“Really?” Rita said. “Perhaps Mort was not being entirely open and honest with me.”
“I’m shocked,” I said.
The waiter came for our orders, we gave them, and Rita asked for another martini.
“Mort says he brushed Prince off,” Rita said. “Says if they slander him, he should give Mort a call.”
“Whatever the truth, it scared Walford off,” I said.
“And if somebody checked on him,” Rita said, “he had consulted Lloyd, and Lloyd had, sort of, agreed to represent him.”
“Yep,” I said. “Who was the client who sent Prince to Lloyd?”
“He said it was something called the Herzberg Foundation. Mort was evasive as to what it was. All I could get was that it was something to do with the Holocaust. And it might have been earlier than I thought. He was vague on that, too. I frankly don’t think he wanted to tell me anything,” Rita said, and smiled. “But you know how I can be.”
“I do,” I said. “He is their legal counsel?”
“Yes,” Rita said. “He seems happy with that. I gather he’s on retainer.”
“Is he a stand-up guy?” I said.
“Mort? Stand-up. Yes,” Rita said. “I’d say he is. But that would be true only if he were standing up for Mort.”
I nodded.
“The two guys who ambushed me both had an Auschwitz ID number tattooed on their arm,” I said.
“My God, Auschwitz was sixty years ago,” Rita said.
“More,” I said.
“I don’t do math,” Rita said. “I’m a girl.”
“And the world is a better place for it,” I said.
“Of course it is,” Rita said. “How old were these guys?”
“Late thirties,” I said. “They both had the same number.”
“So it’s, like, symbolic,” Rita said.
“Or something,” I said. “Now I see a guy visiting Prince’s old girlfriend, and he’s driving a car registered to a lawyer who represents some kind of Holocaust foundation.”
“Convoluted,” Rita said.
“It is,” I said.
“But you can’t ignore it,” Rita said.
“No, I can’t.”
“Is it a real serial number,” Rita said. “The tattoo?”
“It looks right,” I said. “You know, the right amount of numbers and such.”
“Maybe it can be traced.”
“Quirk’s working on that,” I said.
“You ID’d the two guys who tried to kill you?”
“Not yet.”
“You got any physical evidence linking the attempt on you to the Prince killing?”
“No.”
“But you know it is,” Rita said.
“Yes,” I said. “You were a prosecutor. You know when you know.”
“I remember,” Rita said.
“Prince was Jewish,” I said. “His real name, according to his wife, was Ascher Prinz. His father was in a concentration camp.”
“Which one?”
“His wife doesn’t know,” I said. “They all sound the same.”
“The concentration camps all sound the same?”
“What she told me,” I said. “She’s a poet.”
“The hell she is,” Rita said.
“She’s writing an epic poem, she says, about how her husband’s death has impacted her.”
“Can’t wait,” Rita said.
I was having a lobster club sandwich. Rita had a big plate of wienerschnitzel and a glass of wine. How she could drink two martinis and a glass of Riesling and eat a large plate of fried veal for lunch was a puzzle to
