Carella opened the envelope.

  There were four photocopied pages in it, listing all the calls made from the Newman apartment since the last billing in July. In this city, as in most American cities, a telephone-company bill was broken down into columns that recorded the date of any long-distance call, the city to which that call had been made, the number called in that city, the time the call was made, the duration of the call in minutes, and finally the charge for the call.

  Carella started with the last page first.

  Anne Newman had left the Silvermine Oval apartment at a quarter to 9:00 on the morning of August first, and had not returned home till the eighth. Presumably, then, any calls made from the 765-3811 number during that time span had been made by Jerry Newman himself, while he was still alive.

  The last listing read:

  On the seventh of August, then, Jerry Newman had placed a call to Beverly Hills at 6:21 P.M., local time, which would have made it 3:21 P.M. on the Coast. He had spoken for three minutes and the call had cost him 85¢. Carella didn’t know what the “B” following the “3” in the minute column meant, but the number Newman had called seemed familiar to him. He dialed California Information, and asked for the number of the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. The operator read it off to him: 213-275-4282. He thanked her, and then dialed the Business Office, hoping he would not get either Miss Corning or Miss Shulz. He spoke to a nameless operator, instead, who told him that the “B” following the “3” simply meant the call had been placed either in the evening or on the weekend, when the rates were lower. He thanked her and hung up.

  Jerry Newman had presumably been alive at 6:21 P.M. on the night before his body was discovered. He had called the Beverly Wilshire Hotel and had presumably spoken to his wife at 3:21 P.M. Pacific Daylight Saving Time. Carella took out his notebook. At 5:00 P.M. Pacific Daylight Saving Time, that same day, Anne Newman had called her mother-in-law to tell her she was contemplating divorce. She had then presumably packed and had later gone to the airport to catch a 10:30 plane scheduled to arrive here the next morning at 6:30. But if she’d spoken to her husband on Thursday, why had she told Carella she’d spoken to him for the last time on Tuesday, when she’d called to give him her travel plans?

  He lifted the receiver again, and dialed Susan Newman’s number. He let the phone ring a dozen times, and was about to hang up when a breathless voice he recognized as Anne’s said, “Hello?”

  “Mrs. Newman?”

  “Yes, just a moment, please.”

  He waited.

  When she came back onto the line, she said, “I’m sorry, I was in the shower. Who’s this, please?”

  “Detective Carella.”

  “Oh, hello, how are you?”

  “If this is an inconvenient time for you…”

  “No, that’s all right,” she said. “What is it?”

  “Mrs. Newman, I have a phone bill here that indicates your husband placed a call to the Beverly Wilshire Hotel on August seventh—that would have been Thursday evening at six-twenty-one our time, three-twenty-one on the Coast.”

  “Yes?” she said.

  “When I talked to you last Friday, you told me the last time you’d spoken to your husband was on Tuesday, August fifth, isn’t that correct?”

  “Yes, that’s exactly when I did speak to him.”

  “But apparently he called the Beverly Wilshire on Thursday, the seventh.”

  “At what time, did you say?”

  “Three-twenty-one in California.”

  “I was out,” she said.

  “You were out.”

  “Yes, I was out walking.”

  “I see. What time did you get back to the room?”

  “It must have been a little before five.”

  “Just before you called your mother-in-law, is that right?”

  “Yes. I’d been doing a lot of thinking that afternoon, I wanted to talk to her about what I’d decided.”

  “I see. Was there a message that your husband had called?”

  “If there was, I didn’t get it.”

  “Then you didn’t know he’d tried to reach you.”

  “Not until just now. Are you sure he…?”

  “Well, I have the telephone bill right here,” Carella said.

  “Then he was still alive on Thursday,” Anne said.

  “It would seem so, yes.”

  “God,” she said.

  “Well,” he said, “thank you, I just wanted to check this, I’m sorry to have bothered you.”

  “Not at all,” she said, and hung up.

  Carella debated whether or not the city would start screaming about the number of long-distance calls he was making, decided the hell with the city, and dialed the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Los Angeles. The desk clerk he spoke to informed him that one copy of any telephone message was placed in a guest’s box within minutes of its receipt, and another copy was slipped under the guest’s door shortly thereafter. He could see no reason why a guest coming back to the hotel at a little before five would not have seen at least one copy of a message received at 3:21.

  Carella thanked him and hung up.

  The call from Probate came a half hour later. The clerk with Probate Division was a woman named Hester Attinger, who at Carella’s request yesterday had checked to see whether any attorney had filed a will following Jeremiah Newman’s death. In this state, the law required that a will be filed within ten days after knowledge of a death. Most attorneys kept a daily watch on the newspaper obituary columns to see if any of their clients had kicked the bucket overnight. And whereas most laymen did not know about the law’s requirements, chances were that if they were in possession of a will, or even if they had been witnesses to the signing of a will, they would call their own attorney to ask what they were supposed to do. Most wills—except for those hidden at the bottom of a well or under the floorboards of a house—found their way to Probate. Jeremiah Newman’s will had been filed there yesterday.

  “The will is now a matter of public record,” Miss Attinger said, “so you can come down here anytime you want to look at it.”

  “Do you think you could read it to me on the phone?” Carella asked.

  “Well…” she said.

  “This is a homicide I’m working,” he said, forgiving himself the lie. In his own mind, he had already begun classifying it as a homicide. “You’d save me a lot of time.”

  “I’ve only scanned it,” Miss Attinger said. “Without going into detail, I think I can tell you the will leaves everything to a man named Louis Kern.”

  “As sole beneficiary?”

  “Yes.”

  “Any alternate beneficiaries.”

  “Kern’s wife and two children.”

  “Who filed the will, would you know?”

  “Someone named Charles Weber, I’m assuming he’s an attorney. The will’s in a blue legal binder, and the name of the firm on the binder is Weber, Herzog, and Llewellyn. That’s a double L in—”

  “Herzog, did you say?”

  “What?”

  “Is one of the partners named Herzog?”

  “Yes, Herzog.”

  “Can you spell that for me, please?”

  “H-E-R, Z-O-G,” Miss Attinger said.

  “Is there an address?”

  “There is an address. 847 Hall Avenue, here in Isola.”

  “Thank you kindly,” Carella said.

  “No trouble at all,” Miss Attinger said, and hung up.

  The law offices of Weber, Herzog, and Llewellyn were on the twenty-eighth floor of a building in the heart of midtown Isola. The building was delightfully cool inside, its windows sealed shut, the entire forty-two-floor structure air-conditioned from top to bottom. This was very convenient when there were no power failures. It became inconvenient only when the electric company experienced an overload at any of the upstate plants servicing the city, a common occurrence during the dog days of summer. Whenever that happened, it was impossible to open any of the windows, and the building became a forty-two-story steam bath. It was also somewhat difficult to commit suicide by defenestration in the edifice at 847 Hall.

  Carella had called Charles Weber at a little past 10:00, and was told the busy lawyer could spare only a half hour before lunch that day. When Carella arrived, Weber was with a client. He did not buzz his secretary and ask her to show Carella in until almost a quarter to 11:00. He was a portly man, in his early fifties, Carella guessed, with graying brown hair and penetrating blue eyes. He was wearing a pale-blue tropical that matched the color of his eyes, a darker-blue silk tie fronting his white shirt. The monogrammed initials C. P. W., in navy against the white, peeked from under the left-hand lapel of his suit jacket. He sat behind a large, uncluttered desk in a vast two-window office overlooking both the avenue and the western end of Grover Park, smiled pleasantly, glanced at his watch to remind Carella that this would have to be brief, and then said, “What can I do for you, Mr. Carella?”

  “Mr. Weber, I’m investigating the apparent suicide of Jeremiah Newman, and I understand—”

  “Apparent?” Weber said.

  “Yes, sir, apparent.”

  “It was my understanding that he’d died of an overdose of barbiturates.”

  “Yes, that’s true, sir. But the case hasn’t yet been officially closed out as a suicide.”

  “I see.”

  “Mr. Weber, I understand you filed his will with Probate yesterday.”

  “I did.

  “Were you the attorney who prepared the will?”

  “I was.”

  “If I’m correct, the will leaves everything to a man named Louis Kern?”

  “It does.”

  “Who is Mr. Kern, sir?”

  “The owner of the Kern Gallery.”

  “An art gallery?”

  “A very important and influential one.”

  “Where?”

  “Here in the city. Right up the street, in fact.”

  “Can you tell me how much Mr. Kern stands to inherit?”

  “I don’t believe I’m obliged to do that, Mr. Carella.”

  “I already know Mr. Newman inherited several million dollars’ worth of paintings when his father died. That was only two years ago. Can I safely assume…?”

  “I don’t want to be difficult,” Weber said, and smiled. “I think you can assume, if you wish, that the estate is worth at least two million dollars, yes.”

  “And Mr. Newman left all that to Louis Kern.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Why? I don’t understand your question, Mr. Carella. A man is certainly entitled to decide upon his own beneficiary.”

  “To the exclusion of his wife? Or his mother? Or his brother?”

  “His wife is adequately taken care of in an insurance policy.”

  “What’s the face amount of the policy?”

  “A hundred thousand dollars.”

  “So he left a hundred thousand to his wife and in excess of two million to a stranger.”

  “Mr. Kern isn’t what you would call a stranger. When Lawrence Newman was alive, he exhibited all his work at the Kern Gallery. It was Mr. Kern, in fact, who appraised the paintings after he died, and later handled the sale of them for Jerry.”

  “So Jerry was grateful, naturally.”

  “Yes.”

  “To the tune of two million dollars.”

  “We only prepared the will,” Weber said. “We had nothing to do with any of its directives. Mr. Newman chose his own beneficiaries. We executed the will as per his wishes. I wasn’t pleased with what he asked us to do, but—”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, I don’t know if you’re familiar with the statutes regarding inheritance in this state…”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “I’ll explain them to you as simply as I did to Mr. Newman. In this state, if a man changes his will to exclude his wife, she’s still entitled to a share of his estate not less than it would have been if he’d died intestate. Intestate means—”

  “Yes, without leaving a will.”

  “Exactly. In other words, even if he changed his will to exclude her, she’d still be entitled to half his estate if she chose to assert her right of election.”

  “And you explained all this to Mr. Newman?”

  “Yes.”

  “What was his reaction?”

  “He seemed intent on a punitive course of action.”

  “Punitive?”

  “Yes. He insisted on eliminating her as beneficiary of his will. Considering his vehemence on the subject, I suggested an alternate possibility.”

  “And what was that?”

  “A circumventive maneuver, if you will. A minimum amount could have been settled on his wife to satisfy her elective right. If her share of the estate would have come to more than twenty-five hundred dollars—as of course it would have, in this case—then it would have been within the law for him to have left her twenty-five hundred in cash, with half the remainder of the estate put in trust for her and providing an income for life.”

  “But he chose not to accept this alternative.”

  “He said he didn’t want to leave her a penny. He told me he’d have to take his chances on her not asserting election. He insisted that his entire estate go to Louis Kern.”

  “And that’s the way you drew the will.”

  “That’s the way I drew it. A lawyer’s responsibility is to advise. A client, of course, isn’t obligated to accept the advice. I believe he made a mistake. Under my suggested alternative, she’d have got only the same half she’ll now get if she asserts her elective right. Besides, it would have been more in keeping with the punitive action he had in mind.”

  “In what way?”

  “Well, the money would have been doled out over the years, you see. The income from the trust. She would never have seen it in a lump sum of cash. Of course, asserting her right now will entail legal fees and delays and whatnot, and perhaps that was what he had in mind. Causing her as much trouble as he possibly could.”

  “Why would he have wanted to cause her trouble, Mr. Weber?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “You didn’t ask him?”

  “I’m not a marriage counselor.”

  “Was the marriage in trouble?”

  “Mr. Newman was a drunk.”

  “I know that. But from what I understand, Anne Newman was a devoted and loving wife who—”

  “I did not ask Mr. Newman why he wanted to change his will. I simply advised him on the law, and then followed his wishes.”

  “When did he make this new will, Mr. Weber?”

  “Last month sometime.”

  “In July?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you let me have the exact date?”

  “Certainly,” Weber said, and pressed a toggle on his intercom. “Miss Whelan,” he said, “can you get me the execution date of Jeremiah Newman’s will, please?” He clicked off without waiting for a response.

  “Does Louis Kern know he’s about to inherit such a large sum of money?” Carella asked.

  “I’m sure he’s been informed.”

  “Who informed him?”

  “The Trust Department of First Liberal, I would guess. The bank that was named executor of the will.”

  “When would that have been?”

  “Yesterday. I called them yesterday to inform them of Mr. Newman’s death and to remind them they’d been named as executor.”

  “And you believe they, in turn, would have called Louis Kern.”

  “That’s my belief. You’re thinking of the movies, Mr. Carella, where everyone sits in a lawyer’s office while a will is being read. In actual practice, that rarely ever happens. The beneficiary is usually informed by letter, or sometimes by telephone. Even in a case such as this, where Mr. Newman instructed that the will be kept confidential until after his death—”

  “Was it kept confidential?”

  “Of course.”

  “Mr. Weber, is someone named Herzog a member of your firm?”

  “Yes, he’s one of our senior partners.”

  “What’s his first name?”

  “Martin.”

  “Martin Herzog.”

  “Yes.”

  “Any relation to Jessica Herzog?”

  “She’s his sister.”

  “I see.”

  “It was Martin who introduced her to Jerry, in fact. Oh, this was many years ago.” Weber suddenly smiled. “Is that a conflict-of-interest look I see on your face, Mr. Carella? There was none, believe me. A man who was a client asked that we prepare a will for him. The fact that he was once married to the sister of one of our firm’s partners had no bearing on either the will’s directives or our determination to see that our client’s needs were served.”

  “Uh-huh,” Carella said.

  “We have a standing rule here, in fact, that neither the firm itself nor any individual working for the firm may be named as executor of any will we prepare. The rule was designed precisely to avoid even a suggestion of conflict.”

  “It’s your belief, then, that Miss Herzog knew nothing at all about this will.”

  “That’s my firm belief.”

  “You don’t think Mr. Herzog might have mentioned it to his sister.”

  “Of course not.”

  The buzzer on the intercom sounded. Weber flipped the toggle.

  “Yes?” he said.

  “I have that execution date, sir,” a woman’s voice said.

  “Yes, Miss Whelan?”

  “It was the eighteenth of July, sir.”

  “Thank you,” Weber said, and clicked off. “The eighteenth of July,” he said to Carella.

  “Exactly three weeks before he was found dead in his apartment,” Carella said.

  “Yes, it would seem so,” Weber said.

  “Well, thank you very much,” Carella said. “I appreciate your time.”

 

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