Dark Money

by Larry D. Thompson

  “I was flying fighters in Desert Storm. In fact, I was a major and led a squadron. Our mission was to soften up Saddam’s forces before you guys advanced on the ground. Was a damn good plan in my opinion. Saddam had a few fighters. Their pilots shouldn’t have been flying a Piper Cub. We strafed artillery. We bombed tanks. We strafed troops. They were the enemy and we were doing our job.” He paused as he thought back to the time. “Then, one morning our assignment was to bomb a village occupied by the Iraq army. We pretty much leveled it. When we returned to the base, we learned that our intel was wrong. Civilians were in that village, including women and children.” He put his arms on his knees and clasped his hands as he stared at the patio deck. His voice dropped. “We killed them, Walt, women and children.” He looked up to stare into Walt’s eyes.

  “I never wanted to climb into a plane again. But I did, in spite of nightmares that left me bleary-eyed every morning. Fortunately, our part of the mission was over shortly thereafter. You guys took over and the war ended with Saddam running back to Iraq with his tail between his legs. Only it didn’t end for me. I rotated back to the United States and was put in command of several squadrons on this training base until I retired. I suffered from about everything you described. Slowly the memories faded.” He raised a fist to his head. “Knock on wood, they haven’t come back like yours did.”

  There was silence for a long minute. “Thanks, Fox. I appreciate you telling me that.”

  “Look, whoever said war is hell didn’t come close to describing the horror of it. We all react differently to what we saw and did. I can only imagine what that scene at the barracks did to a nineteen year old like you were. But, Walt, it’s over. You need to put it behind you. It’s been a long time. Move on with your life.”

  “I’m trying, Fox. Somehow, I think that I was drawn here just to hear your story. It’s going to help for sure. I’ll be heading out now. I see some weeds in that bed on the other side of the pool that need your attention.”

  Walt stopped on the edge of Del Rio. He was about to head back to Austin when he changed his mind. He had one more stop first. After filling the truck and getting a Big Mac at McDonalds, he headed northeast through central Texas, actually enjoying the small towns that dotted the highways. It was late in the day when he arrived on the outskirts of Fort Worth. He found his way to Westover Hills, then to the Hale mansion where he cut the engine and rolled down the windows as night descended. He stared at the mansion and forced himself to re-live the experience, hour by hour and, at the last, minute by minute. He forced himself to look at the costumed freaks below him when he was on the stage. He breathed a sigh of relief when they did not turn into a mass of bodies at the barracks. He remembered carrying the governor from the stage and the wild ride to the hospital. Finally, he accepted all that occurred on that night as well as what he went through in the barracks. He was about ready to leave when a Westover Hills cop on patrol drove up and lowered his driver’s window.

  “Something I can do for you, sir?”

  “No officer. Name’s Walt Frazier. I’m a DPS officer. I’m reaching for my wallet now.”

  The officer tensed as Walt’s hand dropped below the window and relaxed when it appeared with a wallet. Walt extracted his DPS creds and handed them to the officer. “I was part of the governor’s protective detail when the attack occurred here last Halloween. I was just trying to put a few things in my mind to rest. If you’ll give me my creds, I’ll be leaving now.”

  It was almost dark when Walt pushed the code to open Jack’s gate and drove to the back. Colby looked out when she heard the gate buzz, expecting to see J.D. When she saw Walt instead, she rushed out to greet him. After a hug she stepped back. “Where the hell have you been. Mary’s been out of her mind.”

  “Sorry. I had some soul searching to do and had to do it alone. Let’s go inside. I’ll call Mary. I suspect someone has called the DPS. I’ll call and report that the prodigal has returned. Jack here?”

  “I’m calling him now. He’ll be here in twenty minutes. And, let me be the first to say that you need a shave and shower. Jack’s clothes are too small for you, but I suspect you can wear a pair of J.D.’s shorts and one of his T-shirts. I’ll pitch them on the bed while you’re in the shower. You’ll find a clean razor and a toothbrush in there, too.”

  When Jack arrived, they sat around the kitchen table while Walt explained his last two days. When he finished, he said, “For the first time in months, my head is clear. This two day odyssey was somehow therapeutic. At least something I did worked. Fox was a giant help. Anyway, I’ll head back to Austin in the morning.”

  Jack smiled at his friend. “And I’ll be taking O’Connell’s deposition tomorrow.”

  “Can I attend? I feel like I’d like to face that son of a bitch now. I’ll let Mary know I’ll be home after the deposition.”

  “I’ll find the smallest pair of J.D.’s pants and a dress shirt,” Colby said. “You may have to cinch them up with a belt, but the dress shirt should fit about right.”

  61

  “State your full name for the record”

  “Kevin O’Connell.

  “Mr. O’Connell, you understand that we are here in your lawyer’s office in Dallas to ask you questions about your injury at the fundraiser and to obtain documents? With me is my client, Walt Frazier.”

  O’Connell was dressed in a $5,000 suit, a $500 shirt and a tie equal in price to the shirt. “I understand.”

  “Mr. O’Connell, you also understand that the court reporter is recording everything that is being said and we also are making a video. Further, either of them may be used at the time of trial.”

  “I do.”

  “I’m handing you a subpoena that requires you to produce certain documents and financial records, personally and from the Stepper PAC as well as Stepper Official Strategies, Inc., also known as SOS.” Jack stretched his arm across the table and O’Connell did likewise to take the subpoena.

  “Your lawyer has shown this to you before today, hasn’t he?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Jack, if I can interrupt, I’m handing you a flash drive that contains the financial records of the PAC and the list of contributions made by SOS. We have eliminated the names of the contributors to SOS, pursuant to the ruling from the Court of Appeals. They are accurate up to last month,” Christiansen said.

  “Thank you, Cecil. Am I correct that they are in searchable form?”

  Cecil nodded his head.

  “Then, Mr. O’Connell. we’ll turn to your damages. I know you were wounded. In fact we visited with you in your hotel a couple of days after the shooting. Did you recover from that bullet to your arm?”

  O’Connell nodded. “Pretty much. It was painful for a few weeks and gradually improved. I wouldn’t be here if it was just that.”

  Jack made a few notes on his legal pad. “What are your other damages?”

  “First, SOS had pledges that night before the shootings of nearly a hundred million, by far my most successful one-day fundraiser ever. Afterwards, we ended up collecting less than five million. My consulting and other fees would have been in the range of five million dollars. After the shootings, the consulting fees basically evaporated. Then, SOS and Stepper have become persona non grata in Republican circles. I was expecting to springboard from that night during this election cycle. A billion dollars was not out of the question. Bottom line is it’s not happening.”

  Jack tapped his pen on the table as he thought. “Any explanation?”

  “Mr. Bryant, I don’t know why. Frankly, one of the reasons I filed this case is to, hopefully, convince the Republicans that this fiasco wasn’t my fault.”

  Jack nodded. “We’re going to trial next month. So you and Mr. Christiansen will have your chance. No more questions.”

  Jack and Walt returned to Fort Worth. When he arrived home, he shook Walt’s hand in the driveway before Walt departed for Austin. “Looks to me like whatever you did has worked. Let’s
hope it continues.”

  “I really think that I’ll be okay. Keep your fingers crossed.” Walt was smiling as he drove away.

  Inside, he told Colby about the deposition.

  “Are you going to depose Maria Hale and the Hale children?”

  Jack shook his head. “Nope. She was interviewed by the DPS for hours a few days after the shootings. We can use that statement about what she saw and heard that night. I’ve got her financial records and we can analyze her claimed losses. I’ll just cross her during trial. As to the Hale children, they weren’t at the party. I’ll just cross-examine them at trial. I suspect that there will be a big probate fight between her and the adult kids from the prior marriages. They’re probably postponing it to put up a united front in this case. Meantime, they’re just riding Maria’s coattails. You’d think that with an estate worth forty billion, that pie could be sliced so that everyone was happy, but the rich are greedy just like the rest of us.”

  He speed dialed J.D. “Hey, Dad, how’d the deposition go?”

  “Nothing exciting. I have a flash drive that supposedly has the financial information of the Stepper PAC and SOS, only not the contributors to SOS. I’ll make a few copies. Can you drop by later today to pick up one for yourself and one for our professor. Tell me his name again?”

  “Cagle, Calvin Cagle. He’s a political science junkie and eager to take a look inside these organizations. Did you see that the Texas Legislature had a bill to make these dark money organizations disclose their contributors? Damn thing was killed in the Senate. You were right. The politicians don’t want us to know who is funding them.”

  “You got that right. Still, I may be able to use what happened in Austin in our case. We’ll see. Tell Professor Cagle we need his opinions in about a week. We have to list him as an expert and give a brief summary of his opinions. I want to be vague so that Cecil won’t be interested in deposing him. If the professor finds what I think he will, we’ll set a nice trap that we’ll spring during trial.”

  Jack ended the call and pressed another button on his cell, this call to Walt. After they returned from New Orleans, he forwarded the i.d. information on the guy J.D. killed in New Orleans to Walt. “Walt, I’m sorry to bother you even before you get home. I forgot this. Your guys find anything on that guy we had to shoot in New Orleans?”

  “Not much. The guy worked security for the Chechen delegation to the United Nations. At least, that was his cover. Could have been a government assassin for all we know.”

  Jack gazed out the window to the old bomber plant across the Trinity River. “I’ve been racking my brain, trying to figure out why some Chechen would want to kill Crossmore. We know he had ties to Van Zandt. He probably was in the middle of the payments to Van Zandt for the attack, only now that can only be an educated guess.”

  “Yeah,” Walt replied. “We’ve contacted the Cayman bank and even the government. Been stonewalled at every turn. We may eventually dig up something, but not before trial. That’s for damn sure.”

  “But why the Chechens? Were they behind it? Lardner was only one of about ten potential Republican candidates. If he had been killed, it would have left plenty of right wing Republicans. As to Edward Hale, was that an accident? If someone wanted to cut off the Hale brothers funding of right wing causes, he needed to kill Oscar, too. He was right there at the front of the stage. Easy shot for someone like Miriam. For some reason she wasn’t after him. And I have to believe that if Chechnya wanted someone killed, they wouldn’t have gone through Crossmore and Van Zandt. We damn sure know they have trained killers. These days, I’m sure some of them could pass for Americans and even speak Texan like they grew up on a ranch in West Texas. They killed Crossmore to cover something up. Damned if they didn’t succeed. Now, we’ll probably never find out. Shit.”

  62

  When Jack was close to trial, he rarely went to the RV. Instead, he moved the trial case materials home to spread on the dining room table, and the dining room became his war room. He, J.D. and Colby sat around the table, iced teas in hand, on the Thursday before trial started the next Monday. Jack looked glum and out of sorts.

  “Dammit, here we are a few days from trial, and we don’t have any more idea who paid to have this attack done than we did months ago.”

  “Yeah,” J.D. said. “We were so close at Trombone’s. Then we let the answer get away from us.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. I suspect that he never knew who was paying him the money. His cell phone didn’t have any calls around the time of the attack except to Bernard and Van Zandt. Still, I would have liked to have grilled him.”

  “You think that he had one of those burner phones I hear about on the criminal shows?” Colby asked.

  “Good a guess as any. If he had lived, maybe we could have gotten our hands on it. The New Orleans cops searched his house and didn’t find one.” Jack pounded the table with his fist. “Dammit, our strategy was to find the real killer. That was a great plan at the time. Unfortunately, we’ve we put all of our eggs in one basket. Now all we have to show for it is a bunch of broken eggs. Last time I saw a strategy fail this badly was probably twenty years ago.”

  “So, what do we do now?” J.D. asked.

  “We try a straight up negligence case. We convince the jury that no matter how good the security is, you can’t always stop an assassin. We’ve had four presidents who have been assassinated. Like Walt said, they have a small army protecting them. All it takes is some idiot who gets off a lucky shot, Lee Harvey Oswald for example. So, that’s our backup plan. If that army of Secret Service agents can’t protect presidents, how could Walt’s detail and a few cops have changed the outcome?”

  “I read Walt’s deposition,” Colby said. “He didn’t do very well. Neither did the other members of the detail.”

  Jack shook his head. “Yeah, I know. I have Walt driving up here tomorrow. J.D., you’ll have company upstairs for the duration.”

  “I’ve already moved into my room. OTAs are over. I’ve got a few weeks to be your legal assistant. What about the other members of the detail?”

  “St. James is preparing them. He’s the DPS lawyer. I will be defending them at trial, but I haven’t had time to work with them. St. James is pretty sharp. He knows our game plan and can get them ready. And I suspect that Christiansen is going to try to unload on Walt as head of the detail that night. If I’m right, he won’t have much for the others, may not even call them.”

  “We were talking about cell phones,” J. D. said. “Didn’t you mention that Mr. Nichols was going to subpoena the cell records of the plaintiffs?”

  Jack picked up his cell and called Nichols’s office. When the Fort Worth attorney got on the phone, he said, “Brian, Jack here. Just checking in. You got the Fort Worth cops squared away?”

  “Sure do. They’ll be singing from the same hymnal as the DPS, and Keith says he has the security company boys ready, too.”

  “One more question. Didn’t you tell me you were subpoenaing the cell phone records of the plaintiffs?”

  “I did. They haven’t gotten here yet. I had to go through lawyers for three different phone companies. They were a pain in the ass. Dragged it out for months, but they finally agreed. Should have them early next week. You think we’ll find anything?”

  “Damned if I know. We’ve all gotten in the habit of subpoenaing cell records and mountains of emails. Most of the time we spend a hell of a lot of hours and turn up empty handed. Still, if you get them, email them to me. We’ll both start looking for anything unusual. Otherwise, I’ll be working on the case between now and Monday. Call if you want to talk.”

  “You do the same,” Nichols said as he hung up.

  Walt pulled into Jack’s drive about ten-thirty the next morning. Jack met him as he exited his car. J.D. was close behind to take his bag from the trunk.

  “I brought three suits. Is it okay to wear them more than once and then get them cleaned next weekend?”

  Jack laughed. “I
’ll tell you a funny story. One of Houston’s best plaintiff lawyers always wore the same suit and tie and a white shirt every day of trial. He said that he only had one suit when he tried his first case, won it, and decided not to mess with a good thing. So, when I started practicing, I did the same thing. You’ll see me in the same dark, charcoal suit every day. I do wear different ties. Oh, and fresh underwear every day. So, with three suits, you’ll look like a fashion plate.

  “J. D., if you’ll carry Walt’s suitcase up to his room, we’ll grab some tea and sit out here under one of the umbrella tables until it gets too hot. Walt, have a seat and I’ll retrieve my notes. I presume you’ve got your deposition and the depositions of the other security detail in that briefcase in the back seat.”

  Walt nodded and took the briefcase. Before they could enter the house Colby came out with a tray containing a pitcher of iced tea and glasses. “Welcome, Walt. Wish it could be under better circumstances.”

  “You’re not the only one. At least we’re going to get this SOB over. Maybe then my life can return to normal.”

  Jack went to the house and returned with an arm full of papers and depositions. He made one more trip to retrieve his laptop. J.D joined them at the table.

  “First, I’ve made a deal with the other defense lawyers that I’ll take the lead. They understand that if all of us go into lengthy questions with each witness, it’s going to get the jury confused. I don’t expect Burton to ask much of anything. Brian Nichols may be the exception. He’s a damn fine trial lawyer. If he wants to cover something I may have overlooked, I’ve had a private conversation with him and encouraged him to do so.”