Assessing the news that Bert, my screwball colleague, had written millions of dollars of checks to a company that didn't exist, I felt some peculiar impulse to defend him, my own long-time alliance with the wayward.
'Maybe somebody asked him to do it,' I said.
'That's where
'Glyndora's searched three times for any paper trail,' Wash told me. 'Invoices. Sign-off memo from Jake.' Under our procedures, Bert was allowed to write checks on the 397 account only after receiving written approval from Jake Eiger, a former partner in this firm, who is now the General Counsel at TN.
'And?'
'There is none. We've even had Glyndora make inquiries upstairs with her counterparts at TN, the folks who handle the accounting on 397. Nothing to alarm them. You understand. 'We had some stray correspondence for this Litiplex. Blah, blah, blah.' Martin tried the same approach with one or two of the plaintiffs' lawyers in the hope they knew something we didn't. There's nothing,' he said, 'not a scrap. Nobody's ever heard the name.' Wash is more shifty than smart, but looking at him — his liver spots and wattles, his discreet twitches and the little bit of mouse gray hair he insists on pasting across his scalp — I detected the feckless expression he has when he is sincere. 'Not to mention,' he added, 'the endorsement.'
I'd missed that. Now I took note on the back of each check of the bilingual green block stamp of the International Bank of Finance in Pico Luan. Pico, a tiny Central American nation, a hangnail on the toe of the Yucatan, is a pristine haven of fugitive dollars and absolute bank secrecy. There were no signatures on the checks' backs, but what I took for the account number was inscribed on each beneath the stamp. A straight deposit.
'We tried calling the bank,' said Martin. 'I explained to the General Manager that we were merely trying to confirm that Robert Kamin had rights of deposit and withdrawal on account 476642. I received a very genial lecture on the bank secrecy laws in Pico in reply. Quite a clever fellow, this one. With that beautiful accent. Just the piece of work you'd expect in that business. Like trying to grab hold of smoke. I asked if he was familiar with Mr Kamin's name. Not a word I could quote, but I thought he was saying yes. God knows, he didn't say no.'
'And what's the total?' I thumbed the checks.
'Over five and a half million,' said Carl, who was always quickest with figures. 'Five point six and some change actually.'
With that, we were all briefly silent, awed by the gravity of the number and the daring of the feat. My partners writhed in further anguish, but on closer inspection of myself I found I was vibrating like a bell that had been struck. What a notion! Grabbing all that dough and hieing out for parts unknown. The wealth, the freedom, the chance to start anew! I wasn't sure if I was more shocked or thrilled.
'Has anybody talked to Jake?' That seemed like the next logical step to me, tell the client they'd been had.
'God, no,' said Wash. 'There's going to be hell to pay with TN. A partner in the firm lies to them, embezzles, steals. That's just the kind of thing that Krzysinski has been waiting for to leverage Jake. We will be dead. Dead,' he said.
There was a lot that was beyond me going on among the three of them — the Big Three, as they are called behind their backs — but I now thought I could see why I was here. Through most of my career at G amp; G I have been viewed as Jake Eiger's proxy. We grew up in the same neighborhood and Jake was also a third or fourth cousin of my former wife. Jake was the person responsible for bringing me to the firm when he left to become Senior Division Counsel of TransNational Air. That is a long tradition at Gage amp; Griswell. For over four decades now, our former partners have dominated the law department at TN, becoming rich on stock options and remembering their old colleagues with the opportunity for lavish billing. Jake, however, has been under pressure from Tad Krzysinski, TN's new CEO, to spread TN's legal business around, and Jake, unsure of his own ground with Krzysinski, has given troubling signs that he will respond. In fact, in my case he seems to have responded some time ago, although I can't tell you if that's because I divorced his cousin, used to drink my lunch, or remain afflicted by something you might politely call 'malaise'.
'We wanted your advice, Mack, on what we should do,' said Martin. 'Before we went any further.' He eyed me levelly beneath his furry brows. Behind him, out the broad windows of the thirty-seventh story of the TN Needle, Kindle County stretched — the shoebox shapes of Center City and, beyond that, upraised brick smokestack arms. On the west bank of the river, suburban wealth spread beneath the canopy of older trees. All of it was forlornly sullied by the dingy light of winter.
'Call the FBI,' I offered. 'I'll give you a name.' You'd expect a former city cop to recommend his own department, but I left some enemies on the Force. Reading my partners' looks, you could see that I'd missed their mood anyway. Law enforcement was not on the agenda.
Wash finally said it: 'Premature.'
I admitted that I didn't see the alternatives.
'This is a business,' said Carl, a credo from which all further premises devolved. Carl worships what he calls the market with an ardor which in former centuries was reserved for religion. He has a robust securities practice, making the markets work, and a jet-lagged life, zooming back here to Kindle County at least twice a week from DC, where he heads our Washington office.
'What we were thinking,' said Wash, who laid his elderly hands daintily on the dark table, 'some of us, anyway, is what if we could find Bert. Reason with him.' Wash swallowed. 'Get him to give the money back.'
I stared.
'Perhaps he's had second thoughts,' Wash insisted. 'Something like this — he's impulsive. He's been running now, hiding. He might like another chance.'
'Wash,' I said, 'he has five and a half million reasons to say no. And a little problem about going to jail.'
'Not if we don't tell,' said Wash. He swallowed again. His sallow face was wan with hope above his bow tie.
'You wouldn't tell TN?'
'If they didn't ask, no. And why should they? Really, if this works out, what is there to tell them? There was
'And what would you do with Bert? Just kiss and make up?'
Pagnucci answered. 'It's a negotiation,' he said simply, a deal maker who believes that willing parties always find a way.
I pondered, slowly recognizing how artfully this could be engineered. The usual false faces of the workplace, only more so. They'd let Bert come back here and say it was all a bad dream. Or withdraw from the practice for a while and pay him — severance, purchase of equity, call it what you'd like. A person feeling either frightened or remorseful might find these offers attractive. But I wasn't sure Bert would see this as much of a deal. In fact, for three smart guys they seemed to have little idea of what had happened. They'd been flipped the bird and were still acting as if it was sign language for the deaf.
Wash had gotten out his pipe, one of his many props, and was waving it around.
'Either we find some way to solve this problem — privately — or the doors here will be shut in a year. Six months. That's my firm prediction.' Wash's sense of peril no doubt was greatest for himself, since he had been the billing partner for TN for nearly three decades, his only client worth mentioning and the linchpin of what would otherwise have been a career as mediocre as mine. He has been an
‘I still don't understand how you think you'll find Bert.'
Pagnucci touched the checks. I didn't understand at first. He was tapping the endorsement. 'Pico?'
'Have you ever been down there?'
I'd first been to Pico when I was assigned to Financial Crimes more than twenty years ago — sky of blue, round and perfect as a cereal bowl above the Mayan Mountains; vast beaches long and lovely as a suntanned flank. Most of the folks around here are down there often. TN was one of the first to despoil the coast, erecting three spectacular resorts. But I hadn't taken the trip in years. I told Carl that.
'You think that's where Bert is?'
'That's where his money is,' Pagnucci said.
