White Collar Blackmail

by Peter Ralph

  “Don’t think I haven’t thought about it. It sounds like you’re telling me not to tank. You know what that will mean.”

  “I do. I think we’re both just delaying the inevitable.”

  “I’m sorry. I still don’t understand. It’s going to be far worse for you. Your kids are going to go through hell. Why did you feel the need to tell me that you’re leaving Tom?”

  “Oh, Devlin, you’re so young,” Karen said, putting her hand on his forearm. “You said so long as you did what they told you to, they’d honor their word. They won’t! That’s what I needed to tell you. Think about it. It might be better if you tell them to go to hell now, rather than ruining the rest of your life.”

  “You’re leaving Tom to give me that option.”

  “That sounds very noble, but I’m not just doing it for you. It’s better for everyone. I’m going now. I don’t think we should meet again.”

  After Karen had gone, Devlin pushed his empty cup from hand to hand. His mind was made up. He couldn’t stand the thought of seeing his family dishonored.

  Chapter 30

  After four nights in Richter’s, Vanessa Hodge was freed on Tuesday morning when the ADA dropped all charges against her. She looked tired and drawn as her jubilant family hugged and kissed her. She saw Doug Lechte standing on the outskirts and pushed her way toward him.

  “Thank you,” she said, fighting back tears. “Thank you for believing in me. How-how did you get me out?”

  “It’s a long story,” he said. “I’ll tell you when we have more time. Right now, you should be with your family. Like you, they’ve been through hell.”

  “Yes, yes,” she said, disentangling her arms from around Lechte’s waist. “Will I come in tomorrow?”

  “Next Monday will be okay. You have to put your apartment back together, and I know your family wants to spoil you. It’d be nice if you let them.”

  “You seem to be always convening emergency partners’ meetings, Doug,” Cromwell said. “Out of the fat and into the frying pan I’d say.”

  “My fellow partners,” Lechte said, ignoring Cromwell’s comments. “Most of you will know about Vanessa Hodge’s release from Richter’s this morning. All charges against her were dropped.”

  “Yes,” Cromwell said, “and another member of Doug’s team, Todd Hansen, has been charged with multiple insider trading offenses. They were working together on some assignments, and it wouldn’t surprise me if they colluded.”

  Lechte sighed in exasperation. “The SEC and FBI have exonerated Vanessa and acknowledged that they should have believed her. She is innocent and what Phillip just said is errant rubbish.”

  “Hasn’t Hansen been charged?” Cromwell asked.

  “Yes, but I caution partners from making any judgment while this matter is before the courts. Many of you were prepared to convict Vanessa without any foundation. Let’s not make the same mistake with Todd. I’ve told Vanessa to take the rest of the week off.”

  “Take the rest of the week off?” Cromwell said. “I’m not sure we should be re-employing her. After all, she was suspected by the SEC and FBI, and she now has a reputation that precedes her. Not a flattering one, I might add.”

  “You’re a slimy piece of shit, Phillip,” Lechte said, joining his hands together and flexing his forearms. “We’re not re-employing her; she never left. More to the point, I’ll be nominating Vanessa for admission to the partnership. Many of you still don’t realize it, but she’s smarter than anyone sitting around this table.”

  “Don’t you talk to me that way!” Cromwell said. “And how dare you talk about nominating partners. After our meeting at the end of the month, you won’t be a partner, so you’ll hardly be in a position to nominate others.”

  “Drop it, Phillip,” Sandra Bishop said, “you don’t have the numbers. If we’d removed Doug because of the purported misdemeanors of Vanessa, where would we be now? Staring at a legal suit and the unwanted publicity that goes with it.”

  “Hear, hear,” chorused several other partners.

  “You get to remain a partner for a little longer,” Cromwell said. “When Hansen’s convicted I’ll be seeking your resignation.”

  Lechte grinned. “I’ve told Todd we’ll pick up his legal fees.”

  “No, no,” Cromwell shouted. “It’s not our problem. If a manager or, dare I say, even a partner makes a major mistake or is guilty of an offense, then it’s that person’s problem. It’s not up to the firm to pay their legal expenses or bail them out. The only legal costs that we should bear are those relating to protecting the firm. Let’s have a show of hands. All those opposed to paying the legal expenses of Todd Hansen.”

  More than twenty hands went up.

  Cromwell smiled smugly. “Let Mr. Hansen know he’ll be paying his own legal expenses.”

  “And you call yourself a Christian.” Lechte sneered.

  At the instruction of the SEC and FBI, the assistant district attorney did no more than make a show of opposing bail for Todd Hansen, which was set at a generous five hundred thousand. Doug Lechte had no problem arranging bail through a bondsman.

  It had taken all of Aaron Lord’s persuasive powers to convince the FBI and Chas Grinich that there was merit to Doug Lechte’s plan. Grinich studied Todd closely as the young accountant recounted everything that had occurred from his gambling until Jack Elliot had bought his debt from the betting parlor. Grinich didn’t like handling crooks with kid gloves but found himself feeling sorry for Todd. “Tell me again how they killed Giovani?”

  “They executed him. Ferguson made him kneel down in front of the car and put two bullets into his head.”

  “Did you see any blood?”

  “No, no. I was in the car and then I vomited, but I know what I saw. They even had a truck equipped with a water pump to wash away the blood. Why do you keep asking the same questions?”

  “We’ve identified Ferguson and Fraser from the identikits that you helped us put together. They’re con men. They’re not heavies, thugs or killers. They’d run from anything involving violence.”

  “What? What are you saying?”

  “We think they conned you.” Grinich grinned. “We’re still looking for Giovani, but his family isn’t being very helpful. You know they never even reported that he was missing. Don’t you think that’s strange?”

  “I know what I saw,” Todd said defiantly.

  “No, you saw what they wanted you to see. I don’t think Giovani was in that coffee shop by accident. I think it was a setup.”

  “But why? Why would they do that?”

  “Why? Why are you frightened about what might happen to your family? They wanted to scare you from doing anything. They did a good job.”

  “What did Elliot’s identikit reveal?” Todd asked.

  “Nothing. He appears to be clean,” Grinich said. “We’ve got you on CCTV going to the coffee shop in downtown Manhattan, but we’ve got nothing on him. Likewise, the room at the Hyatt was booked by Ferguson and in the footage we have of Elliot, he’s wearing a cap that covers his upper face and a scarf that covers his lower. Mr. Elliot is a very careful man.”

  “You’ve got nothing,” Todd said.

  “We’ve got a start,” Grinich said. “You’re a betting man, Todd. I’ll bet you by the time we’ve finished checking Giovani’s parents’ and siblings’ phone records, we’ll find him alive and well.”

  “I was tricked.” Todd grimaced. “They weren’t dangerous.”

  “Yeah, you were tricked all right, and Ferguson and Fraser aren’t dangerous but that’s not to say Elliot’s not,” Grinich said. “Don’t beat yourself up. It’s too late now. We’ll know a lot more by the time you get out of jail.”

  Dirk Vaughan had taken a severe tongue lashing from Borchard, and when he called Cooper, he repeated what his boss had said. “Don’t bullshit, Cooper! You can fake it without getting badly hurt. Release the ball as soon as you get hit.”

  “You still don’t understand. If
I do, my offensive line won’t protect me. They’ll feed me to the opposition. I’ll get killed, and when they replace me with Sweeny, you’re gonna lose your money. Do you want to take that risk?”

  “Crap! You can disguise it, so no one knows. If you don’t, we might just have to release the CD. Do you want take that risk?”

  “No, no,” Cooper muttered.

  “Good, I’m glad we have an understanding,” Vaughan said, ending the call.

  It was midnight when Devlin Cooper reversed the canary yellow Lamborghini out onto the street. It was only a leisurely half hour drive to I-290, and he drove slowly. The last thing he wanted was to be caught speeding before he reached his destination. He felt sick. He hadn’t had a drink all day and prayed for courage. He took a ramp off I-290 and drove along the secluded, heavily treed Dalton Road. The pot–holed road was in a state of disrepair, and its shoulders were crumbling. As a boy, he had camped in the area with his family and knew it well. He unclipped his seatbelt, and the Lamborghini’s electronics screamed at him to put it back on.

  The engine roared as Devlin pressed the accelerator to the floor, and he moved the paddle shift out of neutral. He said a silent prayer and begged for forgiveness. In less than seven seconds, the Lamborghini was traveling at more than hundred miles per hour. At fifteen seconds, the speedometer went through one hundred and fifty. At twenty seconds, Devlin closed his eyes and took his hands off the wheel. The car flew off the road at nearly two hundred miles per hour plunging ten feet before cutting a swathe through the trees. Airbags deployed when the Lamborghini struck its first small tree, and it plowed on another eighty yards before disintegrating into the trunk of a massive old oak tree.

  It was late afternoon the following day when a group of trekkers stumbled on the mangled wreck of the Lamborghini. There was no sign of the driver. The trekkers didn’t need CSI to know that no one could’ve survived and immediately called Chicago PD. Even in Chicago, Lamborghinis weren’t written off every day, and after the police had run its license plates, the matter took on a sense of urgency. Three blue and whites and ten officers converged on the scene of the accident.

  The wreckage was just visible from the road, and one of the policemen said, “You can see where it veered off the road, but it’s strange.”

  “How so?” His offsider asked.

  “There are no skid marks. Whoever was driving didn’t brake. I don’t get it.”

  One of the airbags was still behind the steering wheel, but the others had exploded, ripped apart. The trekkers and police formed a line about forty yards long and methodically moved forward from the wreck. The area was dense with foliage and progress was slow. Dusk was falling, and the police shone their flashlights on the ground as they slowly advanced. More than an hour had elapsed, and the searchers pushed aside waist-high foliage as the retraced their steps. They were about fifty yards from the wreck when one of the trekkers screamed, “I’ve found something.”

  The jeans and black sweater were barely visible under the dense brush. Two of the policemen pulled back the shrubbery while another crawled under in on his hands and knees. A few minutes later he shouted, “It’s him. It’s Devlin Cooper.”

  His face had a few small cuts, but he was virtually unmarked. He was, however, dead, very dead.

  That night, news of the tragedy was carried by all of Chicago’s television and radio stations. The police had determined that the accident had taken place between 12:30 A.M. and 1 A.M. and Cooper’s Rolex had stopped at exactly 12:46 A.M. While Chicago and the nation mourned, hard-nosed reporters were already asking what was Cooper doing out on the secluded Dalton Road at that hour? Why was he driving at more than one and hundred and fifty miles an hour on an unsafe road? And most intriguingly why didn’t he brake?

  Borchard was furious and ranted at Vaughan. “I told you not to push him to suicide. You put too much pressure on him. You’ve cost me two hundred million.”

  “It was your idea to force him into tanking in the playoffs. I told you he was stressed, and you said I was weak,” Vaughan retorted.

  “Don’t tell me it was my fault,” Borchard shouted. “You mishandled him. I should’ve done it myself. Next time I will.”

  Vaughan didn’t respond. His face disclosed nothing, but he was seething. He wasn’t scared of Borchard and never had been. If Borchard didn’t watch out, he’d find himself in the same condition as Cooper.

  Karen Deacon cried and cried as grief completely enveloped her. Then she cried again in anger. She knew what had happened and why Devlin had taken his life. She regained some control and thought about when he had called her noble. Noble? I seduced a boy fourteen years my junior. Real noble! She wept again and wished that their affair had never occurred.

  She also knew that the blackmailers would know what had happened and that with Devlin gone, they would be coming for her.

  Chapter 31

  As soon as news of Devlin Cooper’s death broke, Dermott Becker hastily convened a meeting of the board of Vulture Inc. The tension and anger in the room were palpable and directed at one man, Brock Borchard, who was on time for once.

  “What happened to Cooper, Brock?” Becker asked.

  “It looks like suicide.”

  “Tell us something we don’t know,” Arthur Ridgeway said. “What did you do that drove him over the edge? You couldn’t have been stupid enough to tell him to tank in the playoffs. Tell me you didn’t.”

  Borchard glowered. No one spoke to him like that, least wise not some shit kicking, crooked accountant. He was about to respond when Lydia Coe said, “We told you at the last meeting, one game per season, and we’d pull in nearly two hundred million. What did you do?”

  Borchard crossed his arms over his chest. “Do ya want your ten cent’s worth, Harry?” he asked. “Or I can answer without one of youse buttin’ in?”

  “Go for it, Brock. I’ve got no hassles with you,” O’Brien replied.

  “I’ve got no idea why he killed himself. I didn’t apply any pressure to get him to throw another game and had I, it wouldn’t have been the playoffs,” Borchard said.

  “Is that right?” Ridgeway smirked. “I wish I could believe you.”

  “Are you calling me a liar?” Borchard asked, his eyes narrowed.

  “No, he’s not,” Becker said. “We’re all just annoyed that we only got one game out of him. One payoff. You must feel the same, Brock.”

  “One payoff? You seem to have forgotten there are two people on that CD and one of them, Karen Deacon, is still alive. We called and let her know the facts of life. We told her she could have the CD and all the copies for five million. After she pays, I’ve got a buyer for the CD. He’s offered five mil but I think I can double that.”

  “You’re blackmailing her,” Lydia Coe gasped.

  “I don’t like it,” Becker said. “Releasing that CD while he was alive is one thing. Cooper’s near a saint now, and if it gets released, there’ll be those who’ll move heaven and earth looking for loose ends to find out where it came from. What did the woman say?”

  “She was nervous but feisty. She said she’d go to the police and told my man he could go to hell, but it was an opportune call. She said that she knew it was that sleazy little bastard at the Astor who’d videoed them. He was the only link to us.”

  “Was?” Lydia asked.

  “Yes,” Borchard said, “he got killed in a nasty hit and run. Police located the car, but it was stolen. They’re at a dead end with their investigation.”

  “You had him hit,” Ridgeway said.

  “I didn’t have anything to do with it,” Borchard replied. “It was an accident.”

  “There’ll be plenty of time to see what you can get out of the woman after the frenzy about Cooper has blown over. She’ll be distraught and emotional, so don’t push her into doing anything stupid like going to the police. Ease up for now,” Becker said. “And, Brock, under no circumstances are you to sell that CD. We threaten, we blackmail, and we intimidate, but
we never draw unnecessary attention to ourselves. You don’t know who the clerk at the Astor spoke to. You have no idea how many loose ends there are. You release that CD and someone will talk; it will lead to you, and then to us.”

  “What happened to the financial controller?” Lydia asked.

  “Jeez. You’re not blaming me for that too,” Borchard said. “He got drunk and fell under a train. End of story.”

  “The killing has to stop. We can’t condone it,” Arthur Ridgeway said.

  “So what happened to Giovani? Euthanasia?” Borchard sneered. “Talking about pay-offs, what happened with the auditor and your insider trading scam, Dermott?”

  “I don’t know. Somehow the SEC found out. Maybe the CFD positions we took were too large, and the providers laid them off on the NYSE. What’s important is that we proved the model worked, and we can do it again. Next time we’ll aim at one of the big four.”

  “What are ya gonna do about the auditor?” Borchard asked.

  “Nothing! Why should we? I hear that he’s going to get at least five years. He’s terrified that his parents will be killed if he says anything. He won’t breathe a word to the SEC or FBI. See, Brock, you don’t need to follow through if the intimidation is potent. Jack Elliot’s very convincing,” Becker replied.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Borchard said, loudly cracking his knuckles. “But the risk will always be there. Once he’s in prison, we’ll be able to fix that.”

  “What’s that mean?” Ridgeway asked.

  “Accidents have a way of happening in prisons.” Borchard grimaced.

  “He’s no threat to us,” Becker said. “I don’t want him harmed.”

  “Yes,” Lydia Coe agreed, “let’s not have another Devlin Cooper, Brock.”

  “We’ve had a few setbacks,” Becker said, “so let’s lie low for a while. Before I close, the meeting does anyone have anything else they’d like to raise?”