Law and Vengeance

by Mike Papantonio

  “Crash into any buildings lately?” asked the lawyer.

  It hadn’t been buildings Strahan had crashed into, but he didn’t correct Carter. His job with the Secret Service had come to a “crashing end” when he’d lost control of his $150,000 specially equipped company vehicle and plowed into a White House barricade. The .19 he blew on the drunk-meter closed the deal.

  “Not lately,” said Strahan. “I know that’s a hazard in your line of work with all your ambulance-chasing quality of lawyering.”

  “Why don’t both of you shut up?” said Knapp.

  Strahan hid his surprise. Knapp was usually mild-mannered. Somehow he seemed to have grown a pair.

  “There’s a reason you were summoned here, Kendrick,” said Knapp. He nodded to his lawyer so that his mouthpiece could speak on that matter.

  “In light of recent developments,” the lawyer said, “we have been reviewing our potential corporate liability both internally and externally.”

  “Explain that in English,” said Strahan.

  “I assume you are aware of the False Claims lawsuit being brought against Arbalest in Chicago Federal Court by the firm of Bergman-Deketomis,” said Carter.

  Strahan nodded.

  “The lawsuit contends product liability for the Sight-Clops instrument. It also alleges our illegally bribing officials in law enforcement and the military, as well as civilian contractors. There is the suggestion that these bribes were not only monetary in nature, but that lavish gifts were given ranging from tickets to professional sporting events, to the services of professional escorts. It is also alleged that parties were held which rivaled those in Sodom and Gomorrah, where there was all manner of illegal drugs and activities going on. All of that is bad enough. The charges are serious enough that Arbalest is doing its own internal investigation, as you know. But something has happened that we need to know we are clear of: Angus Moore, the lead attorney for Bergman-Deketomis, recently died under suspicious circumstances.”

  “I told Carter that you never would have plotted, or condoned, or had any part in such an action,” said Knapp. “But now I need to hear from you. Do we have any exposure in this area?”

  Strahan looked at Knapp’s anxious eyes. It was almost funny, thought Strahan. Knapp’s company was responsible for the deaths of thousands, or more likely hundreds of thousands of people, but he desperately wanted to make sure his hands were clean of this one death.

  “If you think I set up, or sanctioned, that lawyer’s death,” said Strahan, “then I’m here to tell you that I’m innocent.”

  “Are you saying you had nothing to do with Moore’s death?” asked Carter.

  Strahan turned away from Knapp. It was easier to look at the lawyer. “Like I said, I don’t know anything about that death. I read the lawyer might have been drinking. There’s also the suggestion that he and his passenger might have been diddling around behind the wheel, which could explain the reckless driving that witnesses reported seeing.”

  As forceful as Strahan tried to make his words, and as much as he wanted to believe them, he knew that it was more than a coincidence that the lawyer had died after he’d given Ivan’s name to Lutz and company. Strahan wasn’t a lawyer, but he wondered if that involved him as a conspirator in a crime. No, not a crime, a murder.

  He turned to his old companion hoping that he believed him, but Knapp wasn’t even meeting his eyes. At some level, Knapp knew Strahan was lying. The lawyer knew that as well.

  “If this lawsuit proceeds,” said Carter, “there will be allegations of your involvement in all sorts of illegalities.”

  Strahan didn’t like the idea of his being hung out to dry. “Then maybe you should make sure it doesn’t proceed,” he said.

  “You brought this on yourself,” Carter said.

  “Did I?” asked Strahan. “Just how exactly am I supposed to go about lobbying politicians and union leaders and purchasing agents, all of whom have their hands out and their zippers down, wanting something for something? This whole thing I’m asked to do is a pig in a prom dress, and everyone here knows that.”

  “Kendrick,” said Knapp.

  “All this time I’ve been left to my own devices to make sure Arbalest’s weapons keep selling. Why weren’t any questions being asked of me before? My job was to make sure those orders kept coming in, and no one cared if what I was selling was defective, or not up to par. As long as my numbers were good everything was fine. That’s why you gave me that discretionary fund, so that I could make things happen.”

  “And that’s why you no longer have a discretionary fund,” said Carter. “As far as I’m concerned, you’re lucky to still have a job.”

  There was a reason for his continued employment, thought Strahan. If the lawsuit proceeded, Arbalest would happily sacrifice him to the Feds, or whoever was doing the investigation. Strahan would be the company fall guy. He was sure that behind the scenes, the company was already distancing themselves from anything illegal that he might have done. The best they could hope for was that Strahan would fall on his own sword.

  That wouldn’t come without a big price, thought Strahan, but apparently that negotiation would have to wait for another day.

  “I think that concludes our business,” said the mouthpiece.

  The door opened. Geoffrey must have somehow been summoned. He was there to escort Strahan to the car.

  Strahan stood up. His only immediate goal was to see if he could finish the rest of the bottle of the 10-year-aged Old Rip Van Winkle by the time they arrived at Midway.

  Geoffrey and Strahan walked out to the car. The chauffeur silently opened the door, and Strahan took a seat. Even before the Rolls began to move, Strahan set about filling his glass.

  A man needs his goals, thought Strahan, taking his first of many sips.

  By the time they arrived in Chicago, the bottle was empty, and Strahan wasn’t feeling any pain.

  8

  THE HOVERING OF ANGELS AND VULTURES

  “I dream of Gina with the light brown hair, borne, like a vapor on the summer air.”

  Bryan and that silly song of his, thought Gina. It was his version of Stephen Foster’s “Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair.” Of course, he changed Jeannie to Gina. And she liked to remind him that her hair was more of a sexy, deep brunette than it was light brown. That never stopped his singing though.

  “I long for Gina with the day dawn smile, radiant in gladness, warm with winning guile.”

  It was Bryan’s way of serenading her, she knew, but how he’d glommed on to the standard, Gina didn’t know. “Jeannie” wasn’t nearly as famous as other Foster creations like “Oh, Susanna,” or “Camptown Races,” or even “Beautiful Dreamer,” but Bryan seemed to have settled upon it as “their” song. Maybe Bryan liked it because it was a “courting” song back in the nineteenth century. It was time Bryan came into the twenty-first century.

  Gina tried to tell him that, but something seemed to be preventing her from getting the words out. She knew this was very strange, but she couldn’t quite get why. Eventually, Bryan stopped singing. It sounded like he was choking up. But why did he sound so sad?

  She couldn’t quite open her eyes, but even through her eyelids Gina knew it was daytime. Where was she? This couldn’t be her bedroom, nor was it Bryan’s.

  Open your eyes. Gina tried that command on herself. It went from her brain to her eyes, but it was easier thought than done. She struggled and fought for her body to comply. All she had to do was open her eyes. Why was that so difficult? It was like lifting a heavy weight beyond her strength. But she wasn’t going to let that stop her.

  Damn it, open sesame, she thought, straining with all of her might. Almost imperceptibly, lifting up just far enough for her to see, Gina’s eyes opened slightly.

  What was that tube coming out of her arm? And was that an IV drip?

  She stared at an elevated leg and tried to make sense of it. The way the leg was suspended, with all the hardware attached to it
, made it almost look like a modern sculpture. The disembodied leg was an interesting touch. But was it really disembodied?

  In the background, she could hear sucking sounds. It sounded like Darth Vader, she thought. Through her fog, Gina realized it was her own breathing.

  That’s why her throat hurt so much. She was on a respirator. Gina panicked. She wanted to flee, but nothing worked, not her hands, nor her legs, nor her head. She couldn’t quell her fear.

  Around her, alarms began going off.

  “What’s wrong with me?” she thought, and then the eyes she’d worked so hard to open closed, and the light gave way to darkness.

  The alarm went silent just as Bryan, Deke, and Cara turned the corner, and then the three of them realized the sound must have been coming from inside the room as Dr. Bray talked to three nurses just outside of Gina’s hospital room. Although the doctor as a rule projected a cool, composed persona, at the moment he was looking edgy and severe. Whatever he was saying was enough to make the nurses scatter in different directions.

  “No,” said Bryan, reacting to the doctor’s body language.

  He ran down the hall, followed closely behind by Deke and Cara. “What’s wrong?” Bryan called. “I was here just ten minutes ago, and she was fine.”

  It took a moment for Dr. Bray to make sense of the interruption and understand what Bryan was saying. He lifted a hand to calm Bryan down, and then spoke to him reassuringly. While the gray-haired doctor’s bedside manner was sparing and methodical, he had the reputation of being an outstanding doctor. “Everything’s fine,” he said. “Apparently, Gina didn’t like being in an induced coma, and she had a little bit of an awakening. With the amount of anesthesia she’s receiving, that was surprising. I am guessing she is a very strong-willed individual.”

  Bryan’s nods and Cara’s tears confirmed that prognosis.

  “Her waking up is a good sign,” said the doctor, “but I made the call to increase her anesthesia so as to keep her condition stabilized. For now, she needs to recover from her blood loss and shattered leg.”

  Gina had been in her induced coma for two days. When she’d been brought in, the doctors hadn’t been sure if she would live or not.

  Bryan asked, “How much longer will you keep her under?”

  “Based on what I saw with that head injury, my best guess is two more days,” he said.

  “Can she hear us?” asked Deke. “Can she understand what we’re saying?”

  “If we were monitoring her brain activity, you would see Gina responding to the stimuli of your presence,” he said. “Does that mean she understands the essence of what you’re communicating? That’s probably a stretch. But there’s no question that she’s comforted by the presence of loved ones. I can only encourage all of you to keep doing what you’re doing. Continue talking to her. Read to her. Hold her hand.”

  “I was singing to her,” Bryan admitted. “I’m not sure if it was a song she likes much.”

  “If you were singing it,” said Cara, “I’m sure she loved it.”

  “Knowing Gina,” Bryan said, “she probably hated it so much that she decided it was time to wake up and walk out.”

  “Can you really blame her?” asked Deke.

  There had been a lot of tears over the last two days. It was nice to see a few smiles for a change.

  As the Gina vigil continued, her friends took turns spending time with her. After Cara had found out that Gina’s favorite book was To Kill a Mockingbird, she downloaded a copy and began reading it aloud to her.

  As Bryan quietly entered the room, Cara was reading from the book. “‘We know all men are not created equal in the sense some people would have us believe—some people are smarter than others, some people have more opportunity because they’re born with it, some men make more money than others, some ladies make better cakes than others—some people are born gifted beyond the normal scope of men.

  “‘But there is one way in this country in which all men are created equal—there is one human institution that makes a pauper the equal of a Rockefeller, the stupid man the equal of an Einstein, and the ignorant man the equal of any college president. That institution, gentlemen, is a court.”

  Cara looked up from her tablet and smiled at Bryan. “Gina could have written those lines,” she said. “I know how much she believed in people having the opportunity to have their day in court.”

  He nodded. “The law is like a holy vocation for her. She is as passionate about her job as I am about mine.’

  “Don’t ever tell my dad this, Bryan, but when I was a senior in college it was actually Gina who sold me on the idea that I wanted to be a lawyer.”

  Bryan pulled a chair close to the two women and settled into it to hear the story.

  “It was the first day of a major trial,” said Cara, “and because I’d talked about the possibility of practicing law, my dad had suggested I watch the goings-on. The drug company that Dad was suing rolled out at least a dozen lawyers, all of them impeccably clad and probably each a Harvard Law graduate. There wasn’t a female on their team, and there was barely a female in the courtroom.

  “One of the defendant’s lawyers intercepted Gina as she was approaching the plaintiff’s table. It was clear he was looking for an excuse to flirt. He said, ‘You’re lucky we’re not deposing a bunch of Third World Indian doctors today like we did in our last case.’ Gina looked puzzled and said, ‘Excuse me?’ That’s when the lawyer, in his uppity, cultured Boston accent, said, ‘You’re the court reporter, aren’t you?’

  “Gina shook her head and told him, ‘No, and I’m not barefoot, and I’m not pregnant.’ Then she smiled sweetly, and as if explaining to a two-year-old, pointed to an area in front of the bench and said, ‘Let me help you with this. In a big boy courtroom like this, the court reporter, he or she, sits over there.’ Then she pointed to the plaintiff’s table. ‘And I’ll be sitting over there. I’m one of the plaintiff’s lawyers. There are only two of us, but for the next two weeks, we will be the ones humiliating you and your dirtbag client while the court reporter who, again, sits over there, will be the one documenting all the fun.’ And then Gina passed by the lawyer, and joined my father at the plaintiff’s table.

  “Over the course of the trial, she did a brilliant opening and a powerful closing, tormenting them just like she said she would. That week, she was the last best hope for the widow of a forty-five-year-old man who died from a stroke four days after he began using a drug that was supposed to be the newest breakthrough in controlling diabetes. After I watched Gina in court, and after I saw that passion, I wanted to be her.”

  Instead of reading for Gina, Bryan preferred talking to her as if she was fully alert. He hoped it calmed her as much as it did him. In the aftermath of her accident, Gina looked like she had been through a war.

  “Gina, sometimes I wonder if vet offices shouldn’t come with confessionals,” said Bryan. “Today was a good example. This mother, and her adult son who was maybe twenty, brought in their pug. The dog was behaving oddly and presenting with unusual symptoms, including a reddish-yellow coloring around his mouth. While the mother was alarmed, the young man was doing his best to downplay the pug’s condition. Finally, the kid came clean. He admitted the pug had eaten his stash of marijuana, something he had been forbidden from having inside the house. What’s more, since the pug had acted like he had a case of the munchies, the boy had given him a bag of Cheetos.”

  He stopped talking when another man entered the room. The newcomer was about five foot ten, with dark hair and eyes. He looked to be in his early thirties. There was something familiar looking about him, but Bryan couldn’t quite place it.

  “Geez!” said the man. “My God, Gina. You really look like shit.”

  Bryan couldn’t help but feel offended by the man’s words. What if at some level Gina was hearing them?

  “She’s been through a terrible car accident,” said Bryan. “What’s your excuse?”

  The man stiffened
, clearly not enjoying being on the receiving end of Bryan’s rebuff. “I’m Peter,” he said, “Gina’s brother.”

  Gina had confided to Bryan about Peter’s miserable upbringing and how she’d been charged with helping to raise her younger brother.

  “Oh,” said Bryan, and then recovered enough to offer his hand. “I’m Bryan.”

  Peter warily shook the other man’s hand and said, “Are you Gina’s boyfriend du jour?”

  “We’ve been going together for more than a year,” said Bryan, trying to hide his disappointment that Gina hadn’t told her brother about their relationship.

  “Do you have a key to Gina’s place then?” Peter asked.

  Bryan wasn’t sure how to answer the question, or even if he should, but he finally said, “I do.”

  “That’s a relief,” Peter said. “I just got in town, and I know Gina would want me to stay at her place rather than a hotel. If you give me the key, I’ll make a copy for you.”

  “I wouldn’t feel right about doing that without Gina’s approval,” said Bryan.

  “Like I said, I’m her brother.”

  “And like I said, I wouldn’t feel right doing that. Tomorrow, the doctor is hoping to bring Gina out of her induced coma. I don’t know what condition she’ll be in then, but maybe we’ll be able to ask her about the key. That’s only maybe, though. She might be overwhelmed.”

  “I can assure you it wouldn’t be any big deal to her,” said Peter. “If the two of you have been going together as long as you say, you must have heard about me.”

  Bryan loved Gina, but he detested entitled people. His first impression of Peter Romano was that he was a bona fide asshole.

  “I’ve heard of you,” Bryan said, but purposely didn’t elaborate. “Did you rent a car?”

  Peter shook his head. “I thought I would borrow Gina’s while I was in town since she won’t be able to use it.”

  “And how long are you going to be in town?”

  “My plans are open. It’s kind of dependent on how Gina is.”