The lady in the silver c.., p.8
The Lady in the Silver Cloud, page 8
Very eyed Myrna carefully. “Are you going somewhere with this?”
“I am. If Muriel had it in for a person, she’d go out of her way to hit them where it hurts. And I, well . . . I helped her.”
“Helped her how, Myrna?”
“I called an old, old business associate of Paul’s who he’d met through Albert and asked him to give Muriel’s lawyer, Sandy Panisch, a call.”
“In reference to . . . ?”
“I imagine it had something to do with Olivia’s clothing line. I don’t know any of the details. I didn’t ask, and Muriel didn’t tell. I simply did her that small favor.”
“What’s the name of this old business associate who you called?”
“I’d rather not say.”
“I can compel you.”
Myrna shrugged. “So compel me.”
He stared at her for a long moment before he decided to let it go. For now, anyhow. “Thank you for sharing that with us.”
“I thought you should know. It might not mean anything.”
“Then again it might,” he said, glancing at his watch. “And thank you for your time. We have to be getting back to the city now. Have a full day ahead of us.”
Myrna roused Lulu, who yawned and climbed down from her lap. Then Muriel Cantrell’s best friend stood up and led us down the long marble corridor past the home theater, book-lined den, billiard room, and dining room toward the front door. “You’ll be speaking with Sandy Panisch, I imagine.”
Very nodded. “Yes, we will.”
“I hope he can help you. But if you want my personal opinion, this had nothing to do with Albert or any of his cohorts or enemies. Those men are long gone, and their scores were settled ages ago. Joey Gallo, who everyone said was responsible for setting up the hit on Albert at the Park Sheraton, was gunned down at Umbertos Clam House more than twenty years ago. If I were you, I’d be looking for that little druggie Trevor.”
“We are, trust me. Thank you again for your time.”
“Yes, thank you,” I said.
She opened the door and ushered us out. “If you have any more questions, don’t hesitate to call.”
“Will do,” Very said.
She stood there in the courtyard and watched us get back into the Jag, Lulu settling herself into Very’s lap. Then she waved goodbye and went back inside her castle.
I started to put the key in the ignition, then stopped.
Very peered at me, his brow furrowing. “Something bothering you, dude?”
“Most definitely,” I said, starting up the Jag with a roar.
“What is it?”
“I feel as if I’ve been a step slow—which is to say clueless.”
“In regards to what?”
I circled the Jag around in the courtyard, pulled back onto Kings Point Road and started back the way we came. Or at least I hoped I did. “In regards to what, or make that whom, we’re dealing with.”
“Which is . . . ?”
“Two elderly women who spent a lot of years associating with men for whom violence was a way of life. Muriel was never who she appeared to be, and neither is Myrna.”
“No one is,” he said, his jaw muscles going to work on a fresh piece of bubble gum. “That was one of the first really important lessons I learned on this job. Want to know who taught it to me?”
“Who?”
He grinned at me. “You did.”
CHAPTER FIVE
It turned out that the offices of Panisch and Panisch, Attorneys-at-Law, were actually two doors down West Fifty-Seventh Street from the building that had the Steinway showroom in it, not directly upstairs as Bullets had told us. But Very and I agreed that we wouldn’t hold it against the big guy.
A glamorous office building it was not. It had a narrow, dimly lit lobby and no reception desk. Just an office directory on the wall, which seemed to be packed mostly with dentists, certified public accountants, and insurance agents. Panisch and Panisch was on the tenth floor.
We rode the elevator up. It was just past one o’clock by then. It had taken us nearly an hour longer getting back to the city than I’d expected. First, we’d lost twenty minutes circling round and round in Great Neck due to Very’s crack map-reading skills. On the plus side, while we were lost, we stumbled upon a fragrant family-owned Italian deli where we’d stopped to scarf up meatball heroes. Lulu had a tuna sub minus the sub. She loves Italian tuna, which is packed in olive oil instead of spring water, whatever the hell that is.
Panisch and Panisch, Attorneys-at-Law, was not exactly a white-shoe law firm. There was a sparsely furnished outer office where a gaunt, elderly secretary was pecking away at an IBM Selectric. Her eyes were red, and a damp tissue was tucked into the wristband of her sweater. There was one office with its door closed and another with its door opened that was crammed with filing cabinets.
She glanced up at us, then down at Lulu before she said, “May I help you?”
“Need to speak to Mr. Panisch, please,” Very said.
She made an elaborate show of consulting her desk calendar. “I’m afraid he’s rather busy. Did you have an appointment?”
He held out his shield. “I’m Detective Lieutenant Romaine Very. I’m here about Muriel Cantrell’s death.”
Her eyes widened. “Oh, my, of course. Just a moment please, Lieutenant.” She got up, tapped on Sandy Panisch’s door, and went inside. When she came back out, closing the door behind her, she said, “He’ll be right with you.”
Sandy Panisch had a mournful look on his face when he emerged from his office, buttoning the jacket of his suit—a charcoal-gray polyester blend with the trademark schlumpy fit that shouted SYMS, the discount clothing chain that advertised on local TV day and night. Panisch was in his fifties, pudgy and bald, with a round, pink, kindly face. He looked more like a high school social studies teacher than a mobbed-up attorney. “Come in, gentlemen,” he said in a somber voice. “Please.”
“Thank you, Mr. Panisch,” Very said.
“Call me Sandy. Everybody does.”
“Sandy, this is my associate Stewart Hoag.”
“Are you with the NYPD, too?”
“In an advisory capacity,” Very answered for me. “He was Muriel’s neighbor.”
“Is that right? And who might this be?” Sandy asked, bending down with a slight oof to pat Lulu, who sniffed delicately at the cuff of his pants and didn’t let out a sound, meaning she didn’t recognize his scent.
“This would be Lulu,” I said. “The brains of the outfit.”
Sandy said, “Miss Maimes, do we still have that box of Milk-Bones around from old man Hammermasch’s schnauzer?”
“I can look around,” she answered with a distinct lack of enthusiasm.
“Not necessary,” I assured her. “Lulu never touches doggie treats. She has intensely strong feelings on the subject.”
Sandy’s office was not showy. It’s hard to pull off showy when your window overlooks a grimy airshaft. The desk was good, solid oak that looked as if it had been around a lot of years, as did the two chairs that were set before it. Very and I sat in them, Lulu stretching out on the worn carpet between us. There were filing cabinets against one wall, and another wall that was filled with shelves of law books. Sandy took a seat behind his desk. He had a modest desk chair, not one of those fancy, high-backed black leather numbers that are favored by dick swingers. On his desk there was a picture of his pudgy wife and three pudgy adult kids.
If you didn’t know better, you’d swear that everything about Sandy Panisch, Esq., cried out small time. Except Very and I both knew better.
“Pop never believed in wasting money on a flashy front,” he explained as he noticed us looking around. “We were partners until he passed away eight years ago.”
“Hence Panisch and Panisch?” I asked.
“Hence Panisch and Panisch,” he acknowledged. “He got his law degree at Fordham by working nights there as a custodian. Saved his money. Never spent a nickel on fancy clothes or cars. It was his greatest dream in life that I’d go to law school someday and that we’d become partners. And we did. Except I didn’t go to Fordham. He put me through Columbia Law School. And my sister, who graduated from Brandeis, is married to a professor at MIT. Applied mathematics is his field, whatever that is. Do you have any idea what it is?”
“Can’t help you,” I said. “I get paid to write, not to think.”
He frowned at me, started to formulate a response, then decided to move along. “So now Panisch and Panisch is just a one-man practice. And Pop would be proud to know that I’ve carried on the family tradition. I didn’t move to a fancier office when he died. Didn’t trade in Miss Maimes for a sexy blonde with tits out to here. I still live in the same house in White Plains that Hilda and I have lived in for twenty years. I drive a Honda Accord that has eighty thousand miles on it. Pop believed that our job was to serve our clients, not to draw attention to ourselves.”
“What sort of clients do you typically serve?” Very asked him.
“Panisch and Panisch is a bread-and-butter law firm,” he replied, clasping his hands on the desk before him. “I draw up wills and serve as executor of estates. I handle closings on home sales. Draft partnership agreements, small business contracts. Pop always believed in staying away from lawsuits and divorces, and so do I. Too many late-night phone calls. Too much aggravation. He never got rich, but he made a good living over the years and so have I, but . . .” Sandy trailed off, his face falling. “But you came to see me about Muriel. Terrible, her falling down the stairs that way. What was a woman her age doing in the service stairwell anyway?”
“She didn’t fall, Sandy,” Very said. “She was grabbed and shoved down those stairs. It was murder.”
He blinked at Very in utter shock. “You know this for a fact?”
“Those are the medical examiner’s preliminary findings.”
Sandy ran a hand over his pudgy pink face. “Oh, dear . . .”
“You weren’t visiting her last night, were you?”
“Who, me? Heck no. I was home in White Plains handing out candy to the trick-or-treaters. Besides, I never visited Muriel. Not once. She always came here.” He settled back in his chair, sticking out his lower lip. “Who would want to murder that sweet old lady?”
“We were hoping you could help us figure that out.”
“Certainly. If there’s anything that I can do to help, I’m at your service.”
“You were her attorney. Did you draw up her will?”
“I did. She left almost all of her assets to the American Cancer Society. Her sister, who I gather she was very close to, died of breast cancer many years ago.”
“By ‘her assets’ would you be referring to the contents of her safety deposit boxes?” Very asked.
Sandy’s eyes flickered. “So you’re aware of those. Yes, the contents of her safety deposit boxes, which I would estimate to be approximately two hundred thousand dollars. Also the net proceeds of the sale of her apartment, which she bought at a low insider price of twenty-five thousand when her building went co-op in ’78. It must be worth twenty times that much now, given the location, and it will have to be sold in order to settle her estate. There’s also a checking account in the firm’s name that was set up so that we could write her monthly expense checks. It’s not a large account. Just a few thousand.”
“You said ‘almost’ all of her assets go the American Cancer Society,” I pointed out. “Who else stands to benefit?”
He smiled faintly. “She wanted to leave the Silver Cloud to Bullets Durmond, which he is free to keep or sell.”
“That was a generous gesture. That Rolls is worth a fortune.”
“Indeed it is.”
“Does Bullets know about it?”
“I don’t believe so. Not unless she told him, and that wasn’t her style. Muriel was tight-lipped. And, let’s see, she left her jewelry and that fabulous wardrobe of hers to her friend, Myrna Waldman. I suppose she thought that Myrna would know best what to do with it.”
“How about Trevor Ferraro?” I asked. “Is he mentioned in her will?”
Sandy’s face tightened. “No, he’s not. And that’s an intentional slight. Recent, too. She had me revise the will just a few weeks ago. Prior to that she had intended to leave him five thousand dollars. But she told me he was a no-good druggie bum who’d stolen from her and she wanted nothing more to do with him. Cut him off cold.” He fell silent for a moment. “She wished to have no funeral service. Simply wanted to be cremated and to have her ashes strewn over a certain individual’s grave in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn.”
“By ‘a certain individual’ do you mean Albert Anastasia?” Very asked.
Sandy glared at him angrily. “So that’s why you’re here? To drag her name through the tabloids? I’m disappointed in you, Lieutenant. Highly disappointed.”
“I’m here for the exact reason I said,” Very responded calmly. “To find out who killed her. If Muriel’s death has anything to with Anastasia, then I intend to pursue it. That’s my job. You mentioned he’s buried in Brooklyn. Is his wife buried alongside of him or is she still alive?”
“I have no idea if she’s still alive,” Panisch answered tightly. “After he was bumped off, I was told that she changed her name and moved to Canada with their kids. And I want to get one thing straight right away. I had nothing whatsoever to do with him. That was Pop, not me. Hell, when Anastasia was gunned down in the barbershop of the Park Sheraton, I was a sophomore at NYU. And I want to tell you something else—Pop was in no way, shape, or form a mob attorney. He didn’t set killers free by bribing jurors. He didn’t make shady deals with crooked politicians. He was an honest, decent guy with a one-man family law practice over a shoe store on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn back in those days.”
Very gazed across the desk at him. “By ‘those days’ you mean . . . ?”
“Back in 1947, not long after V-J Day. Pop was sole supporter of his mother, so he wasn’t sent overseas, although he did serve two years in the JAG Corps in Washington. Albert, as Pop called him, was looking around for an attorney with absolutely no mob connections whatsoever. No ties to organized labor, the restaurant business, liquor business, or any facet of the entertainment world. He wanted a nice, quiet little attorney who absolutely nobody would be able to trace back to him. So he had a friend of a friend ask around, and the name that came up was Max Panisch. Pop was just a young neighborhood lawyer with a wife and two kids. I was eight. My sister was five. We lived right there in Flatbush,” he recalled fondly. “I played stickball with my pals. Read comic books at the candy store. It seems like a lifetime ago, but, believe me, I can still remember every detail of the story about how Albert came into Pop’s life. Pop told it to me enough times, God knows . . .”Sandy gazed up at the ceiling, summoning the memory. “He and Miss Maimes, who was a young filly just out of secretarial school, were sitting in the office one summer day. It was a hot day. Pop was in shirtsleeves. It wasn’t as if he had air conditioning. A quiet day. The phone wasn’t ringing. Nothing was going on. Not until these two guys came thumping up the stairs, walked in the door, and right away he knew they were trouble. Big bruisers, both of them, wearing sharkskin suits and way too much cologne and hair tonic. Plus they had bulges under the armpits of their jackets. Greaseballs, he called him. ‘Are you Panisch, the lawyer?’ one of them said to him. ‘I am,’ Pop replied. And the other one said, ‘Gentleman downstairs wants to see you.’ So Pop said, ‘Is he handicapped?’ Which they didn’t take kindly to at all. ‘Is that supposed to be some kind of joke?’ one of them growled. Pop hurriedly said, ‘No, I was wondering if you wanted me to come down because he can’t climb the stairs.’ And the other guy said, ‘He’s got no trouble with stairs. We’re just checking things out.’ The two of them then proceeded to look around. Not that there was much to see. It was half the size of this office. There were two doors. One was a closet, the other the lavatory. Still, they opened both of them.”
“They were casing the joint,” Very said.
“Exactly, Lieutenant. They were casing the joint. Then they said, ‘He’ll be right up,’ and left, thumping their way downstairs. A moment later Pop heard someone climbing the stairs and in walked another man. This one was impeccably dressed in a navy-blue worsted-wool suit, crisp white shirt, muted tie, and a gray fedora, which he removed when he came in the door. He carried himself with an air of great authority. Pop immediately sensed he was not a man to be trifled with. He also told me he had the coldest, blackest eyes he’d ever seen in his life. ‘You’re Max Panisch?’ he asked him. ‘I am,’ Pop replied. ‘Max, please to ask her to leave,’ he said, meaning Miss Maimes. So Pop sent her downstairs to get a cup of coffee, and it was just the two of them alone in the office. Pop sat down behind his desk and motioned for his visitor to have a seat across from him. He sat down, gazing around the office before he stared intently at Pop with those cold eyes and said, ‘My name at birth in Calabria was Umberto Anastasio,’ he said. ‘When I came to America people start calling me Albert, not Umberto. And they changed my last name so it ends in a letter A, not O.’ ” Sandy paused, smiling faintly. “It was at this point, Pop told me, that he almost wet his pants, because he realized he was sitting across his desk from the most-feared mobster in New York.”
“And he had no idea why?” I asked.
“None,” Sandy answered me. “ ‘You got kids, Max?’ Albert asked him. ‘Yes, I have two,’ Pop answered. ‘Me, I got four,’ Albert said. ‘But I got no choice. I’m Catholic. Max, I want to hire you to take care of something for me. I’ll pay you twenty thousand dollars a year, in cash, for very little work.’ Mind you, guys, that was a fortune in those days. More than Pop was grossing annually from his entire practice. ‘What is it that you want me to do?’ asked Pop, who told me he’d begun to tremble by this point. ‘What I’m about to tell you,’ Albert replied, ‘must stay strictly between us. As far as the world is concerned, we don’t know each other. You don’t tell anyone. Not even your wife, understand?’ When Pop said he understood, Albert said, ‘Max, I want you to take care of someone for me.’ Pop gulped and said, ‘I’m a lawyer, not a hit man.’ Albert let out a little chuckle that made the hairs on the back of Pop’s neck stand on end and said, ‘I think maybe you seen too many gangster movies. I mean that I want for you watch over her, understand?’ Greatly relieved, Pop said, ‘Who is it that you want me to watch over?’ Anyhow, as you fellows have no doubt figured out by now, Albert had fallen madly in love with a young hatcheck girl at the Copa named—”
