Collared

by David Rosenfelt

  “So I can make you a proposition, and you can accept it.”

  There is a fairly long pause, to the point where I think he might have hung up without me hearing the click. Then, “Tomorrow night, nine o’clock, at my home.”

  “Which home is that?” I know from Robbie Divine that he has homes in Greenwich, Connecticut, and Park Avenue in Manhattan.

  “Greenwich. The address is—”

  I interrupt. “I know the address. Nine o’clock tomorrow.”

  “Come alone, or don’t come at all,” he says.

  I hang up the phone. I find hanging up first in situations like this gives one the psychological upper hand. It’s always better to be the hanger-upper rather than the hanger-uppee. I know that because when I did get those high school girls on the phone, I was invariably the uppee.

  I turn to Laurie and Sam. “Nine o’clock tomorrow night at his house in Greenwich. I’m supposed to come alone.”

  “You’re supposed to, but you’re not going to,” Laurie says. “I’ll call Marcus.”

  achary Alford is Kelly’s next witness. He testified at the first trial, so I’m sure he’s just going to reprise his previous testimony.

  Kelly spends some time establishing Alford’s business background, up to the time he arrived at Finding Home. He also gets him to talk about the success of the company under his direction, as if that will make his subsequent testimony more credible.

  “Was Keith Wachtel working at Finding Home when you arrived?” Kelly asks.

  “Yes. He was the chief chemist.”

  “Did his position change after you got there?”

  “It changed as soon as I got there. His title remained the same,” Alford says, “but his responsibilities definitely were adjusted.”

  “In what way?”

  “We were developing a new process of testing DNA, much faster and requiring less time. We brought in some new people to work on it, and Keith was not involved in that effort.”

  “Did he ever complain about that?”

  Alford nods. “Oh, yes. Close to every day. It created a morale problem in the office.”

  “Did you consider terminating his employment?”

  “No, he had been there a long time, and Jill … Ms. Hickman … had established a culture of loyalty to employees. We did not and do not fire people casually or precipitously.”

  “What caused him to finally leave?”

  “Within a couple of months, our security people obtained evidence that Keith was gaining access to confidential documents that he should not have been privy to and that he was attempting to share them with our competitors.”

  “What did he say when you confronted him?” Kelly asks.

  “He denied it, said it was nonsense, but he used much stronger words than that. I told him that under the circumstances he would have to leave the company but that we would give him a healthy severance package to put it all behind us.”

  “What was his response?”

  “He wanted to talk to Ms. Hickman,” Alford says. “He said that she wouldn’t believe that he was guilty and would back him. She was in Europe at the time.”

  “Did you agree to that?”

  Alford shakes his head. “No, she was there for an extended period raising money. Besides, I had already spoken to her. She had signed off on forcing Keith out of the company.”

  “Did you tell him that?”

  “Yes, and he got very upset. Said that he couldn’t believe she would stab him in the back like that. He threatened to sue us, and I told him that it was his choice whether to do so or not.”

  There isn’t much that I’ll be able to do with Alford on cross; he’s basically relating a two-person conversation. The only way I’ll be able to present a different version is if I put Keith on the stand during the defense case, but I’m loath to do that.

  “Mr. Alford,” I say, “just to get the chronology correct, you arrived at Finding Home when the Parsons Group had invested money in the company but had not yet bought a 50 percent share?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “And once that subsequent purchase was done, and Ms. Hickman stepped back and became chairman, you were made CEO?”

  “Correct.”

  “So you were the Parsons Group’s boy?”

  Kelly objects, calling the question disrespectful, which I really never knew was a legal objection, but Judge Moran sustains it anyway.

  “Mr. Alford, how much damage did the alleged theft of the documents by Mr. Wachtel cost your company?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Which part didn’t you understand?” I ask. “You said that Mr. Wachtel stole the documents to turn them over to a competitor, maybe even to sell them, so how damaging was that to you? You don’t have to give me an exact monetary amount; you can ballpark it for me.”

  “I am not aware of any damage, monetary or otherwise. We acted so quickly to prevent that.”

  “I’m afraid that now I don’t understand,” I say. “According to you, he stole the documents; did you recover them?”

  “No, they were stolen electronically. Recovery is not possible in a situation like that; there is nothing of a physical nature to recover.”

  “And they would have been valuable to a competitor?”

  “Yes.”

  I pretend to look confused; I’m good at it because it’s a look I’ve had very often in my professional life. “But then he did nothing with them? Why would that be? Do you think he was suddenly showing loyalty to the company that had just fired him?”

  “Perhaps the companies he offered them to behaved ethically.”

  “Did they ethically come forward and report what Keith was trying to do?”

  “Not to my knowledge.”

  “What did the police say when you reported the theft?” I ask.

  “We handled it internally,” he said.

  “So someone stole valuable documents from you, putting your company at substantial risk. You had proof of that theft, and prosecuting the thief might have made other companies leery of using the documents. But you handled it internally?”

  “Yes.”

  I pause for a few moments to let that sink in, and then I ask, “When you told Mr. Wachtel that Ms. Hickman had signed off on his firing, did he make any threats against her personally?”

  “No, but he was very disappointed. He felt betrayed, and he expressed his anger.”

  “No threats?”

  “Just the lawsuit against the company.”

  “You didn’t warn Ms. Hickman that she might face retribution?”

  “No.”

  “You said that your company does not fire anyone precipitously. Is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “The chemists on staff that worked for Mr. Wachtel, you testified that you fired them after he left?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you have evidence of their wrongdoing?”

  “No, but we perceived them as being loyal to Mr. Wachtel.”

  “Lucky for them you don’t fire precipitously. No further questions.”

  arcus, we’re not in Paterson anymore.”

  We’re driving through Greenwich neighborhoods that are remarkable, although I’m not even sure I’d call them neighborhoods, in the way that neighborhoods are a grouping of homes. Each piece of property here is an entity unto itself and neighborhood size in its own right. I think a while back we passed the Ponderosa.

  The lawns are endless, and I have no doubt they are perfectly manicured under the thin snow covering. This is a very wealthy community; I’ve got a feeling you could walk around Greenwich for ten years, staring at the ground, and never see a dropped food stamp.

  Marcus and I haven’t chatted much on the way here; I’ve said a total of three sentences, which is three more than Marcus. I wonder what he thinks of this area; I have no idea where he grew up, but I suspect it was a very different place. Of course, it’s possible that he grew up on Krypton and flew here in a space
capsule just before the planet exploded.

  Before we left, Laurie, Marcus, and I discussed our strategy. I am going to act unafraid and talk to Kaiser, and Marcus is going to make sure I don’t die in the process. By me talking and Marcus protecting, we’re definitely playing to our strengths.

  “You sure you want to do this?” Laurie asked.

  “Not even close,” I said.

  “What is it you want to accomplish?”

  “I want to shake things up. We’re in need of that right now. However things fall out, we’ll deal with it then.”

  Kaiser’s property is as, or more, impressive and enormous than any we’ve seen on our tour of Greenwich. The Donner party wouldn’t have made it from the street to the house; they’d have been chomping on each other halfway up the driveway. The setup increases my discomfort; anything that is about to happen will not exactly attract attention from the neighbors.

  We pull up to the front of the house and get out. I’m sure I’m more nervous than Marcus is; I’m sure the car is more nervous than Marcus is. We go to the front door, and I almost trip over a small football lying on the slate path. It’s not a good start.

  I ring the doorbell and can hear chimes echoing loudly through the silence. Within moments the door opens, and a very large, rather ugly man opens it. He’s got to be 280 pounds and six foot four; maybe that football was lying there because he brought it with him from the Giants’ practice field.

  The guy looks at me, then looks at Marcus, and then sort of grunts and steps aside for us to come in. I’m not feeling any warmth so far.

  We follow him through what by any standards is a magnificent home. I’m not a good judge of stuff like this, but this place cost a fortune to decorate. And I’d bet that the people who painted the artwork on the walls have been dead for a really long time.

  We go toward the back of the house, which feels like it’s a half mile away. At one point, I can see through a glass wall to the backyard, which has a tennis court, swimming pool, and elaborate playground equipment. Just like Robbie Divine said, Kaiser has a regular family life, with a wife who probably goes to PTA meetings.

  We’re led into what might be considered a large den, although we’ve already passed two other rooms that I thought were dens. At the entrance to the room is another guy, just as large as the first guy, but even uglier. I think to get a job working for Kaiser, you must have to be a huge person willing to run a gauntlet where a line of people smack you in the face with an ugly stick.

  Sitting behind a large, ornate desk is a guy I assume is Renny Kaiser. He’s dressed casually, in a pullover shirt and black jeans, which seems incongruous for these surroundings. He looks to be in his early fifties, thin, and in pretty good shape.

  The two huge ugly guys follow us into the room.

  “Mr. Carpenter,” he says.

  “Mr. Kaiser,” is my witty comeback. “This is quite a pair of butlers you have here. Which one is Jeeves?”

  “You were instructed to come alone.”

  I nod. “I disobeyed.”

  “So now instruct your friend to wait in the car.”

  “I trust this man with my life, Senator. To ask him to leave would be an insult.” It’s a line from The Godfather Part II, but based on his non-reaction, Kaiser hasn’t seen the movie. This pretending-to-be-unafraid routine isn’t scaring him any.

  “You will remove him, or I will have him removed.”

  “Then you’d better have an extra truckload full of ugly butlers hanging around. Because these two are not going to get it done.”

  Kaiser looks toward the butlers and makes a very slight motion with his head. They don’t hesitate, moving with surprising speed toward Marcus.

  Marcus does hesitate; he doesn’t move a muscle until they are very close to him. Then he throws a forearm directly into the first guy’s throat, sending him down and gasping to the ground. I’m not a doctor or a voice coach, but I can safely predict that his glee club days are over.

  Butler number two doesn’t even have time to be deterred and possibly rethink his approach. He’s already too close to Marcus, who kicks up and into the guy’s groin. This causes the guy’s head to drop, maybe so he can get a look at what used to be his groin.

  Marcus’s fist, traveling up and in the opposite direction of the guy’s head, smashes into it. His fist wins, and the head does an about-face and goes in the opposite direction before following the rest of the body to the floor.

  Kaiser watches all of this without saying a word, really without any reaction at all.

  “I should have mentioned that my friend is the one who met your friend Kyle Gillis the other night. May he rest in peace.”

  “You have made a very serious mistake,” Kaiser says. “A life-changing one.”

  “Whatever,” I say, a dismissive word that Ricky uses when he wants to annoy me. “You want to hear my proposition or not?”

  He smiles as insincere a smile as I have ever seen. “The floor is yours.”

  “Okay. You know about the trial and what I’m doing, and it at least worries you some, or you wouldn’t have sent Gillis after me or agreed to this meeting.”

  I hear a slight gurgling noise, which I think is coming from the guy whose neck Marcus used as a heavy bag. Fortunately, Marcus has heard it as well, and he edges toward the two fallen guys, just in case.

  “I know a lot about your business. I know who you are and what you do. I’m going to make you a focal point of the trial so the whole world will understand. No more hiding behind this upstanding citizen bullshit; by the time I’m done with you, you’ll be voted drug dealer of the year by Pharmacology Weekly.”

  “And your proposition?” he asks. If he’s worried about what I’m saying, he’s hiding it really well. Maybe because we both know it’s bullshit.

  “I care about only two things, and the first is getting my client acquitted. I think you can make that happen; you can either point me to the real guilty party or give me some evidence that I can use to get my client off. I don’t think you grabbed the kid, but I’ll bet you know who did.”

  “And your second care?”

  “I want to know what happened to Dylan. His mother deserves closure.”

  “Fascinating. Based on your reputation, I would have thought that you were smarter than this. Leave now.”

  So we do.

  t would be wrong to say I accomplished nothing by meeting with Kaiser. Sure, our case is no better off, and yes, Jill Hickman is no closer to finding out what happened to her son. But I did manage to piss off a dangerous drug dealer who will likely make it the goal of his life to end mine.

  Well done, Andy.

  One thing I know for sure … not all is fun and games at Finding Home, and I think Jill should know about it. I call her and ask if she’ll meet me for lunch after the morning court session, and after questioning me to make sure there’s no bad news about Dylan, she agrees.

  Kelly’s first witness this morning is Pete Stanton. He was the lead detective on the case and can explain the actions of the police throughout.

  “When you arrived on the scene, you took control?” Kelly asks.

  “Yes.”

  “Did you speak to Teresa Mullins immediately?”

  “No, there was a delay of maybe fifteen minutes. Emergency medical personnel were treating her facial injuries on the scene. Once they were finished, I interrogated her.”

  “Was she able to identify her assailant?”

  “She said that she strongly believed it was Mr. Wachtel, based on his voice and the part of his face that was uncovered. She also had a description of the car and a partial license plate.”

  “What did you do with this information?”

  “I confirmed that the license plate information in fact matched that on Mr. Wachtel’s car and that the car was of a similar make and model to what Ms. Mullins described. Once that was done, a search warrant was prepared, signed off on, and executed.”

  “Where was Mr. Wachtel while
all this was happening?”

  “I have no personal knowledge of that. I know that he said he was hiking on Garret Mountain that day.”

  “So you were not able to confirm that?”

  “I was not.”

  I have very few questions for Pete; he didn’t do us any damage, so there’s nothing to repair. I reserve the right to call him in the defense case, where he will be a crucial witness. He may not be happy with that fact; helping defendants is not something he would ever relish.

  Kelly next calls an ex-employee of Finding Home, Sarah Stafford, for the purpose of reporting how upset Keith was at being let go and how betrayed he felt by Jill.

  Stafford was a chemist working under Keith, and she says all the things Kelly wants to hear. Kelly then turns her over to me.

  “Ms. Stafford, did you ever see any evidence that Keith Wachtel was stealing documents?”

  “I did not, but I wouldn’t necessarily be in a position to do so.”

  “But you reported to him?”

  She nods. “Yes.”

  “Ever see any sign that he was disloyal to the company?”

  “No.”

  “Are you still employed at Finding Home?” I ask.

  “No, pretty much everyone who worked for Keith was let go and replaced. It wasn’t fair, but it happened.”

  “Why wasn’t it fair?”

  “Because it wasn’t like Keith was our big buddy. He was a tough boss. And we weren’t close; there was no reason to think we would hurt the company just because they thought he did.”

  “Has anyone that was terminated been rehired?”

  “No, which makes it tough for people with our skills. Because of the new process, Finding Home has at least 50 percent more work, a lot of it from the government. And they’ve doubled their staff. So we can’t go there, and nobody else has any openings, because they’re not doing as much work as they used to. They gave us good severance, but that doesn’t last forever.”

  “Thank you, Ms. Stafford. No further questions.”

  I meet Jill for lunch at a diner about four blocks from the courthouse. The distance will mean that we’re less likely to be seen by people connected with the case. Not that we’re doing anything wrong or unethical, but there’s no need to start anyone talking.