Jane McCoy opens the file on her desk:
“Jane, Mr. Benjamin’s here,” Harrick says. “In theconference room.”
They take a stroll down the hall.
“Hello, Mr. Benjamin,” she says when she enters theconference room. “Mr. Salters.”
Walter Benjamin is the director of governmental affairs,Midwest region, for Flanagan-Maxx Pharmaceuticals. Gerald Salters is his lawyer,an aging veteran of the criminal courts.
“Appreciate you coming back down,” she says. “You came inthrough the underground entrance?”
“Of course,” says Gerry Salters.
“Okay. Good.” McCoy opens a file folder. Her notes fromtheir last meeting were typed by an office assistant. A wonder, that the typistcould comprehend her lousy penmanship. “First, I’d like to go back over what weoriginally talked about. Then I’d like to cover something new.”
“If you have a specific question, my client can certainly answerit,” says Salters. “But I don’t see why we need to cover old ground.”
“Call it a favor,” she requests. You always learn at leastone new thing when someone tells a story a second time. Which is precisely whydefense attorneys don’t like to let their clients have more than oneconversation with law-enforcement types.
“That’s fine,” Benjamin says to his lawyer. TheFlanagan-Maxx executive is painfully thin, but not in a way that she wouldattribute to exercise. He doesn’t look fit. He looks ill, actually. But youdon’t see a lot of happy, healthy faces sitting across from you in this job.Not two years ago, she recalls putting the squeeze on an executive who wasborrowing a little here, a little there from some corporate accounts, whensuddenly he vomited all over the conference-room table. She ended up with noinformation from him that day except what he had eaten for breakfast.
Benjamin starts his narrative-hiring Sam Dillon to pass theDivalpro legislation, paying MAAHC to hire Mat, and the sudden switch of threevotes in the Senate that allowed it to pass.
“How did Mat Pagone prevail on Senators Strauss, Almundo,and Blake to change their minds? Agent McCoy, I have no personal knowledge ofthat. You think I have time to micro-manage like that? I’ve got seven statelegislatures I’m dealing with, I’ve got seven sets of statutory and regulatorycompliance issues to deal with. I don’t have time to ask those questions.”
“Understood,” she says, because she believes him.
“But then Sam calls me one day, January of this year. Couplemonths ago. About two months after veto session. He says he has some concernsabout what may have transpired in the Senate. He tells me, he’s hearingwhispers in the corridors of the capital. He says he heard Senator Blake talkingabout a trip to Sanibel Island, and he knows Mat took the same trip at the sametime. So now, Sam says, he’s thinking about those three new votes for our bill.Strauss. Almundo. Blake. He tells me, flat-out, what that concern is.” WalterBenjamin shrugs. “We didn’t know what to do. Neither of us. We’re not sure. Wedon’t have the power to subpoena or immunize people. We can ask, but howexactly do you do that? Approach a sitting senator who just voted for your billand accuse him of being on the take? We have to have a continuing relationshipwith these people. That’s political suicide.
“We asked Mat, did he bribe those senators? He said no. Werewe totally convinced? Maybe not. But I didn’t know. Sam didn’t know. What more,in God’s name, are we supposed to do? We have nothing but suspicions.”
“Okay, Mr. Benjamin,” McCoy prods. “Keep going.”
“So Mat comes to Sam, late January of this year. He’spanicked. He says federal agents want to talk to him. He says they’ve seizedhis bank records. They’re looking at money withdrawals Mat made over severalmonths. It looks bad. It smells. Sam says to Mat, come clean. Tell me whathappened. And that’s when Mat drops it on Sam.”
McCoy nods. This is her favorite part, or least favorite,depending on the perspective.
“Mat denies the whole thing, right? But he says it to Samhypothetically. Mat says to Sam, ‘If I were to have done something wrong, thesame could be said of you.’ He says to Sam, ‘If money were handed to SenatorStrauss, it wasn’t handed to him by me. It would have been handed to him byyou, Sam. So we’re in this together.’ ”
Benjamin sighs. “See, Strauss apparently had lunch at theMaritime Club with Sam and Mat, last-I guess it was October.”
“Right.”
“And that was after they played racquetball at the club. Samand Strauss. But before that, apparently, Mat saw Sam and handed him a bag. Agym bag. He told Sam it was Strauss’s clothes from another time they hadplayed-sweats, in a gym bag that Strauss had left in a locker. Turns out, Iguess, that gym bag had some money in it, too. Sam swears he never looked. I’msure if he had, he would have found some dirty clothes in there. But somewherein there was, I assume, about a hundred one-hundred-dollar bills. About tenthousand dollars.”
“So Sam unknowingly handed the money to Strauss,” McCoysays. “In the locker room before racquetball, before all three of them hadlunch.”
“Exactly,” Benjamin says. “And Sam’s no dummy. He gets it.Mat Pagone’s telling him, if he has any inclination to squeal, Sam will go downwith him.
“So Sam meets with me and tells me all about this. We don’tknow what to do. So he calls you guys, the FBI. You know he called you. Hewanted you to subpoena him before the grand jury.”
“Understood,” McCoy says. “But let’s back up. Back to whathappened after Sam confronted Mat, and Mat threatened Sam.”
Walter Benjamin frowns. McCoy, after hearing all this, wantsto focus on conversations between Benjamin and Sam Dillon.
“You’re not a target, Mr. Benjamin. You know that. Sam cameto see you, you said. Start with that.”
“Okay.” The executive sighs. “Sam comes to my office andtells me that his worst suspicions have been, more or less, confirmed. MatPagone all but admitted to bribing these senators and threatened Sam if hecooperated with the feds. Sam swore to me that he didn’t know what was in thatbag that he handed to Strauss. And I believed him. I’ll go to my gravebelieving that. Sam’s a trusting sort of guy. Yeah, he’s political, but-Mathands him a gym bag and says, ‘Strauss left this in the locker room, last timewe played,’ Sam’s going to believe Mat. He’s not going to assume there’s bribemoney in there.”
“I believe you, Mr. Benjamin. I do. Sam Dillon was a goodguy. What happened next? Next thing you remember, after meeting with Sam?”
McCoy sees Owen Harrick, in her peripheral vision, his penpoised. McCoy asked for Benjamin to repeat the entire story for cover; this isthe only part she needs to hear again.
“The next thing I remember?” Benjamin looks at his lawyer.“Like, going home or whatever?”
“Like,” she elaborates, “did you speak with anyone aboutthis conversation?”
“Not in any detail, no.”
“At all,” she insists.
“At-” Benjamin’s focus strays to the ceiling. “Well, right.I think I told you this before. The scientist who came
