PLUMMET: A Novel

by MICHAEL ZAROCOSTAS

  When he woke up, the parking garage was dark, and the Taurus was one of only three cars left on the level. He was disoriented at first, checking every instrument on the dash. The air conditioning was still tunneling out of the vents, the car still running. He looked at the temperature gauge. Sixty-six. Not enough to keep the body from spoiling, but he didn't notice the rancid stench. Maybe he was getting used to it. Or maybe the smell was all over him. He swallowed hard at the idea. He rolled down his window, wafted air inside the car. The breeze was moist and heavy. Like rain was coming. He nodded his head. I can't keep the thing in the trunk forever, he thought. He had to do it tonight or never. But he wanted to see the video first.

  $ $ $

  A tired security guard sat at his station in the lobby as Gabe approached with his ID card, trying to hide the half-empty bottle of scotch.

  "Hey there, Mr. Weiss. Yes sir. How are ya? Working late, eh?"

  Gabe nodded at him. The security guard caught a glimpse of the bottle and winked a sleepy eye as Gabe passed through the turnstile.

  "I didn't think that the Firm's big anniversary party was until tomorrow night."

  "Call someone from Office Services for me," Gabe said. "I need a hand truck."

  "Yes sir, Mr. Weiss. You got it, boss. I'll send 'em right up. How's the wife and daughter by the way?"

  He ignored the guard and entered an elevator.

  A Jamaican woman from Office Services rolled a hand truck into Gabe's office. It was big enough to wheel around a small desk. Or a body. The Office Services woman disappeared without a word, and he wondered if he should do it now. The red letters and numbers on his desk clock showed, Thurs 11:03 p.m. Almost everyone was gone. Thursday night was a time of carousing in Manhattan. The young Sullivan & Adler lawyers were probably deep into their fourth or fifth martinis by now. The older ones the same, or, maybe, at home, in bed in Westchester or Connecticut or Jersey. He checked the other offices on the floor, and, finding them empty, decided to do it.

  He pushed the hand cart toward Sarah's car. He had taken a service elevator connecting the Firm and the parking garage to avoid the nosy security guard, who was probably reading The Post and ignoring the dozens of security camera screens at his station. One of those screens would have shown Gabe pushing the hand truck, making it to the garage without seeing a soul. The sixth level of the garage was completely empty now, and no one would see him moving it from the trunk. The security guard was probably too bored or tired to even see what had transpired on the tiny black and white screen. The body was wrapped up in a tarp and towels, and it looked like a roll of carpet to Gabe. At least that's what he kept telling himself.

  After he moved it, he washed his hands and face in his office's private bathroom, where a dry-cleaned tuxedo hung from his door. Cherise had left a Post-It note on the tux. In case you want to wear this instead of a t-shirt and jeans for the Firm's anniversary party. He smiled at the note. Only a secretary with her tenure and balls could get away with needling him.

  He locked his office door. He felt thirsty and mixed the Dewars with a tall glass of water and ice from the mini-fridge in his wall cabinet. He took a long sip while he decided whether he should go through his desk to find the thumb drive. The one he should have looked at a long time ago, but was too busy trying to bring in the biggest client and class action defense in Firm history.

  "Hooking the white whale," he joked with himself.

  The lights were out, except for the computer screen's silvery glow. He knew exactly which drawer the thumb drive was in. He had made a mental note of it before, thinking it would probably come back to haunt him. He sipped his watery scotch, nibbled at a two-day old everything bagel. The computer screen was blank for a long time while he questioned whether he actually wanted to find the thumb drive and watch the video.

  23 (2 months ago)

  * * *

  He was feeling the urge after six pieces of raw fatty tuna and three California rolls he ordered from Dojo Sushi for dinner. The extra wasabe and half-liter of Pellegrino didn't help either. Add to the nausea, the anxiety from a new securities fraud class action that was keeping him at the Firm a hundred hours a week, at the beck and call of Gabe Weiss and Max Goldberg and some Delaware partner he had to impress to make partner himself. Raphael leaned back in his office chair, held his bubbling and kicking stomach like a pregnant mother. He needed privacy in moments like this, and so he got up and walked to the elevator. The top floor was where he could use a bathroom that was off limits to almost everyone at the Firm.

  The elevator bell pinged, the doors opening on the top floor of Sullivan & Adler. It was almost ten o'clock, which meant few of the partners would be around. He used his electronic I.D. card to unlock the hall door, started walking to the northwest corner of the building, farthest from Gabe Weiss's southeast corner office. As he walked the long corridor, he could see light through Stu Greenbaum's half-open office door. Celine Dion's recorded voice wafted out the open door, and Raphael cringed from the diva's riffs. He tiptoed by the office, glancing through the doorway. Hannah Smythe was sitting on the desk, dangling her stilettos, facing Stu who was in his chair with a stupid grin on his face, his one good eye twitching or winking.

  It made him wonder if the rumors from his network of paralegal spies were true. Is that why Stu had dinged him in his review? Could Stu be sleeping with her? He couldn't believe it.

  Then it suddenly hit Raphael. The stilettos. He'd seen Hannah's shoes before, and they looked just as out of place now as they did the first time he'd seen them six years ago. Raphael was a Second Year back then, and he and Hannah had been dating for a year. They had made plans to go out to their favorite Irish dive bar, The Old Stand, on a Thursday night, but Raphael got stuck at work, drafting an appellate brief for a psychotic senior associate who called him "Ralph." Raphael remembered complaining to Hannah over the phone, canceling their date. And later that night at about 11:00 p.m., he'd been sitting at his desk when Hannah walked in, grinning. She was wearing pigtails rolled up over her ears like Princess Leia and a puffy winter parka, and he noticed her unusual shoes. Black stiletto daggers with serpentine straps that did figure 8s around her freckled ankles. She tried to strut in them, stumbling while she set a six-pack of Amstel in front of him and said, "Fuck this place. It's your birthday, big boy." He asked her, "What's with those shoes?" She called them her "hump-me pumps" and said she wore them only when she was feeling horny. She snapped open the parka to reveal a tight Princeton tank top and a tartan Catholic school mini-skirt. It was a quirky assortment of his fantasies, and he loved her for it. She'd been so sincere and sweet then.

  And now she was wearing those same "hump-me pumps" with a navy business skirt and starched blouse, modeling them in Stu's office about as naturally as a Stepford mannequin.

  Raphael hustled past the awkward scene, wanting to kick Stu in his marble-sized balls, thinking maybe he should tell Vader the other rumor about Stu and Vader's wife. He walked to the end of the hall, up to the locked door to the formal conference room where the litigation partners had their weekly meeting. The meeting room where they hawked over associates' hours and bitched about forcing associates to do more work because they never said no to a new case. He had heard Stu, drunk at the Christmas party, calling it the Counting Room because that's where they counted all the billables.

  He mumbled, "Fucking Stu Greenbaum. Smarmy one-eyed jackoff." He took a jumbo paper clip from his pocket, bent it into shape, and looked up and down the hall. It was deserted. After more than seven years of practice, he knew how to jiggle the old-school lock to the off-limits Counting Room. No one else dared to enter, and the cleaning ladies only touched the room after the Thursday meetings. That was two days away.

  The door lock tumbled open. He quickly darted inside, shut the door quietly behind him, and re-locked the handle. He left the light off, walked around the long granite conference table in the dark, knowing the steps by muscle memory. He loosened his belt, headed for the back co
rner of the conference room, the narrow wood-panel door with the brass handle. Above him to the right on the wall was an emergency exit light glowing on the framed document posted on the bathroom door: The Statement of Client's Rights. He opened the door, flicked on the bathroom light, and there was the silent-flush porcelain Rolls Royce in all its white sanitary glory. Above it were glass shelves of toiletries, razors, towels, Q-tips, a box of lemon deodorizers and scented sprays, and a stack of Sports Illustrateds and Golf Digests.

  "Nirvana," he said, preparing himself, squatting like a yokozuna sumo performing the sacred ritual.

  Halfway through, there was a noise in the conference room. He turned off the bathroom light, sat in frustrated silence. Was that fucker, Stu, unlocking the conference room? No. He heard the intercom operator through the bathroom door, faintly coming from a speaker in the ceiling hallway. He cracked open the bathroom door, listened intently. The operator was saying, ". . . Bianco, 1-4-2-3. Raphael Bianco, 1-4-2-3."

  "Damn it, why's Mikey paging me?"

  He turned the bathroom light and fan back on. There was an office phone mounted on the wall just above the toilet paper holder. He reached for the receiver, dialed Grayson's extension.

  The kid answered in his professional voice, "Micah Grayson."

  "Dude, what're you paging me for? I'm in a meeting. This better be good."

  $ $ $

  Raphael was waiting inside Elliott's office when Micah came in. They'd been talking about the fourteen name plates that Elliott had saved. Each one was on the door of a former associate who'd quit S & A and moved on to a new firm or company. Elliott talked about them all the time like he was still on Death Row and they were pardoned by the governor. It always annoyed Raphael when Needleman talked about how a few of them were supposedly better off. So-and-so had stock options at this internet company, that guy works for the Governor, what's-her-name was general counsel in house at a Wall Street bank. Yadda, yadda, yadda.

  Raphael was glad when the kid came in and Elliott's nostalgia and boring stories ended.

  "Hey, guys." Micah plopped down in a chair.

  Raphael noticed the kid held a thumb drive in his hand.

  "What's the story, Mikey?" Raphael took a mangled cigarette from his suit pants pocket, sucked on it. "What'd you page me for?"

  "Don't smoke in my office," Elliott said. "You know the Firm's policy. Not to mention I don't like-"

  "Stifle yourself, Edith." Raphael turned to Micah, eyed the thumb drive. "What's that, a little collection of videos of you and your girl?"

  "No, jackass. I found it in the boxes for the Mavros case. There's some PDF files I already printed out, but then I saw a video file and thought you'd wanna watch it. I didn't want you to get all upset if I didn't tell you about it, boss man."

  "'Boss man.' Cute." Raphael turned to Elliott to explain. "Mikey's a little pissy because I told him to review some docs in front of Gabe. I had to do it, Mikey, had to show him I'm partner material. We didn't get anywhere in mediation, and now they're threatening to move to compel. So Vader wants the document review finished."

  "Yeah, Raph," Micah said, "but you didn't have to act like I didn't know what the hell was going on. I know I'm supposed to review the documents."

  Raphael pulled out a lighter, lit his cigarette. "Why'd he send us that? You think it's relevant?"

  "Hell if I know, I haven't watched it," Micah said. "His secretary sent over the boxes a long damn time ago. This thing was underneath a bunch of files in the last box with some bills from an imaging company."

  Raphael snatched the thumb drive, examined it. "If we're lucky, it's gonzo porn."

  He connected it to Elliott's computer, and they sprawled out in the office, feet propped up on various books and chairs and Elliott's file boxes. Raphael craved popcorn, but he settled for some stale butterscotch candy from Elliott's desk.

  The file took a long time to open, and the video was hardly professional. They could tell from the start, when it began with a time code and snow, and then random scenes from a dimly lit church and shelter. Shaky handheld camera work of a ground-breaking ceremony and homeless people in a kitchen line and then weddings of random couples. There was even a same-sex ceremony for two men. Raphael made jokes about one of the grooms looking like ex-Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey. He said, "I am a Gay American," and Elliott laughed.

  In another ceremony, there was a voluptuous bride, and Raphael said, "Look at those flotation devices. I bet she got it good that night on her honeymoon."

  But it was a highlight video with no highlights. Somewhere near what they hoped was the end was a cut to Carlos Mavros in his office with his brother, Nick. They were talking about the One Love For All foundation and the shelter, and plans for expansion.

  "This is about as fun as document review," Micah said. "I take it back. I'd rather review docs about now."

  "Better than cow-tipping though, huh, Mikey?"

  "Shut the hell up, Raph."

  The video turned to snow again, and they all sighed.

  "Well that sucked ass," Raphael said.

  "Just a minute," Elliott said, pointing. "There's something else."

  The snow on the screen became dark and grainy. It looked like the video had been damaged, burned over or corrupted, but there was something left to the older footage. It was a mix of snow and unfocused blurs until it became a pixellated mosaic of squares in shades of gray. A figure or something was moving in the video. The background looked like a dim room, not the office in the shelter they'd seen before. Raphael could make out the familiar shape of a ruffled bed. A large mattress with folds of covers. Then the something moved again, slightly. He squinted at the video and saw what he thought was a person with long hair. A woman. She could have been naked on the bed. The covers were in the way. She moaned softly.

  "No way, turn that shit up!" Raphael edged closer to the screen. "Now we're talking."

  "Hush, Raph!" Micah hissed.

  Elliott raised the volume on his computer.

  In the video, a hand appeared in front of the camera's lens, adjusting its angle maybe. Who's hand was that? Raphael wondered. The video zoomed closer on the woman. She looked unconscious. A man passed in front of the video camera, naked torso flashing across the filmy video image.

  "No fucking way," Raphael mumbled. "Is that-"

  "Shut up!" Micah said.

  The man in the video leaned over the bed, slapped the woman's face. She didn't move.

  "She's out of it," the man muttered.

  They watched the next twenty minutes of video in silence. Raphael felt like getting sick, the diarrhea pains unbearable. He wished he'd never left the bathroom in the first place.

  $ $ $

  After they watched it a second time, freeze-framing the images to be sure, Raphael and Micah stood toe-to-toe next to the thumb drive on the desk. Elliott sat behind his desk and watched them argue. They went back and forth for what seemed like hours to Raphael. He was getting tired of repeating himself, but he wasn't going to let the kid get his way.

  "I think it's a big fucking mistake, Mikey. You have this moral crusader mentality, and that's not how the real world works."

  "That video was in the files. Somebody, maybe the secretary, sent it for a reason." The kid leaned against the desk, touched the thumb drive. "I don't know if I can work on this case anymore. I just don't feel right about it."

  "Dude, you're so friggin' naive. I say we just act like we never saw the fucking thing. Trust me, it's like Pandora's Box."

  "But we did see it!" Micah picked up the drive, pointed it at Raphael. "You saw it, I saw it, Elliott saw it."

  "All right, fine." Raphael tried reverse psychology. "Then I don't want any part of it. If you want to give this thing to Gabe, that's your business. Just don't mention my name. I'm up for partner in a couple months and I'm not rocking the fucking love boat."

  "How can you say that? You saw it. Why are you burying your head in the sand?"

  "I didn't see sh
it. And if you mention my name to Gabe, I'll be like, 'I don't know what the fuck Grayson's talking about.' I have enough problems as it is without this fucking video, dude. You understand me? I'm serious."

  The kid's face transformed into an angry smirk.

  "Micah," Raphael said, "if you respect me as a friend, you'll keep me out of it."

  That line seemed to work. The kid looked at Elliott like he was expecting some support, a voice of reason. But Elliott shrugged, silently siding with Raphael.

  "Besides, Mikey, it's a client confidence. We can't disclose it under the attorney-client privilege anyway."

  "I don't know if that's right."

  "Dude, it's fucking privileged. It's a client secret, and we're not disclosing it. That's that. Period, end of story. This is my call. Don't make me pull rank."

  The kid still held the thumb drive, glanced at Raphael, then the door. Raphael wondered if he were stupid enough to actually blow the whistle and show the video to Gabe Weiss. He didn't understand why anyone would even think twice about it. Grayson had to know better.

  "What are you thinking?" Raphael asked. "You better not be thinking what I think you're thinking. Just get it out of your head."

  "I'm thinking I'm gonna put it back where I found it and keep my goddamn mouth shut. How 'bout that? Does that make you feel better?"

  "Yeah, it does, and don't be pissed off, dude. You'll thank me later." He patted Micah's shoulder. "Trust me, it's the best thing to do. If you learn nothing else here, you gotta keep your head down and your mouth shut." He imitated Gabe Weiss's voice, "Capisce?"

  "This is so wrong," Micah said, slipping the thumb drive into his pants pocket.

  24 (2 months ago)