No One Rides for Free

by Larry Beinhart

  “In this instance we have a situation in which discretion is more important than corporate accountability. If I were employing you on behalf of Choate, Winkler, I could not permit myself that option. This, however, is a personal matter, and I am indeed free to exercise that option.”

  The man spoke not only in complete sentences, but in complete paragraphs. A vanishing art. I was impressed.

  The partners at Choate, Winkler had not gone out and recruited Mr. Wood because of his stunning legal qualifications and sterling character. He had happened to them.

  Leisure Time Industries had started as a record company and grown into toys, games, concert promotions, resorts. Anything that could be called leisure and some things that could not. One of their subsidiaries made squash rackets. But they had a moment of weakness, and Charles Goreman, who could scent weakness like a hound can smell a bitch in heat, made his move. Even though LTI was actually larger than Over & East, it became clear early on that O&E was going to win. Rather than have a long drawn-out battle, full of blood and gore, LTI changed course in midstream and allowed a friendly merger. Choate, Winkler handled the approach and everyone made out like bandits.

  Especially Choate, Winkler. Part of the deal was that they then became the corporate attorneys for Over & East. By handling the losing-side, they came out with a client twice the size.

  Part of that deal was that Wood was given a partnership in Choate, Winkler, Higgiston, Hahn & Moore. Thus everyone’s back was adequately scratched. A spiral daisy chain at a financial Plato’s Retreat, where everyone made out. Over & East continued to play Takeover & Eat, the legal fees rolled into Choate, Winkler, and Wood’s partnership share started in the $750,000 range and only went up.

  Then, one night, eighteen months back, a junior accountant was going through the books at Choate, Winkler. Junior discovered something that every other accountant had missed for eight years. He worked all night, checking, double-checking. Impatient for dawn, he worked through the following day, checking what had to be checked during working hours.

  When Junior was sure, he talked his way into the office of Lawrence Choate Haven and laid the bomb on that pure, unadulterated status desk. Edgar Wood was a thief. Worse, he was using the law firm as a conduit.

  At that point, Junior had traced $4,873,927.64 that had come out of Over & East, through Choate, Winkler, Higgiston, Hahn & Moore, to existing but nonfunctioning subsidiaries of Over & East, and from there to suppliers, which were, in fact, Edgar Wood. Subsequent investigation brought the sum to a tad over $8 million.

  “Perhaps,” Haven said, “I acted precipitously. All too often a pall of silence falls, a veil is pulled across the face of the truth. The principals are more concerned with protecting their public relations than in punishing the perpetrators. But I felt at the time, and I still feel, that that is the wrong approach. It virtually rewards the culpable and puts the burden of restitution on the stockholders, or, in our case, the partners. They cringe in the fear that the public will conclude that because there is one malefactor that the entire organization is capable of malfeasance.

  “It is a form of cowardice and an abuse of the public trust.

  “Choate, Winkler, Higgiston, Hahn & Moore has been in existence for over one hundred and fifty years. In all that time, nothing of this sort has ever occurred. Nothing has ever blemished our name. Now that it had, I felt that we would only be stronger for strong action. The other senior partners agreed with me, if for no other reason than that someone must set standards.

  “We decided to prosecute vigorously.”

  So they had. They went directly to Robert Morganthau, Manhattan district attorney, that very day. Before they informed Mr. Goreman. Before they informed Over & East. Before they confronted Mr. Wood.

  That way, there could be no backing down. And there wasn’t.

  “It set off a chain of events that I could not have foreseen. Although Edgar Wood had embezzled money, I could not imagine that he would involve outsiders in the matter and, worse, violate the attorney-client privilege.”

  Edgar Wood, corporate counsel to Over & East, personal attorney to Charles Goreman, had been privy to anything and everything. But that knowledge was protected. It was not his to share. The attorney-client privilege is the foundation of a lawyer’s relations with clients. It is the rock. It requires the attorney to never disclose the client’s affairs. Requires. It is not an option like cruise control or white-wall tires.

  Everyone now anticipated a new attack on Over & East by the SEC and the law firm retained to meet the challenge was Douglas, Cohen, Bartholomew, Neffsky and McDonald. The reason, according to Choate Haven, was that Choate, Winkler, et al, was potentially party to the SEC action and to a number of suits involving Wood and Over & East.

  I had heard of Douglas, Cohen; they were the gunslingers of the three-piece-suit set. The Choate, Winklers of the legal world could handle the day-to-day corporate business of corporations, states and even nations. But when the fat was in the fire, when the feds discovered the smoking gun, when the vice-president was indicted on vice charges, they called in Douglas, Cohen.

  They were so good that the names in the masthead actually belonged to nondeceased people.

  But even they were having problems. They wanted to know what Wood was saying, The SEC, who had hidden Wood away and was taking his testimony in secret, claimed, so far successfully, that they were not part of the judicial system; they were a regulatory agency, and not subject to the normal process of discovery. To add insult to injury, the SEC was leaking the choice bits and pieces to the Wall Street Journal and the Times.

  “They are the attorneys of record. But I, as a private party, have a responsibility, because my conduct, however proper and correct, may be leading to injury to parties whose well-being was entrusted to me.”

  “Yeah, I can find the guy,” I said. “I can find him. Maybe Mr. Wood and I, we could have a conversation. But I don’t think he will summarize his testimony for me. I have sources at the Times, but I bet they don’t know much more than they’re publishing. I can butter up a secretary or a steno down in D.C. … but I don’t think that’s going to answer your questions., not over the long run anyway, and this is an ongoing thing. So we’re talking about going further than that.”

  “If you are implying that you might act beyond the bounds of the law, I certainly recommend against any such activity. I would be hard put, no matter how grave the situation, to countenance your commission of an illegal act while performing as my agent.”

  I looked at him and shrugged.

  “Can you do the job or not? You seem to have doubts.”

  I stood up. “I can do the job. I’ll get you results. If the price is right.” I stepped over to the window. The wind whistled and cracked from tower to tower and whipped tendrils of cloud against the glass. “Expenses could run quite high. Out of town and all that,” I said over my shoulder.

  “This is thirty-five thousand dollars,” he said. That turned me around fast enough. Instead of a check, a $5.98 pressed-paper attaché case had appeared on the deep-glow wood of his status desk. It had to mean cash. I went to the desk and opened the case greedily. It was cash.

  The case contained, in addition, those odds and ends, like photos and a dossier on the man, considered useful by most investigators. Nice, but it was the long green that held my attention.

  “In addition, there will be a like sum when you hand me an accurate summary or transcript of Mr. Wood’s testimony.”

  “That’ll be all right,” I said.

  3

  SHUTTLE

  I LIFTED WAYNE UP in the air. He giggled and grinned. I did too.

  “‘I’m gonna be away for a while,” I told him.

  “Are you going on a mission?”

  “Yes,” I told him solemnly.

  “Wow,” he replied. “Do it to them before they do it to us.”

  “I will,” I promised, and put him down. He grabbed his school things and tore out the doo
r. “See ya,” he yelled as it closed.

  “Will you be good while you’re in Washington?” Glenda asked me when I walked back to my coffee.

  “Whatever do you mean?”

  “There is a certain school of thought, among men, so I have heard, that out-of-town doesn’t count.”

  “The line is, ‘Under five minutes and out-of-town doesn’t count.’”

  “I don’t want a line, I want an answer. Are you going to be good?” She said it with a smile, but the tension was real.

  She loved me. She took good care of me. She helped pick up the pieces when they were strewn all over hell and Avenue C. Or at least she stood by me, gentle, accepting and patient, while I picked them up. I figured I might be good. I figured that was a real serious possibility.

  “Sure,” I said, looked her in the eye and smiled.

  I found my attorney, Gerry Yaskowitz, in the hall of New York Criminal Court, which is where I always found him. He had just finished a plea bargain for a midlevel heroin dealer and just started an argument with the Korean manager of the Far-Out Far-East Big Apple Health Spa. The spa offered “the ultimate in relaxation, calming exotic atmosphere, lovely Oriental hostesses to serve you in the Oriental manner, best of satisfaction guaranteed.” The Korean was giggling and offering to pay in barter.

  “You cheap son of a bitch,” Gerry said. “Do I look like the kind of guy who needs it that bad?” The Korean giggled even more. “OK. You cheap son of a bitch, I want my fee, in cash, up front, and you can throw in the barter on top.”

  At that point I interrupted.

  “Tell me, Gerald, what kind of trouble can I get into if I do a little bugging, maybe a B and E?”

  “Depends. Who and where?”

  “The SEC, probably,” I told him.

  “Are you getting stupid again? Are you back on drugs? You want my opinion, my expert legal advice, backed by many sleazy years in a sleazy racket, namely the law: Don’t. Do not do it. And I am going to send you a bill for that advice, because it is very serious advice and worth money.”

  “Yeah, well, I have just accepted a whole lot of bread, and to do what I have accepted it for may, just may, require that.”

  He looked up and down the hall, pulled me close and said, “In the first place, be very careful. In the second place …” he scribbled a name and number … “here, a good well-connected D.C. criminal attorney. Remember, I was not an accessory before the fact.”

  Gerald was right. It was only money and not worth my license, which is my living, and certainly not worth prison, which I truly dislike. I doubted very much that there was any completely legal way to get what Choate Haven wanted, and it was not so much that I was willing to do anything for money but that the risk itself intrigued me. Dumb.

  While I packed a kit that included a variety of microphones, cameras and picklocks, I filled in my partner, Joey D’, on what I was doing.

  “Yeah, fine,” he said, “just don’t do anything stupid while you’re down there. You know you have a good thing going with Glenda. That one, she’s a real lady. And you got a good thing going with the kid. Don’t go fucking it up.” All that and he hadn’t even heard me call Sandy to say I would soon be in D.C.

  “What is with you?” I said.

  “Ahh, you just gotta restless look about you lately, and most guys, when they go outa town … Just don’ go looking for trouble.”

  I really wished I had a trench coat to hunch up on my shoulders when I walked out the door, turned and said, “Trouble is my business.”

  I caught the last shuttle down to the nation’s capital.

  Sandra Klein met me at National Airport.

  We looked at each other. Past and present fused, and history swirled around us like curlicues of confetti. She was just lovely, serious, bright, one of the few moments of good sense I showed back in the burn-it-up and break-it-down years. We were magic makers in a long-distance romance with nothing but love and laughter every time one or the other of us got off a jet. Sandy was a writer and therapist. Unlike most members of either breed she was sensible and shrewd. She knew there was no future in the condition I was in, and possibly in who I am. She did the eminently sensible thing. She left me.

  Catalog time. Taking accounts. Reading minds. From our very first glance, we never had to speak to know.

  She looked relieved. I had worried her once. I seem to do that to a lot of people. But I looked healthier, happier, younger than I had, than she expected. And calmer. But the same years had hurt her, and the aging was sharp, as if five years ago had been the peak of the bloom. And she had trouble. I didn’t want that. I wanted her to be the happiest woman in the world.

  She smiled at me for thinking that last thought and reached over and touched my cheek. Then we both turned away to make the mind reading stop. She started the car and neither of us spoke until we were over the dirty gray Potomac. She asked if I would have dinner with her and I said sure.

  I really did have a legitimate reason for seeing her. Choate Haven had made up a list of Wood’s habits and tastes, and said, “If I know Edgar, he will never, this side of incarceration, give up his automobile or his compulsion for nouvelle cuisine.” When Sandy’s first book came out she had been on the talk show, cocktail party and reception circuit. I figured she knew the “in” eateries. I explained all that to her, and she said she would help.

  When we were together she had talked about the search for a “life partner” with the clarity and sense with which others approach career choices. She was intuitive, loving, lusty when appropriate, a genuine adult. I had been sure, then, that she would choose well. She was not only on my personal best all-time top-ten list, I had her slated as most likely to succeed at marriage. I was sure, now, that when she opened the door of her apartment we would be alone.

  We were.

  I didn’t ask where her husband was. I guessed out of town. I didn’t ask when he would be back. I guessed not that night.

  “Do you want something to drink?” she asked. “Or would you rather not.”

  “Oh, I take a glass now and again. It’s only a problem when I’m doing that other thing too … and I don’t do that shit nooo more.”

  “I’m glad,” she said and she looked it. “I used to worry about you. … And now … you look good.”

  I reached out and touched her face, the way she had mine in the car. She reached up with both hands and pressed my hand first to her cheek, then to her lips. Then she was in my arms, eyes wet, face pressed to my chest, holding on.

  One part of me was paternal. The other remembered all too clearly the way she orgasmed. That rising, rising moan of rhythm. And separate parts of my body remembered, each by itself, the different ways we used to get there. …

  I pushed back from her and looked her in the eyes.

  “I have been living with a woman for four years, that’s practically a record for me. … Not only that, I’ve been faithful for three, which is certainly a record.”

  I held her close, her hair soft against my cheek, her tears moist on my chest, loving her as much as I ever had. And relieved as hell that I was not the one she had chosen, not the one to have made those tears.

  The Watergate is conveniently located, tucked into a curve of the Potomac between Georgetown and the marble of government town. It holds some of my fondest memories, as it does for most Americans, and it was where I spent that night alone.

  Still, the first thing that Glenda said when I called home the next morning was, “How is Sandy, and don’t tell me you haven’t seen her.”

  “Fine, and happily married,” I said, awed by the range of her radar. Then Wayne stole the phone and saved me from protesting too much. He didn’t want to go to school. He wanted to go out and play in the rain. “I like puddles,” he said. Also, he wanted to join a squash club, just like me.

  I called my congressman, John Straightman. He was willing to see me right away. That was very gratifying.

  Particularly since I didn’t even vote
in his district. Four years previous, his connection had been picked up with three keys of coke. The search and seizure was correct, the warrant was good, Miranda was read and New York’s finest were not on sale that day. The dealer figured he could trade the congressman for at least a reduction to a misdemeanor.

  The D.A. had mixed feelings. On the one hand, all that potential publicity. On the other, the congressman had a lot of friends. Perhaps if the dealer had handed the D.A. a rock-solid case all wrapped in ribbon, there would have been no indecision. As it was, it was only a lead. To do something real with it, the D.A.’s office would have to set up a sale, with witnesses, wires and the rest, and avoid entrapment and the other technicalities that can blow a case.

  One of the prosecutors had been a classmate of William Contact, the congressman’s chief aide. The D.A. allowed as how a leak along that line might be all right.

  Willie got in touch with me. The dealer was out on bail. I was able to get the right kind of introduction to him and tempted him down to Atlanta on the promise of a four-kilo buy. He was busted in Georgia and found out the Atlanta cops didn’t give a damn about some story about a Yankee congressman’s evil ways. The New York case was stashed in the pending file, and the dealer got a whole chunk of his life scheduled for a Georgia work farm.

  I was ushered in to see the man moments after I arrived. He told the receptionist to hold the calls and greeted me fulsomely. Full smile, full, firm handshake, with the elbow grasp thrown in. I realized that he was afraid of me.

  “Relax,” I said. “You paid me to do a job. It was done. Now forget about it.”

  “Is that your code?” he said in a tone meant to be jocular.

  “Yeah,” I said deadpan. “But you can do me a favor.”