Reason to Kill by Andy Weinberger

Author:Andy Weinberger
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Prospect Park Books
Published: 2020-11-14T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14

MELVIN RUPIPER’S OFFICE is downtown on Olive near First, on the third floor of an old art deco building that once housed a bank, back when banks were still places that actually kept your money and people like John Dillinger made a fine, if not decent, living robbing them. It has a large revolving glass door at street level. When you grab the old brass railings and push through, you find yourself in a lobby with a thirty-foot ceiling, a vaulted cathedral dedicated not to God but to business and finance. It makes you feel small and insignificant. When your shoes touch the black-and-white tile floor, they echo. And what you notice right away is how cool and sterile and odorless everything is. That’s the first thing. The second thing is an old-fashioned information kiosk made of ebony or some other extinct wood. And inside the kiosk sits a twentysomething girl with blue eyeshadow, big brown eyes, and long tight braids. She doesn’t look up as I approach, maybe because she’s busy thumbing through People magazine.

I ask about Mr. Rupiper and she points, barely lifting a finger, to her left. “It’s faster, you take the elevator,” she says. “Suite 309.”

“Thanks,” I say. “You’re very kind.”

That last remark makes her glance in my direction. “Say what?”

“Thanks,” I say again. I go past the potted ficus plants in their lovely red ceramic containers, step inside the brass-plated elevator, press the button marked 3, stuff my hands in my pockets, and wait. Elevators are not only the safest form of transportation known to man, they’re also the slowest, which may be related. The good news is, hardly anybody ever dies in an elevator. Not by accident, anyway. Someone tried to push me out of one once, but that’s another story.

Rupiper’s suite is at the end of a hall. I open the door and immediately come face-to-face with his secretary, a stout, bosomy, fiftyish woman in a tight white pantsuit. Her eyebrows have been plucked and painted over. Her fingernails are neat and newly pink. A small gold Jewish star hangs from her neck, and there’s a needy look in her brown eyes. She has short, black, bobbed hair, kind of like the sexy way Liza Minnelli styled it in Cabaret, I think, but that’s where the resemblance ends. The name tag on the desk reads Mirna Kravitz. She has invested heavily in perfume.

“He’s not available,” she says before I can even open my mouth. “Gone for the day.”

“Oh dear,” I say. “Is he in court?”

“Hah!” she goes. “Court! Now that’s funny. You’re a funny man. Melvin never goes to court. Not anymore. I’ve been here a long time. Let me tell you something, he’s not that kind of lawyer.”

I hand her my business card. She looks at it, unimpressed, puts it down. Waits for me to fill the silence.

“Okay, so what kind of lawyer is he?”

“Well,” she says, “years ago he did lots of things. All over the map, you know, but mainly it was civil litigation.

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