A Conflict of Interest (27 page)

“Is that new?”

“No. I just don’t wear it very often. Do you like it?”

“I do.”

She looks beautiful, and the initial pang of desire I feel frightens more than emboldens me.

It feels like I’m cheating on Abby.

Abby might even ask me about it tomorrow, and the idea that I’d lie to her about whether I was sleeping with my wife just seems too ridiculous, even for me. But I suspect that’s what Abby was thinking when she questioned me about why I was going home early.

Why is it that my lust for Abby doesn’t conjure the same fear? When I want Abby, it only makes me angry at Elizabeth, but the opposite isn’t true. For some reason, I’m angry at Elizabeth now too.

“What are we watching?” I ask.

“It’s a
Law & Order
rerun.” Elizabeth laughs. “I’ll switch it. I’m sure you’ve seen enough courtroom drama for a while.”

“It’s fine. I’m really tired, anyway. I’ll probably be asleep before Charlotte.”

I take my glasses off and put them on the night table beside me. Then I turn away from the television and shut my eyes, hoping that sleep takes me soon.

Elizabeth strokes my hair for a few moments, most likely an effort to remind me that there are other options besides sleep. The last thing I remember is that she lowers the volume to allow me some rest.

S
itting in the witness box, Professor Andrew Heller embodies what Santa Claus would look like if he taught at a New England prep school for boys, which is to say that he’s approaching seventy years old, seemingly hasn’t lost a single white hair, has a full white beard, and completes the look with tortoiseshell glasses and a rep tie with the Harvard colors. All pulled together on his six-foot-four frame, he makes exactly the impression the government is paying him to make—a cross between the beneficence of Mr. Rogers and the authority of God.

Direct expert testimony is like a professional basketball game—it’s only worth watching the last two minutes. It takes Pavin almost an hour to go through Professor Heller’s curriculum vitae, at the end of which the jury knows that he’s won just about every prize there is to win in the field of economics. At last, Pavin’s about to get to the good part.

“In your expert opinion, Dr. Heller, did Mr. Ohlig know Salminol was being propped up solely by OPM making a market in that security?”

Heller’s not qualified to testify about what Ohlig knew, only what he thinks a reasonable person would know, and so I could object to the question. When I don’t, I earn another of Ohlig’s icy stares.

“He did,” Heller says in a confident voice.

“And do you further have an expert opinion concerning Mr. Ohlig’s state of mind regarding the value of Salminol at the time his company was selling it to the public?”

“Yes. Mr. Ohlig knew Salminol was about to go bankrupt, making its stock worthless. At the same time, he was directing his sales force to sell it as a can’t-miss investment.”

Pavin nods at the jury. They look back like an approving audience getting their money’s worth.

“Your witness,” he says without making eye contact with me.

My cross is as it’s been with all the government’s witnesses—short. I make the obvious points—Heller has no first-hand experience in trading, he has never met Ohlig, he knew nothing about Salminol until this case, and he’s being paid for his testimony. Then I’m done and I sit down.

“Are you just going to bend over and let this continue?!” Ohlig says as we’re packing up to leave for lunch.

Since Heller’s direct began, Ohlig has looked like just sitting next to me has been a struggle. Now that we’re out of the jury’s presence he’s having even more difficulty containing his rage. So much so that if we weren’t in a courtroom with armed guards, I actually think he might take a swing at me.

“And what would you have me do, Michael?”

“Try putting up more of a fight.”

“Trust me,” I say, and as soon as the words pass my lips I realize that’s the problem. “All objecting does at this point is signal to the jury we’re afraid of what he’s saying.”

Ohlig stares daggers at me. “So you decide that the best way to defend me is to kiss Professor Father Time’s ass.”

“Michael, the guy’s a Nobel Prize winner; we’re going to have to rely on Sansotta to offset him.” I should probably leave well enough alone, but I don’t. “I know we’ve had a couple of bad days, but I can’t change the facts.”

“Well, thank you very much,
counselor,
for that sparkling legal analysis.”

We’re at a stalemate. All that’s left is Ohlig’s glare repeating what he has already said—he’s not happy with the way this is going, and he blames me 100 percent.

“I’ve been telling you for weeks that Fieldston’s the guy,” I say. “He’ll be the government’s final witness.”

“There are a few more people left on their witness list,” Abby points out.

“Pavin’s not going to call them. After lunch, he’s going to call Fieldston, and then he’s going to rest. Fieldston will testify that Michael knew he was defrauding his customers, and that’s the last piece Pavin needs to convict.

“You better make damn sure he doesn’t get it,” Ohlig says, and then storms out of the courtroom.

On Thursdays, Judge Sullivan gives everyone a two-hour lunch break so that we can all catch up on our other work, returning phone calls and the like, during business hours. That means Abby and I are heading back to the office.

Before heading down to the war room, I stop back in my office to check my emails. There’s an envelope on my chair. It was hand-delivered, with my address printed out on a plain white label. Inside there’s a DVD that is equally nondescript; it could have been purchased at any electronics store. Taped to the disk is a card on white stock that contains only the printed message: “THIS MIGHT HELP.”

I dial up the mailroom. A man with a heavy Spanish accent answers. I think he says his name is Jorge.

“Hi, this is Alex Miller. I received a package on my chair, but it doesn’t have any return address. Do you guys have a record of when we received it?”

“Who’s it from?” Jorge asks.

“I don’t know. There’s no return address or any markings. I was hoping you guys might have a record of where it came from.”

“Hold on.”

I wait a minute or two while Jorge yells in Spanish to others in the mailroom, apparently having forgotten to put me on hold. When he comes back on the line, he says, “I’m sorry, but nobody here knows anything about any package to you.”

This isn’t much of a surprise. It stands to reason that someone going through the trouble to make sure that nothing on the package can be traced back would be smart enough not to leave their name and number with the mailroom.

“Jorge, let me ask you this. If someone dropped it off with security
downstairs, is it possible that they would have just sent it up to my chair?”

“They’re not supposed to,” he says. “All packages are to go through the mailroom. Ever since 9–11. If it’s a bomb or something, I guess they want us guys to explode.” He laughs, even though his analysis is probably correct.

I walk the disk down to the war room and wave it at Abby. “Look what I got.”

“What is it?”

“Don’t know. It was left on my office chair. No return address. The note only said that it might help. The mailroom has no record of any delivery to me. Whoever sent us this gift wants to be anonymous.”

“Yeah, I wonder who,” she says.

Abby pulls her laptop out of her bag and puts the disk in the drive. A few clicks later and we hear a woman’s voice. I don’t recognize who it is, but it’s mature, confident, and if such a thing is possible to ascertain from sound alone, she’s as sexy as hell.

I can’t reach Ohlig on his cell, which might be because he’s still in the courthouse, having opted to have lunch with Pamela in the cafeteria, another sign he’d rather spend as little time as possible in my company. With no other choice, Abby and I head back to court, disk in hand.

Sure enough, we find him in the cafeteria. “I’m sorry, Pamela,” I say when we approach, “but I’m going to need Michael for a moment.”

It’s no surprise that Ohlig doesn’t ask what’s so important. Of course, he wouldn’t ask under any circumstances, but like Abby had already surmised, in this case he almost surely knows why I’ve sought him out.

We go upstairs to the witness room adjoining Judge Sullivan’s courtroom. It’s the only place in the courthouse where we can be assured of privacy. As soon as Abby closes the door, I get down to business.

“A disk was left on my chair when I got back from court today. We don’t know who sent it. It’s audio only. The whole conversation—at least the part that’s on the disk—is less than two minutes.”

Ohlig starts to say something, but I put up my hand like a traffic cop, directing him to stop. “Let’s hear it first, Michael, and then we can discuss it.” Without waiting for a response, I motion to Abby to play the recording.

We all listen. And I’ll be damned if Ohlig isn’t wearing his Cheshire cat grin even before it gets to the good part.

“This is good for us, right?” Ohlig asks when the recording is finished.

“Could be good, could be bad,” I begin to explain. “Let’s say it’s not Fieldston on the tape. Then it looks like we’re manufacturing evidence. Not the best foot to put forward in a trial that so far isn’t exactly going our way, don’t you think?”

“I’m willing to take that chance,” Ohlig says matter of factly enough that I no longer have any doubt about the disk’s origin, not that I had much before. God only knows how many times Ohlig has sent beautiful women wearing wires to make small talk with Fieldston in the hope that he’d spill something.

“Michael, I want to stress that this could easily go very poorly for us. For starters, if Fieldston denies that it’s him, Judge Sullivan won’t give us an inch to prove otherwise, especially after your brilliant bribery attempt. But even in the best case scenario, Fieldston is just going to say it’s out of context and a lot of the discussion was edited out. We’ll then be at his mercy, and at that point he’ll be out for blood.”

“Let him say whatever he wants. After the tape is played, no one is going to believe a word out of his mouth.”

“Michael, the jury is going to assume you set him up.”

Ohlig’s face tightens, a look that reminds me of a clenched fist. “I can’t believe that you’re seriously thinking about not using this,” he says.

“I hear what you’re saying, but—”

“No. Don’t give me the ‘I hear what you’re saying’ bullshit. Say it straight out. You blame me for your mother’s death, and now you’re trying to even the score.”

“That’s not true,” I say, almost too reflexively, like when a boxer tells the referee that he wants to continue without regard to the beating he’s just received.

“Then tell me what it is, Alex, because when someone drops a bombshell in our lap like this, it just doesn’t make any sense to ignore it.”

“I’m just trying to lay out the negatives for you,” I say. “I know you don’t like to hear negatives, but it’s part of my job to see the risks as well as the rewards.”

“Okay,” he says, this time more calmly. “Now it’s my turn to say it—I hear you, Alex. I understand the risks. I still want to go forward with using the tape. Agreed?”

“You’re the client,” I say, fully knowing it isn’t a direct response.

“Good,” he says. “Sometimes you act like that’s not the case.”

E
ric Fieldston approaches the witness stand without looking in our direction. Once in the witness box, he seems to be making a conscious effort to focus only on Pavin, as if to block Ohlig completely from his line of sight.

Fieldston has taken on the Ohlig persona, the way some people end up looking like their pets over time. Like Ohlig, Fieldston’s hair is a little long, but well styled, and he’s dressed impeccably, but without flash, as if he went to the Armani showroom this morning and bought whatever the mannequin was wearing.

From the beginning of his direct it’s obvious that Fieldston has been very well prepared. His answers are all short and directly responsive to Pavin’s questions.
Answer the question asked, and only that question
is rule number two of witness prep, right after
tell the truth
. I once had a witness who took the instruction so literally that when asked if he could state his name, he said only
yes
.

Pavin gets the entire immunity issue out of the way early, making it clear that Fieldston goes straight to prison if he lies on the stand. Of course, Pavin omits that he will be the one who makes the determination as to whether Fieldston’s lying.

When the preliminaries are over, Pavin goes right in for the kill.

“Mr. Fieldston, who directed that the stock called Salminol be sold by OPM?”

“That would be Mr. Ohlig.”

“Was Mr. Ohlig aware that Salminol actually had no value at the same time OPM was selling it?”

“He was.”

“Do you know why Mr. Ohlig directed this worthless stock be sold to the public?”

“Yes.”

“Please explain to the jury why Mr. Ohlig made that decision.”

“OPM acquired a huge block of Salminol stock. I think we paid around twenty cents, on average, so the total position was something like thirty-five million. I don’t know precisely what happened to alert Mr. Ohlig to the fact that Salminol was going to crash, but I recall very clearly that he came into my office on March 23. It was first thing in the morning, before the markets opened, and he said there was bad news on Salminol, and we had to unload all of it, immediately.”

“Do you recall what the price of the stock was at that time?”

“I do. The first thing I did after Mr. Ohlig said this was to check the quote. I did it while he was still standing there, in fact.”

“At what price was Salminol trading?”

“Less than a dime and trending down.”

“Then what happened in your discussion with Mr. Ohlig?”

“I said to him, if we dump it all now, we’re going to push the price down. I told him that we bought it at about twenty, so we could end up losing as much as three-fourths of our investment, which could have been more than twenty-five million.”