by Brad Meltzer
Absently, she heard the door open and someone step inside. It was Guff, she thought. He closed the door softly. Then she heard the metallic thunk of the lock falling into place.
She looked up. There he was right in front of her—that face, those sunken cheeks—the man who had knocked her over and stolen her wallet. “What do you think you’re doing?” Sara asked as she stood from her seat.
“Giving us some privacy,” the man said. He wore an inexpensive gray suit and his voice was low, with a hint of ridicule in it.
“You have about one second to open that door before I—”
“I can open the door, but I didn’t think you’d want everyone hearing us talk about the Kozlow case.”
Sara took another good look at her visitor. “Please. Sit.” As the stranger obliged, Sara added, “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”
“I didn’t throw it. I’m just a friend of the victim.”
“So you know Doniger?”
“I said the victim,” he replied. “And by the way, I heard about your performance in the grand jury today. I’m extremely disappointed in you.”
“Stop right there. Let me guess: Kozlow sent you to threaten me. He doesn’t want me to go forward with the case.”
“Actually, you have it backwards. I not only want you to go forward with the case, I want you to win the case. But after what happened this morning with your husband—well, in my opinion, you almost blew it today.”
“What’re you talking about?” Sara said. As she asked the question, she pulled her legal pad onto her lap.
“What’re you doing?” the man asked.
“Taking some notes,” Sara said. She kept the pad out of view as she discreetly sketched a picture of her visitor. “Now tell me how I almost blew it today. What’s the story there?”
“The story is about your husband and the way he tried to manipulate you.” Dropping his voice to a deeper tone, he said, “‘C’mon, Sara, do it for us. It’ll be great for both our careers. Dump this case, pick up a better one, and bring home a real victory.’”
Sara stopped sketching. “Where’d you hear that?”
“It’s amazing what you can hear in a crowded hallway. Let’s just make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
Now Sara was annoyed. “Let me tell you something: You keep using that tone with me, and I’ll charge you with menacing, coercion, and obstructing governmental administration.”
Showing no fear, the man replied, “I’m impressed. You finally know your statutes.”
Sara didn’t move.
“Sara, tell me if you recognize this story. There’s this little girl who’s afraid of nothing. Suddenly, she gets fired from her job, and that loss not only forces her to seek psychological help, but also reignites feelings about the death of her parents. Then, things get so bad, she has to start taking medication to deal with the depression. The crazy thing is, she’s so desperate to get a job, she never reports the medication on her employment application. And since it’s a government position, that omission is now a potential legal problem for her.”
“That application was submitted before I ever got the prescription.”
“But it’s your job to keep the application up to date. Even if you didn’t do it on purpose, seems like they’d be pissed about that.”
Slowly, Sara’s expression turned from hostile to distressed.
“Isn’t it frustrating when everyone knows your business?”
“What do you want?” Sara asked, in a slow, deliberate monotone.
“Not much. You see, I know you stole this case from Victor. So all I want is for you to live up to that responsibility. More importantly, I want you to know that if you truly love your husband, you’ll do everything you can to win this case.”
“What do you mean?” When the man didn’t reply, Sara said, “Answer me.”
“Don’t play stupid, Sara. You know exactly what I’m saying. He’s not hard to get ahold of. So keep your head down, keep an eye on your husband, and do your job.”
Before Sara could say a word, her phone started ringing. She didn’t pick it up.
“I wouldn’t ignore that,” he warned. “It could be an important call.”
The phone rang again. Sara stared coldly at her visitor.
“I’m serious,” he said.
As Sara reached across the desk to pick up the phone, the stranger grabbed the legal pad from her free hand. She tried to pull it back, but it was no use. He was too fast and his grip was too strong. Wresting it away from her, he ripped off the top sheet, which contained Sara’s sketch. “Nice picture,” he said, admiring the likeness. Then he crumpled it into a ball.
“ADA Tate,” Sara said into the phone. The man pulled out a lighter. With a quick flick, he set the ball of paper on fire and threw the small burning mass on Sara’s desk. Jumping from her seat, Sara grabbed her statute book and slammed it down on top of the paper, smothering the fire.
“Ms. Tate, are you there?” a voice squawked from the phone. “This is Arthur Monaghan.”
As soon as Sara heard the name of New York’s district attorney, her heart sank. Oh, God, she thought. Not now. “Hello, sir,” she stuttered. “How can I help you?” As she watched the stranger walk toward the door, she covered the mouthpiece on the phone and yelled, “Don’t go anywhere!”
“Are you talking to me?” Monaghan asked.
“No, not you, sir,” Sara said, turning back to the phone. Without a word, her visitor left the office. “I was just talking to my assistant. Now what can I do for you?”
“I have some personnel matters I’d like to discuss with you. I want you to come over to my office.”
“Right now, sir? Because I—”
“Yes,” Monaghan said. “Now.”
“Yes, sir,” Sara said. “I’ll be there right away.” Throwing down the phone, Sara ran into the hallway, hoping to catch the stranger. But he was gone. On her left, at the far end of the hallway, she saw Guff. “Have you seen an ugly-looking guy in a gray suit run by?” she called out.
“No. Why?” Guff asked.
Without giving an answer, Sara looked to her right and ran up the hallway. Maybe he went the long way around, she thought as she flew past Conrad’s office. “Has anyone seen a guy in a gray suit run by?” she yelled. Of the dozens of ADAs, police officers, and assistants scattered throughout the hallway, no one answered in the affirmative. By the time she reached the elevators at the end of the corridor, Sara realized he had disappeared. “Damn,” she said, catching her breath.
When Sara got back to her office, Guff was waiting. “What’s going on?” he asked, sniffing the air. “Smells like a campfire.”
“Come in, but don’t touch the doorknob,” Sara said as she stepped inside. After throwing away the charred remains of her sketch, she pulled her accordion file from her bookshelf and opened it to the letter G. Pulling out a pair of latex gloves, she added, “I assume these were put in here to handle evidence?”
“Yeah,” Guff said as Sara put on the gloves. “But what’re you…”
Sara gingerly took hold of both doorknobs and twisted them in opposite directions. Eventually the rusty knobs gave way and she was able to unscrew them from the door. “Give me the evidence bag from the travel kit,” she said to Guff.
Guff pulled out a plastic bag and opened it. Sara dumped the knobs in the bag and took off her gloves. “Take those over to Crime Scene. I want them dusted for fingerprints.”
“You think someone was in your office?”
“I know someone was in here. Now I want to know who it was.”
Five minutes later, Sara arrived on the eighth floor at One Hogan Place, the office of District Attorney Arthur Monaghan. After passing through security, she walked up the long hallway until she reached a visitor’s waiting area. Two other new ADAs from her orientation class were already there. As Sara remembered, the woman with the oval glasses had just graduated from NYU, while the blond man with pale freckles was a fellow Colu
mbia grad. Both of them looked uncomfortable. When Sara got closer to her coworkers, she shot them a weak smile. “I take it we’re in trouble,” she said.
“I’d rather not talk about it,” the woman from NYU said. “This city is the worst-run organi—”
“Are you Sara Tate?” a woman’s voice asked from the far right side of the waiting area.
Turning, Sara saw the DA’s secretary, a thin woman with an outdated feathered hairstyle.
“Yes, I am.”
“Go right in,” the secretary said. “He’ll explain.”
“Good luck,” the man from Columbia called out.
Unnerved both by the ease of her entry and the looks on her colleagues’ faces, Sara slowly walked past the secretary. In her stomach, the butterflies were again swarming. As she stuck her head in the doorway of Monaghan’s office, she saw that the long room was centered on an enormous mahogany conference table. And although the rest of the office furniture was hardly top of the line, she also noticed it was clearly nicer than the government-issue wares of the ADAs: a shiny oak desk instead of an ugly metal one, a leather chair instead of a squeaky vinyl one, and new filing cabinets instead of the standard rusty ones.
“What took so long? All you had to do was cross the street,” Monaghan said, inviting her into the office. With a bright smile and an obvious toupee, District Attorney Monaghan looked like he was trying to please. But as office rumors suggested, he rarely achieved his goal.
“So how are you doing today, sir?” Sara asked as she took a seat in front of Monaghan’s desk.
“Every day’s a bear. Now let’s talk about these budget cuts. Got an opinion?”
“Looks like an election ploy to me,” she answered, forcing confidence into her voice even as she shifted uncomfortably in her seat.
“Of course they’re a ploy—but they work. And that’s exactly why the mayor loves them. These days, everyone loves gritty budget-cutting reality. Fuck moderation, let’s get back to the raw, real basics. The more it hurts, the more people think it’s good for them. We’ve become a city of masochists. Destroy welfare, lose the entitlements, cut it all. People see it as tough love. If something good is taken away, it must be because it wasn’t good for us—otherwise, the politicians wouldn’t be taking such risky stands. It’s the ultimate reverse psychology: We keep the things we don’t want and slash the things we love.”
“I guess, sir. Although I think—”
“Y’know what, though? None of that matters.” Laying his hands flat on his desk, he said, “Let’s talk about your future in this office.”
Sara’s hands filled with sweat. Without thinking, she blurted, “I have five cases, and I just got an indictment. I pled out two of them, but if you want, I can do extra work, or take another case—”
“Don’t take any more cases,” Monaghan interrupted. “If you leave, that’s another trial we’ll have to replace you on. Just stick with the ones you have and do your best work on them. In the next thirty days, you’re going to be judged against your peers, so if you can prove you’re worth having around, we might be able to keep you on board.”
“Does that mean I’m safe for the next month?”
“Safe is a nonsense word. But if I were you, and I were playing the odds, I’d start looking at other job options.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
Sara walked back to her office in a daze, her mind still reeling from the afternoon’s one-two punch. The moment Guff saw her, he said, “You got fired, didn’t you?”
“Not yet,” Sara said. “But never fear. It’s coming soon to a theater near you.” Rather than sitting behind her desk, Sara sank to the floor and leaned against the wall. “Think Purchasing will deliver my new sofa within the next month?”
“Tell me what happened,” Guff said. “Are you okay?”
“I think so,” she said unconvincingly.
After Sara had relayed Monaghan’s news, Guff said, “Well, at least you weren’t fired. Now what’s the story with the doorknob guy? What’d he do?”
“Ah, yes, Sunken Cheeks. First and foremost, he threatened me. Besides that, he really freaked me out. He had all this information about me, and he said if I don’t win my case, he’s going after Jared.”
“Do you think he’s serious?”
“I don’t know what to think. I was hoping that when his fingerprints came back, we’d know if he was dangerous or not.”
“Well, Crime Scene said they’d have them first thing tomorrow morning. They said if you can give them some more information—hair color, physical features, anything like that—it will speed up the ID.”
“Actually, can you hand me my legal pad and a pencil?” Sara asked. “I started sketching him, but he stole the sheet when I reached for the phone. That’s what he lit on fire.”
“Then what do you need this for?” Guff asked, handing her both items.
“You’ll see.” Lightly brushing the side of the pencil lead against the top sheet of the legal pad, Sara revealed the outlines of her original sketch.
“Holmes, you’re a genius,” Guff said.
“You have to pick your moments.”
“Did he say anything else?”
“Not really. I just wish I knew who he was. Then I’d know if I was dealing with a blowhard or a real lunatic.” When Sara’s phone started ringing, Guff picked it up. After a few seconds, his face went white.
“What is it?” Sara asked.
“It’s Pop,” Guff said. “There’s been an accident.”
Chapter 10
RUNNING THROUGH THE EMERGENCY ENTRANCE AT NEW York Hospital, Sara raced toward the information desk, followed by Guff. “I’m looking for my grandfather,” she said to the nurse as panic flooded her voice. “Maxwell Tate. He was admitted here about an hour ago.”
Checking her clipboard, the nurse said, “He’s currently undergoing surgery.”
“Is he going to be okay?” Sara asked.
“He’s in the O.R. Should be out pretty soon.”
Wiping her forehead, Sara closed her eyes. “Please, God, don’t take him from me.”
An hour later, Sara and Guff were sitting in the sparsely decorated hospital waiting area. While Guff flipped through year-old magazines, Sara sat motionless, staring at the starkness of the light blue wall.
Eventually, Guff put his hand on Sara’s shoulder. “He’ll pull through. You’ll see.”
“It always happens with a phone call,” Sara said.
“What’re you talking about?”
“Everyone thinks that death comes when you’re in a hospital, surrounded by loved ones. But death is far more random and chaotic than that. It doesn’t ease in during a moment of silence. It leaps in—exactly at the moment you’re not ready for it.”
“Is that how you found out about your parents? On the telephone?”
“I should’ve been so lucky. In my case, the wonderful hospital administrators decided to leave the news on my answering machine. Can you imagine that? You play your messages and that’s what you get: ‘Sorry. Your parents are dead. Sleep tight.’”
“You just walked in and played it?”
“I had just gotten home from studying for finals,” Sara explained. “As long as I live, I’ll be able to picture that little blinking light. I can still do the message by heart: ‘Hi, this is Faye Donoghue. I’m the patient advocate for Norwalk Hospital in Connecticut, and we need to speak with a family member for a Mr. Robert Tate and a Mrs. Victoria Tate. It is an emergency.’ She had a slight tinge of a Massachusetts accent, but otherwise, there was no emotion in her voice.”
“That was all she said? She didn’t say they died?”
“She didn’t have to. I knew the moment I heard it. You get that feeling. I hit the play button right as I walked in the house, and since my feet were cold, I headed to the kitchen to warm up some cider. I heard a message from a classmate who wanted to study for torts; a message from Jared, who, even though he barely knew me, still
wanted my outline for civil procedure; and then the message from Faye Donoghue—‘It is an emergency.’ That’s what I kept hearing: It is an emergency, it is, it is. I played it back three times to make sure I heard it correctly.”
Afraid to say the wrong thing, Guff remained silent. Finally, he offered, “I’m really sorry.”
“It’s not your fault. It just taught me that there’s no such thing as a romantic death—and to always prepare for the worst. That’s the real lesson. As long as I do that, I’ll never be surprised when it actually happens.”
“That’s no way to live your life.”
“It’s not like I have a choice, Guff—that’s just the way my life works. Whenever I let my guard down, I get smacked in the face. As soon as I got excited about this job, I found out about the layoffs. The second I got excited about the case, I found out my husband was on the other side. When I got excited about chasing Victor, I found out he was the one chasing me. Then today, the moment I finally started feeling good about the grand jury, they called me about Pop. And since it happened right after that guy came into my office—”
“Sara, I know what you’re thinking, but this probably has nothing to do with that guy in your office.”
Sara stared skeptically at Guff.
“I’m not saying it definitely doesn’t. Just don’t let your fears get the best of you. When Pop gets out of surgery, we’ll hear the story.”
Ten minutes passed before a doctor entered the waiting room. “Are you Ms. Tate?”
“That’s me,” Sara asked, jumping up. “How is he?”
“He took a bad fall down a flight of stairs,” the doctor explained. “He has a fractured pelvis, which is why he needed surgery, and he has a Colle’s fracture.”
“A what?” Sara asked.
“It’s a break in the distal radius,” the doctor said. “His forearm. Probably happened while he was trying to break his fall. He also has a contusion on his forehead, which is nothing more than a bump.”
“Will he be okay?”
“Considering his age, he’s holding up pretty well. He’ll be out of commission for a while, but he made it through the surgery without incident.”
