the trunk was an experiment by Ford. Only four of them were ever made, all handed out to high executives for testing. For whatever reason, production never got off the ground, with the result that the car and its innovations died on the drawing boards.
Nick picked it up in the early eighties as part of his fees from a client who got caught moving drugs under the folded hardtop in the trunk. This was before the government seized such property.
The car got more attention than most beauty queens. With the top down it looks amazingly like the presidential limo in which Kennedy was assassinated, and in fact it was used once in a major motion picture to re- create the scene. Nick was sure he had the only remaining vehicle of its kind still on the road. He worshiped it, shrouded and protected it like the Israelites with the Ark of the Covenant. For this reason, Margaret wound her lawyers up and took particular pleasure in stripping it from him in the divorce.
This I know because each time I met him over drinks or a meal he would revisit this like a slow-mo instant replay of some blindsided, bone-jarring hit in the Super Bowl. Of all the sharp and painful impacts of his domestic crash, the loss of these prized wheels seemed the sharpest and most painful of all. The worst part was that Margaret was driving his big blue baby all over town, refusing to sell it, parking it in tight spaces at the grocery store just to put dents in the doors, so the next time Nick saw it he could count them. Margaret is apparently already here waiting for me upstairs.
It took three days in Capital City to finish up my business while Sarah stayed with friends. Harry and I can’t seem to let the old office go, so we have subleased most of the space out to two young lawyers and retained a single office for ourselves to share.
This morning when I get back, Harry is feeling somewhat self-satisfied, having done his measure of good works for the day. We have mailed a hefty check for Dana’s fees, to Nick’s daughter, Laura, along with a letter explaining that the money is from Nick’s estate.
Harry is also gloating over an article that appeared two days ago in the Trib. It’s a boiled-down version of Adam’s newsletter, crediting us for settling with the carrier. It was the lead on a page-two story reporting that the police still have no suspects in the killings. Newspapers and two television stations have been calling the office asking questions and requesting on-camera interviews. Adam is making the most of the settlement. At this point the press will take anything to fill the news void in a double murder investigation that seems to be going nowhere.
So far, for some reason, the cops have made no effort to question Espinoza. Why they would ignore him, after Harry’s tip from his friend in the D.A.’s office, I don’t know, but they would have to come through me to get to him, and no one has tried.
I have asked Susan Glendenin for a meeting with Margaret Rush this morning for one reason. It’s possible that Margaret may have some answers to one of the more puzzling riddles concerning Nick’s last year, his business dealing with Metz.
I take the garage elevator up to five. When I get there, the office air-conditioning is running on overtime. The city has been in the grip of a record-breaking hot spell for five days, with breezes wafting out of the desert like the Sahara.
As I enter reception with one finger hooked in the collar of my suit coat, holding it like a sack over my shoulder, I notice that Susan’s door is closed. She is cloistered with Margaret, so after the secretary tells them I am here, I wait a couple of minutes before Susan opens the door.
She’s cheerful as ever. She has facilitated this meeting out of natural graciousness and because it is the reasonable thing to do. Glendenin is the kind of lawyer who would make courts and judges obsolete if only her opponents would show the same levelheaded good sense.
“How are you, Paul?”
“Fine.”
“Still hot out there?”
“Like a torch.”
“How about something cold to drink?”
“Water sounds great.”
“Come on in.”
She orders up some iced bottled water from the secretary, then leads me into her office.
As I enter, Margaret is seated in one of the client chairs, facing away from me. She doesn’t turn to look or greet me until Susan makes it obvious that to ignore me might be impolite.
“Margaret, I think you know Paul Madriani?”
She turns her head, looking down, a tight smile and a nod is all I get. She immediately returns her gaze to the other side of the desk where Susan is now settling into her leather BodyBilt, with its high headrest and custom swivel arms. Lawyers now prize their executive chairs in the way they did their Porsches a decade ago, testing the levers of the air cylinder that control height and the tension of the back support for ride as if they are cruising at light speed toward the new world of geriatrics.
I take the other client chair and hope that Margaret’s freeze will thaw before my ice water arrives.
“I have been meeting with Margaret,” says Susan, “and discussing your request. She has agreed to answer whatever questions she can but with certain ground rules.”
“I see.”
“She does not wish to talk about the divorce or the property settlement agreement with her former husband. She would also prefer that we not discuss his subsequent marriage, if at all possible.”
“I understand.” Susan has been able to get this meeting only by telling Margaret that Dana was forced to compromise her position on the insurance settlement. This seems to have touched something profound and gratifying within Margaret: revenge.
If she knew that Dana forged checks from the firm’s trust account, she would lay rubber with big blue, scorching the asphalt all the way up Broadway to get the news to the cops while it was fresh. No one knows this except Adam and me, along with a few minions in his office who have pledged an oath of silence, collateralized by their careers.
“Perhaps I should start,” I say. The door behind us opens and the secretary enters with a tray, glasses, and three large plastic bottles of water from the refrigerator each sweating with condensation. I wait until she leaves to pick up the conversation.
“The questions I have regard what appear to have been business dealings that Nick had during the last twelve to eighteen months of his life,” I say.
“Then you’re talking to the wrong person,” says Margaret. She’s still not looking at me. I have committed the unpardonable sin of being a friend of Nick’s.
“Perhaps, but I thought you might have heard something, maybe from others.” What I am gambling on is that her lawyers in the divorce turned over every rock.
“Fine. What do you want to know?”
