Degree of Guilt

by Unknown

  Forget it for a moment, she told herself. Learn something. Watch him do this.

  Her metaphor, she decided, was better than she had thought. Paget had a cat’s patience, a cat’s still blue eyes. And there was a look of fineness to him, the result of great self-discipline and much exercise. The copper hair, ridged nose, and clean angles of his face seemed little different from the classic photograph, taken fifteen years before.

  Christopher Paget had been famous so young, she knew, that some saw his career since then as an afterthought; the picture had been on the cover of Time, when he was twenty-nine.

  She had found it in the library, as she was about to interview for a job as his associate. It was a well-known cover: a young lawyer testifying before Congress, the portrait of idealism and risk. Curiosity had led her from one article to another, relearning things she had heard about but had been too young to remember clearly.

  The case had involved William Lasko, a close friend and financial supporter of the President. Paget was an investigator for the Economic Crimes Commission, assigned to check out Lasko’s stock transactions. A key witness – one of Lasko’s employees – had died in a hit-and-run ‘accident,’ leaving behind one ambiguous memo and the suspicion in Paget that someone within the ECC was betraying his inquiry.

  Slowly, Paget had begun to uncover corruption within the ECC, which, he came to suspect, reached all the way to the White House. Then a second witness was kidnapped. When Paget persisted, someone had tried to kill him, just before he pieced together the meaning of Lasko’s transactions.

  The transactions, it turned out, were meant to funnel one and one-half million dollars to the President’s campaign. And the man who had been leaking information about the investigation to Lasko was the chairman of Paget’s agency. A man named Jack Woods.

  It was never clear, Terri had found, whether Paget had entirely uncovered the corruption within the ECC itself. But he had taken the story to the Washington Post and then to Congress. A second witness had come forward – a young woman lawyer who was Woods’s chief assistant. The results were prison sentences for Woods and Lasko, and political ruin for the President.

  Christopher Paget was the first twenty-nine-year-old, a columnist wrote sourly, to bring down a President without using sex. The columnist seemed slightly nettled; Paget refused all requests for interviews.

  As far as Terri could tell, he had never spoken of the Lasko case again.

  The strain must have been enormous; everyone wanted a piece of him. The young woman witness, Terri knew, had become a television journalist. But Paget seemed to want no part of it. And, much more than the woman, he had earned the undying enmity of partisans of the President, who felt that he had tampered with the scales of history. He had left Washington and returned to California for good.

  He had started his own firm, turned down requests to enter politics, made a specialty of white-collar crime. Within the office, Paget’s time in Washington was treated like some private trauma, which people were too tactful to mention. In six months, she learned almost nothing about him except that he was very good at his job.

  ‘Mr Gepfer?’ he asked politely.

  Across the table, the witness was staring at several pages of handwritten figures, seemingly unable to move or speak. He looked like a mouse, Terri decided: thin, sharp face, sandy hair combed to cover a bald spot, small eyes that shifted between avarice and fear. Had he not been so dishonest, and the moment so sublime, she would have felt sorry for him.

  ‘I don’t recall this document,’ opposing counsel broke in. ‘I’d like to know what this is and where you got it.’

  It was with Starr that Terri’s conceit of cats and mice broke down. He had a basilisk face, slicked-back gray hair, and an air of deliberate shrewdness; it had not surprised her to learn from the skinny associate who sat next to Starr that he treated his staff like serfs.

  Ignoring him, Paget turned to the court reporter, a young woman who sat watching from the end of the table, fingers poised over her machine. ‘In Mr Starr’s excitement,’ he said, ‘the witness may have forgotten the question. Perhaps you should read it back.’

  Starr leaned across the table. Terri scrutinized him, trying to figure out how much he understood. Not quite enough, she concluded; he looked like a man who was prepared for a setback but not for a disaster.

  ‘Oh, go ahead.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Paget’s tone held the barest trace of irony. He nodded to the reporter.

  ‘Can you identify Defendant’s Exhibit 13?’ the reporter read out.

  Almost inaudibly, Gepfer answered, ‘Yes.’

  Paget took up the questioning. ‘And is that document in your handwriting?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Could you read the heading at the top center, please.’

  Gepfer’s eyes shut. ‘Liberal Accounting Adjustments,’ he said in a monotone.

  ‘How did you come to call it that?’

  ‘David Frank suggested it.’

  ‘When he was still chairman of Lyon Industries?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you also get the figures under that heading from Mr Frank?’

  Starr watched the questioning without changing expression. What Terri noticed was how intent he was.

  ‘He set the direction,’ Gepfer answered miserably. ‘I came up with the numbers for him.’

  ‘And what do these numbers represent?’

  ‘The amount of additional income Lyon needed to show a profit in fiscal 1991.’

  ‘Additional, or imaginary?’

  Gepfer frowned, as if pondering a complex thought. ‘We didn’t make the money,’ he finally answered, ‘if that’s what you meant.’

  ‘But the figures on the document,’ Paget said, ‘became the figures on Lyon’s financial statements, correct?’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘And were used to raise $53 million in the public offering?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Mr Frank sold stock in that offering, correct?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And made several million dollars.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you also sold stock in the offering?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And made roughly $670,000.’

  ‘Yes,’ Gepfer said again.

  Paget had him in a rhythm now. ‘Whose idea was it to change the books?’

  Gepfer’s voice turned accusatory. ‘Mr Frank’s.’

  ‘And you just went along.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did my client, Steve Rudin, know about this?’

  ‘Objection,’ Starr cut in. ‘Calls for speculation.’

  Paget’s eyes widened. ‘Really, Mr Starr, I’m proving your entire case. I’d think you’d be more grateful. . . .’

  ‘Come off it. Frank killed himself. How can this man know who Frank talked to?’

  Paget looked at him a moment. Not for the first time, Terri had the sense that nothing surprised him; that something had taught him not to show what he felt; that he expected very little from anyone. ‘You mean you haven’t asked him?’ he asked Starr softly. ‘You’re prosecuting this case against my client, this man’s cooperating with you, and you haven’t asked him yet?’

  Starr leaned back. ‘I’m not the witness here,’ he retorted. ‘I’m not telling you what I’ve asked or haven’t asked. That’s work product.’

  ‘I’ll try another question,’ Paget said agreeably, turning to the witness. ‘Before today, when was the last time you saw this document?’

  Starr’s face said everything; too late, he saw where this was about to go. Could hear the next five questions before they were ever asked.

  ‘July,’ the witness said. For Gepfer, Terri knew, the worst had already happened; the questions were now worse for someone else.

  Paget sat back, looking at both Starr and the witness. ‘At that time, did you give this document to anyone?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Paget had stopped looking at Ge
pfer now. When he asked the next question, his gaze was fixed on Starr.

  ‘And who was that?’

  ‘Objection!’ Starr stood up. ‘That’s work product.’

  The court reporter’s head had begun moving back and forth, following the voices.

  Paget turned to Gepfer. ‘You may answer.’

  ‘Press on,’ Starr snapped, ‘or we’re walking out.’

  ‘That hardly seems reasonable.’ Paget had yet to raise his voice. ‘Let me suggest this, Mr Starr. Why don’t we call a magistrate and get a ruling by telephone.’

  ‘Fine.’ Starr spoke with more assurance. ‘But the courts close at five – there’s no one there to give us a ruling. I’m busy the next few weeks. Maybe sometime in February.’

  Terri suppressed a smile.

  ‘Curiously,’ Paget said to Starr, ‘I anticipated this problem and called Magistrate Riordan’s office this morning. He’ll be available until six.’

  Starr stared at him. Paget pointed toward a telephone table. ‘The telephone is over there,’ he said. ‘Just dial nine for an outside line. I believe Ms Peralta’s written the number down for you, if you haven’t yet committed it to memory. . . .’

  ‘This is an abuse. You’re trying to invade the tactical decisions of opposing counsel. That’s the classic definition of work product.’

  ‘Hardly. In fact, I’m fascinated to know how the identity of the nameless person with whom Mr Gepfer shared this document could be anyone’s work product. Really, Mr Starr, it seems you have but two choices. The first is to call Magistrate Riordan and present an argument that, quite likely, is without precedent in the annals of Western jurisprudence. That’s the option I favor, if only for the sheer interest of listening to it.

  ‘The second and more mundane choice is to take a ten-minute break and see if we can resolve this matter without compelling Mr Gepfer to answer any more questions.’

  Starr was impassive. Finally, he waved Gepfer and the court reporter from the room.

  ‘If you have something to say to me,’ Starr said at length, ‘I’ll give you ten minutes.’

  Terri could not help but admire the gall that made a trip to the abattoir sound like a concession to good manners.

  ‘Ten minutes,’ Paget responded, ‘is all I’m giving you to drop this lawsuit.’

  ‘What kind of crap –’

  Paget reached beneath the table, pulling a typed agreement from his briefcase. ‘This is a stipulation of settlement. It recites that you have become aware that your charges against Steve Rudin are mistaken; that Mr Gepfer has confirmed the error; that you are dismissing this lawsuit; and that your firm is paying Mr Rudin $250,000 to compensate him for his time and expenses.’

  ‘I won’t sign that.’

  ‘For at least six months,’ Paget went on, ‘you’ve had this document. Which means that you’ve known for at least six months that my client was innocent of fraud.’

  ‘You can’t hold me responsible for what Gepfer says now.’

  Paget looked at his watch. ‘Why don’t we save eight minutes and ask Gepfer what you knew?’

  ‘The man’s admitted falsifying documents. Now you want him to give false testimony. Whatever he says, no one will believe it.’

  ‘Won’t they? Frank was bankrupt when he killed himself. That leaves only two defendants with money. Gepfer has less than a million; but my client is very wealthy and covered by insurance. So you make a deal with Gepfer: if he doesn’t give anyone else the document and doesn’t tell anyone what really happened, you let him keep the money he stole and try to extract a settlement from my client by tying him up in an endless lawsuit you know to be a fraud.’

  Starr folded his arms. ‘You can never prove that.’

  ‘Care to find out? Because if the case against Steve Rudin goes one question longer, you’ll find out more than that. Whether we can prove it. Whether we can win a suit for malicious prosecution. Whether the legal press will enjoy watching us try. Whether the Bar Association will let you keep your license. Whether every judge in this district will start looking at you like some evolutionary cul-de-sac. And the only person who will enjoy that more than I is Steve Rudin – the man you charged with fraud.’ Standing, Paget looked at his watch again. ‘You have five minutes, it seems.’

  Terri followed him to his office.

  It was sparsely furnished: bright modern prints; two plants; a glass table; a single picture of a dark-haired boy. Paget collected art, she knew; one of the prints was a Miró. She had no idea who the boy was.

  Paget stood staring out the window.

  ‘Will they go for it?’ Terri asked.

  ‘Yes.’ He answered without turning. ‘Starr is driven by sheer self-interest.’

  ‘I can hardly believe he knew.’

  ‘Oh, he knew. Always expect people to be what they’ve been in the past. That way, they don’t surprise or disappoint you.’ Paget shoved his hands in his pockets, sounding suddenly weary. ‘Being surprised is a sin, professionally. But it’s the disappointment that can be so soul-wearing.’

  The remark was uncharacteristic; it was almost, Terri thought, as if he were talking to himself.

  ‘How did you get the document?’ she asked.

  ‘I promised not to say.’ He turned, smiling faintly. ‘But Starr really should treat his employees better.’

  There was a knock on the door. Starr’s associate came in, holding the settlement papers. He paused, glancing at Terri. She wondered if the associate, who seemed a little too interested in her, realized that she was married. It wasn’t as though he knew her at all, and lately it was harder to believe that men could find her attractive. What could you say about a nose that she thought was a little too sharp, crescent eyes a little too small for her liking, straight brown hair that she shared with fifty million other Hispanic women in the Western Hemisphere alone? You could say what Richie said in that ambiguous tone of voice – that she looked smart.

  ‘He signed them,’ Starr’s associate said, and handed the papers to Terri.

  ‘Thank you,’ Paget answered civilly. The associate looked at him, then at Terri, and left.

  Terri felt a rush of triumph, although the triumph was not hers. Without really thinking, she said, ‘I thought maybe the watch trick was overdoing it a bit. At least on top of handing him the agreement.’

  He shrugged. ‘Apparently not.’

  ‘Did you ever do that before?’

  He regarded her a moment. ‘Once. Years ago.’

  ‘Did it work?’

  ‘After a fashion.’

  There was distance in his tone, perhaps preoccupation. Feeling awkward, she looked at her watch.

  ‘I have to run. A kid emergency.’

  ‘I have somewhere to go too. We’ll call Steve Rudin in the morning.’

  The telephone rang. Distractedly, Paget answered it. Terri paused in the doorway, thinking it might be something about the case. But what kept her there, forgetful of herself and time, was the stillness that came over him.

  ‘Where are you?’ Paget finally asked.

  He listened for another moment.

  ‘Don’t talk to anyone,’ he said. ‘I’ll be right down.’

  Paget sounded quite calm. Only when he put the telephone down, with almost exaggerated care, did she notice he was pale.

  She looked at him quizzically.

  Paget seemed surprised to see her. Then he said simply, ‘Mark Ransom’s been killed.’

  It startled her. She did not know why someone would be calling him or how he was connected to the famous writer. Finally, she asked, ‘Who was that?’

  He paused a moment. ‘Mary Carelli.’

  ‘The TV interviewer?’

  The description seemed to surprise him. Suddenly it came to her: the woman in Washington, the second witness against Lasko. Then, as if correcting her Christopher Paget replied, ‘My son Carlo’s mother.’

  Chapter 2

  Christopher Paget had not imagined that the mother of hi
s only son, a woman for whom he had felt much more passion than trust, would be accused of murder within twenty-four hours of appearing in their lives for the first time in eight years.

  They had been in the kitchen of their house in Pacific Heights. It was four o’clock: through the floor-to-ceiling window, the failing sunlight lent the trim Victorians and stucco mansions a pale Florentine pink and white; the bay a slate blue; the Marin headlands beyond a tawny brown. Paget was slicing lemons for chicken piccata. Carlo was sitting on a barstool, slender frame leaning against the counter, complaining about his girlfriend’s parents.

  ‘She’s fifteen,’ Carlo was saying, ‘and they’re absolutely paranoid. They’ve done everything but have her tubes tied.’

  Paget smiled at the hyperbole; he was fairly confident that Carlo did not yet warrant such drastic measures.

  ‘Like what, exactly?’ he asked.

  ‘Like they won’t even let her out on weekends.’

  ‘At all?’

  ‘At all.’

  Paget began chopping scallions. ‘That’s a bit medieval. Are you sure there isn’t some history there?’

  ‘She has no history, Dad. They’ve never let her out of the house at night. They’re afraid her morals are going to get corrupted or something, and all I want to do is introduce her to my friends and do stuff with everybody.’

  For the moment, Paget guessed, that was pretty much true; Carlo and his friends hung out in groups, and the easy interchange of boys and girls as friends struck Paget as infinitely saner than the rituals of his own teenage years, when girls were a mystery and dates took place in cars.

  ‘They’re afraid of something,’ Paget finally said. ‘Perhaps from their own lives.’

  Carlo pondered that a moment. Not for the first time, Paget examined his son with a kind of wonder. To be so uncertain still, he thought, yet so suddenly close to manhood. Paget could recall like yesterday carrying Carlo on his shoulders. Now Carlo was taller then he, a handsome blackhaired boy with a crooked grin and startling blue eyes. The eyes were regarding him with that opaque look which, Paget knew, often concealed thoughts too close to home. ‘They’re pretty young,’ Carlo ventured, ‘to be parents of a fifteen-year-old.’