But Phyllis was pretty smart, and she suggested, “What about before your bargain?”
“Good question.”
“Then answer it.”
Meany shook his head and said, “You lousy, lying son of a bitch.”
Phyllis looked impatient, and said, “Drummond, we must know what you did, how much you exposed. For Godsakes, we have people inside this syndicate. We have to know whether it’s time to get them out and collapse this thing. We have to know whether you’ve caused us a huge disaster.”
“I understand your needs. But do you understand my needs?”
“I don’t care about that.”
“I do.”
We stood there for a moment, frozen, watching each other.
Phyllis said, “What are you proposing?”
“A deal. Your word there’ll be no legal problems, and I’ll tell you everything.” I added, “I broke no laws. But if you decide otherwise, prosecute me.”
George said to his CIA counterparts, “No deal. Absolutely not.” I think George was carrying a grudge, incidentally.
Phyllis replied, “What’s your argument against it, George?”
He faced her and said, “This guy could be an accessory to murder. No deals.” After a moment of further thought, he mentioned, “And jurisdiction of this matter resides with the Bureau, not the Agency. Murder is a domestic crime and the decision of whether to prosecute rests with me.”
She said, “Then what do you propose?”
“He’ll break when I throw his ass in a cell and charge him.”
I said, “Charge me with what, George? I’ve got witnesses. Tell him, Jack.” For good measure, I added, “And there’s a bit of a time crunch, if I’m not mistaken. Arrest me, and I’ll keep my mouth shut till hell freezes over.”
Poor Jack MacGruder clearly did not enjoy being put on the hot seat. He did admit, however, “It’s true. He was watched and tagged this whole time.”
Well, we’d reached a stalemate, and a moment passed, then Phyllis said, “If you’ll excuse me, I need a moment to discuss this with Director Peterson.” She was really classy and well-mannered, that lady. And she went into the bathroom and closed the door, where I guess she had one of those souped-up Batphones in her purse that she used to have a secure and confidential chat with her boss. This lasted a few minutes, as you might imagine. And I guess Peterson had to talk with Meany’s boss, who maybe needed to talk to the Attorney General, and around and around it goes. MacGruder, Meany, and I stood around with our thumbs up our butts, staring at walls, and so on.
But finally Phyllis emerged, and after a moment, she said, “All right. There’ll be no problems, if you’re telling the truth. But if I find out you’re lying, or if you’re playing games…”
I said, “I wouldn’t dream of playing games.” But, as you might imagine, nobody in the room at the moment swallowed that. Anyway, I said, “Yesterday morning, right after the gunfight, the killer called me.”
“He called you?” Meany asked.
“Right. He was checking to see if I was still on his target matrix. So we talked.”
“About what?” Phyllis asked.
“What he was going to do to me, what I’d like to do to him, that kind of thing. But our conversation turned a little testy, and I suggested to him that I knew who sent him and whose asses he was sent to protect and why. Jason Morris and Hal Merriweather.”
There was a stunned silence for a moment.
Meany spoke first, and said, “My God, Drummond. You marked them for execution.”
Yes, I had. I definitely had. But I’d be really stupid to confirm that, so instead I informed them, “Merriweather was the syndicate’s inside guy.”
“Merriweather?” Phyllis asked. “How do you know that?”
“He was in charge of the firm’s information management systems, and was therefore authorized to mess around in the server. When he caught me sniffing around, he tried to set me up to be thrown out of the firm. He also slapped a firewall around Lisa’s electronic files to prevent intruders from seeing the connection between her, Julia, and Anne.”
“Go on.”
“Twice a day, he got server printouts that kept him informed of every case and client in the firm. It’s right there in their manuals-the instant you speak with a potential client, you’re required to notify the firm’s management committee through e-mail, so they know what the emerging opportunities are, and case teams can be formed. That’s how Merriweather learned who approached the firm for bankruptcy advice.”
Meany’s face had become incredulous, and he said, “Then a lot of people in that firm would know. Did it ever cross your mind, Drummond, that you might have just marked an innocent man to be killed?”
Phyllis, who really was very quick on the uptake, was apparently becoming just as annoyed with George’s malicious attitude as I was, and she informed him, “Don’t be an idiot. The syndicate knows who its inside man is. His death just confirms it.”
I nodded that this was so, because it obviously was so. But to further amplify her point, I added, “The irony is that the killer no doubt informed Merriweather that I fingered him and Morris, Merriweather informed the syndicate, and in so doing, he made himself expendable. He signed his own death warrant.” Phyllis nodded, and even smiled, struck, I think, by this turn of heavenly justice.
But Meany was by no means finished or defeated, and he said to me, “But Morris is a different story, Drummond. Isn’t he? The only suspicion we have on him was his possible implication in corporate graft. You gave him a death sentence.”
I said, “He set up the relationship with Grand Vistas.”
“You know this for a fact?”
“Yes. He was the guy who told Cy Berger to send Barry Bosworth to Italy for the contract.”
“That’s circumstantial and inconclusive.”
“No, George, it’s ironclad. Morris knew his company’s condition and turned to the devil for salvation. Open and shut.”
“That doesn’t justify a death sentence, does it?”
I could sense Phyllis studying my face throughout this little exchange. She said, “He’s right, Drummond.” She regarded me more closely and asked, “You have no proof about Morris, do you?”
“He set up the partnership.”
“Of course. But regarding the murders…”
“Look, he set this thing up, and-”
“And you gambled,” she suggested. “You assumed he had knowledge about the murders, so you pulled the trigger. Isn’t that correct?”
I wasn’t going to answer her. But, yes; right on the money. In the split second I had to decide which names to give the killer, I threw the dice and included Jason Morris. I was not sure Morris had been behind, or was even knowledgeable about, the murders. My instincts told me he was, and I went with them.
Everyone was looking at me now and trying to see what I was thinking. I had actually considered this issue a great deal over the past twenty-four hours. Agonized over it, really. I knew I could have, at any point, stopped the wheels I put in motion. I could have informed the CIA or Meany about my little plot, and they would have jumped through their asses and found some way to put up a wall of protection around Morris and Merriweather. But the man who plotted Lisa’s murder would’ve been spared.
Genghis Khan was once supposed to have advised, “Kill them all, and you know you get the guilty ones.” American law does not operate that way, nor should it, nor should individuals. The most basic tenet of American law is the presumption of innocence. The protection of innocents is sacrosanct and is what separates civilization from savages.
I had reasoned and rationalized that Morris was the grand architect of the crimes that had caused the deaths of innocents. At the least, his guilt was indirect, and that was enough. But it wasn’t enough. And so I had accepted the bald fact that I was going to spend the rest of my life knowing I might have sentenced an innocent-or, actually,
