They were discussing the case over a lunch of Peking duck, boiled asparagus, and fried wild rice when the couple appeared out of nowhere.
Jack was holding Mia’s hand as they approached the table. “Hi, Mitch, Phil,” Jack said, smiling broadly, as if they had just happened to bump into each other, and wasn’t it a lovely coincidence.
Walters dropped his fork, took one look at them, and felt like throwing up. He thought about landing a punch in Jack’s face, or maybe wrapping his hands around his neck. Knowing Jack, though, there was bound to be a hidden camera nearby. He would only end up with more charges.
“You’re a lousy, lying bastard,” Walters snarled. “You ruined my life.”
“Get lost,” Jack told him with a dismissive wave. “We’re here to talk with Phil.”
“Who the hell do you think you are?”
Jack looked at Jackson and hooked a finger at the exit. “Tell him to get lost. We need to talk.”
Jackson considered the request for a moment, then said to Walters, “Do as he says.”
Walters stood up, and for a moment he considered telling them all to screw off. Unfortunately, Jackson was his only hope for freedom. He bit down hard on his tongue and stomped off.
Jack and Mia fell into two chairs.
“Are you wired?” Jackson asked Jack in a taunting tone.
“Not today. Should I be?”
Jackson studied their faces and knew with a blinding flash something he should have recognized from the beginning. Jack and Mia were lovers.
“Isn’t this sweet? How did you two meet?” he asked, dripping sarcasm.
“We met three years ago,” Mia said, surprisingly open. “A company my law firm was representing was being bought by Jack’s firm. After the deal closed, we began dating. We’re in love, Jackson. Doesn’t that melt your heart? For various reasons we decided to keep it quiet and low-key.”
“Why?” Jackson asked.
“Why what? Why you? Why me? Why did we keep it quiet?”
“Start with why you?”
“I have a twin sister, Janet. Born a minute ahead of me, so we always call her my big sister. Like many twins, Janet and I were inseparable until it came time for college. I went to Dickinson, she went to Notre Dame.”
“Nice story. Is there a point to this?”
“Listen and learn something for a change, Jackson. At Notre Dame, Janet fell in love. He was a football player, a big bear of a man who adored her back. He was wonderful, intelligent, incredibly talented, and had so much to live for. Anything he tried he was good at. Senior year, he and Janet couldn’t wait, they were so much in love, and they married.”
“Is there a point to this?” Jackson prodded, totally uninterested in this nice little love story.
“You asked why and I’m telling you. Come graduation, Bill turned down a wonderfully lucrative offer to go to Wall Street and instead chose an Army commission. He stayed in when the war started. He and Janet had two lovely little girls they both adored, big money on Wall Street still beckoned, but Bill didn’t want to run out on his men when they deployed to Iraq. How do you think this story ends, Jackson?”
Jackson had no idea. “Go on.”
“A little over two years ago, Bill was leading a convoy of his troops through an Iraqi village. This was less than two weeks before he was to return to Janet and his little girls. He was riding in a Humvee, a model that had yet to be uparmored with the latest protection. His battalion had been scheduled to get upgraded models eight months before, but the contractor kept falling behind. The soldiers riding in the death traps complained endlessly, but the contractor cared less. The upgrading program was understaffed, its employees notoriously lazy, the management dreadfully inept. The only thing the contractor accomplished on time were the billings to the Pentagon, after they were stuffed with nonexistent overtime, ghost employees, and as much double billing as it felt it could get away with. Would you care to guess the name of the company?”
“So this is a vendetta?” Jackson asked in a disappointed voice.
“Bill Forrest died horribly, Jackson. He was blown out of his seat. He landed on a dusty street, his legs amputated by the blast, his stomach blown open, and he bled out within minutes. Only two weeks from home, he died in agony, staring at a picture of Janet and the girls.”
“How sad,” Jackson said, as if to say, Screw you.
“I spent the month of the funeral with Janet and the kids. They cried the whole month. Janet fainted at the funeral. Do you have any idea how horrible it is to lose a husband and a father who might so easily have been saved by a few extra pounds of armor?”
“Don’t sound so noble, Jenson. You two make me sick. It was always about the money. Blood money. The one-billion-dollar prize, the biggest whistleblower jackpot ever.”
“Well, here’s the surprise, Jackson. Every dollar of that money is going into a fund Jack and I founded this week. The Bill Forrest Fund. You’ll be happy to learn that it’ll all be used to fund college scholarships for the wives and kids of servicepeople who died in this war.”
“So that’s why you chose us.”
“You see, I went crazy for a while. I quit my law firm and joined DCIS, because I wanted to hurt you. I didn’t care how, or how long it took. I would go after you, one by one. Anytime you made a mistake, I would be there. I would haunt the acquisition office, pore over their files, find every corner you cut. Every instance of overbilling, of cheating, of graft. I was confident you would give me plenty of opportunities and I intended to pounce on every one of them. The death of a thousand cuts, I called it.”
“What changed your mind?”
“It was Jack’s idea. Rather than waste my life chasing small cases, why not go for the big bang? So we decided to test your greed. You always had a choice. We’d offer you a deal only a scoundrel would take. Every step of the way, you people could always stop, always have second thoughts, always do the right thing. You never disappointed us, Jackson. You surpassed all our expectations.”
“And Arvan Chemicals was the lure.”
“Poor Perry. He was facing an almost certain bankruptcy, but he wasn’t very comfortable with the arrangement. An honorable man. We dragged him into it kicking and screaming. He didn’t fully change his mind until Walters paid him that nasty visit.”
Jackson looked at her and said, “The correct legal terminology is conspiracy and graft. When this comes to court I’ll prove it and shove it up your rear, Jenson.”
“I don’t think so. Any first-year law school student would look at the evidence and know how screwed you people are.”
Jackson was too cold-blooded to get flustered, and too much the bully himself to be bullied. He turned his eyes to Jack. “This whole case rests on your shoulders. The tapes you provided, the testimony you’ve given. You’re the only real prosecution witness.”
“I do my best.”
“Pretty soon you’ll see my best, Wiley. I’ll destroy you on the stand.”
“Through Edith Warbinger?” Jack asked.
“Yes, because you’re a murderer and a thief. I’ll wait, Wiley. I’ll bide my time till we’re in a nice little federal court, with a judge and twelve impressionable jurors. I’ll share my evidence and bring in your old friend Wallerman. Then I’ll put you on the stand, pull out all my evidence, and drag you through the mud.”
Jack said nothing for a moment. He seemed at a loss for words. He stared at a far wall long enough that Jackson thought he was in a coma.
“How did you find out about Edith?” Jack finally asked, almost choking on his own words. He sounded sad and tired.
“A source,” Jackson said with a tight, confident smile.
“Who? Who was your source?”