“Not according to the Bar Association,” she answered.
“The New York Bar must recognize exceptions like California. You know. If a client is involved in a crime or fraud and is using the attorney as a facilitator.”
“I don’t have any proof that that’s the case.”
“You suspect that you’re being singled out to play some sort of role in something shady. An unconventional role for the attorney to assume. You know in your gut that the situation is not benevolent toward you.”
“Okay,” she said after a moment. “But just between us.”
She searched for commitment in his eyes and continued despite not definitively finding it. There was momentum now. She wanted so badly to trust him. “It’s a South American company called Gerais Chevas.”
“Think about hiring a private investigator.” Joe sat on the edge of the coffee table still facing her. “If you like, I can take care of it.” Joe watched her eyes, which widened and stared. “Just to take a closer look at what he’s up to. I know a very good one who’s experienced at working corporate espionage angles. And he’s invisible.”
“Joe!” She focused abruptly on the suggestion he was making. “Is he legal? Does he stay within the law?”
Joe smiled. “Yes. He’s licensed and he does observe the law,” he laughed, “to any degree he’s asked.”
“Jooooooeee!”
“Not to worry. I’ve only engaged his services from a defensive posture. Never as part of an offensive strategy.”
She suppressed a smile and shook her head. “I don’t know. Let me think about it.”
“Unless—unless, you’d rather consult with someone on the outside. Do you have colleagues who litigate this type of case?”
“No, I can’t think of anyone. Y’know, I haven’t given the partnership a chance yet. I was waiting to find something more concrete. And, I need to see the contents of that secret document to evaluate the legalities. I’m not even sure Paul—he’s the current managing partner—I’m not sure he believes me about that one matter I told you about—the one Alan manipulated. I need some tangible proof to have any chance of being believed.” She looked off into the distance and blinked away some of her reluctance. “Okay. Maybe some aggressive investigation is what I need, but let me think about it.”
“Are you working on any other client matters with this asshole?”
“Yes, but I don’t think any of the others are controversial.”
“Can you pass them off to other associates?”
“Not without committing career suicide.”
“Well, maybe that’s the conversation you need to have with the managing partner. Tell him about the harassment and give him some pretext—tell him that lately you’re feeling uncomfortable working with Alan. He’ll have to protect you or put the firm at risk.”
“That’s a good idea, but what if Alan gets word that I spilled the story about Chicago?”
“If he’s setting you up for something illegal, you need the partnership to be aware of the bad blood between you. You need their eyes focused on this guy if you’re planning to continue to walk the halls of this office.”
“Okay. You’re right.”
“Good. And stay away from him.”
She felt a rush of emotion and wanted to throw her arms around his neck, but she watched him think instead. His willingness to help was a welcome comfort. She could definitely find solace leaning on his strong shoulder.
He stood up quickly and walked to the door and opened it. The two black and gold canines rambled outside wagging their stubby tails, having concluded that the crisis was over. He leaned down and rubbed behind each set of ears. He was still visibly preoccupied, but the dogs didn’t seem to care. He closed the door and stood motionless. He looked at her and there was an unmistakable sense of resolve on his face now, as if he had definitely decided that he would take a place on the front lines of this battle.
“I’ve got an idea,” he said suddenly. “Let’s send this asshole an email.”
19
What kind of email? Do you mean let him know I suspect him?”
“Not from you, from me. From a hotmail account I have. Email address ‘goliath.’” Joe winked at her.
“Will he suspect me?” she asked.
“Shouldn’t. It’s an account my secretary set up for me for remote communications, when our server’s down or unreachable.” He smiled. “No way to connect it to you.”
“Goliath?”
“You think she was trying to tell me something?”
Evie grinned, beginning to enjoy their collaboration in spite of the coiled spiral of fear in her chest. She laughed, releasing some of the tightness in her throat.
“He won’t know who sent it. Even if he finds out whose account it is, he won’t recognize my name.”
“Oh-kay. But what would it say?” She shifted on the sofa.
Joe walked back to the dining room table where his laptop sat idle and Evie stood and followed. He logged onto his hotmail account and began typing an email message:
I know what you’re doing. I’m watching and I don’t like what I see. You will rethink your short-term plans or there will be consequences that YOU won’t like.
Evie watched him compose the message. After he had entered the text, he typed in a series of keystrokes she couldn’t follow, but she did recognize the familiar icon that meant “attachment.”
“What’s this guy’s email address?” Joe asked.
“It’s alevenger@hr&s.com.”
Joe typed the address on the line for receiving party and hit SEND.
“Nice and vague,” she said. “Did you attach something to the message?”
“Yes. It’s called a ‘sniffer.’ A handy little software script that will gather some information for us.” He turned his chair away from the computer and pulled Evie into his lap. “It will surreptitiously track his incoming and outgoing mail and automatically send me copies of any that include a reference to Gerais Chevas.”
“Joe, that’s illegal surveillance! It’s like … email wiretapping!”
“Don’t worry, Eves. It’ll only level the playing field. He had to have used some sort of Trojan horse or other clandestine software to swipe your password. And he’s apparently practiced at impersonating you online and sending email with your name on it. He’s committing a kind of identity theft—using your identity for some nefarious purpose. I’m just giving you a little electronic self-help.”
She relaxed slightly in his lap. “And he won’t know? He won’t notice anything?”
“No,” he said and pulled her toward him and kissed her neck.
“What about our firm’s network. Won’t the firewall block it?”
“I’d be surprised if your firm’s firewall is sophisticated enough to catch this one.”
“What do you think he’ll do when he gets that message?” she asked, leaning against him and enjoying the comfort of it.
“Probably nothing. But at least it’ll make him think.” He sat upright. “Did you check your email?”
“Instead of using my BlackBerry, may I dial in on my laptop from your telephone line?”
“Sure.”
She retrieved it from her luggage and handed it to Joe who set it up and connected the modem to a phone jack. She logged in, wandered through her new emails and replied to a few.
He gathered the dishes and disappeared into the kitchen.
One of the messages asked her to re-send a message she had sent a week or so back so she clicked on her history of “Sent” messages and gazed down the list, looking for the one requested. Her attention was diverted when she noticed an unknown message in the list posted from her email address dated last week, addressed to what looked like a group of pre-defined email addresses. Some of the user names had Brazilian extensions. The message was entitled “Neon Only.” She clicked on the message and the contents appeared. The message read:
pw: Ninuccia
The back of her neck
began to tingle, and her hands trembled as her fingertips slid off the keys.
She jumped when Joe, who had approached her from behind, placed his hands on her shoulders. “Impatient clients?” he asked. He rubbed her shoulders for a moment and then pulled up a chair next to her. She was staring at the screen.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“This is yet another message from my email address that I didn’t write,” she said. Joe’s face registered understanding. “And Joe, Ninuccia was my mother’s name!”
“So, he’s changed one of the passwords to something irrefutably tied to you and communicated it to the group of people involved in the negotiation of this deal … whoever that is.”
“Yes. He’s reinforcing the notion that I’m leading this transaction. Each fragment is designed to work together … it’s like he’s creating a mosaic.”
“But, he has to know that you’re going to discover some of this.”
“I know. I don’t understand that either. I was thinking about that when I got that message from Adinaldo. If Alan directed that, too, why would he pick that moment to let me learn about the existence of this deal?” “Have you received any other communication from this Adinaldo?”
“No. And I sent him a reply telling him it was mis-delivered to me. You’d think if it was supposed to come to me, he would’ve resent it.”
“Adinaldo could’ve inadvertently undermined the covert operation.”
A shiver went through her body with the additional puzzle piece and its weight.
“Let’s look behind the scenes and see if we can capture the identity of the real author of this password message.”
She watched as he attempted to communicate with the firm’s system level—the backstage of the user interface. He typed a series of commands on the keyboard and began speaking simultaneously.
“Mmmm,” he said. “Not getting very far. I can’t break through to the underbelly. But let’s forward this to my email so we can at least print it out.”
“Oh good. Joe, that reminds me—do you know where I can get a tape recorder? I want to record that woman’s voice mail message over the telephone receiver. At least then I’ll have two pieces of tangible evidence that someone is trying to involve me in this deal, although neither of them make me look innocent. I can then go to the partnership and at least tell them I don’t know anything about this transaction and I don’t understand how my name is getting dragged into it.”
“I’ve got one. I’ll find it for you, but first let’s try this new password to see if we can get access to those two files.” Joe stood and let Evie sit in front of the computer to pull up the list of Neon files.
“You know Joe, maybe Alan wants me to find out about this transaction. This email’s making me some kind of involuntary coordinator. Maybe he’s inviting me to look at these files. I mean, when you think about it, that actually furthers his plan, doesn’t it? The more I know about the transaction, the less credible my denial of involvement with it.”
“Don’t worry about that. No right-thinking person would fail to try to discover the details of a deal with their name all over it. Is there anything else in email form or in your voicemail that we could preserve for you?”
“There was that erroneous expense report I mentioned,” she said as she entered the client number for Gerais Chevas and retrieved the familiar list of files.
“I was in Dallas in July meeting with a client,” she continued. “I stayed at the Euphorion Hotel, but a false hotel receipt from the Colonial Court Hotel somehow got attached to my expense report. It included that list of calls to and from Brazil—more of Alan’s paper trail.”
“Did you call the hotel?”
“My secretary did. They claimed to have had an Evelyn Sullivan registered for the dates I was in Dallas, but I wasn’t at that hotel.”
“Someone must’ve registered as you, and someone stayed in the room and made those telephone calls.”
“I wonder if there’s any chance that someone there might remember what she looked like,” said Evie.
“It might be interesting to know how she paid, too,” said Joe. “Still have that hotel receipt?”
“It’s on my desk back at the office.”
“Fax it to me when you get back. I’ll get my guy to check into it.”
“Okay, Joe, but tell him to be very discrete.”
Evie highlighted “Neon Three” and double clicked. The password query screen appeared, she typed in N-i-n-u-c-c-i-a and hit ENTER.
Evie and Joe stared at the laptop screen. The contents of “Neon Three” filled the screen.
“It’s the payment schedule. Looks typical. It shows a pretty standard set of payments and securities transfers, and the purchaser’s timing obligations.”
They both read silently for a moment and then Evie spoke.
“Joe, look at this.” She pointed to an entry labeled Commission with a corresponding amount of $25 million.
“Let’s scroll down,” said Joe and Evie obliged. “There doesn’t seem to be any further detail on that commission, explaining who receives it and for what.”
“I don’t see anything either.”
“It’s not unusual to pay an agent or broker a fee for putting a deal together, but that’s an awfully nice chunk of change.”
“Yes and if there was such an agent or broker, he would have his own contract with the purchaser or seller, whoever hired him. Or her. That person wouldn’t be a party to this agreement.”
“Yeah, I’ve never seen such a thing. Parapier never pays brokers for deals. We find our own.”
“Oh my God. Could this commission be payment to the attorney?” she said almost to herself. Then she turned back to Joe to explain.
“Joe, the reps and warranties in the main purchase agreement include this obligation of the seller to get its attorney to become a party to the deal. The language says that the attorney will be ‘securing’ some project, Project Neon, and that delivery of a sub-agreement will be evidence that this project has been secured. There’s no explanation as to what Project Neon is and what the word ‘secured’ really means in context.”
“So, presumably, the type of project and perhaps the details of the attorney’s obligations are spelled out in one of these files?”
“That’s what I think. The language referred to a Schedule B7.”
“Well, let’s take a look at the last file. Try the same password.”
Evie brought up the password query screen for Neon Four and her mother’s name again yielded the contents of the file. Just as suspected, it was a series of Schedules, Schedules A1 through A8 and Schedules B1 through B7, describing parts of the business unit being sold and the transfer details. On page twelve, there was a heading for Schedule B7, but it had nothing under it but the letters “TBD.”
“To be determined,” said Evie. “You know, that’s what I overheard Alan say. Something about a Schedule. And, something about showing the deal take shape.”
“So, this Schedule is going to evolve into a noose.”
They both read silently again for a few minutes, then Evie spoke. “I don’t see anything unusual in any of these. Schedule B7’s the only one with contents that are still to be determined.”
“So either Schedule B7 is not negotiated fully yet or someone has purposely left it out of this file for now.”
“I guess I have to keep digging,” said Evie. “At least I can point to this lack of detail regarding the commission as a reason for my suspicions when I talk to the partners. What could that commission be for and to whom would it be paid?”
“If it is to be paid to the attorney, it definitely raises legality questions. So, what would bind the attorney to secure this Project Neon?”
“The attorney’s signature on the sub-agreement, which is to be delivered to Romez Nuevo at closing.”
“So, the delivery of this signed sub-agreement binds the attorney to do something, presumably in exchange for $25 million.”
&
nbsp; “That’s my theory so far. It just goes to show how ambiguous language can be and why attorneys spend so much time trying to clarify their references.”
“In this case, I’d say the attorneys failed.”
“I agree, although I think it’s ambiguous on purpose—to make it difficult to pinpoint the exact nature of what’s being guaranteed here.”
“Okay. Then, do we think this Alan character is capable of forging your signature on that contract at closing?”
“I think he’s capable of anything. Can we print these somehow? I’ve already printed out Neon One and Two, the purchase agreement itself and the term sheet, but this definitely raises more of a red flag.”
He stood to retrieve his printer, but she stopped him.
“Oh, wait,” she said after hitting the print command. “That’s the same thing that happened to me before. The system wouldn’t let me print.”
Joe looked at the error message on the screen, took Evie’s place at the keyboard and began typing. He performed a series of technical maneuvers and then clicked on the print icon on the tool bar and the same error message appeared: ACCESS REQUEST NOT PERMITTED.
“Okay, let’s try to save an electronic copy.” He issued the series of commands to save a copy of the file onto a diskette in his “a” drive. An error message THIS FILE IS READ ONLY—COPY PROTECTED appeared on the screen. Evie watched him type a series of system level instructions, but he was still unable to capture the file image from the network.
“We can see this file’s contents, but it was created with access parameters that prevent certain actions, depending on the user. He probably has multiple groups of users set up. Some having permission to edit or do anything they want to the file, others having only the ability to read it. Your username isn’t permitted very broad access rights.” He minimized that screen and typed in another series of commands.
“Okay, I’ll just take notes.” Joe maximized the opened file’s screen again, she sat down beside him and began writing on a pad of paper.
Wearing the Spider (A Suspense Novel) (Legal Thriller) (Thriller) Page 19