No Time To Run (Legal Thriller Featuring Michael Collins, Book 1) (33 page)

Michael shook his head, coming back to the question.

“
I didn’t think much about it, other than it was big.”

“
$300 million.”

“
That’s right,” Michael said. “If it went to trial it would be in the billions, but $300 million was a fair settlement, given the risks.”

“
A lot of firms would kill to get a piece of that settlement.”

“
Other firms aren’t Wabash, Kramer & Moore,” Michael said. “We do the multimillion-dollar cases every day. We won’t even take a patent case that’s under $20 million.”

“
Were you in the
Maltow
settlement discussions?”

“
No.” Michael stomped his feet, trying to keep the circulation going in the cold. “I didn’t negotiate the thing. I was just a scribe.”

“
Meaning?”

“
It was in the midst of
Krane
,” Michael said. “You have to understand that compared to
Krane
,
Maltow
was a boring case. No press coverage. No magazine covers. My focus was on
Krane
, that’s all, and
Maltow
was just a case that I helped Lowell out on. I’d draft the memos or discovery, but Lowell had the client contact and he also took the lead with opposing counsel.”

“
Is that normal?”

“
Depends on the case. Has a lot to do with client preference.”

“
So you didn’t negotiate the settlement?”

“
No.” Michael shook his head. “But, why does that matter?”

Tammy decided to lay it out. What did she have to lose? She turned to Michael, looking at him until he turned to her. When she had his attention, Tammy spoke.

“
It was a fake. That’s why.”

CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

Michael looked at Tammy, but didn’t say a word. He had no doubt that she was telling the truth, but he couldn’t understand how. How could a lawsuit be faked? There was so much paper and correspondence, it didn’t make sense.

He felt the sudden need to move, get the blood that had thickened in the cold flowing again. Michael also wanted to make sure there wasn’t anybody watching him. His eyes scanned the still, dark silhouettes, watching for a shape to change.

“
Can you stay just for a few more minutes?”

“
It’s cold,” Tammy said.

“
I know.” Michael stood, then he pointed. “Belvedere Castle is down that path. I’ll follow behind. There’s a bench near the top of the hill.”

“
Do you think people are watching?”

Michael scanned the edges of the park.

“
You never know.”

Tammy got off of the bench and started walking. Michael waited, and then followed from behind. They walked along the trail that ran parallel to Fifth Avenue, toward the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Lit from the ground, the building’s stone facing glowed white, with the falling snow casting odd shadows on its face.

It took another ten minutes before the castle came into view. Belvedere Castle rose out of the gray Manhattan Schist, the second highest point in the park. The dark outline of the miniature castle overlooking the Great Lawn was simultaneously the most natural and unnatural structure in the park, and maybe in the whole city.

They followed the trail leading up to Vista Rock, but stopped short at a bench nestled in a grove of leafless London plane trees. Tammy sat down, and Michael sat down next to her.

“
I’m not convinced.” Michael was playing devil’s advocate.

“
That’s fine. You don’t have to believe me, but I’ve got enough to go forward with a formal inquiry to the board.”

“
Against Wabash, Kramer & Moore?”

“
That’s right.” Tammy left out the part about the case and files being taken from her, the reluctance of her supervisor to even consider it, and the high likelihood that she will be fired if anyone ever learns about her current meeting.

“
I talked to the defendants, and they don’t have any record of ever being served with that lawsuit and they have no record of paying any money toward any settlement fund. And the court also doesn’t have any record of the lawsuit, not one scrap of paper.”

Michael shook his head.

“
I must have filed a half-dozen motions in that case.”

“
Did you?” Tammy smiled. “Or did you just sign the motions and give them to your legal secretary to file?”

“
What about the letters that I’d get from opposing counsel, the briefs they would file?”

“
Faked. I have copies of some of the correspondence and motions, but the attorney for the Defendant told me he had never seen them before. He signed an affidavit stating he never worked on the
Maltow
case and I have a handwriting expert ready to testify that the signature of defense counsel is a forgery.”

Michael leaned back and tried to remember any personal meeting with opposing counsel or any specific conversation, any deposition, any court appearance, anything that would make the case real.

“
You were just a scribe,” Tammy said. “Lowell would file the papers for you, or rather pretend to file them. And Lowell would talk to opposing counsel, not you. He would make the appearances in court, and you sat behind the computer and did the work.”

“
Why?”

“
I don’t know,” Tammy said. “I think I know, but not for sure.”

“
All right,” Michael said. “Let’s hear it.”

“
Okay.” Tammy looked at Michael. Her confidence was growing, and for the first time someone was actually listening to her theories. She was being taken seriously.

Tammy took a breath, and then punctuated every word: “He missed the deadline.”

“
What?”

“
The lawsuit needed to be filed and served by a specific date, and Lowell Moore missed it. You had everything ready; and he just forgot or got busy or something. You said yourself it was crazy with the
Krane
investigation. I think he just made a mistake, a mistake that would have ended up costing the firm millions of dollars in a malpractice lawsuit and who knows about the firm’s reputation.”

Michael thought about it for awhile. The reputation of the firm, it was the one thing Lowell was interested in more than money itself. The firm was his legacy, his identity.

“
What does Lowell say?”

“
Lowell says you did it,” she said. “That’s how he’s going to testify tomorrow morning at the grand jury.”

“
How would I pay a $300 million settlement out of my own pocket?” Michael asked, but  before he finished, Michael already knew the answer. “Joshua Krane.”

Tammy nodded.

“
Agent Vatch loves that theory. Thinks you had a nervous breakdown after you missed the deadline and were too proud to admit it and take your lumps.”

“
So I murder my client and shoot myself in the face?”

“
No, Reginald Thompson shot you in the face.”

“
And this disgruntled shareholder and I are somehow partners.”

“
Agent Vatch thinks so,” Tammy said. “But Thompson wasn’t a shareholder. That’s just what was reported in the newspaper. He was former FBI, worked at a place called Guardian Security. Ever heard of it?”

Michael thought of the Professor.

“
Yeah, they do work for the firm.”

“
Right, so Agent Vatch seems to think you two cooked up the scheme together, and then you double-crossed Thompson somehow.”

“
I was bleeding to death in the car at the time. Doesn’t he get that? How could I double-cross the guy?”

“
Maybe you have another partner.” Tammy rubbed her hands together, trying to generate some warmth. “Anyway, I think it’s more likely that Lowell took the money out of the firm’s general account or maybe an escrow account for a larger client. Then he started shifting the money around, paying one settlement agreement with another to cover up the shortfall. All he has to do is show me the audited bank statements to prove I’m wrong.”

“
But he won’t.”

“
Correct,” Tammy said. “If the audited financials come back clean, then my theory falls apart.”

“
But if we get the financials and it shows that Lowell has been playing a shell game with the money, it’ll establish a motive for Lowell killing Krane and prove that I didn’t just take the money from Krane’s secret accounts to fund this settlement agreement in the
Maltow
case.”

“
Right,” Tammy said, “but nobody’s interested in my theory or investigating your old firm.”

“
You think I can get them?”

Tammy avoided the question.

“
A chance to clear your name, move on with your life.” Tammy looked up at the castle’s turret and stared. “But I can’t know about it or direct it. It’s something you just have to do.”

“
Is it something Rhonda Kirchner tried to do?”

There was a long silence, and then Tammy said what Michael already knew.

“
She tried.”

CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT

Kermit picked Michael up at a 24-hour Dunkin’ Donuts a block from Rockefeller Center.

“
How did it go?”

Michael climbed inside the Camry. “I don’t know.” He shut the door. “Good, I guess.”

“
Guess?” Kermit shifted the car into gear, and then merged into traffic. “I thought all the secrets were going to be revealed by the mistress of the night, no?”

“
I got the answers about
Maltow
, but. ...”

“
What?” Kermit looked at Michael, and then turned back to the road in front of them. “But what?”

“
I still need to visit another friend.”

“
It’s late,
mi amigo
,” Kermit said. “I gotta get some shut-eye.”

“
We have to do this tonight.”

“
They’re going to be asleep,” Kermit said. “You know? Sleep? That thing which we both need to have in order for our super-hero strength to be preserved for our daily fight for justice?”

“
We have to do this now.” Michael pointed at the approaching stoplight. “Take a left up here.”

Kermit mumbled to himself, and then signaled for a left.

“
Whoever it is, they ain’t going to be coming to the door this late at night. Fact of life.”

“
I know.” Michael organized the thoughts in his head. “I don’t want my good friend to come to the door. I don’t even want him to wake up, at least not right away.”

“
A surprise.”

“
Kind of,” Michael said. 

CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE

He turned on the small light sitting on the nightstand. Then Michael pulled a chair up next to the bed and sat down. He held Vatch’s loaded gun in his hand and stared down at the man who had been nothing but a thorn in his side whenever their paths seemed to cross.

It began when Michael took Vatch’s deposition as a first-year associate. Vatch could barely control himself as Michael tore apart every piece of evidence that Vatch had purportedly collected against Michael’s client. Michael poked holes in Vatch’s theories, challenged Vatch’s opinions with prior testimony he had given in other cases, and called Vatch out on every assumption.

Then there was Vatch’s partner. Michael had never met her, just read the obituary. But he knew that he had come close to death that night. The headline in the paper could have just as easily described four dead as it had described the three: Joshua Krane; his killer, Reginald Thompson; and the female agent that was killed in the confrontation with Thompson in a nearby alley.

But here they were. After listening to Tammy Duckstein, Michael needed to talk to him, hear what he was thinking, and this was the only way. The police were looking for him, and Michael couldn’t call and make an appointment.

He coughed and stamped his foot on the floor a few times.

Vatch didn’t move.

Michael coughed, again, and then prodded Vatch with his foot.

Vatch rolled onto his side, pulling the cover up and grumbled.