An Engineered Injustice

by William L. Myers Jr.

  Benjamin Balzac’s swimming pool sits fifty feet beyond the terrace that runs the length of the back of his mansion. Just off the pool is a twenty-foot cedar pergola supported by stone columns. The pergola covers Balzac’s outdoor kitchen—fitted with a K1000 Hybrid Fire Kalamazoo grill and its attendant sink, cooktop, warming cabinet, and refrigerated drawers, all of which are built into marble-topped stone cabinetry. An identical pergola sits above Balzac’s U-shaped, ten-seat bar. The pool, grill, and bar—along with a two-story pool house, cabanas, and a ten-seat dining table—make up Balzac’s large outdoor-entertainment area. The flagstone-paved space is surrounded by a ten-foot wooden fence that’s hidden behind twelve-foot skip laurels.

  Balzac is there now. So are Jack Bunting and Royce Badgett. The three friends are having a roaring good time, enjoying Ketel One, Macallan 25 Year, Zino Platinum Crown cigars from Holt’s, and fat Kobe steaks flown in from Japan and grilled to perfection by Balzac himself. Benny Balls is especially ebullient over the news regarding the cap on damages. Earlier that day, thanks to pressure from him and Day and their well-placed Washington cronies, Congress actually repealed the statutory cap, paving the way for a punitive-damages award that could rise into the billions.

  “Hey!” calls Badgett from the floating pool lounger, pointing to his crotch. “When does the entertainment arrive? Little Badger’s getting impatient.”

  Balzac laughs and shakes his head. “If you moved out of that row-house shithole and took more of my money, you could actually get some pussy on your own.”

  “I don’t need no Wayne fuckin’ Manor to get tail,” Badgett shoots back. “I got the moves.”

  The three men laugh again, but Badgett is only half joking. He really doesn’t need a big house like the boss’s, or want one. He never has. That’s why he only accepted $5,500 for causing the train crash, why he accepts even less for whacking guys like Reggie Frye—shmucks who agree to help the boss with one of his plans, then try to fuck things up by having an attack of conscience, or by demanding more than they agreed on, or by just being a pain in the ass. Badger’s dad once told him that there are two kinds of people in the world: those who need to live high on the hog, and those who are satisfied just to live.

  No soul searching is necessary for Badgett to know which he is. He accepts his place in the world and is happy with it. The little row house suits him just fine. A used car is no problem; he has the know-how to keep a car running with three hundred thousand miles on it—even a Chrysler. And women? He doesn’t need runway models with their stuck-up attitudes, porcelain faces, and rock-hard asses. He’ll take a good-natured skank with a few dents and dings any day.

  Well, most days, anyway. Even the steadiest salt-of-the-earth man—and that’s how Badgett sees himself—needs prime beef sometimes. Benny knows that, which is why he splurges two or three times a year to fly in some top-shelf talent, usually Asian and Eastern Bloc girls brought in via Dallas or Vegas or LA.

  Speaking of which, Badgett sees Dave Devine, the Boss’s part-time driver and errand boy, leading three lovelies through the wooden gate. One of the women is a tall redhead with massive boobs. She would be for Bunting. The Jap would be the boss’s date. That leaves the third woman, a Ukrainian blonde with a perfect button nose and sparkling blue eyes, for Badgett.

  “Hey, sweetheart, over here!” Badgett shouts to blue eyes as he waves.

  Everyone looks in Badgett’s direction, and when they do, the little Ukrainian’s eyes bulge, and she covers her mouth with her hands.

  “Don’t worry,” Balzac says. “He only looks like Putin.”

  The three men burst into laughter.

  “Yeah,” says Bunting. “Our government was going to smuggle him into Russia and substitute him for the real thing, but they just couldn’t teach him any Russian.”

  “Seems he has the IQ of a russet potato,” Balzac says, and he, Bunting, and Badgett laugh some more.

  Suddenly, Balzac stops smiling. His cell phone, sitting on the bar, has begun buzzing and flashing blue. He knows that can mean only one thing: someone has set off the motion detectors in his office. “Jack! Royce! Get over here,” he shouts. “Something’s up.” As his two friends make haste, Balzac opens the cabinet doors under the large television screen above the bar. He presses some buttons, and the TV turns on.

  “You three,” he says to the women, “on the ground, facedown.” He doesn’t want the hookers seeing whatever is going to appear on the screen.

  Bunting and Badgett move up to the bar to get a good look at the television. They’re just in time to see black-and-white images of Vaughn Coburn, Laurie Mitzner, and Erin Doyle.

  “That’s them,” Badgett says. “The lawyer Coburn and the one he’s seeing. I don’t know who the third one is.”

  “I do,” Balzac says, his blood pressure rising. “She works for me.”

  “Fuck,” says Jack Bunting.

  “What are they looking for?” Badgett wonders aloud.

  “I wish I’d installed sound,” says Balzac.

  The three men watch silently for the next ten minutes as Vaughn, Erin, and Laurie try in vain to open the desk drawers, then scour every nook and cranny of Balzac’s office and try to access his laptop. It’s clear that their search yields nothing, which is some relief to Balzac, but not much. The very fact that they’re searching his office and that Coburn’s investigator has been tailing Royce tells him they’re onto something. There’s no way they can know how the train crash went down, of course, or that he and Day were behind it. But they know something, and something always leads to something else. Balzac turns to Badgett.

  “I think the search-and-rescue stage of the mission is over. It’s time you switched over to retrieving bodies. Just don’t do anything until I figure out the order and timing. We can’t have a bunch of disappearances happening all at once. It’ll look suspicious.”

  “Sounds like what needs to happen are accidents, not disappearances.” Bunting puts his two cents in.

  Balzac nods. “Maybe a couple of each.”

  “I don’t have any more vaults in my cellar,” says Badgett.

  “You might have to do some seeding,” says Balzac. Meaning march them into a cornfield and plant them in a hole.

  Badgett looks away and sighs. He doesn’t like the cornfield routine. Too many logistical problems, too much risk. If you walk them from the car to the burial site, there’s always a chance they’ll break and run, even if you have a gun pointed at them. If you plasticuff their legs so they can’t run, the long walk takes forever. If you have them dig their own grave, you have to free their hands and risk them trying something with the shovel. If you dig the grave yourself—well, that’s a huge pain in the ass. It’s why Royce decided to construct the vaults in his basement.

  “Aw, cheer up,” Balzac says. “That’s all for another day. As for tonight . . . girls, on your feet!”

  28

  SUNDAY, JULY 27

  Laurie Mitzner sits at her desk, pretending to work on a legal brief. Pretending to check her e-mail. Pretending not to be an electrified bundle of nerves. What on earth, she asks herself, was I thinking, coming here this morning after ransacking Balzac’s office last night? How could I expect for a minute that I’d be able to concentrate? What force impelled me to show up here today? How could I forget that returning to the scene of the crime is a criminal’s mistake as old as crime itself? As old as the moth and the flame?

  Close your eyes and take some deep breaths.

  Inhale, hold for ten seconds, exhale. Again.

  There’s nothing unusual about her being in the office before nine on a Sunday morning. She’s a senior associate with a heavy caseload. And Balzac has just pulled her into the Amtrak thing, so she has plenty of catching up to do.

  But what’s up with that?

  The train-crash litigation is already fully staffed. And why has Balzac been paying so much attention to her all of a sudden? There’s only one possible explanation for all of it: he know
s she saw the crash video, and he’s toying with her.

  Oh God, please let that not be it.

  Laurie is pulled from her thoughts by the sound of feet in the hallway. Is that him? Laurie holds her breath as the footfalls get closer. She exhales when she sees that it’s Ginny Lenfest, another one of the associates. Ginny stops in Laurie’s doorway, and they trade small talk for a few minutes before she moves on.

  I can do this, Laurie thinks, determined to conquer her fear and get some work done. But no sooner has she begun editing a brief than she hears the growl of Balzac’s BMW 750Li as it pulls into the small lot behind their building. She hears car doors open and close, followed by wet, heavy breathing, and the quick clumping of eight massive paws.

  He’s brought the hounds.

  The stampede progresses directly toward Laurie’s office. In short order, Laurie is being glared at by four gleaming black eyes. And then another pair appears.

  “Laurie!” Balzac practically shouts her name.

  Laurie’s eyes bulge, her jaw drops, and she issues a squeak so thin that only the dogs hear it.

  “I need you in my office, right now,” Balzac continues, using the same voice she’s heard him use to melt opposing witnesses. It’s the voice Patton used when he dressed down soldiers—fakers, he called them, and cowards—paralyzed by shell shock.

  Balzac turns and heads down the hallway. Thor and Loki remain until Laurie stands and starts walking toward the door—as though Balzac had them stay behind to ensure her compliance.

  Laurie does her best to compose herself. She climbs the stairs to the second floor and walks through the outer office to Balzac’s inner sanctum, just as she did last night.

  He knows!

  No, he doesn’t!

  Laurie pleads to herself. There’s nothing to fear but her own guilt. She tells herself that all she has to do is keep her cool and she’ll be fine.

  Laurie takes one of the guest chairs in front of Balzac’s massive desk and waits for Balzac to tell her what he wants. But he says nothing, just stares, for what feels to Laurie like hours.

  Sometimes when Laurie stands up too fast, the blood rushes from her head and she’ll feel faint. That’s what she feels like now. Calm down, she tells herself. It’ll all be fine as soon as he starts talking, explains why I’m here.

  “My office was broken into last night.”

  “Oh God. Really?”

  “Now, now, it’s nothing to keel over about.” Balzac’s voice is gentle now, almost nurturing. “There’s really nothing in here worth stealing,” he says. “Still, I wanted you to know because you’re going to have a special role to play.”

  “A role—”

  “A very special one. You see, I’m not going to share this with anyone but you. Not the other attorneys. Not the staff. I’m telling you alone.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Because I trust you, Laurie. I’m a good judge of people, and out of everyone who works here, I can tell that you have the highest character. You’re the last person I could ever imagine betraying me, betraying the firm.”

  “Uh, thank you?” Laurie’s stomach churns. A small amount of vomit boils up the back of her throat. She chokes it back down.

  “Don’t thank me yet. We haven’t gotten to the special-role part yet. You see, I need you to keep an eye out for me.”

  “An eye out?”

  He nods, still staring at her. “Be alert to how other people behave. Study them and ask yourself if anyone is acting like they have a guilty conscience. Like they’re afraid because they’ve done something they know would really piss me off? Something that would cause me to retaliate in some terrible fashion?”

  Laurie gulps.

  “I can spot guilt and fear in a person from a mile away. But I can’t be everywhere, and I’m just too busy.” Balzac stops and looks hard at Laurie for a long minute. “Can you do this for me?”

  Laurie stares back, her eyes wide. “Yes.” It’s all she can get out.

  “I knew it.” Balzac beams. “I knew I could put my faith in you.” He stands, smiling at first. Suddenly, his face clouds over.

  “Damn it!”

  Laurie flinches, takes a half step back.

  “Loki!” Balzac looks toward the back of the room and shakes his head. The dog has urinated on the floor. “Laurie, be a dear and get some paper towels and clean that up for me.”

  Laurie rushes out of Balzac’s office toward the hallway bathroom. She takes a roll of paper towels from the cabinet beneath the sink. Then she stands up, doubles over the toilet, and evacuates the contents of her stomach.

  29

  MONDAY, JULY 28

  Vaughn stares at Eddy’s casket, ready to be lowered into the ground. He glances at Eddy’s wife, Kate, holding their newborn daughter. He looks at the other bereaved on the folding chairs directly in front of the coffin—Aunt Claire and Uncle Frank, their daughters, Peg and Jean. Vaughn’s own parents and siblings stand behind them, along with other relatives, neighbors, and some of Eddy’s friends from the railroad.

  Vaughn stands by himself, on the other side of the coffin.

  Suddenly, Aunt Claire leaps from her seat, thrusts her finger at him. “This is all your fault!”

  As she screams at him, all the other mourners turn away . . .

  Vaughn wakes with a start, soaked in sweat. Another nightmare, the latest in a long series. He’s alone in Erin’s guest bedroom. His tossing and turning the past two nights made it unfair to ask that he share her bed.

  He throws off the sheet. He stares at the ceiling, then rolls onto his side, then onto his stomach, then onto his back again. But sleep doesn’t come. It’s not enough—the scant evidence he’s been able to muster in Eddy’s defense. Laurie can swear up and down that she phone-taped the crash video directly from Balzac’s computer. But her word will not be enough. His theories about Day’s and Balzac’s prescient website train-law compendiums and the complaint allegations about a fatal driving history and criminal record? Theories and nothing more. Day and Balzac will claim they were planning to branch into train law before the crash and were in the process of drafting their website passages when the train wrecked. And how did they know about Vaughn’s driving and criminal histories? They didn’t. The language was boilerplate.

  The hours drag on, and Vaughn finally falls into the black.

  He opens his eyes to find Eddy sitting in a warehouse, tied to an old wooden chair. Next to the chair is a metal table. On the table are hand tools—a drill, a hammer, a hacksaw, pruning shears, a blowtorch. Jimmy Nutzo and Johnny Giacobetti stand next to the table, trying to choose which one to use first, and on which part of Eddy’s body. Eddy screams through the gag. Nunzio picks up the drill as Vaughn, tied to his own chair, struggles to tear free.

  “You look and you look, but you just don’t see,” Nunzio says to Vaughn.

  “It’s all about picking the right tool,” says Johnny G.

  “That’s it!” Vaughn vaults out of bed, walks to Erin’s bedroom, but stops himself at the threshold; he’d better think this through. The moral implications are too great to make the leap in haste. He walks to the kitchen, pulls a Smartwater from the fridge, and drinks. The clock on the oven reads 3:47 a.m. He walks through the living room and out onto the balcony. It’s cooler than it has been, and a fresh breeze is blowing. Vaughn leans over the railing and stares into the night sky. He senses something behind him and turns his head. It’s Erin. She smiles, but he can see the worry in her eyes. She waits for him to talk. After a moment, he does.

  “I’ve been looking at this the wrong way,” he says. “Nunzio isn’t the problem. He’s the solution.”

  At 9:00 a.m., Eddy Coburn stands in the shower, scrubbing himself as fast as he can. He suffered some bad experiences in prison showers when he was incarcerated before, and he wants to get done quickly. Not that he thinks anyone is going to bother him. When they first brought him to Curran-Fromhold, he was put into a private cell. A guard—Quaid—told him it
was because he was a target for prisoners wanting to build their cred by attacking someone notorious. For the same reason, he wasn’t allowed to eat or exercise or even socialize with the other inmates. Then, two days ago, everything changed. He was kept in the private cell, but was taken for his meals to the prison cafeteria. He was also allowed to socialize in the yard with other inmates. Not that it mattered; no one would talk with him. No one wanted to be anywhere near him. He tried to strike up conversations with other prisoners, but they turned away. When he sat to eat, the table emptied.

  He didn’t understand. He asked Quaid what was going on, but the guard just shrugged his shoulders. Finally, Quaid quietly confided that, “You’re off-limits. No one’s allowed to lay a hand on you.”

  “My lawyer do that?” Eddy asked.

  Quaid smiled sadly. “Be better for you that way. But it’s not. You’re off-limits because you’re being saved for someone.” Quaid shook his head and walked away.

  Eddy shakes his head now, as he showers. He hates this place. It’s not as bad as the state prison he served time in for killing the patrolman, but it’s still awful. The claustrophobic cells, the orange jumpsuits that make grown men look like clowns at a kid’s birthday party, the animal smells, the hopelessness. And most of all, the loneliness. Eddy’s been here five days and has had no visitors other than Vaughn. That’s because, with the exception of their attorneys, inmates are allowed visitors only one day each week. For names that begin with C, that day is Monday, and Eddy was admitted on Wednesday. He desperately hopes Kate will come with the baby. He’d like to see his parents, too, and Vaughn.

  Eddy closes his eyes as he washes the shampoo from his hair and face. When he opens them, two inmates are standing outside the shower stall. The taller of the two has a bald head and a full beard. The shorter one, also bald, is very muscular, and his whole head is covered with tattoos. The two prisoners glare at Eddy, neither saying anything. Eddy starts to ask them what they want but stops when he realizes suddenly that there is no one else around. No prisoners. No guards. Just these two. It’s then that Eddy notices that the tall one is holding a plastic jug filled with some liquid. The shorter man has a small metal object. A Zippo lighter.