Rosato and Associates: Legal Tender Part 7

"Ms. Rosato," Azzic said, his voice growing loud, "weren't you jealous of Eve Eberlein?"

I said my line. I refuse to answer on the grounds it may make me look like a smacked a.s.s.

"Didn't you throw a pitcher of ice water at Mr. Biscardi in open court? Just yesterday morning, the day he was murdered? Because you were so jealous of Ms. Eberlein?"

Oh, s.h.i.+t. "I refu-"

"Detective Azzic, this interview is over," Grady said abruptly. "I won't let you hara.s.s my client." He took my arm and I stood up, surprised to find my knees wobbly.

Azzic stood up, too. "You're gonna hide behind the Fifth Amendment, Ms. Rosato? Like the sc.u.m you represent?"

"That's it!" Grady announced. He started to hustle me out, but I wouldn't budge, infuriated.

"You don't have any evidence against me, Detective, because I didn't kill my partner. It's simple logic, but maybe not simple enough for you."

Detective Azzic met my eye. "I'll be working this case myself, and as soon as I have the evidence, you'll see me again."

"I hope that's not a threat, Detective," Grady said, but I opted for a less mannerly response and delivered it with my usual aplomb.

Chapter 10.

The press mobbed the sidewalk in a dense pack, overrunning the curb and spilling onto the Roundhouse's parking lot. Grady and I pressed forward as they scurried around us on all sides. I'd run this gauntlet with clients a zillion times, there was nothing to do but bear down and go forward. Cameras with rubber filters popped into my face, video cameras whirred beside me in stereo, and TV news-people pressed microphone bubbles at my lips. Each reporter shouted his own version of my name. "Bernadette, look this way!" they called. "Belladonna, just one picture! Benefaci, over here!"

I stared straight ahead, my mind clicking away with the cameras. I knew how this would play out. I'd be the lead story on the local noon news, CNN, and Court-TV. The cops would leak the details about me and Mark, including the will, and by nightfall, I'd be labeled a murderer. My media clients would drop me quick as you can say "film at eleven." My police abuse clients would find a lawyer who wasn't under investigation. My career was cras.h.i.+ng and burning around me. And Mark's killer was free.

Suddenly I recognized a couple at the curb on the other side of the crowd. The woman had her arm in a sling and the man was a strawberry blond. It was Bill Kleeb and Eileen Jennings, together. They stood with a heavyset man with slicked-back hair and a s.h.i.+ny Haliburton briefcase, hailing a cab.

"Miss Rosato, did you do it? Miss Rosato, just one question! Please! Over here!"

How had Eileen gotten out? What was she doing with Bill? Then I remembered the death threat to the CEO. "Bill!" I shouted over the sea of cameras, since I had the height advantage. "Bill Kleeb! Over here!"

Bill turned vaguely in my direction just as a Yellow cab pulled up behind him. The man with the Haliburton ushered Eileen into the cab and climbed into the darkness beside her.

"Bill!" I hollered, trying vainly to be heard over the reporters. I could see him scanning the crowd, but he didn't see me. I waved wildly while the cameras whirred, even though I knew it would end up as teaser footage. "Bill!"

"Are you nuts?" Grady asked, wild-eyed. "What are you doing?"

I was trying to save a life. "BILL!" I screamed, but Bill got into the cab, closed the door, and took off.

Outside my closed office door, uniformed police and crime technicians inspected, measured, and photographed every inch of R & B, trying to gather evidence against me. You would think I could have barred the front door, but they'd had another search warrant and presented it to me and Grady in front of the few a.s.sociates still left. Wingate had looked down, shamefaced, and Renee Butler had run out the front door, disappearing into the crowd of reporters I couldn't seem to shake, like a low-grade infection.

"This is Bennie Rosato and I just spoke with him. Can you put me through?" I was standing, phone to my ear, in the middle of the disaster area that used to be my office. The cops had searched and confiscated most of my client files, and the few they left were dumped on the floor. The mess I could clean up, but there was nothing I could do about the breach of client confidentiality.

"You have to hold while I find him," said a rasp I recognized as Meehan's. I replaced a casebook that had been torn from the shelves. Papers were scattered over the floor and tables. A jade plant had been knocked over and its dirt spilled out. Fingerprint dust covered everything. What did they expect to find? My prints and Mark's? What would that prove?

"I don't know what you think you're doing," Grady said, from the wing chair in front of my desk. "We agreed I was running this case."

"You are. I told you, this is on another matter."

"A criminal matter?"

"Sort of." I righted the jade plant, cupped the loose soil in my hand, and dumped it back in the pot.

"You can't tell me more than that?"

"No." Before I made this call, I'd checked the ethical rules for lawyers, which is not an oxymoron. I could tell the cops what I knew, but I couldn't tell an a.s.sociate, friend, or the intended victim. I didn't see what good it would do to tell Grady anyway. He'd just try and stop me. "Give me five minutes, okay?"

"You telling me I have to leave?"

"Sorry," I said, covering the receiver. "I have to make this call."

"To Azzic? Have you lost your mind?"

"Just trust me, okay? And go, please. I'll let you win the next power struggle, I promise." Grady frowned and left the room just as Azzic picked up. First things first. "Detective, this is Bennie Rosato. You boys did a nice job on my office. Why'd you take my client files?"

"They were covered in the first warrant."

"'All client files from 1980 to present'? It was overbroad. If you'd tried to serve it on me, I wouldn't have honored it."

"Oh really."

"My clients have nothing to do with this, and it's their confidential information you took. If I hear that they got a visit or a call from you or your men-"

"I don't have time for this, Rosato. I gotta go."

"Wait, I need to talk to you, it's important."

"Now you wanna talk? Twenty minutes ago you told me to f.u.c.k myself."

"It's not about me." I shoved my law dictionary into place with a smooth thunk. "One of my clients, Bill Kleeb, was arrested yesterday for protesting animal rights at Furstmann Dunn. I have reason to believe his accomplice, Eileen Jennings, who was also arrested with him-"

"I don't know anything about it, Rosato. I do homicide, not animals. You want to talk to the animals, they're in the cells." He laughed, then exhaled audibly. I gathered he was smoking, and it had brought his warm good humor to the fore.

"This is about a homicide, Detective."

"Something you know about, Rosato?"

"The CEO of Furstmann Dunn may be in danger. Eileen Jennings threatened him yesterday with a taser."

He laughed. "That's rich. He might like it, who knows, them guys."

"I'm not kidding around. I wouldn't call unless I thought there was something to this, I'm breaching my client's confidence here. Get Jennings in for questioning and put somebody on the CEO, or at least alert him."

"Don't tell me what to do. I'm sick of you dictating to this department, Rosato. You think you know what we do, but you don't. You wanna tell us procedure, you don't know procedure. You think you can jerk us on a string, but this time you're jerkin' the wrong guy."

Another Great and Powerful. They abounded, and I handled them wrong every time. "You have a choice, Detective. Pick her up or explain later why you didn't, even after you were warned."

"Warned? She didn't do anything about this threat, did she?"

"She told her boyfriend she was going to kill the man, and the boyfriend thinks she'll do it. They got a new lawyer. I think he put up bail." I was talking about the man with the Haliburton.

Azzic was silent a minute, exhaling. "Rosato, what's your angle here? You trying to distract me? Jerk me around? What?"

"Christ, I'm talking about a murder! Why don't you try protecting and serving, for just one single minute? I won't tell the other boys, I swear."

"Don't tell me I don't do my job. I'm talkin' about a murder, too! I'm talkin' about a lady who would kill her boyfriend for twenty mil. That's what I'm talking about, so excuse me if I don't have time to take your c.r.a.p."

"It's not c.r.a.p. She could be a killer!" I shouted, but Azzic had already hung up.

Chapter 11.

An army of reporters swelled behind the police barricades outside, laying techno-siege to the townhouse. Grady and I ignored them, or tried to, and cleaned up the second-floor offices, excluding Mark's, which had been taped closed. Not that I had the heart to go in there anyway. It was hard enough trying to function, but I had to see if I could salvage R & B.

None of the a.s.sociates except Grady stuck around, and I didn't blame them. I wondered how many would stay on now, a.s.suming there was a firm at all. I drafted a letter to our clients explaining that their matters would be handled through this tragedy, and called to rea.s.sure them. Only thirty would even take the call, and some had already been contacted by a detective they chose not to name. Most told me outright they were taking their legal business to a lawyer who wasn't a murder suspect, and I couldn't blame them, either. Between Detective Azzic and the press, I was becoming a pariah.

The calls I dreaded most were to the drug companies Mark represented. I'd called Kurt Williamson and Dr. Haupt at Wellroth Chemical all day, but didn't reach them. I dictated a request for a postponement of the Wellroth trial, then tried Haupt one last time at the end of the day after his secretary had gone.

"Ms. Rosato," Dr. Haupt said, in a tone as distant as I expected. "I'm surprised to be hearing from you."

"I left several messages."

"I saw them, but I didn't feel it was appropriate to return the calls. I understand that you have been charged with murder," he said, in his stilted accent.

"No, that's not true. I haven't been charged with murder, and I certainly didn't kill Mark. I want you to know that."

"I don't wish to discuss this with you, Ms. Rosato. I find this situation rather ... horrifying. We saw Mark only yesterday. He was more than a lawyer to me, he was a friend."

"I realize that. The purpose of this call is to tell you I've prepared a request for an indefinite postponement of the Cetor patent trial. I'd like to file it, with your permission."

"We don't wish to postpone the trial indefinitely, Ms. Rosato."

"I'm afraid there's no other choice. I'm not in a position to try the case."

He cleared his throat. "Ms. Eberlein is fully prepared to go forward with the trial. We wish it to go forward, so that it concludes sooner. She has already asked the judge for a one-week postponement, and he agreed, in view of the circ.u.mstances."

"What? How do you know this?"

"I have spoken with Ms. Eberlein by telephone. She is at home. Very upset, understandably, but as soon as she is feeling better we'll go forward with her. Now I really must go. Please do not call me or Kurt again."

"But Dr. Haupt-" I said, then the line went dead. I hung up slowly. Eve, trying the case herself? I was trying to process the information when the door to my office burst open. It was Grady, his print tie flopped over the shoulder of a blue oxford s.h.i.+rt. His eyes were bright with excitement behind his wire rims and he carried law books, legal pads, and photocopies.

"Look at this," he said, shoveling papers over the desk at me. "It's the will, Mark's will."

"How'd you get it?"

"The police, along with a real thin file. That's all the information they would give us so far. But look at the will! Do you know who Mark named as his executor?"

"Who?" I thumbed through the pages, looking for the answer, and found it at the same time Grady said: "Sam Freminet."

I skimmed the provision, which looked standard. "So?"

"So! As executor, Sam gets two percent of the estate as a fee. He also has the power to choose the lawyers for the estate, and he can choose himself. This way, he gets the lawyers' fees on top of the executor's fees, also two percent, which can start right away if he wants them to. The topper is that the will sets up a trust naming Sam as trustee, so he also takes a trustee's fee, one percent a year for life. It's like an annuity. He'll never have to work again."

"I'm confused." Half of me was still thinking about my conversation with Dr. Haupt.

Grady stood over me impatiently. "Considering the size of the estate, that means Sam makes a million dollars in fees, and the trustee's fee goes on and on. It's double, even triple-dipping, and he also gets the billings as the responsible attorney at Grun. You don't think he'll see some kind of bonus for bringing in an estate of this size?"

"And?"

"Bennie, aren't you following me?" Two lines furrowed Grady's usually mild brow. "Sam gets rich from Mark's death. Does that say something to you about motive?"

"That's absurd, Grady!" I felt angry, insulted for Sam. "That's just absurd."

"Is it? Please be objective. I don't know Sam Freminet, only met him the one time, but money is a very powerful incentive."

"Sam kill Mark?" I shook my head. "No way. Sam and Mark were friends. We all started at Grun together out of law school. Besides, Sam doesn't need the money or the billings. He's a partner at Grun, he probably makes over four hundred grand a year."

"Do you know that for a fact? How's his client list, do you know?"

"Sam's a bankruptcy lawyer and everybody's going bankrupt. I have to believe he gets his share of business."

"You believe, but do you know? What about his bank account? Rich people are greedy. It's the nature of the beast."

"Come on, Grady, Sam has all the toys he needs. Literally." I smiled, thinking of the stuffed Tasmanian Devil and Pepe Le Pew. Then I remembered Daffy Duck and his moneybags and stopped smiling.

"Bennie, think about it." Grady unloaded his books and leaned on my desk, bracing himself on his arms. "Sam knew about Mark's will, apparently he was the only person who did. You say you three were friends, but I get the impression Sam had more of a business relations.h.i.+p with Mark, but more of a personal relations.h.i.+p with you. Is that right?"

"Yes, I guess, since the breakup."

"Could Sam have killed Mark to get back at him for leaving you? And make a bundle in the bargain?"

"It's unthinkable!" I leaned back in my chair. "Sam Freminet is the gentlest soul in the universe. You don't know him. Forget it. Nice try, lousy theory."

Grady c.o.c.ked his head. "Did you tell Sam that Mark wanted to break up R & B?"

"You mean after Mark told me? I went right to the river."