Pleading Guilty

by Scott Turow

  'Did you warn Bert?'

  'No one here has accepted my warnings. No one.' He remained momentarily forlorn, even as his agitation visibly mounted. 'Jesus, what a mess. What a mess! This one may have been the single stupidest thing -' Martin waved. 'This ludicrous, insane novelty with these basketball games -And worse, both of them, neither had given a moment's thought, not a bare instant, to the costs of this behavior -Imprisonment, bodily harm, my God, the prospects, and the two of them are surprised by this, shocked, absolutely, positively disbelieving, like tiny children, the two most immature grown men I have ever known, neither with the remotest -' Martin stopped himself; he was losing the thread.

  'You were explaining how you decided to cover for Jake.'

  'This is part of it,' he said. 'I told you. It's happenstance. Circumstances conspire. This is part. This is what led Glyndora to it.'

  'Blaming Bert? You're saying that's Glyndora's idea? For what? To get even with him?'

  He waited. He smiled.

  'What kind of mother do you imagine Glyndora is, Mack?'

  You could take your choice of adjectives. Intense. Protective. She'd have sheltered Orleans through the ravages of war, scavenged food, or sold her body. For all I knew, that's what she was doing with me that night. But I still wasn't following. Martin saved his partners, his professional life, by covering Jake. I didn't see much gain to the chief clerk in Accounting.

  'Look, Mack, Bert's decision to drop out of sight was well-intentioned as far as it went. He thought he was being heroic. But it was hardly a solution for Orleans. Not as far as Glyndora was concerned. She wasn't going to have him running for the rest of his life. She wanted him safe to stay here, and he wasn't.'

  I still didn't get it.

  'You're the one who asked the question, Mack. Last week. "Where did Bert go?" Where do we say Bert went? This is a lawyer. With sixty-seven partners. And clients. Never mind his family. There's not much. His friends, so-called, were all implicated in the same thing and surely willing to keep their peace. But what the hell do we say around here? How do we keep somebody from notifying the police who, in investigating Bert's absence, will promptly discover that whole basketball mess? The only way to insulate Orleans - to completely protect him - was if there was another credible explanation for why Bert disappeared - even if that explanation was understood only by a few people who'd make excuses to everyone else.'

  I rolled my head around, this way and that. I sort of liked it. Until I saw the next part.

  'That's why you needed some hapless stumblebum to go look for him.' Someone, I realized, who wasn't supposed to really catch Bert or even figure out what he'd actually been up to - just state convincingly that he was gone. That was what Glyndora had meant in the one sincere moment we'd had. Absorbing my observation about their estimate of me, Martin, I noted, made no effort to differ.

  'And that's why you hid the body,' I said. It came to me, just like that. 'Once I started looking for Bert.'

  'We what? Martin's entire weight was suddenly planted on one hand fiercely gripping the arm of his chair. This aspect of alarm, of incomprehension, could have been posed, I realized. But Martin didn't look like he was fooling. Instead, I recalculated: Orleans and Bert, already shamed and scolded, yelled at, told they were irresponsible fools, hadn't confessed the worst. Martin and Glyndora thought Bert was running only from threats. Archie's disappearance, when it hit the papers, must have terrified them.

  'Figure of speech,' I said. 'The memo. You hid the memo.'

  'Oh,' said Martin. He relaxed. 'Right. We hid the body.' He made a brief effort to smile. For an instant, I wondered again about who'd moved the body. The only thing certain was that Archie couldn't have walked.

  In the meantime, Martin had resumed his explanation, telling me how they had come to blame Bert for stealing the Litiplex money. The first few times Glyndora and he had discussed it, he said, the whole plan, it was in the vein of magnificent fantasy, a perfect future where all problems came to an end. He worked it out with her dozens of times, calculated how the dominoes would fall, saw at once how advantageous it would be to the firm not to have to sacrifice Jake. It was fun to discuss, lots of laughs, like a couple saying they'll rob a bank to pay the mortgage. Eventually he recognized that she was urging him to pursue what he'd regarded as jest.

  'I told her this was lunacy. Worse than that, impermissible. A fraud. But you see. Really.' He sat up. He faced me squarely. 'It's me. It's mine. It's my precious values. My law. My rules. Take that out of the equation - My right,' he said, 'my wrong. My precious abstractions.' He halted in the midst of the litany he must have heard from her for years and lingered like some bug in the breeze, manifestly pained. Watching him, my heart spurted with sudden hope that Brushy and I might resolve what divided us the same way, until I recollected, as quickly, that we were both supposed to believe in the same thing.

  'Here are these people,' he said. 'Glyndora and Orleans. My partners. Jake. Bert. Even you, Mack. Even you. This is an institution. It's the product of lives. Hundreds of lives. All right. I sound like Wash. Forgive the sanctimony. But do I lay that all on the altar? I've made worse compromises.'

  Both hands were thrown wide. He had a touch of priestly majesty. He thought he was revealed.

  I said, 'It doesn't hurt you either, Martin. We all know who gets the biggest share.' I was enjoying this - being the man of greater rectitude, even if we both knew it was situational and I knew it was an act. Fact is, I've enjoyed my acts, every one of them - copper, hard guy, smartass, lawyer. I can be a good anything, if it's only part time.

  Martin had absorbed my remark with a lingering, rueful grin.

  'Not me,' he said. He backhanded the little note card he'd had on his desk so it spiraled through space; I picked it up off the rug. Martin's handwriting is atrocious -slashes and squiggles indiscernible to me, even after all these years. But certain words were clear enough. 'Resigning.' 'Mayor.' 'Riverside Commission.' 'Long-held passion.' In tonight's speech to the partnership assembled, Martin Gold was going to quit.

  'Think the public sector can handle me?' he asked.

  'You've got to be kidding.' I couldn't believe it. The circus without Barnum.

  He muled around. Stubborn. Set. It was time, he said. The deal was done. Martin Gold, head of the Riverside Commission. Starting April I. He talked about thirty years in private practice, giving things back, but I understood the imperatives. If he took a dive for Jake, if he didn't march stalwartly to Krzysinski's office and let his law firm pass into the great beyond, then Martin would punish himself instead. His people might survive, but he wouldn't get to the promised land. It was an old idea, and its mixture of shrewd practicality and highfalutin principles was quintessentially Gold. Lawyerly, you'd say. But still nuts.

  'You should have been born a Catholic,' I told him. 'You really missed your chance. There are all these obscure fast days and penitential rites. We've been working for centuries on strategies for self-denial.' He thought I was funny of course. He always did. He laughed out loud.

  All these years I've figured that if I somehow eluded Martin's defenses and peered into his core it would be a vision of glory: I'd see a lionheart, beating at mach speed and enlarged by passion. Instead, what was within was some little gremlin that made him believe that his greatest nobility came from cutting himself off from what he liked best. Glyndora. Or the law firm. He was cheap with himself, with his own pleasure. It was crushing to recognize: he was more productive than me, but no happier. I didn't want his life either.

  He was still disagreeing.

  'As of today' - And he nodded toward me - 'I'm not giving up much. Not once the dust settles upstairs. Whether Tad instructs his new General Counsel to cut us off or just cut us back, this place won't hold together. A fellow like Carl -' Martin stopped himself; he never spoke ill of his partners. 'Not everyone will settle for less. In the end, frankly, there will be those who paint me as an opportunist. First man to the lifeboat.'

 
; There was, of course, a subtle accusatory element to these observations. Martin had removed a limb or two for the team. I'd destroyed it. The Catholic boy, ever guilty as charged, still reared up to defend himself. It was comic, of course. I'd stolen nearly six million bucks and wasn't beset by thoughts of giving it back. But in that goofy way we have of thinking we are what we're seen to be, I cared about Martin's impressions.

  'Am I supposed to apologize?' I asked. 'It's an ugly deal, Martin, the one you were trying to cut with Jake - five and a half mil of the client's money so he continues throwing slops to G&G.'

  Martin went still - just the way he had when I mentioned the body. He gave his head a distinct shake.

  'Is that what you think?' He smiled suddenly. Luminously. He used the chair arms to boost himself. What I'd said actually pleased him. I knew why too. I'd made some error that allowed him to resume his familiar supremacy.

  'Oh, I see,' he said, ‘I see. I was bartering with Jake. TN's business for the money. Is that it? That's it?' It was a contest now, a stalking. I just kept my mouth shut as he kept moving in. ‘I plead guilty, Mack. I was trying to preserve the firm. I was even trying to save Jake from himself. And God knows I was hoping to shelter Orleans. I trimmed some corners off my conscience in the process - I admit that too. Maybe more than corners. But do you honestly think the object of this was that - that crass?'

  I didn't answer.

  'I can't imagine how you viewed this. Why would I confront Jake with Wash and you last week? Why not just whisper in his ear that I knew he was a thief and demand he send all business now and hereafter?'

  He was safer, of course, not confronting Jake openly, but I knew he would ridicule that suggestion.

  'Don't you see?' he asked. 'Look at this, for God's sake, from Jake's perspective. We tell him the money's missing, we believe Bert's got it, we can't locate any records related to the disbursement to Litiplex. But we also say we're looking high and low for Bert, and when we find him, we'll beg him to give the money back and come home. We even tell Jake we want his blessing for that arrangement. You were sitting right here. You heard that. Now how does Jake know that you're not going to find Bert? How can he be sure?'

  This was like law school. The Grand Inquisitor. I swallowed and admitted he couldn't.

  'He can't,' said Martin, 'that's right. He can't. He can't be certain. And when Bert is found, when he returns from whatever exotic detour he's taken, Jake knows where Bert is going to be pointing. Straight at Jake. There's no safety for Jake in the fact we blame Bert. He knows it's a misimpression.

  'But now let's consider an alternative. You're out searching up Bert, trying to get him the message that all is well if he just gives back the money, and lo and behold, lo and behold, Jake Eiger, Glyndora, someone is able to report that mysteriously, wonderfully, a wire transfer has come in from Pico Luan. God bless Bert. God bless us. Case closed. As promised, not another word will be spoken on the subject. My God, Mack! Could you really have missed this? Don't you understand that the point was to offer Jake a discreet way, a last opportunity to give the goddamned bloody money back

  It settled in then, like the mystical presence of some nearby angel. Martin, of course, was speaking the truth. It had all the delicate signs of his typical engineering. Nothing so direct as a confrontation with Jake. That would have been shabby and extortionate - and risky as well, if Jake ever told tales. This way the world could go on, with all its false faces. Oddly, it would be exactly as the Committee had told me from the start. Except for the identity of the thief, the plan was precisely the same: Get the money back, sweep it under the rug, kiss and make up.

  'He could have run,' I said to Martin.

  'He could have. But he hasn't run yet. Jake obviously wants to hold on to this life. He just craves some security to which he's not entitled. I was letting him know it was time to make a more realistic choice.'

  'And what happens when he doesn't give the money back? You're not telling me you were actually thinking of turning him in?'

  He looked at me like I was nuts.

  'What other choice is there? That was the one limit I set with Glyndora to start.' He could see I was astonished. 'Look, Mack, if I was determined to say nothing, no matter what Jake did, I would have burned that memo, not kept it in a drawer.'

  'But you didn't say anything.'

  'Why should I? You're the one who brought us Jake's message last week: Be patient, Bert's not to blame, it's not what it appears, future accountings will show that there's been a mistake. That was clearly the prelude. Jake was planning to get the money back.'

  A strange qualm passed between us then, some recognition of the differing planes where we'd stood which was transmitted in a stark look. Martin got to his feet.

  'My God,' he said. It was just coming home to him, not the dimension of our misunderstanding - he'd seen that before - but rather, its consequences. He'd assumed I'd sent Carl to Krzysinski out of disdain for the grubby arrangement Martin was orchestrating - protecting Jake and the firm, breaching our duty to TN to fully inform them of what we knew about the General Counsel. Martin saw only now that I'd been propelled by imagining malefactions far grander. He spotted his stud on the floor and pitched it at the windows again - full force, so the jewel flew off in a kind of musical ricochet. He pointed at me. He called me names.

  'You goddamned dumb bastard! You wouldn't even talk to me on the phone.'

  He stood there huffing and puffing. And how did I feel? Pretty strange. Confused. In a peculiar way, I was actually relieved. When I recovered some sense of myself, I realized I was smiling. I'd misjudged Martin and his complexities. You wouldn't call his conduct saintly, but he'd done better than I thought - and, God knows, a hell of a lot better than me.

  There was a knock on the door. Brushy. She had put on her formal, a sleeveless black floor-length job with sequins. She wore long white gloves. A rhinestone tiara was perched in her hair like a sparkling bird. Her eyes went to the desk where the copy of the form from the International Bank still lay and she tolled that, as usual, at the speed of a Univac. I whistled at her and she diverted herself for a fraction of a second to smile.

  'Is Wash here yet?' she asked. 'He just called and asked me to come down. He sounded upset.'

  Wash arrived presently. In the condition she'd discerned.

  ‘I’m just off the phone with Krzysinski. All hell's broken loose up there.' He was in his tux, with a jazzy red bow tie, but his face was pale and he had broken a sweat. 'Tad asked for everyone TN works with - "my dependables" was how he put it.' Wash closed his eyes. 'He wants all of us upstairs. You. Me. Brushy. Mack. Bert as well. What do we say about that? About Bert?'

  Martin waved his hand to pass off the question; Wash, as usual, was missing the point. Martin asked what precisely Tad wanted and Wash at first seemed unable to bring himself to answer. The old age descending on him, where he would be bewildered and addled, seemed at hand. He stood there with his mouth vaguely moving and his eyes never quite fixed. He answered at last. 'Tad said he wants to figure out what to do about Jake.'

  XXIX. AND THIS TIME IT' S THE TRUTH

  A. Office of the Chair

  In Tad Krzysinski's huge office we found the disjointed air of a large, unhappy family. Tad's assistant, Ilene, met us and said that Pagnucci had stepped out to put on the tuxedo his secretary had brought up. Mike Mathigoris, the head of security, was also elsewhere for the moment, while Tad's four o'clock meeting was going on in his adjoining conference room. Only Tad and Jake remained here, paying no attention to each other. Krzysinski was taking a phone call and Jake was abjectly hulked on the edge of his chair, staring without much comprehension at the many portraits of Krzysinski's children that were the principal decoration on the far wall, between the three doors that led to Jake's office, the office of TN's CFO, and the conference room. You could tell from the empty way that Jake first looked at us, the wan smile, that he couldn't explain what was wrong with this picture, why Brush in her floor-length
gown and the three men in tuxes appeared out of place. Martin's bow tie was still hanging loose through his collar, and his shirt was held closed over his stomach principally by his cummerbund, since he'd never managed to insert the last stud.

  'I wanted you to hear this.' Krzysinski had gotten up to shake each of our hands, the usual crushing grip. In college, I'd heard, Tad's nickname had been 'Atom' and that about said it all - size, structure, the barely contained power. Tad, of course, had a vast corner office. The parquet was covered by an enormous Oriental rug - fifty grand at least - and his view ran all the way to the airport on a clear day. When the weather was good, Tad liked to stand at the long windows and watch TN's planes rise, giving you the flight numbers and the names of the pilots.

  Now, once he'd greeted us, he jiggled a commanding finger at Jake, instructing him to proceed. Jake recounted the story somewhat methodically, drained of emotion. You could tell that he'd repeated it about six times already and it was beginning to get routine. He was, as usual, perfectly groomed, hair stiffly parted, his gray herringbone suit buttoned at the waist to add to the impression of his ordered form. But his face was out of focus. Jake, for once in his life, was under the crush of sensible pain and it threatened his sanity. I felt only a twinge of regret. Asked to speak, I might well have said, 'Goody.'

  In November, Jake said, as we were thinking about making the final disbursements on 397, Peter Neucriss and Jake had a talk. Actually, Peter took Jake out for the evening, a characteristic manipulation, wooing the enemy. Royal treatment. Dinner at Batik. Many drinks. Hockey game. Afterwards, as Jake and Peter were having a nightcap down at Sergio's, Peter got to what he had been leading up to all night. He had a business proposition for Jake. For TN, really. Neucriss had three different settlements on 397. Huge cases, naturally. A mother and child one of them. The total was nearly thirty million. Peter was working on the usual third. He had almost ten million in fees coming.