An Engineered Injustice

by William L. Myers Jr.

  The tall man pulls the lid off the plastic jug, and Eddy smells gasoline.

  Eddy quickly looks around him to see if there’s any way of escape, but the shower walls prevent it. The only way out would be through the two hardened men.

  Eddy’s shoulders slump as he’s overwhelmed by sadness. He’s never going to hold his little girl, never see her grow up. He’s never again going to hug the only woman he’s ever loved. Never say goodbye to his parents, tell them he loves them. Never see another sunrise. Eddy thinks of the run-down little farm he shared for a few days with Kate before he rushed to the hospital in his ill-fated trip to join her for the birth of their child. And it hits him that he wants nothing more than to be back on that farm with Kate, and the baby.

  Eddy hears a click as the shorter of the two inmates standing outside the shower stall flips open the lid of the Zippo.

  Eddy closes his eyes.

  Vaughn strides through the lobby of the modern office building. He takes the elevator to the third floor and walks quickly down the hallway toward the offices of Modern Innovations, Inc. Through the glass doors, he sees Johnny Giacobetti leaning over the reception desk, apparently flirting with the receptionist. The young woman looks Vaughn’s way, says something to Johnny G., who rises to his full height and stares through the doors at Vaughn.

  “You gotta be kidding me,” Giacobetti says as Vaughn opens one of the doors and enters.

  “I need to see your boss.”

  Without a word, Johnny G. moves to Vaughn and searches him. When he’s done, he tells Vaughn, “Wait here.” Then he turns and walks down the hall. In short order, Giacobetti returns. “Let’s go.”

  Vaughn follows the big man to James Nunzio’s office. The mobster is sitting behind the desk when Vaughn enters. He follows Vaughn with his eyes as Vaughn takes one of the visitor’s chairs.

  “Remember what I told you about lying to me?”

  Vaughn opens his mouth to answer, but Jimmy Nutzo cuts him off. “If you’re here to plead for your cousin, don’t bother. I have a very simple business model, Mr. Coburn. I reward my friends, I punish my enemies. That’s the way it is with me because that’s the way it has to be. If I don’t reward my friends, I’ll end up without friends. If I fail to punish my enemies, they will lose respect for me. In my business, not having friends bodes ill. Not having respect bodes dead.”

  “That’s not why I’m here. I—”

  “But, of course, this isn’t just business. This is personal. My son, my Alexander, is dead. And that means that the punishment must be taken to a whole other level. Which brings us back to your cousin, the fuckup driving the train when my boy was killed—”

  “Your son wasn’t killed in that train crash, Mr. Nunzio. He was murdered.”

  This stops Nunzio cold. His whole body seems to freeze in place.

  “The train accident was no accident.” Vaughn’s right hand is closed. He extends it over Nunzio’s desk and opens it to reveal a memory stick.

  “The fuck is that?” Nunzio demands.

  “A video of the crash, taken by the people who caused it.”

  Nunzio lets Vaughn put the memory stick into his laptop, and Vaughn plays the crash video. When it’s finished, Vaughn tells the mobster about Geoffrey Day’s drone, and about the complaints and the websites. He describes the connections between Balzac and Jack Bunting and between Bunting and Reggie Frye. He tells Nunzio that Frye gave Eddy the burner phone Bunting recently “found” on the locomotive, that Eddy remembers calling his wife from the train but has no memory of the second call, the one placed to the burner phone. Finally, he tells Nunzio what George Haley told Tommy about Jack Bunting having a copy of the locomotive-cab video.

  “That engine-cab video could be the key to how they pulled it off, to this whole thing,” Vaughn says. “It will certainly show what happened to Eddy.” Vaughn pauses here. He steels himself. He’s thought about what his next sentence will mean, for him, as a person. He’s about to cross a threshold, into the dark lands. But there’s no choice.

  “The reason I’m here is that I need your help getting that video. Bunting denies it exists, so a subpoena would be useless. I’ve searched Day’s office, and Balzac’s, but couldn’t find a copy.”

  Nunzio studies Vaughn, hits him with a hard look. “You know what you’re asking?”

  Vaughn stares back, equally firm. “There’s no other way.”

  “Fork in the road . . .”

  “No other way,” Vaughn repeats.

  As Jimmy Nutzo sits back in his chair to consider Vaughn’s request, his secretary buzzes him. He picks up the receiver, listens. His face registers surprise. He thanks the secretary, hangs up, looks to Giacobetti. “We have another guest. Bring him back.”

  Johnny G. leaves, and Jimmy Nutzo leans forward, toward Vaughn. “If a single word of what you’ve told me is bullshit, I will rip your beating heart from your chest. And, Mr. Coburn, so that there is no misunderstanding between us: I’m not speaking metaphorically.”

  Vaughn swallows. He tries to think of an answer, but before he can, the door opens again and Giacobetti walks in, with Tommy behind him.

  “Tommy?” Vaughn says. Then, with his eyes: What are you doing here?

  “I was in the neighborhood.”

  “This your muscle?” Nunzio asks. He and Johnny G. chuckle.

  Tommy stiffens. His eyes ignite with a ferocity that Vaughn has not seen before. Johnny G. squares off with him. The tension in the room increases fivefold.

  “It’s okay,” Vaughn tells Tommy. “We’re all on the same side now.”

  “We’re all on the same side for now,” says Nunzio. Then, as though he’s suddenly remembered something, he turns to Giacobetti. “You better make a call. Hurry.”

  Giacobetti pulls his cell phone from his jacket pocket, puts it up to his ear. After a moment, he says, “You do it yet? Well, don’t. Yeah. Change of plan.” Johnny G. hangs up, turns to his boss. “Nick of time.”

  Ten minutes later, Vaughn is riding in the passenger seat of Tommy’s pickup. Tommy tells Vaughn that Erin called him, told him what Vaughn was up to, said she was worried. After that, neither says anything most of the way up Broad Street.

  When they reach South Street, Tommy turns to Vaughn. “You know what they’ll do to Bunting to make him turn over that video, right?”

  Vaughn’s mind returns to the news footage of the train crash, the injured people limping away from the railcars, their faces fixed in stunned, faraway gazes. He recalls the two men kneeling over the body of the dead woman, sees the photos of the deceased in the Inquirer—young faces, and old. White, black, Latino, Asian. He remembers Susan’s description of the blind woman sitting in the overturned car, calling out for her dog. He looks at Tommy.

  “I can live with that.”

  Eddy Coburn closes his eyes and waits for the end, waits for the tall guy to splash him with gasoline and the short one to toss the lighter. Then a cell phone rings, and he opens his eyes. The tattooed inmate, holding the lit Zippo in his left hand, pulls a phone from his orange jumpsuit with his right. He lifts the phone to his ear. “No,” he says. “Okay.” He puts the cell phone away, closes the lighter. “Come on,” he says to the tall man with the plastic jug, whose disappointment shows in his eyes. “Mission canceled.”

  It’s just before four o’clock and Vaughn is sitting on a black, wire-mesh seat next to Eddy in the visitation room of the prison. The room is crowded with inmates in orange jumpsuits, their friends, wives, and girlfriends. Uniformed prison guards casually patrol the space, keeping an eye out. Eddy tells Vaughn about the two inmates who appeared outside his shower stall, about the gasoline and the Zippo, and about the phone call that stopped them from immolating him.

  Vaughn takes in what Eddy’s told him; then it’s his turn. He shares everything he’s learned about Balzac and Day, Balzac and Bunting, Bunting and Frye. The drone video, and the engine-cab video he hopes to be able to see soon. The websites. The complaints. And la
st, but most important, Jimmy Nunzio.

  Eddy sits back in his chair. His eyes have a faraway look to them, and it seems to Vaughn that his cousin isn’t getting it, that he’s hearing the words, but some part of him simply cannot accept that the crash was planned. Or that a mobster has him in his sights.

  “If I’m right,” Vaughn says, “there’s only one real mystery remaining. How they did it. How they actually set it up so you wouldn’t stop or slow the train. The engine-cab video is the key to answering that question.”

  It has to be . . . or Eddy’s a dead man.

  “I sure want to see that tape,” Eddy says. “I need to know what happened.”

  “You still can’t remember anything?”

  Eddy shakes his head. “It’s right there. The memory. I can feel it. Like it’s on the other side of a curtain that I can’t see through.”

  They sit in silence for a while. Then Eddy says, “What if that video doesn’t clear me? What if I never remember what happened, if there’s no answer for why I didn’t see that track machine, didn’t slow the train down?”

  Vaughn imagines Jimmy Nutzo and looks away.

  “You know what I thought when those two guys came for me? I thought that what I wanted more than anything in the world was just to go get Kate and the baby and take them to that little farm.” Eddy’s eyes well up. “Just a run-down little house in the middle of a field. Right now, man, that seems like heaven on earth to me.”

  Vaughn looks away. He doesn’t want his cousin seeing the tears in his own eyes. “Don’t worry,” he says. “I’ll get you there.”

  30

  TUESDAY, JULY 29

  At 10:01 a.m., Balzac sits behind his massive leather-topped desk. Shifting impatiently in his chair, he watches the second hand on his Rolex Oyster Perpetual as he waits for Geoffrey Day to pick up the phone. It’s already been a full minute, and Balzac is getting pissed. He’d have hung up by now if he weren’t looking forward to the call.

  “Hello, Ben. How can I help you?”

  Balzac snorts. The very idea that he would need help from Geoffrey Day is insulting. “You’re not running a very tight ship, are you?”

  On the other end of the line, Geoffrey Day sighs. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “You have an associate named Erin Doyle. She went to law school with the engineer’s lawyer. Coburn.”

  “What of it?”

  “What of it, Geoffrey, is that she’s been meeting with him. And they’ve been nosing around, looking for information about you and me. Along with Coburn’s investigator.” He doesn’t mention Laurie Mitzner’s role.

  “Why should Coburn be interested in us?”

  “Maybe because we crashed a trainful of people and framed his client for it.”

  Silence from the other end of the line.

  “Are you there?”

  “I don’t like the idea of some investigator trying to dig up dirt on us,” Geoffrey says, carefully avoiding any admission of guilt in case of recording devices. “Something needs to be done about that.”

  Balzac lets the words hang in the air, then says, “What type of something?”

  “Do you really want me to spell it out, Benjamin? On the phone?”

  “You want me to have them rubbed out? Including your associate?”

  “I’m hanging up now.”

  “You hang up on me and I’ll call in your loan right now.”

  “Ben—”

  “I’ll walk the damned complaint and confession of judgment to the courthouse myself and—”

  “Oh, all right. Just do it!”

  “Including your associate?”

  “Yes. Yes. Just leave me out of it.”

  The phone goes dead, and Balzac smiles. He’ll never forget the night that Philly law’s golden boy showed up at his office, hat in hand. It was pouring down rain. Day looked like he’d been wandering in the deluge for hours—his $100 haircut, $1,000 shoes, and $10,000 suit were all sopping wet.

  Balzac knew as soon as he saw Day why his nemesis was there. Day’s Relazac multidistrict litigation had collapsed in spectacular fashion, leaving the fool with tens of millions in unrecoverable legal expenses. Balzac also knew that Day had just forked over $50 million as his down payment on Penn Law and indebted himself at least as much on the balance. Day’s bank had refused to increase his firm’s line of credit, and no other bank in town would touch him. Balzac had learned all this from a source he’d cultivated inside Day’s own law firm.

  Day looked pitiful, standing in the reception area of Balzac’s building. A startling contrast to the haughty Ivy Leaguer who’d joined Arthur Hogarth’s firm the same year as Balzac and set about immediately to drive him out.

  Before Day could open his mouth to make his plea, Balzac smiled at him and said, “No.”

  “Ben, please. This could work out very well for both of us.”

  “What could work out better for me than watching you flounder and then snatching up all of your cases?”

  “Don’t be shortsighted. That would just be killing the goose that laid the golden egg.”

  Balzac smiled, took a sip of Bombay Sapphire from the glass he’d carried with him from his office to the firm lobby when he’d heard the doorbell ring. In his other hand, he held the lit Churchill. It had been close to ten o’clock when Day showed up. Nights were Balzac’s favorite time at the office.

  “Think about it, Ben. By investing in my firm, you could have a percentage of every one of my cases. You’d make back your investment in no time. But if my firm fails now, you’d get some of the cases, sure, but not all of them. Probably not even most.”

  Balzac took a deep drag off his cigar (yes, he inhaled; fuck the surgeon general) and shrugged his shoulders, unconvinced. Day seemed to be unraveling by the second.

  “You could monitor the cases,” Day continued, choking on the words. “Make tactical suggestions. I would let you look at the firm’s P-and-L once a quarter—”

  “I would have real-time access to all of your firm’s financials and bank accounts. And I don’t make ‘suggestions’ on cases. I give orders.”

  Day’s face was ashen at this point. He looked like he was about to pass out. But he closed his eyes and slowly nodded his head.

  Balzac took another drag on his Churchill, the ember at the end glowing bright red. After a moment, he exhaled, then took a healthy gulp of gin. “It does sound somewhat interesting,” he said. “Not as much fun as watching you hauled off to debtor’s prison. But more lucrative.” But it wasn’t the money he was thinking about; it was the power. If he saved Day and Lockwood, he would do something no other P.I. lawyer had ever done. He’d run the top two firms in the city.

  Balzac sighed. “I guess we could flip a coin.”

  “A coin?”

  “Heads, I go along with it. Tails, you stand on the sidewalk while the bankruptcy trustee auctions off your artwork and underwear.” With that, Balzac pulled a quarter from his pocket.

  Geoffrey Day stood numbly as Balzac flipped the coin and watched it land on the crimson oriental carpet.

  “Looks like this is your lucky day,” Balzac announced. “It’s heads.”

  Day clutched his chest and exhaled.

  “It will all have to be put down on paper, of course,” said Balzac. “And there will be a confession-of-judgment clause.”

  “Confession of judgment?”

  “Absolutely. I want to be able to race into court and destroy you on a moment’s notice if you try to welch on me.”

  “I would never—”

  Balzac raised his hand, cut Day off. “There’s no one who would never.”

  The two men stood in the center of the reception area, each waiting for the other to speak. A smile slowly spread across Balzac’s lips. “There is one other thing . . .”

  Day raised his chin, asking the question silently: What?

  “Beg.”

  Day looked stricken. Now he said it aloud: “What?”

  “Drop to
your knees, you popinjay patrician, stick-up-your-ass son of a bitch. Pull your nose from the air, and plant it on my rug.”

  Geoffrey Day stood frozen in shock and outrage for a full minute. And then he slowly lowered himself to the floor.

  Thinking back on it now, Benjamin Balzac feels warm inside. He walks to the minibar, pours himself a tumbler of Bombay Sapphire, and takes a generous sip. Then he lights up a cigar and lets his mind drift to the afternoon when Day dropped the first hints about crashing a train. It was the same week that a passenger train crashed in Germany, killing a hundred people, the accident all over the news. Day mentioned the crash and mused aloud about something similar happening here. He brought up the Metrolink accident in California and the Metro-North crash in New York.

  Balzac could see that Day thought he was being clever, that he was planting the idea into Balzac’s head in a way intended to make Balzac think it was his own idea. Day would never admit he was up for a train crash. But weeks later, when Balzac had informed Geoffrey that Amtrak Train 174 would be crashing soon, and told him how it would happen, Day leaped in with both feet, offering suggestions as to how to fine-tune the plan.

  And now, Geoffrey is perfectly willing to go along with killing the engineer’s attorney and investigator, plus his own associate. Just so long as he doesn’t have to do the dirty work himself.

  “Coward.”

  Forty floors above street level, Geoffrey Day lowers the receiver and glares at the phone. Numbskull. Talking about rubbing people out over the phone.

  It was the same with the train crash. Balzac was alert enough to take his bait and set it in motion, but Balzac’s rudimentary scheme lacked a critical element: he’d planned to have a sniper fire at the train to scare the engineer away from his controls. But that would only work if the engineer instantly grasped that he was being shot at, that his life was in immediate and deliberate peril. Otherwise it would take too long for him to figure out what was happening—if he understood at all—which meant that he’d surely see the track machine ahead and throw the train’s emergency brake. No, it was essential that the engineer realize instantaneously that someone was shooting at him so that he would duck away from the controls and stay down as the train raced toward the track machine. Any fool could see that this required someone to phone the engineer and signpost what was about to happen. Of course, the caller’s wording would have to be effective to do so, and that required that a behavioral psychologist and focus groups be brought on board—without knowing why, obviously—to help craft a short and intense word burst that would accomplish the desired effect. Balzac had foreseen none of this.