Undue Influence

Chapter 9

‘The Resolution Trust Corporation,’ says Harry.

‘What?’

‘The RTC. The agency that took over the bankrupt savings and loans.’

Harry is driving as I am looking at him from the front passenger seat of his car. He is telling me who holds the mortgage on George and Kathy Merlow’s house. Harry’s run up a dead end with the realtor.

‘What’s more, the agent said they never heard of George or Kathy Merlow. The sales listing was signed by some swag from the RTC, part of the excess real estate the agency picked up when they were shutting down the thrifts,’ he says.

According to Harry, this property, the Merlows’ house, has languished on their rolls of unsold assets for some time.

‘How did the Merlows come to live there?’

‘Your guess,’ he says. ‘The realtor thinks it was probably rented out. He says that’s not uncommon. Public agencies often do it, he says, while trying to sell property they hold. It defrays expenses.’

‘Where do we go from here?’ I ask him.

‘I got a call in to the RTC,’ says Harry. ‘Left a message on their voice mail. They’ll probably call us back in the next life,’ he tells me.

In the meantime Harry is driving me to the old downtown post office, the place where, according to neighbors, Kathy Merlow worked.

‘This employment is past tense,’ he says. Harry’s talked to a supervisor. ‘They haven’t seen her in almost a month,’ he says. ‘Not a word. She just didn’t show up for work one day, and hasn’t been back since.’

‘Let me guess. Right after Melanie Vega was murdered?’

‘Next day,’ says Harry.

Kathy Merlow vanished like a ghost.

I’m not sure what we hope to find at the post office, but Harry thinks it might be worth nosing around. He’s made an appointment.

‘What about George Merlow?’ I ask.

‘If he worked, it was out of the house. Neighbors said they never saw him leave. Once in a blue moon,’ says Harry. ‘Like the guy was a recluse.’

‘That house,’ I say. ‘Pretty expensive digs for a guy without a job and a wife who works at the post office.’

‘Maybe he clipped coupons,’ says Harry. ‘Big stock portfolio.’

‘And his wife needed to work at the post office? It doesn’t make sense.’

‘Maybe with the government for a landlord the rent wasn’t much,’ says Harry. ‘You don’t expect ’em to charge fair rental value?’ Harry sneers at the mere thought of a rational act by a government agency. A lot of maybes, but no answers that make any sense.

We pull up and park in front of a meter at the curb. Harry pumps three quarters and watches as the dial barely budges. He hits me for some change. I give him two more.

‘We’ll have to work fast,’ he says.

We’re up the stairs, through the heavy bronze doors.

The old post office is one of those structures built during the time of the WPA, when only the government had money and wage scales were on a par with the pay for the pyramids. Dark, with dated artistic touches, more marble than a mausoleum, it is now a tomb for the unknown bureaucrats who toil here.

We take the elevator to the second floor. Harry’s reading from a scrap of paper, a note with the man’s name and room number. He finds the number, 224, a door with a translucent window, lots of chicken wire in glass, and a transom over the top of the door that looks like it’s been stuck open since the forties. It’s too dark to tell if they’ve painted the corridor since then, but my guess would be no from the state of the dingy walls.

Harry opens the door and we go inside. The room is immense, and mostly empty. There are two metal government desks, one of which is vacant. At the other sits a thin black man, pencil mustache, maybe in his early fifties. Short-cropped graying hair. He looks up at us.

‘Looking for Mr. Goldbloom,’ says Harry.

‘You found him.’ The guy gets up and Harry introduces us.

‘Oh, yes. You called. Lawyers,’ he says, ‘about some case.’

Harry gives the guy his card and plucks one from a holder on the man’s desk, government issue recycled stock, the gray cast of cardboard: ‘Cyril Goldbloom, Postal Inspector.’

Leave it to Harry to find a cop.

‘What’s this about?’ he says.

Harry refreshes his recollection, their telephone conversation.

‘Oh, yeah. You called this morning. Something about a criminal case. Looking for one of our people. A personnel matter,’ he says. Relief on Mr. Goldbloom’s face. He’s found the right pigeonhole for our problem. He sits back at his desk and motions for us to join him. I take a chair on the other side of the desk. Harry opts to put one cheek on the empty desk across the way and watch from there.

Goldbloom opens a top drawer and pulls out a form, more small print than the Bible.

‘Employee’s name?’ he says.

We’re going to do this by the numbers. Harry looks at me. I can tell he is thinking profanities.

‘Kathy Merlow,’ I say.

‘That’s right. I remember,’ he says. He writes her name in the block at the top of the page.

Now he’s writing Harry’s name, address, and phone number from the business card, putting it in a little box on the form.

‘Purpose of the inquiry?’ he says.

I look at Harry, shrug my shoulders. ‘Legal investigation,’ I tell him.

‘Your relationship to the employee?’ He looks at me, then to Harry.

‘Strangers,’ I tell him.

‘Emm.’ There doesn’t seem to be a little box labeled ‘strangers.’ He labors over this for several seconds, then finally scribbles a note at the bottom of the form.

He has a dozen more questions, most of them inane. Then he looks up. Task done.

‘We’ll file this,’ he says. ‘As I explained when you called’ — he’s looking at Harry — ‘Mrs. Merlow no longer works here. We’ll check her personnel file to see if there’s any information that we’re free to disclose.’

‘Can we look at the file?’ says Harry.

‘No. No. Personal and confidential,’ he says. ‘Federal law. There could be all kinds of stuff in there.’

That’s what Harry’s hoping for.

‘What can you tell us?’ I say.

‘That’s about it,’ he says.

‘What position did she hold? You oughta be able to tell us that,’ says Harry.

He makes a face, thinking, like maybe what he’s considering is against his better judgment, giving information to citizens. Then he reaches for one of the lower drawers of his desk and pulls out a series of typed sheets, stapled together in the upper left-hand corner. This is an impromptu phone directory of some kind, what is given to employees to find each other. He flips through some pages.

‘Here it is. Kathy Merlow. Customer Relations,’ he says.

‘What’s that?’

‘Customer complaints. That kind of thing.’

‘Did she transfer in from another post office?’

‘That I don’t know.’

‘She was only in town a short while.’

‘Wouldn’t know.’

‘She worked in this building?’

‘Uh-huh. Downstairs,’ he says. ‘Now that’s about all I can tell you.’

‘How long before we get a reply?’ says Harry. ‘To your form. Maybe a forwarding address for Mrs. Merlow?’

Goldbloom makes a face. ‘Could take a while. Has to go over to the main branch. Postmaster will have to review it. Personnel Department,’ he says.

‘So we could die of old age?’ says Harry.

Goldbloom laughs. Staring all day at four dingy walls, his humor threshold is low.

Harry’s getting hot. ‘If we were the cops you’d show us her personnel file today, wouldn’t you?’

‘That’d be a different matter,’ says Goldbloom. ‘An official investigation,’ he says.

‘Would a subpoena do any good?’ I ask him.

‘Oh, sure. Then we’d be free to show you the file.’ He smiles at us. ‘One of the exemptions in the law, a court order,’ he says. ‘I’d like to help, but my hands are tied,’ he says. Dark eyebrows arching.

‘Sure,’ says Harry.

We say goodbye and head out.

We’re halfway to the elevator. ‘We get a subpoena,’ I tell Harry.

He has a better idea. We’re down the elevator and out the door, and Harry’s not headed for the car. Instead I’m tracking him down the street, along the side of the building, which covers half the block. In the rear is an alley that cuts the block in two. From Seventh Street this runs downhill and back up to Eighth Street on the other side. At the lowest point in the alley is a loading dock, several small postal vans backed up to this.

‘No law against talking,’ says Harry.

We’re down the alley and up on the dock before I can say a word. A couple of carriers are loading mail. They ignore us, maybe hope we will go away, pain-in-the-ass citizens looking for mail.

Harry walks up to one of them.

‘We’re here to pick up a package,’ he says.

‘You go to the window out front,’ says the guy. He’s not even looking at Harry, still loading his crates of letters, his back to us. He flings the little flats of letters into the back of the truck like some Bedouin flipping camel dung into a fire.

‘They told us to come here. It’s a big package,’ says Harry. ‘We got a call some time ago from Kathy Merlow,’ he says. ‘I think one of her friends here, I can’t remember the name, is supposed to be holding it for us. Could you check?’ he says.

The guy finally straightens up, gives Harry a look and the government-service sigh. You can tell what’s going through his mind. ‘Like world crisis, national calamity, a package lost at the post office.’

‘Gimme a minute,’ he says. He loads two more crates in the back of the van, empties the little hand dolly, and turns for the building and another load.

Harry’s on his heels.

The guy turns.

‘Stay here.’ He freezes Harry with a look. Then he disappears through a swinging door into the building.

Harry gives me a devilish grin. Even in the short time that she worked here, Kathy Merlow must have made at least one friend, somebody this guy will run to who would come outside to see who is using her name.

It’s a couple of minutes, Harry and I killing time on the dock, dodging other carriers with crates full of mail, happy to ignore us so long as we reciprocate.

Finally the carrier comes out. I think he’s alone. Then I see her, a woman, more properly a young girl, lost in his shadow. She could be anything from sixteen to twenty-two, not so much slender as gaunt. Dressed in the blue uniform shirt of the Postal Service a size too big, the shirttail hanging outside of her dark trousers nearly to the white tennis shoes on her feet. Her mousy brown locks are braided into two pigtails that jet from either side of her head and explode in a frizz of hair just beyond the rubber bands holding them together. In a rational world someone might be pressing the Postal Service under the child labor laws. She has a pale complexion dotted with a few freckles, and all the hope she can muster resides in oval brown eyes that seem to belong to somebody else. She has the look of an urchin from a Dickens fable that ends badly. But one glance and I know, that whether locked in hell or the bowels of the federal post office, from what I remember of Kathy Merlow, this woman and she are likely soulmates.

‘You lookin’ for Kathy?’ she says.

Harry nods.

‘She don’t work here anymore.’

‘You knew Kathy Merlow?’ says Harry.

The woman has wary eyes. ‘Whadda ya want?’ she says.

‘We’d like to find Mrs. Merlow,’ says Harry.

‘He says you was lookin’ for a package?’ She’s looking at the carrier, who’s wandered back to his chores.

‘We need to talk to Mrs. Merlow.’ Harry softens like he’s talking to a young child, coaxing information.

‘Seems everybody wants to find Kathy,’ she says.

‘Who else has been asking?’ says Harry.

She looks at him but doesn’t respond.

I step forward and hand the girl my business card. She studies it for several seconds.

‘We’re lawyers,’ I tell her. ‘We’d like to talk to Mr. and Mrs. Merlow in connection with a case we’re handling. We think it’s possible that they could be witnesses in the case.’

‘They do something wrong?’

‘No. No. We just want to talk to them.’

‘I can’t help you. I don’t know where she is.’ She starts to walk away.

‘Ma’am.’

She turns.

‘It’s very important. A woman’s life may depend on it.’

She locks her oval eyes on me for a moment.

‘A mother with two children.’ I turn the screws a little deeper.

She looks at the carrier, who’s paying no attention at this moment. She moves a step closer to us.

‘How could Kathy save a life?’ she says.

‘It’s a murder trial. We represent — ’

‘Marcie!’ A booming voice from the doorway behind her. The woman shrinks to half her already minimal size. There, outside the swinging door, is a man, maybe thirty-five, a tie, white shirtsleeves rolled to his elbows, close-cropped hair, the look of management in his eyes. ‘Are you on a break?’ he says.

She turns. ‘No, sir.’

‘Then you’re supposed to be sorting,’ he says. ‘This is what we talked about in your last performance evaluation,’ he tells her. ‘Do we have to go through it again? Put it in your file,’ he says. ‘I don’t have to remind you that you’re on probation,’ he says. ‘One more unsatisfactory report and you’re on the street. I told you. I warned you.’

This woman, Marcie, is now shaking, though I cannot tell if it is from fear or anger.

‘I just stepped out,’ she says. Her voice is of sterner stuff.

‘Do you want to talk about it or do you want to have a job? If you want to talk about it, you can do that from out there, on the street,’ he says. He points to the sidewalk.

She stands there frozen in silence, with her back to him, and mouths the word for us to read, ‘asshole.’

‘Well, which is it gonna be?’ he says.

Marcie looks like she could squeeze between the door and its frame when it was closed. But in passing this guy she has difficulty. And he won’t move an inch to let her by, but makes her walk around him.

Shaking his head as she skulks past, hands on his hips. He could be the Master of Tara after some worthless pickaninny fieldhand. All that is missing is the broad-brimmed hat and the whip.

Before I can say another word she disappears through the swinging doors. The hot breath of opportunity, gone.

The guy in shirtsleeves is standing there looking at me now, but a different posture, a lighter tone, dealing with the public, somebody not so easily cowed.

‘What are you gentlemen doing here? This area’s off limits to the public,’ he says.

Harry’s moving as if he’d like a piece of this guy. In his face, solidarity with the workers, a budding assault on the ramparts of management.

I grab him by the arm. ‘Another time,’ I tell him.

Harry growls deep down in the throat, like some mad mongrel about to rip the ass end out of somebody’s pants. I would swear that there’s a little foam at the corner of his lip.

Before we hit the steps down to the alley, the guy’s chewing on the carrier.

‘What are you doing letting them back here?’ he says. ‘Why do you think we have rules? You can’t deal with it, you call security. How many times we have to talk about it? We go over, and over, and over, this stuff and you people, you never listen.’

Five-nine to six feet, he’s looking across at the carrier’s chin, shouting into his throat, a dressing-down in front of others you would not give a schoolchild caught shoplifting.

The mailman looks at him like he could deck the son of a bitch. The only thing holding him back is the need to feed his family in what the politicians euphemistically call a downsized economy.

We’re down the concrete steps from the dock and up the alley and I can still hear the guy ranting, ragging on the carrier, who could kill.

‘What an asshole,’ says Harry.

‘She knows something,’ I tell him. ‘She knows where Kathy Merlow is.’

He looks at me. ‘How do you know?’

‘She was gonna talk. I could smell it. When I told her there was a woman’s life in the balance. She leaned,’ I say. ‘She was falling into our arms. In that instant before Simon Legree showed up.’

‘Maybe we could look on Goldbloom’s list and find the name Marcie,’ he says. ‘Call her on the phone.’

‘What, and fill out another form?’ I ask him. ‘We’ll find another way to run her down. Come back after work if we have to.’

‘It raises another question,’ says Harry. ‘Who else do you think is looking for Merlow?’

‘My guess? Probably Jimmy Lama.’

Harry gets the picture. If Jimmy did the neighborhood like us, he couldn’t miss the Merlows’ empty house.

‘He’d check where they worked. Lama and his cronies probably lined up all the help in the mail room and did the third degree. A point for our side,’ I tell him. ‘If it was the cops who were asking. Marcie’s a friend. If she thought Kathy Merlow was in trouble, you think she would talk?’

Harry’s shaking his head like a village preacher asked if the devil goes to heaven.

‘That’s what I think,’ I tell him. We do a mutual smile, grins all around.

We’re to the corner when I see the expression on Harry’s face turn grim, then angry.

‘Shit.’ It is the only thing he says.

The meter maid is busy writing Harry a ticket.

‘Racketeering, mail fraud, and extortion,’ she says. ‘Six counts. He pled out two months ago to a sealed indictment.’ This is Dana Colby’s rendition of what the Justice Department has on Jack Vega.

I whistle, low under my breath. He could do a dozen years for this. These are no doubt all activities that Jack would lump under the term ‘fund-raising.’

‘Mr. Vega doesn’t have good money manners,’ she says.

Knowing Jack and his ability to draw attention, he was probably working the rotunda of the Capitol, threatening tour groups with new taxes unless they gave him their pocket change.

It is nearly seven-thirty in the evening. I am at Dana’s house out in the avenues. Two blocks from Jack’s. It was Dana’s choice to meet here. To do it in the office, she says, would have raised questions. She has talked to her people and is now able to tell me some things.

‘So Jack’s now doing his civic duty,’ I say. I’m talking about Vega rolling over on his unsuspecting friends in the Capitol.

‘He had something to offer. We were interested,’ she says. ‘Sit down. How about a cup of coffee?’

‘Sure.’ I settle into the couch in the living room, where I can see her through the opening to the kitchen while we talk.

Dana’s still dressed from work, white blouse, a gray tight wool skirt, hemline above the knees, pinstripes. What the well-dressed female lawyer wears. The skirt clings to her form as she moves about the kitchen in bare feet, having ditched her heels by the chair across the way in the living room.

‘We offered him eighteen months at Lompoc,’ she says. ‘And a quarter-million-dollar fine.’

This will no doubt draw down Jack’s kitty. And while he will do his time in one of the federal country clubs, the place where the junk-bond kings made muscles, grew beards, found God, and turned over new ethical leaves, it is still a penitentiary. When he comes out he won’t be doing any lobbying in D.C. The thing Jack lives for, power, will be drained from his bones like some leaking, dead battery in a discarded toy. For someone like Jack, who doesn’t know how to do real work, he would view this as the first step on the road to homelessness. A man who is suddenly under a lot of strain, getting his psyche steamed and pressed.

‘His lawyers made a big pitch,’ she says. ‘First offense. A man with a family. A long and distinguished public career.’

‘Long I will concede,’ I tell her.

‘And children,’ she says.

Suddenly Jack’s rush to get custody is making more sense. The kids were a foil, a shield that he could throw up to a sympathetic federal judge. No place to go, they need a father.

‘He must have given up quite a bit in return?’ I say.

‘Some members of the House,’ she says. No names, but from the way she speaks I am certain these are ranking politicians.

‘And a few lobbyists.’ She talks like they are trading pieces on a chessboard — my knight for your majority whip.

She’s out with the coffee, two mugs, and a little dish of cookies. She hands me a mug, offers a cookie, and I take one. I am doing without dinner tonight. Then she kneels down on the couch, legs slightly spread and curled under herself so that we are now two endpieces with a single cushion between us. Her skirt has hiked up a little so that I am now getting a lot of open thigh with my coffee and cookies. She sees me looking, does nothing to adjust her skirt, but gives me that knowing look that some women do so well when they know they are being ogled but don’t mind.

‘It’s a pretty good deal — for Jack, I mean. Given the charges, if the evidence was solid.’

‘Ironclad,’ she says. ‘We had him on tape, soliciting and accepting bribes. Still, he’s not finished dealing.’

I give her a look, a question mark.

‘His lawyers are arguing that the murder of his wife, the absence of any available parents for the children, changes the circumstances of his situation. His lawyers are making a pitch for straight probation. Another hearing before the court.’

One thing is clear. Though she doesn’t yet know it, the name of Dana Colby will be appearing on my list of witnesses for the defense.

‘You don’t sound like you’re putting up a pitched battle over this.’

‘He was a corrupting influence, poisoning the system,’ she says. ‘Whether he does jail time or not, we’ve effectively cut him out like a cancer. The terms of probation will be long and severe. No lobbying, barred from public office. Sometimes there is only so much you can do. Diminishing returns,’ she says. ‘We had what we wanted. Vega’s cooperation, the man out of the process. His testimony against others more corrupt,’ she says.

I don’t think there is such an animal. And Dana sounds more than a little defensive. I wonder if there are other reasons they backed off to let Jack walk, something she is not telling me. Some other leverage that has gotten Dana to call off her dogs.

Still, this is the Jack I know. The king of Teflon, even in the jaws of justice. A tragedy in the family, and Jack doesn’t miss a beat. His lawyers ever on the lookout for the silver seam, he appears to have found it.

‘How far are you from closure?’ I ask. ‘For Jack to finish his chores? Indictments?’

‘Ahh. Well, these things take time,’ she says. ‘A few weeks, maybe a month — could be a little more.’

It would be easier to get federal cooperation, to go public with the information on Jack’s criminal involvement and avoid a messy battle with the feds if they can wrap their case and bring indictments quickly. It would also shed a new light on the grieving spouse, perhaps take a little of the edge off of the state’s case against Laurel. After all, the victim was, at a minimum, living with a felon. I wonder how much Melanie knew. The favored tactic on defense. Put the victim on trial.

‘There’s no doubt that his wife’s murder adds a complication,’ says Dana. ‘Still, I’m not sure we see any connection between the two, our investigation and Mrs. Vega’s death.’ Dana’s look at this moment is more questions than answers. She wants to know if I have anything specific linking the murder and Jack’s problems with the feds.

‘That raises a question,’ I say.

‘What’s that?’

‘Would you have told me about the sting with Jack if I hadn’t stumbled over the wire?’

She smiles, little crinkles at the corners of her mouth.

‘Probably not. We would have seen no connection to the murders. No foul, no crime,’ she says. ‘Unless you know something we don’t.’

I give her a stone face.

‘You don’t really think that somebody tried to kill him that night to silence him?’

I am a shrug, a downturned mouth.

‘Tell me about his marital problems,’ I say.

She looks at me over her coffee mug.

‘The other day, over dinner, you said that on top of everything else, the screws you folks were turning, that Jack had marital problems.’

She takes a sip. ‘Hmm — that,’ she says. ‘No offense. I know he’s your former brother-in-law and all.’

‘You can put the emphasis on the word former,’ I tell her.

‘I suspect if his wife was sleeping with other people she probably had good reason,’ says Dana.

‘You sound like you’re not a fan of Jack’s.’

‘I take a hot shower with lots of soap every time I have to deal with the man.’ She tells me it’s not just Jack’s corrupting ways.

‘Every look you get from him, it’s like he’s having optical intercourse with you,’ she says. ‘I’m not talking mild glances. The guy would zero in on cleavage, a gap in your knees, any open opportunity,’ she says. ‘And it didn’t stop with looks.’

‘I’ve never noticed,’ I lie.

‘You’re not a woman,’ she says.

I can believe that having set his eyes on Dana, Jack would have developed eyes that could fuck.

‘Was Melanie doing it with somebody else?’

‘More like everybody else,’ she says.

There’s a long sigh, like she’s not sure she should be getting into this. Then she finally looks up at me.

‘You didn’t hear it here,’ she says. She reaches across the gulf between the couch and the coffee table and puts the mug down. Little pockets of fabric open on her blouse and I can see a lot of lace underneath, then I divert my eyes. The ravages of the guilty male mind. She’s sitting up again, straight. I lock eye contact to keep my own from wandering.

‘He allowed us to put a tap on his home phone. I don’t think his wife knew.’

‘You heard her talking to other men?’

‘I didn’t. But agents who were monitoring did. Liaisons out of the house, and some there.’

‘Did Vega know?’

She nods.

‘How do you know?’

‘The guy was awful with the wire,’ she says. ‘He’d leave the thing on for hours. Forget to turn it off. Then twice when it was off and there were important conversations, he forgot to turn it on. We know,’ she says, ‘because the people showed up on the video in his office.’

The image of this, like some silent movie, pictures and no sound, somehow is chilling. I make a mental note not to be seen in Jack’s office again.

‘We had to send him back,’ she says. ‘I mean, it was terrible. He mealymouthed his way back into some guy’s office and told him he forgot what they’d discussed ten minutes before, about the contribution, wink, wink, and what piece of legislation was the quid pro quo. Can you believe?’ she says. ‘Like talk into my tie clip.’

‘And I’ll bet the guy repeated it all.’

‘Oh, yeah.’ Dana is all big eyes. A face filled with expression. Incredulous. ‘These people believe in trust,’ she says.

Why not? I think. They’re talking to Jack Vega, the patron saint of political corruption. Who was dirtier than Jack?

‘It was impossible for Vega to have a secret from us. Even things we didn’t want to know.’

‘So he suspected that his wife was having an affair? He said this?’

‘At least twice,’ she says. ‘Once to one of the young aides in the office. A woman. It was pretty bad,’ she says. ‘He was producing a pity play for sympathy, complete with sound and cameras. Crying on a soft shoulder. The gal was in her early twenties, didn’t know what to do. This slobbering guy all over her, arms around her neck. I couldn’t tell if he was serious or if it was just a pitch to get into her pants,’ she says.

Knowing Jack, I can form my own conclusion. He always operated on a double standard. If it moved, Jack would fuck it. But let Melanie step out with some other man, and you can imagine Jack — capable of almost anything.

‘And there was one other time,’ she says, ‘on the phone to somebody. We don’t know who. It was all very cryptic.’

‘Do you know what they talked about?’

She shakes her head.

‘You have the tapes?’

‘At one time,’ she says. ‘I don’t know if we kept them. Policy is to get rid of anything not relevant.’

‘Could you check?’

‘Is it important?’

‘Could be,’ I tell her.

She’s looking at me, intense. Wheels turning inside of wheels, then they click, and lock, coming up all bars and bells. The dawning of light.

‘You’re thinking he killed his wife,’ she says.

‘I’m considering the possibilities.’