Three To Get Deadly (49 page)

"There, that should do it."

They gawked first at Pamela and then at the gaping hole in the cabinet and then back at Pamela.

"Richard bought the gun for me after someone broke in last month. He said it might come in handy. He was seldom wrong," she said as she returned the gun to its hiding place.

The cabinet was empty except for an unlabeled CD case. Mason opened it and found another DVD.

"Do you mind if we take this to the office, Mrs. Sullivan?" Sandra asked.

"Not at all. But I would appreciate it if you could do a small favor for me."

"You name it," Mason said.

"Have someone let me know what to do to collect Richard's death benefit. When he told me about it, I never imagined actually getting the money. He didn't seem like the kind of man who would ever die."

She said it with a wistful, sad tone laced with genuine surprise. Her mix of anger and grief since last Sunday made sense to Mason, as did her drinking. Sullivan may have been a son of a bitch, but he was her son of a bitch. It was the way a lot of dead people left their survivors.

Still, her request felt as if she'd just fired another round from her revolver. Mason wasn't ready to tell her that her husband had been diagnosed with HIV and didn't get the life insurance policy to pay for his buyout and that the firm didn't have the money to pay her. He would leave that happy task to Scott after Mason warned him about her gun. But he did tell Sandra on the drive back to the office.

She looked straight ahead as she muttered through clenched teeth, "That no-good son of a bitch!"

"Seems likely," Mason said.

The conference room had given birth to a landfill. It was littered with half-empty coffee cups, Coke cans, wadded paper, and pizza boxes. Phil and Maggie had matching sets of bags under their eyes. Diane Farrell looked fresh, rested, and completely in charge.

They had rolled in portable erasable whiteboards to keep track of O'Malley's projects. Each project was cross-referenced to the others so that assets, ownership, and attorneys could be visualized at a glance. Diane was busily entering data on the computer so they could sort information into endless combinations.

"Diane, what do you know about these? We found one in Sullivan's office here and the other one at his house."

Mason handed her the two DVD cases.

"You found Richard's porno flicks—big deal." She turned back to her computer monitor. "What do you want—a psychohistory of a man who watched dirty movies on his computer? Give it a rest. Besides, we've got a lot of work to do."

"In case you've forgotten, Diane, you work for me now, so unless you want to peddle your bullshit at another firm, cut the crap. Make sure there's nothing else on these DVDs."

Mason wasn't certain he could fire Diane, but he doubted that anyone would fight to keep her now that Sullivan was gone.

"The king is dead. Long live the king. Would now be soon enough?"

For her, it was a surrender speech.

"That would be lovely, Diane."

She inserted each disk into her computer and pulled up a list of the contents on the disks. The only document shown on each was the movie title.

"Satisfied, boss?"

"How do you know if the list identifies everything on the disks?"

"That's what it's for."

"Can you put something on the disk that wouldn't show up on the list, something that you'd have to have a special password to access?"

"I don't know. Programming is not one of my areas. I just run the software on the system."

"All right." Mason turned his attention to Phil and Maggie. "How far have you gotten?"

"Phil and I are about halfway through the files. We should have the raw information compiled in a couple of days. Then we have to figure out what we've gathered. Some trends are starting to appear," Maggie said.

She stopped, waiting for them to ask her to continue. It was the nature of too many young lawyers not to speak unless spoken to, especially if they'd been to the Sullivan school of intimidation.

"Well, Maggie—we're waiting," Sandra said.

"Right. The real estate deals handled through Quintex look clean. The property values are backed up by independent appraisals."

"So far, so good. What else?" Mason asked.

"It looks like O'Malley set up a bunch of phony loans from the bank. The companies are mostly shells with no assets. The money ended up in his pocket."

"We've known about that for a while. That's what St. John has been pressing him on. Have you found anything else?"

"This may not be a problem yet. There's another set of deals by Quintex that involve the purchase and leaseback of store fixtures. I never worked on those and we haven't sorted them out yet."

"Fine. Stay after it and, remember, nothing leaves this room. If St. John can tie Sullivan to those loans, he may get the keys to our office as part of the settlement we'll have to make with the government."

Mason dreaded the stack of mail and messages that he knew would be waiting on his desk. His secretary, Cindy, had divided them into piles marked
Junk
,
I already stalled them until next week
, and
Ignore these and die
. Fortunately, the last group was limited to five calls and three letters, which he spent the next two hours answering. He was starting to review the O'Malley billing memos when Scott Daniels walked in and closed the door.

"O'Malley isn't happy."

Scott's pained expression meant that if O'Malley wasn't happy, he wasn't happy.

"I didn't ask him to be happy—I just told him to tell me the truth. If he can't do that, we've got serious problems."

"He'll fire us if you don't ease up. He doesn't want you digging up his life. Back off a little, just until things calm down. Let me deal with O'Malley. We can't afford to lose him as a client."

Mason wondered where Scott stood in all of this. They had been close friends for thirteen years. They had stood up for each other in their weddings and Scott had made a place for him at the firm. But someone had tapped Scott's phone. That had to mean that Scott knew at least some of what had been going on even if he wasn't directly involved. Mason decided to tell him parts of what he knew and let Scott's reaction guide him.

"Kelly Holt says Sullivan was murdered. Someone tried to run me off the road on the way back from the lake. St. John is on us like white on rice. Pamela wants her million bucks. O'Malley is at the center of all of this. I'm not backing off."

"You're making a big mistake, Lou."

He slammed the door on the way out just in case Mason missed his punctuation.

Scott's reaction to Mason's catastrophe checklist was near the top of the week's bizarre turns. No questions or comments about the murder of his mentor or the attempt on Mason's life, no concern for his own vulnerability, no solutions for the financial crisis they faced over Pamela's demand for payment. Scott either didn't care, which Mason didn't want to believe, or trouble with O'Malley was the only thing that really frightened him.

The door was still vibrating when Harlan Christenson opened it, looking as if he'd just been sent to the principal's office.

"St. John has upped the ante. I'm being audited."

"Harlan, lawyers are audited all the time. I doubt if St. John has the clout to single you out. Just give the IRS agent your files and your accountant's phone number and don't worry about it."

"It's not that simple."

Harlan picked up a pencil on Mason's desk and rubbed it between his palms.

"How hard can it be? You give the IRS agent your tax returns and answer a few questions."

"If all they wanted was my tax returns, there wouldn't be an audit. I file my taxes on time every year. They've got the returns."

Mason sat up straight, appreciating the seriousness of Harlan's situation.

"Have they asked for any specific records?"

Harlan didn't answer. He gripped the pencil with both hands, studying it as if the answer lay in the dull lead tip.

"They want records of my income outside the firm and my business expenses."

"Is that a problem?"

Harlan snapped the pencil in half and dropped the pieces onto Mason's desk. A thin trickle of blood dripped from the fat of his palm. He pulled a sliver of pencil from his skin and wiped his hand on his trouser.

"Lou, I can't pass the audit. I've been underreporting income and overstating my expenses."

Harlan shrugged his shoulders, stuck his hands in his pockets, and glued his eyes to the floor. He was a child hoping for his father's promise that everything would be all right.

"Who else knows about your tax problems?"

"Scott. I tried talking to him but he just got angry and told me to get out. Said I should have known better."

His eyes began to water.

"When's your first meeting with the IRS agent?"

"Monday morning at ten."

"Would you like me to go with you?"

Mason offered because he thought Harlan couldn't bring himself to ask. Harlan wasn't strong, but he was proud. It was a curiously sympathetic combination. Harlan was in trouble, which meant that Mason couldn't keep his nose out of Harlan's business.

Harlan straightened a bit and shook off the suggestion. "When the day comes that I can't handle some snot-nosed IRS kid, I'd better hang it up."

"That snot-nosed kid can send you away for a long time, Harlan. We've lost one senior partner this week. That's my limit."

"Don't worry. The government will always make a deal for the right price," he said before leaving.

Mason wondered what Harlan had to offer that would be good enough to wipe the slate clean on income tax evasion. He couldn't decide whether the question or the answer bothered him more.

Sandra Connelly stopped by Mason's office at three o'clock Friday afternoon. "Eight o'clock okay? Dress casual," she said.

His blank look told her he'd forgotten about their dinner date. Recollection came an instant too late.

"You forgot, didn't you?"

He didn't expect the disappointment in her voice. Sandra wasn't someone who let people know they'd hurt her feelings. She just found ways to remind them that paybacks are hell.

"Jesus, Sandra, I'm sorry. This has been a rotten week. I wouldn't be good company anyway. Rain check till next weekend?"

"Sure, no problem. You don't know what you're missing, though."

Her wolfish smile gave Mason a pretty good idea, but fooling around with a partner, even one as tempting as Sandra, was a low-percentage move. And he couldn't understand her sudden interest, since he'd never shown up on her radar before.

The worst thing was that part of him didn't object to the image of being taken advantage of by her. Which reminded him of the one and only piece of advice Aunt Claire ever gave him about sex: Think with the big head, not the little head.

Mason finished reviewing the O'Malley billing memos, checking them against the master index of matters Diane Farrell had generated. The firm had been billing O'Malley between a million and a million and a half dollars a year for four of the last five years. In the last twelve months, the billings had jumped to two million.

The only problem was that half a million had been charged to two matters that didn't exist except in the billing memos. O'Malley had paid five hundred thousand dollars for work that had never been done. Nobody could have pulled that off without Angela knowing about it. Mason called her and told her to come to his office.

"The staff reads all these closed doors like smoke signals," she said as she closed his. "They figure something big must be happening. It's one of the best sources of office intelligence next to monitoring radio traffic and troop movements."

"Yeah, I know. But this has been a closed-door kind of week. I've gone over these billing memos, Angela, and I—"

"—figured out that O'Malley was paying for work we didn't do."

"Do you always—"

"—interrupt and complete other people's sentences? Sorry, it's a bad habit. I knew you'd figure it out when you asked for the billing memos. No point in hiding it."

"I appreciate your candor. Why didn't you blow the whistle on Sullivan?"

"It's none of my business what the firm charges its clients."

Mason shook his head. "Angela, I've only been here a few months, but the one thing I know is that there's nothing that goes on in this place that you don't consider your business. Try me again."

"You're giving me too much credit. I'm a bean counter. That's all. My job is to make sure clients pay their bills so we can pay ours and that there's money left at the end of the year for my Christmas bonus."

"So you knew that Sullivan was billing O'Malley half a million dollars for work we didn't do and never once asked him why?"

"I didn't say that. You did."

Mason let out an exasperated sigh. "Okay, Angela. Let's play cross-examination. Did you talk to Sullivan about the bills to O'Malley for work we didn't do?"

She smiled at his frustration. "Isn't it fun to use all that education, Lou? Sure, I talked to him. He was the boss."

"And what did he tell you?"

"To keep my mouth shut . . ." She let her answer dangle, teasing him with the part left unspoken.

"Or else what?"

She eased back in her chair. "Or else he would have me arrested." She said it with sudden resignation, her bravado exhausted. "Sullivan was blackmailing me. I had cash-flow problems last year and I took an interest-free loan from the firm without asking. He figured it out."

"And if you told the partners about O'Malley, he'd—"

"—go to the police about my loan. I even slept with him, thinking that he might decide to forget about it."