Killer Smile

Mary crouched closer and turned a sharp piece of wood over with the penlight, like a kid examining driftwood on the beach. The killer had taken whatever papers, if any, Frank had in the desk. The cops would think they were looking for money or petty cash, but she wasn’t buying that either. What could have been in there? She took one last look around at the debris scattered behind the desk but saw nothing that mattered. All the time, she was wondering, if Frank had papers relating to Saracone, where else would they be? Then it hit her.

A safe. Mary rose and started looking behind the certificates and photos. No safe. She remembered that Frank had mentioned a will vault. Was it literal? She searched his bookshelves, behind his books, and through the drawers in a credenza against the wall. No safe or vault. Then she realized she’d been going about it the wrong way. She should just troll the office and see what the killer had destroyed; if he’d found a safe, she’d found a safe. She took a slow once-over of the office again, trying not to breathe the horrible odor or see anything too upsetting, which was a neat trick at a murder scene. But there was nothing. No safe. No vault. Strike one.

She left the office and cast a light around the secretary’s area, then reconsidered. Frank had to have a file room, didn’t he? All lawyers had file rooms, and he had even mentioned one at their meeting. She hurried past the reception area, toward the hallway leading to the parking lot, but right before she got to the hallway was an open door. She flashed the light and walked in, where it smelled oddly rosy. She cast the light around.

A toilet, seat up, and on the back rested a can of pink Glade air freshener. Strike two. She went out again and cast the penlight around the hallway. There it was; another door, halfway open. She went inside and found herself in a room that even smelled tiny and cramped, the air stale with old coffee. She flicked the penlight around her, full circle. A wooden table held a Mr. Coffee coffeemaker and the usual array of cups, sugars, plastic stirrers, and powdered creamers. Mary scanned the file room, pivoting quickly on her heel, and noticed that the room had no windows. Good. She went back to the door, closed it securely, and found a light switch, which she flicked on. Fluorescent panels went on overhead, filling the room with harsh light, which was when she saw it.

A recessed frame in the wall near the baseboard had been completely demolished. White and gray plaster had been cut away, wire mesh wrenched out of shape, and wooden studs in the wall had been cut, as if with a crude saw. Mary knelt before it, examining it. Even an idiot could tell that a safe had been extracted from this spot, like a diseased tooth. Was it the will vault that Frank had mentioned? How had they carried it out? Put it on a dolly and wheeled it? Mary considered it. It would have made more sense than trying to bust it open here, and taking it away would clinch the police theory of a break-in.

Damn. She rose slowly, looking at the file cabinets next to the hole. Banks and banks of them; beige, standard-issue Hons in four-drawer stacks. She set upon the filing cabinet, pulling each drawer out and closing it again. Each drawer contained only case files in legal-size manila folders, suspended on Pendaflex hangers and filed by plaintiff’s name, and she went through the first few. There was nothing remotely suspicious about the files, then Mary had another thought.

She eyed the carefully hand-printed labels in the front of each drawer, starting with Ab- Ar. She took a quick look at the B drawer for Brandolini, but there was no Brandolini file for Amadeo or Theresa. But it was at least possible that there was a Saracone file. Mary scanned the drawers until she reached the S s, then yanked on the third drawer, fourth row: Sa-Su. Inside were more case files, starting with Sabella v. Oregon Avenue Painting and Plastering, and she thumbed through the case files until she reached where Saracone’s would be. There was no manila folder.

She stopped, momentarily stumped. Either there was no case file for Saracone or the killer had taken it, leaving no sign that the file cabinets had been disturbed. Smart. Had he left a sign, the cops would have suspected it was more than a robbery for cash. Mary tried to think what to do next. No safe, no nothing, no sign of anything linking Saracone to Frank.

She felt her shoulders slump. Maybe her Saracone search was a dry hole. Maybe it really had been a robbery and murder. Maybe huckleberries didn’t have superpowers. She sighed audibly and lowered her head, resting it on her arm as it lay on the open file drawer, which was when her gaze fell on the two bottom drawers, after the Z s. BILLING, read the label, with last year’s date, then this year. Of course! Why hadn’t she thought of that? Every lawyer kept a copy of his bills in a separate file, in addition to the copy that would be in the case file, for tax and accounting purposes.

Mary closed the drawer, squatted on the carpet, and pulled out the drawer for last year’s bills. The first manila folder read JANUARY, and the others were the months of the year, in chronological order. She flipped through January, reading bills sent to a variety of South Philly residents and small businesses, most of them for a few thousand dollars. Nothing. Mary paged through February, which was more of the same, then continued through March, April, and May. By June, she was beginning to lose hope, but then she hit the middle of June and stopped cold.

There it was. Right in the middle of the stack. A bill, and under the client name, at the top, it read: Giovanni Saracone. Mary read the bill, which merely stated: Payment on semiannual retainer. The amount – $250,000.

What? A retainer of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars? Mary almost laughed out loud. That was insane! Not only was it way out of line with Frank’s other bills, even her old white-shoe firm, Grun amp; Chase, didn’t have more than a handful of clients with retainers of that magnitude. A case demanding those fees would be in the news every day! What type of case could Frank be handling for Saracone that would justify those fees? And twice a year?

Mary skipped back to the year before that, and thumbed through the bill copies. Again, midway in the pack, on the fifteenth, was a file copy of a bill to Giovanni Saracone. The amount was $250,000. Again, unlike the other bills, not even a brief description of the services rendered. What kind of client accepted that for a retainer accounting? None. Mary could barely contain herself.

What gives? Five hundred grand a year billed to Saracone? For what? For how long? And did it have anything to do with Amadeo? It must have. Here was a link between Saracone and Frank. Mary just didn’t know what it meant. Her gaze shifted to the drawer with even older bills, and it took her only five minutes to find the June and December bills to Saracone, again totaling $500,000. She checked the year before that and the two before that, going back a total of five years. Each year had the same bill copies, coming to half a million dollars for five years. Two and a half million dollars. It bought a lot of softball jerseys. How long had it been going on, and why?

If there had been a Saracone case file, it had been taken, but Mary didn’t think there had been a case involving Saracone at all. Ever. The timing didn’t make sense; most small litigation matters didn’t last that long. And the killers hadn’t thought to look here in the billing files because they didn’t know about them – for once, the bad guys weren’t lawyers. Mary’s thoughts raced ahead. These had to have been some sort of payments from Saracone to Frank, disguised as legal bills. Did Frank know something – maybe about Amadeo’s murder – that Saracone wanted silenced? If so, why not kill him a long time ago? And who invoiced for blackmail?

Mary’s hands trembled as she held the folder. She didn’t want to risk Exhibits A through F disappearing when the bad guys figured out what they’d left behind. She’d lost enough documents for one case, in the drawings. She took the Saracone bill from the file folder, then went back to the other folders and took out all the Saracone bills going back all five years. She stacked the bills, folded them over, and stuck them in her purse; then she replaced the file folders, closed the drawers, and left the file room, turning off the light. Good girls conserved electricity and avoided detection.

She hurried down the hallway, climbed back out of the shattered window, and headed down the street in the rain. She had broken at least one commandment, THOU SHALT NOT STEAL LEGAL BILLS, but she was too jiggered up to question her conduct or even to feel guilty. She clutched her purse protectively to her chest, out of the rain. Because inside were the bills, with a very valuable address.

So she knew exactly where to go next.

Twenty-Three

The thunderstorm showed no signs of letting up, and rain pelted the roof of Mary’s ancient BMW and struck her