Defense for the Devil (9 page)

“Maybe some significant fingerprints,” Frank said.

“Maybe. We don’t even know that yet.” She shook her head. “No matter how much bait I toss out for Trassi, he comes back for more. How far will they go? And the other guy, just keep all the money. Hah! I have to keep stalling until I have more information.”

“If a single damn one of them is telling anything near the truth, I don’t think you’re going to have much stalling time. I’m going to mosey down to the office for an hour or two.”

All right, she thought then, someone who had information and would give her straight answers: Lou Sunderman, the firm’s tax expert. She called him and made an appointment for eleven. In succession she called Maggie and arranged for a six or seven o’clock meeting, then John.

“Hi,” she said. “It’s me.”

“On your way home?”

“Nope. Up to here. Want to drive over to the coast this evening, four-ish?”

“You just don’t want to make dinner.”

She laughed. “I know a great seafood restaurant over there.”

“Cheap?”

“On me.”

“You just talked me into it. Be home early?”

“As early as I can.”

She was smiling when she hung up. One last call, she told herself after a moment. She gritted her teeth and called Wes Margollin, king of the nerds. He was a computer consultant who had set up the systems at the office, and talked.

“Jeez, Barbara,” Wes said aggrievedly, “you guys got another problem? I’m really busy.”

“No, no. I just want to open your brain case and take a quick peek inside. Information. Can you spare a little time today?”

“No way. Like I said, I’m really busy. Lunch? We gotta eat, right?”

Not only was he a talker, he was a moocher. They agreed on lunch and she hung up. Then it was time to go talk with Lou Sunderman.

He was only five feet six, possibly weighed 120, and no doubt was the most valued member of the law firm.

“A hypothetical problem,” Barbara said when she took a chair across his desk from him. “If a woman collected back child-support payments for eighteen years for two children, and the sum came to a very big number, would it be taxable?”

“No. The amount is unimportant.”

She restrained herself from uttering, “Hah!” then she asked, “Could she collect from his estate in the event he died before he paid up?”

“Much would depend on circumstances. Did he have a will? Are there other children from a different marriage? Did he leave large medical bills? And so forth. If he died intestate, probably the best she could hope for would be for her children to inherit whatever would be left after all accounts are settled. That money would be taxable.”

“What if he paid her and soon afterward died, before she had a chance to do anything with the money?”

Lou looked as if his patience was nearing an end. “If it can be proved that the sum due her was transferred to her before his death, that money is no longer part of his estate. It is hers and it is not subject to seizure by his creditors, if she can prove delinquency in his support payments. The Internal Revenue Service would conduct its own investigation and issue a closing agreement before she could claim the money legally.”

Pushing her welcome, she asked how long it would take. He said, “Months,” and looked pointedly at his watch. She thanked him nicely and walked out to meet Wes Margollin.

She groaned when she saw how packed the Greek restaurant was that Wes had chosen. He was standing at a table across the dining room, waving a menu at her.

“Hey, Barbara, how you doing?” he called before she reached him. “You know what I’m up to my nose in? See, everyone’s got a modem, everyone’s surfing the Net, everyone’s got to have a Web page. Shoeshine boy, bank president, janitor, they all got to have a Web page, and not a one of them knows diddly about HTML. You want a Web page?”

She shook her head. A harried waitress came and took their order and rushed away. The noise level was decibels above comfort, but it didn’t slow Wes down a second.

“See, you tell me what you want, how fancy you want it, music, bells, dancing bears—”

“Tell me about a company started fifteen or twenty years ago by a man and woman partnership. She died recently.”

He didn’t even change gears. “You mean Major Works. You want to buy stock, go for it. Imagine Einstein with two heads, that was Major and Wygood, and she got herself mugged and killed. Everyone’s watching to see
if he can hack it alone, but it won’t matter to the company. With what they already have, they’ll coast a long time. You never thought of just Major, or just Wygood; it was like one word, you know. Major/Wygood. He began showing up places with babes on his arm, and she took off.”

Barbara listened, confirming item by item what Waters had told her. Their lunch came and she ate her Greek salad and he his kebabs, and he never stopped talking. It was awesome, his talking, eating, drinking wine all at once, and just a bit disgusting, too, she thought, looking away from him.

Finally she interrupted. “What will the next big breakthrough be?”

“Lots of stuff,” he said promptly. “First, AI—that’s artificial intelligence—but not this century. Next, TV, computer, telecommunications combo, big bucks, big brains, big-power machine chugging in the background. Big, really big fights. Then, a voice-recognition system. You know, like Dick Tracy talking to his watch and his watch answering. Right now it’s like speech-class training, you know. Ev. Er. Y. Syl. La. Ble. has to be enunciated clearly. We gotta train people how to talk all over again. And people don’t train too good. Not just that, either. It’s how we talk. ‘That guy’s a beanpole.’ What’s a computer supposed to do with something like that? Or ‘He’s sawing logs.’ Or ‘She’s pickled,’ or ‘He’s a real lady killer.’ But that’s not even the worst of it. What about the homonyms, the synonyms, dialects, accents, not even touching yet on irony or symbolism? Nobody understands symbolism. People from Boston don’t understand Mississippi. No one understands Texans. What about Brooklyn? It’s a headache. See, there’s another one. But, Barbara, baby, you get that and you connect it with telecommunications, you just bought yourself a key to heaven. For a while people thought Major/Wygood was working on it, but nothing came out, so if they were, they got mired down just like everyone else. I saw Wygood on a panel once talking about the problems, and suddenly she got real quiet, but she flashed a funny look at Major first. I was there, I saw it.”

The waitress came back and Wes ordered baklava. They both had coffee. Barbara let him ramble on about Major/Wygood until he had his dessert, then she asked, “What would a workable program like that be worth, do you suppose?”

He snorted. “Can’t even put a price on it. Millions? Lotsa millions.” He wagged a finger at her. “But it’s got to work on the platforms out there. And that’s the rub. You need more memory, more RAM, more speed, more everything than we’ve got.”

He finished his coffee and stood up. “More Web sites, more home pages, more, more, more. You decide you want a page, give me a buzz. Of course, you’ll have to get in line….”

“Thanks, Wes,” she said to his back as he hurried away. She had forgotten the noise in the restaurant, she realized then when it hit her as a cacophony. She put her credit card on the table; the waitress was there almost instantly, and soon Barbara was back outside. It had grown many degrees hotter; she crossed the street to keep in the shade, and walked slowly, thinking of what Wes had told her.

A block from the office, as she crossed the open, downtown plaza where food vendors were doing a brisk business—tacos, Scandinavian pastries, ice cream, espressos—she saw Trassi, the gray man, who looked out of place here in his gray suit and sour expression. He rose from a bench and watched her approach.

“I want to talk to you,” he said curtly.

“All right.”

“Not here. There’s a little park up there.” He pointed toward Park Street, a block away.

“Fine.”

Neither spoke again as they walked to the little park. An ice cream vendor was set up and busy; people were sitting on several of the benches, others strolling aimlessly, a few with quick purpose. Shade from the tall fir and pine trees cooled the air magically. Barbara slowed her pace and let Trassi select a bench. There were only two choices.

He nodded toward the one closer to the fountain, and they went to it and sat down.

The fountain had a twenty-five-foot catch basin with a broad outer lip. Water flowed into it from a center pipe, then over the lip to a second, wide return basin, almost soundlessly. The sheen of water as it overflowed made it look like satin at times; when the lighting was just so, it looked like mercury; other times when the wind was blowing a certain way, the overflow was disturbed in such a manner that it looked bunched up, uneven. Barbara had spent many hours on this bench, gazing at the fountain, considering her next move, her next witness, the last witness…. Now she gazed at the water and waited.

“My client is prepared to pay a fifty-thousand-dollar finder’s fee for the return of our material,” Trassi said without preamble. “Plus whatever damage costs the insurance doesn’t cover.”

She shook her head. “I told you what we want,” she said. “Did you forget? Two hundred ten thousand, for the past-due child support, and so far the damage is up to forty-five thousand, and counting.” She paused, then said musingly, “I haven’t even considered yet the intangibles—fear, worry, loss of goodwill.” Her voice became very brisk again. “We want it aboveboard, without the IRS or other creditors seizing any of it. Child support isn’t taxed, I understand.”

“That’s impossible! The man’s dead! You can’t collect from a dead man who didn’t have anything. He never saw the kind of money you’re talking about.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Barbara said thoughtfully. “What if he was a private contractor who earned a lot of money and didn’t trust banks? In addition to working for your company, of course. There could be a number of safe-deposit boxes with hundred-dollar bills tucked away inside. Could be that he worked under several different names, lived frugally, saved his money.”

Contempt was thick in his voice when he said, “You’ll end up with nothing. A dream of riches, that’s all, a fairy tale. Go back to your law books, Ms. Holloway. You can’t start garnishment proceedings against a dead man; all you can do is present your claim to the probate court and get in line with his other creditors. We are prepared to prove that the material he was carrying belongs to our company, that he was on a legitimate business trip acting as a courier. What he was carrying will be returned to its owners; it will not be included in his estate, believe me. And no matter how many creditors line up, they’ll all get exactly the same thing: nothing. He didn’t have anything. Nothing divided among three or three hundred is still nothing.”

“The way I see
it,” Barbara said, “Mitch Arno got religion and decided to pay his ex-wife for the many years of neglecting to support his children. You know; he told you he had a debt to pay. He decided to make a grand gesture, pay her in cash, and came here on a side trip to do so. You arrived to make certain it was all legal, with authorization to deliver the suitcase to Ms. Folsum or her attorney. She told you to talk to me, which you did, and after you delivered the suitcase, your mission was accomplished. I, of course, immediately put the suitcase in a safe-deposit box until I had time to determine the legality of the procedure.” She paused, then continued in a thoughtful way, “Of course, if that scenario were true, there would be records, payment records, a document to show that he intended to pay his ex-wife what he owed her, an attorney agreement. You know, papers and records, the bane of civilization. That’s what I want, Mr. Trassi, all the paperwork that proves it was his money and he retained you to deliver it, and, further, a statement that you carried out his instructions faithfully before he died. When it’s ready, call the office and set up a meeting with our tax attorney, Mr. Sunderman, and he will contact the IRS to arrange for a closing agreement with them.”

“You are proposing an illegal action that could get you disbarred. We would never agree to such a scheme.” He stood up.

“Okay. So we could auction off what we have and call it quits.”

“What you have is valueless to anyone except my company.”

“So we won’t make much with it. Scan a page or two and put it on the Internet, with a plea for help, might work. Something like ‘Found, pages from someone’s manual. What does it mean?’ Maybe someone would make an offer.”

He did not move.

“One more thing,” Barbara said, keeping her gaze on the water. “I moved things from my own bank to the safe-deposit box the firm rents, one that requires two senior members to open. I’ve given instructions that in the event I am incapacitated, those senior members will turn over everything they find in the box to the police. And if I hear that Maggie Folsum has been pressured in any way, I’ll turn them over myself. You see
,
when you start out with nothing, there’s little to lose. Is there?” She looked up at him. “And, Mr. Trassi, I see
no advantage in further dickering. When you’re ready, call Mr. Sunderman and set up a time.”

“I’ll be in touch,” he said. He walked away like a marionette with an inept handler.

She turned her gaze back to the fountain. A thin cirrus cloud had dimmed the sun slightly, turning the smooth water into molten gold that was just out of reach.

9

“When I was
a little girl,” Maggie said, “I named all these
rocks.”

They were walking on the beach, where fog was gathering and the surf was gentle for the moment. The rocks were basalt, John had said, old volcanoes sailing out to sea on a raft of tectonic plates. Now John and Laurence were walking ahead, out of hearing.

“This one’s the Black Knight,” Maggie said, patting a smooth columnar monolith that rose ten feet high. “He saved my life when I was about eight or nine. An erratic wave caught me. He held me, or I held him. Never turn your back on the ocean,” she added. Laurence turned to look at them and waved, and she waved back. Her voice became strained. “I remember how my mother used to handle my brothers when we were kids. If they got on her nerves too much, she’d send them to town for a loaf of bread or something.”