The Capitol Game

by Brian Haig

  “Is there a point to this?” Jackson prodded, totally uninterested in this nice little love story.

  “You asked why and I’m telling you. Come graduation, Bill turned down a wonderfully lucrative offer to go to Wall Street and instead chose an Army commission. He stayed in when the war started. He and Janet had two lovely little girls they both adored, big money on Wall Street still beckoned, but Bill didn’t want to run out on his men when they deployed to Iraq. How do you think this story ends, Jackson?”

  Jackson had no idea. “Go on.”

  “A little over two years ago, Bill was leading a convoy of his troops through an Iraqi village. This was less than two weeks before he was to return to Janet and his little girls. He was riding in a Humvee, a model that had yet to be uparmored with the latest protection. His battalion had been scheduled to get upgraded models eight months before, but the contractor kept falling behind. The soldiers riding in the death traps complained endlessly, but the contractor cared less. The upgrading program was understaffed, its employees notoriously lazy, the management dreadfully inept. The only thing the contractor accomplished on time were the billings to the Pentagon, after they were stuffed with nonexistent overtime, ghost employees, and as much double billing as it felt it could get away with. Would you care to guess the name of the company?”

  “So this is a vendetta?” Jackson asked in a disappointed voice.

  “Bill Forrest died horribly, Jackson. He was blown out of his seat. He landed on a dusty street, his legs amputated by the blast, his stomach blown open, and he bled out within minutes. Only two weeks from home, he died in agony, staring at a picture of Janet and the girls.”

  “How sad,” Jackson said, as if to say, Screw you.

  “I spent the month of the funeral with Janet and the kids. They cried the whole month. Janet fainted at the funeral. Do you have any idea how horrible it is to lose a husband and a father who might so easily have been saved by a few extra pounds of armor?”

  “Don’t sound so noble, Jenson. You two make me sick. It was always about the money. Blood money. The one-billion-dollar prize, the biggest whistleblower jackpot ever.”

  “Well, here’s the surprise, Jackson. Every dollar of that money is going into a fund Jack and I founded this week. The Bill Forrest Fund. You’ll be happy to learn that it’ll all be used to fund college scholarships for the wives and kids of servicepeople who died in this war.”

  “So that’s why you chose us.”

  “You see, I went crazy for a while. I quit my law firm and joined DCIS, because I wanted to hurt you. I didn’t care how, or how long it took. I would go after you, one by one. Anytime you made a mistake, I would be there. I would haunt the acquisition office, pore over their files, find every corner you cut. Every instance of overbilling, of cheating, of graft. I was confident you would give me plenty of opportunities and I intended to pounce on every one of them. The death of a thousand cuts, I called it.”

  “What changed your mind?”

  “It was Jack’s idea. Rather than waste my life chasing small cases, why not go for the big bang? So we decided to test your greed. You always had a choice. We’d offer you a deal only a scoundrel would take. Every step of the way, you people could always stop, always have second thoughts, always do the right thing. You never disappointed us, Jackson. You surpassed all our expectations.”

  “And Arvan Chemicals was the lure.”

  “Poor Perry. He was facing an almost certain bankruptcy, but he wasn’t very comfortable with the arrangement. An honorable man. We dragged him into it kicking and screaming. He didn’t fully change his mind until Walters paid him that nasty visit.”

  Jackson looked at her and said, “The correct legal terminology is conspiracy and graft. When this comes to court I’ll prove it and shove it up your rear, Jenson.”

  “I don’t think so. Any first-year law school student would look at the evidence and know how screwed you people are.”

  Jackson was too cold-blooded to get flustered, and too much the bully himself to be bullied. He turned his eyes to Jack. “This whole case rests on your shoulders. The tapes you provided, the testimony you’ve given. You’re the only real prosecution witness.”

  “I do my best.”

  “Pretty soon you’ll see my best, Wiley. I’ll destroy you on the stand.”

  “Through Edith Warbinger?” Jack asked.

  “Yes, because you’re a murderer and a thief. I’ll wait, Wiley. I’ll bide my time till we’re in a nice little federal court, with a judge and twelve impressionable jurors. I’ll share my evidence and bring in your old friend Wallerman. Then I’ll put you on the stand, pull out all my evidence, and drag you through the mud.”

  Jack said nothing for a moment. He seemed at a loss for words. He stared at a far wall long enough that Jackson thought he was in a coma.

  “How did you find out about Edith?” Jack finally asked, almost choking on his own words. He sounded sad and tired.

  “A source,” Jackson said with a tight, confident smile.

  “Who? Who was your source?”

  “You’ll learn that in court, Wiley.”

  “Charles? Oh, please tell me it wasn’t him.”

  Jackson chose not to answer. It was no surprise that Jack knew the name. He had the CG building so juiced he probably knew the names of the janitor’s mistresses. But so what?

  “Did you ever track him down?” Jack asked. “I know he was elusive. Ever learn his last name, his profession, how he learned about Edith and me?”

  To answer those questions would reveal vulnerabilities that might come back to haunt him in court. Jackson was too smart a lawyer to fall for such an obvious taunt. He scraped back his chair and kept his mouth shut.

  Jack leaned his elbows on the table and came forward. “Let me help you, Jackson. Charles Palmer. A Broadway actor, not overly successful, but I think you’ll agree his talents are underrated.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “Look him up. He’s in the Manhattan phone book. Since you’re paying his rent this year, I’m sure he’ll take your call. Fifty grand for a two-night performance, the best money he ever made.”

  “I don’t believe you, Wiley.”

  “Or take Lew Wallerman. My old pal from Princeton. One of my best friends then, and now. Poor Lew has had a string of bad luck. His career on Wall Street was souring, a nasty divorce that cleaned him out. The past few years have been awful. So I offered Lew this one golden chance to make millions. He asked me to thank you. You boys came through like champs.”

  Jackson now was looking like the kid who just had his candy stolen. After all that happened with the polymer, he didn’t doubt one word Jack was saying. It was going to be so beautiful, Jack on the stand, sweating and squirming, Jackson flashing his evidence that exposed the government’s main witness as a cad and a murderer, the prosecutors wilting, the judge frowning with disgust, the jurors sneering and shaking their heads. Jack’s credibility would be shredded. Jackson had plotted an epic mistrial and was sure he would get it.

  Only a minute before, it had all been so clear in his mind, so within reach.

  Jack crossed his legs and shook his head. “After the break-in, the dope in my home, the bugging, your TFAC boys crawling through my past, it seemed like a good idea to create a diversion. You see, I needed to get your people off my tail. With enough people, time, and energy you might’ve discovered Mia. I couldn’t afford that.”

  “Was there ever an Edith?”

  “The best lies are always built on a grain of truth. Any decent lawyer knows that. Yes, there was an Edith and she did disappear from her cruise. She was missing for seven months.”

  Only out of idle curiosity at this stage, Jackson asked, “Where did she turn up?”

  “Amsterdam. Met another old gent on the cruise, they snuck off, eloped, and were married in a small Greek chapel under the shadow of the Acropolis. A last fling for poor Edith. She was a mental wreck by then. I was worried about her so I hi
red a Dutch detective outfit after I left Primo. The CEO and CFO were crooks. They were after her money, and when I accused them, they gave me a million-dollar bonus to disappear. They didn’t want Edith found, so I took it into my own hands.”

  “I see.”

  “She died five years ago, if you’re interested.”

  “Uh-huh,” was all he could manage to say.

  “Complications from Parkinson’s. She’s buried in a well-tended grave out on Long Island, beside her first husband.”

  Jackson buried his face in his hands. He knew Jack was telling the truth and he knew his last hope for a brilliant defense—for any defense—was in shambles.

  “But we didn’t come here to gloat,” Jack informed him.

  “Yes you did, you bastard.”

  “Okay, maybe a little. You have one final thing to do for us. One last job.”

  Slowly the face came out of the hands. “I wouldn’t piss in your mouth if you were dying of thirst. Not if my life depended on it.”

  “Oh, but it does,” Mia told him. “It very much does.”

  “Are you wondering why you alone weren’t arrested or indicted?” Jack asked him. “You don’t really believe it was due to your brilliant legal skills, do you? That blustery press conference, those nasty threats you threw around? Please tell me you’re not that naïve and stupid, Jackson.”

  It was a one-two punch. Mia barely allowed that thought to sink in before she lowered the hammer. “Of course we screened the tapes before we handed them over. If you’re interested, we kept about thirty of them.”

  Jack’s turn again. “Thirty tapes in which you are flagrantly breaking several serious laws, Jackson. Any one of them will get you disbarred and some prison time. Your career in Washington will be over. But the entire collected works… no, you really don’t want them heard by a jury of twelve impressionable jurors.”

  Jackson was beyond arguing or resisting at this point. They had it all figured out. In a way he admired these two, their brilliance, their trickery, their persistence; in a much larger way he loathed and feared them. “Tell me what you want.”

  “What lawyers do best: settle,” Jack told him very firmly. “When the Defense Department comes after the Capitol Group, you’ll persuade the board to settle. It will cost you another five and a half billion. We want to be sure you pay back the taxpayers every penny you stole from them.”

  He tried to suppress it, tried his best to force it down, but a weak smile began to form on Jackson’s face. The number didn’t surprise him. Of course Jack knew exactly how much had been paid; CG’s offices had been wired like a porn studio. But a friendly settlement was the best way out of this mess anyway. The board was already brought on. Three billion had been placed in reserve. Jackson and the boys from legal counsel already had their defensive strategy laid out; they would fight every penny, itemize and inflate every expense, whittle it down until three billion felt like an incredible act of contrition and remorse on CG’s part. With any luck, they’d get away with far less.

  As if reading his mind, Mia added, “Don’t even dream of counteroffers. You’ll pay the full 5.5 billion, Jackson. We’ll be listening closely. At the slightest hesitation, even a hint of resistance, Jack will suddenly remember the thirty tapes he sloppily misplaced.”

  Jackson locked eyes with her and had no doubt they meant it. His mind immediately turned to ways to reverse his earlier advice to the board. The Capitol Group’s earnings this year were already an unsalvageable wreck. Now, after a month of wretched press coverage, the last thing CG wanted was a long, contentious brawl that only further dragged its name through the mud and antagonized an already furious Pentagon.

  Jack added, “The Defense Department is also going to try to throw a one-billion-dollar penalty at you. Coincidentally, that equals my reward. You’ll smile and pay every single dime of that, too.”

  Jackson grabbed his throat and looked like he was going to be sick. Six and a half billion dollars! That was the cost of keeping him out of prison. The board was going to howl, yet there was not the slightest doubt in his mind that he’d find a way to force them to pay it.

  Mia said, “Somehow, we enjoy the thought of you paying our bill.”

  “Up yours.”

  “Don’t be that way. Think of the good cause it’s going to when you sign the check.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Yes, one other thing,” Jack told him as he got to his feet.

  Mia stood also. She looked down at him and said, “Tell all your friends out there in the big defense companies that we’re here. We’re not going away, Jackson. Now we have a boatload of cash, and plenty of clever ideas. We’ll be keeping a close eye on you and them.”