Flinch Factor, The Page 4

  “Oy.” I shook my head. “This is a demented conversation.”

  “Back to Nick,” Benny said. “Who were his other four girlfriends?”

  “Not necessarily girlfriends,” I reminded him.

  “Fine. Acquaintances of the female gender, O Princess of Propriety. Who?”

  “One of them is Ann’s friend.”

  Ann is my younger sister.

  I turned to my mother. “Brenda Gutterman.”

  My mother put her hand over her mouth. “Oh, my.”

  “We don’t know anything yet, Mom. It could even be another Brenda. But no matter what, your lips are sealed, too. I mean that. Not a word to Ann.”

  She shook her head. “Never.”

  “Gutterman,” Benny said. “Is she married to a dentist?”

  “Actually, an endodontist. They do root canals.”

  “That’s the one. Phil, right?”

  “You know him?”

  “He gave me a root canal. About a year ago. My idea of a great afternoon. Even more fun than a prostate exam. Nice enough guy, but kind of a schlemiel.”

  “That’s him,” I said.

  “Who are the others?” my mother asked.

  “The third name his sister gave me was Barb. There was just one Barb in his files. Barbara Weiss.”

  “And?” Benny said.

  I smiled. “Small world. You know her.”

  “How?”

  “Her son was on our T-ball team.”

  I coached Sam’s little league baseball team last year. Benny was my assistant coach during spring training but missed most of the games because he was a resident fellow that Spring and Summer at a law-and-economics think tank in Washington, D.C.

  “Which one is her son?”

  “Barrett.”

  “Oh, yeah. Nice kid.” Benny frowned. “What happened to him?”

  “He has some sort of asthma flare-up after our first game. He had to leave the team. Doctor’s order.”

  “Barb?” Benny squinted. “Dark hair, glasses, kind of pretty in a mom sort of way.”

  “Whatever that means,” I said. “Yes, that’s her.”

  “And the other two?” my mother asked.

  “Names Nick’s secretary gave me. Two women who called the office a lot looking for him. Robin Emerson and Judy Bussman. I’ve never heard of either one. They both agreed to meet me tomorrow.”

  The front door opened.

  “Sarah?” I called.

  “Hey,” she answered.

  We all turned as my stepdaughter came into the kitchen. Although people mistake Sarah for my biological daughter because we both have dark curly hair, the resemblance ends there. She is taller than me—almost five ten—and is a Mediterranean beauty with huge brown eyes, high cheekbones, and a strong Roman nose. When I take her shopping at the mall, men and boys of all ages turn to stare as we pass. Though she is far more reserved than her older sister Leah, her entrance always seems breathtaking to me. Tonight she had on faded jeans, a red down vest over a white turtleneck, hiking boots, no lipstick, and no makeup. Her cheeks were flushed from the January cold. She could have stepped off the cover of Vogue.

  “Hey, girl,” Benny said.

  She gave him a shy smile. “Hi, Uncle Benny.”

  All three kids called him Uncle Benny.

  “Hi, Baba,” she said.

  My mother stood. “Come give me a kiss, gorgeous.”

  She leaned over my mother and gave her a kiss and let my mother hug her.

  “So?” I said. “How’d we do?”

  She shook her head. “We lost.”

  “Bad?”

  “It was close. Like six points, I think.”

  “How did Corey play?

  She shrugged. “Pretty good.”

  Corey Stein was her boyfriend. My mother had certified him A Nice Jewish Boy, and I agreed. He was a sweet kid. He’d already been accepted to Northwestern, which meant that he and Sarah would be going their separate ways after the summer, since the five schools she’d applied to were Amherst College, Colby College, Miami of Ohio, University of Wisconsin, and Johns Hopkins University. I’d wanted her to apply to Brandeis as well. I loved the thought of the two sisters together at college, but Sarah was determined to go her own way.

  “You going to bed, sweetie?” I asked.

  “I still have some reading for American history.”

  “I’ll come kiss you goodnight after I walk the dog.”

  “Okay.” She turned to Benny and my mother. “Goodnight, guys.”

  “Goodnight, gorgeous,” my mother said.

  Benny gave her wink. “See ya, kiddo.”

  Off she went.

  Benny and my mother followed a few moments later after I promised them both I’d fill them in on tomorrow’s meetings.

  Chapter Six

  Professor Ruth Parnos made her reputation in the field of conflicts of law, which examines how a court in State A decides which state’s laws should govern a case involving litigants from States B and C in a dispute over a defective product manufactured in State D, purchased in State E, and causing injury in State F. In the only conflicts class I took in law school, I fluctuated between the states of confusion and boredom.

  Professor Parnos also taught a seminar in special remedies, which focused on the various non-monetary forms of relief a litigant could seek. Several such remedies required decisive and bold action—which also described her relationship with Nick Moran.

  “I seduced him,” she said. “His second day on the job.”

  It was mid-morning and we were seated at a small table in Kaldi’s coffeehouse in the DeMun area.

  She smiled at the memory. “I hauled him into the bedroom, pulled down his jeans, and screwed his brains out.”

  I took a sip of coffee as I tried to conjure up that scene.

  I came up with nothing beyond a deeper understanding of the term cognitive dissonance. Professor Ruth Parnos was no casting director’s choice for Salome. Though she was vivacious, she was also short and stocky, wore thick glasses, and had black frizzy hair. There wasn’t a hint of sexy or saucy in her outfit, which consisted of a brown corduroy sports jacket, blue button-down dress shirt, loose-fitting khaki slacks, and thick-soled brown-and-white saddle oxfords.

  “Wow,” I finally said.

  “Wow is right,” she said. “I have never done that before in my life. Never.”

  “I can understand, though.”

  She gave me a curious look. “Oh?”

  “I was tempted.”

  “You knew Nick?”

  “He renovated my kitchen and my coach house.”

  She smiled. “Then you understand.”

  “I do.”

  “Most men don’t.”

  “Especially the ones with advanced degrees,” I said.

  She burst into laughter—a lusty, cheerful laugh.

  “Exactly,” she said. “They have no conception of the sexual allure of a man who can actually fix a garbage disposal or install a ceiling fan.”

  “You’re right.”

  “You bet I am. I taught at Kansas before coming to St. Louis. My boyfriend there was a philosophy professor. Sweet guy, but totally useless around the house. As my dad would say, like tits on a bull. I was unscrewing a ceiling light bulb once and it broke off, leaving the metal part in the socket. I asked him to help. He had no idea what to do and no interest in figuring it out. He told me to call an electrician. But Nick”—she paused with a distant smile—“he knew how to make things work. All kinds of things. A tool belt on a good-looking guy is our version of a garter belt on a sexy girl.”

  I said, “My mother was in love with him, too.”

  “I’m not surprised. My niece is in high school. She came over one afternoon with a couple of
her teammates. By the time the girls left, they were all smitten. High school girls. Jocks, to boot. You’d have thought he was a rock star.”

  “Does your niece play softball?”

  “Actually, yes. Do you know her?”

  “No. I saw the bumper sticker on your car.”

  “Oh, right. How did you know that was my car?”

  “I parked right behind you. I saw the Washington U parking permit.”

  No need to tell her that it was also the only Subaru Outback on the street—or how I came to know about her allegedly incriminating connection to that vehicle.

  “She’s my only niece,” Ruth said. “I adore her. I go to all her games.”

  We talked some about her niece and then returned to the subject of Nick Moran. Their relationship continued beyond his renovation work, which he had completed almost two years ago. Although the romantic and emotional ties had started to fade by the time he finished the kitchen, they remained “friends with benefits” up until his death. Theirs was a casual sexual companionship which, depending upon the month, could involve anywhere from one to four trysts.

  Ruth knew surprisingly little about Nick’s life outside her bedroom.

  “That was the rule,” she explained. “When we got together, it was for sex. Period. We were friendly, but we never ever talked about the rest of our lives. If I called to get together and he was busy, or vice versa, we’d never presume to ask for an explanation. If one of us was busy, so be it. Hopefully, you’d be free the next time the other one called.”

  “Were you surprised by the circumstances of his death?”

  “Absolutely. I’d never seen him use any drugs, and I never picked up any bisexual vibes, but that doesn’t mean anything. I had a boyfriend back in college that could have made it into the Guinness Book of World Records. He was insatiable. We used to have sex three or four times a day. He had piles of Playboys and Penthouses in his dorm room, and he claimed he masturbated to them every day in addition to all the sex we had. Guess what? We broke up at the end of our junior year, and by the start of the next semester he’d already come out of the closet. Remember all those gay marriage licenses they issued in San Francisco a few years ago? It was front page news. And guess whose picture was actually on the front page? With his longtime male companion?” She shrugged. “Who knew?”

  Ruth had to get back to campus for her special remedies class, and I had a meeting with the homicide detective who’d investigated Nick’s death. She needed to stop in the bathroom, so we said goodbye in the coffeehouse. I thanked her for meeting with me and told her to be sure to tell Benny hello.

  As I walked to my car, I passed by her Subaru Outback. I paused to look at the bumper sticker that read “Softballers Rule,” wishing that my cell phone had one of those cameras. I would have loved to send the image to Benny with a one-word text message: NOT!

  Chapter Seven

  “Oh, Rachel Gold.” He placed his hand over his heart. “Light of my life, fire of my loins.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Good morning, Humbert.”

  “You know what I think every time I see you?”

  “Do I want to know?”

  “I think what a cruel twist of irony it is that my wife’s older brother is the most vicious divorce lawyer in St. Louis. Unless I want to spend my golden years living in a van down by the river, I am condemned to only admire from afar a face which nature’s own hand painted.”

  “Oh, my God, Bertie.” I took a seat facing his desk. “Nabokov and Shakespeare. You sure you aren’t hiding a Ph.D. in literature?”

  “Like I told you, kiddo, only advanced degree I got is in stakeouts. Four hours sitting alone in a car and even a knucklehead like me might be able to get through a chapter of Anna Karenina.”

  We were in the office of Roberto “Bertie” Tomaso, a homicide detective with the St. Louis police department. Bertie and I had known each other for years. I’d met him through Jonathan, who’d had numerous cross-examination encounters with him as a criminal defense lawyer. Bertie and his wife Sue had come to our wedding, and to Jonathan’s funeral, and though he is an old-school Catholic raised on the Italian Hill, he came to my house every day during the week we sat shiva and somehow got a hold of a Jewish calendar and sent me a condolence card on the first yahrzeit (anniversary) of Jonathan’s death.

  Which didn’t change the fact that he was a shameless flirt. But he was also a respected homicide detective and one of the most literate people I’d ever met. Indeed, he was the one who—after listening to one of my interminable paeans to Jane Austen—insisted that I read Middlemarch. I loved it so much that I ended up reading all seven of George Eliot’s novels.

  Tomaso was a burly man in his early fifties. He was about my height and had one of those naturally dark complexions that made it seem like he’d just returned from a week on the beach. He had a warm smile and a pair of eyes that could be playful or severe, depending upon the situation.

  “So what brings you down here?” he asked.

  “Nick Moran.”

  “The rehabber we found on Gay Way?”

  “His sister asked me to look into his death.”

  “I talked with her.”

  “And?”

  He gave me a sad smile. “It’s always hard on the family, Rachel. Especially when no one suspected he was that way.”

  “She’s convinced he wasn’t.”

  “They always are. People have a serious misconception about the men who visit Gay Way. I worked vice for ten years. We had ourselves a Who’s Who of St. Louis married men on Gay Way. Managing partners of law firms, rabbis and ministers, heart surgeons, judges, corporate CEOs, real estate developers. Lots and lots of closet queers. You name it, we had it. And your guy wasn’t even married.”

  “I know, Bertie. She’s upset. He was her beloved big brother. She begged me to look into his death. That’s what I’m doing.”

  “I understand, kiddo. I’m just saying this one doesn’t look dodgy to me.”

  “She gave me a copy of the medical examiner’s report. I had a couple questions.”

  “Fire away.”

  “I’m not sure how they could tell, but the report said that he didn’t ejaculate.”

  “Right.”

  “Is that fishy?”

  “Not really. The drugs killed him, not the sex. And even when the sex kills you, you don’t necessarily complete the act. Nelson Rockefeller died having sex with his mistress. New York cop I talked to told me Rockefeller’s heart attack beat him to the finish line.” He shook his head. “The ultimate coitus interruptus, eh?”

  “What about the drugs? According to the report, he didn’t appear to be a user. There were no needle tracks on his arms or legs, and no other signs of repeated heroin use.”

  “True, but you’d be surprised how many first-timers die from an overdose, especially if they’re doing it with a user. You build up a resistance over time. An addict can handle over a thousand milligrams in one injection, but just two hundred milligrams can be fatal to a first-timer. I assume that’s what happened here.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Whoever joined him in his pickup truck must have been a user. He convinced Moran to do it with him—or maybe it was Moran’s idea. Either way, the other guy probably injected Moran with his own usual dose, which would have been two or three times too high for a first-timer. He wouldn’t have died right away, which probably explains why his pants were unzipped. But he would have slipped into a coma pretty damn quick. My read is the other guy panicked and cleared out.”

  “You have any leads on who the other guy was?”

  “All we know is that the dead man was working on a kitchen in Ladue that day. Called his secretary a few minutes before five to check in and tell her he was heading home soon. Left the jobsite about five-fifteen, according to the maid. That’s the last contact
we know about. We don’t know who he met up with.” He gave me a sad smile. “And we probably won’t turn up anyone. Once we eliminated any homicide suspicions, this case dropped way down on the priority list.”

  Behind me someone cleared his voice. “Excuse me, sir.”

  I turned to see a uniformed cop in his twenties.

  Tomaso said, “What is it, Henry?”

  “Uh, sir, the brass wants to see you.”

  “Which tubas exactly?”

  “Sir?”

  “Brass? Get it? Orchestra section? Never mind. Who wants to see me?”

  “Captains Carper and Fenley.”

  Tomaso groaned. “What do those bozos want now?”

  “I’m not sure, sir. I think Captain Carper has some questions about the department’s numbers. I heard Captain Fenley say something about needing some success stories—his term, sir—needing some for his monthly press conference.”

  “Great, Henry. Just great. Tell them I’ll be there in five.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Tomaso turned to me and sighed.

  “Thanks, Bertie.”

  “Some days I feel like Barnaby the Scrivener and some days I feel like Joseph K.”

  “Just don’t start feeling like Hannibal Lecter.”

  “Nah. My life here is more like something out of Kafka.”

  “I know the feeling. I was once a junior associate in a big law firm. It’s why I left life in a big law firm.”

  He smiled. “Maybe I should do the same.”

  “I could see you as Lew Harper.”

  “I’m more Columbo than Harper.”

  “Either way, I’d hire you for all my cases.”

  “Don’t tempt me, Beautiful.” He stood with a grunt. “On this Moran thing, if you turn up anything suspicious, come see me. The case won’t be officially closed for another month or so.”

  “Thanks, Bertie.”

  “And if, God forbid, my brother-in-law the shark should ever get disbarred, I’m going to reserve a suite at the Ritz that night for us.”

  “It’s a deal. You bring Sue, I’ll bring my kids, and we’ll have a pajama party.”