Judgment

by Joseph Finder

  “I don’t know.”

  Of course he knew; he just didn’t want to say, which told her all she needed to know. He’d begun bending the fingers of his left hand backward as far as they’d go, a long-standing nervous habit. During chemo he did it all the time. He bent his fingers so far back they nearly broke. It must have hurt a lot. Maybe the pain was a needed distraction.

  “What’s going on, sweetie?”

  “Nothing’s going on. What do you mean?”

  “I’m sorry I haven’t been around.”

  He shrugged. “Doesn’t bother me. You don’t have to pick me up, you know. I could Uber. I know how busy you are.”

  “But I like picking you up.”

  He continued bending his fingers back, looked out the side window. They fell into silence for a minute or two. Finally she said, “You talked to Dad.”

  “He told me.”

  “We’re just taking some time apart.”

  “You guys getting a divorce, is that what’s really going on?”

  “No, sweetie.”

  “This family is nothing but silences.”

  “How so?”

  “You think I can’t tell? You guys don’t hold hands the way you used to. Or kiss.”

  Was it that obvious? Did he really notice that much, barricaded in his room with his giant recording-studio-quality headphones on?

  “Is that true?”

  He looked away.

  “We can talk about anything you want to talk about,” she said.

  But he said nothing. He kept bending back his fingers, staring straight ahead. His face was set in an adolescent scowl, but his eyes were a child’s.

  She remembered one Saturday afternoon when he was ten, memorizing a poem for a school competition, helped by Duncan. Jake was marching up and down the stairs, declaiming, “O Captain! My Captain! Our fearful trip is done.”

  And Duncan marching with him, saying, “Big gesture, big gesture—no, bigger!”

  “The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won!” Jake called out.

  “Yes!” Duncan said. “Outside!”

  Jake and his father went out into the backyard, and Juliana followed, just watching, enchanted.

  “O Captain! My Captain!” Jake said. He marched on the lawn, his arms swinging wildly. “Our fearful trip is done!”

  Duncan marched alongside him, his arms swinging in sync. “Your body has to know it better than your mind does, you see? So you make it rhythmic to yourself by running while you shout it out—Here Captain! Dear father! This arm beneath your head!”

  “Dear father! This arm beneath your head!” Jake shouted.

  Duncan was playing coach, but at the same time it was as if they were really two boys playing together, Jake giggling sporadically, Duncan fighting to keep a straight face. He’d always had a bond with his father, she remembered. Different from the relationship between Jake and her. Duncan and Jake always seemed to be in sync, to just get each other. That had never changed. It probably never would.

  * * *

  —

  Martie was having her dinner when Juliana arrived, eating a salad in front of CNN. “There’s salad and some chicken if you want it. And Sancerre.” She gestured toward some take-out boxes on the kitchen table.

  “I had to pick up my son and decided to get some more clothes.”

  “As long as you want. It’s a pleasure having the company.”

  “I don’t want to turn into the houseguest from hell. It shouldn’t be for much longer. Duncan and I still need to hash things out.”

  Martie muted the TV and put down her salad container. “Any more from Austin Bream at the Globe?”

  Juliana shook her head, told her about the visit from the cop and the state trooper.

  “This went all the way up to the AG’s office?”

  She nodded.

  “Boy, that must have been a hot potato. The cops find your prints on a pair of sunglasses and their supervisor must have freaked out. Bounced it all the way up to the Attorney General. Nobody wants to handle a case involving a Superior Court judge.”

  Juliana winced as she told her about how she’d lied to the State Police detective. Martie listened, nodding, and didn’t react one way or another. “You had to do it,” she said. “You had no choice. Your connection would have become a matter of public record. You’re just in a terrible position. An unenviable position.”

  “You know Kent, right?”

  “Sure. But you don’t want me to call him. It’s not going to help, and it’s just going to backfire—shine a light on you—and you don’t want that.”

  “No, you’re absolutely right.”

  “Can they place you at the hotel?”

  “If they have surveillance video they sure can.”

  “Did they mention video?”

  Juliana shook her head.

  “Call Philip. Ask him to find out if the police took the video yet. They should have.”

  “And if they have it?”

  “If they have it, if they can see who entered his room, they probably have the identity of the killer. Assuming the guy was in fact killed and it’s not a suicide.”

  “And they’ll also know I was in the guy’s hotel room too.”

  Martie was silent for a while. At last she nodded. “Let’s hope they don’t find out.”

  35

  Juliana slept badly most of the night. It was the unfamiliar bed, as comfortable as it was, with high-thread-count sheets; it was the strange room, the heavy sweet smell of the potpourri on the nightstand. She found herself reliving her conversation with the homicide investigators, the lies she’d had to tell, their suspicious expressions. She mulled over Jake’s anger. She thought about what would happen to her if the hotel had surveillance tape and the State Police detective saw her enter the hotel not once but twice. How would she explain that? Before going to sleep she’d e-mailed Philip Hersh and asked him to meet her at the courthouse in the morning. She thought about Hersh, wondering how good he really was, whether he’d be able to find out more about Mayfair Paragon or—what was the name of the British firm that was the lead investor in Wheelz? Right, Harrogate Capital Partners.

  Then something popped into her head, a free-floating phrase: accredited investor form. Whatever the hell that meant. She’d come across that phrase in the Wheelz chats, and she remembered jotting it down. Accredited investor form. Rachel Meyers was trying to get access to them and was shut down. Her boss didn’t want her to see this form, these forms, for some reason.

  By the time she got back to sleep there were pale orange brushstrokes in the sky. The alarm on her phone jolted her awake after what seemed like only minutes.

  * * *

  —

  Hersh, dressed in a gray suit and loafers and looking like a shabby courthouse lawyer with not a lot of clients, was waiting outside her office door when she arrived. He handed her a cup of coffee from the gourmet coffee truck out front. Which she didn’t expect but appreciated. She always accepted coffee. Then, when they were sitting inside her lobby, he gave her a file folder.

  “The dossier on Greaves, old-school style. I can also e-mail it to you if you want. Using WhatsApp.”

  “Who?” She’d momentarily blanked on the name.

  “Donald Greaves. The muscle. The enforcer. The guy who threatened you.”

  “Right. Do you know who he’s working for, who his client is?”

  “I don’t have that yet. But I have a bit more on Harrogate Capital Partners.”

  “Okay?”

  “It’s not much. Let’s see, it’s based in the town of Harrogate, up north in England, in Yorkshire. Sort of a posh town. One member of their board of directors is an earl. The Earl of Wenfield. He’s vice chairman.”

  “Okay.”

  “I poked
around some, and I found out that the Earl of Wenfield went bankrupt a few years ago. Guy’s name is Charles Arthur Bertram Hogg, known as Cab. Next thing you know, Cab becomes vice chair of Harrogate Capital Partners.”

  “Huh.”

  “What a lot of these British firms do is, they name someone fancy and titled to their board of directors. It bestows cachet. My guess is that the earl doesn’t actually have to do anything. Lend his name, go to cocktail parties, maybe give a party for the company at his grand house once in a while. Vice chairman is probably a title without responsibility.”

  “So what do they invest in?”

  “Not clear. It’s a private company; they don’t have to reveal their portfolio to the world. Here and there you find mentions of Harrogate investing in European high-tech companies.”

  “But whose money is behind it?”

  “No idea. All I know is that it wasn’t so long ago that Wheelz was burning through their cash like crazy, they were desperate for money, and all of a sudden this English venture capital firm swoops in and saves their ass.”

  “Okay. What about Mayfair Paragon? Any more on that, who’s behind it?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t have any more leads. But I found an article in a pretty obscure newspaper called the British Virgin Islands Advertiser about the Wheelz deal. It talked about some local BVI bank getting involved with this financing arrangement along with a much bigger bank in Cyprus.”

  “I don’t understand—what can I do with that? What does that mean?”

  “You gather facts until you have enough facts to recognize a pattern.”

  “And what does this tell you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Frustrated, she sighed. “What about the ‘accredited investor forms’ that the plaintiff was trying to get and kept getting blown off? Any idea how we find these?”

  “Nothing on that either. I’m sorry to disappoint. I found out what they are, though. When you make a private investment in a company, the government makes you fill out a form. You’ve got to put down your name and the names of all investors. There are no anonymous investors. Everyone has to list their name. It would be huge if we could find these forms. They probably contain all the information you’re looking for.”

  “What about the surveillance video at the hotel?”

  “I checked with hotel security. The investigator from the Attorney General’s office asked for the tapes, and they found something kinda screwy when they tried to make a copy for the police.”

  “Yeah?”

  “There’s no video for the entire past week. Some kind of freak malfunction. All of the hotel’s cameras, down the whole week.”

  “Meaning someone got to them.”

  “What I assume. But it’s good news for you.”

  “Yes.” Without videotape, it would be that much harder for the investigators to prove she’d been there. Though not impossible. They could interview people who might have seen her. They might talk to the housekeeper who’d let her into the room. It would be easy to connect her, if the police pursued it.

  “Why does it not feel like good news?” she said.

  36

  A few minutes before the morning’s court session was to begin, her mobile phone rang.

  “Judge Brody, this is Trooper Markowski from the Attorney General’s office. A couple things have come up, some things we’d like to talk to you about.”

  Her stomach seized. “Happy to talk.”

  “Does this afternoon work for you?”

  “I’m in court until four.”

  “We can come by your office at four.”

  “I have a meeting at my son’s school. Let me get back to you in a few minutes about my schedule.”

  “Sounds good.”

  She hit End, glanced at her watch—so she’d keep the courtroom waiting a minute or two—and hit Martha Connolly’s number.

  “Martie,” she said, “the AG’s investigator wants to talk to me again. They have some follow-up questions.”

  “That’s not good. But remember, you don’t have to talk to them.”

  “I’m not talking to them without a lawyer.”

  “Who’re you going to use?”

  “You,” Juliana said.

  There was a pause. Juliana wondered if Martie was taken aback.

  “Let them know they are welcome to talk to you in my home,” Martie said. “And let me give you a warning I used to give all my clients, which I heard from an old Boston political boss: ‘Never write if you can speak, never speak if you can nod, never nod if you can wink.’”

  “And never put it in e-mail,” Juliana added.

  * * *

  —

  During lunch a large envelope had been hand-delivered to her lobby by a courier for Wheelz’s lawyer, Harlan Madden. Inside were a DVD and a short document. As soon as she glanced at the document she understood what it was. The two parties had been in the middle of depositions, with Rachel Meyers being questioned by Madden, when a dispute broke out. She looked at the paper. It was an emergency motion filed by Harlan Madden “to compel answers to deposition questions and to preclude counsel from improper coaching.” He said they were going to have to come back for a second day of deposing Ms. Meyers and wanted the plaintiff to cover the costs. She skimmed the rest of the motion, then put the DVD into her computer’s disk drive.

  She hit Play. A wispy blond woman in her early thirties, Rachel Meyers, was sitting nervously at a conference table, looking directly at the camera. A male voice off-camera was asking her questions. That was Madden.

  She couldn’t help but think about Trooper Markowski and what might possibly have “come up.” What the hell else could they have found? But at the same time she had to pay attention, because what she was doing was important. And there was nothing she could do about Trooper Markowski until later.

  She fast-forwarded to a couple of minutes before the point in the time code where the controversy erupted. The offscreen voice asked, “Ms. Meyers, have you had a lot of boyfriends?”

  Rachel Meyers looked to one side, probably at her lawyer, and said, “A lot? No.”

  “How many, would you say?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t keep a count.”

  “More than ten?”

  “No.”

  “Twenty?”

  “Much less.”

  “Then how many?”

  “Maybe four or five.”

  “And are you seeing someone at the present time?”

  “No.”

  “And, Ms. Meyers, are you a member of any online dating sites?”

  “Yes.”

  “Which ones?”

  “Uh, OkCupid and Bumble.”

  “Have you had many dates as a result of these online dating sites?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, can you give me your best estimate? Would you say fifty?”

  “Fifty? No way. Maybe five or six.”

  “Ms. Meyers, Devin Allerdyce is the CEO of Wheelz, is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he invite you to dinner?”

  “No—”

  “No? When he said to you over chat, ‘OK if we meet at Madrigal at seven,’ were you aware that Madrigal is a restaurant?”

  “Yes.”

  “An invitation to a restaurant at seven o’clock in the evening is not a dinner invitation?”

  “Well, I mean, it was supposed to be a business meeting. He said he wanted to talk about the Carras case.”

  “A business meeting at the most expensive restaurant in Boston?”

  “No, at first he asked me to come by his office. Later he changed it to Madrigal.”

  “Ms. Meyers, did you know that Devin Allerdyce was single?”

  She seemed to hesitate.
“I think I’d heard that, but I don’t remember.”

  “Ms. Meyers, when a single man invites you to dinner at an expensive, romantic restaurant like Madrigal, wouldn’t you assume that was a date?”

  A female voice broke in: “Objection! This is ridiculous; this is improper and totally irrelevant and intending to harass the witness.”

  Madden said, “Counsel, are you instructing the witness not to answer the question?”

  “No, I’m not instructing her not to answer, but this is a highly inappropriate line of questioning. You can answer the question, Rachel.”

  Rachel Meyers’s eyes slid from one side to the other, from her lawyer to Madden. “No, I did not assume it was a date,” she said. “He’s the CEO of the company. I thought it was business.”

  “Ms. Meyers, is it true that you changed your clothes before dinner?”

  A pause. “Yes.”

  “What did you change into?”

  “I—I don’t remember.”

  “Have you been to Madrigal many times?”

  “No, just that one time.”

  “And you can’t remember what you wore that night?”

  Glenda Craft’s voice broke in again. “Objection, this is completely irrelevant. How is the fact that she changed her clothes relevant? This was almost two years ago! How would she remember what she was wearing on one night two years ago?”

  “Objection,” said Harlan Madden. “Coaching the witness.”

  “Go ahead and answer, Rachel,” said Craft.

  “I don’t remember,” Rachel said.

  “Thank you,” Madden said. “Ms. Meyers, did you order wine at dinner?”

  “He did.”

  “Did you drink wine?”

  “Yes.”

  “How many glasses of wine did you drink?”

  “The waiter kept filling my glass. I don’t know.”

  “Really? Do you think it was at least two glasses?”

  “Probably.”

  “More?”

  “Possibly.”

  “Three glasses?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Another pause. “Ms. Meyers, were you intoxicated at your dinner with Devin Allerdyce at Madrigal?”