"Cold? You shivered."
"Cold coming on, I think."
"Okay, so that's number one, calling the ex-FBI boys. Now what the hell is this about Suzanne shooting herself? Why pick our office to do herself in? How absolutely thoughtless. Leaves her mess for us to clean up."
Now that. That was sounding more like JM. JM as he sounded when not on the ropes for $200 million dollars. JM as he sounded when the bell rang and he came off the stool to stalk you around the ring. David was doomed, truth be told. Only David didn't know it yet. Ansel knew it and there was nothing he could do.
But he was going to try.
The phone chirped. JM took it.
As JM listened to the incoming call, Ansel mouth-mimed to him, "There's something I need to tell you. About my son."
JM watched Ansel's expression, watched the lips move, but offered no response. Someone on the other end had his ear and had his cognition.
Then Ansel realized: JM didn't get his mime. Which meant his secret was still safe. Which meant David was one step further away than he was when Ansel came in with every intention of blowing his cover.
Ansel's resolve dissipated like smoke. Go David, go! He wanted to cheer. Who wouldn't? It was his son, for the love of God.
The feeling of love for David overwhelmed Ansel's duty to the firm. He decided in that instant that he was not going to tell JM about David. At least not then.
But hold on, he thought, that would be a cover-up, right? Well, not if I didn't know. Which came down to the note Ansel found on his laptop, which read:
Dad, by the time you read this I will have broken your heart. And mom's heart. There's a certain group that helps kids who would otherwise die. It needs help. So I've embezzled the trust funds. All of them. May God guide my journey as I obey His commands. May you somehow find it in your heart to forgive me. But most of all, may you and your partners come to understand how your funds have touched so many little lives. God bless you, Dad. D.
Ansel had printed out the note and left it centered on his own desk in his office where it couldn’t be missed. The note was Exhibit 1.
When he turned his son in--that time would come--his computer would become evidentiary. Everything on it would be studied by the police and FBI and insurance companies whose funds were gone. Ansel's hundreds--thousands?--of emails back and forth with Melinda all those years past, would become common knowledge. As would certain pictures that she presented Ansel at those times when he was traveling and aching for her body. Yes, they had those moments when nothing else would do but flesh. At least, pictures of. While Ansel knew he could erase all of it, like all good trial lawyers he also knew the forensics. Anything erased wasn't really erased and could be recovered. Which made it look like someone had something to hide. Which he did, as far as he and Melinda went. His mind was spinning and he still had to get through the partners' meeting.
JM finally hung up the phone, but not before saying into the mouthpiece, "Tell them I'm reviewing the numbers. Tell them the checks will issue today." Pause. "Yes, today. Yes, I'm sure."
JM removed his eyeglasses and pinched the sweet spot between the eyes. "God," he moaned, "what did I do to deserve this?"
"What did we do?" Ansel added.
"We're needed in the purple room. Partners' Monday."
"Lead the way."
They ferried cups and saucers to the wet sink.
JM held out a hand. Ansel went first.
5
Chapter 5
Burton shook his hands in the hot cell air, alarmed and frightened.
He turned to Thaddeus.
"Man, you saved me from that guy. I owe you big."
"No, you don't. One gringo to another, that's all."
"What’d they get you for?"
"Gun."
"They busted me for an ounce of pot. It was under the floor mat. I forgot I even had it."
He shook his hands in the air again, as if exorcising kinetic demons. He slumped back against the wall and shut his eyes.
"Man, I am so screwed," he said to anyone listening. "Man, oh man."
"What's your story?" Thaddeus said. He watched the two men across the cell, whispering and shooting looks his way. He might need backup next time.
"I'm going to Hermosillo to get married."
"Who's the lucky girl?"
"Girl I met online."
"That sounds promising."
"Plus Arizona's after me."
"For what?"
"Prison. I was supposed to report and do six years."
"And you didn't."
"Man, I can't do six years. I don't want those guys raping me."
"Well, you're in a mess. Drugs are a serious crime down here. You'll probably wind up in prison along with me."
"Could we partner up?"
"I'm not looking for a partner. Find someone else."
"I'm just saying, man."
Thaddeus gave him a hard look. "And I'm saying no. You don't bring anything to the party, Burton. You're one big plate of need."
"I got one thing you might want."
"Such as?"
"I know my way around Mexico. My old man crossed cattle for forty years. I worked this side of the border for him. I know the language and I know the towns. I know the good places and the bad places. And I know the cartel guys, lots of them."
Thaddeus looked at him. "What about the cartel guys? What do you know about them?"
"I know they're death on guys like us in Mexican prison. We're goners if we end up staying.”
"You're probably right. So you know how to find someone down here?"
He was thinking of Hermano Sanchez. Which was looking more and more impossible the longer they were being ignored by the guys out front.
"I can find anyone. That's my specialty."
"Your specialty."
"It is. We have contacts all over Sonora. Who you looking for?"
"We can talk about that later. First thing, we need to see a judge and get out of here."
"Good luck with that."
"It's not about luck, it’s always about money. We've got plenty of that."
Two hours later a different man appeared from the front office. He was barrel-chested and wore his blue Federale jumpsuit unzipped neck to navel. He was hot despite the air conditioning up front. His bulk was too much for the AC.
"Can you open the door in between here and your office?" Thaddeus said as the man bellied up to the cell. "Let some cool air in here?"
"You have the right to remain silent," the thick man laughed. "And you got the right to roast in peace."
"Seriously. When do we get to see a judge?"
"What for you want to see a judge?"
"Determine conditions of release. Bail."
"Six weeks probably."
Thaddeus stepped closer to the bars. "Can we make that happen faster than six weeks?"
"Maybe yes, maybe no. How much you got?"
"One thousand dollars."
"Señor, everybody got one thousand dollars. Is no good. Mas--mas."
"Five thousand. Take me to a judge before night and I'll give you five thousand dollars, American dollars."
"I don't know. But that's closer. I'll ask."
The man pointed at the smaller Mexican man.
"You come over here."
The smaller man got up, blinking and unsteady on his feet.
"You sober up?"
"Si."
"Boracho?"
"No."
"Gonna drink if we let you go?"
"No."
"Not gonna come round here begging no more?"
"No."
The jailer worked the keypad and the cell door opened.
"You come out. You going home."
"Hey, what about us?" Thaddeus said.
"Mr. Five Thousand can wait. I'll ask up front."
"Good going," Burton said, once the jailer had left with his newly sober charge. "Will that include me?"
"We can see about that,"
Thaddeus said. "Right now I do need someone who knows someone. That just might be you."
"I can find anyone."
"Sure you can."
6
Chapter 6
When Ansel was a kid, his Uncle Jan asked if he would like to be a barber someday (like him). Ansel violently shook his head and vowed he would be a lawyer. Which was unheard-of in Ansel's blue collar home.
His father excavated water lines and strung plumbing in the three-bedroom eyesores of the western 'burbs.
College? Why college, when you had an in with the pipe fitters' union?
His mother had learned early on how to beat a typewriter to death at 100 wpm and excelled at her legal secretary métier. But she was also carrying on affairs with a dance card of lawyers--a fact which became known to Ansel in his early high school years. That solidified his commitment to lawyering: he wanted desperately to kick some bar association ass. He hated those sons-of-bitches for taking advantage of his mother (as he perceived it) and wanted to get back at as many as he could. This was back in the day before you could buy an AR-15 and shop the local mall for payback. This was back in the day when payback took exertion.
Law school followed college and he exerted and passed the Illinois bar exam the first time around. Following that he began to practice his hatred of lawyers on anyone with a law license who crossed his path. And there were plenty. DA's, insurance whores, bankruptcy slime, divorce denizens, real estate scammers, criminal counsel, and especially the blue-noses from the silk-stocking firms where he couldn't even score an interview upon graduation. He mowed those guys down.
And he did the next best thing: he hung out his own shingle.
Then JM happened along and a partnership bloomed when Ansel found nothing about him that he hated.
Then a third partner happened by. At the same time, Ansel was mellowing, as the math of having others earn and give him a piece of their action settled over him like Scrooge McDuck's MBA. He told them, 'You earn one hundred and kickback seventy to me and I continue to make rain and bring in more and more clients by my TV Five courtroom highlights. That's our formula."
In six years they were one-hundred strong and two years later they agreed to cap it at two-hundred attorneys.
They went back on this, JM and Ansel. They added a few more here and there--gunslingers they couldn't pass up--and became a two-hundred-twenty-lawyer firm. Teeny, by national standards, small by Chicago standards, but large enough to litigate with any firm anywhere in the world. They even tried a Washington office for eighteen months. It eventually closed when Bush was handed the White House by the Supremes and the firm lost its ins with bureaucrats as the Republicans stirred the pot and sent Democrats home.
Mostly the firm litigated in the Midwest. It strained to grow. It was a struggle to maintain a stasis of two-hundred-twenty, as law firms—like zombies at large—tend to replicate unless carefully corralled. This became Ansel's job, the management of the firm, since that had been his role from the first day anyway. He relaxed the reins and in five years they were eight-hundred strong and counting. "So much for keeping it simple," he told JM.
Which was where they were when JM and Ansel marched into Partners' Monday the day after Ansel's kid ran the table.
The purple room was anchored by a forty-foot conference table around which all fifty-five full partners clustered. JM took up the Visitors' goal; Ansel the Home. As soon as Ansel sat down, the conversations drifted away and eyes rested on him.
"We're going to dispense with the reading of last week's minutes," he began. His voice, even and steady, evinced no alarm.
All attendees settled back. Some patted at breast pockets for the cigarettes that were banished from the building. Habits, thought Ansel. Habits like adoring my son, easy to consciously avoid; impossible, subconsciously, to give up. And he realized in that moment that he had no idea what he was going to say there that morning. He realized that he was probably unable to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help him God. Probably he would have to settle for half the truth. An evanescent stream of truth flitted in and out of his brain like barn swallows at dusk.
"Gentlemen, it is my sad duty to inform you that we have been embezzled. Our trust funds are gone."
Pandemonium.
Fists banged and howls went up.
Eyeglasses were adjusted and shirt-cuffs tugged.
Eyes met, horrors acknowledged, and eyes flitted to other eyes for more of the same.
One hundred-ten ears immediately on alert.
The transformation was instantaneous, like electricity charging headlong down a wire, flipping negative ions to positive, without thought, without the need for reflection, for everyone knew and understood to their marrow one inalienable truth: they were jointly and severally on the hook. This base knowledge came as naturally as the ex tempore act of taking the next breath. Presto, the financial grim reaper was come.
And they knew it.
Now to cut the losses. All eyes were on him. They waited, there would be a way around this, Ansel had never let down the firm.
"As of this moment we are less than one hour into this. JM and I have met and talked and we've already contacted agents to recover our funds. The FBI is in the building as we speak."
There, he'd made it sound like they were but one step behind the perp, that a collar was imminent. A sigh of relief swept the crowd. Bulging neck veins were seen to relax. Clenched hands paused with the hope that the firm's leaders had the situation under control. Ansel nodded with the reassurance the parent offers the child when fears of the dark are dismissed.
JM cleared his throat as if throwing a rope to a floundering lifeboat.
"We don't know who has our money," he said from the Visitor's goal. "But we have a very good idea who it might be. And we think we can mitigate our losses at around ninety percent."
Always the numbers guy, JM was making it sound like the partners might be out a couple million bucks, give or take, a figure they could make happen. It wouldn't be pretty, but they could make it happen. Fact was, personal credit lines should carry the day. Everyone would chip in a small amount, he said. He looked from face to face. Lips were pursed as internal calculators did the math.
Bill Gerard, one of twelve among them who held a CPA designation, raised a hand and asked, "How was the trust account accessed? Check? Wire transfer?"
Shock was easing up. Now the questions.
They were inquisitors, the partner bunch.
Ansel clutched the creases in his trousers to steady his hands.
"Wire," Ansel answered, and everyone nodded; yes, that's how they would have done it too. Enough wire transfers bouncing around the Caribbean and you had a mess. Hard to trace, impossible to untangle, especially from a distance. Someone, Ansel said, would have to go there. They looked at him. By default he would be the one to go there. Which was when it first occurred to him. He just might have a play here, after all. It might just be a way to buy some time. He announced he would be the one to make the trip and right the wrong. But go where? He thought he knew, but wasn't certain. Most important, what he thought he knew, he didn't tell them.
But the CPA hadn't finished. This time, without raising the hand, Bill Gerard lurched ahead, "Who had access to make wire transfers?"
He was asking for the list of suspects, those who had the credentials to initiate a wire transfer.
JM nodded Ansel's way. The ball was punted.
"The list consists of me, JM, Louis, and Nedra with JM's countersign for checks, no access for wires. Not for her."
"So that leaves three of you. Not much of a field," Stan Morehouse III stated.
Stan was their mandatory African-American civil rights litigator. He had more black clients than Johnny Cochran and possessed the phone numbers for all members of the Congressional Black Caucus. Ansel sized him up. His guess was Stan was smarter than the rest of them, but Stan had never been known to lord that over anyone. Among their firm he was quick to
defer and always willing to take the losing end of an argument if it meant keeping a friend--especially a white one. Ansel was aware that black people, even in the age of enlightenment, most often took that higher road of letting the lesser mind win, were it white, out of necessity. It was a damn poor commentary on race relations in the U.S., but there you were. It was what it was. You didn't make the rules. You could only hope to make them more fair and that, in Ansel's view, would come only when a thousand years of intermarriage produced the same mahogany hue among all men. Ansel's take.
Ansel look at Stan and nodded. "That's right. That leaves three of us."
Stan continued. "And what do the network administrators tell us about which of you logged in to make the wire? We all know those credentials events are stored on the servers. The transaction has an electronic signature attached." He said "electronic" with a full emphasis on each syllable, much like the witnesses of Alexander Graham Bell's era might have said it: E-LEC-TRON-IC.
Stan swallowed and said it again, but differently, the cross-examiner coming back around for a second bite. "And the electronic signature belonged to which of you?"
JM and Ansel exchanged a look. A key clue overlooked. Maybe they were too rattled. Or maybe one of them had just avoided it. Thank you, Stan, for that.
Ansel unstuck his hands from his trouser seams. He should depart the place, and now. Because any minute, when the FBI obtained the name of the login, that person could very well be taken into federal custody and confined to a six-by-nine in the Federal Detention Center while the evidentiary egg-gathering proceeded.
"We're going to keep it short, this morning," Ansel abruptly announced, totally ignoring Stan's perfect question. “JM and I are needed back at the ranch to assist the investigation."
The Mental Case (Thaddeus Murfee Legal Thriller Series Book 6) Page 3
