“Courtney-”
“Please.”
Gage looked up at Faith. She nodded. Courtney needed an answer.
“If Peterson got the indictment he wants and Jack got convicted of everything, it would be kind of long…”
“How long is long?”
“Maybe about…” Gage hesitated, hating to say the words that would stab at Courtney’s heart. “Twenty years.”
Faith drew her close as Courtney’s eyes filled with tears.
“But I know he didn’t do it,” Courtney said, voice rising. “Jack doesn’t work for money. It’s all just play for him. You know that, Graham, don’t you?”
“I know that. So does everybody who knows Jack. But our first chance to prove it to everyone else may not be until the trial.”
Courtney lowered her head, then wiped her eyes with a tissue. Gage and Faith sat silently, not diminishing her by backtracking, and pretending the truth was otherwise.
After a minute, Courtney looked up. She took Gage and Faith’s hands. “Thank you.”
“This case has turned into a steamroller,” Gage said to Faith as they drove away an hour later. “Between Washington wanting a whipping boy for corporate crime and the class action lawyers looking to make a killing, I don’t think there’s a way to stop it.”
“What do you know about Simpson amp; Braunegg?” Faith asked.
“That they’re disgusting. It’s one of those firms that deceives itself into thinking it’s on the side of truth and justice, when it’s really just after the money-sometimes ruthlessly. It almost makes you respect gangsters like Matson’s pal Gravilov. At least they don’t pretend to be serving the public good.” Gage exhaled and shook his head as he stared at the car taillights in front of them. “Simpson amp; Braunegg will sue Jack whether they believe he was in the wrong or not. He has deep pockets and his firm has deep pockets.”
“Why didn’t they just name him now?”
“Because they don’t want a big fight over his files. They want him to believe that he’s just going to be a witness. They’re hoping he’ll give them everything if he thinks it’ll keep them from naming him.”
“Jack may be weak at the moment, but he’s not stupid.”
“And you know what else?” Gage wasn’t looking for an answer. “I think Peterson fed them the case.”
Faith’s head swung toward him. “But isn’t that un-ethical? U.S. Attorneys aren’t supposed to do that, are they?”
“No, they’re not. But we won’t be able to prove it and, even if we did, nobody’ll care. Not with Simpson amp; Braunegg on the courthouse steps showing off a bunch of retirees who lost everything.”
“Can you do anything?”
“I don’t know.” Gage felt the pressure of two clocks ticking. The criminal case and the civil suit, each counting down toward explosions that would rip Jack and Courtney’s lives apart. “There’s one thing I do know. I need to buy some time.”
CHAPTER 43
D errell Williams, an ex-FBI special agent who’d worked with Gage for almost a decade, intercepted him as he walked from his car toward the front steps of his building.
“Hey, Chief. I had a meeting over at the U.S. Attorney’s Office on your antitrust case. The good news is that they were so thrilled to have the thing handed to them in a package that they did a little more tongue wagging than they should’ve.”
“And the bad news?” Gage asked, eyes fixed on Williams.
“You better watch your back. The word is that Peterson is pretending to be playing the SatTek case like it’s a game of Sunday touch football, but inside his four walls he’s been screaming that you’re screwing up his indictment and that he’s going to hammer you.”
Gage nodded. “Thanks for the heads-up.”
Williams smiled. “That’s what you always say, and then you do whatever you were going to do anyway.” His smile faded. “But I’m not sure that’s a safe way to go this time. My old partner was at the meeting. On the way out, he whispered that Peterson asked him whether there’s a connection between you and a Hong Kong company called TD Limited. He thought it was chickenshit. But it sounds to me like Peterson is following your tracks, trying to get you into his crosshairs.”
Gage knew Williams was right. Peterson was looking for a way to make him duck and run. Toxic Disposal Limited was a front company he and Burch created to smuggle medical supplies through Pakistan by mislabeling them as contaminated equipment sent for recycling. It was the only way to keep it from being stolen and sold on the black market. The problem was that the scheme required first presenting fraudulent export documents to U.S. Customs, a felony that could cost Gage both his license and a year in federal prison.
“Sounds that way to me, too,” Gage said, “but I’m working on getting Peterson into mine. We’ll see who locks on first.”
Alex Z hustled to catch up with Gage as he walked down the hallway toward his office.
“You guessed it, boss,” Alex Z said, following him inside. “There’s a connection. The partner at Simpson amp; Braunegg who’s handling the SatTek suit was a frat brother of Peterson at Cal. Franklin Braunegg. And they’re golfing buddies now. They even belong to the same country club.”
Gage pointed at a chair in front of his desk. “How’d you find out?”
“Alumni bulletins. That kind of thing.” Alex Z sat, then flipped open a folder and turned it toward Gage. “I even found a photo of them holding up a trophy from a tournament. They play in what’s called the Winter Circuit.”
“Can you find out whether Peterson was ever-”
“Already did.” He slid over a spreadsheet. “I found three securities cases where Peterson was the prosecutor and Braunegg was the class action lawyer. A total of about fifty-five million dollars.”
Gage gazed out of the window while doing his own calculation. “If Braunegg’s firm got thirty to forty percent, that would be fifteen or twenty million. Even if they had a few million in expenses, they made out like bandits in slam-dunk cases.”
“Slam-dunk? I thought these cases are more complicated than that.”
Gage looked back at Alex Z. “If Peterson can prove a criminal case to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt, then even a second-or third-rate attorney can reach a preponderance of the evidence in a civil trial. It’s not that hard to tip the scales, especially when the defendants all have fraud convictions.”
Alex Z’s eyes widened. “You mean a guy driving on a suspended license facing a four-hundred-dollar fine can’t be convicted unless the jury finds him one hundred percent guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, but Mr. Burch could be wiped out based on fifty-one percent to forty-nine percent?”
“Pretty close.”
Alex Z threw up his hands. “That’s absurd.” He looked down, shaking his head, then up at Gage. “I see what Braunegg gets out of it, but what about Peterson?”
“Peterson can use Braunegg to take advantage of civil discovery rules that force defendants into depositions. The smart thing is for Jack to take the Fifth. He could do it secretly in front of the grand jury. But he knows if he did it in a deposition, Braunegg would leak it to the media.”
Gage cringed as he imagined the press stationed on the sidewalk in front of Burch’s house, and the humiliation inflicted by cameras riveted on his car window as he drove from his underground garage.
But there was something worse: “In a criminal case, a jury can’t hold it against you if you take the take the Fifth; in a civil trial they can. Braunegg would crush Jack with it.”
“But I thought they delayed-”
Gage shook his head. “There’s no way a judge would delay the civil case until the criminal trial is over. A lot of the shareholders are elderly. The court will want them to get their money back, not die waiting.”
