Private Sector (31 page)

I flipped shut the notebook and stated, “Boy . . . I’m guaranteeing a lot, aren’t I?”

Barry and Jessica exchanged quick, anxious glances.

“Nothing to be nervous about,” Barry assured me, before he swiftly added, “sign it.”

“No.”

“No?” Barry’s smile disappeared. “God damn it, Drummond, do what you’re told.”

Jessica put a hand on his arm. “Drummond, what’s the fucking problem here?”

“I’m not sure there is a problem.” To her confused look, I added, “I haven’t even seen the audit results yet. It wasn’t completed before I left last night.”

“Oh. . . you want to see the final results?”

“Well, that’s what I’m assuring, aren’t I? It shouldn’t take long . . . maybe a day . . . maybe two.”

Jessica was nodding at me and looking sharply at Barry, like, Hey asshole, wasn’t it your bright idea to use this dunce for this job? Bang his balls together or whatever you need to do, but get the signature.
Now.

And Barry very smoothly said, “Jessica, could you excuse us a moment? My associate and I need to talk.”

“No fucking problem.”

Wrong, Jessica—big f-ing problem. Barry and I went together out into the hallway. There was a fair amount of foot traffic, so he pointed at the men’s room door and ordered, “Get your ass in there. Right now, Drummond.” We stepped inside, the door closed, Barry shoved me against a wall and said, “What the fuck’s going on here?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“The hell you don’t. Your issues at the firm have no business here.”

“My. . . Hey, word gets around, doesn’t it?”

“You’re on my team, idiot. Of course I was informed.”

“Did you have to be told?”

“What’s that mean?”

“What does it mean?”

“You lousy prick.” He pounded my chest with his right fist. “You’ll do what you’re told. You better not be trying to blackmail me, Drummond.”

I wasn’t. I was trying to
extort
him. But you can’t expect corporate lawyers to understand the fine distinctions of the criminal codes. I replied, “And if I am?”

He slugged my chest again and said, “You don’t want to fuck with me, you punk. I’ll—auugh!”

Well, Barry suddenly stopped talking. I suppose he was suddenly overcome by an abiding sense of shame and remorse for the way he’d been acting. Also, I think he noticed that my left hand was gripped tightly around his testicles.

I danced him backward until his butt was against the wall. Well, we then stared into each other’s eyes for a moment, adjusting, as it were, to the terrible predicament we found ourselves in. Just to be sure that Barry fully understood that predicament, I informed him, “They say it only takes forty pounds of pressure to rip ears and nuts off a body. You believe that?”

I received a frantic nod. Personally, I didn’t believe it. But what mattered was what he believed.

A quick jerk brought Barry up on his tippy-toes. “I should warn you I’ve done ears, no problems. But this nuts thing . . . it’s kind of confusing . . . I mean, I tried it once and I don’t know . . . I probably squeezed when I should’ve yanked . . . and, Jesus, they’re sort of like grapes, you know? Very soft.”

Barry’s mouth opened, and I said, “Shhh.”

Well, for once, he actually did shut up. Barry was being very reasonable. Maybe I had misjudged him after all.

I asked, “Did you insert those legal files in Lisa Morrow’s e-mail?”

He shook his head, but it’s important in these situations to be on the same wavelength, so I gave another hard tug. He babbled, “Ow, ow . . . I swear. . . I swear.”

It looked like an honest response. “Okay, Grand Vistas. What is it?”

“You don’t . . . I mean . . . please. . .”

“Do you think your voice will actually get higher?”

“It’s . . . it’s what I told you. It’s a holding company.”

“Who owns it?”

“I. . . I don’t know.”

Barry suddenly found himself another inch higher up on his tippy-toes. He’d better know how to levitate.

“I. . . I swear I don’t know. God, ow. . . it hurts. . . please don’t.”

“Is it a front? What?”

“No. . . it’s a. . . a real company. Like I tried to tell you, it’s . . . auggh . . . it’s a legal partnership.”

I had to contemplate that for a moment. Barry, I thought, was being as honest as he knew how to be. I mean, you could only expect so much from a guy like him. But I was also certain he was scared out of his wits. The fount of that fear, however, was the interesting question.

So I asked him, “What are you afraid of ?”

He studied my face, I think weighing which was worse— explaining to the Mrs. why there’d be no more tiny Barrys skipping around the suburbs, or exposing what he knew about Grand Vistas. Not a hard choice, in my view. But hey, that’s me.

“I don’t know who they are. I met with their lawyers and brought back the agreement. That’s what I was told to do . . . and look . . . that’s all I did.”

“Told by who?”

“By Cy. And Jason.”

“No due diligence?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I was assured they were okay.”

“What are you not telling me, Barry?”

“I, shit . . . I just, please, don’t . . . auughhh.”

Well, Barry somehow arched up another quarter inch, but I think he and I both knew we were down to the last millimeter.

“Ow. . . oh God, this hurts. . . ow, ow, ow. . .” Then he said, “All right . . . please. . . ow. . .”

So I let him down about two inches. He drew a few deep breaths, then blurted, “I swear, I don’t know who they are. Not people you want to fuck with, though.”

“Crooks? Spies? What?”

He was shaking his head. “I don’t know . . . something. We met in a secret location in Locarno, Italy. They came with guards.”

“Lots of rich assholes have private security.”

“Not like that, Drummond. These guards were tough bastards. They were different, you understand?”

I suspected I did understand. I asked, “Nationality?”

“I only spoke with their lawyers. One French, the other German. The meeting lasted less than thirty minutes. They gave me the contract and told me to get it signed. No changes, no negotiations.”

I released Barry’s gonads and he slumped immediately to the floor. He was rubbing his crotch, and you could tell Mrs. Bosworth wouldn’t have to fake any orgasms for the next few weeks. I walked to the basin and washed my hands. I said to Barry, “You will go out and inform Jessica that my concerns about the audit are reasonable and will be straightened out in a day or so. Understand?”

“You don’t tell me—”

I took a step back in his direction and he slapped his hands over his crotch. I added, “Tell Cy and Bronson I’m completely unreasonable. Explain that I’m very pissed off. Put on your lawyer’s hat and persuade them that I will not sign that audit if they take any action against me. Understand?”

He looked up at me. “You can’t . . . This whole deal could go down the drain.”

“Yes . . . it definitely could.”

“Don’t be an idiot. If we lose that contract for Morris, he’ll drop our firm. It’ll destroy us.”

“Good point.” I wiped my hands and added, “Be sure to explain that to Cy and Bronson also.”

I left him blubbering on the men’s room floor. I found Martha, got a copy of the audit, and departed.

Okay, yes, I had been very, very rough on Barry and his nuts. Sometimes I have no idea what gets into me. However, a string of ugly thoughts had begun dancing around inside my head. Right now, it was like one of those hyper-modernist, impressionist paintings with colors splashed everywhere, dripping down the canvas and running into one another.

But with a little elbow grease that picture would clarify.

CHAPTER THIRTY

A
DEFENSE COUNSEL PRACTICING CRIMINAL LAW OWES HIS FEALTY TO HIS client—open and shut. It matters not that most clients are guilty, even when you
know
they’re guilty. Unless the client wants to confess, it’s ethical, in fact orthodox, to pretend innocence and try to hinder, smear, and obfuscate the search for truth and justice.

Corporate law is the same—but not. Morris Networks was my client and thus was owed my service and loyalty. Within limits. But where that line of loyalty is drawn is a murky province.

As I previously explained, corporate lawyers can actually become party to a felony. Therefore, if, for instance, an associate
knows
a client is up to its knickers in illegal muck he is expected to tattle to a partner. The partner then approaches the client, cautions its executives to amend their bad ways, and if the client refuses, then the partner should terminate the business relationship and everybody goes along their merry way.

More ticklish is what happens when the associate merely
suspects
something’s amiss. The convenient thing, obviously, is to update your malpractice insurance and keep billing your ass off—actually
their
asses off, to get the possessive forms properly aligned. Investigating your own client isn’t anywhere in the legal canon. And, obviously, as lawyers, we’re expected to respect the attorney-client confidentiality to the bitter end.

This was the quandary gnawing at me as I drove away from the scotch-bottle tower of Morris Networks, my client, possible future employer, and partner of an international company that appeared shady—“appeared” being the operative verb.

Further complicating matters, I did not trust Barry, Sally, Cy, or Bronson. All four could be neck-deep in these shenanigans.

So. This was going to be tough. How to get to the bottom of it?

I needed someone I could really trust. Blood is thicker than water, as they say, and in fact, my parents had actually two children—the good-looking, lovable stud who is hung like a rhino, and my brother, John, a year older, a hell of a lot smarter, but, trust me on this very salient matter, shorter where short
really
matters.

If you’re interested, my father was a career officer who made it to colonel before he was leading his brigade on a sweep in Vietnam, dropped his map, bent over to pick it up, and a Vietnamese peasant with an ancient crossbow and a wicked sense of humor plunked one up his ass. Colonel Drummond, however, was a tough bird and survived, though his organic garbage disposal had to be reconfigured, requiring hourly trips to the potty, further requiring him to trade his Army green for a medical disability discharge. Literally, his career went to shit.

But back to John, he and my father had that special bond that often exists between stern, ambitious, hard-driving military fathers and their eldest sons. My father wanted to mold John into his finest soldier; John wanted to mold my father into the parent of an orphan. But what was a bad deal for John was a good deal for me, since I got to hide in his shadow.

It was like watching one of those Greek myths and you knew tragedy loomed on the horizon. We got used to the MPs dragging John home drunk, high, zoned out, a menace to public safety and himself. And of course, John came to a predictably bad end. He started an Internet company, cashed out at the height of the boom in 1999, banked a hundred and fifty million, and now lives in a huge punchbowl of a house overlooking some Pacific bay. If he’d only had a better childhood, who knows how he might’ve turned out.

We exchange Christmas cards. He sends me postcards from exotic places he knows I can’t afford to visit, and if I ever get married he’ll be my best man. Other than that our lives have taken their separate paths.

What John has that I lack—setting aside money, a big house, and professional success—is the ability to interpret a spreadsheet. I called him from the carphone, got his answering machine, and warned him a long fax was coming. I then pulled into a Kinko’s, employed a magic marker to darken out the name of Morris Networks, and faxed him the audit summary. Disclosing confidential corporate information to an outsider is a breach of ethics and law, but eradicating the company’s name was a step back in the right direction.

But back to the past: When John and I were kids we had what psychologists would term a virulent sibling rivalry. At young ages, these things are determined by who can pound the crap out of the other. I was stronger and quicker, but he was more cunning and deceitful. He won most of the time, but my victories hurt more. Brotherhood is very primeval and it’s a miracle any of us survive it. When you get older, you outgrow all that; not the rivalry, certainly, but how you measure victory. At this point in our lives, for instance, he was about one hundred and fifty million points ahead.

Anyway, I was seated in my apartment an hour later when my beloved brother called.

We got through the opening banter about Mom, Dad, his new Ferrari, the new waterfall in his swimming pool, and then he said, “Those were interesting spreadsheets you sent me. Morris Networks, right?”

“I can’t tell you.” I assured him, “But no, definitely not Morris Networks.”

He chuckled. “I know the company, Sean. I’ve got money in Morris.”

“Oh.”

He chuckled some more. “Actually, my broker dumped the last share fifteen minutes ago.”

“That bad?”

“Actually, the numbers look great.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“What you don’t see in the annual report, but you do see in an audit.”

“Meaning?”

“I can’t believe we have the same genes. Do I really need to explain this?” Well, he obviously did, so he continued, “Go to the bottom of the second page . . . put your right forefinger on the line that says operating profits.” I did, and that line said $42, 630, 323.00. He explained, “That’s what Morris made after expenses, write-offs, and a few other things you don’t even want to understand. Now page eighteen, go down to the twentieth line.”

I did that, too. He said, “Now put that same right forefinger on it. That’s what Morris booked as swaps last quarter. Eighty mil . . . see the significance?”

“Nope.”

“The swaps are keeping Morris Networks profitable and on target with its growth forecasts. Happened last year, too. Morris would’ve been in the red had it not booked three hundred mil in swaps.”

“I don’t get it.”