Fatal Reaction

the secretaries would no doubt some day serve him well in public office, but today he just looked exhausted.
    “Thank you,” he murmured wearily. I found myself remembering how quickly those well-meaning offers of condolence began to grate.
    ‘I assume you’ve heard about Danny...” I ventured, hoping that he had.
    “What a terrible thing...”
    f don’t know if you’ve also heard that I’m tem-Porarily taking over for him as in-house counsel at Azor.”
    Guttman told me you’ve taken a leave of absence.”
    “Just until they’ve concluded negotiations with Takisawa.”
    “The Japanese thing?”
    “Yes. But that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about. While you were out of the office Azor was served with another wrongful-death suit involving Serezine,” I said, handing him the copies of the complaint and the interrogatories that I’d had Cheryl make for him.
    “Ouch,” he said, reaching for the file. “I bet Stephen was pissed.”
    “You can say that again. Once you’ve had a chance to read through the complaint you two should sit down and discuss it, but he seemed to indicate there’s a good chance that—”
    Cheryl appeared in the doorway looking so flustered that I stopped in midsentence. Her judgment was as formidable as her composure. She would never interrupt if it weren’t important, and she wouldn’t look this shaken unless it was something beyond the pale of normal crisis. “I’m sorry to interrupt you,” she began.
    “What is it, Cheryl?” I demanded, trying to suppress my alarm.
    “Stephen just called,” she reported uncertainly. “He wants you to meet him right away at this address on Division.” She held out her hand. In it was the piece of notepaper on which she’d scribbled the address.
    “When?”
    “Right now. He said it was urgent.”
    “Right now?”
    She nodded.
    “Did he say where it was or what it was about?” I asked.
    “He wouldn’t tell me,” she replied. This in itself seemed to be cause for alarm.
    “Why didn’t you let me speak to him?”
    “He was on the car phone. He was really upset, yelling. Whenever I asked him a question, it was like he couldn’t hear what I was saying. He just kept on shouting that you had to get there right away.”
    “And he didn’t say anything about what it was about?”
    “I don’t know. It was so hard to understand him. But he might have said something about needing a witness.”
    The address turned out to belong to McNamara’s Funeral Home and as the cabby pulled up in front of the building I saw that Stephen was already at the front door, banging on it with his fists. I gave the driver a twenty and, without waiting for the change, sprang from the cab and grabbed Stephen by the arm.
    “What are you doing?” I demanded.
    “They’ve released the body,” shouted Stephen over the pounding of his own fists. Pedestrians crossed the street in order to keep their distance. It was only a matter of time before someone called the police.
    Suddenly the door was opened by a gray-haired gentleman wearing a cardigan sweater and a pair of reading glasses on a chain.
    “Is there something I can do for you?” he inquired tentatively. I’m sure that in his line of work he did not have much of a drop-in clientele.
    “I need to see Danny Wohl,” announced Stephen.
    “Excuse me? Who?” asked the man, obviously bewildered.
    “Danny Wohl,” repeated Stephen in frustration. “Danny Wohl. Danny Wohl.”
    “He’s a...” I fished helplessly for the right word. What was he? A customer? A client? “He’s deceased,” I blurted stupidly.
    “I’m afraid that unscheduled viewings are not permitted,” the man in the cardigan sweater informed us in a shocked voice. “Are you family?”
    In response to that question Stephen shouldered his way past the man into the building.
    “Wait a minute! You can’t come in here!” shrieked the man in alarm, taking off after him. Not knowing what else to do, I followed both of them. Before I knew it Stephen had pelted through a set of double swing doors, down a long, dimly lit corridor, and up a half-flight of stairs, guided, no doubt, by the increasingly powerful smell of formaldehyde.
    Passing through a door marked private, Stephen came up short and we found ourselves in a large room with green tiles on the walls and a drain in the middle of the floor. On a steel table in the middle of the room, illuminated by a hanging fluorescent fixture, was the naked body of an elderly