“What’s going on?” she asked.
“Put your briefcase down and relax,” Max said. “Shank will explain it.”
She tossed the briefcase at Max, who caught it just before it clipped him in the forehead. He gently placed it on a sofa of white Haitian cotton.
“Congratulations on getting your new job,” Shank said, his voice gravelly, like tires crunching loose stones.
“Thank you,” she said without enthusiasm. “What’s going on?”
Why the hell was Max spreading the news?
She’d seen Shank several times in the last few years but had never exchanged more than a casual greeting. A sullen, homely man, he stood perhaps an inch above six feet and had a Sergeant Joe Friday flattop that was so out-of-date it had come back into style. He looked to be between forty and fifty, there was no way to tell. Either he owned only one suit, or he had a closet full of the gray ones, which he always wore with a white shirt and a gray and black tie. She had only seen him once without the suit, in Max’s hotel suite in Paris at the annual air show. He was speaking on the phone in a combination of English and what sounded like Japanese and was wearing jeans and a polo shirt. Lisa had been surprised at the size of his arms. In a suit, he looked rangy, even underweight. In the snug, short-sleeve shirt, she could see thick wrists and powerful, cabled forearms. On one forearm was the tattoo of a knife slicing a heart down the middle.
“Right now, you’ve got the most important job of anybody at the airline,” Shank said, exhaling a plume of smoke, “and your enterprise falls under my jurisdiction.”
Lisa wheeled toward Max, the anger building. This was supposed to be between the two of them. Now it was an enterprise. A phrase came back to her from criminal law class: the RICO statute and “racketeering enterprises.” She pictured the FBI, the U.S. attorney task force, and a grand jury all probing into their little enterprise.
“Damnit, Max, I thought I was doing a personal favor for you. Now, it’s a corporate job? Who else knows? Did you put it in the shareholders’ report?”
“Calm down, Lisa,” Max said. “Let me fix you a drink.” He walked to the liquor cabinet and tossed some vodka over ice, pouring in bottled orange juice from the minirefrigerator below the wet bar. Then he poured another for himself, his hands trembling. He wouldn’t look her in the eyes.
“I don’t want a drink,” she said angrily. “I want you out of my apartment.”
Max shrugged, chugged one of the screwdrivers, and appropriated the other, carrying it to the sofa where he sat down, apparently content to sit out the dance.
“ Your apartment is paid for by Atlantica,” Shank said with a sneer, “so I tend to look at it as corporate property and you, Ms. Fremont, as a corporate asset.”
Lisa fought to control her rage. She had worked so hard to be independent, to be free of anyone else’s control, that she felt violated by the man’s presence in her home. “You can’t invade my privacy like this! You can’t take over my life.”
Shank didn’t move. He looked amused, watching her as a fleck of ash fell from his cigarette to the red and gold Persian rug.
Lisa wheeled toward Max, waiting for an explanation, for something that would make sense. After a long pull of the screwdriver, he said, “A matter as sensitive as this, I had to bring in Shank.”
“And who else?”
“The general counsel, but no one else.”
“You told Flaherty! Why not just take an ad in the Post?”
“Flaherty had to know. He’s the one who ran the projections. All the judges’ opinions were run through the computer and stacked up against the facts of our case. The vote came out four-four. Truitt’s new. He’s the swing vote. If we get him, we win. If we don’t, we lose.”
She walked toward the faux fireplace, turning away from both men to gather her thoughts. “Then you’re in a lot of trouble. Has Flaherty read Truitt’s law review articles, his speeches? Does he know Truitt was a card-carrying member of the ACLU when he was a young professor? That he did a stint in the Peace Corps? Does he know that every Thanksgiving he still dishes out sweet potatoes at a homeless shelter? In a dispute between corporate executives and widows and orphans, which way do you think he’ll vote?”
“Everyone has his price!’ Max said.
“Wrong! Everyone you know has his price, but you don’t know Sam Truitt. He really believes the stuff that’s carved into the marble, the basic decency of people, the rule of law. Trust me. He’s not the kind of man you can buy.”
Shank cleared his throat. “That’s exactly why you’re so important, Lisa.”
It was the first time he’d ever called her by her given name, and for a reason she couldn’t articulate, she didn’t like the familiarity.
“We’re counting on you to persuade your boss that Atlantica should win,” Shank said. “Simple as that.”
“When two hundred eighty-eight people die in a plane crash, it’s not so simple.” She was growing even more furious.
“The trial court ruled for us,” Shank said, smirking, “and so did the appeals court. It’s not Atlantica’s fault if some crazy Cubans bombed the plane.”
“Shank’s right,” Max piped up. “The trial judge found we weren’t negligent.”
“Then you have nothing to worry about, do you? You don’t need my help.”
Shank smiled, or at least, he bared his teeth, small and jagged like eroded slivers of rock. “Maybe not, but we like to think we’ve bought some insurance.”
“Sorry, I’m not for sale.”
Shank’s teeth vanished, and little vertical furrows appeared on his sloping forehead. “Max led me to believe you’d already been paid for.”
Damn him!
“Max,” she said, casting him a murderous glance, “is behind the times. Here’s a news flash. I didn’t go to law school to join some conspiracy that could put me in jail. I don’t work for Atlantica, and I don’t work for Max. As of today, I’m an employee of the United States government, and I’m not going to prostitute myself for you or anyone else.”
“What!” Max was staring at her, wide-eyed. “Lisa. Lisa, darling, I thought we had a deal.”
“There are no more deals, and there never will be. Now, you two are conspiring to obstruct justice, and I want you out of here.”
Shank’s laugh crackled like dead leaves underfoot. “Hey, Max. Call a cop. We’re obstructing justice here.”
Looking worried, not laughing at all, Max hurriedly stood and walked toward Lisa, who stiffened and folded her arms across her chest.
“Lisa, just hear Shank out,” Max said, agitated. “Please. For me.”
She’d never seen him this way, so nervous and unsure. There was i a shift of power going on here, but why?
Jesus, Max. You’re his boss. Why are you deferring to this glorified security guard?
“You’ve got five minutes,” she said, “and then the two of you can get out of here.”
Max nodded thankfully and returned to the sofa and his drink.
Shank ground out his cigarette in a crystal bowl on the coffee! table and said, “We need you to use whatever legal mumbo jumbo you can come up with to win the case.”
Mumbo jumbo? Oh, that’s clever. Try to fool the guy who’s maybe the smartest legal mind in America.
“But if you can’t persuade him with the law,” Shank continued, “we have a backup plan.”
“Really? And what would that be?”
His smile was a leer. “Max showed me your bedroom, all frilly and smelling of powders and perfumes.”
“Are you out of your mind?” Lisa exploded. “What do you think I am?”
“I don’t know,” Shank said. “What do you think you are?”
She was so astonished by his tone, by the insinuation, that she was momentarily speechless. Who was this thug to insult the boss’s girlfriend, to throw his weight around with Max standing right there? Jesus, she didn’t have to take this. Incensed, she turned to Max. “Are you going to let him talk to me like that?”
Max looked as if he might have a stroke. “Lisa, please-”
