by Martin Clark
Anderson was a seasoned lawyer. He kept his composure, didn’t let on he’d been groin-kicked. “Perhaps after you finish on the stand,” he said casually. “But let’s visit another topic. You claim you were in negotiations with Lettie VanSandt before her death, correct?”
“Yes.”
“How was that going?”
Garrison smiled. “Well, to be honest, she was very strong-willed.” Several lawyers in the gallery chuckled. “We hadn’t reached a comprehensive agreement, if that’s the question.”
“You sent representatives to speak with her?”
“Yes.”
“These people traveled under fictitious names?”
Slayton stood up. “Why is this relevant to our hearing today? I don’t think this is a proper question. Whether or not Benecorp had dealings with Miss VanSandt has no bearing on Mr. Stone’s dishonesty and ethical lapses.”
“But,” Anderson responded, turning a half circle to face her, “it has everything to do with Mr. Garrison, who appears here today painting himself as some virtuous babe in the woods, who claims he was shocked, just shocked, to discover there was mischief afoot in his dealings with Mr. Stone. He claims he knew the will was a fake but paid six figures to make it go away. Strange, isn’t it? Why not just notify the cops and be done with it? He suggests he was in bona fide negotiations with Miss VanSandt, but, lo and behold, he’s running a shady racket packed with sketchy people and sham IDs. I think we’re entitled to present the full picture of Mr. Garrison so this board can evaluate his credibility and compare his actions to plain old common sense. I would submit that when you do so, when you scrutinize what he’s telling you, it doesn’t hold water.”
“Go ahead,” the chairman said.
“Do I need to repeat the question?” Anderson solicitously asked Garrison.
“No,” Garrison replied. “I’m happy to answer it. If I came off as sanctimonious, I didn’t mean to. Making Mr. Stone disappear was a bargain for $750,000. I was worried about the money and Benecorp’s interests at that juncture, not the principle. When I made the deal, I wasn’t concerned with whether Mr. Stone should be punished by this panel or whether he should be allowed to practice law—that’s your issue, not mine. As for our reps using confusing identities, I don’t apologize for that. I didn’t want to tip off every other drug manufacturer in the country we were attempting to purchase a formula that might be a blockbuster. I’m an aggressive, bottom-line businessman, Mr. Anderson, and none of this changes the fact that Mr. Stone used a forged will to gain money from me and then lied to me in an effort to leverage even more—very uncool. I’ll admit I bargained with a devil, but I’ll also tell you I finally ran out of patience with him when he crossed the line too far and started poking me with his pitchfork.”
“The names, please, of the people who came here to meet with Miss VanSandt?”
Slayton objected again. “Seriously? He’s admitted his company takes security precautions. So what?”
“He’s admitted his company breaks the law,” Anderson said.
“Not exactly,” Garrison interjected, before there was a ruling. “I understand our negotiators used middle names and maiden names, that kind of thing. Confusing, perhaps, but I’m not agreeing we did anything illegal.”
“How about we leave it at this,” Anderson said. “Tell us the real names, and we’ll move on.”
“I’ll do my best to locate the information,” Garrison promised. “Miss Rousch no longer works for us, but I’ll be pleased to provide you and the board with her name and address. I’m not certain where she is these days. We have thousands of employees, and we don’t follow them after they depart.”
“Does the notary who claims she witnessed my client sign the agreement still work for you, or has she evaporated also?”
“She’s still on the payroll,” Garrison said.
“She’s my final witness,” Slayton said quickly, darting her eyes at Anderson. “Helen Allyn. We anticipate she’ll say she drove from a Benecorp company in Charlotte and met Mr. Stone at the Greensboro airport parking lot. Evidently, he wanted a large, explainable public place in case he was spotted.”
Anderson stepped closer to the panel, who sat on a dais in leather chairs used by legislative committees when the General Assembly was meeting. He scratched his head, said nothing. The room was silent. “Was the $750,000 a legitimate payment in the sense it was listed on your company’s books? Was it reported to the IRS?”
“Absolutely,” Garrison answered.
“So why would Mr. Stone be rooting around in the Bahamas? There’s a written contract in your possession, undeniable evidence of the deal, and you reported the payment to the government. Why would Mr. Stone go through all this rigamarole and allegedly send his wife to collect money in Nassau? What would he gain by that?”
Garrison wasn’t ruffled. He answered immediately, his tone steady and confident. “We assumed he didn’t want this on the local radar. It wasn’t about taxes. Three-quarters of a million lands in your account in a smaller community, tongues wag. Also, he had to believe that if this arrangement went south on him, the privacy of a Bahamian bank might make it more difficult to establish he actually received the cash. We thought he was simply building a barrier between himself and the payment.”
“Sounds slick when you say it, Mr. Garrison,” Anderson replied, “but it makes no sense when you seriously think about it. Me, I’d just ask for cash dollars in a suitcase. Really difficult to trace cash handed over in an alley or at the Greensboro airport.”
Slayton objected and the chairman sustained her, warning Anderson to ask questions, not offer editorials or his opinions.
Anderson twisted a small grin. He’d scored his point, and the mild rebuke was the price for doing it. “A final question, then: Where are Miss VanSandt’s pets?” He was walking away as he spoke, his back to Garrison.
“Her pets?” For the first time, Lisa could sense Garrison was surprised. He added the classic, guilty protest, his voice half a register too high: “What pets?” He shrugged. “We donated five thousand dollars to the Henry County SPCA, more than the original will required. Does that answer your question? Beyond the donation, I have no idea about Miss VanSandt or her pets. Sorry.”
Phil Anderson requested a brief break, and he, Lisa, Joe and Kaye Slayton met in a small room behind the panel’s platform, the door closed, none of them sitting. “Did you sandbag me, Kaye?” Anderson bristled. “You gave me a list of your exhibits and evidence. What the hell is this about some recording from Virginia Beach? On Garrison’s boat? You never, ever disclosed it.”
“First of all, Phil, I’m not required to, not in a disciplinary hearing. I did you a favor by giving you our information. I try to be fair. I do more than is required, so you can climb down off your high horse. This recording is news to me. I gave you everything I had. It’s not like I chatted with Seth Garrison every day. I was as surprised as you.”
“Have you listened to it?” Anderson asked.
“No,” Slayton answered. “I’ll be glad to have the investigator get it from Mr. Garrison. We’ll listen to it right now if you want. Together. It is what it is.”
“Fair enough,” Anderson said.
Anderson motioned for Joe to follow him, and he and Lisa left Slayton and huddled in a corner at the very front of the main room. They could see panel members milling around, the audience seats full of lawyers and friends. “So?” Anderson whispered, his head tucked, peering over his spectacles.
Joe was stoic, calm, almost beatific. “Sorry. There’s no doubt our friend Seth has my voice saying ‘would you pay us five million?’ or ‘would you settle for five million?’ something in that ballpark, though I’m also damn sure the rest of the recording will have been doctored and patched together.”
“You didn’t actually ask him for five million, did you?”
“Only rhetorically,” Joe answered, his voice emotionless. “I didn’t really—”
Lisa interrupte
d him. “Joe sort of threw that figure out to gauge, to, you know, sort of peg just how valuable the formula was to Benecorp. We never truly tried to get paid. Hell, we never—I never—received any money in the Bahamas. This was Joe mentioning a number so we could see if this formula is as big as we think it is. Garrison never flinched. He offered us money, Phil, which we turned down flat. This is all crazy. I can’t believe how conniving and…cunning this bastard is.”
“Okay,” Anderson said, “but I’m going to hear Joe on tape asking for five million dollars? Is that what I’m understanding?”
“Yep,” Joe said. “Probably. You won’t hear the complete conversation, and you won’t be privy to the context, and the tape will’ve been edited, but you’ll hear me ask for the money.”
“Damn,” Anderson replied. “Not helpful, to say the least.”
Joe touched Anderson’s shoulder. “You did a great job with Garrison. We made some progress. Thanks. Unfortunately, I’ve left us in a bind. Not your fault. Garrison has outmaneuvered Lisa and me. He was tuning in to all this and writing his story before we’d even thought about it.”
The investigator returned with the recording, a CD, and loaded it into Slayton’s laptop, and the contents seemed genuine, seamless and logical, beginning with chatter about breakfast and the stray sounds of a table being set with glasses and china and silverware, and next came a discussion about Lettie and a trust and the formula, and then there was Joe, no mistaking his voice or his demand, asking Garrison if he’d “settle” for five million dollars, and Garrison, righteously angry, warning them not to sue him or they’d regret it and making arrangements for the Stones to leave his ship. Finally, they heard Joe smugly carrying on about his seafood omelet, sounding like an asshole.
“I’ll testify under oath that’s been seriously spliced and manipulated,” Lisa said the moment the recording ended. “It’s as fake as the bank video, the contract, the cash withdrawal, the—”
“The will Mr. Stone presented to the clerk’s office?” Slayton added, her eyebrows raised. “There sure is a lot of ‘fake’ involved in this case. We’re almost, Mrs. Stone, down to the Richard Pryor defense: ‘Are you going to believe me or your lyin’ eyes?’ Your husband brings with him a sterling reputation, and I’m aware he’s highly regarded, but I’m sensing that even if we went back into the hearing and he confessed in front of a packed room, it would somehow be yet another ‘fake.’ ”
“Are you going to offer this?” Anderson asked. “Play it for the panel?”
“This is an ethics hearing, Phil, so I want to be ethical. I learned about the recording the very same moment you did. I didn’t conceal it, didn’t sit on it for a tactical advantage. Tell you what: I won’t play the CD unless Mr. Stone testifies and denies making the statement or claims it’s being taken out of context.”
“That’s fair,” Anderson conceded. “Thanks.”
The hearing resumed a few minutes after three o’clock, and Helen Allyn was the bar’s final witness. She identified Joe and testified she’d met him in the Greensboro airport parking lot and watched him sign an agreement. She didn’t read the agreement, she stated, didn’t pay attention to the contents, but she produced a UPS receipt from the overnight envelope used to send the papers to Mr. Garrison personally. She’d asked Mr. Stone for an ID, and he’d shown her a driver’s license. Phil Anderson stood and wearily admitted the control number on the contract beside Joe’s signature matched the number on his license. “I’ll probably get scolded by my friend Mrs. Slayton,” Anderson added, “but it makes no sense for Mr. Stone to sign an agreement and put this in the spotlight if in fact this was a scam.”
“It makes perfect sense,” Slayton shot back, “if this was the only way he could receive his payoff. At the time, no one knew the will was fake—except Benecorp, possibly—so why wouldn’t Mr. Stone go through the motions of making this appear aboveboard? More to the point, Mr. Anderson is just assuming that Benecorp would agree to some illicit cash payment. I can certainly recall Mr. Garrison to refute that idea.”
After Slayton rested the bar’s case, Lisa, Joe and Anderson returned to the cramped side room, and as soon as the door closed behind them Joe said he wasn’t planning to testify. “There’s no need,” he told them. “I’ll come off as a dolt and a grifter.” He stared at the floor, kicking at the carpet with the toe of his black wingtip. “Plus I’ll get hammered by the boat CD. Shit.” He shook his head. “You know, I wish everyone hadn’t come to support me. Losing my law license won’t be the worst part of this. Nope. It doesn’t hold a candle to my friends seeing this debacle and leaving here thinking I’m a crook, twenty years straight down the fucking tubes.”
“You at least have to deny it, Joe,” Lisa urged him. “You can’t just roll over. Sheriff Perry is here and can confirm he found the will at Lettie’s and it left her estate to you. I’ll swear the CD is cut and pasted.”
“Phil’s welcome to announce I deny all wrongdoing or some such, but I worry it’ll only be worse if I sit there with nothing more than my word against tapes and documents—and hell, a very real set of phone calls to Benecorp—and trot out feeble denials and a string of ‘yeah, but’ hedges. ‘Yeah, that’s me talking to Pichler, but…’ ‘Yeah, that’s me demanding five million, but…’ ‘Yeah, my wife was in Nassau the day the money was withdrawn, but…’ No thanks. I’ll keep the tiny speck of dignity I still have and not look like every other desperate defendant.”
Lisa began crying, and Joe told her it was okay, hung his arm around her. “I can’t believe this,” she sobbed.
When—after less than ten minutes of deliberation—the panel gave its unanimous decision suspending Joe’s privilege to practice law in the Commonwealth of Virginia pending a full hearing, his expression didn’t change, held stable and inscrutable, and it was only after the chairman announced the panel found it prudent to also examine Lisa Stone’s role in the dealings with Benecorp that Joe cinched his face and slammed the table with his fist and shouted “Bullshit!” and landed himself in deeper trouble, drew a warning from a capitol cop.
“Keep your head up,” Joe told her as they were walking to their car. “I didn’t do a fucking thing wrong.”
She took his hand. “No, you didn’t. I couldn’t be more proud of you.”
During the drive home from Richmond, around South Boston, near the stretch of fast-food joints and gas stations, Joe’s cell phone sounded and he pressed the green Send button, accepted the call.
“So you took the Fifth,” Toliver declared. “Didn’t testify.”
“Word travels fast,” Joe said. He was driving, steered with one hand, held the phone in the other.
“Not really, chief. I was there.”
“Oh, okay. I didn’t see you.”
“I was in the hall to begin with. Too many lawyers clogging the room. I finally made it in. Had a good view to see Seth Garrison come upside your head with a two-by-four. Pretty nasty.”
“Yep.”
“Yep,” Toliver repeated.
“What brought you to Richmond?” Joe asked.
“I heard about the e-mail your fine wife sent. I told your lawyer I’d be a character witness for you. He thought I’d be helpful, though it seems we never got to that point. Besides, I’m still aggressively investigatin’ this whole case.”
“Oh…thanks for volunteering,” Joe said.
“Bad day for the home team,” Toliver noted. “Sorry.”
“Oh well.”
“How about I cheer you up? You ready? What do you call a criminal lawyer?”
“Beats me,” Joe said.
“Redundant.”
As soon as Joe finished with Toliver, Lisa called a Roanoke number, muttered “Pick up, pick up, pick up,” while it rang.
“Hey,” Billy Hamblin said when he answered on the fourth ring. “So? How’d the Richmond thing go?”
“Extremely poorly,” Lisa told him. “Listen.” She did her best to sound normal. “Any luck at all with my sh
oes? Certainly we have some news or a possibility. I’d really like to have them.”
“No report,” Hamblin replied. “Sorry. We’re looking day and night for you. So far, nothing in stock at Charlotte or anywhere else.”
“I thought you guys were the best personal shoppers in the business?” Lisa said impatiently. “How hard can it be to find a pair of blue Louboutins in my size?”
“We’re on it, Lisa. We’re doing all we can. I’m cracking the whip, believe me.”
“Well, if we don’t find them soon, I’ll miss the party.”
“Understood,” Hamblin said. “Tell Joe I’m thinking about him. Sorry it didn’t go well.”
—
Three mornings later, despite not being able to practice law, Joe went to his office, and around ten, Betty brought him his mail, and she stacked his letters and magazines in a neat pile near the center of his blotter, didn’t hand them to him even though he was sitting there watching her. On the bottom was an oversize envelope that was sealed with masking tape. There was no return information, the address was written in stilted, felt-tip print, and the postage was not metered—instead, two rows of mismatched stamps were stuck across the top-right corner, many of them in penny and nickel denominations. The postmark was from Greensboro, North Carolina. Joe immediately opened the envelope, and at first it seemed to be empty. He turned it upside down and shook it, and a half sheet of cheap stationery floated out:
Lawyer Joe, S. Garrison tryed to kill me. I’m in danjer. Hiding. They stoll my med. Revelation 17:4 says the woman was dressed in purple and scarlet, and was glittering with gold, precious stones and pearls. She held a golden cup in her hand, filled with abominable things and the filth of her adulteries. New site is Wireclub/hobbys/drawing but use a nother computer. I will be Tobysmom. Help! Remember the peekonknes.
Lettie
The writing was hers, as best he could tell, though several words were shaky and sloppy. “Pee-kon-nes,” he said, sounding the word. “Pee-konknes.” He read the letter again. “Shit. Pekingese. I can’t spell it, either.” He called and left a message for Toliver, told him he had an envelope and another letter and was in high hopes they could both be checked for prints and DNA, the sooner the better—it was damn urgent.