Murder for Lunch Page 3

  Reuben Frost was a serious young lawyer at Chase & Ward. Orphaned while still in his teens, he had worked his way through Princeton and Harvard Law School with a combination of scholarships and odd jobs. Determined not to return to Upstate New York, he had been jubilant when Phineas Ward, himself a Harvard graduate, had offered him a job at Chase & Ward at the magnificent salary of $2,000 a year. In the Depression year of 1935, getting any legal job was considered something of a triumph, but a chance to work at Chase & Ward was good fortune indeed.

  Frost had worked diligently and attracted favorable comment from those he worked for. But his apprenticeship was a long way from being over—though his salary had risen to $7,500—when he met Cynthia Hansen. The diligence he showed at the office, and which inevitably colored his manner outside it, concealed a romantic streak that had never before had a chance to display itself.

  Soon the couple were seeing each other daily, or as near to daily as was possible with their conflicting careers, Cynthia’s touring and Reuben’s business trips out of town. Frost became a confirmed balletomane, and a knowledgeable one as well. Cynthia came to admire his taste; he did not, like so many dance addicts, like everything, and she not only respected, but came to value, his critiques. And they both had the drive not to return to their roots, to be successes in the world beyond Missouri and Upstate New York, and to enjoy the fascinations and pleasures of New York City as if they were eager immigrants from lands more distant.

  Only Pearl Harbor kept them from getting married. Within months of the beginning of the war, Frost was commissioned as a lieutenant in the Navy and was sent off to the Pacific. From then until war’s end his courtship of Cynthia Hansen was frantic—endless V-mail letters, the occasional badly connected telephone call and, somehow, a dozen roses at the stage door whenever she was performing a new role.

  Cynthia, despite infinite opportunities to do otherwise, remained loyal to her romantic sailor/lawyer, and they were married just before Christmas 1945 in the Little Church Around the Corner in New York. Their thirty-nine-year marriage was one of the durable wonders of the circles in which they traveled in the city, not always the healthiest environment in which to cultivate marital bliss. Totally independent in their own careers, each was nonetheless supportive of the other in valuable ways. Cynthia sympathized with Reuben when the volume of work he was doing, particularly in his younger days, occasionally seemed overwhelming, especially when done for unappreciative clients. Reuben not only encouraged his wife as she went from one artistic triumph to another, but often pointed out flaws that members of her company might either overlook or (perhaps deliberately) ignore—sloppy corps work, for example, or the visual blindness of a particular costume designer.

  Cynthia Frost continued dancing into her thirties, retiring in triumph in the mid-1950s. She remained very much a part of the ballet world, however, working as an energetic ballet mistress for Ballet Theatre and then for a new company, the National Ballet, until a whole new, if not unrelated, career opened up when she became the head of performing arts activities for the Brigham Foundation. Martin Brigham, an extraordinarily successful inventor whose laser-beam techniques had revolutionized the manufacturing process in a score of industries, had been a client of Reuben’s and, through his urging, had established a private foundation, active primarily in making grants to performing arts organizations. In addition to being a client, he was a good friend of both Frosts. It had been his idea to recruit Cynthia to administer the grants program.

  She had accepted the job with many misgivings—she had never been an administrator at Ballet Theatre or the National Ballet. But she had taste, and strong ideas based on a lifetime of experience and observation as to how the arts should be supported. The dancers-are-dumb cliché most decidedly did not apply to her, despite her lack of any formal higher education.

  The result was the development, in concert with Martin Brigham and the advice (when solicited) of her husband, of a program in support of the arts generally conceded to be one of the most effective—and, given the magnitude of Brigham’s generosity, the largest—in the country. Cynthia Hansen Frost became an articulate spokesman for the arts—testifying before Congressional committees, speaking at universities, pleading the cause for artistic support on television talk shows. Now in her late sixties, she had a reputation that continued to grow and a schedule that remained full to overflowing.

  Reuben Frost’s career developed at a comfortable pace too, though in a less public way than his wife’s. His reputation as a fine legal craftsman, as contrasted with his partner George Bannard’s gifts as a shrewd hand-holder, was well known. Within the legal profession, or at least that portion of it that dealt with corporate and financial matters, he was reputed to be the best legal draftsman around, capable of writing clear, concise legal prose that could be read and understood by lawyers and laymen alike. At sixty he had become Chase & Ward’s Executive Partner, presiding with distinction over his firm’s transition from a relatively small, homogeneous organization to one twice its size at the time he took over, a move to spacious new quarters at One Metropolitan Plaza, and an early, innovative beginning at automating many of its operations.

  All this was accomplished smoothly, without the bickering among partners, the decline in quality of work, or the loss of the “family” feeling that had characterized the older Chase & Ward firm. The agrarian shrewdness that Frost had brought with him from the Adirondacks—he was not just a transplanted rube recently fallen off the hay wagon, as one of his partners once pointed out—fitted him well for the task. As did the sense, acquired from his wide acquaintance with life outside the law, that the firm must not be isolated but instead be a part of the world in which it existed—and prospered. He had insisted that the firm cast its net wider in seeking able young people, and its recruiters had sought out qualified minority and women lawyers at a quickened pace under his direction; also at his insistence and over some virulent but ultimately ineffective opposition, two women were admitted as partners. Frost had also encouraged his colleagues to take part in public service, whether through projects run within the office or by taking leaves of absence. The inconvenience of accommodating this activity, and its dollars and cents cost to the firm, were considerable, but Frost firmly maintained that the costs were worth it and his partners agreed, albeit some more reluctantly than others.

  Through the dead hand of Charles Chase, the founder of the firm, Frost had had to retire as Executive Partner when he became sixty-eight and to give up his partnership altogether four years later, when he became seventy-two. By all accounts Chase had been a genius, and indeed he had visualized and created a firm with exceptional resilience and durability. But those closest to Chase had seen the other side as well—the completely autocratic decision making (Chase’s loud, boisterous one-man band had continued until Chase was in his doddering eighties) and the old man’s insistence upon a massive, paternal share of the profits. After his death, his surviving partners hastily agreed, and so rewrote the firm’s partnership agreement, that no partner could remain as Executive Partner after age sixty-eight, and that, absent dire circumstances, all partners of the same seniority would receive equal shares of the firm’s profits in lockstep, with that share declining after age sixty-five to zero at age seventy-two, when retirement was mandatory.

  As happened almost every morning—only an early morning meeting of consuming urgency prevented it—Frost thought about his status at Chase & Ward as he sat at the breakfast table. As a young partner at the firm, he had been the direct beneficiary of the post-Chase reforms that had led to a more democratic sharing of the firm’s profits. And, while he was too young to have been subjected to Charles Chase’s autocratic ways, he had supported the mandatory retirement policies his seniors had decreed for the partnership.

  Again this morning, as he looked up from the Times and gazed out over Seventieth Street, he reflected that the firm’s policies were inherently right. Sixty-eight was plenty old enough for the compulsory
retirement of the leader of a growing and active law firm. And seventy-two was an appropriate age for ceasing to be an active partner and a participant in the firm’s income—especially when generous salary arrangements were made for those, like Frost, who remained partially active in the firm’s business as “of counsel” to Chase & Ward.

  Frost realized that the honorific “of counsel” covered a variety of situations. It could be a title bestowed, in Chase & Ward as well as other firms, on those who were senile and gaga, a title that said to the outside world, “He’s a dear old fellow and we all love him, but he may have lost his marbles and we are no longer responsible for his legal advice.” Or it could simply signal, as it did in his own case, the mere fact that he was no longer sharing in the firm’s profits as a partner.

  In good health, although his hearing had started to fade, Frost was confident that those with whom he continued to deal would not consign him to the paper-slipper, gaga category. But there still were the annoying intangibles, aggravated by George Bannard’s “reforms.” True, he had given up his magnificently large corner office, befitting the Executive Partner, when Bannard had succeeded him. But his more modest quarters were more than adequate and still looked out on the beauties of New York harbor; not for him were the indignities inflicted by another firm he knew well, where three retired partners of his own vintage jointly shared a windowless office unworthy of a fledgling associate. And true, his secretary was not one of the old-school, efficient and literate nursemaids that a senior partner might command; the little, semiliterate girl from Hoboken who was his secretary did not meet those standards, but she was at least cheerful and, on the second or third try, could get approximately right the letters and documents he now produced in his reduced circumstances.

  No, surrendering the surface attributes of power didn’t really bother him. The hurt was more subtle. Bannard’s decision to bar retired partners from the firm’s weekly lunches, for example. He understood the reasoning—the old retired crocks tended to talk too much, to reminisce at too great a length, when the purpose of the weekly lunch was not fraternity but the discussion of current firm business in a crisp, expeditious manner.

  Then there was the condescension. George Bannard, to one degree or another, condescended to everyone, always managing to pitch the level of his discourse just below the level of comprehension and sophistication of the person to whom he was speaking. Frost, for example, had done research at Harvard in the early 1930s that had assisted Felix Frankfurter and William O. Douglas in drafting the Securities Act of 1933, the basic Federal law that had served to redefine the public behavior of the country’s corporate citizens and their officers and directors. As a member in later years of the City and American Bar Association committees dealing with securities law matters—he hated bar association activities in general, but these were committees of worth and substance—he had kept reasonably up-to-date on developments in this basic area of business law. So he did not need the explanation of the Securities and Exchange Commission rules on corporate tender offers that Bannard had gratuitously given him at lunch at the Hexagon Club the previous week.

  Then there was the matter of being excluded from events occurring at the firm. He had been mortally embarrassed only days before when his old friend Joe Mather, over drinks at the Gotham Club, had obliquely alluded to a problem concerning a controversial press release apparently stolen from Graham Donovan’s office. He had been truly puzzled by Mather’s conversation and had had to draw the story out of Mather without letting on that he did not know of the incident. Why had he not been told? Granted, he no longer shared in the firm’s profits, but shouldn’t he have been told on general principles—and wasn’t it just possible that he could have brought an elder statesman’s wisdom to the problem? He had not confronted Bannard with his knowledge of the incident; if Bannard had not wanted to consult him, there was no point in seeking an embarrassing confrontation.

  Frost roughly closed the Times, putting an end to his sour meditation. Cynthia, dressed for the day in a designer silk dress that did justice to her remarkably preserved dancer’s figure, came in from the bedroom as he did so.

  “Off to the office, I suppose?” she asked.

  “Of course. Where else can an old man go in the morning? The movies don’t open until noon.”

  “Oh, Reuben. Are you really happy traipsing down to that marble palace every day?”

  “Of course not. But I’m still too young, dammit, to spend my lunches at the old farts’ table at the club or napping in an easy chair afterwards. And I do, believe it or not, occasionally perform useful work at the office.”

  Cynthia refrained from saying “Like what?” and her husband continued: “You know, I’ve got a fairly interesting project right at the moment. Do you remember Perry Griffith?”

  “Should I?”

  “I know you’ve met him. He’s an associate, been around for several years. Tall, blond, quite good-looking. Very sure of himself too.”

  “It sounds like you don’t like him all that much.”

  “Well, you’re right. A little too aggressive and ambitious for me. But he’s had an interesting technical problem of drafting—converting an old-fashioned utility mortgage that’s been around since Charles Chase’s time into a document under which Frontier Utilities can issue mortgage bonds to the public.”

  “If you say so, dear.”

  “I know it sounds about as exciting as your old friend Myna dancing Juliet, but I’m trying to teach Mr. Griffith some drafting streamlining that may keep him from writing like George Will.”

  “Fine, Reuben. I’m delighted that some of those bright young Hessians still have the sense to draw on your skills. But you do seem to do a lot of staring out the window at breakfast and I was just wondering …”

  “Look. That old fool in the White House running the country is almost precisely my age. So there’s room for us old parties yet. Besides, it’s good clean work, keeps me off the streets and—most important my dear—keeps me busy and out of a nursing home.”

  “Reuben, it’s been clear to me for some time that I will be in a nursing home long before you. God knows I’m not trying to discourage you from going to the office, but I can’t help thinking it’s not quite the happy place it used to be.”

  Cynthia Frost was, as usual, close to the mark. But there was no point in sharing his complaints—they were probably silly and paranoid anyway—despite his confident knowledge that he could, and should, do so if his psychological scratches should become infected.

  “Well, I am going to the office. I’ll try not to drool on Griffith’s mortgage and everything will be all right.”

  “Of course it will,” Cynthia said, squeezing her husband’s shoulder with affection.

  “And what are you up to today?”

  “Oh lord, a dreary ceremony at Gracie Mansion. The Mayor’s appointed a commission to study bringing culture into the schools, and the members are being presented at a press conference. Mostly rip-off artists with axes to grind for their own ‘public service’ outfits.”

  “Sounds great.”

  “Well, the idea’s good anyway and I want to show him—and his committee—that there are some of us watching what’s being done.”

  “Good luck.”

  “Did you know, by the way, that there’s a typographical error in those silly scrolls he gives to everyone he appoints?”

  “No, what?”

  “This will appeal to you as a lawyer. As I recall—Jean Meyer at the Mayor’s Office pointed it out to me—the text ends with ‘to have and to hold the said office with all the rights and emoluments thereunto legally appertaining unto.’”

  “That’s certainly distinguished legal prose. But don’t tell anyone or they’ll engrave a new batch at vast public expense.”

  “You’re right. Are you going downstairs?”

  “Yes. Just a minute, I want to get the bills that came yesterday. I’ll fill out my day, assuming I finish with Mr. Griffith, dro
oling over my checkbook.”

  “Very funny.”

  The two of them went down the stairs and out into the street. The couple embraced and kissed like striving, career-oriented Yuppies and then parted, he toward the subway and she toward Park Avenue, where she hoped to find an empty taxi that would take her uptown to the Mayor’s residence.

  Thanks to Cynthia’s tutelage, Reuben Frost cut a fine figure as he walked the two blocks to the subway in the September sunshine. A careless, disorganized dresser as a young bachelor, he had become almost narcissistic about his appearance under his wife’s prodding. As a result, he was able to combine Italian high fashion with Brooks Brothers basic without looking like either a Hollywood agent or an apprentice loan officer in a bank.

  Reuben Frost had gone by subway to his job interview at Chase & Ward almost a half century earlier; it had never occurred to him since to go to work by any other means. Granted the fare was no longer a dime, and some of the equipment used today had surely been around at the time of Reuben’s first ride, but he still regarded it with fascination. And, for all the discomforts, it was a way of feeling oneself a part of the bloodstream of the city.

  The morning rush hour was coming to an end when Frost boarded the Lexington Avenue local. The train was not crowded, so he took a seat and resumed his reading of the Times. At Forty-second Street he had to make his first strategic decision of the day—whether to cross the platform and take the express to the Bowling Green stop directly opposite his office, or to continue on the local and walk the last ten minutes to work from Brooklyn Bridge. He was sure of a seat on the local, but the express would be faster. There was no express in the station, so he would have to wait. What was the weather? A nice day; he would stay on the local and walk from the last stop. Not much of a decision, Frost had thought one morning, but a more exciting one than deciding whether to take the buggy or the Studebaker into town.