J.D. Trafford - Michael Collins 03 - No Time To Hide

by J. D. Trafford

  Kermit finally located his lighter, took it out of his pocket, and pressed the button. A flame flicked out the top.

  “Put that away.” Michael swung his legs over the side of the bed, stood up and walked toward the door. “Who is it?”

  “Mr. Collins, I’d like to talk with you.”

  Michael saw the knob turn a little, but the man on the other side of the door didn’t turn it all the way. He didn’t come in. He was just getting ready.

  “Give me a second.” Michael looked back at Kermit who had walked over to the curtains and appeared to be figuring out whether the curtains were flame retardant. Then Michael looked at Andie. She was starting to wake up, but still half asleep. Michael wondered whether this was the last time he’d see her as a free man.

  “Just let me throw on a shirt,” Michael shouted.

  He walked over to his dresser. He glanced at the picture of his revolutionary namesake on the wall, and then he forced a sticky drawer open. Michael grabbed a wrinkled Flogging Molly T-shirt and put it on.

  “We gonna make a run?” Kermit was now in his ready position. He was crouched low with his arms out wide.

  Michael shook his head. “No.” He walked back toward the bed. He grabbed his keys and sunglasses off of his nightstand. Then Michael kissed Andie’s forehead.

  “I’m done with running.” Michael had said it softly, more to himself than to anyone else. “No more hiding.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Michael looked at the man. He was in his early-fifties with slicked hair that was graying at the temples. He wore a dark blue, pinstriped suit. His teeth were unnatural, glow-in-the-dark white. He held a large leather briefcase in his hand, but Michael didn’t see a gun. There was no badge attached to his belt. There was no holster for a firearm, either.

  A younger version of the older man stood behind him wearing the same outfit. He was an assistant of some sort, but he wasn’t paying attention. He had an iPhone, and was hypnotized by the screen.

  Kermit was right about the two visitors being trouble, Michael thought, but they weren’t government. They smelled more like lawyers.

  ###

  “You can talk, and I’ll listen. Let’s start with that.”

  Michael began walking over to the Sunset’s largest thatch hut. It was the resort’s bar and main office. It was the place where, years earlier, he had arrived with nothing but a backpack, a few paperbacks, and a sheet of paper with the account numbers and passwords for a half-dozen foreign bank accounts.

  Andie Larone had greeted him with a soft smile and an ice-cold Corona (the foundation of any romantic relationship), and soon he had signed an overpriced lease agreement for Hut No. 7. He’d found a home among the losers and drop-outs and he didn’t ever want to leave.

  “It’d be nice if the boy wonder stayed behind.” Michael gestured toward the young associate. “He kind of freaks me out with that phone.”

  “Any other requests?”

  Michael nodded. “If you’re sticking around, I’d like you to change your clothes before the rest of the resort wakes up. White guys in suits are bad for business.”

  Michael thought for a moment. “Or better, yet, I’d rather you just leave as soon as we’re done. Don’t bother changing your clothes.”

  Michael walked up three steps to the large, thatch-roofed hut at the end of the path. He found the right key, and then unlocked the door to the bar.

  “Follow me.” Michael went inside. “We serve the best Bloody Mary in Mexico.”

  There weren’t many early risers at the Sunset Resort and Hostel, and so the beachfront bar didn’t typically open for brunch until eleven. If people got up before then, they made some coffee in their hut and ate a granola bar or biked into San Corana to have breakfast at one of the cafes that lined the small city square.

  “Have a seat.” Michael pointed to a chair at a table with a nice view.

  It was early and the sun was still low in the sky. Its light bounced off the blue Caribbean water. Seagulls alternated between chasing the waves and chasing each other above the rocky point that jutted out into the water in front of the resort.

  “Want anything to drink? Coffee? I was also serious about the Bloody Mary. They’re good.” Michael walked toward the back of the bar. He tried to play it cool, but he knew that whatever the lawyer wanted to talk about was going to be bad.

  The man shook his head. “I really would just like your full attention for a moment,” he said. “I need to get back as soon as possible.”

  “No complaints about that.” Michael opened a small refrigerator under the bar, grabbed a bottle of water, and then walked back over to the man and sat down at the table. “Why don’t you start by introducing yourself?”

  The man extended his hand, and they shook. “Tad Garvin.” He smiled, expecting Michael to recognize him or the name. There was an awkward pause, and then Garvin added, “I’m a senior partner at Franklin and Uckley in New York.”

  Michael shrugged his shoulders. “I’ve heard of it.” He unscrewed the top of his water bottle. Michael took a sip, continuing to keep an outward appearance of calm.

  Franklin and Uckley merged with two other major international law firms when the housing market crashed and took the global economy into a recession. The firm had laid off hundreds of “dead weight” partners as part of the merger, but, despite the layoffs, Franklin and Uckley became the third largest law firm in the world and, more importantly to its remaining partners, Franklin and Uckley was the most profitable law firm.

  Size matters, but money matters more.

  When Michael had been an associate at Wabash, Kramer and Moore, they had referred to Franklin and Uckley by its nickname: F U

  It was a nickname and attitude that the firm embraced, even going so far as to acquire the domain name www.fu.com from an Eastern European pornography company in the late 1990s. That’s how they rolled at Franklin and Uckley: F U

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Garvin leaned back, taking a deep breath to inflate himself.

  “In short, my client wants to meet with you.” He smiled, displaying his perfect teeth. An aura of confidence radiated from his orange, fake tan. “But it needs to be done privately. I am not involved, and I, quite frankly, don’t want to be involved any further.”

  Michael smiled back at Garvin. “Great,” he said, sarcastically. “Where is he?” Michael looked around the room, feigning eagerness.

  “My client is not a ‘he.’ Brea Krane is Joshua Krane’s daughter.” The reference to Joshua Krane hit Michael like a quick jab to his stomach. He winced, but Garvin continued. “She says it’s urgent.”

  Michael took a sip of water, trying to recover. He hoped that his discomfort wasn’t obvious.

  He thought back to the corrupt businessman and the night that changed his life. Michael’s hand, reflexively, touched the scar on his cheek. “I didn’t know Krane had a daughter.”

  “He had a daughter and a son,” Garvin said. Michael’s mind raced as Garvin continued to prattle on.

  It had been years since Michael had burned his suits and ties in a glorious back alley bonfire. After being shot on the same night that Joshua Krane had been killed, Michael had left New York with no plans other than to never practice law again. It was a plan that was greatly assisted by the funds in Joshua Krane’s off-shore bank accounts. Money didn’t buy happiness, Michael’s mother used to say, but it was a pretty good down payment.

  Michael had never thought of Krane as a father. He had never really thought of Krane as a person, much less a family man. Krane was just another billable hour. A rich chump that his law firm was going to charge massive amounts of exorbitant legal fees until the client was either broke or in prison, whichever came first.

  Michael took a drink. He put the cap back on the water bottle.

  “What does she want to talk about?”

  “Like I said earlier,” Garvin lifted his briefcase off the ground, opened it, and removed a large, thin envelope. “I don�
�t know the details and I do not want to know. Brea Krane has sent me here to make contact with you. She was quite insistent.”

  “And the client is always right.”

  Garvin smiled. “And the client is always right.” It was every lawyer’s mantra.

  Garvin put the briefcase back by his feet and slid the envelope across the table to Michael. He pointed at it.

  “Please, take a look. Her contact information is inside.”

  Michael looked down at the envelope. Then he pushed it back toward Garvin.

  “I’m not interested in anything she has to say.” Michael stood up. “Why don’t you get back in your helicopter or whatever it is and go home. I only came out here because …” Michael’s voice trailed off, but Garvin knew where Michael was going.

  “You only came out here because you thought I was going to arrest you.” Garvin smiled.

  Michael stared back at Garvin. He already hated the man. Michael had just met him, and yet, he knew that Tad Garvin was more arrogant than all the senior partners at Michael’s old law firm, but dumber.

  “You can see yourself out.” Michael turned and started walking toward the door.

  “Mr. Collins,” Garvin said. “Did you know that Agent Frank Vatch is testifying in front of a grand jury this morning?”

  Michael stopped, but didn’t turn around. So, Garvin continued.

  “My client has already testified. Your various bank accounts are already flagged and likely frozen, and the United States Attorney will get the indictment today or tomorrow.”

  Garvin paused, letting the information sink in for a moment. Information was power, and Garvin leveraged it.

  “You need to be smart.” Garvin tapped the envelope sitting on the table. His voice now carried an edge. “Brea Krane just might be the only person in the world who can get you the one thing that you need.”

  “And what’s that, Tad?” Michael said with disdain. “What’s the one thing I need?”

  Garvin smiled, smug.

  “Your freedom, son. You need freedom from your past.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Frank Vatch studied the documents that had just been handed to him. “These are bank records that I received a month ago.”

  United States Attorney Brenda Gadd nodded her head and walked back toward counsel table. A few of the jurors were looking at the clock, but most of them leaned forward in their seats. They were now engaged.

  It had been two days, and they wanted to see the evidence that had been hinted at from the beginning. Like all juries, there was also a desire to just get the job done — hang the bastard and go home.

  “And how did you obtain these bank records?” Gadd sat down. She picked up a pen and made a checkmark by one of the questions typed on her sheet of paper.

  “It wasn’t easy.” Vatch forced his narrow slit of a mouth into a bent smile. He attempted to seem normal and friendly, but it didn’t work. When he made eye contact with a few of the jurors, they looked away. Since he was a child, Vatch simply gave off a bad vibe. He was an asshole, and anybody who spent more than thirty seconds in his presence quickly figured that out.

  “Michael Collins’ story didn’t seem right to me. I always treated him like a suspect, because it would be stupid not to.” Vatch paused, and then continued. “He had opportunity and he took it.”

  “Explain,” said Gadd, and Vatch obliged.

  “On the night Joshua Krane was murdered, Krane and Mr. Collins went to get the account numbers and passwords from a safe deposit box as part of a potential settlement agreement with the Justice Department.”

  “Why?” Gadd asked, just as they had rehearsed the night before.

  “Krane had been accused of bribery and various other bad acts while securing very large contracts from the Defense Department. We are talking billions of dollars. The money in those accounts was going to be used by Krane to pay back some of what had been stolen and also as a penalty.”

  Vatch paused and waited. Gadd nodded her head and he continued.

  “In the confusion that night, either before or after Krane was killed and Mr. Collins was shot, Michael Collins got those bank account numbers and then later illegally transferred the money to his personal accounts.”

  “And Michael Collins had no authority to make those wire transfers, true?”

  “That’s true.” Vatch spoke directly to the grand jurors. “That money either belonged to Krane, Krane’s family, Krane’s company or the victims who had been defrauded by Joshua Krane. I don’t know who it belonged to, exactly; I’ll leave that to the lawyers. I just know that the money didn’t belong to Michael Collins.”

  Gadd nodded earnestly, allowing the jurors a few moments to process the information.

  “And to you, as a trained law enforcement officer, what did this mean?”

  “It means that Michael Collins committed wire fraud.”

  Gadd nodded, making sure to give the jurors time to write down the words “wire fraud” in their notebooks. She liked the term ‘wire fraud.’ It sounded like Michael Collins was an old-time mobster. “And then?”

  “And then motive wasn’t too hard to figure out.” Vatch leaned forward. “Michael Collins had grown up pretty poor, and the temptation to get rich quick isn’t unusual for his type. Then he disappeared. People don’t normally ditch all of their belongings and move to Mexico,” Vatch smirked. “It made him look very suspicious to me.”

  “Are you saying that Michael Collins arranged to have Joshua Krane murdered?”

  Vatch shook his head.

  “I can’t say that. It’s possible, but I can’t say that for sure. There were others who also wanted to kill Krane and take the money.” Vatch paused, unsure of how much detail he should provide. “I just know that Michael Collins took the money and ran.”

  Vatch caught the eye of a few jurors. They nodded at him, despite their dislike. Then, Vatch nodded back. His honesty had apparently just scored a few points.

  “A few years ago,” Vatch continued. “Collins had come back to New York. His girlfriend was in trouble, and we had an opportunity to make an arrest. But things got complicated.”

  “How so?” Gadd knew that Agent Vatch was going to talk about Lowell Moore, Patty Bernice and the Maltow file. It was complicated testimony that she would try to avoid at the actual trial, but in the safety of a grand jury room, Gadd wanted to see how it would play out. She wanted to practice, just in case Vatch had to testify about it at the actual trial. Without a judge or defense attorney in a grand jury proceeding, there wasn’t any better place to test Agent Vatch.

  “Well, I had been focused on Michael Collins from the beginning. But, it appears that there were multiple people who knew about these bank accounts and wanted to take the money from Krane. A den of thieves, so to speak.” Vatch paused. He smirked, hoping that somebody would find him humorous, but nobody laughed. He was back to being an asshole.

  “The law firm where Collins worked had mishandled a case, called Maltow. The firm had missed a major deadline, which resulted in the case being dismissed. Rather than come clean, the senior partner, Mr. Lowell Moore and his assistant, Patty Bernice, tried to cover it up. They didn’t tell their client. They faked a settlement agreement, and then paid for the Maltow settlement from the escrow accounts of other clients of the law firm, and this started a domino effect.”

  “What does that mean?” Gadd interrupted, sensing that the jurors were getting confused.

  “Maltow was a huge case,” Vatch said. “To avoid a malpractice claim and tarnish the law firm’s reputation, they faked the settlement and the law firm issued a large settlement check to their client. Although the settlement was fake, the check was real and so Lowell Moore and Patty Bernice started constantly shifting money among the law firm’s various client escrow accounts. Like a pyramid scheme or a Ponzi scheme. The law firm’s books were never in balance, because they were always short the amount the firm paid out in Maltow. Ultimately, by stealing Joshua Krane’s money, Low
ell Moore and Patty Bernice believed that they would be able to cover up the faked settlement. The money would replenish the escrow accounts and bring the law firm’s books into balance and nobody would be the wiser.”

  Vatch stopped himself, knowing that his testimony was getting too detailed.

  “And why does all that matter in this case against Mr. Collins?” asked Gadd, giving Vatch an opportunity to get back on track. Vatch took a breath, and then refocused.

  “In short,” Vatch said, “I believe Lowell Moore and Patty Bernice were likely involved in Joshua Krane’s murder. When this information came to light, it became unclear whether Lowell Moore and Patty Bernice had taken Joshua Krane’s money, whether Michael Collins was working with them, or whether Lowell Moore and Patty Bernice intended to take Joshua Krane’s money but Michael Collins snatched it first.”

  “So then what happened?” Gadd asked.

  “I had to back off.” Vatch turned to the jurors and puffed up his chest. “My job is to get the right perpetrator and build a rock solid case.”

  A few of the female jurors rolled their eyes, but Vatch didn’t stop. “As long as there were other people out there who were just as likely to have stolen the money, a prosecution couldn’t move forward. We needed proof beyond a reasonable doubt.”

  “And then what?” Gadd liked how Vatch had handled the question. She scanned the grand jurors, looking for any sign of confusion. She saw none.

  “We had to wait for the banks to provide the information,” Vatch continued. “The only way to get the truth was to follow the money trail to Michael Collins. We needed proof beyond a reasonable doubt, and we couldn’t do that without clear evidence that Michael Collins had Joshua Krane’s money.”

  “So you sent the subpoenas to these banks right away?” Gadd made a checkmark next to another question on her sheet of paper.

  “No.” Vatch shook his head. “First we had to figure out where Joshua Krane had hidden the money. Due to the plea negotiations, we knew there were secret, foreign accounts. But at the time, the government didn’t know where the accounts were located. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of banks where people can hide assets.”