“He was found guilty in a court of law.”
“Yeah, sure,” Kelly said contemptuously. “Probably the first time the courts ever made a mistake.”
“What was the evidence against him?”
Kelly’s eyes shifted.
“Well?” Steve prompted.
“Well, he was in charge of the books. And …”
“And?”
Kelly took a breath. “Well, my brother is weak. He likes to gamble.”
“Oh?”
Her eyes blazed. “See? You made up your mind already. Just like the jury did. Which wasn’t fair. All right, I’ll tell you. Herb liked to play the ponies. It was a weakness with him. He tried to control it, but it was always there.
“Anyway, he was in charge of the books, so if he was a little short until payday, he’d sometimes dip into the petty cash to cover his losses. It wasn’t that much, and he always made good by Friday when he got paid.”
“That came out in court?”
“Yeah. He got arrested on Thursday. He was short, as usual. A couple of hundred bucks. Anyway, there’d have been no trouble the next day, but as it was he was screwed.”
“He didn’t go to jail for two hundred bucks.”
“No. That was the tip of the iceberg. It was over a hundred thousand.”
“How was that possible?”
“Stocks had been manipulated, transactions misreported, entries carried on the books that weren’t accurate. Over a hundred grand of investors’ money had been siphoned out of the company.”
“And the bookkeeper in charge had a history of playing the ponies and dipping into petty cash to cover his losses?”
She took a breath. “Yes. I know it sounds bad. Hell, the jury didn’t have to hear any more than that. They brought in a verdict without even thinking. But the fact is, he didn’t do it.”
Steve held up his hand. “Fine. Let’s not argue the merits of the case anymore. What has this got to do with you working for Castleton?”
She looked at him. “Isn’t it obvious? To get my brother out of jail. To find something to prove he didn’t do it.”
Steve looked at her skeptically. “Wasn’t that a hell of a long shot.”
“Not at all. I knew exactly what I was looking for.”
“What was that?”
“Well, you gotta understand. The way Herb tells it, he knew something was fishy with the books long before this happened. It was all somewhat complicated, he couldn’t be sure what was going on, but the way the entries were coming in, he had a suspicion everything wasn’t entirely kosher.”
“So?”
“So, about two weeks before his arrest he wrote a memo to Milton Castleton, telling him this.”
“Was that brought out in the trial?”
“Yes and no. Herb claimed he wrote the memo. His lawyer subpoenaed Castleton’s files. Of course, it wasn’t there.”
“I see.”
“No, you don’t. They were making a case against him. If the memo had been in the files, they’d have destroyed it.”
“Did his lawyer point that out?”
Kelly sighed. “In a halfhearted way. He was just going through the motions. Look, I have to be honest with you. The way Herb tells it, his lawyer thought he was guilty too.”
“Yeah, fine,” Steve said. “But what’s the point? Of you working there, I mean? If the memo was destroyed, what good was it gonna do?”
“That’s the thing,” Kelly said. “Herb remembered something. He hadn’t during the trial. Probably because his lawyer was a piece of shit and didn’t believe in him to begin with. But I talked to Herb. Drew him out. I know how to do it. And I got something.”
“What’s that?”
“He faxed it.”
“What?”
“The memo. He faxed the memo.”
“To whom.”
“Milton Castleton. Look, you gotta understand the setup. This was two years ago. Milton Castleton was still head of the company then. He hadn’t stepped down yet. He was still running things.
“But he was sick. His health was bad. I don’t know what he’s got, no one seems to know, he’s real quiet about it. But the last year before he stepped down, when his health got bad, he stopped going into the office. He ran things from his apartment on Fifth Avenue. Had his office set up there.
“Well, fax machines were the new craze, and of course Castleton had one, to get reports directly from the company. Herb remembers he faxed the memo to him.”
“What difference does that make?”
“It’s recorded. There’s a record. See, Castleton Industries is all computerized. The latest state-of-the-art equipment. Very sophisticated. We’re not talking a desktop computer here. Castleton’s got a setup in his office like they got in the Pentagon. You could run an army with it.
“And it’s tied into everything. Including the fax system. When a fax comes through, it’s automatically copied.”
“How do you know all this?”
“I’m not just a typist. Back in California-when I was supporting the schmuck-I was working as a computer programmer.”
Steve’s eyes widened. “So that’s why you took the job.”
“Of course. See, after I pumped Herb for everything he could give me, I knew what I had to do. I went out and investigated Castleton Industries. I was looking for some way to get a job, to get in.
“I managed to make friends with one of the secretaries there. What she told me wasn’t that promising. The only thing I’d be able to get would be in the typing pool, the girls in the pool wouldn’t have access to anything. It’d be a hell of a long shot. Still, it was better than nothing.”
Kelly lowered her eyes. “Then she told me something else. She’d heard rumors about Milton Castleton. His memoirs, the whole bit. She said he advertised in the
Kelly shook her head. “Well, it was so bizarre I couldn’t believe it. Or I didn’t want to believe it. But I kept watching the
“Well, I had to think about it, but not too long. It certainly wouldn’t hurt to go to the interview.
“I called the number. Phil Danby answered. I gave him the name Kelly Blaine. I rattled off a list of qualifications. Some I made up, some were actually mine.
“He asked my age. When I told him, he said fine and set up an interview.
“It was at Castleton’s apartment. The morning I went, there were four other women there. Two of them were rather plain. Danby took them first. He was the one conducting the interviews. Castleton was not in evidence. Anyway, we were all sitting in a drawing room. Danby came in, smiled at one of the women, led her off. Was back two minutes later to get the other.
I doubt if he even took them into the office. Just told them in the hallway they weren’t suitable and sent them home. Anyway, they never came back.
“The next person he took was me. He led me to the office-the one where I worked-and explained the situation. It was just like the secretary said. There was a window in the wall with a one-way glass to Castleton’s office, he was eccentric and liked his secretaries to work nude, for which he paid a hundred bucks an hour, and if I had any problem with this there were no hard feelings and he was sorry he’d wasted my time, but did I want to
