Ben tried to calm their fears and assuage their insecurities. We’ll appeal, he said—the eternal battle cry of the vanquished. That’s what they all say, right? Never mind that their chances of success were virtually nil. Never mind that he couldn’t afford a new trial even if he won it. He had to maintain some glimmer of hope. Even if his clients didn’t really believe it.
Even if he didn’t really believe it himself.
Ben’s cat, Giselle, padded into his bedroom. Apparently she’d finished her Feline’s Fancy; she had that slightly fishy cat food smell that initially had made Ben nearly vomit, but over time he’d sort of learned to like.
“C’mere, sweetie,” he said, patting the sheets.
She thought it over carefully for a few moments, then consented to join him. She snuggled up close, pressing her head against his hand.
“You’re easy enough, aren’t you?” Ben said as he stroked her head. “I feed you grossly overpriced cat food twice a day, put out water, wash you on occasion, and take you in twice a year for your shots. And you’re happy. I’ve done everything I’m supposed to do for you.”
Giselle made a pleasant mewling sound.
“Thank goodness for you, anyway,” Ben said as he pulled her close. “You’re the only one I haven’t let down.”
Mark Austin sat alone on the veranda outside his room at the Riverside Apartments. It was a nice place, as apartments go. The view of the river was spectacular; he had to pay extra for it. The breeze was cool and the air was clean. No traces of carbon monoxide or refinery reek or other spoilers. He was nursing a tumbler of Courvoisier, his favorite overpriced indulgence. There had been a time when he couldn’t afford things like Courvoisier. But now he could, at least occasionally. Because now he was an all-important associate at the all-important firm of Raven, Tucker & Tubb. He was a litigator. He worked with Charlton Colby, the best trial lawyer in the state. It was the job he’d always dreamed of having.
So why was he so miserable?
He was glad they’d won, of course. Sympathetic as he was for those poor parents, he was still a litigator, and litigators like to win.
It was how they won that bothered him.…
From the outset, the interaction between Colby and Blaylock had given him the creeps. He didn’t know why, exactly. There was always a sense that there was more to their conversations than was immediately apparent, that there was a subtle subtext he didn’t comprehend, unspoken knowledge hidden just beneath the surface. And he hadn’t entirely approved of some of the tactics they’d used during the discovery period—threatening employees if they spoke out, rewarding them if they toed the company line. But they hadn’t actually done anything improper, hadn’t done anything hundreds of other lawyers haven’t done on a regular basis.
What was troubling him, then? Was it just wanton guilt? An inability to experience pleasure? Some childish sense that justice—whatever the hell that was—was being silenced?
He had tried to balance the equities once before, when he anonymously told that cop to “follow the money.” He didn’t know what Colby and Blaylock had been hinting about, but he figured if it had any relevance to the investigation, the cop would figure it out.
So hadn’t he done enough? Hadn’t he proved he was on the side of the angels, albeit somewhat secretly? What was it that kept gnawing away at his conscience?
Whatever it was, it was all summed up for him by that damned blue report. It had been Blaylock’s principal concern since the case began. Mark suspected he was more worried about the report getting out than he was about losing the case. What was in the thing? What evil truths lurked between those blue covers?
Mark had to know. It had been too hard to get to the thing without being caught while the trial was still going and their security measures were all in place. Too risky. But now that he had a copy …
Now that he had a copy, he’d read the whole thing, cover to cover. Twice.
And what he read made him sick. Made him want to vomit. Made him want to drop a bomb on top of Blaylock and Colby and his stinking law firm and send them all to oblivion.
But what could he do? If he leaked the report, it would be the end of his career. Undoubtedly. Even if he did it secretly, it would eventually be traced back to him. He’d lose his job. Probably lose his license. After all, he would be betraying a client trust. Never mind that the client didn’t deserve his trust and the report hadn’t been properly subject to privilege in the first place. He could be disbarred for this.
All his dreams, all his promise. Up in smoke. No dining at the Tulsa Club. No hobnobbing with society debs. No majestic estate near Philbrook. Everything he had wanted, everything he had dreamt about—gone.
He couldn’t do that to himself. Could he?
He remembered what the other lawyer, Kincaid, had said that day in chambers when Colby taunted him, telling Kincaid he was going to bankrupt himself for nothing. Kincaid had said, “I’d rather go broke doing the right thing than get rich doing the wrong.”
You had to admire a guy like that.
Slowly, Mark reached for the Yellow Pages and started looking up courier services. He was probably making a tremendous mistake.
But he was feeling good about it. The best he’d felt in a long time.
Chapter 45
MIKE STARED AT FRED, trying to make sense out of his story. “I’ve talked to the attorneys at Blaylock, and they told me they recovered almost every dime of the sixty million he stole. I saw the entries on the corporate ledger where the money reentered the books. And you’re telling me Montague still had the money?”
“Not the money. His money.” Fred stepped away from the window and closed the drapes. “You see, he had the stolen funds for more than a year. Money makes money. Over that amount of time, even a fool like me ought to be able to increase the wad.”
“I was told the loot was found in a noninterest-bearing account.”
“It was found there, yes. But had it been there the whole time? No.” An admiring smile crossed Fred’s face. “Tony got wind of the Blaylock boys before they caught him. He knew he couldn’t evade them forever, now that they knew he was alive. So he took sixty million dollars out of his investment account and put it in a noninterest-bearing savings account for them to find. He bribed a bank official to alter the computer records, make it look like the money had been sitting there for much longer than it had. Then he secretly withdrew all the profit he’d made.”
“Was it a lot?”
“Are you kidding? Think about it. Sixty million invested for more than a year? Even with conservative investments, you’d expect an eight or ten percent return. And Tony was an accountant; he knew better than most how to make his money make money. He placed big chunks of change into some of those hot Internet IPOs. By the time Blaylock found him—he’d made almost fifteen million bucks.”
Mike’s lips parted. “What did he do with it?”
“He converted it to government bonds—not the U.S. government, either. He knew that these days, in the computer age, if he put the money in a bank anywhere, it could eventually be tracked down. But he didn’t want to carry all that cash around with him.”
“So he converted it to bonds.”
“Exactly. He thought it was safer.”
“But I assume the bonds were negotiable. Anyone could spend them. So it wasn’t any safer—”