If I Should Die Before I Die Read Free Page B

approval over Margie Magister’s expenditures, and from what Hank Rand showed me, the bereaved widow had been spending as though tomorrow would never come, or just in case it didn’t. Bendel, Gucci, Cartier, Mark Cross, all of them were there, and art dealers, antiques dealers, and many of the watering holes and eateries around town which survive, or don’t, on the largesse of the rich and famous. None of them was going out of business that season, thanks to Margie, and you could say Bob III’s death was the first good thing that had happened to New York’s pleasure merchants since Imelda Marcos lost her credit cards.
    In addition, the Firm controlled Margie’s payroll, or “household staff,” the maids and housekeepers and gardeners and cooks and chauffeurs and “personal secretaries” without whom, you had to assume, the bereaved widow couldn’t so much as get out of bed. There’d been a heavy dosage of young male employees, I noted, plus a lot of turnover; apparently Margie was hard to satisfy. In addition to names and dollars, to which they were entitled, the Firm had a lot more, and I was glad to see my sometimes accomplice, Bud Fincher, had been making an honest living. Bud runs a medium-sized private investigations agency, one of the better ones around town, and as far as I could tell, he’d done a pretty thorough work-up on the Magister staff, past and present.
    â€œSo much for strict neutrality,” I commented to Rand as I went through the paperwork.
    He looked at me with a quizzical expression.
    â€œThat’s what McClintock told me,” I said, quoting: “‘The Firm’s position is one of strict neutrality.’”
    â€œWell,” he said huffily, “that’s substantially correct. What other position could we take?”
    â€œIn that case,” I said, “why aren’t we going through the same material on the rest of the family? You’ve got it, haven’t you?”
    He hesitated, like he wanted advice on how to answer. But then he thought better of it.
    â€œOff the record?” he said.
    I nodded.
    â€œThe answer is no,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean we couldn’t develop it if we wanted to.”
    â€œOf course you could,” I agreed.
    The point, though, was that they hadn’t. Margie Magister, the Firm had clearly decided, was their target and Roy Barger their enemy.
    I took some notes on items I thought could use further investigation, and Rand’s bow-tied secretary photocopied some of the documents for me, but the message I took back uptown that afternoon, clear as it was, was one I knew the Counselor wouldn’t want to hear.
    â€œEssentially they’ve got nothing,” I told the Counselor. “They know she’s been on a spending spree, that she’s got some good-looking young studs on her payroll, also that she’s been chasing around with a pretty fast-and-loose crowd recently, but that’s about it. Some smoke, but nothing you could light your pipe with.”
    The Counselor was in one of his fouler moods. He sat behind his desk, a massive figure in the usual late-afternoon working costume of shirtsleeves, bow tie, and suspenders. He chewed on an unlit pipe while I gave my report, his jawline gleaming in the light. The air-conditioning unit and his pipe smoke had been fighting for control of the atmosphere when I got there. The unit had won, but only temporarily, because when I finished, he kept me sitting there while he fussed with matches, then, failing to relight the old pipe, discarded it and found another, which he stoked with tobacco, then lit. The usual ritual, I thought, but I noticed one detail that wasn’t: the bow tie and the suspenders didn’t match. In fact, they clashed. The Counselor’s Wife, I thought, would have a fit.
    â€œWhat does Fincher say?” he asked, glowering at me.
    â€œI haven’t had a chance to