Authors: Michael A Kahn
I waited for Sheila Trumble in the marble rotunda of City Hall. We were scheduled for combat this morning with Nathaniel Turner, aka Nate the Great. Although I hoped we could reason with him, based on my last telephone conversation with him I was afraid that a battle seemed more likely.
I was a few minutes early and happy to spend the time enjoying the interior of my favorite city hall. Unlike the standard Greco-Roman structures that house the mayors of America, the St. Louis City Hall resembles its counterpart in Parisâa resemblance that is hardly coincidental. When the St. Louis city fathers decided to build a new city hall in 1890, they chose to recognize the city's heritage by selecting a French Renaissance Revival design based on the Hôtel de Ville de Paris. The result was striking, with an interior as lovely as its exterior. I was standing in the rotunda, whose walls were illuminated by a graceful set of three-pronged globe lamps. Directly ahead, the grand marble stairway led up to a four-story interior courtyard that was capped by gold-leafed archways and pastel murals of scenes from the early days of the city. High overhead, a ceiling of stained-glass skylights bathed the interior in a soft glow that could almost make you forget the nasty business transacted behind so many of those imposing doors.
“Rachel?”
I turned to see Sheila Trumble approaching, her low heels clicking against the marble floor. She was a handsome woman in her fifties with an aquiline nose, short-cropped black hair streaked with gray, and keen blue eyes. She was dressed, as always, with that understated elegance that whispered “exquisite taste” and “big bucks.” She had plenty of both. Sheila was, after all, the wife of Carson Trumble III, who had the good fortune (literally) to be the son of the founder of Trumble Communications.
I smiled, delighted to see her.
“Did you meet with Angela yesterday?” she asked when she reached me.
“I did. She sends her greetings.”
“That's sweet.” Her smile faded to a concerned frown. “How is she?”
“Hanging in there.”
She nodded sympathetically. Sheila Trumble was high on my list of quality peopleâa genuinely fine woman who'd somehow avoided the perils of wealth. Oh, yes, she and Carson were members of the right clubs, sent their children to the right private schools, and owned vacation homes in the right places (Aspen and Martha's Vineyard). But unlike her social peersâwhose definition of a charitable act required a designer gown, a good table, a boldface blurb in the society column, and a flattering photograph in the
Ladue News
âSheila's commitment to philanthropy was authentic and totally without glitz. She did her good deeds down in the trenches, tutoring third-graders three times a week at an inner-city elementary school and taking part in several rehab projects for Habitat for Humanity each year. Typical of her no-nonsense attitude, a month before her first Habitat project she'd hired a carpenter to train her in the tools of his craft. She wanted to make sure she'd be useful on the job site. She was, too. I'd worked alongside her on a project last winter and watched in amazement at her adeptness with a nail gun.
Although the tutoring and rehab projects would have sufficed for many volunteers, Sheila's overriding allegiance was to the Oasis Shelter, which she founded sixteen years ago and which brought us together today. Back at the beginning, she'd been spurred into action by the plight of her cook, Pearlie Brown, who was trapped in a physically abusive relationship. Sheila found a vacant two-flat in north St. Louis, signed a one-year lease for the entire building, and helped Pearlie and her two children pack up and move in. By the end of the first year, there were six battered women and eleven children living in the building. During the first year, Sheila shopped for all the groceries herself, arranged day care for the children, and hired the security guards posted around the clock to keep out the angry husbands and boyfriends. But by the time of the gala tenth-anniversary celebration at the Hyatt Regency, the Oasis was a self-sufficient shelterâa model, in fact, for other citiesâhaving expanded to include the adjacent apartment building and a full staff of professionals to help the women turn around their lives.
Six months ago, though, the storm clouds known as Renewal 2004 began gathering. That's when Sheila retained me as the attorney for the shelter. Today would be our third meeting with Nate the Great in an effort to avoid a head-on collision between Renewal 2004 and the Oasis Shelter.
Sheila was also my connection to Angela Green. They'd become good friends while serving together on the Oasis board, and their relationship had survived the trial and Angela's incarceration. When Angela needed a civil lawyer to defend her in the Son of Sam case, she turned to Sheila for advice, and Sheila gave her my name.
“By the way,” I said as we waited for the elevator, “Angela knows Nate the Great.”
“Really?” Sheila said, intrigued. “How?”
“She once baby-sat for him. She told me they grew up in the same neighborhood. He was a few years behind her younger sister at Soldan High.”
“What did her sister think of him?”
“Not much. She said he was one of those slick Casanova types, dressing real fine, checking himself in every mirror, always patting and fiddling with his Afro.”
Sheila smiled. “Nate with an Afro. Now there's an image.”
“Actually,” I said, grinning, “I have a better image. It's a story Angela told me about Nate.”
“What?”
“Back when Angela was in college, Nate's mother hired her one summer to baby-sit for Nate and his younger sister while she was out of town. Nate was twelve years old, and his sister was eight. Angela took her to the zoo one day. When she came home that afternoon she caught Nate on his bed with some of her bras and underwear and a pair of her high heels.”
“Oh, my God,” Sheila said, giggling and covering her mouth. “Was heâ¦you know?”
“Probably. He must have heard her coming down the hall because when she walked in on him he had a towel wrapped around his waist.”
“What did she do?”
“She slapped him in the face and called him a pervert and told him if he ever misbehaved she'd tell everyone in the neighborhood what he was really like.”
“Oh, my.”
“I don't think he learned his lesson. From what I hear, he still spends his free time trying to get into other women's pants.”
“It's so disgusting. I was at a fund-raiser last year, and he was, too. He acts like he's God's gift to women.”
“Maybe we can convince him to be God's gift to the women in our shelter.”
Have a seat,” the secretary informed us in a bored tone, barely looking up, the phone cradled in the crook of her neck. She had iridescent fingernails the size of vulture talons. “The commissioner will be with you soon.” She swiveled away from us and resumed her telephone conversation. “So, then he goes, âGirl, don't be talkin' âbout whatâ¦'”
I wandered along the back wall of the reception area, studying the framed photographs of the city's flamboyant redevelopment commissioner posed with various visiting dignitariesâNate the Great shaking hands with Donald Trump; standing next to Sammy Sosa, both of them wearing Chicago Cubs hats; embracing Colin Powell; giving a thumbs-up to the Pope, who looked baffled; grinning alongside President Bill Clinton, the two of them flanked by a pair of St. Louis Rams cheerleaders.
“Ah, welcome, ladies.”
I turned to see Nate beaming at us from the doorway of his office.
Sheila stood. “Good morning, Commissioner.”
“Sheila, my dear.” He stepped to the side and with a sweeping gesture toward his office said, “Please come in, ladies.”
He followed us into his office, where a familiar, perennial figure stood by the picture window.
Nate said, “I believe you ladies have already made the acquaintance of my assistant, Herman Borghoff.”
Borghoff turned to gaze at us, expressionless, his arms crossed over his chest.
Although both men were in their late forties, Herman Borghoff made such a contrast to his boss that cynics claimed Nate kept him around just to make himself look better. Borghoff was tall and lumpy and pasty-white. His boss was short and lean and jet-black. Borghoff wore thick hornrimmed glasses, an old-fashioned black Timex watch with a faded canvas watchband, and his high school class ring. He had a bad haircut that failed to disguise the cowlicks in his brown hair. His boss had a stylish goatee, a shaved head, tinted aviators, and lots of gold jewelry, including a Piaget watch worth more than my car. Borghoff wore an ill-fitting plaid suit and scuffed black shoes. His boss could have stepped out of the pages of GQ in his chalk-striped double-breasted navy suit, starched blue shirt with white collar, elegant silk patterned tie, and shiny black alligator shoes. The contrast remained in their lifestyles as well. Borghoff drove a late-model Chevy, lived with his mother, and rarely was seen outside of City Hall. Nate the Great cruised around town in a gleaming black Jaguar XJ8 and appeared at public functions with an ever-changing procession of gorgeous women of all races and ethnic origins. Never married, Nate made
St. Louis Magazine's
“Most Eligible Bachelor” list every year.
To me, their eyes were perhaps their biggest contrast. Borghoff's were inert. Staring into themâas I had done on several occasionsâwas like staring at two gray pebbles. Nate's were dazzling and manic, darting from face to face, sizing you up in an instant, moving on, zooming in, zooming out. Nate's eyes kept me on guard. Borghoff's gave me the creeps.
Borghoff moved off to the side wall, where there was a chair with a legal pad on it. He lifted the pad and settled into the seat as his boss slid into the high-back leather chair behind his imposing desk.
Nate smiled at us. “Sheila, always a pleasure and a privilege to see you, my dear. Rachel Gold, you are looking fine today, girl, yes you are. Gonna make me have to take some of my blood pressure medication.”
Typical meaningless jabber from Nate the Great. We'd been tangling over the fate of the Oasis Shelter for more than half a year now, and during that period he'd called me everything from a “stone-cold fox” to a “demon spawn,” from “sexy mama” to “goddamn ball-breaking bitch”âand sometimes all four during the same meeting. He had what charitably could be described as a volatile personality.
The walls of his office were festooned with even more framed photographs than the reception area, along with various proclamations, letters of commendations, and the like. The enormous picture window behind his desk displayed the Arch in the distance and the Civil Courts Building up closeâtwo impressive edifices unique to St. Louis, although the Civil Courts Building was easily the more intriguing of the two. Hailed in 1930 as the Skyscraper Temple of Law, it's an otherwise undistinguished fourteen-story limestone structure until you get to the “roof,” which consists of an Ionic Greek temple crowned by an Egyptian pyramid crowned by two enormous griffins, those half-eagle, half-lion creatures of myth. This curiosity is actually a replica of the Tomb of Halicarnassus, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Why it sits atop the Civil Courts Building is anyone's guess, but the way it dominated the view from the window added an oddly sinister aura to Nate's office.
“So, my lovely ladies,” Nate said, “what's on your mind today?”
“Same as last time,” I told him.
He chuckled and glanced playfully at Borghoff, who stared back without expression.
Although Nate sometimes assumed the manner of a jester, he was as innocent and harmless as a king cobraâand at least as lethal. After all, his mother was Lucille Turner, which meant that his uncle was the Reverend Orion Sampson, an old-fashioned fire-and-brimstone preacher who'd given up the pulpit thirty years ago to run for Congress. St. Louis had never seen a black politician of his ilk. While others kowtowed to the city's white power elite, Orion Sampson spent thirty years in Congress thumbing his nose at the white boys while his constituents kept reelecting him with increasingly lopsided votes. The Republicans hadn't even bothered putting up a candidate the last four elections. The reverend apparently was as pure and principled as he was self-righteous and arrogant. Three scandal-free decades on Capitol Hill translated into sufficient seniority to chair the types of committees and subcommittees that forced white boys to kowtow to him if they wanted that tax break or federal subsidy or government contract for their Fortune 500 company.
Orion Sampson dearly loved his older sister Lucille, and Lucille dearly loved her precious son Nathaniel. All of which meant that Nate was not only dangerous but untouchable. He was also the city official in charge of Renewal 2004, the ambitious plan to transform a large section of north St. Louis into an urban environment that would attract middle-class whites back to the city. As redevelopment commissioner, he helped administer the special government-guaranteed mortgages that were the city's principal tool for implementing the massive redevelopment planâtens of millions of dollars in redevelopment funds, much of it from the federal government, thanks to Uncle Orion. The properties intended for redevelopment were principally two- and three-flat apartment buildings acquired by the city over the years through tax delinquency seizures, abandonment, or eminent domain proceedings. Indeed, Nate the Great, through his office as redevelopment commissioner, was now the single largest property owner in north St. Louis.
The target year for completion was 2004, which was the one hundredth anniversary of the St. Louis World's Fair, which in turn was the one hundredth anniversary of the start of the Lewis and Clark expedition at St. Louis. As part of the redevelopment plan, Nate's office was attempting to condemn various properties within the area that were deemed to be “inharmonious” with the redevelopment plan. The Oasis Shelter was one such allegedly inharmonious property, which made Nate the Great my principal adversary in the Oasis Shelter condemnation dispute. And now that he'd moved to phase two of Renewal 2004, the battle was heating up.