Flinch Factor, The Page 19

  Based upon identification materials found on the body, including a Missouri driver’s license inside a wallet in the dead man’s pants pocket, the police have tentatively identified him as Eugene Chase of University City.

  The police are not yet saying how the man died and are unwilling to label the death suspicious until after a complete autopsy. Although there were signs of trauma on the body, the police cautioned that such signs are not inconsistent with the man having fallen into a drainage ditch near his home in University City during the recent thunderstorms and drowned while being swept downstream by rising floodwaters through the underground portion of the river.

  I turned to Jacki. “My God.”

  She nodded.

  I reached for the phone. “That was no accident.”

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Bertie Tomaso was out when I called. He returned my call thirty minutes later from the Central West End, where he was about to interview a witness. He got off duty at five. I promised I’d take no more than fifteen minutes of his time if he let me buy him a cup of coffee before he went home. He agreed.

  I arrived at Coffee Cartel first and got us each a coffee and a scone.

  My eyes widened when he walked in.

  “Oh, my goodness,” I said.

  He grinned.

  “You like?”

  “I love it, Bertie.”

  Though he was wearing his usual wrinkled-dark-suit-white-shirt-loosened-tie outfit, he’d added something new on top: a grey fedora. He wore it pushed back on his head with the front of the brim bent down over his eyes.

  He gave me a wink. “I got that noir thing going, eh?”

  “You look terrific. When did you get it?”

  “For my birthday. Susie Q got me the hat, a trench coat, and the New American Library edition of Hammett. You should have seen me in the outfit during that rainstorm. I could have passed for Sam Spade—or at least a dago version.”

  He took a sip of coffee.

  “So?” he said. “What’s on your mind, gorgeous?”

  “That body in the River Des Peres.”

  “Okay.”

  “What do you know about it?”

  “Not much. The detective assigned to the case—he and I had a late lunch today after he got back from the morgue. We talked some about it.”

  “Why?”

  He shrugged and dunked his scone in the coffee.

  “Just shop talk.”

  He took a bite of the scone.

  I said, “I met the dead guy last week.”

  “Where?”

  “In my office.”

  “Really? For what?”

  “He knew something about Nick Moran’s death.”

  “Nick Moran?”

  “The body in the pickup truck on Gay Way.”

  “Oh, right.” He leaned back and studied me. “You thought this Chase guy knew something?”

  I nodded.

  “What?”

  I explained how I got to Chase—from my confidential witness on Gay Way that night to the license plate trace to my crazy story at the Corundum job site about the $750 downpayment.

  Bertie dunked his scone in the coffee, took another bite, and chewed it slowly.

  “Interesting,” he finally said.

  He reached into his suit jacket, pulled out a small notebook, flipped it open and set it on the table. He took the ballpoint pen out of his shirt pocket, clicked it open, and jotted something down. He looked up.

  “This Chase guy,” he said, “he told you Moran was already dead when he picked him up?”

  “Yes. But he wouldn’t say where he picked him up. He was really rattled, Bertie. He said he needed to think it over. He practically ran out of my office. Next thing he’s dead.”

  “Not exactly next thing.”

  “So a few days later.”

  “A few days can make a big difference, Rachel.”

  “He was killed, Bertie.”

  “Because he talked to you?”

  “Look at the timing.”

  “Rachel, we’ve actually looked at the evidence.”

  “And?”

  “It’s consistent with an accidental death by drowning.”

  “How so?”

  “The autopsy ought to help us pinpoint the time of death, but the medical examiner thinks he died no more than twenty-fours before that MSD crew spotted him that morning. That means it had been raining for two days by then. He lived in one of those little shotgun houses in U. City. His house was less than a hundred yards from the River Des Peres stormwater ditch. After those kids fell in and drowned during a storm a couple years ago, they were supposed to fence it off, but there are still gaps. The stormwaters would have been at least three feet deep after two days of that rain. That’s deep enough to carry a corpse downstream all the way through that big tunnel that runs beneath Forest Park. There’s a lot of debris where it exits onto the riverbed near Macklind—old shopping carts, big branches, car fenders, other crap. That’s where the body got snagged when the waters ebbed.”

  “How do you know he fell in back near his house?”

  “We don’t know for sure yet, but we know enough to draw some inferences. His car was in the driveway. The front door of his house was unlocked. The body had on a windbreaker, which suggests he’d been out in the rain. The animal pound picked up his dog last night. It had been running free and still had a leash attached to its collar. So the likely scenario is that he’s out walking his dog in the thunderstorm, gets too close to the edge of the drainage ditch, slides down the bank, conks his head on the cement and drowns.”

  I shake my head. “He just falls in?”

  “It’s pretty slick and muddy over there. Also, he was probably drunk at the time. We don’t have the blood work back yet, but the guy liked to drink. The house was filled with empties, and his garage was stacked with cases of Busch.”

  “Are there any witnesses?”

  “Don’t know yet. We have two cops taking statements from the neighbors. Could be hard to find a witness, though. Not many people go out walking at night in thunderstorms.”

  I frowned. “Still, all these coincidences bother me. A guy with no history of drug use and no known homosexual tendencies is found dead of a drug overdose at an infamous gay meeting spot. The last guy to see him alive—or at least to see his body—drowns in a stormwater sewer a couple of days after he gets questioned about his connection to the dead guy. I’m telling you, Bertie, you need to find someone from Corundum. That’s what I’ve been trying to do. Someone there ought to know about Gene Chase and Nick Moran.”

  I watched him write Corundum Const. Co in his notebook.

  “You say they do renovations, this Corundum outfit?”

  “As far as I can tell.”

  I couldn’t decide how much more detail to give Bertie about the pattern of city officials and TIFs and Ruby Productions. He’d resisted my efforts to get him to reopen Nick Moran’s death, and he seemed pretty dubious about the criminal aspect to Gene Chase’s death. Moreover, the TIFs were all out in the suburbs—and thus outside the jurisdiction of the St. Louis police department. And I’d far exceeded fifteen minutes of his time this afternoon. I needed to get home, too.

  I said, “When will you have the autopsy results on Chase?”

  “Another day or so.”

  “Will you at least call me when they come in?”

  “Sure.”

  “Thanks, Bertie.”

  He stood, pinched the front of his fedora, put it on, and angled the brim over his eyes. Doing his best Humphrey Bogart impression, he gave me a wink and said, “Here’s lookin’ at you, kid.”

  “We’ll always have Paris.”

  He winked. “I’ll call you.”

  Chapter Forty

  The week that began
in darkness and rain ended in warm weather and glorious sunshine. Being a blue sky junkie, I packed a picnic basket Saturday morning, loaded Sarah and the dog and a Frisbee into the minivan, picked up Sam from religious school, and drove us all over to one my favorite quirky spots, the Compton Hill Reservoir Park. Although Sarah might have opted for an afternoon at the mall and Sam for an afternoon of videogames, some of Yadi’s enthusiasm and mine had rubbed off on the kids by the time we’d spread out the picnic blanket on the grass near the fountain pond.

  I’d packed everyone’s favorites—a peanut-butter-banana-and-honey sandwich and Cheetos for Sam; hummus, toasted bagel chips, sliced granny apple and cheddar cheese wedges for Sarah; Milk-Bone treats for Yadi; turkey and Swiss on rye with pickles and Stadium mustard for me; and my mother’s kamishbroit for us all.

  We ate our lunch in the shadow of that outlandish structure known as the Compton Hill Water Tower. Having grown up in St. Louis, I had no idea how unusual our three water towers were. A century ago, there were more than five hundred of them around the country. Now there were just seven—and we had three. Like its two counterparts on the north side of the city, the Compton Hill Water Tower had been erected to help equalize water pressure in the fast-growing city of the eighteen-hundreds. It was a huge standpipe—close to 200 feet tall and six feet in diameter.

  Toward the end of the nineteenth century, the city fathers decided to camouflage all three standpipes by erecting exotic structures around them. On the north side, the results are the tallest freestanding Corinthian column in the world—nicknamed Old White—and an even taller Victorian version of a Moorish minaret, complete with projecting gargoyles, and balustraded balconies—nicknamed New Red.

  But my favorite is the Compton Hill Water Tower. The main portion is a huge tower built of buff-colored brick and terra cotta decorated with carvings of mythical animals and leaf patterns, all capped by a bell-shaped roof. Attached to the main structure is a slightly taller asymmetrical turret of rusticated limestone that reminds me of a minaret from Disney’s Aladdin. Just beneath the bell-shaped roof of the main tower is an observation deck with a 360-degree vista. Since this was the first Saturday of the month, the water tower was open to the public—which is why I chose it as our picnic spot. A panoramic view of the city awaited anyone with the desire and the energy to climb the 198 steps that spiraled up that standpipe. I definitely had two kids with the desire and the energy.

  When we finished our lunch, I gathered up the picnic leftovers, folded up the blanket, and put them into the car with Yadi. I vented the windows and promised Yadi that I’d be back soon. Then the kids and I headed up the stairs to the observation deck. The views were amazing in every direction, although Sam seemed more wowed by the sight of the playground on the far side of the park below the tower than the Arch and the Mississippi River in the distance.

  When we got back down, Sarah agreed to take Sam over to the playground for thirty minutes and then meet Yadi and me back at the Naked Truth statue near the water tower for a game of Frisbee. I got Yadi out of the car and walked back over to the statue, which was a larger-than-life bronze figure of a naked woman seated on a stone bench with arms outstretched and holding torches. It caused quite a scandal a century ago when it was, literally, unveiled.

  There was a bench nearby facing the statue. I settled down, opened my purse, and pulled out my copy of Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop. I’d been on a Willa Cather kick the past month, having read My Antonia, O Pioneers and Song of the Lark. I’d started Death the night before and couldn’t wait to get back to it. Yadi lay down in the grass at my feet.

  I’d no sooner opened the book and removed the bookmark when someone in my peripheral vision approached the bench.

  “Rachel Gold.”

  I turned to see Ken Rubenstein. He was dressed more for a day at the office than at the park in a brown v-neck cashmere sweater over a blue-and-brown tattersall dress shirt, gray pleated-front wool slacks, and cordovan loafers.

  He gestured toward the bench.

  “May I?”

  I shrugged. “There’s plenty of room.”

  He took a seat.

  After a moment, he said, “Amazing structure, eh?”

  I looked up from my book at the water tower, nodded, and returned to my book.

  “Did you know it was a big attraction during the 1904 World’s Fair? Thousands of people went up it.”

  “I didn’t know that,” I said, without looking up.

  “Hasn’t been in service as a water tower since 1929.”

  “Okay.”

  “They took it out of service when Stacy Park Reservoir went into service. Not far from where you live.”

  I turned to him. “What’s not far?”

  “Stacy Park. In Olivette. Not far from your home.”

  “How do you know where my home is?”

  He smiled and shrugged. “Phone book?”

  “I’m not listed.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “How about that.”

  I stared down at my book, no longer able to read the words.

  “Were those your kids?”

  I looked at him. “What kids?”

  “The ones you took up the tower? Sam and Sarah, right?”

  I said nothing.

  He smiled and gestured toward the sky. “Beautiful day, eh?”

  “Are you stalking me?”

  “Stalking? Good Lord. That sounds—well, downright unsavory.”

  I closed the book and turned to him.

  “What do you want?”

  He smiled. There was not a trace of warmth in it.

  He said, “You have a reputation as someone whose word is good. I wanted to remind you to keep your word.”

  “About what?”

  “Your certification. The one attached to our settlement agreement. Where you stated that you weren’t representing any parties who were challenging one of my company’s projects.”

  “So?”

  “Exactly.”

  “I’m not following you,” I said.

  “You would appear to be in violation of that statement.”

  “Oh, really? How so?”

  “I don’t know which of my projects you’re planning to challenge. At least not yet. But if you persist in your efforts, Counselor, I will have no choice but to turn this over to my lawyer. That is no idle threat. Rob was disappointed, to say the least, that he never got to square off against you in court last time. Apparently, you two have a history. I’m quite sure he’d jump at the chance to do it now, especially if you’re the defendant.”

  “Hold on. Let’s back up. Who do you think I’m representing?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “Would you like me to tell you?”

  “Please do.”

  “No one.”

  “Come on, Rachel. I hardly think you’re off on some lark on your own.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about Corundum Construction.”

  “What about it?”

  “What business is it of yours?”

  “Actually, Ken, that’s a good question for you.”

  “Pardon?”

  “What is your relationship with Corundum Construction?”

  “What makes you think I know anything about Corundum Construction?”

  I gazed at him. “Talk to your lawyer.”

  “Why should I talk to him?”

  “He represents Corundum.”

  “So? He represents lots of other clients.”

  I shook my head and stood up.“We’re done here. I am not representing any party that is seeking to challenge any project of Ruby Productions. Period.”

  Yadi scrambled to his feet.

  I stared down at Rubenstein. “Have your lawyer call me if you hav
e any further questions. And be sure to tell him that if he tries to sue me over some trumped-up claim of breach of contract, I will haul him in front of the disciplinary commission and I’ll seek sanctions against you as well.”

  “Whoa. Time out, lady. We got off on the wrong foot today. I didn’t come down here to pick a fight with you.”

  “I didn’t come down here to talk to you. This is Saturday. I’m here with my family. You and I are done. Please get away from me.”

  “Come on, Rachel.”

  “Get away from me.”

  He stood, his face flushed.

  “You listen to me,” he said. “This is my livelihood we’re talking about.”

  “Mine, too.”

  “Don’t try to fuck with me.”

  I stared at him. “And don’t try to fuck with me.”

  From a distance, Sarah called, “Rachel.”

  I turned to see her and Sam approaching.

  “Rachel.”

  I turned to look at Rubenstein. His face was flushed.

  “You have no idea who you’re messing with,” he said.

  “Neither do you.”

  And I walked away.

  My Tough Gal façade disappeared almost as soon as Ken Rubenstein did. I was so rattled by our encounter that I gathered the kids and Yadi and drove straight home, glancing in the rear view mirror most of the way. I decided that we would all stay in that night. My mom and I cooked up a feast, we played some games of Uno and Scattergories, popped some popcorn, and watched The Princess Bride. I made sure the burglar alarm was set before going to bed.

  I woke up Sunday feeling a little better. By Monday morning, my paranoia level had dropped back to normal, and on Tuesday I had turned my focus to drafting a complaint in a brand new copyright infringement lawsuit that had absolutely nothing to do with Nick Moran, Ruby Productions, Corundum Construction Company, or my late and unlamented Frankenstein case.

  Gene Chase was the furthest thing from my mind that afternoon when my secretary buzzed to tell me that Detective Roberto Tomaso was on Line 2.

  “We got the results,” he said.