Dead Even

by Brad Meltzer

  “I’m Guff—one of the TPAs from next door. I used to work for Conrad Moore, and I just wanted to introduce you to my new boss.” As Sara approached Evelyn’s desk, Guff said, “This is Sara Tate. She just started with us today. It’s her first time in ECAB.”

  “I’m happy for both of you,” Evelyn said, turning her attention back to the booking sheets on her desk.

  Before Guff could say another word, the office door opened and a man wearing an olive-green suit walked in carrying a small stack of booking sheets.

  “More?” Evelyn asked.

  “The afternoon’s just warming up,” the man said as he left the office. “See you soon.”

  When the door closed, Evelyn put the new sheets in her in-box and went on with her work. She continued to ignore Sara and Guff.

  Sara shot Guff a look, then addressed the receptionist. “Listen, I’m sorry to bother you. It’s just that I’m new here and—”

  “Actually, why don’t you listen,” Evelyn said, putting down her stapler. “I know you’re new here, and I know you want a good case, but I don’t know you from Adam. So if I let you cut the line, I’m jerking over all the people who I not only like a whole lot more, but who bother me a whole lot less.”

  Stunned, Sara didn’t know what to say. “I didn’t mean to be a bother. I’m just trying to save—”

  Once again, the door to ECAB flew open. But it wasn’t the man in the olive suit. It was Victor Stockwell. Striding across the reception area, Victor looked at Sara. “Still not fired?”

  Sara forced a smile. “Can you believe it? I made it through another whole twenty minutes.”

  “Hiya there, Vic,” Guff said. When Victor didn’t respond, Guff added, “Love you, too, baby. Kiss ya, hug ya, squeeze ya.”

  Without another word, Victor headed for the ECAB supervisor’s office. Evelyn picked up a stack of booking sheets and followed him.

  When she was gone, Sara leaned on Evelyn’s desk. “I can’t believe this.”

  “It could be worse,” Guff reasoned.

  “How? How could it possibly be worse?”

  “You could be on fire, or you could have poison ivy. You could even have chicken pox—that would be a whole lot worse.”

  “Guff, not now,” Sara begged.

  “I’ll tell you what: Let me go beg to Victor. Maybe he’ll take some pity on us.” Before Sara could object, Guff headed off behind Victor and Evelyn.

  Now alone, Sara closed her eyes and started to massage her temples. Once again, the front door opened. It was the man who delivered the booking sheets. “Where’s Evelyn?” he asked, holding the newest pile of crimes.

  “She’s in the back with Victor,” Sara explained. As he put the booking sheets in Evelyn’s in-box, Sara asked, “Anything good in there?”

  “No idea,” he said. “But the one in the folder is a request for Victor. You can bet that one won’t suck.” Sure enough, on the top of the pile was a booking sheet in a plain manila file folder. On a yellow Post-it attached to the folder were the words Request for Victor Stockwell.

  “That’s great for him, but do you have anything for me?” Sara asked.

  “Let me guess: You need a good case so you can wow your boss.”

  “Something like that.”

  “So hasn’t this city taught you anything? If you want something, take it.”

  “I don’t get it,” Sara said.

  “The case,” he said, pointing to the folder. “If you want it, that’s your case.”

  “What do you mean that’s my case? It’s marked for Victor.”

  “It’s not marked for him—it’s a request. That just means the arresting officer, if he had the choice, would like to see Victor on the case.” Looking down the hallway, the man checked to see if he could spot Evelyn. He turned back to Sara. “If they request Victor, it’s a good case. You should take it.”

  “Are you crazy?” Sara asked. “I can’t take it—it’s not my case.”

  “It’s not anybody’s case. It hasn’t been assigned yet.”

  “But if it’s marked for Victor…”

  He pulled the yellow Post-it from the folder and crumpled it up. “Not anymore. Now it’s marked for no one.”

  “Wait a minute—”

  “Half the cases in this city have requests for Victor. Trust me, he can’t do them all. Besides, Victor’s a real asshole. He could use losing a few good ones. If you really need it, just take it.”

  “I don’t know,” Sara said nervously.

  “Listen, it’s your life. I can’t tell you what to do,” he said as he walked to the door. “But I can tell you that Victor won’t miss it. He has dozens of cases.” Leaving the office, he added, “Hope it works out for you.”

  Once again alone in the office, Sara stared at the now-unmarked folder. She couldn’t move. It’s a guaranteed great case, she told herself. And Victor will never miss it. Unsure of what to do, she could hear Guff and Victor arguing. From the sound of it, Victor wasn’t offering his assistance.

  “It’s not my fault,” Victor said from his office. “Welcome to life.”

  Seconds later, Guff returned to the reception area. “What’s wrong with you?” he asked, noting the concern on Sara’s face.

  Sara pointed to Victor’s case. “The delivery guy said that one was an absolute winner.”

  “Oh, man,” Guff said with a smile. “You’re thinking of taking it, aren’t you?”

  Sara didn’t say a word.

  “Are you sure it’s a good case?”

  “Yeah, pretty sure,” Sara said. “Why? What do you think?”

  “Take it. Without a doubt. Believe me, if you want a winner, you’re not getting any help from this office.”

  From up the hallway, Sara could hear Victor and Evelyn wrapping up. Tentatively, she approached Evelyn’s in-box. “I shouldn’t be doing this.”

  “But you’re going to,” Guff said. “Just take it. It’s not a big deal.”

  Sara grabbed the file folder. “This better not get me in trouble.”

  “It won’t,” Guff said as they darted to the door.

  By the time Evelyn returned to her desk, Guff and Sara were gone. And so was the file marked for Victor Stockwell.

  “Have you been listening to anything I’ve said during the past half hour?” Jared asked. “Four hundred thousand’s not even close. If you’re going to stick with numbers like that, we’ll see you downtown.”

  “Jared, I’m getting tired of this,” Hartley said with a sigh. “You say you want to settle, but you thumb your nose at everything I put out there.”

  “That’s because you’re putting out nonsense. There’s—” Jared was interrupted by the electronic ring of his phone. He had given Kathleen strict instructions: He should be interrupted only if Barrow called. Lenny Barrow was Jared’s best private investigator. While prosecutors had entire precincts of police officers and detectives to dig up dirt on the opposing party, defense attorneys were forced to rely on private investigators for their snooping needs. For the past week, Barrow had been searching for information on Hartley’s client. And now, Jared smiled to himself, he would finally have the information to force a reasonable settlement. As always, the research would pay off. Picking up the receiver, Jared wondered if even fifty thousand was too much. Maybe twenty-five and an apology was sufficient. Or just twenty-five. “Jerry, please excuse me for a moment,” Jared said, lifting the phone to his ear. “Hello. Jared Lynch.”

  “J, it’s me,” Barrow said in his usual calm voice.

  “I was wondering when you’d call. Any good news?”

  “Actually, I couldn’t find a thing. Nothing dirty, nothing juicy, nothing controversial. The woman’s a regular yawn convention.”

  “That’s just wonderful,” Jared said, trying to look like he was getting good news. “I’ll tell him as soon as we hang up.”

  “You got Hartley in your office?” Barrow asked.

  “Oh, yeah,” Jared said, smiling. “Right in front o
f me.”

  “Then let me add this to your plate. Because I love you, I also did a little extra homework. The guy Hartley filed the claim against—your client?”

  “Yeah?”

  “He’s a real scumbag, J. At the last company he worked for, he had four complaints lodged against him—two of them proven. You just better pray Hartley doesn’t have good friends like me, because the way this is going, you’re in for some pain.”

  “No, that’s even better,” Jared said. “What more can I ask for?”

  “Listen, I’m sorry, boss,” Barrow said. “Send my love to Hartley. And to Sara.”

  “I definitely will. And thanks,” Jared said as he hung up the phone. Looking across his desk at Hartley, he forced a grin. “Sorry about that—just getting some info on your client. Now let’s get back to those numbers.”

  Sara and Guff raced up the hallway. “Let me see it,” Guff said.

  “Not here,” Sara said, checking over her shoulder. “In the elevator.”

  “Oh, man, I bet it’s a great one. A brutal homicide. No, wait—even better—a double homicide.”

  “Can you please try to control your blood lust?” Sara asked.

  The elevator was empty when Sara and Guff stepped inside. Guff repeatedly pushed the door-close button: “Close, close, close, close, close, close, close,” he demanded. As the doors finally shut, Sara opened the file and flipped to the section marked Description of Crime. Struggling to decipher the arresting officer’s bad handwriting, Sara read the facts of the case. “Oh, no. This can’t be happening. Please tell me I’m reading this wrong,” she said, handing the file to Guff.

  “What? What is it?”

  As Guff read the report for himself, Sara said, “I can’t even believe it. It’s not a double homicide, it’s not a single homicide, it’s not even an assault. Some guy named Kozlow was caught breaking into someone’s house on the Upper East Side. The case that’s supposed to secure my future is just an idiotic little burglary. No gun, no knife, no nothing.”

  “It’s definitely a loser,” Guff said as the elevator reached the ground floor. “But look at the bright side: At least you have a case.”

  “I guess,” Sara said as they headed out of 100 Centre. “I just hope it’s not a whole new headache.”

  Victor stood in front of Evelyn’s desk. “There was a case that was supposed to come in for me. The defendant’s name was Kozlow.”

  “Kozlow, Kozlow, Kozlow,” Evelyn repeated, flipping through the newest set of booking sheets on her desk. “I don’t see it here. Sorry.”

  “What about this pile?” Victor asked indignantly, pointing to Evelyn’s in-box.

  Evelyn riffled through the new stack in her in-box. Still nothing. “Sorry. Haven’t seen it.”

  “It was a burglary case. Kozlow was the defendant.”

  “I heard you the first time,” Evelyn said. “And I still don’t have it. Have you checked with any of the other ADAs?”

  “Let me ask you something,” Victor said, his eyes narrowing with anger. “Do I answer to you, or do you answer to me? Or to make it even easier, which one of us is the ECAB supervisor?”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

  “I don’t care what you meant. All I care about is getting that case. So I want you to go through this office, and I want you to find out who has it. Now.”

  Chapter 3

  “SO WHAT DO WE DO NOW?” SARA ASKED, SITTING IN her office and staring at the Kozlow booking sheet.

  “What do you mean, ‘what do we do?’” Guff asked. “What kind of question is that?”

  “I mean, this case is garbage, so how can I get rid of it? Can we return it? Can we go back and get another one?”

  “You can’t return a case once you catch it. It’s like buying a pair of pants and having them shortened—once you’ve messed with them, you can’t bring them back.”

  “But I didn’t mess with these pants. I just pulled them off the rack.” Waving the Kozlow booking sheet in the air, Sara shouted, “These are perfectly good pants!”

  “Well, you still can’t return them. No refunds, no exchanges.”

  “Why?”

  “Because if we operated on a return policy, the small crimes, which are the majority of crimes in this city, would never get prosecuted. Everyone would be waiting for the good stuff.”

  “Guff, I really don’t care what the policy is, I need to find a way out of this. Now let’s back up. Are you telling me I can’t walk right back into ECAB, drop this file on the receptionist’s desk, and say, ‘Sorry, the delivery guy handed me this by mistake’?”

  “I guess you could,” Guff hypothesized. “As long as—”

  Sara’s phone started to ring.

  “As long as what?” Sara asked, ignoring the phone.

  “As long as the ECAB receptionist doesn’t know it’s gone. But if she finds out…”

  “Hold on a second,” Sara said to Guff as she picked up her phone. “This is Sara.”

  “Sara, this is Evelyn from ECAB. Do you have a burglary case for a defendant named Kozlow? If you took it, I need to know. It’s important.”

  “Can you hang on a second?” Sara asked. She put Evelyn on hold and looked up at Guff. “We’re in trouble.”

  “Two hundred and fifty thousand?” Marty Lubetsky asked, his face flushed red with anger. “What the hell kind of settlement is that?”

  “Considering the facts of the case, I think we did okay,” Jared explained, trying to put a positive spin on his negotiation with Hartley. “He was originally asking for seven hundred.”

  Marty Lubetsky was the partner at Wayne & Portnoy who supervised the Rose Microsystems account. “I don’t give a shit that they were asking for seven hundred thousand—they could’ve been asking for seven hundred million for all I care. Your job is to bring them down to where our client is comfortable. On that endeavor, you failed. Miserably.”

  Annoyed at himself for trying to explain, Jared knew that Lubetsky didn’t like explanations. He liked results. And when he didn’t get results, he liked to yell. And when he was yelling, he liked to yell uninterrupted. So for almost ten minutes, Jared stood there silently.

  “Dammit, Jared, if you needed some help, why didn’t you ask for it? Now I’m left standing here with my thumb up my ass, looking like a schmuck. And that’s not even including the fact that you agreed to fifty thousand more than Rose authorized.”

  “I told them it was contingent on Rose accepting the offer.”

  “Who cares what you told them? You can’t stuff the genie back in the bottle.”

  Jared again fell silent. “I don’t know what you want me to say,” he finally replied. “I gave it everything I had. I wouldn’t have settled the case if I didn’t think it was in Rose’s best interest. If you want, I’ll be the one to break it to them.”

  “You better damn well believe you’re going to be the one to break it to them. If they have to empty their pockets for this, I want them to know who’s responsible.”

  Unable to face Guff, Sara fidgeted with a pencil on her desk. In front of her was a sketch of a person in the gallows, hanging from a noose. Below the hangman, she made four blank spaces and filled them in with the letters S-A-R-A. After she finished the last letter, she stabbed the hanged man with her pencil, breaking its point.

  “Are you done beating yourself up yet?” Guff asked.

  “That case didn’t even belong to me.”

  “It didn’t belong to anyone. And if it makes you feel any better, if she really wanted it, she would’ve asked for it back.”

  “The only reason she didn’t ask for it back was because they realized it was a bum case.”

  “Beggars and choosers, boss. Now stop kicking yourself.”

  “No, you’re right. We should focus on what our next step is. Enough with the self-pity.”

  “Exactly. That’s a far better attitu—”

  “Let me just say one last thing,” Sara interrupted. “You know what th
e stupidest part of this case is?”

  “No, tell me the stupidest part.”

  “The stupidest part is, I can’t even save my job with it! That’s how dumb I am! I stole the one case in this whole damn building that has no real value! And not only is it worthless, it’s getting me in trouble!” Catching her breath, Sara calmly pushed the Kozlow booking sheet to the side of her desk.

  “Case—one. Sara—zero,” Guff announced.

  “It’s not funny,” she said. “In that one selfish move, I hurt my career and made an incredible enemy.”

  “Don’t worry about Evelyn—she won’t stay mad for long.”

  “Who cares about Evelyn? I’m talking about Victor.”

  Guff stopped. “Victor knows?”

  “I assume so. Evelyn said Victor was the one who asked her about the case. Why? Is that bad?”

  “Let’s put it this way: On the list of people you want mad at you, Victor’s last.”

  “We have to get some help. Do you think you can find someone who’s friendly with Victor? Maybe they can help us make nice.”

  “Let me make a few phone calls,” Guff said, heading for the door.

  Guff’s departure from the office created a sudden silence. Sara’s eyes darted around the mostly bare room, and she was hit with a sense of vertigo. Feeling the walls close in on her, she put her head down on her desk, hoping to shut out reality. For almost a minute, it actually worked. Then the ringing of her phone brought back every one of her problems.

  “This is Sara,” she answered. “If this is bad news, I don’t want to hear it.”

  “Sounds like we’re having similar afternoons,” Jared said.

  “If it’s possible, I think I’ve actually made things worse.” After explaining how she stole the leading ADA’s case, Sara added, “And now I’m stuck with this loser case and still can’t save my job.”

  “I don’t understand one thing,” Jared said. “If it’s a nothing, little case, why was it marked for an office hotshot?”

  “Some cop obviously wanted him on it.”

  “Are you sure that’s it?”

  “What’re you saying?” Sara asked, picking her head up.