Strange Bedfellows

17

Deceitful Little Bitch

On the ride to Orange County, Billie wondered whether we should obtain a search warrant for Habiba Shareef’s financial records. “Those big crocodile tears she was shedding could be hiding a shitload of anger,” she contended. “She could have made some big cash withdrawals from her accounts prior to the shooting and paid someone to off her handsome, charismatic husband!”

“I’d rather talk to Renata Lippincott first, see if she corroborates her statement to Mrs. Shareef about Zuccari’s wife and Malik. If so, it would certainly bolster our request for the warrant, if we decide to go that way. It did sound like something Renata would say, though, especially that ‘deceitful little bitch’ comment.”

“I’m curious about Mrs. Shareef’s take on Renata Lippincott. Did Chuck’s ex seem like a racist to you?”

“She acted like she didn’t want me touching her the day we were at the hospital, but I wasn’t sure if it was because I was a cop or I was black. Thor interviewed her after that, but she probably was so busy pulling that ‘richer than thou’ act on him, I doubt if he got anything substantive out of her.”

“Certainly not that she suspected her ex-husband’s new wife was sleeping with their joint venture partner,” Billie replied. “Maybe she would’ve responded differently to two black women coming at her. That is, if she figured out you’re black.”

I had a fleeting thought about my mother and certain members of the Curry clan who judged every person they met by the color of their skin-something I swore I’d never do. But I’d danced along the color line before, using other people’s ignorance of my race when it benefited a case, and I was not above doing it again. “If she hasn’t, then we know who the good cop will be if we see her.”

Billie gave me an impish grin. “Sounds like fun to me.”

Our first stop was CZ Toys’ headquarters, where we met up with Thor, Perkins, and the Feds, who were jointly serving the Zuccari siblings and other company executives with the search warrants. And although Robert Merritt and the company’s legal team protested mightily, two hours later our combined teams had fanned out to four different locations to search for documents that would tie CZ Toys, Natalie Johnson, or the Zuccaris to the fraud or the payments to Nilo Engalla.

Billie and I were assigned to search Mario’s home in Newport Beach, one of those Orange County cities where houses in the poorer sections of town cost over twice as much as mine in L.A. Mario’s place, a newly constructed Mediterranean mini-estate, which sat on a bluff overlooking the ocean, was definitely not in the poorer part of town.

“Not too shabby,” Billie noted as she guided the car into the cul-de-sac and got her briefcase out of the trunk. “First home I’ve ever been in behind the Orange Curtain. I’d better show them my badge, or they’ll mistake me for the maid.”

Once we were buzzed inside the gates, we walked up the cobblestone driveway to the property, which was landscaped with tropical plants and a burbling fountain. We were intercepted at the door by a young man who identified himself as David Sarkisian, Mario’s personal attorney, although the way he was dressed suggested tennis pro or gigolo. Made me wonder if Mario was hiding something behind that good Christian demeanor of his.

Our search warrant was inspected yet again before Sarkisian escorted us across the marble entry to his client’s upstairs home office and stood close by while we began to go through the file cabinets. “We really don’t need you hovering over us, Mr. Sarkisian,” I pointed out as Billie and I put on some gloves.

“I’m here to ensure you confine your search within the strict boundaries of the warrant.”

“Don’t want us confiscating your client’s porno collection?” Billie deadpanned, turning to give me a mischievous wink as Sarkisian sputtered a reply.

A few minutes later, I found Mario’s home safe, in the closet of his office. “We’ll need the combination for this.”

“I don’t have it.”

“Then call your client and get it, or we’ll have to carry it out of here,” I told him.

“Let me see if I can reach him,” Sarkisian said as he headed for the phone downstairs.

After he was gone, we moved on to Mario’s desk. While Billie searched the drawers for the combination to the safe, I looked over the photos on Mario’s desk-one that looked like a company party, and a duplicate of the photo I’d seen at the hospital of him, his father, and Alma at that toy convention. Underneath them was a tattered photograph of what must have been Mario as a toddler posing with Chuck and a woman I guessed was Mario’s mother. Next to these was a collection of old letters that appeared to have been written by Chuck Zuccari when Mario was at Stanford and a “Thinking of You” greeting card in which Mario had begun to write a note. I was just reading what he’d written when Billie said, “Got something.”

“You find the combination to the safe?”

Billie withdrew an envelope. Addressed to Chuck Zuccari, it was postmarked from Jersey City, New Jersey, on January fourteenth of last year, some six months before the shooting. Inside was a Xerox copy of an article from a 1959 issue of Der Spiegel entitled “Was Wurde Eigentlich aus dem Schneider der Hitlerjugend?” and a letter handwritten in a spidery hand on off-white parchment. I moved aside the old photograph and letters to spread this one on the desktop so we could both read it.

Until today, I thought the pain your family inflicted on me and mine was behind me. But your evil is far greater than I ever dreamed. If you weren’t so arrogant, you would see what you’ve done is a sin against God. Can’t you see who’s right in front of you?

Believe me, I will expose you for the liar you are. The enclosed will remind you of the wrongs you have done to me and of the lengths I will go to stop you.

For God’s sake, Chuck, please do something before it’s too late.

Mrs. William (Belle) Thornton

“Damn!” Billie exclaimed. “I can see why Zuccari hid this.”

“The letter seems highly personal, like the writer knows Zuccari,” I noted. “But what in the hell is she talking about?”

“A disgruntled former employee, maybe? CZ Toys used to be based in New Jersey, right?”

“Up until Chuck relocated it out here in ’sixty-eight. But I don’t know if it was in Jersey City or not.” I examined the envelope. “There’s no return address, but she signed her name, so she can’t be trying to hide her identity too hard.”

Billie leaned in a bit closer and reread the note. “‘Pain your family inflicted on me and mine’ might refer to Chuck’s father’s Nazi connection.”

“But there was nothing in our original investigation that suggested Claus Zuckerman was more than a hapless dollmaker forced into making uniforms for the Hitlerjugend.” I scanned the note again. “And if that’s what the writer is referring to, what evil could Chuck be doing that’s worse? And what does the writer want him to see?”

“Not what, who,” Billie corrected, pointing at the document. “Maybe this isn’t about the Nazis at all. Maybe this Belle’s referring to the deal with the Shareefs.”

“But would doing business with a black company qualify as an ‘unspeakable sin’?”

“Would if the writer’s a white supremacist.”

I shook my head. “This doesn’t add up.” I picked up the letter with gloved hands and held it up to the light to examine the watermark on the paper, then picked up the article and tried to see whether any of the German words leaped out at me. “This article is over thirty years old. And it’s definitely about the Hitlerjugend, and I see the Zuckerman name here, but other than that I don’t know what it says.”

“Can’t help you there,” Billie said.

“I wonder how Mario got this away from his father.”

I heard Sarkisian’s footsteps downstairs. “Should we confiscate it?” Billie whispered. “It may not be in the scope of our warrant.”

I hastily swept the envelope, greeting card, and other personal effects from the desk inside an evidence bag. “When we get back to the office, let’s send it over to Questioned Documents, see what they can make of it. And run this Belle Thornton’s name through the system.”

“Find anything?” Sarkisian asked from the door.

I whirled to face him. “You got the combination?”

Sarkisian handed me a slip of paper. “Ms. Lippincott will be here shortly.”

“I can hardly wait.”

Under Sarkisian’s watchful eye, we opened the safe, which contained more personal correspondence as well as brokerage, mutual fund, and bank statements. We catalogued and boxed all of the documents, but nothing leaped out at us nearly as much as that letter from Belle Thornton. After another hour, certain we had found as much as we could, we started stacking up the boxes of correspondence and documents in the entryway. Billie had begun to load them into our car when, from the office window, I saw a black Bentley slide behind the gates and stop in the motor court. A black-suited chauffeur hopped out and scurried to open the door for Renata Lippincott, who stalked over to Billie, her heels making angry little stabs in the cobblestones.

By the time I got downstairs I could hear Mrs. Lippincott in the motor court, thundering at Billie. “What in the hell do you think you’re doing! David, you have to stop this!”

“I’m afraid their warrant’s in order, Renata,” Sarkisian replied, hurrying to her side.

“Can’t you get Judge Fenwick to block it?” she demanded. “We play tennis together at the club.”

“I’m afraid not.”

“You’re worse than useless!” She waved her arm, striking Sarkisian in the shoulder. “Get out of my way!”

Sarkisian beat a hasty retreat, and Lippincott repeated her demand of Billie, who squared her shoulders and replied: “I’m doing my job, ma’am. Now, if you’ll excuse me…”

Lippincott saw me approaching and shouted: “Detective Justice! Can you get this… this…”

Billie took a step closer and produced her badge. “Are you looking for the word cop, ma’am?”

Lippincott narrowed her eyes at Billie as if she’d like to strike her, too, then turned to me, working her tight-skinned face into a semblance of a smile. “Can we speak privately?”

I motioned her into her stepson’s house, across the marble entryway and down a couple of steps into a cavernous sunken living room. She perched herself on a red leather sectional sofa that faced the ocean view, a monogrammed handbag held in her lap as if it were a shield. From the way she sat and the pained look on her face, I guessed this was the first time she’d been in Mario’s house since her split with Chuck.

“Mr. Merritt called about your ridiculous search warrants. But none of your people will give me any more information than that.”

“There’s nothing for me to say, ma’am. Unless there’s something you want to tell me.”

“Me? Tell you?” She gave me a startled look and started squirming in her little Chanel suit. “Like what?”

I opened my notebook and flipped back to my notes from the meeting Monday at CZ Toys. “For starters, what did your board’s audit committee ask the internal auditing department to investigate recently?”

“Nothing!” Lippincott’s voice registered the appropriate indignation, but she blinked a few times too many. “I can’t believe you’re turning our offices and our homes upside down because of something the audit committee is investigating!”

“So they are investigating something.”

“I didn’t say that!” she insisted, clearly flustered. “I don’t see what this has to do with-”

“It may have a lot to do with Mr. Shareef’s murder. Never mind,” I said, pulling out my cell phone. “I’m sure it’ll be in the minutes of the audit committee’s meetings.”

She stretched out a manicured hand, said, “Just a minute!” and withdrew it as quickly. “I don’t know why you’re asking me! I don’t even sit on the audit committee!”

“But as chair of the company’s board, I can’t imagine the committee keeping its work secret from you.”

Lippincott shrugged and gave me an inane stare. I didn’t expect her to admit to her own complicity in allowing the company to pay for her Montecito residence, but her lack of cooperation in getting to the bottom of the shootings and murder was pissing me off. “Then tell me this-why wasn’t your stepson named CEO of the company?”

Her mouth formed a bright red O. “I don’t see what that has to do with-”

“Why don’t you humor me, Mrs. Lippincott, and answer the question?”

The housekeeper, a Latina with a long braid down her back and fearful eyes, tiptoed in from the kitchen and asked if we were going to be much longer.

“Oh, I didn’t know anyone else was here.” Lippincott turned as if relieved for the interruption. “Blanca, get me a Scotch, por favor?”

She sat gripping the handles of her handbag and frowning as if trying to think of an answer until the housekeeper returned with her drink. She grabbed the glass and took a long swallow, which seemed to steady her nerves. “The reason why Mario wasn’t selected to succeed my husband goes to the very heart of our business strategy. It would be inappropriate to share it with outsiders.”

I made a show of closing my notebook. “Don’t worry, Mrs. Lippincott, our conversation won’t show up in the Wall Street Journal. We’re just trying to solve the murder of Mr. Shareef and the shooting of three innocent bystanders, among them the father of your daughter.”

Embarrassment and something else bloomed on her face. “I’m sorry. It’s just that my husb-Chuck was so vital. I… we… the board had never considered what the company would do if Chuck was to become incapacitated. Or die.”

I looked at the emotions moving across the woman’s face. “I understand,” I murmured. And I did, because in that instant I realized that after all Chuck Zuccari had done to her, Renata Lippincott probably loved her ex-husband as much as she hated him.

“Chuck had been giving more and more responsibility to Mario.” She took another swallow of Scotch and rolled it around as if clearing the distasteful name of her stepson from her mouth. “With the idea that he would eventually become CEO. But the board was developing some reservations, which came to a head last fall.”

I wished I could refer to my notes, but I didn’t want to interrupt her train of thought. “Were you even on the board last fall?”

She shook her head, lips pressed together carefully. “I’d been gone for almost a year, but I still had several friends who were directors who kept me apprised of the situation and sought my counsel.”

I wondered how kosher that was, but let it go. “So these reservations had been brewing for a while.”

“Since the previous spring. At the board’s annual strategy session, the directors asked Chuck for an update of his succession plan. Nothing cast in stone, mind you, but if Chuck was hit by a car, who would he think could carry on.”

“And he named…?”

“My stepson. But last fall, after Chuck was shot, a couple of the directors came to me, quite distressed. Chuck had expressed some concerns to them privately about Mario before the shooting. Nothing formal, you understand, just some concerns.”

“About?”

She blinked slowly as if trying to remember, or maybe that was the effect of the Scotch. “Chuck told them some issues had come to his attention that gave him pause…”

As her voice trailed off I wondered if Renata Lippincott was trying to figure out how to tell me about the bogus vendor.

She shifted on the sofa, the Scotch clearly taking effect. “But then he was shot, and the board truly didn’t know what to do, what with Mario pressing them so hard to name him as successor.”

“So you got yourself renamed a director and helped them make a decision.”

Lippincott smoothed her skirt and took another long draw on her Scotch. “Yes, I did.” Her voice echoed in her glass. She finished her drink and set it on the coffee table. “I think I acted in the best interests of the shareholders.”

“You have to forgive me, Ms. Lippincott,” I began, covering my annoyance with a smile. “I was a history major undergrad, so I’m a little slow to pick up on this business stuff.” I opened my notebook, flipping back and forth through my notes. “How Mario could have headed up the company’s operations on two continents, been your CFO for five years, been handpicked by Mr. Zuccari to succeed him, and you not endorse him as your ex-husband’s successor? Unless you withheld your endorsement for personal reasons.”

Renata Lippincott gave me an icy stare. “What are you insinuating?”

Over her shoulder, I saw Billie slip into the foyer and pause near the archway, where she stepped back, out of sight but well within earshot of our conversation. “Your stepson introduced Mr. Zuccari to his current wife, didn’t he?” I asked.

The ice in her eyes turned to daggers. “How dare you!”

“Should I take that to be a yes?”

Lippincott’s face had turned as red as her stepson’s sofa. “I refuse to talk about that deceitful little bitch!”

“I see you don’t think much of your ex-husband’s new wife.”

“Chuck was never that sophisticated about women,” she confided. “He married his first wife when they were kids, and he married me soon after she died, so he’s really-he really was quite naïve. But the way Alma duped him and bled him dry is criminal!”

“We were led to believe Alma had become quite an asset to him and to the company, especially in assessing the joint venture with the Shareefs.”

“The defunct joint venture,” she corrected, a note of triumph in her voice.

“We were told the venture was very promising.”

She leaned in my direction, trying to read my notes. “Who told you that? Alma? Of course she’d think so!”

“The Shareefs were very high on it, too.”

“They had to be-they were trying to sell us on the idea. But I think the window has closed on that whole ethnic doll thing.” She leaned closer, her voice dropping to a whisper. “People don’t mind a Diana Ross or a Whitney Houston doll, but an Aisha or Zakiya or Felicidad? Those are maid’s names, for God’s sake!” She sat back and made a face.

“But we understand Mr. Zuccari’s wife was excited about the collection,” I said, making sure to put the emphasis on the word wife. “Maybe she had a different perspective as a younger woman and mother-to-be.”

Lippincott bristled, as I’d hoped she would, but her words took me by surprise. “That’s not the reason Alma was so enthralled by the Shareefs. She was one of them.”

“A Muslim?”

“No, them!” She jerked her head in the direction of the front door. “The Afro Americans, Negroes, whatever they call themselves these days!” She leaned toward me and whispered: “Alma Gordone never thought anyone would find out her little secret, but I did!”

As Renata Lippincott congratulated herself on her cunning I was trying to remember whether there was anything in Alma’s appearance or behavior that suggested she was passing. I’d noticed her blond hair had dark wavy roots, but I knew some Italians and Jews whose hair was the same way. And while I’d also detected a bit of black slang in her speech pattern, that could have been the case with anyone who grew up near a television in post-segregation America. But passing? Given her age, I would have figured Alma would have been prouder, and more secure, about her racial identity than to resort to a game like that. Passing was something out of a Nella Larsen novel, or Imitation of Life-one of those old fifties movies. But, like it or not, I had to admit Lippincott’s accusation provided an alternative explanation for Alma’s championing the Shareefs’ project. How had Malik characterized Alma’s interest in their dolls to his brother? Having a black attack.

“The way they got married so fast,” Lippincott was saying, “and then she started inserting herself in the company’s affairs, I knew something wasn’t right. What if she was a corporate spy from Mattel or Hasbro? Or she and the Shareefs were in cahoots to steal the company’s secrets? Everyone was aware of how much time she spent with him.”

“Weren’t you being a little extreme?”

“I didn’t think so, and neither did Mr. Merritt, head of our company’s legal department.”

As if a corporate survivor like Robert Merritt was going to disagree with a major stockholder, my little voice said.

“He had Mr. Collins arrange for a private investigator to check into her background for me.”

“You have a copy of the investigator’s report?”

“Mr. Merritt thought it best that he be the only one to see the actual report,” she explained, “just so the company could protect itself in case outsiders tried to get hold of it. Attorney work product privilege, he called it. But he told me the essentials.”

She leaned forward, eager to share the dirt that had been dug up. “That story Alma told everyone about both of her parents being dead? All lies! Well, not exactly. I mean, her father’s dead, but her mother’s in some nursing home in Newark, not far from one of the company’s old warehouses!”

I made a note to find out how far Newark was from Jersey City, the postmark on that letter we’d found. “And how did this P.I. discover they were black?”

“The report said the Gordones were pale enough to fool most people-”

Pale like me? I wanted to ask, but I held my tongue.

“The father was a well-to-do obstetrician with a thriving practice in Montclair, which is what deceived the people who sold their home to them in the mid-sixties. But how were they to know? The man was a member of the most exclusive country club in the area!”

Which, I was willing to bet a year’s salary, probably didn’t accept blacks as members back in the day. Maybe not even now. I made a sympathetic sound. “And here this Dr. Gordone had been examining their wives and delivering their babies.”

“Exactly! But when some of the wife’s family showed up one Christmas, that’s when the truth came to light.” She allowed herself a little smile. “Or dark, if you prefer.”

“Hm. That must have been quite a blow for Montclair.”

“Upper Montclair,” Lippincott corrected, “which was known at the time as one of the finest neighborhoods in New Jersey.” She compressed her lips into an ain’t-it-awful expression. “My point is, it was quite the scandal back in the sixties, not the kind of thing a neighborhood soon forgets. The investigator found out that the husband’s practice dropped off to nothing, he and the wife divorced, and Alma ended up with her mother, who remarried again before landing in the projects. Served her right, trying to deceive people like that!”

“Why are you telling me all of this, ma’am?”

“Because Alma’s just like her mother-trying to claw her way out of the ghetto by deceiving my poor Chuck!”

When I didn’t respond, Lippincott leaned forward and demanded: “Well? Don’t just sit there.”

“What would you like me to do?”

She made a shooing motion with one hand. “Go and arrest her!”

“For what? Pretending to be white?”

“No, for trying to kill my husband! I know Chuck would have divorced her, if he’d had the time. Something like this would have jeopardized every political contact he had!”

Billie emerged from the spot where she’d been eavesdropping, as angry as I’d ever seen her. I raised a hand to stop her, but it was too late. “Whether you know it or not, Ms. Lippincott, interracial marriage is no longer a crime in this country!”

Chuck Zuccari’s ex-wife gave Billie a withering look. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”

“So are you saying,” I pressed, “that Alma had your ex-husband shot to keep him from divorcing her?”

“I think so, yes,” she insisted, nodding her head firmly. “Which is why I think you should investigate.”

“We will,” I said, flipping my notebook closed. “But what I don’t get is… why didn’t you tell us this before?”

Renata Lippincott’s body stiffened and she lifted her head, suddenly above it all. “I would have, but Mr. Merritt advised me to let it go. He said that while the investigator proved Alma was a deceitful little bitch-those weren’t his words exactly-lying to trap a man isn’t exactly a crime. And if I continued to pursue it, it might stir up problems the company or I personally didn’t need.”

Like alerting her new boyfriend to his wife’s obsession with her ex. “You said you knew Chuck would have divorced Alma if he’d had time. Does that mean you told him about the investigator’s report?”

“I wouldn’t dream of doing something like that!” Eyes as wide as her face-lift allowed, Renata Lippincott raised a hand to her chest in a sign of feigned innocence.

“But someone else did?”

Her lips twitched. “Mr. Merritt said he would talk to Chuck. I remember he said there were some parts of the story Chuck should hear directly from him.”

Or maybe Merritt was trying to spare his boss the embarrassment of hearing the news from his ex. “I just bet he did,” I said. But as I watched the fierce gleam in Renata Lippincott’s eyes, I wondered if Merritt’s motive in talking to his boss privately might be for some other reason entirely.