When The Devil Whistles

by Rick Acker

  “He’s my ex-boyfriend, but other than that, yeah, basically.” She smiled sheepishly. “Sorry to be so shallow.”

  An uneasy thrill swept through him. A gate had just vanished from a path he didn’t dare take. “Ex-boyfriend?”

  She nodded and sighed. “As of today.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” he lied. “Are you okay?”

  “I am now. Thanks for taking me out. I’m having a great time.”

  “Me too.” He looked into her eyes. Her beautiful face was right there—he could reach out and touch her cheek, caress her skin. He was exhilarated and unsettled by what he saw there—and what she probably saw in his face. He wasn’t ready to cross this line. She was an important client and a friend— what would happen if she became more? He’d lose his job and all he had worked for. Worse, Devil to Pay would be compromised and she’d never blow another whistle. He couldn’t do that to her.

  He broke away from her gaze. “So, why do you keep transferring hundreds of thousands to an account in Elmhurst, Illinois? I don’t think the slopes there are all that good.”

  Her eyebrows went up. “Didn’t think you read Devil to Pay’s bank statements that closely.”

  “Hey, I’m the general counsel. I’ve got a duty to read them. You own all the stock, so you can do what you want with the money. I’m just curious why you want to send it to Elmhurst.”

  She sighed and a look of pain clouded her face. “That’s where my mom lives with my sister and her kids. They’re on their own, so I help them out.”

  Connor smiled with satisfaction. “See? I knew there was more to it than having a good time.”

  The clouds thickened. “Yeah, well I wish there weren’t. Trust me—sending money doesn’t make me a hero.”

  “So why do you do it?”

  “Because of my dad.” Her answer was quick, almost automatic. Her eyes widened a split second after the words came out. “I mean, I… it…” Her voice trailed off and she drained the last of her wine. “I mean I owe my parents, you know, for raising me and everything. So, I guess I’ll always be in their debt.” She glanced quickly at him and then looked out into the night crouching beyond the reach of the patio lights.

  “What did you mean before you meant that?”

  She gave a short laugh and looked back at him, her eyes bright with unshed tears. “Man, you’re good.”

  She dabbed her eyes with her napkin and took a deep breath. He watched her in silence, waiting until she was ready to go on. His heart raced. He knew she was opening the door to a private room. A room that had been locked for years. He felt like he was watching a butterfly come out of its chrysalis.

  She took another deep breath and looked him in the eyes. “Cone of silence?”

  He smiled. “I’m your lawyer and your friend. How many secrets am I already keeping for you?”

  “This is different.”

  “Okay. Cone of silence.”

  “I’m the reason they’re on their own. I killed my dad.” Her voice shook and she paused for a moment. She swallowed and went on. “I was home from college for winter break. I needed to get some software for one of my classes and the school bookstore was out, so I decided to go to Best Buy. Of course, Dad had to come if someone was going to Best Buy.” She sniffed and took a sip of water. “Anyway, we went together. It was snowing and Mom said, ‘Pete, you should drive.’

  “I said, ‘No, it’s my car. I’m driving.’

  “So we started arguing. She trotted out all her favorite lines. ‘Dad’s a safer driver.’ ‘You drive too fast.’ On and on. I got mad and started yelling back at her about how I’m just as good a driver, how I’m an adult and she shouldn’t treat me like a child.

  “Eventually Dad just says, ‘All right, I’m going by myself.’

  “I went after him and said, ‘Hey, my car has antilock brakes. Let’s take it.’

  “He said, ‘Fine. Give me the keys.’

  “I said, ‘Daddy, it’s my car. I know how to drive it. Don’t you trust me?’ ”

  She bent her head and pressed her napkin to her eyes.

  Connor wanted to reach out to her. “And you drove.”

  She nodded. “I drove. I drove too fast. And we spun out—I spun out—on some black ice on the highway. The car flipped over and landed on the passenger side. I had a broken nose and some cuts, but Dad—” she broke off and buried her face in her napkin, sobbing uncontrollably now.

  A few diners and restaurant staff cast curious glances their way, but Connor couldn’t care less. Against his better judgment, he reached across the table and took her hand. “Oh, Allie. I’m so sorry. ”

  Her face was blotchy and her makeup was a mess when she looked up again. “The last thing he said was, ‘Mom won’t understand. Say I was driving.’ He made me promise to tell Mom and everyone that he was driving, so I did.”

  “And you’ve kept the truth bottled up all these years.”

  She nodded. “I promised I would. He was right too—Mom wouldn’t understand. She’d still love me, but she’d never get past the fact that she told me not to drive and I drove anyway and Dad died.”

  Now he understood. “And you send money to take care of her because your dad can’t.”

  “I can never pay her back. I can’t bring Dad back. I can’t fill that hole in her life. In all our lives. All I can do is take care of them like he would have.”

  “You’re a good woman, Allie.”

  She shook her head and gave a smile that completely took his breath away. She was a mess—red eyes, smeared make up, blotchy cheeks—but she was more beautiful than he had ever seen her. Her face held a sweet, natural openness he had never seen in it before. “You just won’t see through me, will you?”

  He chuckled. “I think I just did.”

  “No, you’re too good a man to.” She squeezed his hand and released it. She opened her mouth, but then paused for an instant—as if she was revising what she had been about to say. “Thank you, Connor. For tonight. For being my lawyer and my friend. For listening and keeping my secrets. For everything.”

  She got up suddenly and walked around the table. He started to rise, but she was standing over him and leaning down. She kissed him, and her hair cascaded around their faces, shielding them from the world. Her lips lingered on his for a long moment, soft and insistent. She smelled of sun and Chardonnay and flowers.

  She pulled back and smiled. “Good-bye.”

  Then she turned and walked away. The night swallowed her, and she was gone.

  35

  FIRST MATE JENKINS STOOD AS CHO AND MR. LEE ENTERED CAPTAIN Wither’s stateroom. “So that’s what you were after.” He whistled and shook his head. “What’s down there is worth more than ten Nazi subs full of gold.”

  Mr. Lee took a seat across from the captain. Cho stood behind him, hands in the pockets of his jacket. Neither hand was empty. One gripped a pistol and the other a Taser.

  Mr. Lee inclined his head. “Yes, it is quite valuable. I apologize for misleading you. If the wrong people had learned that we were looking for a Soviet submarine, there would have been serious problems.”

  Jenkins folded his arms. “Not just any Soviet submarine. That’s a Soviet missile submarine.”

  “It is indeed.” He and Jenkins regarded each other silently for several seconds. “What do you think of that, Mr. Jenkins? Captain Wither?”

  Jenkins scratched his beard. “It was a surprise. Big surprise.”

  “Yes. Yes, it was,” echoed the captain.

  Mr. Lee leaned forward and rested his elbows on the small table. “Does it bother you?”

  Jenkins shrugged. “That depends.”

  “On what?”

  “Let’s start with your plans. What are you going to do next? Salvage the missiles?”

  Mr. Lee nodded. “Two of them should be sufficient.”

  “For what?”

  Mr. Lee’s face hardened. “That’s not your concern.”

  “Really? Then why are
you here talking to us?”

  Mr. Lee said nothing. Cho tightened his grip on his weapons and visualized what he would do. Sidestep and draw in one motion. Take down Jenkins first, then turn to the captain. If he was a threat, take him down too.

  Jenkins suddenly grinned and chortled. “See, I’m thinking that you’re planning to take these things back to Oakland. Go anywhere else and you’ll get searched by customs and port security. But not in Oakland. We won’t get searched there because the Grasp II didn’t make port in another country and because they know the ship, the captain, and me. But if the captain and me aren’t on board or we don’t cooperate, then all bets are off. So you need us.”

  Mr. Lee nodded slightly. “You are a perceptive man, Mr. Jenkins. Please go on.”

  Jenkins’s grin broadened. “Maybe you’re terrorists and you’re going to try to set off a couple of nuclear bombs in San Francisco.”

  Cho looked at Mr. Lee, but his face remained impassive.

  “But I’m guessing you’re not,” Jenkins continued. “You don’t seem like the terrorist types. And anyway, those warheads have been underwater for years, so they’d need a lot of work before they’d go off.”

  Mr. Lee smiled, and Cho could tell he was enjoying this. “So what do we plan to do with them?”

  Jenkins knit his brows together for a moment. Then he snapped thick fingers. “You’re going to use them to make blueprints and sell those, like that Indian guy—what’s his name?”

  “I believe you are referring to the Pakistani scientist A. Q. Khan.”

  “That’s the one. You’ll also probably sell the plutonium from the warheads, but the real money will be in the blueprints.” He paused and spread his hands. “Am I right?”

  “Bravo, Mr. Jenkins! Excellent thinking. You’ve solved the puzzle.”

  Jenkins’s face took on a sly look. “There’s just one problem left.”

  “What is that?”

  “You’re the ones making all the money.”

  “Ah, that is a problem that can be solved. You will receive a one-million-dollar bonus for your services.”

  “Ten million.”

  “Three.”

  “Five.” He nodded to Captain Wither. “And five for the cap’n, of course.”

  Mr. Lee turned to the captain. “Is that acceptable to you?”

  Wither looked up at his first mate. “I… I suppose I can trust Randy’s judgment on this.”

  “Excellent. Half of those amounts will be sent to you tomorrow, and the remaining half will come after our, ah, business is at an end. Please give wire instructions to Mr. Cho.”

  “Of course,” replied Jenkins, who was now grinning from ear to ear.

  Mr. Lee frowned. “We have not discussed Granger and Daniels. What about them?”

  Jenkins made a dismissive gesture with his right hand. “Don’t worry about those two. I’ll take care of them.”

  36

  CONNOR COULDN’T FOCUS. HE HADN’T BEEN ABLE TO FOCUS ALL MORNing. The only thing he remembered from the 8:30 Doyle & Brown partner meeting was that the breakfast spread had included Nantucket Nectars juices. And he only remembered that because he still had a half-empty bottle of orange juice on his desk.

  After the meeting, Tom Concannon had stopped by Connor’s office to chat about golf and firm politics. Connor had just smiled and nodded, waiting for his friend to leave.

  When Tom was gone, Connor started writing a routine letter to opposing counsel in one of his cases. After forty-five minutes, all he had was “Dear Fred.”

  He knew exactly what the problem was, of course. Allie. He had hardly been able to think of anything else since their evening together yesterday.

  Lying awake last night, he had given free rein to his fantasies. He allowed himself to imagine showing off his favorite chalet in the French Alps. She’d be amazed at the snow and the manicured slopes. He’d ski and she’d snowboard, and they would see each other in flashes as they sped down the mountains.

  Afterward, they would go to a little restaurant he knew that specialized in wild game. They’d get the table by the old stone fireplace and the owner would come out with two glasses of Beaujolais as soon as they were seated, like he did for all his regulars. Allie would sip her wine and look beautiful in the firelight. They’d have pheasant—no, venison—and Allie would make jokes about Bambi and Rudolph and they’d both laugh. Then they’d walk back to the chalet with the moonlight silvering the mountain and the narrow brick road before them. It would be cold and she would snuggle up against him and say how happy she was.

  When he woke in the morning, he remembered why that was a fantasy. Doyle & Brown had a policy against lawyers dating clients, and they did not make exceptions. Five years ago, a former corporate client had sued, claiming that a D&B lawyer had seduced their general counsel in order to keep her from moving the company’s multi-million-dollar legal budget to another law firm. D&B paid six million to settle the case and lost millions more when several big clients took their business elsewhere “to avoid even the appearance of impropriety,” as they put it.

  And a romance with Allie wouldn’t just mess up his career, it would ruin hers. Too many people wanted to know who was behind Devil to Pay, Inc. Even if they were discreet, it wouldn’t take long for someone to see them together. Then someone would put one and one together and guess what the two of them were up to. And then Allie would be nothing but an unemployed accountant with a string of bad references.

  So what was he going to do when she called? He glanced at the clock. 11:15. Okay, fifteen minutes to figure out what he was going to say. Pretend last night never happened? No, that never worked. Besides, he didn’t want to find a way to go back to the way things were—he wanted to find a way forward where they could be together painlessly. He was good at that— always had been. There was always someone he could call or a bank account he could draw on somewhere. Things could always be fixed. He just had to find the right lever to pull.

  But how was he going to fix this? He bit his lip and stared out the window, hardly seeing the fog-covered bay outside. He could switch firms—but that would only solve his problem, but not hers.

  Maybe he could arrange a high-paid accounting job for her at one of the companies where Mom and Dad were directors. No, that would take her away from the fraud-fighting work she loved. Plus, it would look like he was buying her.

  He picked up a model P-51 from his desk (a gift from a former secretary) and spun the propeller. He waited for inspiration to come, but the only thing he felt inspired to do was get out of the office and take the White Knight up for an hour or two.

  He looked at the clock again. 11:30. He sighed and put the plane down. He’d just have to fudge his way through the call and think some more. There was a solution there someplace. He just had to find it.

  At least Max had given them plenty to talk about. DOJ had never turned down one of their cases before. Once Max filed a “declination to intervene” as it was formally called, the case would come out from under seal and litigation would begin in earnest. And so would the bills. If Max was right that the ceiling on their recovery was only about sixty thousand, they really had no business going much further. D&B’s legal bills alone would probably cost over sixty thousand. Per month.

  Connor was entitled to his attorney fees under the California False Claims Act, even if they far exceeded the actual amount of the judgment. But he’d have to fight for them, and the judge would likely slice a big chunk off of whatever bill Connor submitted. Overall, it just wasn’t worth it. He hadn’t asked the Executive Committee for permission to continue with the case despite DOJ’s decision, but he had a pretty good idea what they’d say.

  He’d recommend to Allie that they fire off a massive wave of discovery as soon as the seal lifted, then offer to settle. The discovery would be cheap to prepare, but expensive for Deep Seven to answer. Presumably, they’d be willing to pay something to make the case go away at that point. Even if they weren’t, the case wo
uld still go away. Or at least Connor would.

  Allie would understand. She was a smart businesswoman, and she’d be able to see that going forward with the case would be stupid. In fact, as soon as she called, he would—

  He looked at the clock in the corner of his computer screen. It showed 11:35.

  Weird. She was always punctual, and they had specifically decided that she would call him because she didn’t know whether she’d be home this morning.

  11:37.

  Maybe they’d had a misunderstanding and she was expecting him to call after all. He dialed her cell phone. It rang three times and went to voicemail. He left a message.