Law and Vengeance

by Mike Papantonio

  Deke added sarcastically, “You know what a fan I am of Justice. Their attitude is consistent when it comes to criminal corporations; no soul to save, nobody to incarcerate. Good luck with your dealings with them, Angus.”

  “Be that as it may,” said Angus, “after our filing, Justice requested we bring them our whistle-blower, a forty-two year old male named Robert Diaz. We met with Trench in her office. Diaz worked for Arbalest for almost fifteen years. He claims that he brought his concerns about Sight-Clops early and often to upper management. Diaz even wrote a report saying that the gunsight calibration could be off by as much as half a degree every ten yards given certain weather conditions. Being a good employee is what got Diaz fired. After his dismissal though, Arbalest claims Diaz stole patent secrets. Naturally, they’ve threatened to press charges against him.

  “At the time of our meeting with AUSA Trench, she seemed to be impressed with Diaz’s testimony, but in retrospect I realize she was trolling for any and all information she could get. During the meeting she got us on a speakerphone call with investigators from the FBI, US Treasury, Department of Defense, and the Office of Inspector General. All of those agencies had read our complaint and asked us questions.”

  “So much for a sealed brief,” said Martin.

  “We can be sure that by now Arbalest knows every detail in the brief,” said Deke.

  Whistle-blower cases like this one were required to remain sealed from the public eye for a minimum of sixty days while the DOJ considered whether or not they would prosecute. The good news was that if the DOJ failed to do its job, a private law firm could step in and prosecute the case on its own. That was the crossroad the firm was facing.

  “We’ve waited more than four months to hear back from the DOJ,” said Angus. “Despite all my prodding, they’ve regularly requested time extensions to make their decision, and they claim that they are still reviewing the documents, emails, and recordings that we submitted.”

  “Thus, a perfect demonstration of stonewalling,” said Ned.

  “You know they say that laws are like sausage—it’s better not to see them being made,” said Angus. “I guess that makes the DOJ the biggest sausage maker of all. Clearly, it’s extremely political, with huge egos and big personalities clashing over just about everything. Thrown into that stew are politicians and partisan politics. All of that might be contributing to Trench’s lack of enthusiasm. Or maybe she doesn’t think this is a case worthy of her AUSA status.”

  “So it’s time we start making noise about their brain paralysis,” said Martin.

  “Exactly what I intend to do. I’m filing new motions with the court next week focusing on all the endless delays by the DOJ.”

  “How solid is your whistle-blower?” asked Deke.

  “I won’t say he doesn’t have barnacles,” said Angus. “But Robert Diaz stepped forward when others weren’t willing to. He did what he knew was right in order to save lives.”

  “Tell us about these barnacles,” said Gina.

  “He has two ex-wives,” said Angus. “Neither would call him a model husband, as he wasn’t faithful to either. In addition to his skirt chasing, Robert has racked up some substantial debts, mostly through his ex-wives. In his own way, the guy is a romantic. He’s still looking for true love. While he is a bit rough around the edges, Robert is no lowlife.”

  “Will he hang in there when things get ugly?” asked Gina.

  In whistle-blower cases, it wasn’t a matter of if things got ugly; it was only a matter of when.

  “He stuck his neck out on the job,” said Angus, “and Arbalest responded by blaming the messenger. They chopped his head off instead of pulling their defective product. And then they threatened to bring him up on charges. Instead of backing down, Robert became a whistle-blower. He wasn’t thinking about a payday. He wasn’t thinking about revenge. He spoke up because he couldn’t stand the idea of a product he was associated with killing innocent people.”

  Angus’s passion rose as he spoke. “I think we should speak up for those same reasons. Diaz was a senior quality control supervisor at Arbalest. He is not some tinfoil hat freak hustling the DOJ, and they know that. What Justice doesn’t know is that they haven’t been given everything pertinent to our case. I’m holding one particular card close to my vest that I thought it best not to disclose for fear of the information ending up in the wrong hands.”

  “Arbalest is one of Capitol Hill’s favorite sugar daddies,” said Ned.

  “So your case is good,” asked Deke, “and your whistle-blower is reasonably solid, but Trench is noticeably dragging her feet?”

  “She is,” said Angus.

  “My guess is that Trench’s boss is encouraging her to move at a snail’s pace,” said Deke.

  Angus’ brow furrowed. “Why?”

  “Get your program here,” said Martin, acting like he was a ballgame hawker. “Get your program and read all about the players.”

  Deke translated Martin’s ballgame parlance. “US Attorney Abe Castillo was an Obama appointee whose legal roots stemmed from being an in-house counsel for three different defense contractors. Castillo was sponsored for his job by Senator Ric Grant of Illinois.”

  Gina connected the dots: “Which happens to be where the corporate headquarters of Arbalest is located.”

  Deke nodded. “Still, I’m not sure Justice thinks it can steer clear of all the potential bad publicity this case would bring them. It seems to me they’re taking a huge risk by not joining us going forward with this. And does Senator Grant really want to be associated with the friendly fire deaths of innocent American soldiers, police officers, and civilians?”

  “We don’t need the DC bureaucrats dragging us down anyway,” said Angus. “We’ve got a good case without them.”

  “A good and expensive case,” said Martin. “I suppose I don’t need to remind everyone that whistle-blower cases tried without federal involvement traditionally have a pitiful success rate. And why is that? It’s because political roadblocks inevitably develop in the course of pursuing these cases, and without the Feds bulldozing these obstacles out of the way, everything usually comes to a big standstill.”

  “This case has massive ramifications,” said Angus. “In our sights are defense contractors, the gun lobby, and all the people they bribe, such as lawmakers and police union bosses. Their recklessness has wounded and killed people, so with or without the government’s help I believe it’s our duty to go forward with this case.”

  The conference room fell silent while those present absorbed Angus’s words. At last, Deke spoke up. “Well said, Angus.”

  Gina couldn’t help smiling, knowing how much her friend and mentor relished taking on the really tough cases, especially when they had the high moral ground. Martin Bergman was ever the pragmatist though.

  “When you take on the gun lobby Angus,” he said, “you better expect them to come out with all their man toys blazing. As we take this on, make sure our balls don’t get bigger than our brains. My biggest fear is that as these multinational giant corporations continue to suck up political and economic power, they’ll become not only ‘too big to fail’ but ‘too big to prosecute.’ I am so old, I dream in black and white. However, some truths never change. You can be sure that criminal corporations able to wield that kind of power aren’t afraid at all of using criminal conduct as a means to their ends. How far they’ll go, I don’t know, but it should scare the hell out of us just a little bit.”

  Martin stopped talking for long enough to look woefully at his still unlit cigar, and then continued speaking. “These days, the odds are stacked against whistle-blowers. Think about what happened to Assange. Granted, he’s a schmuck, but forced incarceration, even if it is in a cushy embassy, is a little much—well, I digress. In regards to your case, Angus, it seems to me that when the DOJ is waffling on a case that looks like a slam dunk, something’s rotten and usually opportunity awaits. But you’ll need to tread carefully.”

 
Waving his cigar to the room, Martin concluded by saying, “Common wisdom is that you don’t poke a snake with a stick. Be aware that what we’re doing is poking a stick into a nest of vipers.”

  5

  ONE LAST TOAST

  Show and Tell had concluded at a little after five, but Gina’s workday continued on. At six-thirty, she was still behind her desk working on getting out a brief on a Title VII sex discrimination case. The problem was the firm’s printing department. Gina had been put on hold yet again by one of the tech support people. Her filed brief had been rejected by a judge because it did not follow the federal appellate rules on formatting, namely, the heading on one of the brief’s fifty pages was inconsistent with the court rules. A $2.2 million case had been thrown back at her over that single page. Because of that, she needed the entire brief reformatted and reprinted, and she needed it yesterday.

  Gina couldn’t help thinking about the conversation she’d had earlier with Cara. Most working women did have to be Ginger Rogers, she thought, dancing backward and in high heels. There was no way one of the male partners would have been put on hold for this long. They would have raised hell. But if Gina did the same, she’d probably be called a “ball buster.” She was doing her best to keep her temper in check, even in this exercise of futility.

  One stupid, insignificant, formatting error, she thought. More and more, Gina was beginning to think the law was more about form than substance. She recalled how the brief from New England Patriots’ quarterback Tom Brady, defending his actions in Deflategate, had been thrown out by a court clerk because it was not printed on the precise shade of white paper required.

  The law was supposed to be about shades of grey, not about the frigging shade of white paper.

  And now, she had to jump through another stupid hoop. Somewhere, sometime, bean counters and bureaucrats had won the war and now enforced its rules.

  According to her phone, she’d been put on hold by the printer guy eleven minutes and twenty-eight seconds ago. “Hello,” said Gina. “Hello?”

  But neither the printer guy, nor the universe, was apparently listening. Gina’s phone display went blank and she realized that she had been disconnected.

  “Shit!” she yelled.

  She slammed the phone into its cradle just as Angus tentatively poked his head into her large corner office. “Is it safe to enter?” he asked.

  “It will be after I have a few minutes to come unglued,” she said.

  “Take your time with that,” said Angus.

  Gina waved for him to take a chair, and then she got the printer guy on the phone. Calmly, but firmly, she said, “If you put me on hold again, I will write you up to your supervisor and mention that your inaction and/or indifference might have cost this firm more than two million dollars. Can you hear me now?”

  Suddenly, the printer guy was more than accommodating, and the problem with the incorrectly formatted page was resolved. When Gina hung up the phone, Angus nodded his approval.

  “You have such a sweet side,” he said with a wry smile.

  “It sometimes goes unnoticed. Can you imagine?”

  “You got a minute to talk?”

  “For you, I’ve got at least two minutes. What’s up?”

  “What do you think about helping me on the Arbalest case?” he asked.

  Gina didn’t immediately answer. “I thought Ned was your trusty second,” she finally said.

  “He is. But Deke wants Ned’s help in the DuPont wars. And there was one area in particular where I know you’d be the perfect confederate in this case.”

  Instead of asking him where that area was, Gina said, “When you took on the Arbalest case, I was disappointed that you didn’t ask me to be second.”

  Angus nodded. “I seriously considered asking you, but the biggest reason I went with Ned is his way with languages. The Arbalest case is going to go international, and Ned can use his German, Spanish, French, and whatever else he speaks.”

  That made sense, thought Gina, but she still had the sense that something else had factored into his decision.

  “You should know I took a semester of Latin,” she said.

  “If we get a case in Vatican City I’ll remember that,” he said.

  Then Angus decided to come completely clean with her. “I knew that in the initial stages of this Arbalest case, Ned and I would have to spend a lot of time together, and we have. We’ve traveled together, eaten together, and spent a lot of late nights together. If the two of us had done that, Gina, I am not sure I could have trusted myself. In case you don’t know it, you are and will always be my ‘what if?’”

  Although Angus was ten years older than Gina, when she had first come to the firm the two of them became lovers for a short time. No one ever knew about that. At the time, Angus was recently divorced from Darcy, his college sweetheart. But Gina and Angus had both realized a workplace romance just wouldn’t jive. Their time together was short but sweet, and the two of them actually came away from their split liking the other even more.

  Angus continued talking. “You know how it is when you start a big case. I’ve barely seen my wife and child these past three months. And I’ve seen you and Bryan together. The two of you have a good thing. On my own end, I think I was afraid of the prospect of having to spend all that time with you. Or maybe I was afraid of finding out that you just looked at our time together as a fling.”

  “Never,” said Gina. “And thank you for your explanation, as well as saving a place in your heart for me.”

  Being Angus’s “what if” meant more to Gina than she could say. A one in a million guy like Angus actually held her in esteem. A part of him even loved her. That kind of validation gave her hope that she had somehow surmounted her upbringing.

  “And now that you’ve got me all dewy-eyed,” said Gina, “why is it that you think I’m so invaluable to your case?”

  “I need someone to go toe-to-toe with AUSA Trench.”

  “So you want a catfight?”

  “This isn’t about gender,” Angus answered. “This is about the two of us playing tag team on her, with you being the good cop and me being the bad cop.”

  “Why do you get to be the bad cop?”

  “Because I’m older,” he said, “and I’ve already presented myself to her as the heavy. Listen, Trench has a history of settling important cases like this one for chump change. She gets to pad her resume and claim victory, while at the same time giving the so-called losers not much more than a slap on the wrist. It’s win-win for Trench. So in the future, when she decides to run for the Senate, Trench will be able to portray herself as being tough on crime, while at the same time she’ll be collecting big contributions to her campaign coffers from those individuals and companies that essentially got free passes and no jail time.”

  “So what’s my role as good cop?” asked Gina.

  “You are going to be a righteous talking point,” he said. “And I’ll need you to elegantly deliver a threat of sorts. Nobody can do an elegant threat like you can.”

  “You really know how to sweet talk a girl,” said Gina. “So what elegant threat am I going to make to an already hostile AUSA?”

  “The threat will reference something I’m working on. Right now, I’m following a lead that I’m hoping will force the Justice Department into actually prosecuting some white-collar criminals. Justice needs to be concerned that I will embarrass them all the way up to the top if they engineer a quick settlement for pennies, and then Bergman-Deketomis recovers hundreds of millions of dollars against Arbalest in state and federal courts all over America under a simple defective product theory.”

  “Can you tell me more about the lead you have?” asked Gina.

  “I will when I have more proof. For now, though, I’m hoping you’ll settle for a drink.”

  “You buying?” she asked.

  “I’m hoping to prevail upon the charity of the prettiest bartender in Spanish Trace.”

  “How do you know my ba
r is stocked?”

  “Because the other day when you opened a filing cabinet I noticed an unopened bottle of Scotch that, if I’m not mistaken, you were given last Christmas. And while it’s a fine bottle of Scotch, I think it has aged long enough.”

  Gina went and retrieved the bottle and then found two water glasses. She handed Angus the bottle of Scotch and let him open it. He poured two fingers worth into each glass.

  “I think I was saving this bottle for some courtroom victory,” she said, “but this is even better.”

  Each of them raised a glass. Angus surprised Gina with his toast:

  Here’s to the prettiest, here’s to the wittiest,

  Here’s to the truest of all who are true,

  Here’s to the neatest one, here’s to the sweetest one,

  Here’s to them all wrapped in one—here’s to you.

  Gina found herself wiping away a tear as they touched glasses.

  6

  DARK WAS THE NIGHT

  Even though Gina and Angus both had plans for the night—Gina had her dinner date with Bryan, and Angus had a night of going through whistle-blower paperwork—neither hurried to finish their drinks.

  “Didn’t I see Bryan drop you off this morning?” asked Angus.

  “Bryan was enjoying chauffeuring me so much I am surprised he wasn’t honking Jennifer’s horn and flashing her lights to draw even more attention to us.”

  “Jennifer?” asked Bryan.

  “That’s what he calls that old work truck of his. It’s a 1970 model, and Bryan tells me Jennifer was the most popular girl’s name that year. Whenever I suggest to Bryan that Jennifer is long in the tooth, he takes umbrage. And this morning when my car wouldn’t start he took particular pleasure in giving me a ride.”

  “Should we offer a toast to Jennifer?”