“It’s a personal matter between Judge Holland, Alex Bauer, and myself. Mr. Bauer suggested that I call.”
“Just a moment, please.”
Waiting for her to come back on the phone, I figure there is about a two percent chance that Holland will get on the phone. Maybe less.
“I’m afraid Judge Holland is unable to speak with you, Mr. Carpenter.”
“Unable or unwilling?”
“I assume you are aware that Judge Holland is currently presiding over a case in which Mr. Bauer is an interested party?”
“I am.”
“Then you should know that all contact must go through the court. Good day, sir.”
As my mother would have said about my attempt to reach Holland, “Nothing ventured, nothing gained.” I always found the saying annoying, but it crystallized a clear difference in attitude between us. To her, the “ventured” part was important; while all I ever really cared about was whether something was “gained.”
With nothing better to do, I plunge into as much information as I have been able to accumulate about the case before Judge Holland in Delaware.
Financial litigation has never been a specialty or interest of mine, and this case, if nothing else, confirms that attitude. It is deadly dry, lawyers arguing in arcane legalese about issues which do not seem terribly consequential. Regardless of which company prevails, the world will not be a better, or even appreciably different, place.
But there is something in here, something that relates to Noah Galloway’s trial, and to the murder of twenty-six people six years ago. At least I hope that’s true, because it’s the only hope I have.
The phone rings, and it’s Pete, telling me that he has the list of missing persons from that period six years ago. It’s a very, very incomplete list, he says. “If it helps you, I’ll be surprised.”
I ask him to e-mail it to me, and then I call Sam and tell him I’m forwarding it to him. It’s Saturday, probably a day that most of his gang rests, but he promises to get right on it.
He asks what I specifically want. “Actually, hold off until I get you the rest of the names,” I say, thinking of the list that Cindy Spodek is working on. “Meanwhile, any other connections between people on the cell phone call list?”
“No, but we’re still rechecking it,” he says, and I let him off the phone to do his work.
I take Tara and Bailey for a walk, and when we get back, Laurie comes out on the porch to greet us. “I reached Bauer,” she says.
“And?”
“He did a one-eighty; now he wants to talk. He says he has a lot he needs to say.”
“Needs?” I ask.
She nods. “Needs. It sounds like he wants to get something off his chest.”
“Sounds good to me. Does he have a specific time and place for the unburdening?”
“He’s going to call me back; he said this must be done in absolute secrecy. Made me promise that I would never reveal that he talked to us.”
“Did you promise?” I ask.
“Of course.”
“I’m glad I didn’t.”
“Andy…”
“Let’s see what he says, okay? Maybe he’ll admit to setting the fire. Either way, let’s see if keeping your promise justifies Noah spending the rest of his life in jail.”
“Carpenter called me. He said he was calling on behalf of Alex Bauer.”
If it wasn’t panic in Judge Holland’s voice, it was something close to it.
“Did you talk to him?” Loney asked.
“Of course not. I had my assistant tell him it was inappropriate for me to do so, because of Bauer’s involvement in the case.”
“Good,” Loney said. “You handled it perfectly.”
“You don’t seem to understand; he obviously knows what’s going on. You think he’s going to stop because my assistant said I wouldn’t come to the phone?”
Loney was tired of babysitting these people. They were all leaders in their fields, accomplished people, yet they turned to mush when the going got difficult. “He’s not calling you because he knows… he’s calling you because he’s trying to find out.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because if he knew what was happening, you wouldn’t be the judge that he would go to,” Loney said. “His focus is on his trial, and getting Galloway off.”
“Galloway should get off.”
“Get a grip, Judge. Your part in this is almost over.”
“It doesn’t feel like that. It feels like it will never end,” Holland said.
“Have you finished writing your opinion?”
“Almost.”
“Good. Issue the damn thing already and you’re done.”
“Why does Bauer want the company?” Holland asked. He’d been curious about that since the suit was filed; Milgram was a struggling company, and the legal process had been steadily draining them, to the point where they would not be able to afford a lengthy appeal if they lost.
The wind turbines were promising, but overall the company should not be a ripe takeover target. In fact, noticeably absent these last few years was any other bidder for it; Bauer was the only one.
“There is no need for you to know, and you don’t want to know,” Loney said. “Your sole function here is to make sure he gets it.”
“I’ll post the opinion to the court Web site on Tuesday, after which I will never hear from you again.”
Loney laughs off the threat. “Hey, you called me this time.”
“I mean it, Loney. This is the end of it. I swear, I’ll tell everything I know and go to jail. I might even be able to live with myself.”
“You going to take your wife and child with you? Maybe get adjoining cells?” The threat was very clear, and Loney had made it multiple times before. If Holland did not do as he was told, exposure of his wrongdoing would not be the only retribution.
So for the moment Holland did the only thing he could do. He hung up.
“There’s a motel on Route 46 in Clifton called the Parker Court. I’m in room 216.”
Bauer is saying that to Laurie, and I’m listening on the speakerphone. He has driven up from his home in Cherry Hill, from where he commutes to his office in Philadelphia.
I’ve passed by the motel he’s talking about many times; it is not where you’d expect to find the CEO of a big corporation, unless he was meeting a hooker.
“When should we be there?” Laurie asks.
“We?”
“Andy Carpenter and myself.”
“Oh,” he says, and then is silent for a few moments while he considers that this secret is expanding. “That’ll be okay. Now would be good; the less time I spend in this dump the better.”
“We’ll be there in thirty minutes,” Laurie says, and hangs up.
She starts heading for the car, and I say, “Might make sense to bring Marcus. We don’t know whose side this guy is on.”
She shakes her head. “No time, and I don’t want to scare him off. I’ve got a gun, in case you decide we should shoot him.”
We are at the motel with five minutes to spare. It’s one of those places where you enter the individual rooms from the outside, so we head for 216 and knock. Alex Bauer opens the door in ten seconds.
“I’m Alex Bauer,” he says. “Come in.”
We enter the drab, nondescript room and introduce ourselves, and he says, “Sorry I can’t offer you anything. I would have ordered from room service, if not for the fact that they don’t have any.”
“No problem,” Laurie says.
