“I guess you’re right.”
“I have some places that would be perfect for you.” She whipped a card out of her portfolio, offered it to me. “If you’re interested, give me a call.”
“I don’t think I really want to buy something right now.”
“Still, give me a call. I’m sure we could work out something. Now, why don’t you go up and see how your partner’s getting along.”
I found Beth leaning on a sill, peering out a window in a small, closetlike room with a sloped ceiling on the third floor. There was enough room for a chair or a desk, maybe, but not enough room for both.
“Nice home office,” I said.
“Look at the view,” she said.
“What view?”
“If you lean forward and look left and bend your neck just so, you can see the tip of Billy Penn’s hat.”
“Oh, that view.”
“What do you think?”
“I think I don’t have the imagination for this place.”
“I like it.”
“You always had a thing for reclamation projects. That’s why you’re with me.”
“This would be quite a cozy office,” she said.
“Cozy being the operative word.”
“And did you see the rooms on the second floor? A nice master bedroom, a guest room, and then the small room that could be a nursery.”
“A nursery?”
“Paint it pale blue, put in a cradle, a nice rocking chair.”
“Doesn’t a nursery need a baby first?”
“And the kitchen is marvelous, isn’t it? You heard what Sheila said. Philadelphia magazine.”
“Yeah, I heard.”
“I love walnut.”
“There’s not a stick of walnut in this entire house.”
“With the settlement you wheedled out of Eugene Franks and some help from my dad, I bet I can swing this.”
“Beth, do you really think this is the answer to whatever existential disquiet you’re feeling, to buy a house and saddle yourself with a thirty-year mortgage and a limitless future of home repair?”
She turned from the window and stared right at me, her lips flat with seriousness, her eyes impassive. “What would you suggest?” she said in a calm, soft voice.
I thought about it, but not for long, because the very calm of her voice let me know that she didn’t really want an answer.
“I represented a home inspector in a DUI once,” I said.
“Is he an incompetent drunk?”
“Only when he drives.”
“Perfect. Thanks, Victor,” she said, looking up to the sloped ceiling. “I think I’m going to be really happy here.”
“Can I make one piece of decorating advice?”
“Sure.”
“For the home office, get a laptop.”
27
I wasn’t long back from our visit with Sheila the Realtor when I was summoned from on high.
Talbott, Kittredge and Chase was one of the firms that had rejected me out of law school. There were many firms that had rejected me out of law school, a glorious fellowship of discretion and good taste. Yet Talbott was the bluest of the blue chips, and its rejection, all these years later, still irked. Whenever I spied a Talbott lawyer, the bitter strands of resentment and envy rose like bile in my throat. By now I had realized that my big-firm dreams were a chimera, I was congenitally unfit for working for anyone except myself, but if there was a spot I still secretly pined for, it was among the brilliant successes at Talbott, Kittredge and Chase, one of whom was Stanford Quick.
“Can I get you something to drink, Mr. Carl?” said the very attractive paralegal who had escorted me into the conference room of Talbott, Kittredge and Chase on the fifty-fourth floor of One Liberty Place. The paralegal’s name was Jennifer, the conference table was marble, the chairs were upholstered in real leather. The conference room’s windows stretched from the ceiling to the floor, and the view of the city as it rolled to the Delaware River was breathtaking.
I sat in one of the leather chairs and sank in as if sitting on a cloud. “Water would be fine,” I said.
“Sparkling or mineral?” said Jennifer. “We have San Pellegrino and Perrier, we have Evian, we have Fiji, and we have a wonderful artesian water from Norway called Voss.”
“That sounds refreshing,” I said.
“Very good.”
“Do you do general paralegal work here, Jennifer?”
“Oh, no, Mr. Carl. I work exclusively for Mr. Quick.”
“How nice for him.”
I was sipping the Voss, admiring the view, remembering an old joke – How do you get laid on Capitol Hill? Step out of your office and call, “Oh, Jennifer.” – when Jabari Spurlock and the tall, elegant Stanford Quick entered the room. They didn’t seem so happy to see me. They seemed, in fact, quite peeved.
“Thank you for coming, Victor,” said Stanford Quick as the two men sat themselves across from me at the table with somber expressions and parched eyes.
“You didn’t give me much choice,” I said. “I’ve heard more temperate demands from the IRS.”
“Well, as you can imagine,” said Spurlock, his hands clasped on the table, his head leaning forward aggressively, “we are quite concerned about the events of the last few days and their effect on the reputation of the Randolph Trust. That is why I insisted on this meeting and why I insisted it not be at the trust but in this office. It was alarming enough when our supposedly secret negotiations were splashed across the newspapers and television screens, but it is totally appalling for the trust to be in any way connected to a murder.”
“I didn’t make any such connection,” I said.
“You were spotted entering the scene of the crime,” said Spurlock. “Questions were asked and broadcast over the air. The connection was made.”
“Let’s be clear about something from the start,” I said. “It wasn’t I who leaked our original discussions to the press. I told no one about it, not even my partner, and next thing I know, it’s on the television, so look to yourselves for that.”
Spurlock glanced inquiringly at Quick, who simply shrugged. “We didn’t leak it,” said Spurlock.
“Well, somebody did, and the disclosure put my client and my own health at risk. Why don’t you guys find out who spilled the beans and get back to me.”
“Nobody forced you to appear like a publicity hound on every news show for a week,” said Quick.
“I simply continued the story’s play in the media in an effort to bring the situation to a head more quickly. As for the murder, I showed up at the scene at the request of the homicide detective in charge of the case. It was the media itself that drew the connection.”
“Is there a connection?” said Stanford Quick. “Is there any link between our painting and this victim, whom the papers identified as one” – he opened a file, examined some papers for the name – “Ralph Ciulla?”
“I’m not certain yet. There is certainly a connection between the victim and my client. They are old friends. That’s as much as I can be definite about. But it also appears the victim may have been involved with my client in stealing the painting many years ago.”
“That hardly seems possible,” said Quick, rather quickly. “There was nothing to indicate that the dead man, or even your client, had the wherewithal to be involved in a crime of that sophistication. From all accounts, the robbery was pulled off by a team of experts from out of town.”
“Why do you keep saying they were from out of town?”
“No city has looser lips than Philadelphia, but there was never even a whisper about the crime from the city’s underworld. No thief ever crowed about stealing the works, no fence ever owned up to selling the metal and jewels.”
“Neither of us was with the trust at the time of the robbery,” said Spurlock, “and so we know little more than was disclosed in the papers. Mrs. LeComte would know more of the details.”