Al Sarrantonio - Cold Night

When he walked in, Kopiak was staring out a wide window that gave the same view of the Hudson that Morris Grumbach had bought for himself. His hands were behind his back, the classic pose of rich lawyers in deep thought.

"I wasn't able to find Paterna's brown folder before I got fired," Paine said.

"That doesn't matter," Kopiak said, not turning. "Gloria Fulman and I wanted to see how much you knew. It was Gloria who decided to have you discredited and then killed. There was also the slim chance that you would find the folder, which would tell us who was killing everyone."

Kopiak turned. On the low sill of the wide window was a bottle of Chivas Regal and a single crystal glass.

"I don't want to die, Mr. Paine," Kopiak said. "It's as simple as that. I've tried to control this thing all along, but someone has been killing everyone down the line and I know that I'm at the top of the list. Gloria Fulman is already a virtual prisoner in her Boston apartments; there was an attempt on her life when she was in New York and I just can't live like that. I'd rather go to prison than be dead."

Kopiak's hands shook. Paine had seen him that one time in his office, and now his clubbiness and arrogance had faded like an outmatched number 10 horse in a crowded field. He was a frightened, beaten man.

"I've telephoned the one other person left in this thing, and when he gets here I intend to settle with him and then turn myself in." He smiled wanly at Paine. "You may do the honors, if you wish."

"I'd like to hear the whole thing," Paine said.

Kopiak ran his hands through his hair. There was a photo on his desk, framed, turned so that Paine or any other visitor could see it, of a smiling, middle-aged woman flanked by two college boys. The woman looked content. The boys looked like the kind that got letters on their jackets, drank moderately, had perky girlfriends.

"I want you to know something first," Kopiak said. He managed to pour himself another drink and get half of it down. "I want you to know that I made two mistakes in my career, and I never did anything else wrong in forty-five years of practice." His voice strengthened with self-justification. "That's a long time, Mr. Paine. Forty-five years."

He lowered his voice, using his glass as an emphatic pointer. "There was a time when I wanted to run for office, Mr. Paine. That was my weakness. To do that, you have to make connections, and you have to make money. I made both.

"I met Morris Grumbach and his wife, Jane, at a fund-raising dinner for a local congressman. I was up on the same slate for state senator. In those days I was surrounded by men who thought I could go far beyond that. Congressman, they said, and then senator, and then. ." He laughed bitterly. "Those were the Kennedy years, and a Catholic Pollack with connections could dream.

"Grumbach was a blowhard, but not unpleasant. Came into his money almost by mistake; his father had filed a basic patent and the family got rich overnight. He acted like he still didn't know if he deserved it.

"But Jane believed he deserved it, all right. And more. She had been born for that money, and she acted like it had always belonged to her. She thought she was royalty and acted like it.

"I didn't see all this at first, of course. But that night she seemed to take an inordinate interest in me. Fawned over me, almost. I was flattered, and, I think, my wife was a little jealous. It turned out Jane wanted something from me. She never hesitated in going after something she wanted.

"She pledged a lot of money to my campaign. As I say, I was flattered. And I needed the money. But the next week she came to my office and we had a little private talk. She had already checked me out, long before that fund-raiser, but I didn't know that then. There was something I'd done for my father-in-law, just after passing the bar, and I didn't think a soul on earth knew about it. But she did. She was very discreet about it, very gentle, but also very clear."

Kopiak looked down at the thin pool of scotch in his glass and emptied it. He went to the windowsill and poured another drink, setting it down on the ledge and staring at it. He looked around at Paine.

"She had me by the balls. With her contribution, which I had already spent, I had enough money for my campaign to really get off the ground. My practice was doing well also. My first son had just been born, giving me a real family for the first time in my life. With one phone call she could end it all." He fingered the glass on the ledge. "Or, she hinted, she could take out her checkbook and write another check."

He picked up the glass and moved it to the desk, sitting down in his chair. "She wrote another check. While she did that she told me what she wanted.

"It didn't seem like much, the way she told it. She had a way of talking that made you think you had nothing to do with her business, that she was merely hiring you for the details she couldn't handle herself. It was her way of making you feel as if you weren't in any way responsible. Which wasn't true, of course."

Kopiak held out a shaking hand to Paine. "I believe you have two packets of photographs?"

Paine took them out and handed them over. Kopiak took the pictures of Les Paterna, Lucas Druckman and Jeffrey Steppen and put them to one side. He spread out the other three and stared at them, as if coming across an old memory in a scrapbook, something momentous, perhaps, and, though buried by time, finding a host of dredged and still-sharp memories surface. His hand moved to his drink and, without removing his eyes from the three photos, he brought his scotch to his lips and drank. When the glass was empty he set it down.

"These two," he said quietly, as if to himself, pointing with his forefinger to the picture of the man and woman standing next to the new car, "were Gloria's father and mother. He worked for an aviation firm in southern California. She was their only child, and they had her late in life. He died about eight years ago, a massive coronary. His wife died two months later."

He moved to the second photograph, his finger trembling slightly over the man and woman in the field with the horse in the background. "Dolores's parents. Originally from New Mexico. They moved to California in 1966. Dolores was born two years later. She was their only child. They died in an auto accident in 1975. The coroner's report said he was driving while intoxicated."

The finger moved to the third photo, the corporate head shot of the man with the wry smile. "Rebecca's father. He served in Korea in 1953, worked for a P.R. firm when this picture was taken, and, after his wife left with their other child, a son, he went back to serve in Vietnam in 1968. Suicide ran in his family. The wife and son left no tracks, and he never saw them again. After he got back from the war he hung himself in 1972."

He stared at the three photos as if waiting for them to speak. But the dead don't speak. Then, seemingly of its own accord, his hand moved to the other three photographs, coming down flat on all of them.

"And this," he said, "was the man who stole the three girls away from their real parents."

Kopiak reached back toward the windowsill for the scotch bottle, but instead of taking it he knocked it to the rug. The sweet-sour smell of spilled Chivas filled the office.

"Oh, Jesus," he sobbed in self-pity, putting his head in his hands. He looked up into Paine's face, searching it for something he didn't find.

He ran his hand once more through his hair and continued. "Jane Grumbach was from an underworld family in California. Morris had nothing to do with the Mafia, but he fell in love with her and she ran him like a puppet. She was a very strong woman. Marrying Morris made her legitimate rich, but she never forgot how she'd grown up. She got whatever she wanted. And she wanted little girls. She couldn't have them herself, and adoption was long and would not give her exactly what she required, so she hired Jeffrey Steppen to get them for her. She heard about Steppen through her family; he had been kicked out of the FBI but knew everything about getting things like phony birth records and Social Security numbers. It was easy for her to buy Steppen; she had enough to blackmail him to begin with through her underworld acquaintances, and he was a sucker for money and the trappings of it. He gave her some trouble later, when his side businesses kept getting him into hot water with various mob people, but he was valuable enough to her that she put up with his face changes and she always paid his bills when it was necessary. She even made Morris work with him and set up Bravura Enterprises after he became Les Paterna.