Private Sector

by Brian Haig

Mike said, “See what I mean, man? The lady’s gone over the edge. For Godsakes, please, see if you can talk some sense into her.”

  The newcomer appeared completely clueless. “I . . . uh. . . Christ, I’ve got no idea what’s going on here.”

  Mike said, “Shit, look at me, man. You’ve heard the description of the L. A. Killer, right? It’s all over TV and the radio. Short and stocky, with a ponytail, right? Do I look short and stocky? Where’s my ponytail?”

  The young man turned toward Anne and said, “It’s true. The description’s all over the news. Like he said.”

  She faced him. “I don’t give a shit. This is the guy.”

  “Did he attack you?” the man asked, making no effort to disguise his skepticism.

  “Not yet. But only ’cause I didn’t give him the chance.”

  Mike’s hands got a hard grip on the crossbar of his bike. The young man said to Anne, “Well, if he didn’t attack you, how can you be so sure?”

  Anne was becoming flustered. “I just know. I thought he’d come for me, and this is him.”

  “You thought he’d come after you?”

  The young man and Anne were now facing each other.

  Anne had just opened her mouth to explain, when suddenly Mike’s bike flew through the air, an ill-shaped javelin hurtling straight at her. She turned and threw up her arms, but the twenty-four-pound rocket crashed into her torso and face.

  Mike came right behind it. He leaped across the path and dove straight for the pistol. Her arm was trapped under the bike and he pried the gun out of her fist then bashed her forehead with it.

  The newcomer was yelling, “Hey, man, take it easy! You don’t have to do that!”

  He threw the pistol aside. Anne was stunned and moaning, and he climbed off her. He began walking toward the biker, saying, “Look, man, she gave me no choice. The chick could’ve shot me or something.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “No buts.” Mike shook his head. “She’s crazy. Jesus, I was scared.”

  He was two feet from the biker. He could’ve just shot him but the loud noise could draw more nosy guests. He swiped a hand across his forehead and said, “You see how it was, right? I couldn’t take the chance.”

  Suddenly his fist lashed out and hit the biker on the nose. A spray of blood and the young man flew off the rear of the bike. Mike calmly walked over and easily lifted him off the ground. He yanked the helmet off his head and let it drop to the ground. The young man weighed about 160 pounds, but Mike was terrifically strong and he held the howling man under his thick arms and sprinted full-speed toward a large oak tree beside the trail. Like the tip of a battering ram, the biker’s head went straight into the bark and split open like a melon. His body went completely limp, and Mike dropped it at the base of the tree. He bent over and checked the man’s pulse—definitely dead.

  Anne was just shoving the bike off her body when he returned. A deep gash on her forehead and another cut on her right shoulder were pouring blood. She looked at him and started to scream, when he leaped forward, slapped one hand over her mouth, and lifted her into the air with the other.

  He murmured into her ear, “Hey, Anne, we got off on the wrong foot. No more lies between us. This is going to really, really hurt.”

  Her eyes bulged with understandable terror as he dragged her with one arm and began picking up the discarded bikes and hauling them into the thick underbrush.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  MONDAY MORNING—SEVEN O’CLOCK SHARP, INDIAN SUMMER HAD COME and gone, and I was seated behind my desk at the firm, booting up the computer. The numbers had been crunched and recrunched, the final audit was being drafted, and I was left with a few hours to kill.

  So I thought I’d use the opportunity to make a more thorough examination of Lisa’s file. I wasn’t buying into Janet’s suspicion, but the possible theft of Lisa’s computer and briefcase did raise an eyebrow. We had searched her e-mail, and now I thought I’d check her general work file, noodle around, and see if anything struck a chord. It was this or spend the morning with the accountants. So it was this.

  The two little boxes appeared, I typed in Lisa’s name, then “J-A-G,” and that pesky “Incorrect Password” message popped up. This was odd.

  I was thinking about how odd it was when my phone rang. I lifted it up, said, “Drummond,” and a voice curtly demanded, “Turn off your computer and come see me. Now.”

  “Who are—”

  “Hal Merriweather. Ninth floor. Three minutes or I’ll send a security officer to get you.”

  He hung up. I hate it when people do that.

  I walked down the hallway to Elizabeth, who sort of blinked a few times as I approached. But I think she was starting to look forward to our occasional encounters. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king, or whatever.

  I smiled. “Morning, Elizabeth. You look stunning today.”

  She giggled. “Oh, you are a flirt, Major Drummond. Rob any banks lately?”

  “Gave it up. Too many cameras and security guards.”

  “Found a new hobby, have we?”

  “Not yet. But I’m looking into overbilling and corporate graft. The boys upstairs swear that’s where the big bucks are.”

  She laughed.

  I leaned across her desk and asked, “Hal Merriweather?”

  “Hal, is it?” She diddled with something on her desk. “You haven’t managed to land on his bad side, have you?”

  “Who is he?”

  “Our superintendent of administration. Not one to have mad at you, I should say.”

  “Why?”

  “He’s quite powerful, really. My supervisor. In charge of security, administration, personnel.”

  English people tend to speak in these odd half-sentences, like only an idiot needs a fully expressed thought. Well, I’m an idiot.

  I tapped a finger on the desktop.

  “Oh, let me see. He’s youngish, early thirties I should think. Very efficient and quite competent, though I should say a bit difficult to get along with.”

  Subtlety is another English trait, and I translated this to mean Hal was a type-A asshole. I had reached this conclusion already. I told her, “I need the key to go up and see him.”

  “Ring you up, did he?”

  “He heard what a great guy I am and wants to meet me.”

  She laughed. “Be on your toes, Major. Hal’s manners could stand a bit of polish.”

  So she handed me the stairwell key, and actually, Hal’s office wasn’t that hard to find. His name was inscribed in gold letters on his doorway, like the partners’, and happened to be located in the connecting corridor between the junior and senior partners. Given that all kinds of people downstairs with law degrees were killing themselves to get an office on this floor, and that the rest of the administrative staff were packed on the seventh floor, it struck me that Hal’s stature within the firm perhaps exceeded his title.

  The door was locked, so I knocked, a buzzing sound emitted, and I entered. Nobody was present, just two vacant desks in what appeared to be a narrow outer office. I walked to the next door and knocked again. Maybe this was like one of those dozens of boxes inside a box thing, and I’d keep walking into smaller and smaller rooms, and Hal was actually a midget who worked inside a tiny drawer.

  But another buzzing sounded, and I entered what appeared to be the inner sanctum, where a guy who looked like he was named Hal was seated behind a desk. He was, as Elizabeth warned, in his mid-thirties, short and pudgy, with balding dark hair, flat black pig eyes, and a thick, imperious nose.

  He also wasn’t alone. Harold Bronson, the managing partner, and Cy, my titular boss, stood directly behind him. From Cy I was getting the old avoid-my-eyes routine. And from Bronson the-old-happy-guy-who-wasn’t-happy act.

  Hal was scowling and ordered, “Take a seat.”

  So much for pleasantries. I stood.

  “Suit yourself,” he said.

  “I always do, pal.” Regar
ding Hal’s office, the desk, files, and bookcases appeared to have been purchased from an Office Depot sale. No paintings of ships or lush oriental carpets, nor was there any of the general clutter you associate with a real working office, suggesting Hal either didn’t have much of a job, or was one of those anal neat freaks. Also of interest were the video monitors mounted on wall brackets. One showed the entryway, where sat Elizabeth, energetically buffing her nails. Another showed an empty stairwell, presumably the one that led to the partners’ floor. And last, the interior of the elevator.

  Among his other talents and duties, Hal appeared to be the partners’ watchdog. He probably had a gun inside another drawer and would love nothing more than to cap somebody for trespassing, or farting in the partners’ elevator.

  Anyway, I smiled and reminded him, “You called me, Hal.” I looked at my watch. “My time is billable. You’ve got thirty seconds and I go back to work.”

  It seemed clear that we were on the verge of a nasty little power spat, and I wanted to get in the first blow.

  An eyebrow twitched, he flopped open a manila folder, and studied something with great care and interest. With no preamble, he mentioned, “At 5:46, on Thursday night, you signed a Miss Janet Morrow into the firm. Correct?”

  “Does it say that on the sign-in form?”

  “It does.”

  “Then why are you asking?”

  “At 5:55 P.M. you logged onto the firm’s server. Correct?”

  “What form does it say that on?”

  “The central server monitors all transactions. I receive a complete printout twice a day.” He snapped, “At 5:55, correct?”

  “You’re sure it wasn’t 5:57?”

  The piggy eyes turned piggier. “The server is recalibrated every fourth second by the clock at Greenwich. It is accurate to within three microseconds. It does not make errors.”

  “But you do. Right, Hal?” I actually was starting to think I’d just been transported to a really bad episode of Hogan’s Heroes with Sergeant Schultz saying, “Achtung, Herr Colonel Hogan, the commandant is mad zat zomebody drew pimples on Der Führer’s picture.”

  And true to form, Hal continued, “Starting at 5:58 there were multiple attempts from your terminal to enter the e-mail account of Lisa Morrow. Seven fruitless attempts, followed by a successful effort.”

  “What time was the successful effort?”

  He stared back at his form. “That would be 6:04.”

  “And how many microseconds?”

  His face reddened. “It has been widely noted that you have an attitude problem. Don’t try it in here.” He set down the folder and informed me, “Breaking into another firm member’s files is a violation of firm policy. That policy was included on the firm’s associate exam you took and passed. You should also know it is a federal crime.”

  I suspected that having two partners staring over his shoulder was cramping Hal’s style. This motorized, legalistic interrogation was too lawyerly and prompted for this chubby little buffoon. In fact, it struck me that Hal had been given a script.

  He put his elbows on the table, bent toward me, and went on, “What were you doing in that file?”

  “Ask your all-knowing server.”

  Again, Hal glanced at his file, and oops—apparently, the server could tell him. “You downloaded information and an e-mail was sent. We know Janet Morrow was present.” He established eye contact and asked, “Did you in fact permit a non-firm member to access our confidential databases?”

  “Did I?”

  Bronson chose this moment to intrude. “Answer him, Drummond.” He folded his arms and added, “Miss Morrow, we’ve learned, is a city prosecutor in Boston, and her office is currently involved in cases against two of our firm’s clients.”

  Well, it suddenly struck me that Hal was the type of paranoid bureaucrat who liked burning people, and the presence of two senior partners implied that the firm took Hal’s obsessive idiocy seriously.

  I therefore addressed my remarks to the partners and said, “We looked up Lisa’s e-mail addresses so her sister could inform her friends about the funeral.”

  Hal demanded, “But you logged on using Lisa Morrow’s name and password?”

  “Is there another way, Hal?”

  “And Janet Morrow was present, wasn’t she?”

  “And she’s Lisa Morrow’s sister, and she only saw the e-mail addresses.” I looked back at the partners and added, “Case closed, docket cleared, time to run up those billable hours.”

  Bronson looked annoyed. But apparently Hal wasn’t finished, because he lifted up the folder again, withdrew a computer printout, and tossed it onto his desk. “Explain this, Drummond.”

  “This” turned out to be a long column of electronic scribbles with two phrases highlighted in yellow—“LF: BosVSParagon” and “LF: BosVSMurray.”

  I shrugged and he said, “Don’t play dumb with me. You know ‘LF’ stands for legal file. And you know the entries are City of Boston versus Paragon Ventures, and City of Boston versus William Murray.”

  I replied, “Do I?”

  “And you know Paragon Ventures is under indictment by the Boston District Attorney’s Office for fraud and overbilling the government on Medicare payments. And William Murray has been charged with mail-order fraud and conspiracy. They are clients of this firm, and both files were downloaded from Lisa Morrow’s e-mail file.”

  He leaned back into his chair and smugly rocked back and forth. I found myself wondering why a firm such as this would hire a putz such as this.

  And I knew from his expression that he wasn’t finished, and indeed, he then said, “How these files ended up in Lisa Morrow’s e-mail is very mysterious. But she’s no longer alive to explain, is she?”

  “But a brain like yours has surely manufactured an explanation, Hal.”

  “In fact, I have. I surmise that Lisa Morrow intended to help her sister. You were her friend, possibly her accomplice. Alternatively, you might have planted those files in Captain Morrow’s e-mail, foolishly assuming we wouldn’t pay attention to electronic activity in a dead person’s account. In any regard, both files contain confidential information that would benefit the City of Boston’s case.”

  Cy’s shoulders were slumped with disappointment. Bronson did not appear at all disappointed; he had that half-scowling, half-happy look of a high school vice principal who just caught the school hoodlum drilling peepholes in the girls’ room walls.

  “Why, Sean?” asked Cy. “I knew you were unhappy about this assignment . . . but why?”

  Indeed, why? Had I failed to see those two files in Lisa’s e-mail? I mean, Janet had been so hot-to-trot to see Lisa’s files. But that theory only worked if Lisa was crooked also.

  It was also possible the server had an electronic infarction and registered the wrong files in the wrong place. But unlikely.

  Which obviously left a setup—a high-tech frame. But by who? And why? I recalled my conversation the day before with Barry. Was there a connection? If so, there’s who . . . possibly why. But how?

  The Law of Crappy Coincidences warns that when two really good things happen to you at once, that’s probably a coincidence. But when two really shitty things happen, there’s a direct connection—you just have to find it.

  “What happens next?” I asked.

  Bronson answered, “Our ethics committee will meet Tuesday evening to decide your fate and whether we should turn this matter over to the court system.” He added, regretfully, “You’ll be permitted to defend yourself, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  He further informed me, “Until then your electronic rights are suspended. If you enter the firm’s facilities you must have an escort from Mr. Merriweather’s office. Is that understood?”

  “Fine.”

  He fixed me with his version of a nasty glare, lowered his voice, and ordered, “And now, you will return to Morris Networks and complete the audit.”

  Was he kidding? I’m not tr
usted enough to turn on a computer or walk through the firm without a watchdog, but I remain billable to clients.

  On the other hand, the audit had probably set back Morris Networks a few million bucks, and it sure would suck to have to inform the client that the supervising attorney was too ethically challenged to perform his duties, and ask to have it done again. The client might very logically point out that since the firm picked me, the firm should now pick up the tab. Back to the Law of Crappy Coincidences—the audit was scheduled to be completed Tuesday and the disciplinary powwow was set for that night.

  You see what I mean? These private-sector guys think we public-sector guys are too stupid to pee.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  AS I DROVE TO MORRIS NETWORKS I USED THE JAG’S BUILT-IN CARPHONE to call Janet’s cell phone. Five rings, and then a mechanical female voice offered me a series of options—dial one for voicemail and so forth. So I punched one, and said, “Drummond here. Call me. Pronto.”

  I took the elevator upstairs and went to the conference room, where I found Martha parked in a corner peering quizzically at a long spreadsheet. We exchanged brief pleasantries and I was struck by this really off-the-wall thought that she might be the one who recorded those phone messages for the wireless services. Same dull, flat monotone and . . . oh, who gives a crap.

  “Yesterday,” I reminded her, “you asked about a company called Grand Vistas.”

  “Yes?”

  “What information do you have on it?”

  “Is there a problem?”

  “None at all. I need to inform them they’re included in our financials. It’s a standard legal courtesy.”

  She nodded, then went back into the room and returned with a thin manila folder. “The contact information is inside. It’s a privately held foreign company. Surely Morris’s normal accounting firm knows this company, but since we were only hired for this audit, we’re completely unfamiliar with it.”

  I thanked her and retreated to the car.

  Janet returned my call as I drove to my apartment. I gave her directions and told her to meet me there for lunch.