* * *
Micah took the thumb drive home and tried to sleep. At dawn, he was still staring at the clock when he decided to go in early. He was on a nearly empty train and arrived at the S & A office tower before most of the crotchety senior partners who couldn't sleep past 5:00 a.m. even if they wanted to. He took the elevator ride up, staring at the flat panel TV above the elevator buttons. The familiar MSNBC ticker scrolled across the bottom of the screen, announcing breaking news, financial data, currency rates, and white collar crimes du jour.
He had made up his mind and wanted to avoid Raphael at all costs. The luxury of arriving just after dawn was that no one was on the forty-second floor, especially Bianco whose normal work routine was to get in at 11:00 a.m. Unless he had a deposition or a court date, Raphael would never be in this early.
Micah wanted to be left alone all morning while he thought about his decision. If he were going to go through with it, he wanted to see Max Goldberg before 11:00 a.m. He left a note on his secretary's desk, I'm not here. He locked himself in his office and stared at his open briefcase on the desk. The thumb drive had a tiny label from "G.T. Imaging Services." Micah didn't dare connect the thumb drive to his computer and watch the video again. He didn't have to, because the graphic scenes had been playing in his mind all morning.
At 10:45 a.m., he walked around the south side of the floor to the elevators. Raphael's office was on the north side. He didn't look up when he slipped past Elliott's open door. There were secretaries and paralegals in the halls and the hum of telephone conversations, the shuffle of paper and the pushing of keyboard buttons. When he got to Max Goldberg's office on the top floor, Max's secretary must have sensed that something was wrong. She said, "Are you okay? You look sick." He said that he was fine, holding the thumb drive inside his suit jacket. She sent him in to see Max without the usual intercom phone call. The last time he'd been in Max's office was for a research assignment months ago.
When Micah entered, Max seemed surprised to see him now, no assignment pending.
Micah sat across from the round man, took out the thumb drive, and thought about what he should say.
"What's wrong?" Max asked. "You unhappy about something? Don't tell me you're leaving the Firm."
"No, sir. Why would I leave?"
"Junior associates are funny that way." Max broke off a piece of rice cake from a plate on his desk. He chewed it, saying, "They work here a little while then they want to be CEO of an Internet company. You just had that look on your face like you had something on your chest."
"I like it here fine." He thought about what he'd just said, wondered if it rang true. "I just had a question about a case. It was an ethics question, and somebody said you're on the Ethics Committee. So you're the person to ask."
"Yeah, I am, but," Max paused, spreading some grape jam on his rice cake with a plastic knife, "you want one of these things?"
Micah shook his head. "No thank you."
"They're terrible, but my wife says they're good for losing weight. I need to drop about another forty. Stu Greenbaum's the Ethics Chair at the Firm, but I usually handle any problems with associates. So go ahead, shoot."
Micah's fingers fidgeted with the thumb drive. "I just want to make sure I'm not going to get into any trouble, that I'm doing the right thing. I don't know what the policy is, what the rules are-"
"Strictly confidential. That's the Firm's policy on associate issues. No repercussions." Max took the last bite of his rice cake, made a dissatisfied face, and wiped crumbs from his loose tie. "They should shoot whoever invented those puff cakes. Now what's up?"
"Well, I was reviewing a client's documents, and I found a negative file. Sort of puts our client in a compromising position, you know what I mean, Max?"
"Yeah." Max squinted at the thumb drive in Micah's hand. "You mean incriminating evidence. A Smoking Gun? Or a Hot Doc as we say at S & A?"
"Yes, but it's not a document. And honestly I don't know what I'm supposed to do. Do I let the client know or do I tell someone here or what? I don't feel comfortable with it. I want to get rid of it. I mean, not destroy it. You know what I mean."
"Sure." Max chuckled, the jelly folds in his chins quivered. "Reminds me of when I was an associate. You're not prepared for the skeletons in your own client's closet. When you're young, you think your client's the good guy. Not always like that though, is it?"
"But this is really bad." Micah shifted in his chair, looked back at the closed door.
"It's not uncommon, Micah." Max looked directly at him, twisted the wedding band around his bloated finger. He had a gold bracelet with charms on the same hand and a pinkie ring on the other like a mobster. "I'll give you an example. We've had a certain tobacco company as a client for decades. These days you wouldn't know who the hell they are because they're a conglomerate, swallowing up all kinds of other companies, food products, toys, detergents, changing their name, diversifying. Back when this company was only about cigarettes, a young associate like you reviewed some client files and found a report." Max stopped twisted his wedding band. "You know what that report disclosed?"
"I can guess." He began to wonder if the young associate was Max himself. Whenever anyone told stories at S & A, they were always shrouded in third person anonymity, but seemed personal. "That the company knew cigarettes were poisonous?"
Max nodded, looked down at his fat hands. "Yeah, something like that. And the associate followed the proper procedures. He turned the document over to the partner on the case, and the partner took the responsibility of handling the issue with the client and complying with the discovery and disciplinary rules."
"What happened to the associate? Or to the document?"
"At the end of the day, everything was dealt with. The associate came out fine." Max raised his eyebrows, winked at him. "And nobody went to the hoosegow."
"So I should let the partner I'm working with know about this?"
"That's our parliamentary procedure here. It's his call." Max reached into a desk drawer, pulled out a bag of rice cakes. "I have to eat five of these hockey pucks to feel full."
Micah nodded, slightly relieved with the answer.
Max crunched into a rice cake, mumbled, "Anything else you want to talk about?"
Micah glanced at a Star of David charm on Max's bracelet. "Actually, yes."
Max swallowed hard, tried to speak. "Shoot."
"Do you ever work on Saturdays, Max?"
"Do I work on Saturday?" Max cocked his head, as if he'd never heard that one. "I got sick a few years ago, so I may not be the right guy to ask. As far as I'm concerned I got my health, my family, my God, and a few other things to worry about. The Firm will always be here. We won't, right? So I do what I gotta do."
"Yeah." Micah nodded. Raphael had told him some story about Max having a heart attack at one of the Firm's summer associate retreats. Max turned purple and fell right through a lunch buffet table with a swan ice sculpture. Everyone at the country club had thought it was a joke, calling it "Max's Swan Dive" and laughing until the EMTs came and defibrillated his chest and wheeled him straight to emergency triple bypass surgery.
"Thanks, Max."
"Glad to help." Max's telephone rang, and he shifted on his haunches. "Conference call with the client." He waved, lifted the receiver.
$ $ $
Micah wasn't too anxious to face Gabe Weiss. There was the visit to Gabe's house the night before New Year's Eve, months before, and the things that had happened that night, things Micah would take to his grave. They were terrifying enough. But now this video file was something that affected a case, and Micah strangely felt that this was more dangerous. He expected Gabe's reaction to be apoplectic. He'd seen his tirades before, but they were usually directed at another associate, sometimes even Raphael. A mistake would be made, someone would forget to citecheck a case, and Gabe would later find out that it was bad law, overruled by a higher court. He would drop his chin, shake his head back and forth, and just
stare. It was a scary look, cold eyes, as if he really wanted to kill you.
Micah walked down the plush hall of the top floor, thumb drive sliding between his sweaty fingers. He looked down at his feet, counting the steps to Gabe's corner office, wondering if he should drop the drive in a mail chute along the way, measuring in his mind the distance from the fiftieth floor to Broadway. Twelve feet per floor times fifty would be six hundred feet. He'd need a parachute. He exhaled, stopped at Gabe's door. Cherise wasn't at her cubicle, but he could hear Gabe's voice. He was actually laughing, and this gave Micah hope that he was in a good mood. Maybe he'd just won a case.
Micah glanced up and down the hallway, leaned closer to the door.
Gabe's voice said, "My plate's full today. Why don't you and Stu go have a good time?"
"Let's celebrate, Gabriel," a woman said through the speaker phone. "It's not everyday I get a show at a real gallery. We can go to Scalinatella on the Upper East Side and split the-"
"I wish I could, but this isn't school. I can't get a sick note and just play hooky."
Micah decided that this was as good a time as any. He knocked.
"Come in," Gabe said.
Micah sucked in as much air as he could, as if he were about to swim the length of a pool, and pushed open the door. He expected to see Gabe in his swivel behind the desk. But Stu Greenbaum was there, too. They sat across from each other, leaning against opposite sides of the desk. Gabe waved Micah to sit down. Micah started to say "hello" to Stu, but Stu didn't acknowledge his presence. The two partners turned back to the speakerphone.
"My star associate just walked in," Gabe said to the speakerphone. "Sit."
Micah sat next to Stu.
The women's voice asked, "Who's that, your superstar associate?" And that's when Micah realized it was Gabe's wife, Rachel. He could hear his own heart beating frenetically.
Gabe said, "The one you tried to match-make with our daughter a few months ago."
"Oh, Micah Grayson. Of course, I remember." A pause on the speakerphone. "How are you, Micah? What are you doing for lunch today?"
"Hi, Mrs. Weiss." Micah looked at Gabe's poker face, wondered if he knew. Micah hadn't been near the Weiss home in Jersey since that night. "I'm extremely busy-"
"All right, Rachel," Gabe said, his finger hovering over the phone. "I have to go. I'll see you tonight. I'll bring home dinner to celebrate."
"Yeah, right, midnight supper?"
"You and Stu go have lunch. Ciao." Gabe made an apologetic face at the telephone, punched off the speakerphone button. He turned to Micah. "So what's the occasion?"
Micah tried to disguise the sigh he heaved after she was off the phone. He shifted the drive to his left hand, looked at Stu's weeping eye. It silently judged him, oozed its discontent. "Maybe I should come back later?"
"What are you talking about, Grayson? You came up here for a reason, I assume. So?"
"It's about the Mavros case." Micah looked down at his feet tapping on the carpet.
"Yeah, what about it?"
"Is that the pro bono one?" Stu asked, dabbed at his eye with a handkerchief.
Gabe nodded.
Micah said, "I was finishing up the document review now that the case is heating up again, and I found this portable drive in the boxes. It was in the back of a folder, stuck between some papers." Micah reached across the desk, handed Gabe the thumb drive.
"Okay. And?" Gabe shrugged.
"I really think you ought to take a look at a video file on there." Micah waited for Gabe to turn angry. "It must have been in the boxes by accident."
"What is it? Did you watch it?"
"Yes, sir."
"So what is it?" Gabe's face glowed pink now. "I don't have time to watch this thing."
"It's a Hot Doc. It's a … it's a sex video." Micah took a deep breath. "The client's in it. And some other people." He looked up at Gabe, then at Stu to gauge their reaction. Like Mount Rushmore, not even a blink. "They're all, they're, you know?"
"Fucking?" Gabe said. He exchanged a look with Stu. "Were the women who filed criminal charges in this thing?"
"No, some other women and a man, too. He looked familiar. I just really think you should take a look at it. When I saw the-"
"If those women who filed charges aren't in it, then it doesn't sound like it's relevant to their discovery requests." Gabe eyed Stu. "Does that sound right to you?"
Stu nodded. "I think that's right."
Micah didn't want to say anything. He wanted to wash his hands of it and leave.
"I don't think we need to do anything with this right now," Gabe said. "Maybe it's from his college days before One Love For All was started. Besides, it's nothing criminal, right?"
Micah said, "I don't know." He stood up, inching back to the door. "I just thought I ought to tell you. I didn't mean to cause any problems."
"No, that's good, Micah. You did the right thing." Gabe was studying him. Maybe it was something he picked up deposing a thousand people, Micah wondered, like a professional poker player picking up nervous gestures, knowing when someone was lying.
Micah had his hand on the door handle when Gabe said, "One sec. Has anyone else seen this drive or file or whatever it is? Like a paralegal or Bianco?"
"No, sir. Only me."
"Is this the only copy?"
"Yes, sir."
"Good. I'll take care of it from here. Thanks."
Before Micah slipped out, he saw Gabe slip the thumb drive into a desk drawer. Micah shut the door and heard Stu whispering to Gabe, "Remember those ancient stag films that Max would show on his basement wall, the ones with the co-eds playing naked volleyball?"
The partners cackled on the other side of the door.
25 Thursday
* * *
It was getting late on Thursday night. Gabe Weiss was still sitting in his locked office in the dark. He wasn't thirsty, but he mixed another Dewars with water and ice from the mini-fridge in his wall cabinet. The screensaver and white noise on his computer monitor had a soothing effect so he turned the volume up. He glanced at the rabbi statuette on his desk.
"How about you? Any words of wisdom?"
He yanked open the desk drawer and began digging through months of bills sent out to clients, Post-Its with client phone numbers, notes with his chicken scratch calculating his share of partnership points on cases. All of it was garbage now. He threw everything into a waste basket and finally found the thumb drive in the back of the wooden coffin of the drawer. It would have been buried there forever if he hadn't gone home early last night.
The thumb drive had barely any dust on it. On the back was a label in small print, "G.T. Imaging Services." He sighed, drank more scotch and water.
"Let's get this over with," he said, attaching the thumb drive to his computer and downloading the solitary video file.
The computer screen was blank for a long time while he held the mouse and summoned all of his courage to watch the video. He clicked "play," and the progress bar slowly moved forward, starting the video with an innocuous white test screen. He thought about the day that Micah Grayson had walked into his office with this burden, pale as a white-collar criminal client. He should have watched it then. But it wasn't the kid's fault, he decided. The kid had done the right thing, and Gabe was too blind, no, too cynical to see anything but business. He counted the days in his mind and realized it was a couple of months ago when he had shoved the thumb drive deep into his desk drawer. It was the day Rachel had gotten the art show and called asking to go to lunch at Scalinatella. Her art show that opened last night, the night he had become a murderer. It still seemed like a surreal nightmare playing frame by frame in his head.
The video too rolled by, frame by frame. A digital array of scenes from soup kitchen meals to marriage ceremonies, but he couldn't bring himself to look, to concentrate. It was like watching a horror film. He knew this must have been the lull, the comforting scene right before the terror. His eyes looked away from the
screen and searched the dark office. Everything was shadow in moonlight filtering through humid August clouds.
His dry-cleaned tuxedo hung from the door. Cherise had made sure it was ready for him. He was supposed to wear it tomorrow night for the anniversary party of the almighty Sullivan & Adler. "Fucking den of thieves," he mumbled. He didn't plan on going anymore. How the hell can I? he asked himself. The tux was another symbol of his failure. With the lights out and the screen's occasional glow, the black suit almost looked like a man. The sound of cheers came from the video, congratulations for a new bride and groom as Gabe stared at the figure of the tuxedo hanging from a hook on the door.
He turned to the screen, his eyes blurred by scotch, and watched people hugging the bride and the groom, throwing bird seed. "Everyone's happy at first." He sipped more, took the corroded trumpet off the wall. He tried his lip skills, began to push the old valves, to play scales, to remember the first songs he'd learned when he was a kid in Brooklyn. Nothing came to him, and his fingers just pumped silent dissonance. He put the horn back.
The computer screen became snow every now and then. Someone hadn't been too swift with the recording of new scenes. It all seemed harmless and boring, and he thought that maybe Grayson had been wrong. Or maybe this wasn't the video. Until the snow ended and the grainy frames of another scene blinked in and out on the screen. This time his eyes widened, adrenaline replaced the alcohol in his head, and he couldn't look away. Mesmerized, sobered, he watched and knew something was different right away, something was wrong. And he felt like he was there as it was unfolding in the images.
The room in the video had no windows. It was dim, barely any visible light at all. There was a small flicker, a candle or night light maybe in the corner that shone brightly. Everything else in the video had a greenish surreal glow. He realized the camera must have had an infrared illuminator for night vision. The walls in the room were covered in what looked like fake wood-paneling, like something cheap plastered up in a basement for rambunctious kids. Or in a poor women's shelter. But there was no indication of furniture except for the large rectangle of lumps and covers. A mattress, maybe a queen or king size.
PLUMMET: A Novel Page 19
