John Grisham

by The Brethren (v5)

  “They’re not stupid,” York said.

  “No, but they’re clumsy. Their nets have snared the wrong person.”

  “I guess we picked the wrong person.”

  “No, they did.”

  NINETEEN

  THE MEMO ARRIVED by fax from the Regional Supervisor, Bureau of Prisons, Washington. It was directed to M. Emmitt Broon, the warden of Trumble. In terse but standard language the supervisor said he’d reviewed the logs from Trumble and was bothered by the number of visits by one Trevor Carson, attorney for three of the inmates. Lawyer Carson had reached the point of logging in almost every day.

  While every inmate certainly had a constitutional right to meet with his attorney, the prison likewise had the power to regulate the traffic. Beginning immediately, attorney-client visits would be restricted to Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, between the hours of 3 and 6 P.M. Exceptions would be granted liberally for good cause shown.

  The new policy would be utilized for a period of ninety days, after which time it would be reviewed.

  Fine with the warden. He too had grown suspicious of Trevor’s almost daily appearances. He’d questioned the front desk and the guards in a vain effort to determine what, exactly, was the nature of all this legal work. Link, the guard who usually escorted Trevor to the conference room, and who usually pocketed a couple of twenties on each visit, told the warden that the lawyer and Mr. Spicer talked about cases and appeals and such. “Just a bunch of law crap,” Link said.

  “And you always search his briefcase?” the warden had asked.

  “Always,” Link had replied.

  Out of courtesy, the warden dialed the number of Mr. Trevor Carson in Neptune Beach. The phone was answered by a woman who said rudely, “Law office.”

  “Mr. Trevor Carson, please.”

  “Who’s calling?”

  “This is Emmitt Broon.”

  “Well, Mr. Broon, he’s taking a nap right now.”

  “I see. Could you possibly wake him? I’m the warden at the federal prison at Trumble, and I need to speak with him.”

  “Just a minute.”

  He waited for a long time, and when she returned she said, “I’m sorry. I couldn’t wake him up. Could I have him return your call?”

  “No, thank you. I’ll just fax him a note.”

  THE IDEA of a reverse scam was hatched by York, while playing golf on a Sunday, and as his game progressed, occasionally on the fairways but more often in the sand and trees, the scheme grew and grew and became brilliant. He abandoned his pals after fourteen holes and called Teddy.

  They would learn the tactics of their adversaries. And they could divert attention away from Al Konyers. There was nothing to lose.

  The letter was created by York, and assigned to one of the top forgers in Documents. The pen pal was christened Brant White, and the first note was handwritten on a plain, white, but expensive correspondence card.

  Dear Ricky:

  Saw your ad, liked it. I’m fifty-five, in great shape, and looking for more than a pen pal. My wife and I just bought a home in Palm Valley, not far from Neptune Beach. We’ll be down in three weeks, with plans to stay for two months.

  If interested, send photo. If I like what I see, then I’ll give more details.

  Brant

  The return address was from Brant, P.O. Box 88645, Upper Darby, PA 19082.

  To save two or three days, a Philadelphia postmark was applied in Documents, and the letter was flown to Jacksonville where agent Klockner himself delivered it to Aladdin North’s little box in the Neptune Beach post office. It was a Monday.

  After his nap the following day, Trevor picked up the mail and headed west, out of Jacksonville, along the familiar route to Trumble. He was greeted by the same guards, Mackey and Vince, at the front door, and he signed the same logbook Rufus shoved in front of him. He followed Link into the visitors’ area and to a corner where Spicer was waiting in one of the small attorney-conference rooms.

  “I’m catchin some heat,” Link said as they stepped into the room. Spicer did not look up. Trevor handed two twenties to Link, who took them in a flash.

  “From who?” Trevor asked, opening his briefcase. Spicer was reading a newspaper.

  “The warden.”

  “Hell, he’s cut back on my visits. What else does he want?”

  “Don’t you understand?” Spicer said, without lowering the newspaper. “Link here is upset because he’s not collecting as much. Right, Link?”

  “You got that right. I don’t know what kinda funny business you boys are runnin here, but if I tightened up on my inspections you’d be in trouble, wouldn’t you?”

  “You’re being paid well,” Trevor said.

  “That’s what you think.”

  “How much do you want?” Spicer said, staring at him now.

  “A thousand a month, cash,” he said, looking at Trevor. “I’ll pick it up at your office.”

  “A thousand bucks and the mail doesn’t get checked,” Spicer said.

  “Yep.”

  “And not a word to anybody.”

  “Yep.”

  “It’s a deal. Now get outta here.”

  Link smiled at both of them and left the room. He positioned himself outside the door, and for the benefit of the closed-circuit cameras looked through the window occasionally.

  Inside, the routine varied little. The exchange of mail happened first and took only a second. From a worn manila folder, the same one every time, Joe Roy Spicer removed the outgoing letters and handed them to Trevor, who took the incoming mail from his briefcase and gave it to his client.

  There were six letters to be mailed. Some days there were as many as ten, seldom less than five. Though Trevor didn’t keep records, or copies, or documents in a file that would serve as proof that he had anything whatsoever to do with the Brethren’s little scam, he knew there had to be twenty or thirty potential victims currently being set up. He recognized some of the names and addresses.

  Twenty-one to be exact, according to Spicer’s precise records. Twenty-one serious prospects, with another eighteen who were marginal. Almost forty pen pals currently hiding in their various closets, some terrified of their shadows, others getting bolder by the week, still others on the verge of kicking down the door and dashing off to meet Ricky or Percy.

  The difficult part was being patient. The scam was working, money was changing hands, the temptation was to squeeze them too quickly. Beech and Yarber were proving to be workhorses, laboring over their letters for hours at a time while Spicer directed operations. It took discipline to hook a new pen pal, one with money, then ply him with enough pretty words to earn his trust.

  “Aren’t we due for a bust?” Trevor said.

  Spicer was flipping through the new letters. “Don’t tell me you’re broke,” he said. “You’re making more than we are.”

  “My money’s tucked away just like yours. I’d just like to have some more of it.”

  “So would I.” Spicer looked at the envelope from Brant in Upper Darby, Pa. “Ah, a new one,” he mumbled to himself, then opened it. He read it quickly, and was surprised by its tone. No fear, no wasted words, no peeking around corners. This man was ready for action.

  “Where’s Palm Valley?” he asked.

  “Ten miles south of the beaches. Why?”

  “What kinda place is it?”

  “It’s one of the gated golf communities for rich retirees, almost all from up North.”

  “How much are the houses?”

  “Well, I’ve never been there, okay. They keep the damned gate locked, guards everywhere like somebody might break in and steal their golf carts, but—”

  “How much are the houses?”

  “Nothing less than a million. I’ve seen a couple advertised for three million.”

  “Wait here,” Spicer said, gathering his file and walking to the door.

  “Where you going?” Trevor asked.

  “To the library. I’ll be back
in half an hour.”

  “I got things to do.”

  “No you don’t. Read the newspaper.”

  Spicer said something to Link, who escorted him through the visitors’ area and out of the administration building. He walked quickly along the manicured grounds. The sun was warm, and the gardeners were earning their fifty cents an hour.

  So were the keepers of the law library. Beech and Yarber were hiding in their little conference room, taking a break from their writings with a game of chess, when Spicer entered in a rush, with an uncharacteristic smile. “Boys, we’ve finally hooked the big one,” he said, and tossed Brant’s letter on the table. Beech read it aloud.

  “Palm Valley is one of the golf communities for rich folks,” Spicer explained proudly. “Houses go for about three million. The boy’s got plenty of dough and he ain’t much for letters.”

  “He does seem anxious,” Yarber observed.

  “We need to move fast,” Spicer said. “He wants to come down in three weeks.”

  “What’s the upside potential?” Beech asked. He loved the jargon of those who invested millions.

  “At least a half a million,” Spicer said. “Let’s do the letter now. Trevor is waiting.”

  Beech opened one of his many files and displayed his wares; sheets of paper in soft pastels. “I think I’ll try the peach,” he said.

  “Oh definitely,” Spicer said. “Gotta do peach.”

  Ricky wrote a scaled-down version of the initial contact letter. Twenty-eight years old, college graduate, locked down in rehab but on the verge of release, probably in ten days, very lonely, looking for a mature man to start a relationship. How convenient that Brant would be living nearby, because Ricky had a sister in Jacksonville and he’d be staying with her. There were no obstacles, no hurdles to cross. He’d be ready for Brant when he came South. But he’d like a photo first. Was Brant really married? Would his wife be living at Palm Valley too? Or would she stay up there in Pennsylvania? Wouldn’t it be great if she did?

  They enclosed the same color photo they’d used a hundred times. It had proved to be irresistible.

  The peach envelope was taken by Spicer back to the attorney-conference room where Trevor was napping. “Mail this immediately,” Spicer barked at him.

  They spent ten minutes on their basketball bets, then said good-bye without a handshake.

  Driving back to Jacksonville, Trevor called his bookie, a new one, a bigger bookie, now that he was a player. The digital line was indeed more secure, but the phone wasn’t. Agent Klockner and his band of operatives were listening as usual, and tracking Trevor’s bets. He wasn’t doing badly, up $4,500 in the past two weeks. By contrast, his law firm had put $800 on the books during the same period.

  In addition to the phone, there were four mikes in the Beetle, most of them of little value but operational nonetheless. And under each bumper was a transmitter, both wired to the car’s electrical system and checked every other night when Trevor was either drinking or sleeping. A powerful receiver in the rental across the street tracked the Beetle wherever it went. As Trevor puttered down the highway, talking on his phone like a big shot, tossing money around like a Vegas high roller, sipping scalded coffee from a quick-stop grocery, he was emitting more signals than most private jets.

  MARCH 7. Big Super Tuesday. Aaron Lake bounced triumphantly across the stage in a large banquet room of a Manhattan hotel, while thousands cheered and music roared and balloons fell from above. He’d taken New York with 43 percent of the vote. Governor Tarry had a rather weak 29 percent, and the other also-rans got the rest. Lake hugged people he’d never seen before and waved to people he’d never see again, and he delivered without notes a stirring victory speech.

  Then he was off, on his way to L.A. for another victory celebration. For four hours, in his new Boeing jet that would hold a hundred and leased for $1 million a month and flew at a speed of five hundred miles per hour, thirty-eight thousand feet above the country, he and his staff monitored the returns from the twelve states participating in big Super Tuesday. Along the East Coast, where the polls had already closed, Lake barely won in Maine and Connecticut, but put up big margins in New York, Massachusetts, Maryland, and Georgia. He lost Rhode Island by eight hundred votes, and won Vermont by a thousand. As he was flying over Missouri, CNN declared him the winner of that state by four percentage points over Governor Tarry. Ohio was just as close.

  By the time Lake reached California, the rout was over. Of the 591 delegates at stake, he’d captured 390. He’d also solidified the momentum. And most important, Aaron Lake now had the money. Governor Tarry was falling hard and fast, and all bets were on Lake.

  TWENTY

  SIX HOURS after claiming victory in California, Lake awoke to a frenzied morning of live interviews. He suffered through eighteen in two hours, then flew to Washington.

  He went straight to his new campaign headquarters, on the ground floor of a large office building on H Street, a stone’s throw from the White House. He thanked his workers, almost none of whom were volunteers. He worked his crowd, shook their hands, all the while asking himself, “Where did these people come from?”

  We’re gonna win, he said over and over, and everybody believed it. Why not?

  He met for an hour with his top people. He had $65 million, no debt. Tarry had less than $1 million on hand and he was still trying to count the money he owed. In fact, the Tarry campaign had missed a federal filing deadline because its books were in such a mess. All cash had vanished. Contributions had stopped. Lake was getting all the money.

  The names of three potential Vice Presidents were debated with great enthusiasm. It was an exhilarating exercise because it meant the nomination was in the bag. Lake’s first choice, Senator Nance from Michigan, was drawing fire because he’d had some shady business deals in another life. His partners had been of Italian extraction, from Detroit, and Lake could close his eyes and see the press peeling skin off Nance. A committee was appointed to explore the issue further.

  And a committee was appointed to begin planning Lake’s presence at the convention in Denver. Lake wanted a new speechwriter, now, and he wanted him working on the acceptance speech.

  Lake secretly marveled at his own overhead. His campaign chairman was getting $150,000 for the year, not for twelve months, but until Christmas. There was a chairman of finance, of policy, of media relations, of operations, and of strategic planning, and all had contracts for $120,000 for about ten months of work. Each chairman had two or three immediate underlings, people Lake hardly knew, and they earned $90,000 apiece. Then there were the campaign assistants, or CA’s, not the volunteers that most candidates attracted, but real employees who earned $50,000 each and kept the offices in a frenzy. There were dozens of them. And dozens of clerks and secretaries and, hell, nobody made less than $40,000.

  And on top of all this waste, Lake kept telling himself, if I make it to the White House then I’ll have to find jobs for them there. Every damned one of them. Kids now running around with Lake buttons on every lapel will expect to have West Wing clearances and jobs paying $80,000 a year.

  It’s a drop in the bucket, he kept reminding himself. Don’t get hung up on the small stuff when so much more is at stake.

  Negatives were pushed to the end of the meeting and given short shrift. A reporter for the Post had been digging into Lake’s early business career. Without too much effort he’d stumbled upon the GreenTree mess, a failed land development, twenty-two years in the past. Lake and a partner had bankrupted GreenTree, legally shafting creditors out of $800,000. The partner had been indicted for bankruptcy fraud, but a jury let him walk. No one laid a glove on Lake, and seven times after that the people of Arizona elected him to Congress.

  “I’ll answer any question about GreenTree,” Lake said. “It was just a bad business deal.”

  “The press is about to shift gears,” said the chairman of media relations. “You’re new and you haven’t been subjected to enough scrutiny.
It’s time for them to get nasty.”

  “It’s already started,” Lake said. “I have no skeletons.”

  For an early dinner he was whisked away to Mortimer’s, the current power place to be seen, just down Pennsylvania, where he met Elaine Tyner, the lawyer running D-PAC. Over fruit and cottage cheese she laid out the current financials of the newest PAC on the block. Cash in hand of $29 million, no significant debt, money being churned around the clock, coming in from all directions, from everywhere in the world.

  Spending it was the challenge. Since it was considered “soft money,” or money that couldn’t go directly to the Lake campaign, it had to be used elsewhere. Tyner had several targets. The first was a series of generic ads similar to the doomsday ads Teddy had put together. D-PAC was already buying prime-time spots for the fall. The second, and by far the most enjoyable, were the Senate and congressional races. “They’re lining up like ants,” she said with great amusement. “It’s amazing what a few million bucks can do.”

  She told the story of a House race in a district in Northern California where the incumbent, a twenty-year veteran Lake knew and despised, started the year with a forty-point lead against an unknown challenger. The unknown found his way to D-PAC and surrendered his soul to Aaron Lake. “We’ve basically taken over his campaign,” she said. “We’re writing speeches, polling, doing all his print and TV ads, we even hired a new staff for him. So far we’ve spent one-point-five million, and our boy has cut the lead to ten points. And we have seven months to go.”

  In all, Tyner and D-PAC were meddling in thirty House races and ten in the Senate. She expected to raise a total of $60 million, and spend every dime of it by November.