Murder for Lunch Read online

  Murder for Lunch

  A Reuben Frost Mystery

  Haughton Murphy

  MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM

  For Martha,

  with much love

  GRAHAM DONOVAN

  1

  Steve Watson stood outside the double front doors of 928 Park Avenue, Manhattan, and discreetly stretched in the warm September sun. He knew that stretching, or scratching, or any similar catlike movements, would not be considered acceptable staff behavior by the stuffier residents of the fancy cooperative building. But he felt relatively safe since all the early morning traffic—the joggers and the striving Wall Street brokers—had already passed through the lobby.

  Despite a large and fearsome mustache, Steve looked no older than his twenty-two years. A three-year veteran at 928 Park—the job was his way of putting himself through college—he knew the tenants well and their extremely regular habits even better. Right now, at 8:45 A.M. on a pleasant Tuesday morning in September, he was reasonably sure, when the elevator bell rang, that Graham Donovan was calling it. He was equally sure that a half hour later Anne Singer, an increasingly frequent visitor to Donovan’s apartment, would emerge. (Tony, the nightman, had alerted him that “Mrs. S” was in residence.)

  Steve was indifferent to Mrs. Singer’s visits. He was very fond of Mr. Donovan—a terrifying presence if angered, but normally both a genial and an amusing man. Not at all overbearing, as so many of the tenants were and as a successful Wall Street lawyer might be expected to be. And he had remained cheerful even after the death of his wife two years earlier. So if Mrs. Singer soothed the old boy, it was fine with him.

  The elevator door opened and Steve’s first prediction proved right. Out strode Graham Donovan, still three years short of sixty, gray-haired in a most distinguished way and almost but not quite overweight. Donovan, who had had a mild heart attack five years earlier, had been sufficiently frightened by that experience to make an effort to control his weight. Just under six feet tall, he managed to conceal his bulk, except for a formidable middle with which neither his efforts to diet and exercise nor Dunhill’s custom tailoring could adequately cope.

  Donovan was carrying a letter-sized leather envelope under one arm. Steve, generally a shrewd observer of the social scene about him, did not understand the subtle symbolism of the tiny envelope. It said: This man does not need to establish himself by carrying home pounds of work in a giant attaché case. He is established and all he has to do at home is to review the carefully distilled work product of others. All of which, in Donovan’s case, was on the mark. In thirty-odd years of practising law with Chase & Ward, one of New York’s leading law firms, he had graduated from the large attaché case toted by ambitious young associates to the thinner, sleeker model favored by young partners and, finally, to the skinny envelope that denoted senior status.

  “Good morning, Mr. Donovan,” Steve called out, half saluting him as he did so.

  “Good morning, Steve,” Donovan responded.

  He smiled at Steve with what he fancied was a perfectly straightforward and friendly smile, quite unaware that those years of shrinking briefcases had engraved a toughness and determination in his face and eyes that his smile did not entirely offset.

  From past experience Steve knew that Donovan would not want him to flag a taxi; he would do that himself.

  “Most of the taxi drivers in New York are maniacs or idiots or both,” he had once told Steve. “The only possible chance you have for safety and comfort is to look them over in advance as best you can. Never flag a cab with an advertising sign on the top. That cab belongs to a fleet owner more interested in buying a new Jasper Johns than new shock absorbers. And the driver will probably have been in this country about six weeks. Go with a cab with a ‘radio call’ light; chances are the driver has a family and a mortgage and a decent respect for human life.”

  Donovan moved past Steve and out the door to Park Avenue. He made an impressive figure at the curb, with his protruding middle pointing into the street. Seeing that the nearest approaching cab met his standards, he waved his leather envelope and the cab pulled over smartly.

  “Good morning, driver. Down the Drive to One Metropolitan Plaza, please,” Donovan commanded, after arranging his bulk in the back seat. “Get off at Broad Street.”

  “Yes, sir,” the driver responded over the cacophony created by a music program on his regular radio and a dispatcher’s calls on his two-way radio.

  “And one more thing, driver. Either turn off the music or your dispatcher. One or the other is fine, but not both.”

  The taxi driver was about to argue but thought better of it. Donovan was not smiling, and the toughness and determination that Steve had noticed signaled a man who was not to be trifled with. The music was turned off and the cab’s radio messages continued.

  Donovan sat back in the taxi, The Wall Street Journal in front of him. After a quick glance at the front page he put the paper down and closed his eyes. A headline about a Securities and Exchange Commission crackdown on “insider” stock trading reminded him of an unsolved mystery—and potential scandal—at the office. Once again he considered, as he had done so often in recent weeks, who could have exposed the firm to potential embarrassment, and possibly to legal liability.

  Many American fortunes had been based on the skillful use of “inside” information; many a robber baron had not been a fabled captain of industry at all, but an inside dopester adept at using facts not generally known to the public in selling or buying stocks to and from the unsuspecting. But both ethical standards and the law of the land had changed so as to make the use of “inside” information unseemly and, in at least the most flagrant cases, illegal.

  Chase & Ward, like its sister firms at the top of the Wall Street hierarchy, was extremely sensitive to the “insider” problem. Not, God knows, because ethical standards were low within its confines, but rather because of the high volume of potentially volatile information the firm collectively possessed. Of the Fortune 500 corporations, a fair share were Chase & Ward clients; an even larger number were, at any given time, engaged in transactions with its clients—borrowing money from them, selling securities through them, even (though it was rare) acquiring them. Chase & Ward had what its partners called “associations” with—and what envious competitors called tentacles into—virtually every major industry in the United States. The result was a collective pool of valuable information that, in the hands of those willing to violate their professional confidences, could readily be used for self-enrichment.

  All of these considerations went through Donovan’s mind as he once again reviewed the facts of what he had come to think of as the “Stephens matter.” Early in August his old friend and client, Joe Mather, President of Stephens Industries, had sent him in strictest confidence a draft press release. It announced sharply lower projected earnings for Stephens during the current year due to production problems with its computer peripheral equipment. Subject to Donovan’s approval of the text, the release was to go out over the Dow Jones wire immediately after the summer meeting of Stephens’ board of directors.

  The news was expected to create turmoil in the market for Stephens stock. A public company for less than three years, its stock price had risen spectacularly as it announced one innovative product after another, all designed to perform various computer functions better and faster than comparable equipment produced by others in the industry. The fact that “bugs” had developed with its new low-cost, high-speed modem—a product with great potential sales among home computer hobbyists eager to “talk” to each other through their machines—was the first adverse development since Stephens’ public launching. Its stock was then selling at a multiple of earnings astronomical even by comput
er industry standards; bad news could be expected to have a devastating effect on its price.

  Donovan had read the draft press release sent to him by Mather and had suggested some judicious cutting of several euphemistic phrases designed to obfuscate the true import of the news being announced. As usual, the public relations department had substituted fluff for the precision that made lawyers comfortable. He then sent the draft, with his handwritten marks on it, to the Chase & Ward files and thought no more about it until two days later when he received a call from a broker at Bennett Holbrook & Co. asking if it was true that Stephens Industries was about to show a drop in earnings. With some anger, he had told the broker in no uncertain terms that any such matter was none of his business. He had been forced to curb his indignation, however, when the broker told him that he possessed a copy of Mather’s letter addressed to Donovan at Chase & Ward, and the accompanying draft of the press release.

  Subsequent investigation showed that the broker indeed had a Xerox copy of the draft release, with Donovan’s penciled notes on it. So someone at the firm had sent the copy anonymously to the Bennett Holbrook employee.

  Even though Donovan made clear to the stockbroker that any use by him of the information about Stephens would be grounds for potential action by the SEC for improper use of “inside” information, the price of Stephens stock dropped sharply, forcing the company to announce its unfavorable news even before its board had met.

  Someone was trying to force down the price of Stephens stock—presumably someone who had sold the stock short and now wanted, in order to make a profit, to cover his position with stock purchased at a lower price. But who? A messenger who had taken the Stephens material from Donovan’s office to the file room? A file clerk? Donovan had no idea. But he suspected, sadly, that it was probably some two-bit operator playing around with a few hundred dollars. Someone making a minuscule profit, but in the process causing a not so minuscule problem for Chase & Ward. Or was it someone trying to embarrass him? He couldn’t believe that that was the reason, but then, he couldn’t rule it out, either.

  Could it be Arthur Tyson? He tried to dismiss the thought; it was petty—or worse, paranoid—to think such a thing of his contemporary and partner. He had known Tyson as long as he had been at Chase & Ward. Both were the same age, the same class at law school (Donovan at Columbia, Tyson at Harvard). Both had become partners of Chase & Ward the same year. But despite all this, they had never really been friends; their personalities were just too different. Donovan was a man of some elegance and much grace. Tyson, by contrast, had been an all-American lineman at the University of Michigan and treated most personal encounters in his life, whether at home or at the office, like scrimmages at the goal line. He was an arbitrary tyrant, short-tempered, impatient and sarcastic with everyone but his clients and (except on rare occasions) his partners. But to be married to him, or to work for him, or to be his son, was trying indeed.

  “Arthur loves to kiss up and kick down,” Donovan had once observed to a colleague. “Someday, though, he’s going to get confused and make the wrong gesture at the wrong time.”

  Tyson’s kissing up occurred most often as the senior partner in Chase & Ward’s trusts and estates department. He was the epitome of charm with his demanding, wealthy clients. Rich widows and titans of industry alike found him responsive and irresistible when discussing their personal affairs; many refused to deal with anyone else at the firm when matters involving their personal fortunes were at stake.

  Except for the occasional outburst when things were not going his way, Tyson was reasonably polite to his partners—not because he respected them or their intelligence, but because he had decided that he wanted to cap his career as the Executive Partner of Chase & Ward. There were many within the firm—including Donovan—who regarded the job of Executive Partner as more of a burden than an honor. But at an early time Tyson had learned that it was better to be the captain rather than merely a player, so he wanted to be not only a respected senior partner but the Executive Partner.

  With his impressive roster of well-to-do clients—and the prospect for the firm of several hefty commissions from their estates when they died—Tyson had a fair claim to the title he wanted. Only two things stood in the way—a long-standing tradition at Chase & Ward that the Executive Partner come from the ranks of the firm’s corporate department and the presumed consensus among the partners that Graham Donovan should succeed to the job when George Bannard, the present holder of the title, retired in two years.

  Donovan of course knew of Tyson’s barely concealed ambition. But now he shook his head, as if to drive out the thought that Tyson might be seeking to embarrass him. It really was unworthy, he told himself; Tyson was extremely aggressive, but Donovan could not imagine him being underhanded enough to set up the Stephens caper. No, it was unthinkable, Donovan concluded.

  But who was it? Ross Doyle, the private detective Chase & Ward had retained on occasion over the years for “sensitive” matters, had been called in, but so far had produced nothing other than bad feelings on the part of Grace Appleby, Donovan’s secretary, and the messengers and file clerks Doyle had interviewed. Donovan resented the whole business. Partners of his senior eminence were not supposed to be troubled by such irksome matters.

  Donovan’s musings were interrupted as the taxi’s radio came on again full blast. They had reached One Metropolitan Plaza. Donovan paid the driver and headed for the marble facade of One Metro. Each morning he marveled anew at how the Chairman of the Board (and largest stockholder) of Metro Bank, owner and principal tenant of the building, had acquired his reputation as a sensitive connoisseur of art and architecture. To Donovan, the heavy pink marble suggested Mussolini rather than Medici.

  As Donovan reached the revolving doors to the building, he met his partner, Roger Singer. Roger Singer, cuck-olded husband of Anne Singer. Encountering him had become immensely painful to Donovan since the beginning of his affair with Anne. Although they were both corporate lawyers at the firm and practically contemporaries, they had never worked together closely. Singer’s practice was more international in scope than Donovan’s and they had not shared the same clients. And beyond that, Donovan found off-putting Singer’s taciturn reticence, which seemed to have gotten worse in recent months.

  This reticence was not something only Donovan had noticed. It had been a subject of considerable comment within the firm. Week after week Singer sat through the Thursday luncheon meetings of the partners without saying a word or even making small talk with those sitting around him.

  It was an open secret at Chase & Ward that Singer had been recruited for Central Intelligence Agency work back in the 1960s. By a series of coincidences, Singer had ended up spending virtually all his time in those years on Latin American business. Such business had never been particularly important at Chase & Ward, but one deal seemed to lead to another in those optimistic days of the Alliance for Progress, and Singer had become known as an “expert” in the legal intricacies of doing business in Latin America, both within and without the firm.

  Donovan did not know precisely when Singer had been recruited by the Agency. But in the 1960s Singer had started leaving on extended trips, his absences explained in the flimsiest of ways. From all Donovan could gather, it was a commonly held assumption among his partners that this clandestine activity had severely depressed Singer and resulted in his silent behavior. As far as Donovan knew another likely cause, Donovan’s affair with Anne, was not generally known—and if Anne was correct, not known to Singer. But Donovan of course could not be entirely sure of what Singer knew, and this made him uneasy whenever they met.

  “Good morning, Graham, how are you?” Singer said, as Donovan gestured him through the revolving doors.

  “Fine, Roger,” Donovan responded heartily—perhaps too heartily. “Coming in from the country?” he asked, pointing to Singer’s overnight bag.

  “Yes. Decided to stretch out the weekend. Nice weather.”

  N
o mention of Anne, who had come back to the city from Sagaponack late Sunday and had been at Donovan’s for two nights.

  The two men fell silent as they went up in the elevator to the fifty-first floor. Donovan felt very much the hypocrite but knew that neither he nor Anne had the courage to confront Roger with the fact that they wanted desperately to get married. Anne feared that Roger would completely fall apart if he knew the truth. Donovan would gladly have let him know the truth but he, too, had a fear—of his partners. One’s personal life was none of Chase & Ward’s business, but scandal so close to home might be.

  Donovan did his best to conceal the emotions provoked by these delicate thoughts, but was relieved when the elevator stopped. After a series of “good mornings”—the receptionist, a stenographer, an associate, none of whom he knew by name—he reached his corner office with its commanding view of the harbor.

  The last “good morning” was to Miss Appleby, an austere and formidable—some would say disagreeable—presence, but a woman who had served Donovan discreetly and well as secretary for the past twenty-five years. He knew she was regarded as a witch by his colleagues, but he didn’t care as long as she continued to coddle and protect him. And besides, he was sure that those who complained about her did not know of her almost daily volunteer work at St. Blaise’s Hospital, an acute care institution where it could not be terribly pleasant to work, as a volunteer or otherwise.

  No, Miss Appleby was just fine with Graham Donovan, and he said good morning to her with gusto. It was the last time he would do so. Less than four hours later, he would be dead.

  GEORGE BANNARD

  2

  Graham Donovan had once been asked by an attractive but persistent dinner partner to describe how Chase & Ward was run. Donovan explained that the partners of the firm basically operated as a democracy, with “one man, one vote” the governing rule. His dinner partner did not believe him; a very successful cosmetics industry executive herself, she expressed disbelief that Donovan’s ideal could really be the governing principle for thirty-seven articulate—and egotistical—lawyers. Pressed by his companion, he finally admitted that the firm was in actuality “a one-man band, as long as the band doesn’t play too loud.”