The Survivors

by Robert Palmer

  I walked her back to her desk. There was an awkward moment, when I might have given somebody else a hug, but with Tori that seemed like asking for trouble. I got practical instead. “Call a locksmith. I want every lock in the place changed before we go home tonight.”

  That cheered her up. “Just what I like, a man who takes control.”

  I gave her a skeptical look and muttered, “I’ll bet you don’t.”

  Charlene and Cass Russo arrived at fifteen minutes after eight, bickering about whose fault it was they were late. Tori showed them in. Cass took a seat on the sofa and propped her feet on the coffee table. Tori looked threateningly at her, motioning with the back of her hand. Cass put her feet on the floor.

  Charlene had cleaned up considerably since the last time I saw her. She was wearing a silk suit with matching shoes and purse. Her hair was pulled back in a businesslike ponytail. Her eyes were clear, so she hadn’t been drinking last night. Cass had reverted to baggy jeans and T-shirt. The shirt had two pictures of Che Guevara, morphing from man to monkey. Maybe it’s true what they say, that irony is the real currency for today’s teenagers.

  Charlene wouldn’t sit until she shook my hand. Looking around, she said, “Where?”

  I pointed at the other end of the sofa. Tori softly closed the door.

  “I’m kind of unsure why you’re here,” I said. “Since the three of us met while I was visiting Eric, this isn’t like most of my new patient sessions. That’s why I didn’t have you fill out the office forms before we started.”

  Charlene said, “Cassie wanted to come back—”

  Her daughter cut her off. “She needs to talk to somebody. Like really.”

  “OK, new patients it is. Let’s call it family therapy for now.”

  Neither of them liked that. They had exactly the same way of scowling, eyes beady and mouth puckered.

  “Why don’t we start with this. Tell me how you think I can help you.”

  They stared at me, still scowling. The silence began to drag on.

  “Let’s try something else. Both of you tell me something that’s bothering you.”

  They glanced at each other, a small improvement.

  “Charlene, you first.”

  “Well . . . Cassie isn’t as honest as we’d like sometimes. She eavesdrops on her father and listens in on my phone conversations. And sometimes—” She reached across the sofa, trying to soften what she had to say. “She steals from us.”

  Cass stiffened at her touch. “What bothers me? She’s a nutjob and a lush.”

  Charlene jerked her hand back. “Young lady, you mind your manners.”

  Let the fireworks begin, I thought.

  The best I can say about the next thirty minutes is that they didn’t punch each other. They didn’t spare the cutting comments, though, skipping right past the rapiers to sabers and broadswords. I never tell a patient what they’ve said is inappropriate; instead I call it unhelpful. I said “unhelpful” a lot in that half hour.

  Finally, the lights dimmed. Cass had been through years of therapy, so she knew what that meant. “I need to speak to you alone before we quit.”

  I sometimes end family sessions with a quick individual wrap-up to make sure no one is left hanging. “I can give you each five minutes. Charlene why don’t you step out first.”

  I could sense even before the door shut that Cass was itching to tell me something. “A man came to see my dad last night, real late. Griffin was there too. They talked about you, but I couldn’t get close enough to hear most of what they said.” She pulled out her phone. “Here, I took a picture.”

  “I told you not to listen in on your father’s conversations about me.”

  “It’s just a picture.”

  “Please put the phone away.”

  She sighed and slipped it back in her pocket.

  “Cass, let’s talk about you and your dad. In all the things you said today, you never mentioned him. Neither did your mother. But I had the feeling he was always there in the background. Do you get along with him OK?”

  “He doesn’t even know I’m alive most of the time.”

  “And the rest of the time? Do you do things to get his attention? Give him presents, things like that?”

  “Or listen in on him when he doesn’t want me to?” She laughed darkly. “I know what you’re doing, trying to say everything is my fault but wrap it up in nice sweet candy so I won’t feel bad.”

  “No, that’s not what I’m doing. But I want you to think about why you eavesdrop on him. It’s got to be important to you or you wouldn’t want to talk to me about it. Maybe you think it’s interesting. Do you want to be a lawyer someday?”

  “I’d rather be dead.”

  That was a curve ball I’d caught before. I gave her a smile. “We’ll talk next time about what you’d rather do than be a lawyer. OK?” I waited for her to nod and told her, “Can you send your mom in?”

  Mrs. Russo closed the door firmly and sat in the chair next to me. “Thank you for seeing us. That was difficult, the way Cassie was behaving.”

  “Family therapy can be hard at the beginning. We might try a few individual sessions—”

  “There’s something else we need to discuss. My husband wouldn’t explain why you came to the house the other day, but Griffin did.” She looked primly at her hands in her lap. “I want you to know I’m not going to stand by and let you hurt Eric.”

  I had wondered if there was a special motive for this visit. I stared at her long enough to let her know I was giving extra thought to what she’d said. “I’m not out to hurt your husband or anyone. I only asked some questions about work he did for a client, years ago.”

  “Braeder Design—I know all about that. Let me fill you in on a little background.”

  I glanced at the clock by the couch.

  “I know you’re busy, but it’s important. I know all about Braeder because I was Eric’s assistant back then. That’s how we met.” She leaned closer. “I was Griffin but with great hair and even better legs.” Her laugh was sure and deep. It gave me a glimpse of the woman she’d once been, confident and sexy in a catch-me-if-you-can way.

  She leaned back from me again, and her face became serious. “I wish Eric had never had anything to do with Ned Bowles or his company. Those people were nothing but trouble.”

  I didn’t hide my surprise. “What kind of trouble do you mean?”

  “Trouble with the State Bar Association, with the banks, with the newspapers—you name it. They weren’t bad people. It was just the nature of their business and the times. Greed is good, right?”

  “I’ve seen Wall Street. The sequel, too. What are you getting at?”

  “Eric is naive. That’s one of his best traits. People trust him because of it. That means I have to watch out for him. So does Griffin, and a few others who are close to us.” She set her shoulders, giving herself a shot of courage. “I don’t want you talking to Eric anymore. I don’t want you smearing him with Braeder.”

  “I have a patient I’m trying to help out, just the same as I thought I was helping you and Cass. If things come up about your husband and Ned Bowles and Braeder, there’s nothing I can do about it.”

  “Griffin told me you wouldn’t understand. I don’t see how things from that long ago can help anyone. That’s your business, though. For my part, Doctor, I don’t have much I can threaten you with. But don’t misjudge me. Eric wants this new job as US Attorney. He’s earned it. I’ll do whatever I can to protect him.”

  “Fair enough,” I said. “I guess we do understand each other.”

  She smiled for the first time in a while. “I do have a . . . let’s say it’s a suggestion, something that came up when I was talking to Griffin.” She took a piece of paper from her jacket pocket. “If you really are interested in getting the story on Braeder, try looking here.”

  She handed the paper over. There was a name—Defense Contracting Institute—and a phone number and address in Georgetown. “
Talk to Peter Sorensen, the managing director. He knows just about everything there is to know about Braeder.”

  “How do you know him?” I said.

  “Pete worked at Braeder, way back when. He sued Eric—and Braeder and Ned Bowles.” Once again, she saw the surprise in my eyes. “Old battles, Doctor. We’ve all moved on. But Pete is no friend. He’ll give you the truth.”

  “Why give this to me?”

  “Like I said, it’s just a suggestion.”

  I shook my head. I wasn’t buying anything that simple.

  “I don’t want any problems to surface for Eric now. I figure the faster you find what you’re after, the faster you’ll leave him alone. Pete Sorensen may have the answers you want, and if he doesn’t, I think he’ll point you in the right direction. You win, I win.”

  “Thanks.” I put the paper on my desk. “I’ll check into it.”

  The intercom buzzed, and Tori’s voice cracked over the speaker. “Your nine o’clock is here.”

  “I need to keep on schedule,” I said. We stood up and shook hands. “Was that the only reason you came here? To get me to stay away from Eric?”

  She looked at the corner of the room, avoiding my eyes. “I could have phoned you for that. Cass told me if we didn’t come to talk to you, she’d run away.”

  “Does she talk about running away a lot?”

  “Three or four times a week.”

  “Has she ever done it?”

  There was a mist of tears in her eyes. “Not yet.”

  “Good for you,” I said.

  She was fighting the tears so hard all she could do was nod. She hurried out the door, then stopped in the reception room, juggling her purse, her keys, her sunglasses, and her phone. Something slipped, and she dropped them all.

  TWENTY-ONE

  At noon, I grabbed a cab to Tim Regis’s office. Tim’s law firm, Davies-Shackleton, was in a brand new building two blocks from Ford’s Theater. The architect had gone for an ultramodern look, likely to compensate for the buttoned-down atmosphere of a building full of lawyers. D-S was one of the Washington legal behemoths, with over eight hundred attorneys. Tim said he knew a few of them—slightly.

  His office was on the seventh floor, not a corner space yet, but close. His administrative assistant, Jenny, showed me in and asked what I wanted for lunch. Tim was already eating. I’d been through this routine before. Every day, the firm served a free lunch in the lawyers’ conference room. By noon, most of the good food was gone. “Whatever’s left,” I said.

  “Good choice.” Jenny looked at Tim. “Anything else for you?”

  He was taking a bite of a foot-long sandwich. “Some pasta salad would be good.” He rattled his empty can and yelled after her, “And a diet ginger ale!”

  “Diet?” I said.

  “Every journey begins with a first step.”

  Tim had been the starting left guard at Southern Cal. He had a choir-boy face, with curly blond hair and still a bit of pink in his cheeks. His body was more like the Hulk. Even though he was constantly eating (and most of it not healthy), he kept his weight at a steady two-seventy. When we played racquetball, which we did at least once a month, I couldn’t see a spot of fat on him except for two tenderloin-sized love handles. He claimed he kept those only because his wife liked them.

  “So, you want to talk about Braeder Design Systems?” he said.

  “What did you find out?”

  He tossed me an accordion file and picked up his phone. “Alan-a-Dale!” he said into the mouthpiece. “It’s Regis. Stop by my office, will ya?” He sucked on his teeth while he listened to the reply. “Sure I mean now. You can bring your lunch if you want.” He dropped the phone back on the cradle. “Damned associates. They’re all wimps these days.”

  I shuffled through the papers in the file. There were a dozen Braeder annual reports and magazine articles from Business Week and Forbes and the Economist. There was a profile of Ned Bowles from Time titled, “The Visionary.” At the bottom of the pile was a memo: “Braeder Design Systems, Inc. Initial Public Financings.” Glancing through it I could see lots of dates and numbers. Eric Russo’s name popped out at me a few times.

  I heard footsteps behind me and Tim said, “Cal, this is Alan Dell, one of our merry men. He works in government contracts, and I asked him to brush up on Braeder for us. He wrote that memo you’ve got in your hand.”

  Dell was tall and pale, and I put him somewhere in his late twenties. He nodded to me but didn’t offer to shake hands.

  Tim said, “Meet Cal Henderson, one of my oldest friends. Be careful what you say. He’s a shrink, and he’s writing it all down.”

  Dell smiled nervously and folded himself into the chair next to me.

  “OK,” Tim said. “Tell us everything.”

  “Everything?” Dell didn’t know how to handle Tim’s banter.

  “Let’s start with the year Braeder went public,” I said.

  Dell said, “They seemed to come out of nowhere. They were just a little company focused on mid-level optics and solar panels. Their biggest contract was for surveyor’s transits for the Army Corps of Engineers. Then in less than a year—” He plucked one of the annual reports from the accordion folder. “They got six big deals, all military, all high-end.”

  “Such as?” Tim said.

  “Braeder developed early generation digital imaging components for reconnaissance and combat planes. The one that got all the press was a smart-weapon interface targeting system.”

  Tim held his hand up. “Hey, Harvard grad. I’m a football player. Keep it in English, please.”

  “A camera system that guides a bomb accurately,” Dell said.

  Tim winked at me. “Sounds like the bad guys in RoboCop.”

  Dell looked suspiciously at us. He’d obviously never seen RoboCop.

  “What about the stock issuance?” I said. “When Braeder went public.”

  “Braeder needed to expand,” Dell said. “Those six contracts had short fuses. They sold stock in three lots, forty million dollars each. By the end of the next year, they had signed ten more contracts with the Army and Air Force, and the stock had tripled in value.”

  “And everybody got rich,” Tim said.

  Jenny bustled in carrying two paper plates and a diet ginger ale under her arm. She handed me mine—pastrami on rye, better than I’d expected—and set Tim’s on his desk.

  “This is three bean salad,” he said.

  “That’s all they had,” she said.

  He pulled a long face.

  “So don’t eat it,” she said, smiling at Dell and me.

  Tim watched her leave. “So how was it that Braeder suddenly took the military contracting world by storm?”

  That was just the question I was going to ask.

  Dell folded his hands in the air like a praying mantis. “That was unusual. Normally defense contractors grow slowly. It’s all about developing contacts, getting the brass and bureaucrats to trust you. Braeder jumped right over that step.”

  “Did they hire any new personnel?” I asked.

  “They opened a new research facility with some topflight engineers,” Dell said. “But that wasn’t until after they got those six big contracts.”

  “What about new patents?” I said.

  Dell looked carefully at me for the first time. “Good question. Braeder held eight optical design patents, going back years. They filed for fourteen new patents in the half-year period before those big contracts were signed.”

  Tim whistled. “Were they for parts of that bomb-guidance thingy?”

  “Mostly, yes,” Dell said. “The optical components.”

  Tim poked at his three bean salad with a plastic fork. “So suddenly Braeder got awfully smart. Fourteen-new-inventions smart. Enough to put them up in the big leagues.” He tossed the fork down. “Patent applications need to be filed in the name of the individual inventor, don’t they? Did you check to see whose name was on those new ones?”

  De
ll nervously plucked at his chin. “No, I didn’t.”

  “Put that one on your to-do list,” Tim said.

  Dell shot a quick glance at me. “Is there a client number I can bill this time to?”

  Tim had his foot on his desk, and he pulled it off with a thump. The look on his face was downright menacing.

  Dell sputtered, “It’s OK . . . I can put it down to professional development . . . or not at all.”

  “Good idea,” Tim said.

  Dell checked his watch. “Joy Saldhi is waiting for me. We have to make a conference call. My memo lays out everything I found.” He started to get up.

  I said, “I heard Braeder had legal problems about the time it went public. Lawsuits, and a company lawyer got in trouble with the Bar Association. Did you turn up anything about that?”

  “No, but—” Dell held out the annual report. “Every one of these has a section on litigation. It describes any major lawsuits Braeder was facing.” He flipped through it and handed it over. “There, see?”

  “I’ll take a look at it.”

  He glanced at the door, longing to get away.

  “Just one more question,” I said. “How’s Braeder doing now?”

  “Their stock price is up twenty-two percent in the last twelve months. Kind of a miracle, given the way the economy’s been.”

  “What’s the secret of their success?” Tim said.

  “Another big contract. Braeder is putting together a new cybersecurity program for the Department of Defense. There’ll be new encryption systems, hacker-proof software for every branch of the military, new hardware for field communications. That’s just the tip of the iceberg.”

  “I feel safer already,” Tim muttered. He waved him on his way. “Give Joy-Joy a kiss for me.”

  Dell wrinkled his nose in disgust. There would be no kisses for Joy-Joy.

  “Sorry about that billable-hours crap,” Tim said after he was gone. “Like I said, wimps.”

  “It’s OK. I didn’t mean to take up anybody’s time.”

  “Anybody’s but mine?” He laughed easily. “Just teasing. Don’t worry about Dell. He’s the golden boy of government contracts. He doesn’t need more billable hours. A personality, maybe. I can lean on him later, get him to do some more checking.”