Pleading Guilty kc-3

by Scott Turow

  'And you wouldn't advise sharing this with Martin or Wash before we act?' The fact that his caution exceeded his greed startled me a bit.

  'Afterwards you can tell them what you've done, what you've said. They can only follow. If you tell them in advance, they'll try to derail you. They have to. You know that.'

  Carl continued his silent reflection. The thing that bothered him most, I suspected, was that he was depending on me.

  'Carl,' I said, 'there's no choice. We have a duty to the client. Someone from the Committee has to go to Krzysinski, someone who speaks on behalf of the firm.'

  He considered me soberly. We both knew I was manipulating him shamelessly. But I'd given him what he needed — a good excuse. It had all the right appearances. Highly principled. Above criticism. And very good for Pagnucci. He could salute the flag and steal the client. Beyond that, it did not matter much what I was up to.

  I pulled the phone close and dialed TN. It took some time to get to Krzysinski, but he said he had a few minutes for Carl before two.

  B. Some People Want Me and Some People Don't

  I waited until three to leave the airport, then took a cab home. Right about now, big powwows were going on at TN: Carl and Tad and TN's head of security, Mike Mathigoris. They were figuring what to do with Jake — question him, crucify him, or just throw his ass out. In another hour or so, they'd be calling the FBI.

  When I got home, I stood on the low concrete stoop before my front door and the vines. The rare sunshine had continued, but the air remained cold, with an astringent wind. I looked around for the surveillance vehicles and waved. I raised my hands the way Nixon used to, fingers in Vs, and pivoted about for a full minute. Nobody appeared. Inside, I changed into my tuxedo for Groundhog Night and drove downtown. Lyle had even cleaned up the car.

  I walked the entire block outside the TN Needle three times, looking for the tail and waiting for them to pick me up, but there was still nobody there. Finally I headed up. Lucinda handed me three messages. All from Martin. He wanted to see me at once. In my office, I went to the phone.

  'Financial Crimes,' I told the operator at the Hall.

  Pigeyes picked up himself. I was relieved to hear his voice. I thought he might have called off his forces because he'd grabbed Bert, but his voice was full of bovine indifference for the paperbound life in Financials.

  'You drop your investigation? I thought you were looking for me?'

  'Who the hell is this?' he asked, and then, figuring it out, added, 'You think you're all I got to worry about?'

  'I'm at the office. I'm ready to tell you whatever you want to know.'

  He was thinking. Something, God knows what, had him buffaloed.

  'Ten minutes,' he told me. 'And don't go running again to the fuckin dark side of the moon.'

  I found a cigarette in my drawer. Lucinda stuck her head in. Toots was on hold.

  'All done,' he told me. 'All square. Your fellas are in the clear. Had to remind one or two guys a some things.'

  'Toots, you're a miracle worker.'

  Over the phone, the old guy basked in the praise. You could hear it.

  'Only one thing,' he said, 'is the money. We gotta talk about that. I think, you know,' said Toots, 'I think it's gotta be 275.'

  The number was a blow. I hadn't been thinking of bankrolling Bert like that, but I began to reason it through. Bert was useful to me, essential really. Besides, I was happy to prove to myself that I wasn't quite the lowdown bum Brushy had implied.

  Toots was explaining. "This here was big stuff, that's what I'm hearing. So it's gotta be that, you know, 275.'

  This was not so much a negotiation as Toots setting a price. And it came to me — maybe something I was supposed to know from the start — that the Colonel would be getting his share. This was Toots's skill, his profession, fixing things up, making big problems go away. We didn't defend him for free either.

  I explained how I wanted to do it. I needed an account number at a local bank. Sometime in the next seven days a wire transfer would hit there from Fortune Trust, Pico Luan.

  'What are the ground rules?' I asked. 'Is my guy in danger until the money arrives?'

  'I got your word, they get my word. It's all done, this here. Never happened. But tell your partner: there can't be no next time.'

  Next door Brushy was on the phone. She mugged up and made kissy-face when she saw me, sweeping a hand in admiration of my gallant look in my tux. I tried to smile. She put her caller on hold.

  'Can I say I'm sorry?' she asked.

  'Sure.' I closed my eyes. What was I supposed to be angry about anyway? That she suspected me of bad intentions toward Jake? 'Anything from Bert?'

  He had phoned an hour ago, she said, and promised to call back soon.

  'What about Toots?' she asked. 'Did he work it out? Really?' I got a great smile. I was some kind of fella. The door was open to the hall, so she just took my hand. We did an instant of that stuff, gazing fondly. We'd found a sick little cycle, swords and wounds and soft rapprochement. I saw her eyes shift to the threshold. Lucinda was there. The policemen had arrived. And Mr Gold wanted me upstairs in ten minutes.

  'He sounds angry,' she added.

  'Tell him I'm with the police.' I turned to Brushy, who had finished her call. 'That'll get his attention,' I said.

  C. I Try to Satisfy Pigeyes

  'Okay, Gino, let's see if I've followed the bouncing ball. After talking to Mrs Archie, Missing Persons made a trip to the Bath, where somebody with a weak bladder snitched out this little game-fixing thing, and Missing did what they always do, lateraled to someone else, Financial Crimes in this case, telling you what a great investigation you had, and by the way, should you run into an actuary or a corpse, assuming you can tell the difference, give Missing a call. Am I guessing good so far?'

  He didn't say a thing. We made an odd little group — me, Brushy, Pigeyes and Dewey, scattered around Brushy's high-tech office, each of us visibly wary. Brushy was behind her glass desk, which was sided by the potted jungle plants. I was the only one standing, walking around, waving my hands, having a great time. I was in full dashing formal array, tuxedo and cummerbund and a boiled shirt I'd owned for twenty years and never replaced; it sported silly button-on frills that reminded me of the comb on a cockatoo. Gino'd looked up and down at my getup "when he walked in and asked for a ‘I-bone, medium well.

  'So that's why you're looking for these guys, Kam Roberts especially, and Archie and Bert along the way, and you're pretty sure you have a hot one and you get half the Force helping out cause here's what you see: A, a bunch of characters from the Russian Bath say they were winning money with Bert, who was getting information from someone he called Kam Roberts. B, Bert has got a credit card in the name of said Kam Roberts. C, we have sightings here and there of said Said. And D, the bookie, Archie, is among the disappeared. But there are a few questions: One, who the screw is Kam Roberts? Two, how does a partner in a big law firm fix basketball games? Three, why is he playing hide-and-seek all over North America? And four, by the way, where's Archie? Am I on the right track?'

  Pigeyes gave me something, a shrug, a tip of the hand. He still wasn't talking. You never explain what you're investigating, not until you tell them the charges when they're under arrest. Still in their overcoats, Pigeyes and Dewey were seated side by side on Brushy's chrome-trimmed sofa. I could tell Gino was uneasy because I was having such a good time.

  'Okay, so let's explain some of this. Hypothetically, of course, since if one is a big-goddamn-deal lawyer he has to watch out for BAD and his shingle, which is why you're hearing from me. But let's get one thing straight to start: Nobody was fixing games. Nobody here and nobody anybody here is friends with.'

  That got a rise. 'No?' Pigeyes asked. Skeptical, you might say.

  'No. Here's how it ran. Archie is a tout, but he's an actuary to start. Clever with computers. Does his number runs. Let's say there are some gentlemen, we'll call them Valpolicella and Bardolino, V an
d B, who just always seem to get certain Mid-Ten games right. Let's say Archie notices. The nature of the world is that Archie is supposed to keep such thoughts to himself. V and B are making suckers out of the suckers, and Archie's getting a break on his street tax.

  'But let's imagine Archie's got a buddy — a real good-type close intimate friend.' I hit Pigeyes's peepers to make sure he got it. 'Archie clues him on this info. The friend, a certain hotshot partner in a certain big law firm, starts betting what V amp; B do, winning big. So far so good?'

  Pigeyes somewhere had acquired a photo of Bert and he withdrew it now from the many layers of his coats.

  'Good-lookin here? We sayin he's that way?'

  'How you talk, Gino. Let's not get too personal, okay? Just remember, you're the one who told me about Archie. Pecker tracks in the porthole, didn't you say?'

  He and Dewey liked that one. Brushy covered her eyes.

  'Anyway, Bert, which is what I'll call this lawyer hypothetically, he tries to be discreet, but these guys at the Russian Bath are always in each other's pockets and heads, they've got to know everyone's action. One thing leads to another. And pretty soon everybody there realizes that Bert, or Kam Roberts as he's called when he's putting down money, is hitting big on certain games. Now he's not about to explain why. Everybody sweating there is in Archie's book. It's bad business to favor one customer. And the reasons for doing so are highly personal. So Archie and Bert start this little thing like it's Kam Roberts who's got inside stuff. But it isn't. It's Archie all along.

  'Sooner than Archie hoped, V amp; B hear about what's going down at the Russian Bath and they know sure as shooting the info ain't from any Kam flippin Roberts. It's their proprietary confidential trade-secret business-time information and Archie's peddled it, denting their odds, and they let it be known that Archie is about to literally have his private parts fed to some mutt. Archie scoots and V amp; B start hunting, which brings them pretty quickly to Bert's door. They give Bert the choice — twenty-four hours to dig up Archie or he's the one who's dog food. So Bert scrams too. Until one of his intrepid partners who knows a guy who knows a guy who knows another guy arranges what we might call an amnesty. High-priced. Could be, hypothetically, that Bert is repaying his profits at interest rates that exceed the ceiling on usury.'

  Brush, when I glanced her way, was sunk back in her desk chair regarding me with an uneasy eye. It troubled her, I suspect, to see me lying with such elan.

  'And?' Pigeyes asked me.

  'And what?'

  'And where's this crumb Archie? Today?'

  'I'd look in the sanitary canal. Watch what comes out of the treatment plant. That's the way I hear it. V amp; B found him. He's got something around his neck besides his tie. And if your people on the street are half as good as they used to be, Gino, you've heard the same thing.'

  Whacking a guy, making him dead, is not something anybody owns up to, but word spreads. It has to. It's the way those guys keep everybody in line.

  Lucinda knocked. 'Mr Gold,' she said.

  'Tell him five minutes.'

  'He wants to talk to you right now.'

  'Five minutes,' I repeated.

  Lucinda stepped to the phone and pressed a button. She held out the extension. It's been this poor woman's lot for years to protect me from myself.

  'We are not amused,' Martin said when I put the handset to my ear.

  'I'm busy.'

  'So I hear. What, pray tell, are you and the nice policemen discussing?'

  'Detective Dimonte had some questions about Bert.' I smiled at Gino when I mentioned his name.

  'We're not talking high finance?'

  'Bert,' I said.

  'Did Bert do something else that was naughty?'

  'Never kid a kidder, Martin. I'll be up in one minute. We're just about done.' I put the phone down without allowing further comment.

  Gino was waiting. 'So this Kam Roberts thing was strictly an act?' he asked. 'Exactly.'

  'Except there's a Kam Roberts.' Pigeyes sneered.

  'No. There's a certain young man who's used Bert's bank card a few times. That doesn't make him Kam Roberts.'

  'No? Who is he?'

  'Friend of Bert's.'

  'Another one? Good-lookin's real frisky, isn't he? He's two-timing the other guy?'

  'Hey, Gino, call it what you like. But remember, I used to ride with you. I've seen you stop off with three different gals on the same shift.''

  He was flattered, of course, by the memory. He stole a glance toward Brushy, hoping she was impressed. Someday I'd have to tell Pigeyes about Nueve.

  'Anyway, there's this young man,' I said. 'Bert's piling up a lot of credit on the card, so he's got plenty to share. Now it could be, hypothetically, this young man, he's got a connection to the U. Maybe he's the one who let a certain middle-aged lawyer into the refs' room the other night so Bert and the middle-aged lawyer could confer outside the watchful eye of the law in the hopes of straightening some of this out.'

  'That so?' Gino asked.

  'Could be,' I said and rested on a chair arm to see how it had gone down. Better, it seemed, than I might have thought. I was trying like hell for Bert's sake and my own, vamping like crazy, and when it came to Gino, there was no end to my daring. But I still thought I'd gone over the top. The whole thing was too much, too curious, way too lame. I didn't know what I'd do if, for instance, they wanted to quiz the young man from the U. And there wouldn't be any smart answers if Gino ever started matching the games the guys at the Bath called Kam's Specials with the ones officiated by Friday night's referees.

  But the great thing with people is that you never know. After two weeks of riding my fanny, chasing me everywhere, and spooking my dreams, Gino seemed to have run out of gas. Not that he believed me particularly. He knew better than that. But he was clearly afraid the prosecutor's office would toss him out on his keester because he was nowhere near beyond a reasonable doubt. Bogus or not, I'd touched all the bases; it was a comprehensive defense. And my history with Gino was enough to make a conscientious deputy PA think twice anyway. Pigeyes didn't come to these conclusions peaceably. When he looked at me, his eyes were stilled by a hatred entirely void of goodwill, like black being the absence of color, but I could see he knew I had him beat.

  He turned to Dewey, who shrugged. Go figure. They both got to their feet. 'Great to see you again, Gino.' 'Yeah, really,' he offered.

  Lucinda peeked in, beckoning, and I followed her out, departing with a cheerful wave as Brushy started with Gino and Dewey toward the door. Lucinda had a note: 'Bert's on the phone.' I picked up in my office.

  'Listen,' I said. 'I've settled your problems. Those guys won't be looking for you anymore.'

  The line gathered static. I could hear from the gray roar behind him that Bert was on a pay phone somewhere near a highway.

  'Humor, right?' he asked.

  'Don't ask me how. You're done. D, o, n, e. I've got it squared with the coppers too. What you oughta do is get down here. You'll probably need to answer some questions about Jake.' Mathigoris from TN security would want to go over the whole thing many times. The memo, the checks. Jake telling Bert to keep it strictly hush-hush. 'And what about — '

  ‘I covered both of you. Go rent a tux and get over here. It's GH Night.'

  'God,' he said softly. I could tell that in the instant of relief the terror suddenly had hold of him. He'd been flying combat again. Now he was on the ground, torn up by what he'd been through, the great concussions of noise and the light that had rattled the plane and trailed him through the sky. 'God,' he said again. 'Mack, man, what can I say?'

  'Just come back,' I repeated.

  This was getting exciting, everything falling in place. My phone rang again. 'I'm waiting,' Martin told me.

  XXVIII

  HOW MARTIN SOLVED THE CRIME

  Martin was dressing. He had on his tuxedo pants, striped in satin along the seam, and his wing-collared tuxedo shirt, into which he was nimbly insertin
g the studs, little diamond jobs that glimmered in the pearly light of the late-winter afternoon. In an hour or so my partners, all similarly dressed, would stroll down the avenue to the Club Belvedere, share a drink or two and some canapes, and then over dinner get a report on financial results and the size of their share. It promised to be an excruciating evening in every regard.

  Martin did not speak at first. Standing, he worked over the shirt for some time. Every now and then he stopped to examine a small blue note card on his desk, reading it to himself. It was, I suspected, his GH Night speech. Rah-rah from the managing partner. Picking up his pen, he made a few corrections. I said nothing either. The large corner office, fully lit from the long windows, was quiet enough that you could hear the whirring of the gyroscope device that powered one of his clocks. I was tempted to play with some of his toys, the shaman stick or the coffee-table games, but I took a seat instead in a wooden sidechair painted up in Southwestern shades. I'd brought along my briefcase.

  'I've been too fucking good to you,' Martin said at last. He didn't talk dirty and this was meant to be shocking. He wanted me to know he was pissed, that our partnership agreement didn't include a search warrant for his drawer. He continued fooling with the shirt.

  'How much trouble is Bert in?' he asked in a moment.

  'Now that I've had a little chat with the police, probably none.'

  He glanced my way briefly to be sure I was serious. 'How'd you arrange that? This policeman an old friend?' 'You could say.'

  'Very impressive.' He nodded. I was sorry, frankly, he hadn't been there to see it. In a law firm it took all types, and I was one of the best bullshitters in town. It was like having a guy in the bullpen who could get away with throwing spitballs. Witnessing that performance would have rewarded Martin's faith in me, all the time he'd spent telling our partners I might come back yet.