Murder Saves Face Read online

  Murder Saves Face

  A Reuben Frost Mystery

  Haughton Murphy

  MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM

  Since the New York law firm where I worked for almost thirty years recently moved from Wall Street to midtown Manhattan, I must emphasize that any resemblance between my old firm and the beleaguered Chase & Ward is a matter of coincidence.

  This novel is affectionately dedicated to my former partners.

  —H.M.

  CHAPTER

  1

  Fort Bliss

  Tom Henderson, a lanky string bean only months out of law school, realized that he was alone in the Chase & Ward library. His isolation was not surprising, considering that it was 3 P.M. on Friday, December 30, the last business day of the year.

  The partner for whom Henderson worked had summoned him earlier in the day and, after perfunctory apologies, had announced that he needed a survey of the bulk sales and vendor-in-possession laws in Arizona and five other southwestern states.

  “There’s a department store chain down in Phoenix that’s about to run out of cash,” the partner had explained. “First Fiduciary is trying to put together a package to keep the outfit alive and I’ve got to be out there Tuesday morning. One of the things they’re talking about is a sale-and-leaseback on the stores, so I need to know if we’ve got any showstoppers that would keep the bankers from doing a deal right away. Is there anything in the state laws that could trip them up?”

  With four states done and two to go, it now looked as if he should be finished in time to meet two classmates at M.K. when the club got rolling that evening. Not that he could really complain, given his $80,000 salary (which even he had to admit was probably—probably—overpayment), if his research kept him at Fort Bliss.

  Fort Bliss. The nickname, presumably coined by an older lawyer who remembered the venerable Texas army post, referred to Chase & Ward’s state-of-the-art quarters in a new skyscraper in the West Fifties of Manhattan. For over a hundred years identified as a “Wall Street law firm” (usually preceded by the adjective “prominent” or “distinguished”), Chase & Ward had finally outgrown its offices in the financial district and had moved, the previous February, to Clinton Plaza, a complex consisting of a commercial tower, two adjacent apartment buildings and a movie theater.

  The Plaza’s neighborhood was marginal at best, bordering not only the solid, blue-collar Clinton district—once known as Hell’s Kitchen—but also the porn theaters and bookshops that had spread north from Times Square. Human and electronic security at Chase & Ward’s private entrance and elevators formed a defensive cordon—the Fort—separating its personnel from the hurly-burly outside.

  Henderson, who had never worked anywhere else, had assumed that the high-tech precautions at Clinton Plaza were typical of the world of work; they didn’t bother him at all. From his point of view, the luxurious spaciousness of the firm’s quarters more than compensated for any fancied danger.

  He was now working in comfort in a corner of the law library, his papers and books spread out before him, his long legs wound in a pretzel knot as he read. Arizona polished off, he decided to tackle New Mexico and got up to go into the stacks adjoining the reading room. He turned on the lights and smiled as he noticed the familiar sign, posted above the switch:

  HOW TO STAY ALIVE

  IN THE

  COMPACT SHELVING SYSTEM

  1. Go to the opened stack.

  2. Look for people, stepladders or books on the floor.

  3. Remove obstacles.

  4. Push red STOP/RESET button.

  5. Go to section that you want to open.

  6. Push green OPERATE button.

  7. While in the stacks, hum, whistle or sing.

  8. Keep your foot close to the kickbar which will brake the system instantaneously if somebody shouldn’t follow steps 1 through 3.

  The new shelves were ingenious. Each row of them was on a track and could be moved by starting a motor. Precious floor space was saved since one aisle could now serve four rows, rather than the customary two.

  Henderson found the precise stack he was looking for. It was flush with the adjoining one, so he pressed the green and red buttons, as instructed. Hurrying along, he entered the newly opened aisle, then backed off in horror at what he saw.

  “Holy shit!” he shouted to the world as he spotted the fully clothed body of Juliana Merriman, a senior associate in the corporate department on a bottom shelf. He was going to flee, but instead examined the apparition confronting him more closely.

  There was no need to think of first aid. There were visible strangulation marks on Merriman’s neck; her face was a dreadful shade of blue and outlined by her flowing hair, messily disarranged around her. He rushed out, grabbed the phone outside the head librarian’s office, and dialed 2222, the extension of Joe Conklin, the office security director. There was no answer but, from the endless series of directives that had been circulated on office security, he knew a beeper would alert Conklin to the call.

  Henderson slumped in the nearest chair to wait for Conklin to ring him back. And to contemplate the horrid reality that a murderer had gotten inside Fort Bliss.

  BEFORE

  CHAPTER

  2

  A Merger Made in Heaven: I

  It was just before nine on the Monday morning after Thanksgiving. Juliana Merriman looked around Conference Room B on the thirtieth floor of Chase & Ward’s offices at Clinton Plaza.

  She was pleased that the janitorial staff had gotten its instructions straight—for once. The custodians had opened the sliding door running down the middle of the space, turning two rooms into one. They had pushed together the conference tables from the two parts to form one long, formidable surface. Supplies of yellow pads, pencils and paperclips were spread at intervals along the newly combined table and, wonder of wonders, the water in the two carafes was fresh. Juliana’s complaints about the slovens in the maintenance department, lodged after recently bringing a group into a pigsty of a conference room, apparently had been heeded.

  Juliana sighed quietly to herself as she counted the chairs around the table. There were twenty-four, which ought to be enough, but one could never predict how many would show up for the meeting that was about to begin. The only certainty was that, since everyone would be together for the first time, there would be much posturing, speechifying and general cheerleading.

  She also found herself yawning. Normally she came to work just before ten o’clock and, as a resident of one of the brand-new Clinton Plaza apartments less than a block away, did not get up until a little before nine.

  The previous night she had been unable to sleep, perhaps anticipating the transaction she was about to immerse herself in, the proposed merger of On-Line Distribution Corporation into Applications Unlimited, Inc. In addition, Harvey Rawson, the hotshot investment banker from Schoonmaker & Co., had insisted that the meeting start at nine. There was no good reason to begin so early. The purpose of the kickoff session was for all parties to get acquainted, to set a time schedule and to parcel out work responsibilities. It would take two hours at most and could have begun much later and still been over by lunchtime. But Rawson had been adamant, even though it meant that his clients, the Wylie brothers, would have to leave their homes in New Jersey very early.

  Merriman was also apprehensive because this was her transaction, the first large deal on which she would be working almost on her own. Two weeks earlier, an old friend from Stanford Law School days, Alan Lovett, had called and asked if she could represent him, and Applications, in the merger.

  Lovett had told her that his investment bankers, Harrick, Millstein & Co., had advised him to get experienced counsel, preferably in New York or New Jersey, since O
n-Line, the company being acquired, was located in Madison, New Jersey. Lovett had immediately thought of Juliana.

  She had explained to him that she was only an associate at Chase & Ward but would be delighted to take on the job if the firm approved. She had gone to Charles Parkes, the Executive Partner, who told her she could go ahead if William Richardson, the partner to whom she was assigned, would supervise the matter.

  Richardson, then involved on a nearly full-time basis representing the prospective junk-bond lenders in a complicated takeover of a Detroit steel fabricator, was cool to the idea when Parkes broached it.

  “I’m up to my ears, Charlie, with this Argosy thing,” he had told Parkes. “I’ll be lucky to get home for Christmas.”

  “Well, Bill, from what Juliana tells me, I don’t think a whole lot of supervision is going to be required. It’s a pretty straightforward deal, if I understand it right. Besides, from all I’ve heard about Juliana Merriman, she ought to be able to handle it pretty much by herself.” Parkes had cast a friendly glance at Juliana as he made his pitch.

  “I suppose,” Richardson had said, neither smiling nor joining in the praise of his associate. “If she’ll do all the work, I guess we can manage it.”

  Merriman had been delighted. She was independent by nature and enjoyed having responsibility. Richardson’s busy schedule seemed to guarantee her autonomy in running the transaction. She also thought that working with Lovett should be agreeable, even though in the California past she had turned aside his tentative, short-lived attempt to become her lover.

  Occasionally, when she came upon favorable news coverage of Lovett’s prospering business, Juliana almost regretted having turned him down. She had known him when she was a law student at Stanford. Lovett, then a recent engineering Ph.D. from Berkeley, had come to live in Palo Alto, where he had worked for a computer software company. Soon he had gone out on his own and formed Applications.

  Applications’ success had been quick. The software Lovett designed competed with the most advanced products of Microsoft and Lotus; his graphics-assistance program was a must for those preparing tables and illustrated material, and his financial spreadsheet was a significant rival to Lotus 1–2–3.

  Merriman had not seen Lovett in person for several months before the previous evening, when she had gone to discuss the deal with him over drinks at the Park Lane. Years before, his appearance had matched his status as a computer nerd—mildly good-looking (very mildly), but not especially prepossessing. Now his appearance had metamorphosed as befitted a multimillionaire: he was tan, somehow more handsome and dressed in an elegant Gianfranco Ferre suit.

  This morning, as Juliana waited, she was curious about the Wylie brothers who, with their family foundation, owned On-Line. Lovett had described them hilariously Sunday night, referring to the three New Jersey entrepreneurs as the “low-tech” end of the computer business. But they had something that Applications badly needed—a distribution network capable of getting products into computer stores throughout the country, including those in the smallest towns and cities. According to Lovett, distributing computer software was for the Wylies no different from selling embalming fluid or rug shampoo, both of which they had done before their newest marketing discovery.

  The first arrival was Beth Locke, a Chase & Ward paralegal who had been working with Juliana for several months. A Vassar graduate, she was awaiting (and, with abundant overtime, was well-paid while she did so) inspiration, in the form of a concrete notion of a course of graduate study or, perhaps, in the form of a husband.

  Ms. Locke was a bespectacled young woman with short dark hair. There was nothing unpleasant about her looks, but there was nothing spectacular, either. She looked even plainer alongside Juliana Merriman, who was almost startlingly beautiful. Of medium height, Merriman had pronounced and striking features: an ample, sensuous mouth; long, tapered fingers; and wide, expressive eyes that were a soft, almost liquid blue. And her hair. No one who had met her could forget her brown-red hair, parted in the middle and cascading down her back. The total effect was not at all contemporary, but harked back to the enigmatic beauties of Rossetti and Burne-Jones. Juliana’s only evident physical imperfection was a tiny scar on her upper lip, the result of a childhood operation to repair a cleft palate. The flaw was hardly disfiguring; in an odd way it served as an offset that highlighted her beauty.

  “Where is everybody?” Locke asked. “It’s two minutes to nine and no one’s here.”

  “Don’t worry, they will be soon enough,” Juliana replied. “Can you check on the breakfast order? It should be here by now. I ordered enough coffee and Danish and orange juice for the Panama occupation forces.”

  As she spoke, Ed Sharett, a vice president, and Jeanne Horan, an assistant treasurer, of First Fiduciary Bank arrived, with their lawyer, Angelica Post, a partner in the firm of Rudenstine & Fried. Juliana greeted Sharett and Horan cordially. First Fiduciary was normally a client of Chase & Ward, and Juliana, in her first assignment as a young associate, had worked on its problems. She had gotten to know Sharett, an amiable and able loan officer whose rubicund face concealed that he was approaching fifty. His short companion with the ready smile and freckles, Jeanne Horan, had begun work at the Bank about the same time that Merriman had started at Chase & Ward. They had entered an unspoken mutual defense pact, less out of some kind of feminine bonding than a shared realization that they were both profoundly ignorant about commercial banking.

  The bankers were present as potential acquisition lenders to Applications, Chase & Ward’s new client. Because of the conflict, the Rudenstine firm had been retained by First Fiduciary for the transaction. The irony was that Sharett and Horan knew Merriman much better than they did their own lawyer.

  “Where do you want us, Julie?” Sharett asked.

  “Well, I guess you’ve got more in common with us than with them,” she replied. “How about down at the end on this side?”

  The next wave of newcomers made a noisy whirl as they entered. It was the Wylie brothers, their investment bankers and their lawyers together, indicating that they were coming from a preliminary caucus of their forces. The only member of the contingent Julie knew was Harvey Rawson, from the mergers and acquisitions department at Schoonmaker & Co. She had met him in her first assignment under Bill Richardson when she had been part of a team representing the lenders to Steadfast, Limited, in its hostile takeover of Merlin Industries.

  Merriman knew that Rawson was still an underling, albeit a highly ambitious one, in the Schoonmaker M&A group. But she had not really expected one of the firm’s wheeling-and-dealing superstars, since the combined assets of Applications/On-Line were a mere $460 million, far less than the multibillion-dollar threshold the firm’s big players were used to. On the other hand, the financial press had been full of stories about an impending “bloodletting” at Schoonmaker, with large cuts in staff predicted, so that Rawson might be eager to enhance his reputation with his employer by bringing off the On-Line transaction successfully.

  Rawson, who typically looked in the mood for an argument, was prematurely bald, with only an ever-shrinking fringe of brown hair around the back and sides of his head. He wore the conventional M&A specialist uniform, including an Hermès tie, a striped shirt with white collar and cuffs and (as would soon be apparent when he stripped off his suit jacket for action) red suspenders. His voice was surprisingly high-pitched, though the lack of timbre was compensated for by the general rudeness, and often mean-spiritedness, of what he said.

  If Rawson was a model of yuppie fashion, his colleague, Jim Lewis, was not. His reputation had preceded him—Juliana had heard colleagues talk about the legendary “Fats” Lewis often. He was messily obese, his necktie loose at his neck, his pants loose at his stomach. Even before he was introduced to Juliana, he demanded to know where the coffee was.

  Rawson presented the Wylie brothers: Herbert, the eldest and the chairman of the board of On-Line; Glenn, the president; and Ian, the youngest
and On-Line’s executive vice president. The three were obviously brothers, but even on first look differences were apparent. Herbert, or Herb, as he asked to be called, tugged at his necktie and not only took off his coat but rolled up his shirtsleeves, ever so uncomfortable in city clothes. Glenn wore a three-piece brown suit and kept both his vest and jacket firmly buttoned. Ian, or Skip, wore a wide-striped, tightly cut suit, much more luxurious than the raiment of either of his brothers, set off with a large gold ring on his right hand, a Rolex watch on one wrist and an elephant-hair bracelet on the other. He was taller and, though fleshy, more athletic-appearing than his older siblings; he gave the impression of wanting to burst out of his clothes and into swim trunks, with gold chains around his neck (which was, in reality, exactly what he did want to do).

  The Wylies were uncertain where to sit until one of their lawyers, Frank Martin, directed them to seats across from where Juliana was standing. Martin, a senior partner in the Hoboken firm of Greene, Reed, Martin, Shea & Poletti, passed out his business card to those around the table, joking that you needed the card to remember the name of his firm. He was a jaunty bantam of a man, wispy white hair shooting off at odd angles from the top of his head.

  “We change our name every couple of weeks,” he said. It was an exaggeration, but not too much of one. He had been the Wylies’ lawyer for many years and had today brought with him an associate from his firm, Craig Webber. Webber was very young, his youth underscored by an unfortunate case of acne.

  Martin’s gesture set off a flurry of card exchanges. As they took place, Juliana wondered nervously where her client was.

  Mercifully, the breakfast order arrived and time was taken up as everyone queued up to help themselves. Including Fats Lewis, who loaded up a paper plate with three Danish pastries.

  Herbert Wylie, who turned out to have the geniality of a successful salesman, tried to liven things up as the group drank coffee and waited for Lovett.