First Degree by David Rosenfelt Read Free Book Online

about to do when Edna tells me that my eleven-fifteen meeting is here. Since I have no clients, her designating it as the “eleven-fifteen meeting” is overkill. Just “meeting” would suffice. In any event, I had no idea I had any meeting scheduled, never mind an eleven-fifteen one.
    It turns out that my eleven-fifteen is with Edna’s stock-broker cousin, Fred. Agreeing to meet with cousin Fred was one of those things that I say I will do, as long as it’s in the future, and I somehow assume it will never come about. But here it is, and I’m trying to figure out if I can make it out the window when in comes Edna and the man she considers the perfect caretaker for my twenty-two million dollars: cousin Fred.
    It’s no surprise that Edna has a cousin up to this task. She seems to have the largest extended family in the Western Hemisphere; they cover every occupation ever invented, yet somehow have managed not to overlap jobs. Cousin Fred handles the financial markets.
    Fred is about my age and decked out in a three-piece suit. He shakes my hand, and I have a vision of the scene from Woody Allen’s
Take the Money and Run
, when Allen’s convict character is caught attempting to escape. As punishment, he is locked in a cellar with an insurance salesman from Dayton, and they shake hands as they descend into the hole.
    This meeting would be a form of torture in any event, but right now I want to get away and think this Dorsey thing through, and it’s going to be tough doing that while talking puts and calls with cousin Fred.
    Much to my surprise, Fred turns out to be a normal human being, and one who shares my general distrust of people who claim to understand the stock market. My view is that no one has any idea whether the market will go up or down. Commentators come up with coherent, logical reasons for the market’s behavior at the end of the day; it’s the morning’s pre-opening predictions that are a tad less reliable.
    Fred and I talk the same language. As much as I like to gamble on football and basketball, in the stock market I want to be careful, cushioning myself against disaster. Fred advocates the exact same strategy, and most important, he voices that opinion before I do. That is how I know he is not just telling me what he thinks I want to hear.
    Even though I’m conservative on these financial decisions, I’m also quite impulsive. Fred seems as good as anybody I’ve met, so I agree to let him handle eleven million dollars of my money. I expect him to grab on to my leg and whimper his thanks, but he handles it as if it’s good news but nothing he didn’t expect. I tell him to coordinate everything with Sam Willis, then I call Sam and alert him that Fred is going to be stopping by. Moments after Fred leaves my office, I hear Edna shriek with glee; she’s not quite as reserved as her cousin.
    I am finally free to leave, so I pick up Tara and take her to the duck pond in Ridgewood. It is a wonderfully peaceful place, especially since it’s still chilly, so parents and their screaming children aren’t out in force. Tara is always mesmerized by the ducks; she can sit quietly and stare at them for hours. We bring a loaf of bread to feed them, and Tara knows it’s theirs and doesn’t compete for the food. Tara and I both do some of our best thinking here.
    I feel like I am facing a dilemma, yet it is totally of my own creation. Ethically, there is nothing I need to do; in fact, there is little if anything I am allowed to do. The rules of my profession call for me to behave as if Stynes never sat in my office and confessed. All I should be doing is feeding the ducks, petting Tara, and trying to come up with a charity to support, just in case cousin Fred doesn’t lose all my money.
    Garcia is a slime. Laurie said so, and I totally trust her judgment. The problem is that our system doesn’t and shouldn’t convict an innocent suspect of a crime just because he must have committed other crimes, which