The Adored (50 page)

As Barnes entered the door to the carriage house he said out loud, “Well, if CJ didn’t kill him, I wonder who did.” He laughed, out loud, and kept smiling as he felt his cell phone vibrating. He pulled the phone from his pocket as he closed the door.

“Hello,” he said not recognizing the phone number.

“Barnes, we got trouble.” It was Chunk DeLuna. He recognized the pitch of the voice with the Latin accent.

“What’s up,” Parker replied casually for he was not prepared for what came next.

“You’re my one call,” DeLuna said. “They caught me with the truck. The cops got the whole thing. I need you to get me out of this.”

Barnes did not quite believe what he was hearing. “Where are you, Chunk?”

“I’m in jail in Stamford,” came the reply

Barnes felt a rush, but it wasn’t the good kind of rush from cocaine. It was fear and anxiety combined. Fear they’d been caught, anxiety over not knowing what to do.

“What do you want me to do?” the question Barnes asked was not intended to help. It should have been phrased, “What do you expect me to do,” since Barnes intended to do nothing.

“Don’t play games with me, Barnes. Get me out of this.”

“How do you expect me to do that? Be serious, DeLuna. I can’t involve myself in this,” Barnes said

“You are involved,” came the reply from DeLuna and in rapid fire he added, “And if you don’t want to be sitting in the cell with me and my cellmate, you’d better get your ass down here with a lawyer and bail.”

“Have you called a lawyer?” Barnes asked feebly.

“Listen. They tell me I got one call. You’re it. I was at your old man’s party and so was everyone else who can fix this thing.”

“DeLuna, my father is running for Senate. We can’t do anything. Damn.”

“Let me put it this way,” DeLuna said raising his voice, “if I’m still here this time tomorrow, you will be also. OK, cop’s telling me my time’s up. Do it.” And DeLuna hung up.

Parker Barnes sat in a large lounge chair. He was in full panic. Surely he was going to jail, even worse was the thought that his father would cut him out of the family and out of his rightful fortune. He could hear Jonathan. The harang would go on for hours, for days. There was enough ammunition here for his father to crucify him—drugs, theft from the company, our reputation. “The Senate—you’ve destroyed my chance to help lead the country,” those would be his father’s words. It wouldn’t be the money or even the drugs that would push Jonathan Barnes over the edge. It would be the blow to his ego.

For the first time in two months, Parker felt the weakness returning. It left him powerless to act and think in the right way. He was starting to feel a craving. But first he needed to act. He needed help and he could not ignore this problem.

Chapter 69

Parker Barnes was a singularity. He was alone on a planet of seven billion people. Walt Whitman wrote, “We are large, we contain multitudes.” Parker Barnes, to all who knew him, seemed that way, large, containing multitudes. There were many ways to view him—as an athlete and sailor, friend and companion, student and professional, and son. But for all his roles in life, for all his seeming multitudes, Parker Barnes was alone, in himself.

Einstein wrote, “The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.” And therein lay Parker Barnes’ problem. At each level of treachery to himself, he created an infinitely more complex problem, and he utterly lacked the ability to find a path out. For as he got older, each problem got more severe. When he was sixteen, he began using drugs, and while he would control their use, by the second year of using he became reckless. He no longer could find his way back after that first year. When he was seventeen, he stabbed Augusto Santos to death and allowed Curtis Strong to go to prison for that crime these past seven years. The guilt that built from that initial “accident” grew daily, and all he had to do to be reminded of it was to look at the saddened face of his family’s housekeeper, CJ Strong’s mother. By the time Barnes was twenty-five, he was not the joyful young boy from the Brunswick School. Drugs and guilt now wracked him. Greed loomed and he seized upon it, misappropriating two million dollars from his father’s firm to invest in the Brunswick Fund, to keep up, to be one of the boys. Then he compounded that crime by taking several million more to invest in Rocket Solar in an insider trading scheme to pay back the first theft. But Barnes thought maybe his luck was turning as news of the Chinese orders was out and Rocket Solar was up sharply.

Parker Barnes was smart in the sense a master criminal is smart and develops contingency plans. Barnes did develop a contingency plan in case the tip from Lenny Crane did not work out, and he would need to replace the larger sum on the Rocket Solar investment. With Chunk DeLuna as an ally, partner and drug supplier, they came up with a plan to smuggle drugs into the US on Barnes’ yacht. He would do this just once, he promised himself. One time, a shipment large enough to repay all “loans” to the family firm would allow him to finally relieve the steady pressure he found himself under. It was a plan; if it failed, that would seal his fate, a plan so warped, so removed from the reality of the life he lived there would be no escaping the consequences. It was a plan only the singularity that was Parker Barnes could have developed.

Daniel Defoe wrote about Robinson Crusoe and his survival and his search for a way off the island. It had been three years since Crusoe had been marooned that he found himself with the idea of building a canoe to row to the land he saw in the distance. With his crude tools, he felled a cedar tree that was fully “five feet and ten inches in diameter at the stump” and for weeks he trimmed it, hollowed it out and shaped it. Only in the end did he realize he was one hundred yards from water and the land rose up between the canoe and the water.

It is a forlorn Crusoe who laments, “And now I saw, though too late, the folly of beginning a work before we count the cost, and before we judge rightly our own strength to go through with it.”

The folly of Parker Barnes was his inability to think through the consequences of his actions. The fog of drugs, the weight of guilt, the anxiety of theft, the urgency of greed, the disappointment of a father, and the disappointment in a father were a cancer on his conscience. The promise that Whitman saw in the human condition no longer existed in Barnes. The layers of life ill lived buried the promise of youth. Problems became so significant they could not be solved; holes closed behind impulses acted upon. Ultimately the individual was alone in his stew. This singularity, alone.

And now the captured Chunk DeLuna was making his one call from jail and it was to Parker Barnes. Barnes needed to talk with someone, to think this through. Lenny. If Barnes trusted one person in this world to help him, it would be Leonard Crane. The same Lenny Crane who two days earlier had entered into a plea bargain with Cyber-crimes investigator Jim Conroy and the SEC.

Barnes dialed Crane.

Leonard Crane’s cell phone rang at the apartment of the girl he was dating. They were sitting on a couch watching TV. The caller ID showed it to be Parker Barnes. The phone continued with the crazy, noisy ring tone of the song “Cotton Eyed Joe.”

Mr. Crane’s lady friend asked, “Lenny, aren’t you gonna answer that fuckin thing?”

“No, it can wait,” he replied and shut the phone down.

Crane had never not taken a call from Parker Barnes before. But he had also never sold him out before. As part of the plea bargain with Conroy, he had to state exactly what each person did that he came into contact with during the purchase of Rocket Solar shares. Lenny the Liar told the whole truth. He fully implicated Parker Barnes on insider trading charges. While Lenny the Liar told the whole truth, it wasn’t nothing but the truth. He also implicated Edward Wheelwright.

“Damn, Lenny, pick up,” Parker screamed at his cell phone. He snapped it shut. The craving was growing. He had to act now. He opened the phone again and hit two buttons—the number for Gideon Bridge.

“Gideon, I’m in trouble, and I need your help,” Parker said into the phone and the recorded message from Bridge.

It was 10 p.m. The craving was now overwhelming. He picked up his car keys and wallet and went out into the night.

Chapter 70

James Ford was allowed to accompany the transfer jailer who was charged with delivering Curtis Strong to Stamford Police HQ for a hearing on the following Monday. Ford and Lt Vito Boriello of the Stamford Police had succeeded in finding multiple pieces of evidence that they believed proved Strong had been wrongly convicted, the lead piece being John Walsh’s written statement that Billy Stevens confessed to him that it was he and not Curtis Strong who had killed Augusto Santos. They had arranged for a hearing that in all probability would result in the conviction being set aside, and then it would be up to the District Attorney to decide if the case against Mr. Strong was worth pursuing. Boriello had been persuasive enough that the DA had agreed that if a judge set the verdict aside, then he, the DA would not pursue a new trial. The DA agreed to be present Monday also.

They brought Strong in late Friday afternoon. He would remain in jail over the weekend until the hearing and until a determination was made by the judge. In the meantime, Ford and Boriello had arranged a series of meetings on Saturday, first with Mrs. Strong at 9 a.m.; then at 10 a.m. the public defender who would represent Strong would meet with his client. At 11 a.m. Strong and the public defender would be joined by Ford and Boriello to stitch together the order they would present evidence: evidence of a sham trial with incompetent representation of the defendant and evidence of a highly partial and conflicted judge and prosecutor. Evidence of a badgered jury would be presented with sworn statements from two jurors. Evidence would be presented in the sworn testimony of the defendant that he merely went to the aid of an injured man who was calling out for help.

Strong was taken to the same jail area he had originally been in seven long years ago. Ford and Boriello accompanied him after Boriello had accepted receipt of the prisoner from the Auburn Prison transfer jailer.

“You’ll get a good meal. Have a good night’s sleep, and we’ll see you in the morning,” Ford said.

“Thank you for all you have done for me, Mr. Ford. And you too, Lieutenant Boriello.”

“You’re welcome, and I am finally glad to meet you. I called your mother, and she will be here to see you at 9 a.m. We have a busy day, so sleep well. We’ll get you out of this mess soon,” Boriello said with a smile.

They shook hands, and the Stamford officer on jail duty opened the cell door and let Strong enter. He closed it after him and locked it.

“Richie, take good care of him tonight. He’s been through a lot,” Boriello said to Officer Richard Long.

“Sure thing, Lieutenant,” Long said, accompanying Ford and Boriello out of the small cell block.

Strong had a calm evening. He was brought dinner. He read from a novel he brought with him. At 9 p.m. he was asleep.

At 10 p.m. he was awakened. The jailer brought another prisoner in to this cell. The cell was large enough; on either side of the small room, there were bunk beds. Strong hoped that they would not be filling all four beds. He’d had a long eventful day and was looking forward to seeing his mother and his attorney.

This new prisoner was snarling; he had a wild look in his eyes.

When Officer Long took the cuffs off the new prisoner, he said to him, “Now behave yourself, Poncho. When your attorney gets here, I’ll come and get you.”

Strong did not get up from his bunk. He ignored the new man and rolled back over in the lower bunk on the left hand side of the room. The new prisoner sat on the lower bunk on the right hand side of the room. He was restless.

“What did they get you for,” he said in a clipped foreign accent that Strong believed was Spanish.

Strong did not answer and stayed facing the wall.

“Fuckers. Got me. Got my whole shipment.”

Obviously this was not going to work. Strong turned over and looked at the man. He looked like that little guy from the old TV show that shouted, “The plane, the plane.”

Chapter 71

The offices of the insider trading task force, made up of the NYPD Cyber Crimes Unit and the Enforcement Branch of the Securities and Exchange Commission, were spread over three floors in the building they were using. The building itself was mostly empty, seized by the government after the collapse of Lehman Brothers. It was a building Lehman had been renting for its back office operations. Lehman had been running behind on its rent for over a year; it was early in 2008, and the writing was on the wall for Lehman. It would die a death like Caesar, with all who surrounded him stabbing him and no one stepping in to stop it.

Five days after Lehman vacated the space, the city seized the building, and it sat vacant once again until the task force moved in. It was a narrow cement structure built around 1930. The building was designed for small professional offices; lawyers, accountants, and advertising firms—the size of many businesses in the 1930s before the growth of mega corporations that today not only took whole floors in skyscrapers but who took whole skyscrapers. The narrowness of the building meant you could not house large operations on any one floor. At this particular time, for this particular use, these size constraints would work well for Jim Conroy. The plan was simple—simultaneous arrests, simultaneous interviews—on separate floors where there was little chance of one crook seeing another crook. Warrants were issued on Thursday, and arrests were targeted for 10 a.m. Friday.