Cafe Underground Presents
River Of Lawyers
-- Chapter 2
The Detective Andi Wicksham Series, by RL Bell
Copyright © 2001 RL BELL
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Andi Wicksham's INVESTIGATORY SERVICES
Chapter 2
Through her blackened snapper salad and the first bites of a Death By Chocolate, Andi ranted about Traci’s insensitivity and lack of ethics, if not morals. Sunny loyally reassured that it was not something she had done. Traci was cultural low-life despite her athletic butt and disarmingly casual smile.
Tiring of the subject about halfway into her chocolate, Andi switched to Bryant’s disappearance.
“Follow the money...” Sonny joked.
“No money...” Andi countered. “That’s part of the problem. Standard theory says motives lead to perps. Betting the numbers lists jealousy, money, hatred, advantage–if it’s murder there’s a reason..” Her spoon waved like a baton. “But Morse gives nothing but a big retainer and the guy’s home number and address.”
“He a suspect?”
“Front runner, which makes this investigation a red herring. Still it’s a job, I’ll do Bryant’s neighbors and start background checks tomorrow.”
Wednesday morning, Andi started files on Bryant and Morse and rushed to her appointment with Katherine Chang-Turner. She was ten minutes early, Ms. Chang-Turner arrived wearing a severe grey-blue dress that set off both her straight, black hair and heavy, gold jewelry. Andi turned down coffee and followed to her executive desk in its private alcove among the partner’s offices.
“I’ve made copies of Mr. Bryant’s appointment books and have listed both on-going cases and those concluded in the past four months.” Chang-Turner began as they seated themselves. “It seemed you might need that sort of thing. Mr. Morse asked me to pass on this guest list.” She offered the pages suspended at arm’s length until Andi took it.
“Thanks.” was all she could get out. Chang-Turner’s efficiency was the difference between twenty-five and fifty thousand a year secretaries. Must be nice to have things anticipated and waiting before you ask. “Appointment books–plural?”
“On top is the computer calendar I keep–we both access it. The other is the journal kept for billing. Handwritten, with occasional notes, telephone log, attendees and times of meetings and errata.” She cast an aura of rigorous professionalism–no doubt well worth her professional’s salary. There was no mistaking the intelligence behind her almost genuine-looking smile as she continued without prompting, explaining office procedures and Mr. Bryant’s usually over-booked schedule.
Andi glanced through the papers, wondering vaguely if money alone made the subservient role tolerable.
“In the five years I’ve worked with Mr. Bryant he’d never missed an appointment.”
“Until Sunday? How ‘bout vacations and business travel?”
“In the last two of weeks he visited Seattle twice, in the three before that Vancouver BC and Boise, that’s typical. Last summer he vacationed in Jamaica.” Chang-Turner’s face remained a pleasant mask.
“Family or financial pressures?”
“His mother died a few months ago. He flew back to Toronto for the funeral.”
“He was Canadian?”
“Yes, member of both Canadian and American bars. It gives an advantage in international matters.”
“What sort of matters?”
“Business law; contracts, mergers, representation.” Chang-Turner recited.
“Who among his clients or adversaries might be bitter? Even just a little. I don’t mean to compromise privilege, but...”
“It’s OK. Mr. Morse encouraged me to be completely frank.” Chang-Turner reached for a file and shifted her chair so they could look at them together. Picking up a sharpened pencil she paged through to the client lists. “We’ll go through them all and I’ll tell you what I think.”
They spent more than an hour going through lists and the billing journal. Even to Andi’s eye most of Morse’s legal work was non-contentious and routine to the point of boredom. The few disputes Ms. Chang-Turner alluded to seemed exclusively business–rights to patents, dispute over a boundary, definitions of obscure phrases. Through it all, the closest she came to voluntarily describing hostility was “there might have been a problem.”
The list of possibly dissatisfied clients was small. Andi would look into each, maybe something would jump out. She asked to see Bryant’s office. It’s million dollar view was to the south, spanning from the Willamette River to the steep, Health Sciences University hill. There were no degrees on the walls, no personal pictures or nick-knacks, no books either legal or literary, no magazines. She pulled open the desk drawers without finding a single phone number, parking chit or chewing gum wrapper, no notes or doodling, no scraps, receipts or business cards...clean, unnaturally clean.
“Where does he keep addresses and numbers?”
Chang-Turner switched on his computer and drew up a file.
“May I have a print out?” Andi asked politely. Chang-Turner typed a few pecks and a printer in the outer office began to hum.
Andi scanned directory after directory of Bryant’s computer files, finding a directory named RBRYANT with a few semi-personal letters dated three years ago. She invested another twenty minutes among the computer files without much expectation. Client dirt would be interned deep in confidential file cabinets. She did not even care. It would take months to dig through a fraction of his case files, with attorney privilege in play she didn’t bother asking.
“Personal phone numbers? Could there be hidden files or directories?”
“If there are I don’t know about them.” Chang-Turner replied prissily. “I’m not a computer expert.”
Andi gave up and they returned to Chang-Turner’s desk.
“Travel plans for this week?”
Chang-Turner shook her head. “I arrange his tickets and hotels and he had a full week here.”
“How about his personal life. He must have taken personal calls every now and then.” Andi looked for signs of defensiveness.
“His calls route directly to his phone, voice-mail’s the default unless someone hits O for the receptionist. I’m only called for appointments, route paperwork or to liaison with para-legals.”
“What do you know of his life outside the office?” Andi asked directly. For all her appearance of cooperation Chang-Turner wasn’t volunteering much.
“I never enquired into his personal life.” said Ms. Chang-Turner sedately.
“Don’t know if he was married or single?”
“He was unmarried.”
“Is he involved with someone...intimately?”
“I don’t know. He might have been.” replied Chang-Turner vaguely. “I never asked. Is it important?”
“Usually.” Andi snapped irritably. “Any financial problems.”
“I believe he’d been estranged from his family some years. And at least as far as income...the firm is quite stable.”
“Social life, friends?” Andi tried.
“It was none of my business.”
“Does he enjoy beer or watch football? Read novels? Does he go for walks at lunchtime? Red or white wine? Colorful ties? Did he ever mention anyone outside of work?” Andi let her exasperation slip through.
“We never discussed beer or football.” Ms. Chang-Turner murmured defensively.
“Did you ever see him after working hours in social situations, maybe at a restaurant?”
“I live a rather quiet life.”
Andi sat staring incredulously. Chang-Turner gazed back, only an eye blink marring her implacable surface. “Would you say Mr. Bryant is a outgoing sort of person?”
“He has a warm manner and very good social skills.”
“Yes, everybody in this firm seems to have good social skills.” Andi responded with what she hoped came across as irony. “About Mr. Bryant’s voice mail.”
“I’ll ask Mr. Morse for access.” she made a note to herself. Then, “Oh my! Look at the time. Can I send it to you?” She offered a little hopeless shrug.
Back at her office Andi contrasted her faded posters and less than pristine walls to the interiors of Templeton, Morse and Bryant, her thread-bare rugs to their plush pile and their professional style to her own. It was plain why she was working for but not with Morse’s firm. She dialed Ramirez.
“Hey Wicksham. On that disappearance, you’ll likely be glad to know that we’ve turned-on full professional attention.”
“That a good sign?”
“Not for you. It comes with an official ‘mums the word’ from on high. My bet is that your client got city hall to pass word through the brass down to us peons.”
“You assigned?”
“No. It’s Lieutenant Max’s, but to make numbers work it’s on my rotating list. I’ll go to meetings and review memos.”
“You got the guest list for the party”
“No. Max asked, but as of this morning there hadn’t been progress.”
“Well, unofficially of course, I might be able to help.” She rustled a sheet of paper next to the receiver “Two pages of names, numbers and addresses. I’ll fax it to you.”
“Couldn’t go official or you’d be involved. I’ll let Max know you’re helping. Not that we’ve anything interesting...cause we got zip.” Ramirez gave a sigh, “When you want pizza?”
“Tomorrow’s good.”
“So how’s Cabo looking?”
“Like shit. I’m dumped.”
“The shrew. You deserve better. It means you gotta come by for barbecue. You and your open calendar. I’m sorry Andi, you had high hopes.”
“Yeah. Give my love to Tanya.”
“Tomorrow, Wicksham...Flying Pie.”
She scraped her work into a desk drawer, locked the office and returned to her car, running over the conversation with Chang-Turner. Bryant’s house turned out to be in a closely built transitional northwest neighborhood–transitional from working-middle to upper-yuppie class.
On the right side of Bryant’s rather sedate Craftsman bungalow a boxy, duplex condo hunkered, its over-built garage overwhelming the poorly conceived stucco and glass entrance. On the other stood a fine example of restored overblown-gingerbread with sun-ray spindle spider webs around the porch. Across the street were four row houses on twenty-five foot lots built three-foot apart; the minimalist, carpenter-Gothic subdivision of a 1920's developer with little more taste than that of the condos. Two of the four were newly painted–the others had waited thirty years in need of it.
Andi tackled the duplexes. A middle-aged Hispanic woman at the first unit told her Bryant was a good neighbor, a gentle man who didn’t have noisy parties. But she hadn’t noticed if he had been around the last few days. The closer unit had a gallery-like interior of hardwood-floored modernity with stark white walls and over-large paintings in red and sunflower yellow. The resident first swore he never paid attention to neighbors, then reported that though he didn’t know him, Bryant seemed to have liaisons with both men and women–one at a time, very good looking, who often stayed until quite late, sometimes not appearing until emerging for a weekend morning brunch about eleven. Andi nodded understandingly as the man rambled about Bryant’s decorating. “At least he’s had the decency to get good advice. More money than taste if you ask me...if you know what I mean.”
She flashed a conspiratorial smile. “Has Mr. Bryant been around the last few days?”
“He’s on vacation I think. You know he had that yelling, screaming argument. Is that why you’re here?” The man offered a knowing wink. “Left that afternoon in a cab instead of his green Jag with his briefcase and a small suitcase.”
“Argument? How do you know?”
“Well I live next door, don’t I? I heard them, yelling off and on for ten minutes.”
“Men’s voices? Women’s voices? Recognize them?”
“Hard to tell. I recognized his, the other sounded like a woman, but later I saw a man leaving.
“Any idea what about?”
“No...I wasn’t that nosy.”
“Description of the guy?”
“Younger middle aged...under forty, but just barely, brown hair, medium build and height. It was raining so I couldn’t see. Got in a green car and drove away.”
“Not Bryant’s car?”
“No, no. Something American and a different green.”
“Saturday morning?”
“Give or take a day or two.” the man waved. “He hasn’t been home since. There’s something wrong isn’t there?”
“He could be on vacation like you said. A mutual friend asked if I’d check.”
Nobody answered at the gingerbread’d house on the left, or in two of the row houses across the street. Of the other two, the man in the first didn’t seem to know there were people living across the street, staring across in apparent disbelief. The hostile old woman of the other seemed displeased at being pulled away from her TV show by a young woman on a fools-errand and threatened to call the police.
Andy threw in the towel and drove back to her office.
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Copyright © 2001 RL BELL.
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