Phillip Smith had already drafted three of the firm's best lawyers to help him. Another firm was representing Larry and Tom, and someone Alex had never heard of was representing Simon.
“What about the girl?” Alex asked matter-of-factly. “They didn't get her at all. How'd she pull that off?”
“Luck, I guess.”
“She must be pleased,” Alex said coolly.
“I wouldn't know. She left for London. She figured the good times were over.” And she wasn't wrong. Sam knew what was in store for him. Success in the financial world was very fickle. Once the money and the hot deals were gone, and after a scandal like this, so was the respect and the recognition. He hadn't tried it yet, and had no immediate desire to, but he was sure that if he called La Grenouille or Le Cirque or the Four Seasons, all the reservations available to him would be at five-thirty and eleven-thirty, and the table would be in the kitchen. The champagne only flowed as long as the money.
And in a moment, even after two decades, the name Sam Parker would be forgotten.
The odd thing was that he had always told himself it didn't matter to him, but he realized now it did. Just knowing that his name was dirt, that his business had gone down the tubes, and the reputation he'd had along with it, made him feel finished. He suddenly realized what Alex had felt when she lost her breast, and with it her sense of femininity and sex appeal, and her ability to have children. She had felt diminished as a woman. And he of course hadn't helped by going out with another woman. Nice guy, he reminded himself. All he seemed to have were regrets now. But with the loss of his important position and his respectability based on it, he felt a loss of his manhood.
“Phillip is putting together a great team for you,” Alex said encouragingly on the phone. The worst of it for Sam was that she seemed to bear him no malice. It would almost have been easier if she'd hated him, but apparently she didn't. She seemed not to care about what he'd done to her at all. She had made her peace with everything that had happened to her. He had no idea how she'd done it. And clearly he hadn't figured out about her involvement with Brock yet. Alex gave away nothing, and even Annabelle's mentions of him didn't seem to imply anything but friendship.
“Are you going to be on that team?” Sam asked, embarrassed to even ask her. But he felt so insecure and so scared it was almost childish. He didn't even know what he was going to do with himself before the trial. They were closing the office, and liquidating their affairs. And all the company assets had already been frozen. He was trying to make up as much as he could to as many of their clients as possible, out of his own funds, but there were going to be staggering losses for many. Simon was responsible for most of them, but Tom and Larry had done their share of the damage too, and Sam had unwittingly helped them with some of the deals he had co-signed. He just hadn't been paying attention. He felt terribly guilty, but it was too late to change it. All he could do was pay the penalty, whatever it would be. Sometimes he thought he deserved to go to jail for sheer stupidity, and he said as much to Alex before she had a chance to answer his question.
“As far as I know, that's not a crime yet. And, no, I won't be on the team, but I'll watch from the sidelines.” He knew it was more than he deserved from her, and he didn't argue.
“Thank you. We're going to be closing the office in the next week or two. Almost everyone's gone now.” It had taken exactly three days to empty all the offices, and no one wanted to be associated with them for a moment longer than they had to. They were a pariah. “I guess after that, it'll be all preparation for the trial.” And then, out of nowhere, “I'm going to be selling the penthouse. I'm not going to need it now,” he had really bought it for Daphne, “and frankly, I need the money. Besides, if I go to jail, you don't need the headache of liquidating that for me. I'm going to stay at the Carlyle.”
“Annabelle will like that.” She had tried to sound encouraging, but like her illness the year before, the prognosis was not great. He had some tough stuff to go through. He would be stripped to the bone, and bared for all to see, all his sins, and stupidities, and failings, and then he would be at the mercy of twelve good men, or women, a jury of his peers, who would determine his future. It was pretty scary.
And then she remembered that it was almost the Labor Day weekend. “Are you still taking Annabelle?”
“I'd like to.” He was going to be alone with her, and it was going to be a relief not to have to fight with Daphne. He didn't think they'd go anywhere. He just wanted to be with Annabelle and enjoy her.
Carmen brought her in to the city and when he picked her up Alex was out. She didn't see him again in the office that week, although she knew he'd been in to see Phillip. She was trying to stay out of it officially, but still keep an eye on things, although from a distance. And she had promised Sam that she would sit through the trial with him, and go to as many meetings before that as she could. But she didn't want Phillip to feel that she was crowding him, or interfering.
And by the time she and Brock left for East Hampton for the weekend, on Friday afternoon, they were both exhausted. He was still annoyed that she hadn't taken the bull by the horns with Sam, and pressed him for an immediate divorce, and she thought Brock was being unreasonable and childish. They had a big fight about it again on Friday night, and for the first time in her five-month affair with him, they both went to bed angry.
But in the morning, as they woke up, he reached over and pulled her close to him and told her he was sorry.
“I'm sorry I'm such an idiot about all this, he just scares me,” he said, and Alex turned to look at him in amazement.
“Sam? Why, for heaven's sake? The poor guy's practically in jail. He's got plenty of problems of his own, what's to scare you?”
“History. Time. Annabelle. It doesn't matter what kind of sonofabitch the guy was to you last year, he's still your husband, and he had seventeen years with you before that. That carries a lot of weight. It's hard to fight that.” He looked at her knowingly, and she couldn't deny it, but she loved him too, and she wanted him to know it.
“You don't have to worry, Brock,” she said holding him close to her, and smoothing his hair with her hand, like a child. Sometimes she felt light-years older, but she was touched by what he was feeling, and he was right in some ways. The things he talked about had bound her to Sam for close to two decades. But Brock had a history with her too, a history of incredible kindness, and she couldn't ignore that either. Besides, she loved him. “Don't worry about him. I'll get it all worked out after the trial. It just didn't seem right to do it before that. Like his moving out before I finished chemo. I'm sure he wanted to, but even as lousy as he was at the time, he stayed till I was finished. Sometimes it's just a question of basic decency and good manners.” She smiled and Brock smiled at her in answer. He relaxed for the first time in days and held her close to him.
“Just make sure good manners don't keep you married to him, or my manners are going to fall apart in a hurry. I may kill him.” Brock was the gentlest person she knew, and she knew he didn't mean it. He just wanted her out of her marriage to Sam, and she didn't blame him. She wanted that too. But in the right way, at the right time, without causing even more damage.
They spent an easy weekend on the beach, and packed up their things with regret on Monday. He had rented a station wagon to take everything home with them, and they were unpacking her things at her apartment when Sam came home with Annabelle. And she looked a lot happier than she did after her weekends with Daphne, but this time Sam looked a little startled. Suddenly, seeing Brock help her unload the car made Sam realize that there was more to it than just work at the office.
“Can I give you a hand?” Sam asked politely, carrying a box into the front hall. He suddenly felt like a stranger in what had been his home, and he realized he didn't belong there. Brock was painfully polite to him, and Alex was very pleasant, but when he saw Annabelle with them, he realized that this was a unit he could no longer interfere with. They were part o
f it, and he wasn't.
He left shortly afterwards, feeling depressed, and Brock looked pleased. There was no question. The message had been clear. “She's mine now,” and Sam had got it.
Chapter 21
Annabelle went back to nursery school after Labor Day, and the rest of them went back to their usual routine. Alex had taken on her full workload again, and she appeared in court almost daily. Brock was still helping her, but he had his own cases too, and they didn't work as constantly together as they had while she was in chemo. And they both agreed that they missed it.
Several of her partners had commended her for her fortitude in hanging in while she was sick, and she had become something of a legend in the law firm. And in spite of the amount of time they still spent together almost every day, no one had yet figured out that she and Brock were seriously involved with each other. It had remained a well-kept secret.
Brock spent every night with them after work, but he still kept his own apartment, and most of the time, he slept there. Neither of them thought it would be good for Annabelle to have him living there full time, so he forced himself to get up in the middle of the night and go home, which they both hated. He only spent the night there, in the guest room, on weekends. And both Brock and Alex were anxious to tell Sam about the divorce, and get their life in order quickly, if only to get a good night's sleep, as Brock put it. But Annabelle was crazy about him, and probably wouldn't have minded if he'd moved in completely.
In September, Sam's trial was more than two months away. And by October, his meetings at the firm had stepped up radically with Phillip Smith and the team he'd created to mount Sam's defense. It was going to be a tough case to win, and they all knew it. Even Sam had few illusions. He'd closed his office by then, and all of the employees had been discharged. In the end, they had cheated people out of roughly twenty-nine million dollars. It could have been a lot worse, but Sam had done what he could to minimize clients' losses, and he was trying to activate whatever insurance policies he could to reimburse people for the difference. But no matter how you looked at it, it was ugly. His efforts to help people recoup what they could was not to improve his defense but simply part of who he always had been. If anything, he seemed more himself now. He seemed happier and more at peace, although when Alex saw him at meetings with Phillip, he was strained, and often nervous. The prospect of going to prison terrified him, but he also realized it was a strong possibility. Phillip had told him more than once that keeping him out of jail was going to be a long shot.
By late October, deals were being made, and the prosecutors were trying to get all of them to plead guilty, but so far no one would do it. They were offered shortened sentences as an exchange, but even that wasn't too appealing. Particularly to Sam, whose defense was still that he had been extremely stupid, but not intentionally dishonest.
“Think it'll fly?” Brock asked her honestly, one weekend when they were watching Annabelle in the playground. And she thought about it for a minute, before she answered.
“I'm not sure,” she said honestly. “I hope it does, for his sake. But if I were on a jury and he told me he was too dumb to know that his partners were ripping him off while he was busy getting laid, I think I'd laugh my ass off, and send him straight to prison.”
“That's how I figure it too,” he said, but he wasn't entirely sorry for him, and he still thought he deserved it. But Alex always disagreed with him.
¥bu can't send a guy to jail for being shitty to his wife when she's having chemo, Brock. That's bullshit. That doesn't make him a criminal, it makes him an asshole. The issue here isn't me, it's was he cheating people knowingly?” No matter what else they were, they were lawyers, and the conversation often turned to their cases.
“He knew, don't tell me he didn't. He didn't want to know. But he knew damn well Simon wasn't clean. You even said so.”
“I thought the guy was a crook,” she said thoughtfully, “but Sam always defended him. It was all so easy, the money just kept rolling in, from what he said, I guess he wanted to believe it was on the level. He was naive to believe it, but again, that's not a felony.”
“He should have checked a lot more closely.”
“Yes, he should. That's where I think his love life got in the way.”
“It's going to be a juicy trial,” Brock predicted, and it was. The papers were full of it from the moment they started taking depositions. And by November fifteenth, people were taking bets in the financial community as to who would go to prison, and who wouldn't. Everyone figured that Simon would somehow weasel out of it, he was just too slippery not to. He'd been continuing to do business in Europe while waiting for the trial, and was involved in half a dozen shady deals there, but nothing seemed to stop him. And it was predicted that Larry and Tom were going to go to jail. But Sam was the dark horse that no one could figure. Most people thought he would, but there were a few who thought he wouldn't. He had had an excellent reputation for a long time, and some of the old-timers bought his story, though the younger men on Wall Street didn't. They thought he should have known, or did know, and didn't want to hear it, which was what Brock thought too.
And when the trial began, Alex was there. She watched the jury selection and conferred with Sam in the halls, just to keep him distracted. He had four attorneys, and there were five others involved in the other three's defense. It was a huge event, and the courtroom was filled with reporters. Alex had asked Brock if he wanted to come too, but he said he didn't. They both knew it was going to be a circus.
Brock was still uptight about Sam, still anxious for her to divorce him. He said he wouldn't believe it was for real until she told Sam, and they filed. But she kept promising it was going to happen right after the trial, and she meant it. She and Brock had been physically involved for eight months, and close friends for a lot longer, and she really loved him. But she and Sam had known each other for eighteen years, and loved each other for as long. She owed him something too, and although he didn't like it, she knew Brock understood that. But in spite of himself, and all their reasoning, Brock was extremely jealous. Alex was startled to realize it, but she also found it very touching.
The actual trial began on the afternoon of the third day, and there was an air of real tension in the courtroom. The jury had been selected carefully, and they'd been told that the matters before them would be both complicated and financial. There were four defendants, who were accused in varying degrees, and each case was explained in excruciating detail. Sam's was explained last, and Alex thought the judge spelled it out very clearly. He was a good judge and she'd always had good experiences with him, but that didn't mean anything now. The facts were all against Sam, unless the jury believed his story. He was an honest man, or at least he always had been, but the truth in this case was hard to swallow.
There were three weeks of testimony, and Thanksgiving came and went without too much attention. She and Brock cooked turkey at his place, and Annabelle ate at the Carlyle with Sam, but he was in no mood for holidays. And Alex couldn't help remembering that her extreme reaction to her illness the year before had finally been the straw that broke the camel's back, and Sam had gone berserk because she was too sick to come to the table. Sam remembered that the day's trauma had finally driven him into Daphne's arms, and bed, for the first time, and all he wished, more than anything, was that he could turn the clock back.
He looked very distinguished and tall as he stood in the courtroom in a dark suit the day after Thanksgiving, and when Alex saw him, she asked how he was doing. She knew how difficult it was for him, how worried he was, and how much he had at stake, his entire future. Or at least a decade or two of it. The realization of that made him tremble as he looked at Alex.
“Thanks for coming,' he whispered, and she nodded. She could see the worry in his eyes, but he seemed prepared to take whatever came his way. He already knew that if he lost, he would be given thirty days until sentencing to settle his affairs, before he went to prison, which meant
after Christmas. It was a daunting thought, as the judge rapped for order in the courtroom.
The final week of trial came in the second week in December, Sam took the stand, and his testimony was emotional and very moving. He had had to stop once or twice, when he became overwrought, as the reporters took rapid note of it, but she believed his story. She knew what a nightmarish time it had been for both of them, they had both been out of their minds in their own way, and his affair with Daphne must have clouded his judgment further. She was surprised at how dispassionate she felt, listening to him, it was a fascinating case, but she couldn't allow herself to think that Sam might go to prison. She couldn't even allow herself to think that she had once loved him. It would have been too painful.
Afterwards four of the attorneys addressed the jury, in some cases movingly, and Alex thought Phillip's speech was very clear, and stated the facts clearly. It emphasized what Sam himself had said on the witness stand, that between his wife's illness and his own foolishness, he had allowed himself to be lulled into thinking that what was going on was ethical when it wasn't. But the key was that he didn't know what the others were doing. He had never knowingly defrauded anyone, or been a party to what had happened. He had never knowingly been part of their collusion.
The jury took five days to deliberate, and called for evidence and testimony. They recalled everything they could, and then finally, it was over. Sam and the others sat looking very pale and were asked to stand when the jury entered the courtroom. Alex noticed that Simon tried to look contemptuous, but he was too pale for anyone to buy it. Just like the others, he was scared stiff, and the only one Alex felt sorry for was Sam. And poor little Annabelle. What if her Daddy went to prison? Someone at her school had told her about it, and Sam and Alex had tried to explain it to her simply, but it was much too confusing. And no, they didn't know if he was going away or not, but they hoped not. It had been a lousy resolution.
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