Murder for Lunch Page 10

“We all know Graham Donovan is dead. Several of you were there when he died. But this morning we learned conclusively something else about his death—namely, that he was murdered.”

  There was audible buzzing in the room. “Murdered?” at least three incredulous voices said aloud. Roger Singer, the partner who had been sitting next to Donovan when he died, was one of them. He repeated the word over and over to himself, as he stared off into space.

  “I know you probably don’t believe me. But let me tell you what I know, and you be the judge.”

  Bannard told the group about how he had deputized Reuben Frost to open Donovan’s desk and what spilling his water carafe—and the subsequent laboratory findings—had disclosed. “There you have it, my friends. What do you think?”

  “I’m not convinced, George,” Nigel Stewart said. “Sure, it all looks mighty funny. But you have no proof of the connection between Graham’s death and the water carafe. And how do you square it with the autopsy? I’d hate to try and convict anyone on the evidence you have.”

  “Oh, come on, Nigel,” Arthur Tyson replied. “We’d all like to agree with you—my God, would we like to agree with you—but the probability of murder is just too high. We can’t hide from it.”

  “Maybe we can’t hide from it, but we don’t exactly have to advertise it in The American Lawyer either,” Stewart answered.

  “Why not, Nigel?” Bannard asked. “Here we’ve got thirty-seven—excuse me, thirty-six—people who know what happened. A secret like that can’t be kept for very long. Besides, don’t we have some obligation as lawyers to go to the police, to report this crime?”

  “Not the way the farmers that run the American Bar Association think,” Stewart countered. “Christ, with their notion of ‘professional responsibility’ as they call it, those yokels wouldn’t even discuss the subject. I don’t think we have to go to the police unless we want to. And I don’t know why in the name of God we would want to in this case.”

  “Because I think George is right,” said Coxe, predictably. “As lawyers, we just can’t ignore the existence of a crime, particularly when that crime is murder.”

  “Listen,” Marvin Isaacs interrupted. “We could spend the rest of the day arguing whether we have a duty to go to the police. I say duty or not, we damn well need their help. One of our partners—one of our very own—has been poisoned. And poisoned in his office, at that. There is a murderer loose in our office and I say we should call the police right away. How do we know that the murderer is not some madman who will pick one of us off next? I say we need the police and damn soon.”

  Isaac’s appeal to self-interest turned the tide. Only one other person spoke up to oppose what he had said. This was Ralph Steele, the partner in charge of hiring new lawyers for Chase & Ward. With the tunnel vision he always displayed, regardless of the subject being discussed, he told the group that publicity about a murder at the firm “would be bad for recruiting.” Bannard impatiently cut him off.

  “Ralph, the only thing worse for us than publicity about a murder would be a rumor—a rumor that no one could ever put an end to. Chase & Ward would be like a haunted house as far as your dear little law students were concerned.”

  “I think Marvin is unquestionably right,” Bannard went on. “So I propose to call in the police as soon as we leave here. Agreed?”

  There was no dissent.

  “Very well, then, the meeting is adjourned.”

  “George, before we go, do you have any idea who might have done it?” Isaacs asked.

  “None,” Bannard answered. Then, ignoring what he knew about Grace Appleby, he added, “None whatsoever. Neither does Ross Doyle. I just hope to God the person is not sitting in this room or working at this firm.”

  “Amen,” said Coxe. And on that prayerful note the most exciting partners’ luncheon in Chase & Ward history came to an end.

  ROGER SINGER

  10

  An outsider observing the partners of Chase & Ward leaving MacMillan’s Restaurant would have known that they had just received bad news. It was a subdued group; there was not even the nervous laughter often heard in times of stress.

  The partners departed in groups of two and three, each talking quietly, soberly. Roger Singer walked out into the street with Fred Coxe and Keith Merritt. Coxe and Merritt both shook their heads in disbelief as they walked along.

  “Fred, who the hell is trying to screw us up?” Merritt asked.

  “How would I know? Christ alone knows we’re not angels, any of us. Nor are our friends and our clients. But murder? Jesus.”

  Roger Singer walked side by side with his two colleagues but said nothing. At the next stoplight he left them, saying he had to buy cigarettes.

  Singer did buy cigarettes—the first pack in more than a year. But how was he expected to endure this latest bit of stress without the help of nicotine? He ripped the pack open and lit up while still standing across the counter from the Iranian who ran the tobacco store.

  Smoking as he walked, Singer made his way toward One Metro Plaza. He walked slowly, trying not to jar his shaken psyche by rapid or sudden movement. His mood was one of total despair. Nine months earlier, his whole life had changed as two forces triangulated on his brain, bringing him to a nearly total collapse.

  Singer had decided months before that he would refuse to go on further errands for the CIA—errands that he had patriotically undertaken for years. He was too uncertain of the motives—and the politics—of the oafish outsiders who now controlled the agency and he had flatly announced to his contacts that he was through. Subtle pressure had been brought to bear, however, and the previous January he had found himself on a plane to Mexico City, where he met an old acquaintance dating back to Guatemala days. An old acquaintance and paid assassin. The assignment was distasteful, but not markedly more so than others he had executed in the past—to give his old contact instructions for killing a Cuban guerrilla leader, a latter-day Che Guevara, whose clever organizing efforts were interfering with the power elite in the country in which he was operating.

  His mission accomplished, Singer had returned to New York, where a week later he learned from the newspaper of the botched assassination. The Cuban revolutionary had escaped without injury, but a crowd of nuns and children had been killed.

  Roger Singer had graduated from the University of Chicago imbued, as they said, with the idea of performing public service at some time in his career. As a young man he naively thought this might mean running for Congress; the years had disabused him of that idea. The time required to stroke fund-raisers and party district leaders just was not available to a busy lawyer at Chase & Ward. Then the opportunity to carry out missions for the CIA arose and, while unorthodox, at least partially fulfilled Singer’s desire for public service.

  But killing nuns for an unclear purpose did not exactly accord with Singer’s ideal, and this latest incident had in fact caused him to wake up sweating in the middle of the night.

  Then there had been the matter of Anne and Graham Donovan. Singer had noticed a changed pattern to Anne’s behavior in midwinter. He himself was devoted to spending weekends at their home in the Hamptons. They had had it winterized several years before so that they could use it in all seasons. To Singer, it was a great relief to spend quiet weekends in the country; he was totally indifferent to the weekend socializing in the City he missed out on by rusticating in Sagaponack. Reading, chopping wood, puttering about their handsome country house meant more to him than theatergoing or cocktail parties. Anne had always accompanied him without complaint when, quite suddenly, she found excuses for coming back to the city early or arriving in the country late or, on occasion, not coming at all.

  “Oh, Roger, I know you love the country, so you go ahead,” she had said, for example, just before the long Washington’s Birthday weekend. “I’ve got some sort of bug and I think I really need just to stay here and be quiet. But don’t let me stop you. Poor darling, I know you don’t like to cook for yourself, b
ut you’ll be better off there than looking after a croupy invalid here.”

  Singer had thought little of the evasions until one weekend when Anne had pleaded that she must go and see her maiden aunt in Connecticut. As far as he knew, Anne had never been especially fond of the aunt—Singer in fact had only met her once since their marriage—so he was slightly puzzled by her sudden interest in her Connecticut relative. But it was all plausible; Anne had said that a cousin had called to say the aunt was about to have surgery of an undisclosed kind and that she was very down and needed company. So, in mid-February, Anne had gone to Wilton, Connecticut while Roger had gone to Long Island.

  None of this aroused his suspicions until he tried to reach Anne at her aunt’s later in the weekend. He had received a call from one of his European clients asking him to come to Brussels on the overnight flight on Sunday, and he had called to tell his wife of his changed plans. To his puzzlement, she was not at her aunt’s in Wilton—the old lady was quite confused by his call, claiming that she had not heard from Anne in months—and he was surprised, on a second call, to find his wife at their apartment in the city. When asked what she was doing there, Anne blithely replied that her aunt did not seem depressed at all but, with her endless complaining, threatened to make Anne so. As a result she had come back early from Connecticut.

  Singer did not confront his wife with the obvious contradiction between what his wife and her aunt had told him. The old woman more than likely was addled and had forgotten that her niece had been there. Or perhaps Anne had simply needed a weekend of solitude—he sympathized, as more and more he desired time totally to himself—but had been reluctant to stake it out directly.

  Four days later, Singer wound up his business earlier than expected and decided to take the morning Concorde from Paris rather than the regular afternoon flight from Brussels. He had not bothered to call Anne to tell her of the change and, when he arrived at their apartment about ten in the morning, she was not there. The cleaning woman, who had come in at eight-thirty, had not seen her either. He found this very odd, since Anne usually did not go out until late morning. Singer was annoyed, but thought no more about it and went off to the office after changing his clothes.

  Singer finally reached his wife late in the afternoon. Where had she been? Oh, back visiting her aunt in Wilton overnight. Singer did not believe her. But again he kept silent, though he became more observant of her behavior.

  Then he had found the small book of love poems in the drawer of Anne’s desk. He did not as a matter of practice or habit search through his wife’s belongings, but one evening, looking for a stamp in her desk, he had come across the slim volume. He opened it out of curiosity, only to find an inscription “For Anne, dearest, dearest Anne, G.” in handwriting that he recognized as his partner Donovan’s. All of a sudden the reasons for his wife’s recent evasions became clear—she and Donovan were without question having an affair.

  Singer’s discovery made him physically nauseous; he rushed to the bathroom adjoining their bedroom and threw up. Then he tried to collect himself. What could he do? What should he do? Instead of anger, he felt only guilt. He had been remote of late, he knew. The CIA episode had thrown him into a deep depression. His sense of self-esteem had plummeted. Instead of a patriotic hero using his skills to help his country, he saw himself as a conspirator with assassins, with killers of nuns. He also saw his relationships with his rich Latin American and European clients differently. Wasn’t he really just a lackey for a bunch of too-rich, tax-evading, socially irresponsible oligarchs? Was this the practice of law and the life the idealistic young Chicago graduate had had in mind?

  He knew that his own preoccupations had made him less than an ideal companion for Anne. So in his depressed guilt he had not confronted her with the evidence of her affair. Why wouldn’t she have an affair, given the unworthiness of her husband? he thought.

  The added weight of Anne’s infidelity pressed Singer deeper into depression. By Eastertime he was virtually not functioning—staying in bed until the middle of the day, then going to the office and staring at the harbor out the window.

  Suicide was never far from his thoughts. Why not? Who or what was there to live for? There were no children to comfort him and scarcely any friends—certainly no friends to whom he could outline the dimensions of his depression. Only an unfaithful wife.

  Finally, with the greatest effort, he started seeing a psychiatrist recommended by his regular doctor. The man turned out to be surprisingly sympathetic. He had written about the psychological effects of war and had also seen countless successful men and women reduced to ineffectuality by depression.

  The doctor had told him not to expect instant relief from his mental problems. But gradually Singer felt certain he was getting better, and the black cloud above his head began to lift. But now, he was sure, he would be plunged back into depression. With his wife’s lover murdered, he did not think he could bear the inevitable suspicion of his colleagues, who certainly—on the principle that the husband always knows last—must already have known about Anne and Graham.

  Singer came up to One Metro Plaza as if approaching a prison, walking so slowly that those around him turned to look as they passed him. He took the elevator up and went immediately to his office without speaking to anyone.

  Sitting at his desk, he thought again about suicide. Could one jump through the floor-to-ceiling windows in the office? He thought that he recalled an instance where a distraught executive had been able to jump by throwing his attaché case through the window first. But what if the glass didn’t break? They would probably commit him to Payne Whitney. Besides, would it be fair to the firm that had nurtured him to create another scandal on its premises?

  In a desultory way Singer went through the piled-up correspondence on his desk. A letter from the Practising Law Institute asking him to participate in a seminar on foreign investment in the United States; the month’s schedule of off-the-record talks at the Council on Foreign Relations (including a speech by the State Department operative Singer was sure knew about his most recent mission entitled “What Should We Do about Terrorism?”); a telex from his client, M. Allard, asking him to get in touch at once with M. Allard’s American investment advisor regarding a new real estate investment in the United States. He pondered the telex for several minutes, deciding that the matter could wait despite his client’s urgent tone.

  Instead, he turned to the appalling pile of form letter appeals for funds received on a daily basis by all affluent professionals. Normally these junk appeals went straight to the wastebasket; today Singer read each one carefully as a way of passing the time and occupying his mind. Cystic Fibrosis; Legal Aid; the Fresh Air Fund; Planned Parenthood; the Museum of the City of New York. But the desperate urgency of these appeals, each one claiming to have isolated a fundamental societal problem in need of solution, only depressed him more.

  Then he thought about Anne. Should he call and tell her about Graham Donovan’s murder? He could not face the prospect. Nor could he face the inevitable speculation that would surely take place that afternoon in a hundred whispered, closed-door conversations. He had to get out.

  “Miss Lawrence, I’m going up to see Mr. DaSilva and won’t be back,” he told his secretary.

  “Can you be reached?”

  “No; it’s a very confidential meeting and Mr. DaSilva would be very upset if a strange call interrupted. I’ll be at home later if anyone needs to reach me.”

  He had used the DaSilva gambit before when he needed uninterrupted time alone, time to think, time to avoid confrontation with anything or anyone.

  Singer bought a copy of the afternoon Post at the newsstand in the basement of the building and took the West Side subway to Times Square. On the way he read the Post’s screaming headlines and breathless coverage of a brutal robbery-murder by a gang of black youths. In his depressed state, the yellow journalism of the city’s afternoon daily affected him, though he had no rational connection with eith
er the murder victim or the murderers. The newspaper’s sleazy coverage confirmed his then-current view that the world—and New York City—were unhappy, distressing places, for him and for everybody else.

  Singer also scanned the movie ads in the Post; what he most needed at this moment was the darkness of a large Broadway movie house—not a pornography theater, as many in Times Square were—but an enveloping anonymous cavern that would take him away from the realities of his world and his dark, despairing thoughts.

  He would have preferred a cleaner and more decorous theater on the East Side, but there was too great a risk of encountering acquaintances, perhaps the wives of his fellow partners, seeing a matinee. So he made his way to Loew’s and took a seat amid the score or so of school dropouts, junkies and bag ladies in the bowels of the old, rococo movie palace.

  The movie was one of the comedy hits of the year, but it did not improve Singer’s outlook at all. Third-rate actors muttering leaden dialogue—laced with obscenities that the screenwriters undoubtedly thought were witty—did not amuse him, but instead deepened his sense of depression about himself and both the smaller and larger world about him.

  Singer left before the movie was over. He had to get away—away from Anne, away from his colleagues, away from the city that had become dirty and hateful to him. He took a taxi home, made a quick call to Air France, packed a bag and headed for Kennedy Airport. The comforting dark of the movie theater had not soothed him; perhaps a visit to old haunts in Europe would.

  POLICE

  11

  Luis Bautista, Detective Second Class, Homicide Squad, New York City Police Department, introduced himself to Dorothea Cowden, the Chase & Ward receptionist. It did not take more than a glance for her to conclude that he was startlingly handsome: dark eyes; long but neat jet black hair; a thin, sensual mouth; light, copper-colored skin that gave the impression of a smooth, even and permanent suntan. And his tall body—he was easily six feet—was so well muscled that it seemed on the verge of exploding out of his gray glen plaid suit. Except for a small nick on the bottom of one front tooth, he was a near-perfect masculine specimen, or so he seemed to a woman used to greeting the steady stream of visitors, more often than not paunchy and balding, who came on business to Chase & Ward.