Judgment

by Joseph Finder

  “But you know he’s there?”

  He nodded.

  “He’s a lawyer in Chicago, and he really is from Argentina. Went to St. George’s school in Buenos Aires, undergrad at Tufts, law degree from Northwestern. And he has a twin sister in Miami who’s hooked on opiates. OxyContin, that sort of thing. About a month ago, she was arrested, charged with forging drug scripts for OxyContin. Which is a felony offense. Would have meant prison time.”

  “Would have . . . ?”

  “Right. Here’s what’s interesting. Two days ago, all charges against the sister were dropped. Without prejudice.”

  “Without prejudice,” she repeated.

  “Yes.” That meant the charges could be reinstated at any time. “So what does this tell you?”

  “That she’s on the hook. Maybe he’s being coerced. By some powerful forces.”

  Juliana looked at Hersh for a long moment. His mournful eyes, lines deeply carved around them. Finally she said, “What’s his address?”

  He gave it to her. “But I don’t want you going there—in fact, I strongly advise you not to see him alone.”

  “Why?”

  “The man may be dangerous.”

  “It sounds to me more like he’s desperate.”

  “Desperate people can be dangerous. That’s exactly my point.”

  Juliana took her phone out of her purse and stood up. “I hope you’re wrong.”

  17

  On the way—she hailed a cab in front of the Dunkin’ Donuts—she texted Duncan: very sorry, got caught up in a thing. will see you at home.

  Duncan didn’t immediately text back, which was good, because it probably meant he was in conversation with someone. He wasn’t a particularly shy man. As a law professor, he had plenty to talk about with lawyers and judges, but tonight’s crowd was heavy on financial types. He would no doubt be pissed off that she’d left him there that way, but she’d deal with that later too.

  The cab wound through the downtown streets and through the Back Bay, then a few blocks past Boston University to the Home Stay Inn, an all-suite hotel mainly for businesspeople. It was a four-story brick building, handsome in a sort of bland corporate way, located in a desolate neighborhood near gas stations and auto dealerships. She entered the lobby and took the elevator to the third floor and found room 322. She heard her heart beating loud and fast, felt it hammering in her ears.

  There was noise inside the room, she immediately realized. Music. No, not just music, but television—music, an announcer, applause—a show of some sort, muffled but loud behind the door.

  She reached up her fist to knock on the door but found a doorbell. She pressed it a few times.

  Nothing happened. Just the muffled sounds of the TV.

  She was oddly unafraid. She was angry, that was the main thing. What this man had done; how he’d used her, manipulated her.

  She could hear his words. I don’t know you, but I feel as if I do.

  And I saw a sense of a light inside you.

  She asked herself why she was even there.

  But she already knew the answer. Knew that she needed to confront this bastard, force the truth out of him. Shame him into telling her what was going on, what he was up to, why he did what he’d done.

  She rang the doorbell again, a few times.

  A minute went by. The TV went quiet. She heard movement inside the room. Then nothing. She rang again. Finally she pounded. “Open the door.”

  Nothing.

  She pounded harder. “Open the goddamn door!”

  She raised her fist to pound again, and the door came open.

  For a moment she thought she’d rung the wrong doorbell. An unshaven man in a soiled white T-shirt stood in the shadows. It took her a few seconds to recognize Matías.

  He stared at her blankly for a moment; then recognition set in. “Why are you here?” he said.

  “You goddamned son of a bitch,” she said. The blood jumped in her veins.

  “This is a mistake. You shouldn’t be here.”

  “You twisted bastard. I know what you’re doing, and it’s not going to work.”

  Matías sighed. “Do what they tell you to do and all will be fine.”

  She was surprised at the way he looked, so much sloppier and more unkempt than the polished, well-dressed man that night in Chicago. Worn down, it seemed.

  She took a deep breath. What was the point in venting at the man? Instead, she could try to get him to talk. Before she became a judge, she was a highly regarded litigator. Before that, an acclaimed prosecutor. She knew how to work a witness. She used to do it for a living.

  “We need to talk,” she said. “We can either do it out here or in there; it’s up to you.”

  After a beat, he stepped back and held open the door. She entered the generic-looking living room of a one-bedroom suite. Nearly every surface—couch, chair, coffee table—was covered with take-out cartons or soda cans or beer bottles. A large TV was on but muted. There was an odor hanging in the air, a sour fermented smell with a sharp note of perspiration.

  This is not normal, she thought. The man was not a slob; he had to be operating under stress. Her phone made a text-alert sound, but she ignored it. She looked at him and could see the tension in his face. Why hadn’t she seen it before? This was a vulnerability, and she’d go right at it.

  “Okay,” she said. “Let me be very clear with you. I’m not going to be manipulated, I don’t care what it costs me.”

  “All they want you to do—”

  “I know what ‘they’ want, and I won’t do it. Here’s the bad news for you, Matías. I’m willing to sacrifice my marriage, if that’s what it takes. But I’m not going to be blackmailed.”

  “You are in so far over your head,” he said. “You have no idea.” He didn’t say it in a threatening way. He sounded defeated.

  “And you,” she said. “What do you think happens to your sister now?”

  He winced visibly.

  “Yes,” she said, “I know about Bianca.”

  He shook his head slowly. Now she realized something else: the man was frightened. His eyes widened. “What do you know about her?” he demanded. “How?”

  Her phone made another text sound, and she ignored it again. “I have my judicial sources. I know the Miami authorities dropped charges without prejudice, meaning that they can charge her again at any time.”

  “These people—please, just do what they say. You have no idea what they’re capable of. These people will do anything—stage an accident, a suicide, whatever they need to do if they think you’re an inconvenience.”

  “And who are they? Wheelz? Are they working for Devin Allerdyce?”

  Matías laughed mirthlessly. “Devin Allerdyce knows nothing.”

  “Then who?”

  “I have no idea. They have people inside the Justice Department in Washington. They have people all over. It’s so much bigger than one corporation.”

  “And they got their hooks into you through your sister?”

  He nodded sadly.

  “The opiates. I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “Our father was killed in the Dirty War, and she has never gotten over his murder.”

  “You’re from Argentina.”

  He nodded. “I went to law school in Chicago, and my sister went into a master’s degree program to become a physician’s assistant. In Miami. She worked at a spine clinic, and she started to have problems. She started to forge prescriptions to get OxyContin and that sort of thing. A couple of months ago she was arrested by Miami police. She was charged with obtaining a controlled substance by fraud, which is a felony offense. Meaning prison time. So I flew to Miami—I’m all she’s got—to be her lawyer, help her through the process. And that’s when they contacted me. They made me an offer.”

  He
hesitated. In the long silence she said, “Yes?”

  “They would drop the charges against her if I did as they instructed.”

  “How were you contacted?”

  “A phone call.”

  “And who was it?”

  He shrugged. “I wasn’t given a name. He knew who I was, where I was. He knew all about Bianca’s legal situation.”

  “What did they promise, exactly?”

  “That all charges would be dropped. Just that.”

  “And if you didn’t do . . . as instructed . . . ?”

  “She’d be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

  “So you—what? You forced yourself to seduce the old bag?”

  “Oh, please. You’re an attractive woman. You know that perfectly well. That’s not the point.”

  Her face turned hot. “Why is my ruling so important? What’s the evidence they’re trying to conceal?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know anything. I just keep my head down and do what I’m told, and my sister remains free.”

  “I’m sorry I can’t help you. But I’m not going to be controlled. I have no idea how I’m going to rule,” she said.

  “You don’t have a choice! They’re going to release that video. Listen to me. You and I, we’re just . . . chess pieces. We’re being played. Fighting them is pointless.”

  She looked at him for a long moment. “Well, they picked on the wrong woman,” she said. “I will not be played.”

  18

  Outside the hotel, she looked at her phone and saw a series of texts that had come in from Duncan.

  8:47: Where’d you go?

  9:16: Hello?

  9:23: Where r u?

  9:36: going home.

  At 9:36 a call had come in on her phone, no voice message left.

  He’d looked around for her, texted and texted, and finally had given up. He was probably furious and justifiably so.

  And what could she possibly tell Duncan by way of explanation? She couldn’t tell him the truth, of course. She scrabbled around for something to say, came up with a story about a college friend she’d run into who was in a very bad way. Yes, she should have checked the text messages as they came in, but she didn’t, she couldn’t tear herself away from a very difficult conversation. She mentally rehearsed this lie, this one lie atop a pile of lies, and she felt terrible about it.

  But what else could she do?

  * * *

  —

  At 10:30, her cab pulled up to her house. Some lights were on, on both the first and second floors. Presumably Jake was awake, but she wondered about Duncan. She’d tried his mobile a few times but had gotten no answer. Either he’d turned his phone off, which would be odd, or he was ignoring her calls. Which would be even odder.

  When she entered the house, she called out quietly for Duncan and Jake but got no answer. Upstairs, she saw that Jake was in his bedroom—she could see the light under the closed door—and Duncan was in bed with the lights off. She entered as soundlessly as she could, navigating by the moonlight that filtered in through one of the windows, where he hadn’t closed the curtains all the way.

  “What happened?” Duncan’s voice in the dark startled her.

  “Oh—I’m so sorry about tonight. I ran into an old college friend who was in really bad shape. We got into an intense conversation.”

  She left it vague and hoped he didn’t ask more. She’d met her in the women’s room, she’d say, if he pressed. This old friend was attending some other function in the hotel, that’s what she’d say.

  She undressed, placing her clothes neatly on the chaise longue.

  “You didn’t get my texts?”

  “I’m sorry—I heard my phone and ignored it. I didn’t want to be rude to this poor woman. I should have looked. I’m really sorry.”

  A long silence. “A lot of people asked about you.”

  “Oh?”

  “Lynn Golding.”

  “She was there? It was like I fell into a black hole. By the time we were done talking I checked my phone, and I saw you’d left. God, Dunc, I’m so sorry.”

  She got into her nightgown, then went to the bathroom, brushed her teeth, and washed her face. By the time she got into bed, Duncan was softly snoring.

  * * *

  —

  When Juliana arrived at her lobby the following Monday, Kaitlyn was already there. “I didn’t think you’d want them on top of your desk,” Kaitlyn said.

  Juliana saw what Kaitlyn was talking about: four bankers boxes of documents were piled next to her desk, taking up valuable (and scarce) floor space.

  “From the defense?”

  Kaitlyn nodded. “It’s printouts of all chats that mention Rachel Meyers’s name.”

  “That’s a lot of mentions.”

  “In these boxes are actually two sets of documents. One is redacted, one’s unredacted. With a privilege log.”

  Somewhere in those four boxes was the answer to the question of why she was being blackmailed. “Where’s the log?”

  “On your desk.”

  Juliana saw the manila folder on her desk next to the keyboard.

  “Have you looked through the documents yet?”

  “No, I wanted to wait for your instructions.”

  “Okay.” She took off her jacket and hung it on the coatrack next to her black robe.

  Sitting down at her desk, she opened the folder and began skimming through the privilege log. It listed all the chats the defense wanted to withhold, identifying each chat by date and time, sender and recipient, subject, and, most important, the reason they wanted to withhold it. Assembling a privilege log was tedious grunt work, probably done by some poor young associate.

  At least one of these chats contained something so important, so explosive, that someone was willing to go to great lengths to bury it. So the privilege log was a useful tool. It singled out the important chats, the ones she had to pay attention to. She could ignore the hundreds—thousands?—of other chats in those cardboard boxes.

  All she cared about right now was finding what was being concealed—why she’d been targeted. She glanced at her watch. She had forty-five minutes before the morning malpractice trial began.

  She started reading.

  19

  The first chat appeared to be between Devin Allerdyce, the CEO, and the chief operating officer, Andrew Westerfield, who was Rachel Meyers’s boss.

  ALLERDYCE: how’s rachel meyers working out?

  WESTERFIELD: She just started. But she’s smart. Harvard Law.

  ALLERDYCE: dude, who cares about smart? she’s smokin hot. she involved with anyone?

  WESTERFIELD: Not married, all I know.

  ALLERDYCE: i’d tap that.

  The next one was between the CEO and his CFO, Eugene Brod:

  ALLERDYCE: you check out our new gen counsel?

  BROD: The blonde?

  ALLERDYCE: hands off dude

  BROD: Yes sir!

  There was a long series of chats between Rachel and her new colleagues in the company, mostly introducing herself. A few more between Allerdyce and other executives calling attention to the attractive new general counsel and warning the other execs away from her. How serious those warnings were was hard to tell. It was totally frat-like behavior, and Juliana was surprised at how unrestrained the CEO was. He clearly lusted after Rachel Meyers and wasn’t shy about letting people know it.

  Then there were chats between a couple of engineers that were all marked CONFIDENTIAL on the privilege log. Their chat was mind-numbingly hard to follow, with phrases like “standard back propagation algorithm” and “adjusting the n values” and “high degree of feature extraction in high-dimensional spaces.” And here and there were sprinkled mentions of the new general counsel. What is it with men and
blondes? she wondered.

  ALLEN: u c the new general counsel?

  OSTROVSKY: No, what abt her?

  ALLEN: blond, hot as hell

  OSTROVSKY: Didn’t see her.

  ALLEN: Rachel . . . Meyers? Allerdyce, that hound dog, is prob already doing her

  So clearly the CEO had a reputation for going after attractive women in his employ. No wonder the company wanted to suppress so many of these chats. It didn’t look good. She couldn’t help but think of all the crap she’d had to deal with. Her boss, the US Attorney, now the state attorney general, was a toad named Kent Yarnell who was always telling raunchy jokes or sizing her up physically, making comments about her bust size—sometimes it was just plain gross. “When are you going to ask me out, Juliana?” he’d say. Or he’d say things like “Weren’t those the clothes you were wearing yesterday? Walk of shame, Juli-girl . . .” That was stuff she preferred to forget.

  She read on with fascination tinged with disgust. Until she came upon an exchange between Rachel and her boss, the chief operating officer, that was marked, in the privilege log, “confidential.” It made her sit up and reread.

  MEYERS: How do I access the Mayfair Paragon files? They’re password protected.

  WESTERFIELD: Why do you need them?

  MEYERS: For the SEC. The new bond issue. I’m reviewing all the paperwork, etc., making sure all the forms are in good shape.

  WESTERFIELD: What forms do you need?

  MEYERS: accredited investor forms for Mayfair Paragon going back 10 yrs.

  WESTERFIELD: I’ll see what I can do.

  This was followed by an exchange between the CFO, Eugene Brod, and the COO.

  WESTERFIELD: Gene—Meyers wants access to the Mayfair Paragon files.

  BROD: Why?

  WESTERFIELD: Document prep for SEC. What do I tell her?

  BROD: What does she need?

  WESTERFIELD: Accredited investor forms going back 10 yrs

  BROD: Answer No, she can’t access those files.

  The next day Rachel messaged her boss again.

  MEYERS: Just following up re Mayfair Paragon files—any luck?