Alibi

by Sydney Bauer

  “Yes,” said Tony. “But there were other prototypes, initial testing models, which were left on the plant floor. You have to understand, Peter, that the Chinese are masters at reverse engineering. They do not need plans. All they need is access to the finished product, or close enough to it, and they work backward part by part. And then they start from scratch, building an identical copy, socket for socket, plug for plug.”

  “Are you saying one of our workers is responsible for sharing our knowledge?” Peter’s fist hit the table, causing the ice in their crystal tumblers to chink in a musical scream of protest. “Because I can assure you our employees are loyal, dedicated . . .”

  “Happy? Yes, so I hear.” Tony could not help himself. Peter Nagoshi was an arrogant son of a bitch and Tony was sick of his egotistical demands and holier-than-thou attitude, especially considering he may well be responsible for the most unspeakable of crimes.

  “Look,” said Coolidge at last, perhaps feeling the need to throw a little water on what was becoming a very heated discussion. “I know this is hard to hear but if you recall, Peter, I did warn you of these potential problems when you decided to base the plant in China.”

  Tony noted a slight twitch in John Nagoshi’s left eye. Perhaps Coolidge’s warnings were not passed on from son to father—from subordinate to chief.

  “You saved costs, sure,” Coolidge continued. “But the reality is, there is no way to protect your technology on the great Asian continent. Honda, General Motors, Volkswagen, Toyota, Nissan and many others have been bitten by piracy of their logos, parts, trademarks, technologies—and, like Nagoshi Inc.—even entire cars.”

  “What is our legal recourse?” asked John Nagoshi, his voice low and tempered.

  “The Chinese are setting up tribunals to hear the foreign manufacturers’ disputes,” responded Coolidge. “But in all honesty, a true judicial system monitoring technology theft is years, maybe decades away.” Coolidge looked to Bishop.

  “They are making too much money, Mr. Nagoshi,” said Tony, taking his superior’s lead. “Billions of dollars to be exact. The problem isn’t going to go away. Rip-offs like Tsohuang’s ‘Apple’ will be overproduced in a country where the people are keen to buy but the streets are narrow and already congested with vehicles. We hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but our job is to tell you everything we know and give you the best advice we can.”

  “Which is?” Peter countered. “Tell me, Mr. Coolidge, Mr. Bishop, what do you advise?”

  Tony looked at his boss and nodded, letting him know that he was willing to be the one to see this thing through. He had been the one to stumble across the technology theft in the first place, after all—when he was doing some private investigations of his own.

  “You have a few options,” Tony began. “You can tweak the ‘Dream’ and class it more upmarket, or you can leave it as it is and reduce the price.”

  Peter shook his head, incredulous.

  “But in all honesty, our advice would be to move your automobile manufacturing operations onto Japanese soil. That way, at least you will own the plant one hundred percent and the risk of another copycat usurper would be reduced to a minimum. Costs would be higher, granted, but once you reestablish yourself, six to twelve months down the track you . . .”

  “Father, this is outrageous,” yelled Peter. “We do not need to listen to the false words of . . .”

  But John Nagoshi raised his hand, calling for his son’s silence in no uncertain terms.

  “You think we should cut our losses?” John Nagoshi asked Tony at last.

  “Yes, sir,” Tony replied, looking the older Nagoshi directly in the eye. “Our advice is—my advice is—you have to get out, and you have to get out now.”

  52

  “Call home,” she said, moving the salt and pepper shakers aside so that she might push her cell phone across the surface of the lime green tabletop toward him.

  Sara had texted him just as he was leaving the Mathesons’, the tiny cassette tape Jed had given him now packed safely in a side pocket of his brown leather briefcase. She asked him to meet her at Myrtle’s for a late lunch so that she might fill him in on the goings-on at this morning’s hearing and he might do the same in regards to his news of the search.

  “Sara,” he began. “I am just getting over the news that our innocent client is headed for trial and you are asking me to call our apartment when the only two people who live there are . . . well . . . sitting right here?”

  “I know the indictment is bad news, but in all honestly it is no surprise,” she said. “There was no way Katz wasn’t going to convince at least twelve of them that he had evidence enough to warrant the criminal charges. It was just a formality.”

  She was right. It was a blow but it wasn’t unexpected. What was, however, was Sara’s strange insistence that he call home. But given he was feeling like crap, the cold and drizzle just visible beyond Mick McGee’s now steamy glass windows only adding to his somewhat depressed demeanor, he figured he had nothing to lose. So he dialed the number.

  He heard the ring and then the click of their answering machine as it kicked into gear. Then he heard Sara’s voice asking him to leave a message, as the real Sara took his hand and squeezed it. “Retrieve our messages,” she said.

  He pressed the three-digit code to bring up their voicemail and was told there were two new messages—the first from his mom in Jersey asking if he and Sara could make it home for Thanksgiving, and the second a message of sorts from the most unlikely of callers—Suffolk County Assistant District Attorney Roger Katz.

  “Listen to me,” said Katz, his voice direct and low. “We don’t have much time so you have to focus and take this in as quickly as possible.”

  “All right,” said a second voice, younger, but just as confident.

  “You have done this state a fine service, H. Edgar. The new information is just what the Commonwealth needs but—and please do not take this the wrong way—I do not want you to talk of it this morning, in front of the grand jury.”

  “What new information?” asked a confused second voice, another young man David guessed could only be Heath Westinghouse.

  “It’s something I remembered this morning, Westinghouse,” said Simpson, a sliver of impatience in his voice. “I haven’t had a chance to tell you about it.

  “I don’t understand,” Simpson went on, obviously turning his attention back to Katz. “I thought that was why we were here—to provide as much information as possible.”

  “Yes,” interrupted Katz. “But I am sure a savvy young legal mind such as yours knows that occasionally a prosecutor sees the benefits of, shall we say, rationing the goods. I have the indictment in the bag, gentlemen, and I intend to save this lovely little bombshell for trial.”

  There was a pause then, a static hum as, David gathered, the two boys were taking this in.

  “I’m not sure about this, Katz,” said a new voice, an older man with a tone of authority.

  “This is all aboveboard, Gordon. At the very least it gives us time to verify H. Edgar’s information.”

  The man, who David guessed to be Westinghouse’s father, failed to reply.

  “All right,” said Katz after a beat. “You’re up first, Heath, and I’ll close with H. Edgar. And don’t worry, everything will be fine. There will be no surprises, just straight as we rehearsed.”

  There was another pause then and David sensed that perhaps Katz was not getting the positive affirmation he desired from his prized witness number one.

  “You are doing the right thing, Heath. You are a fine student and will make an even finer attorney. I know Matheson was your friend but believe me when I tell you he was a wolf in sheep’s clothing. This may be difficult, but it is also your duty as a potential officer of the court. One thing is for sure, you and Mr. Simpson have made lifelong friends in the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office, for you are young men of honor and the people of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts shall be et
ernally in your debt.”

  “Jesus, Sara,” David began, lowering his voice, the two of them now leaning into each other, feeling somehow “safe” in this huddle of unknown conspiracies. “How did you . . . ?”

  “Sawyer recorded it,” Sara began. “He was brilliant, David, he just waltzed out of that grand jury hearing room and stood a foot to Katz’s right. He was smart enough to think of calling my number and, well, needless to say Katz had no idea he was sharing his very private conversation with the lead defense counsel and his co-chair.

  “The good news is we know he is up to something,” Sara went on. “But the bad news is . . .”

  “We have no idea what it is,” finished David.

  “Exactly,” she said, picking up her spoon to stir the soup Mick had delivered moments ago.

  “So we have to assume Simpson and Westinghouse’s testimonies were basically a relay of what they told Joe,” added David. “But that Simpson has something else, some bombshell that, judging by Katz’s excitement, could be devastating to our client.”

  “I’m afraid so,” said Sara. “We have to fight this, David. The ADA has a legal obligation to provide us with all evidence discovered in the course of his investigations, and if he is guilty of a failure to disclose, then we can demand the evidence be precluded from trial.”

  “But we don’t even know what it is, Sara. And worse still, we found out about it via means of an illegal recording of a private conversation.”

  “This is no time to have a go at Sawyer, David,” she said, pulling back a little.

  “I wasn’t,” he said, taking her hand and pulling her close again. “I’m grateful, believe me. The kid is kinda freaky but he’s damn smart. It’s just that now we are between a rock and a hard place—we can’t go to Stein with it, and we can’t stroll on up and ask the Kat what the hell he has in his illegal bag of tricks.”

  “Then we have to go to . . .”

  “One of the boys,” finished David.

  “Westinghouse,” she countered.

  “No. He may not be the ringleader, Sara. By the sound of things,” he said, gesturing at her cell, “Simpson is still pulling his strings.”

  “Who then?” she asked, their soup still ignored.

  “The only other person who can help us,” he said before bending down to retrieve the small cassette from his briefcase. He took the tiny plastic tape from a side pocket and placed it in front of her.

  “What’s that?” she asked at last.

  “I’m guessing it’s a tape from James’ home answering machine.”

  “What is it with today and secret recordings?” she said, looking up at him again. “David, tell me you didn’t lift that from the search.” said Sara, pointing at the cassette, the uneasiness in her expression obvious.

  “Not me, his father. He retrieved it before the cops had a chance to . . .”

  “What’s on it?” she interrupted.

  “I don’t know. I haven’t had a chance to find out. But I was going to suggest we head back to the office and use Nora’s dictaphone. Then . . .” He looked at his watch, it was almost four. “First thing tomorrow we take it to the one person who will hopefully be able to shed some light on both of our recorded mysteries.”

  “James,” she said at last. “He was the third musketeer, he knows how Simpson thinks.”

  “And he has nothing to lose,” finished David. “Grab your coat, Sara. Something tells me that whatever it is, we have to get on top of this thing before it blows up in our faces.”

  Two hours later Roger Katz did something he had not done in his entire career—he left the office early. Well, six o’clock may not seem early to some, but it was to him. Hell, he was rarely out of his workplace by nine—a fact his incompetent assistant Shelley could attest to, given she was forbidden to leave until he had officially called it a night.

  But the past two days had been so glorious, so fucking triumphant that he needed some way to release the incredible rush of adrenalin that surged through him like a drug. He pictured porky Shelley doing her own little dance of freedom as she replaced her scuffed heels with her dirty sneakers and headed out the door early with a rare smile on her fat freckled face, which, come to think of it, was not a vision he needed in his blissfully ecstatic mind on this fine November evening, and so he banished it before it had a chance to take form and spoil . . . there, it was gone!

  Was the fulfillment of ambition better than sex? Definitely! Many men, he knew, might find this admission emasculating, many more would consider it an indication of his assumed “poor performance” in bed, but Katz had every faith in his “performance” and knew men who made such postulations were insecure beings who saw a few seconds of Neanderthal pleasure as the ultimate in human highs. Those men were not capable of realizing the true ecstasy of the ultimate career accomplishment, and never would be.

  He was headed for the gym, his red Corvette now weaving down Beacon, the roof down despite the cold, the body shining from its weekly wax and Beyoncé singing “Survivor” on the radio. How appropriate! Come to think of it, that Sara Davis looked a little like the Beyoncé chick, which made for a much more pleasant vision than Shelley, and so he settled on that for a while.

  The past forty-eight hours had started well and gone from good, to better, to fan-fucking-tastic! First, there was his brilliant craftwork in persuading Judge Stein to introduce not one but two charges of murder, then there was the mastery of his work in convincing the grand jury to issue the indictment, and then that wonderful “Ace in the Hole” delivered by young H. Edgar Simpson. The kid was an arrogant son of a bitch, but he liked the way his mind worked, probably because it operated in a fashion not unlike his own.

  Simpson had the reward, but some time in the past two days he had realized that his career prospects, his social standing, were much more important than the money which, to a trust fund baby like him, would be nothing more than spare change in any case.

  Simpson had realized (a realization carefully reinforced by Katz), that James Matheson, his beloved college comrade, had to be found guilty if Simpson were to survive. For if found innocent, both H. Edgar and his puppet Westinghouse would be branded as personal and professional lepers—the Judases who got it wrong! And so in order to assure a conviction, Simpson had been doing some detective work of his own, work that resulted in him coming up with a little gem that would shock that holier-than-thou Cavanaugh to his Irish-American roots and secure his client the ultimate of sentences.

  No doubt about it, this day was a winner! A triumph made all the sweeter a mere hour ago when AG Sweeney called to offer his own personal congrats.

  “Well done, Roger,” he had said. “The feticide charge, the indictment—you are a credit to your office, Mr. Assistant District Attorney, and to the legal fraternity of Massachusetts as a whole. Men like you are a walking, talking argument against those who claim that justice can be bought. In fact, I just got off the phone to some friends at the AG’s office in DC—they are tired of the criticism that money can buy an acquittal and you, my friend, are now their poster boy for egalitarian justice. They are watching this case carefully, Roger, as am I, and so far you have been nothing short of impressive.”

  It was true, the Attorney General had copped some flack in recent years over a string of high-profile criminal cases where rich and powerful defendants with fat wallets and expensive attorneys had walked. Which was another reason why this case was so important to him—it gave him a chance to launch his “justice for one, justice for all” policy, a slogan he planned to use in next year’s election for Suffolk County DA. Regardless of whether he believed it or not, it was a damned fine catch-phrase and one he could well ride all the way to DC.

  And so, he would hit his exclusive Copley Square Health Club, pump some iron and just as his toned arms were reaching that edge between push and pain, he would position himself on the treadmill directly behind the front row of ever-present white “Beyoncé-esque” bootie that gyrated in tiny Lycra
shorts for the appreciative audience of lawyers, bankers and other corporate types in the rows behind. Like everything else in this fine democracy, this was commercialism at its best. The girls displayed their merchandise, the boys decided to buy, and before you knew it those tight little butts were seated in luxury European convertibles with Tiffany diamonds on their fingers and Amex Blacks in their purses.

  Yes, life was good, and while Katz did not need the added satisfaction of scoring some flawless ass this evening, he was more than happy to window-shop with the best of them, knowing that today was a day of victory, and the best was yet to come.

  53

  Beep. Click. Shuffle. Pause.

  “James,” the recording began. “It’s me, Heath. It’s Saturday. About, um . . . four,” the voice went on in a half whisper. “I am just about to put on my penguin suit for this Halloween thing and . . .

  “Are you there? Pick up if you are, man. I know we are not supposed to talk, but . . . I didn’t see you yesterday and I was hoping you got home okay after Thursday night because you were pretty wasted and . . .

  “You are probably out—turning yourself in. God! How crazy does that sound? H. Edgar would kill me if he knew I was calling.

  “Look, I know you got this covered, James. And I am probably worrying for nothing. The money is in the bank and H. Edgar says he has everything under control.”

  A pause. A breath.

  “Anyway, I guess after today it will all be over and we can celebrate. And then you have to tell me how you found out about the shoes, man. That sure as hell clinched the deal for H. Edgar . . . I mean for us.

  “Anyway, I’ll be seeing you.”