Tarnished Image (11 page)

Once the door was shut he spoke. “Wind is picking up fast. The storm is on its way.”

“Will we be OK?” Maria asked.

“The windows are boarded, the doors shut. As long as we stay inside we should be fine.”

Angelina crossed the floor, reached up, and wrapped her arms around her father’s waist. Outside, the wind howled, moaned, and whistled around the corners of the house as if uttering an ominous threat.

T
HE
INTERVIEW
ROOM
WAS
A
TEN
-
BY
-
TWELVE
concrete-block chamber with a small, heavily scarred wood conference table. David sat at one end of that table and waited. He had been sitting alone in the room for nearly an hour, and his frustration was quickly compounding. That frustration was added to the fear, confusion, and anxiety that churned and bubbled in his stomach like an evil alchemist’s brew. He looked at the mirror—a two-way mirror he surmised—and wondered if he was being watched.

The trip from his office to the FBI building in Kearny Mesa took just over twenty minutes. Once inside he was patted down again and his handcuffs were removed. He was allowed to make a phone call, which he used to tell Ava where they had taken him, and shown into the interview room. There he had been read his Miranda rights again. The next hour passed with excruciating torpidity. No one waited with him. No one talked to him. He sat alone, his mind flooded with confused thoughts.

On the trip over, David had questioned Agent Hall repeatedly, but Hall was uncommunicative. David stood and began to pace the room. He knew that such behavior would signal his anxiety to anyone who might be observing him through the two-way mirror, but he did not care. He had a
right to be anxious. He had been arrested in his own office, in front of Timmy, and dragged through a horde of reporters. He was innocent of any wrongdoing, he knew that. Still he felt dirty, tarnished.

David rubbed his wrists where the handcuffs had been. He could still feel their cold, metallic grip. His mind whirled with images: pictures of Timmy’s tears, the faces of the reporters, the expression on Ava’s face. His frustration was quickly ripening into anger. He wanted to throw something, but there was nothing in the room except the table and the four chairs around its perimeter. And while throwing a chair might have some momentary gratification, it would not help his cause.

Focus, David
, he told himself.
Set the emotions aside and focus your thoughts. Use your brain. Clearly, there has been a mistake, and all this will be taken care of shortly.

His conversation with himself only mildly calmed him. No matter how many times he reassured himself that his arrest was little more than a police faux pas, he failed to be convincing enough.

The door, a gray metal slab, swung open, creaking as it rotated on its hinges. Agent Hall entered, followed by a man David didn’t recognize.

“Are you comfortable enough, Dr. O’Neal?” Hall asked.

“Not very,” David answered.

“I understand,” Hall said without sympathy. “You were kept waiting, but Mr. Overstreet insisted on being here during our interview.”

David turned to the man Hall had just mentioned. He was tall, with a solid build and black hair speckled gray. His eyes were a piercing green and reflected a keen intelligence. “May I ask who you are?” David inquired evenly.

“Certainly,” the man said extending his hand. “I’m Calvin Overstreet, your attorney.”

Reluctantly David took the man’s hand. It felt enormous and powerful. Everything about the man gave an impression of strength. “My attorney? I’m afraid we’ve never met.”

“We haven’t,” Calvin said, motioning to the chairs. The three men took seats, David at one end of the table, Hall at the other. Calvin sat at the side between them. He turned and faced David as if Hall weren’t even in the room. “Mr. Barringston called and asked me to represent you. I’ve had the privilege of providing legal counsel to him over the years.”

David cringed inwardly at the revelation that the elderly Archibald Barringston knew of the arrest. “I thought someone from our legal department might represent me.”

“Good people, one and all,” Calvin said with a broad smile. “But they are not criminal attorneys, and it appears you need someone experienced in criminal matters.”

“A good one,” Hall interjected.

Calvin turned and cast an unfaltering gaze at the FBI man. He then turned back to David. “Have you been asked any questions by Agent Hall or anyone else?”

“No. I told them in the car that I wanted an attorney present during any questioning.”

“Very prudent,” Calvin said with a nod. “Now, before we go another step, I need to know if you want me to represent you. That part needs to be official.”

“You say Mr. Barringston sent you?”

“Yes. Your aide, Ava, called him, and he immediately phoned me.”

David hesitated. He didn’t know this man, but he did know Archibald Barringston and trusted him completely.

“Let me tell you two more things, Dr. O’Neal,” Calvin said. “First, Mr. Barringston is paying all legal fees. You need to have no concern about that. Second, you need me. This is no small matter.”

The last phrase sounded ominous to David, and it hit him hard like an unexpected punch to the stomach. Could he be in that much trouble? David nodded silently, then uttered just one word, “Yes.”

“Very good,” Calvin said. “As your attorney, I now advise you to offer no information without my consent. You are to talk to no one about these matters. Not to friends, family, or coworkers. Any remarks you make, whether in a room like this or in casual conversation, can be used against you. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” David answered, feeling comforted that Calvin, who was showing himself to be aggressive, was there to help.

“Fine,” Calvin said. “Agent Hall wants to ask you some questions. I will let you know whether or not to answer them. Refusing to answer a question is not an admission of guilt; it is an exercise of your rights. Understood?”

“Yes,” David answered. “But I don’t even know what the charges are. They mentioned some nonsense about fraud, but that’s all.”

“Nonsense, huh?” Hall interjected. He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. “You’ve become a very popular man over the last few days, Dr. O’Neal. A great many people want to talk to you. In fact, there was quite a debate as to who would have the honor of arresting you.”

“What do you mean?” David said. A serious, determined expression crossed his face. He was quickly moving from confusion and concern to irritation. “Could you be less cryptic?”

“Was I being cryptic?” Hall asked innocently. “All right then, let’s get to it. We have sufficient evidence to believe that you have been involved in mail fraud in which money raised by Barringston Relief has been skimmed off and placed into an offshore bank account—”

“That’s ridiculous,” David objected loudly. “I’m paid a straight salary, and I don’t handle the books. I get a weekly report and that’s it. Not to mention I have only one bank account and one savings account, and they’re in this country.”

“We know about those accounts,” Hall responded, leaning forward over the table. “And so does the IRS and the inspectors at the postal service. We also know about the three accounts in an offshore bank in the Cayman Islands.”

“I have no accounts in the Cayman Islands,” David asserted.

“That’s not what the president of the Americas Bank says,” Hall responded. “According to our investigation thus far we have determined that you have sequestered close to thirty million dollars in those three accounts. That’s an awful lot of money, don’t you think?”

“Your investigation is flawed,” David retorted firmly. “I have no accounts outside this country.”

Hall held up a hand. “Wait, there’s more. The INS is interested in you too.”

“The Immigration and Naturalization Service has interest in my client?” Calvin asked calmly.

“Very much so,” Hall said with a grin that caused his mustache to bunch up under his nose. Turning to David, Hall said, “Have you ever heard of Cross-World Shipping?”

David looked at Calvin, who nodded. “Yes. They’re a South American shipping line that we contract to carry food
and medication for us. Barringston Relief has worked with them for several years. What about them?”

“On a tip,” Hall answered, “the Coast Guard boarded one of their ships two miles out of San Diego Bay. A search revealed nearly five hundred illegal immigrants in the hold of the ship. And not in very good condition, I might add. They were dehydrated, ill, and had been abused. The skipper of the ship had never been in trouble before and was most cooperative. He didn’t want to lose his master’s license, so he gushed forth with information. In that information your name came to the forefront. He gave a written statement in which he said you hired him to smuggle aliens into the U.S.”

“Absurd!” David shouted.

“Is it?” Hall asked. “We have the captain’s statement and statements from five hundred illegal immigrants from Guatemala, Honduras, and Belize. They each stated that they paid ten thousand dollars for passage to this country. They also said that the arrangements were made through a Barringston Relief outlet. In Honduras it was an orphanage; in Belize, a medical center.”

“I don’t believe it,” David said. Unconsciously he rubbed his temples. His head was beginning to hurt.

“We believe it, Dr. O’Neal,” Hall said. “The INS believes it, and the Coast Guard believes it too.”

“It’s not possible,” David said. “I’ve done nothing wrong.”

“Do you know how many times I’ve heard that?” Hall asked bitterly. “Don’t you think it would be better if you cooperated with us?”

David looked up and made eye contact with Hall. “Yes,” he said softly. “Yes, I do.”

Hall leaned back in his chair and smiled.

“I assume what you want is the truth,” David said.

Calvin started to speak, but David cut him off.

“All right, here’s the truth. Everything, and I mean everything, you’ve just told me is a lie. I have no accounts in an offshore bank. I have skimmed no money from contributions. I know nothing about the smuggling of illegal aliens into this country. That’s the truth, Agent Hall. It is the pure, unadulterated truth. I know it’s not what you want to hear, but that’s too bad. As God is my witness, I’m innocent of all those charges.”

The room filled with silence. David stared at Hall, waiting for a response. Calvin studied David. Hall, his jaw tight, his lips pursed, sat motionless. At first no one moved, no one spoke. The silence grew heavy.

Finally, Calvin cleared his throat and said, “If this concludes the questioning, I will be taking my client home.”

“No one is going anywhere,” Hall snapped. He stood, walked to the door, opened it, and said to someone in the hall, “OK, bring it in.”

Hall stepped back and held the door open as a man in a suit, another agent David assumed, pushed a metal cart into the room. The cart carried a television and a VCR. The man plugged the two electronic devices into a wall socket and left.

“What’s this?” Calvin asked.

Hall didn’t answer. Instead he picked up a black case, removed the videocassette it held, and plugged it into the player. After switching on the television, he pushed the play button and stepped to the side wall. He didn’t bother to watch the tape; instead, he stared unblinkingly at David.

He wants a reaction
, David thought and then determined to give him none.

The television screen came to life, first with a blizzard of white and black dots that was quickly replaced by a pure, unbroken blue. A second later an image appeared of three men sitting around a conference table in a room David did not recognize. The darkness outside the windows indicated that the event had occurred long after sunset.

The two men were strangers to David, yet he knew the third one very well. David was watching himself meet with two people he had never before seen. Blinking several times, David instinctively leaned forward to get a closer look at the impossible scene before him.

“Is there audio with this?” Calvin asked.

“No,” Hall admitted. “Just the pictures, but that doesn’t matter right now.”

“What’s the significance of this tape?” Calvin inquired.

“Do you see the man on the left of your client?” Hall asked. “That’s Luis Torres, captain of the
Emerald Green
, the cargo ship boarded by the Coast Guard. The man on Dr. O’Neal’s right is Arturo Lozano. INS tells me he heads an alien smuggling syndicate out of Mexico. But it gets better. Watch.”

The image played out on the screen. The unheard conversation at times seemed tense. Three minutes into the tape the David O’Neal on the video motioned to someone off screen. A second later a tall woman with flowing red hair entered the frame carrying a brown briefcase. She was supermodel beautiful and dressed in a clingy, shimmering blue evening gown. Setting the briefcase on the conference table she leaned over and gave David a long and passionate kiss. When she finally ended the embrace, she gently caressed
David’s cheek and whispered something in his ear. On the screen, David laughed and said something. The other two men joined in the laughter. Even without sound it was easy to tell the bawdy nature of the comment.

David watched himself open the briefcase and turn it first toward the man on the right, then toward the man on the left. The briefcase was filled with money. David closed the case, secured its latches and pushed it over to the man Hall had identified as Arturo Lozano. Lozano quickly opened the case again, pulled out several bills, and handed them to the woman. She smiled graciously and seductively. The three men laughed again.

Abruptly the tape ended.

“Pretty convincing, don’t you think, Dr. O’Neal?” Hall asked.

David was devastated. His head reeled; he felt nauseous. “It’s not real,” he said weakly. “That’s not me. It didn’t happen. I’ve never met those people before. I’ve certainly never met that woman before.”

“Not real?” Hall snapped. “Is that not your face we see on the tape? Of course it’s real, and you know it.”