Fatal Reaction Page 7

  “And in the meantime what about Danny?” I demanded, suddenly feeling very angry.

  “Sony, Kate,” said Blades. “Word from above is ‘no unnecessary inquiries.’ The medical examiner’s got to say the death’s suspicious before anyone can take the next step. The way things are now it could mean my shield if I stepped out of line on this one.”

  “Just tell me one thing,” I said. “If the highway patrol had pulled Sarrek over in Texas as opposed to Illinois, how would you be working Danny Wohl’s death?”

  “As a probable homicide,” replied Blades with a rueful shake of his head. “Definitely a probable homicide, at least until I heard otherwise from the ME’s office.”

  “Then what about Elliott?” I asked, my gaze shifting from one man to the other. “Why couldn’t he start looking into things?”

  “Under the circumstances I’d be willing to give him access to any information we have,” said Blades.

  “Good,” I declared.

  Blades turned to Elliott. “I’d start by trying to find out who was with him in the apartment when he died. We lifted his address book and his bankbook. I’ll get you copies.”

  “What makes you think there was someone with him?” I asked sharply.

  “There were two sets of footprints,” answered the detective, “and only one of them matched the victim. One set corresponded to the dress shoes that Wohl was wearing when we found him. The other looks to have been made by a slightly smaller, narrower athletic shoe.”

  “Any chance the athletic shoes belonged to one of the people who found the body?” asked Elliott.

  Blades shook his head. “The building engineer never made it past the front door. He took one look at the blood, locked the door behind him, and hightailed it down to the management office on the first floor to call 911. He swears he didn’t open it back up until the uniforms arrived. Besides, it’s not only the footprints that point to someone else having been in the apartment at the time of Mr. Wohl’s death.”

  “What else is there?” I asked.

  “We found traces of dried blood in the cracks in the wood floor in the kitchen and blood in the trap in the sink. Also, the tape was missing from the answering machine. We turned the place upside down looking for it, but we never found it. Of course, there may be some other explanation for why it wasn’t there, but I’m willing to bet that whoever was in the apartment when Mr. Wohl died took it with him when he left.”

  “Why would he do that?” I asked even though deep down I already knew the answer.

  “For the same reason he stood in the kitchen after Mr. Wohl was dead and washed his blood down the sink. Because whoever it was didn’t want anyone to know that he had ever been there.”

  As soon as Elliott and Blades left, I picked up the phone and tried to reach Stephen only to be told by the officious Rachel that he was in yet another meeting and she didn’t dare disturb him. Aggravated, I left another urgent message and tried to get back to work, but I found rt impossible to concentrate. Flashes of Danny’s apartment kept running through my head like a disturbing movie whose images were impossible to forget. As unsettled as I’d been while I was in Danny’s apartment, I’d at least felt sure of what it was I was seeing. Educated by the movies, inured by the news, I had been certain I was Poking at the aftermath of a violent and bloody crime. Now, like stepping in front of a fun-house mirror, Joe Blades’s revelations had twisted those assumptions around to the point where I didn’t feel certain about anything I’d seen.

  The phone rang and I jumped. I looked at my watch. Cheryl must have gone while I was still meeting with the two detectives. On Thursdays she had class at five. I was hoping it was Stephen, but instead it was Mimi Sheraton, the decorator. She was calling on her cellular phone from the new apartment. In her own restrained and aristocratic way, she sounded terribly upset.

  “Oh, Kate. I’m so glad I was able to reach you. I’m here with Dick Brimstead, the architect, and I’m afraid he’s found something that you need to have a look at right away.”

  “What is it?” I asked with a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. I was really not sure I could handle any more bad news.

  “It really would be better if you could come and see it for yourself. Is there any chance you could run over here now?”

  “I’m right in the middle of something,” I ventured, staring helplessly around my office at everything I needed to get done before I called it a day.

  “It would take only a few minutes,” she pressed.

  I looked at the pile of faxes from Takisawa still sitting in front of me, unread. “I’ll catch a cab and be right over,” I sighed.

  Arriving at the apartment, I found Mimi waiting for me in the foyer with Dick Brimstead, a distinguished man of sixty with close-cropped gray hair and watery blue eyes.

  I took a deep breath, forced myself to smile, and made a determined effort to not seem brusque. “So,” I said. “What seems to be the trouble?”

  “Let’s go upstairs, shall we?” announced Mimi brightly, leading the way up the graceful curve of the David Adler staircase. We trailed her along the upstairs gallery and through the French doors into the ballroom.

  It was my favorite room in the apartment. It didn’t matter to me that it was a complete waste, that Stephen and I would never have a party big enough to fill even half of it. Whenever Stephen asked me what I was going to do with it I always told him I planned on taking up roller skating. The truth is, the only thing I wanted to do with it was own it.

  If it is possible for an architect to give expression to his genius in a single room, then this was David Adler’s. A masterpiece of proportion, it was a completely gorgeous, lavishly perfect space, lit by a mammoth confection of a crystal chandelier and lined with gracefully arched windows which overlooked the lake. My grandmother had commissioned an artist to paint cherubs on the ceiling, and he’d used my brother Teddy, my sister Beth, and me as models. In subequent years Teddy had grown into a troubled teenager. He’d committed suicide when he was fifteen, but when I looked up at the ceiling in this place I still saw him looking down on me from beneath his halo, an impish smile on his face.

  “It will be easier to see it if we turn off the lights,” said Brimstead. Mimi obliged and the room went dark. In the distance I could see the beacon of the lighthouse on the lake and, to the south, the glittering lights of the Ferris "'heel at Navy Pier. Dick Brimstead produced a powerful flashlight from his pocket and shone it up at the ceiling.

  “There, can you see those deep cracks right along the line of the light?” he asked. “And there?”

  “Yes. I see.”

  “They follow the line of the structural beams that support the ceiling,” added Mimi, switching on the light.

  “So does this mean we’re going to have to replaster the whole thing?” I inquired uncertainly. As much as I hated to admit it, I wished my mother was here.

  “It’s a little bit more complicated than that, I’m afraid,” the architect informed me. “Let’s go take a quick peek at the roof, shall we?”

  We went out the upstairs door to the apartment and took the elevator as far up as it would go. When I was little I had always loved to go up onto the roof. On the Fourth of July we used to haul out lawn chairs and set them up on the tar-paper surface, sticky from the heat, to watch the fireworks over the lake. Dick Brimstead held open the service door for me. When I stepped outside, I was astonished by what I saw.

  In the years since I’d lived there someone had transformed the roof of the building into a private park. Instead of the tar paper that I expected to find under my feet, there was dirt and grass. Along the western side, trees and bushes had been planted. In the center of this urban idyll there was an enormous wooden play structure that looked like a castle.

  “How did this get here?” I asked in astonishment. “When Paul Riskoff bought the Maxwells’ old apartment he petitioned the co-op board to let him put in a play area for his children. They agreed, provided he paid fo
r building and maintaining it himself.”

  Paul Riskoff, not yet forty, represented a new generation of robber baron, so the lavishness of his private playground did not really surprise me. I’d seen pictures that Chicago Magazine ran of his apartment after he and his third wife, Tiffany, had redecorated it. It was filled with tapestries, winged statuary, and overstuffed and gold-leaf-stamped everything else.

  “I’ll say one thing for him,” I offered finally. “When he does a thing, he doesn’t do it halfway....”

  “That may be so,” replied Mimi tartly. “But after it rains the soil gets so heavy that it’s making your ceiling cave in.”

  When I got back to the firm I found a message waiting for me that Stephen had called. He was on his way downtown and would be downstairs to pick me up in five minutes. As quickly as I could I stuffed my trial bag with the work that couldn’t wait until morning and lugged it back downstairs. When I got there Stephen was already waiting at the curb.

  “I talked to my father today,” he said as soon as I’d gotten into the car. “He says he’ll see what he can do about speeding up the autopsy.”

  Anthony Azorini’s ties to organized crime gave him a piece of every politician who could be bought in this city. Needless to say, Stephen’s relationship with his father was somewhat problematic. Ironically, Danny was one of the few people who would have appreciated what that one phone call must have cost him.

  As we drove I told him about my visit from Joe Slades.

  “So who do you think was in the apartment with him?” I asked by way of conclusion.

  “I have no idea. There was a whole part of Danny’s life that you and I knew nothing about.”

  “You mean his sex life.”

  “I mean his gay life. I have no idea what Danny did when he wasn’t working, who he was with, what he was into____”

  “So what you’re saying is it could have been almost anybody,” I replied mournfully. “A friend, a lover, or just some guy he picked up at a bar.”

  “You know what really pisses me off about all of this?” declared Stephen bitterly. “Today is Thursday. Danny died sometime on Sunday. Almost five days have gone by and we still have no idea who or what killed him. And why? Because of this animal Sarrek. He may not have confessed, but they know he killed those women. They know he killed them and they have him in custody. All the evidence they’re ever going to need to convict him is inside that truck. But while the entire police department and the FBI are all working overtime on Sarrek, whatever clues there are in Danny’s case are just slipping away. What does it matter whether they put Sarrek away for one murder or for sixty?”

  “It matters to the families of his victims,” I observed quietly.

  “I’d like to think it’s concern for them that is the engine driving this whole thing, but I’m not that naive anymore. The truth is that these days no misfortune goes unmined. There is money in this. Promotions, book deals, and media exposure. Political careers are being made on the backs of these dead women. Believe me, there are people in this town who will be feeding on the grief of those families until the day the made-for-TV i movie is aired.”

  * * *

  Once we got upstairs to Stephen’s apartment, we began to unpack the cartons of Thai food we’d picked up on the way. As he pulled plates from the cupboards and set the table I poured him a beer.

  “Drink this,” I said, handing it to him. “You’re going to need it.”

  He took the glass and eyed me suspiciously. “Why?” he asked.

  “Just drink.”

  Stephen raised his glass and drained it.

  “Okay. Now tell me what’s going on,” he said.

  “Mimi called me today,” I said, refilling his glass.

  “Oh, no. Did she send us a bill already?”

  “When we get Mimi’s bill you’re not going to need a drink, you’re going to need anesthesia. No, she brought the architect over to look at the back bedrooms this afternoon.”

  “And?” he prompted.

  “And there’s a small structural problem with the apartment.”

  “What is it?” asked Stephen, accepting the refill.

  “The ceiling is caving in on the second floor.”

  “What?”

  “It seems that Paul Riskoff got the co-op board to allow him to build a playground for his children on the top of the building. But you know Riskoff. He didn’t run out to Toys ‘R’ Us and pick up a plastic sandbox and a blow-up wading pool. He put about a hundred tons of dirt on top of the roof. He planted trees—big trees. Unfortunately it looks like the roof isn’t structurally strong enough to support it.”

  “This can’t be happening....” he moaned. My heart went out to him. Little did he know that in the grand scheme of things the problem with the roof was the relatively good news. I poured him another beer. He drained it.

  “Anything else?” he asked.

  “Azor’s been named in another wrongful-death complaint involving Serezine.”

  “Oh, no!” he wailed, laying his head down on the table in front of him. I couldn’t tell whether he was angry or just afraid.

  I produced a copy of the complaint from my briefcase and poured myself a beer while he read through it quickly.

  “This is bullshit,” he announced, looking up from the last page. “Serezine is contraindicated during pregnancy.”

  “Meaning even if she was taking it she shouldn’t have been?” I ventured, wondering whether that, in and of itself, would help us in court or whether it just meant that the doctor who’d prescribed it was another deep pocket to be sued.

  “That’s right. It contains tribulytarin which has been known to cause birth defects. No doctor in their right mind would prescribe it for a pregnant woman.”

  “What if she was given it after she delivered the baby?”

  “Then she wouldn’t have been on it long enough for the drug to have reached a therapeutic dose. It takes at least a six-week course of the drug before it begins to work. This whole lawsuit is complete bullshit.”

  “Let’s just hope it’s not the kind of bullshit a jury will believe.”

  “What do you mean by that? I mean, I’m very sorry about this young woman and her baby. But it’s not our fault. You know her family is just looking for someone to blame and everyone wants to go after a drug company because they think we’ve got the most money.”

  “Even if you’re right, you’re still going to have to defend yourself against it,” I told him.

  “So what you’re saying is that right or wrong, it’s still going to cost us a fucking fortune,” he continued, working up steam. “The goddamned lawyers are the only ones who are going to make out like bandits. What does Tom Galloway have to say about all of this? When he got the news I bet you he ran right out and put a down payment on a condo in Aspen.” Considering that drugmakers are probably the only people more widely vilified than attorneys, he’d generally be more reluctant to slam somebody else’s profession, but in these circumstances I had to admit he had a point.

  “He doesn’t know yet,” I told him. “He’s out of the office because of a death in the family. He’ll be back tomorrow. I’m just relieved you think the drug didn’t have anything to do with this young woman’s death and that of her baby.”

  “Serezine is a drug of last resort, Kate. They don’t give it to you unless they’ve tried everything else first and nothing has worked. It’s a very expensive drug to produce and it’s effective for only some patients. We knew We were going to take a lot of flack the minute we decided to put it on the market. But for some patients, People who have literally spent years in padded cells and straitjackets, it gives them their life back.” He leaned across the table and his eyes drilled into mine, “We can’t let the actions of ignorant people stop us from doing what w know is right, Kate. Not now. Not ever.”

  * * *

  Leaving Stephen to clean up the dinner things, I took my beer into the solarium, a circular room at the front of the apartment
whose wide windows faced north, embracing my favorite view of the city. During the day, the room was filled with light, but at night it seemed to hang out over the dark void of the lake, the glittering splendor of the downtown skyline beckoning from a distance. I sat on the window seat, hugging my knees and nursing my beer. I felt bone tired from getting up so early and all the shocks of the day. I thought about what Stephen had said about this most recent Serezine suit and felt discouraged.

  I thought about the garden on the roof of our new building and what I knew about Paul Riskoff and I knew we were in for an ugly fight. Paul Riskoff didn’t get where he was by being a gentleman. Indeed, one of my partners who knew him well said that he wouldn’t believe Paul Riskoff if his tongue were notarized.

  But finally what I thought about, what I couldn’t stop thinking about, was what it must have been like to stand at the kitchen sink and wash Danny’s warm blood down the drain. What had it taken to close the door on his apartment, step out into the anonymous hallway, and take the elevator to the street?

  Stephen came in quietly and sat down behind me. I leaned back into his broad chest and felt his arms circle around me. In every other area of our relationship I feel as though we tread on constantly shifting ground. Fifty nights a year we stand side by side in evening dress, sip' ping champagne and displaying our good manners. By day we are lawyer and client, sorting through an increasingly difficult and complex world. It is only in his arms that I feel certain.

  It is more than that we are physically good together. That Stephen would be good with anyone, I have no doubt. He is a wonderful lover—athletic, inventive, and generous. But there is something else that draws me. It is as if through each encounter I strain to glimpse more of him. I am seduced, time and time again, by the promise of finally knowing him, of moving beyond the fireworks of physical attraction and the thread of shared history that binds us together.

  My roommate, Claudia, does not approve of my relationship with Stephen. She has been known to call him my disease and tells me I am settling for the safety of a limited relationship. When she’s really feeling pissy, she accuses me of being shallow, of being seduced by Stephen’s good looks, or she insists I’m a coward for not being willing to step into the unknown and give someone else a chance.