Pleading Guilty

obscurely. Tad stepped into his conference room to attend to whatever fire was burning there.

'And what were you thinking the IRS would say about the company and you, Jake?' Brushy asked this. Wash in the meantime was peeking up hopefully. He didn't understand everything, but Jake's last lines had buoyed him. He could see it coming. Undeserved salvation. Story of his life.

'Me? We haven't lied to them. We haven't filed any false documents. I haven't even seen Peter's return. God knows, I've got suspicions, but who can fathom the mind of Peter Neucriss? If the Service ever asked, I'd tell them the absolute truth. And I'm certainly not hiding any income. We want to declare it. It'll be on every return and financial statement. That's the point. Let's not pretend. We all know the story. Tad has been very concerned about the level of legal expenses. And quite pleased with the way 397 has turned out. This is two million, straight to the bottom line. We need that. All of us. The company and everyone here.'

'I still don't think you'd get a good-conduct medal from the Service,' said Martin to Jake.

'Or the SEC,' said Pagnucci.

'Or Tad,' Brushy said.

'Admittedly,' said Jake, 'admittedly. True on all counts. Krzysinski hates it. Hates it. Look at him. It's not his style.' Glancing darkly at the conference room door, Jake lowered his voice. 'But he'd love the result. So would the board. Friends, really. A tree falls in the forest. Is there sound if nobody hears? If I'm discreet, what does anyone know? Neucriss won't say a word. The IRS has no reason to audit an escrow account. We're showing a surplus, for crying out loud. That's why I told no one. I sent the memo to Bert, explaining that it was very sensitive. I left no records here. And I made my own hell by doing it that way. I'm the first to admit it. The very first. There was not a thing I could say when all of you began looking into the matter, except what I told Mack last week: If we just wait, it's going to turn out all right. When the disbursements were made, there would be no money missing. There'd be two million more than expected. Who would complain? Don't you see? I'm not a thief.' He looked around the room at each of us. He was being achingly sincere, wounded and vulnerable, that Jake-thing I'd probably last seen when he talked to me about the bar exam.

Krzysinski had returned for the latter stages of this performance, but he did not allow it to hinder him as he walked back to his desk. He addressed Jake without rancor. Tad was just himself — completely in charge. His job was deciding things. He was better at that than most people, the way certain guys can jump a foot over the rim. He roamed an empyrean landscape where he figured out what would happen with the perfect instantaneous reflex of a machine. He asked Jake where he wanted to go while we spoke.

'Home,' said Jake, and Tad nodded. That was a good idea, he said. Go home. Stay by the phone in case there were more questions. Jake departed, clearly at a loss for the right gesture of farewell. He reverted to his friendly little wave, a politician's touch that he'd absorbed from his father. It was, in the circumstances, sadly wrong. His departure, disappearance, seemed fateful and left a silent, troubled wake.

'So what do you think?' Tad asked after a moment. 'I wanted your opinions. You've all known him much longer than me.' He swiveled about in his big chair. This might well have been Tad's ultimate test — would G amp; G's lawyers shoot straight when the target was Jake? Maybe, in order to decide about us, he was matching our estimate against one he'd derived already. But I thought he was merely making smart use of the available resources.

'I believe him,' Wash said instantly. He had summoned himself to sound stalwart. He brought all that upper- crust nobility back into his face.

Krzysinski pursed up his mouth. 'Mathigoris thinks it's a cover story. Carefully planned. Carl shares that opinion.'

Carl nodded. As usual he wasn't saying much. But his ego would suffer no blows and he preferred the sinister to admitting he had failed in divining the situation. Now and then he had looked darkly at me, suspecting, I imagine, that I'd set him up. But I'd hung in there, meeting his eye meaningfully, and now he was not backing down.

Martin, when Tad addressed him, wasn't there, lost instead at mystical depths within himself. He'd still not fit the last stud into his shirt and he was tossing it up and down in one hand, in a mindless way, the jewel glinting as it turned in the air. He caught me eyeing him and gave me a wry look.

Tad asked the question again to gain his attention. What did he think?

'Oh,' Martin said. 'Do I think it would tickle Neucriss to see your General Counsel doing tricks for him like a streetwalker? Naturally. Neucriss's favorite pastime is proving that all human nature is as base as his. On the other hand, do I think Jake is capable of this deception on his own?' Martin smiled fleetingly at me, with his usual deep appreciation of irony. 'Quite,' he said. 'Quite. Frankly, Tad, I don't know what the hell is going on.'

Martin stood up in his half-secured formal wear and hoisted his striped trousers; he threw his stud in the air one more time. He was enormously cheerful. You wouldn't quite say he didn't give a damn. But you could tell he felt free of this life. Martin was on the road to being somebody else. He smiled again when he looked at Krzysinski.

'To me it sounds typically Jake.' That was Brushy. 'I hate to say it, but we all know Jake's consuming interests are corporate politics and what makes him look good. Frankly, Tad, I'm not even sure he realized he was breaking the law. I believe him.'

I wasn't certain I'd ever seen Brush in the same room with Krzysinski and I watched them for signs. But all that showed was Tad's native intensity. His searching look lingered with her even after she'd spoken.

‘I think I do too,' Tad stated finally. 'You see,' he said to Wash, picking up on some dispute from the boardroom, 'this is what I never liked. Always the easy way out. Well, he's gone today. That's given. Given. And I have to advise the board. But I need to know what to recommend. Everyone will prefer to avoid the scandal. I'd hate to turn him over to the authorities if 1 didn't have to. I guess you go on your gut. I just wish I had some experience. What's your view, Mack? You're the one who's done this for a living. What do you say? Does Jake look to you like a crook?'

We were back to where we had been last week. I had their attention. Everyone's. The fly ball once more was coming my way. I knew I could save Jake. I could tell one of my wonderful wild-ass stories. There were already six of them in my head. Say, for example, that Jake must have forgotten that long ago he had vaguely mentioned some shady deal with Neucriss which I'd told him to avoid. That would do it. Give me five minutes with a fax machine to rip off messages to Pico Luan to the Zuricher Kreditbank and Fortune Trust and I could even replenish Litiplex's secret account. I could do it all.

But I wasn't going that way. It's happened to all of us, especially as kids. The screen goes dark; the music fades and the speakers hiss; the sudden lights sting the eyes. How can it be over, the heart cries, when the film's still running inside me?

It turned out that it no longer mattered what had actually happened. I was set on my way — another direction. I felt that. Somewhere new. Somewhere else. Me and Martin. I'd made the decision. Brave new world. No turning around. If I wasn't headed for a better life, at least I was going toward something unexpressed in the life I presently had.

Looking back, I suppose it's sort of funny that we'd all been so willing to believe Jake was a thief. That slippery side of him must be out there for everybody to see — which was why we were still hanging in doubt. Isn't that life? Seeing it, hearing it — how much is there we don't really understand? Caught in our own foxholes, we never see the battlefield scene. I had wanted to believe they were no better than me. All of them. But we think what we do for a reason. Call me a fool or the victim of my own expectations. The one guy I wasn't wrong about was me.

'I believe him,' I said. And I did. Not because Jake was too honest to steal. God knows, he wasn't. It was the story he'd told. About Neucriss. It wouldn't come to Jake in one thousand years. Not in REM sleep. Tad had it right. Jake always took the easy way out. If Jake was going to need phony cover, he'd find some fall guy, some flunky. Somebody like me.

'I believe him,' I said again, then added, 'assuming there's no problem getting the money back.'

'No, no,' said Krzysinski. 'He and Mathigoris ran off an hour ago to send a fax to the bank. Mathigoris has been standing by the machine waiting for a confirmation. Wait, here he is now.'

There he was, Mike Mathigoris, security chief, nice-looking, right-in-the-middle kind of guy, former vice- commander of the State Police, out after twenty and in a great job here, fending off future skyjackings, ticket frauds, travel agents with commission schemes. I'd worked with him a lot before Jake let my well run dry. He handed the papers he was carrying to Tad without any ceremony. Tad read them and started to fume.