No Time To Run (Legal Thriller Featuring Michael Collins, Book 1) (19 page)

“
Must have a show,” Michael said, as Father Stiles sat down.

“
Two actually. One this afternoon at the Good Samaritan Old Soldier Home, and then another tonight at St. Bartholomew’s on West 53rd.”

“
If any of the old ladies throw their underwear at you, I want to know.”

“
Always,” said Father Stiles. “The King worketh in mysterious ways.”

The waitress came over to the table. Not a word was said about the 59-year-old Elvis sitting at the table. The waitress had seen it all before.

Michael ordered a Coke and two chili dogs. Father Stiles checked his watch, confirmed it was past noon, and ordered a beer and one dog.

“
What kind of beer?” The waitress held her pen and pad at the ready.

“
Whatever’s cheapest.”

She rolled her eyes and muttered something about retiring as she turned away.

“
Any more word about the grand jury?” Michael asked.

Father Stiles shook his head.

“
Nothing.” He was about to continue, but the waitress interrupted them with their drinks. She set a frosted pint down on the table in front of Father Stiles, and the glass of Coke in front of Michael.

“
Dogs’ll be out in a few minutes,” she said, “the master chef back there needs time to work.” They both nodded and watched as she walked back over to the other side of the room. Three sanitation workers sat vigil around two pitchers of beer and a bowl of free popcorn.

“
So the attorney for the church talked to the folks who want me to testify.” Father Stiles glanced around the room, again. “Seems pretty serious, Michael.”

“
I know.”

Father Stiles pushed his beer aside and lowered his voice.

“
I can’t lie for you.”

“
I wouldn’t ask you to.”

Father Stiles leaned back. He took a drink of his
Pabst
, and then another.

“
You have a lot on your mind.”

“
Andie,” Michael said, “of course.”

“
She doesn’t know, does she?” Father Stiles took another draw of his beer. When Michael didn’t respond, he said, “You can’t shut people out, Michael, that can’t be how you go through life.”

“
Can’t tell her everything, either.”

“
You can,” Father Stiles said, “but you don’t want to. There’s a difference.” He waited for the waitress to work the room, and then go to the kitchen to retrieve another order. “When do you see her again?”

“
After this.” Michael took a drink of his soda, and looked around the Belican. He looked for other eyes watching him. “I don’t have a solution.” His voice was quiet. “I can’t tell her, and then not have a way out. I need to give her something.”

“
The truth is something.” Father Stiles rubbed the back of his neck like he always did when he was thinking.

The waitress arrived with two baskets of chili dogs.

“
Let the feast begin, boys.” She tossed the baskets down on the table and walked away.

CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE

Every relationship follows a line, points when attraction becomes flirtation, lust becomes love, dating becomes commitment, and two people are no longer separate, so it was surprising when Michael looked back and realized that a line had been crossed. Without realizing it at the time, he had become responsible.

Michael sat in the attorney-client conference room, and looked at Andie sitting across the table from him. He took Andie’s hand in his own.

“
I need to tell you something.”

“
So serious, what is it?”

Michael’s grip tightened, and Andie looked concerned. Her eyes searched him for comfort that wasn’t there.

“
You’re scaring me,” she said.

Michael paused. He wondered whether he should just run. He could walk out that door and leave this behind. He could be on a plane to Bangladesh in less than twenty-four hours, or maybe the Falkland Islands. He hadn’t been charged with any crime yet. He was a free man.

“
When I came to the Sunset, you know how I was.” The lump in Michael’s throat grew. “I spent my days alone, away from everyone. I didn’t care if I lived or died. My whole life was spent trying to obtain this goal, this idea of ‘success’ and I was so sure that all my problems would go away when I got there. ...” Michael shook his head. “Then I got there.”

“
What’s going on, Michael?” Andie leaned in. Her eyes searched him for a clue. “You can tell me.”

He heard her say it from a distance. You can tell me. He heard her say it while floating above himself, out of his own body. Michael watched himself sitting across the table from Andie, the one person in the world that he trusted and loved. He watched as they sat in silence, her waiting for him.

Michael then watched as he opened his mouth, and for the first time in his life words started coming out, uncensored, without filter.

“
It was a little over four years ago.” Michael looked down at the floor. “I was a ‘rising star’ at Wabash, Kramer & Moore, whatever that means. The great Lowell Moore had taken an interest in me. And I was focused on proving myself to those people. I believed that they didn’t think I was worthy enough to be a lawyer and certainly not worthy enough to work at the firm. I thought my presence there was a mistake; that they would discover it was a mistake and it’d be over. I’d be back in the same housing projects where I grew up, a person on the margin.

“
It was stupid. At the same time, Lowell Moore and all the other partners at the firm didn’t exactly disabuse me of these notions. I was a little money machine, and they weren’t going to mess that up. They were going to sow these seeds of doubt, a stray comment or joke here or there, so that I’d just keep on billing for them and never ask questions or complain.”

Michael took a breath, and let the exhale out slow.

“
So we get this client, and initially all I know is that he’s from Boca Raton, Florida, which means to me that he is guilty as sin, because everybody who lives in Boca Raton is either skimming or scamming in one form or another.

“
Lowell tells me that our client got served with a subpoena as part of a federal inquiry, and I’m told that I just needed to help him play defense. The client is supposedly the CEO and founder of this hazardous waste clean-up company that nobody has ever heard of, but handles basically all of the federal government’s environmental disaster areas, Superfund sites, tornadoes, hurricanes. Anything that’s blown down or contaminated; this company gets the contract to clean it up.

“
So Lowell wants scorched-earth litigation. We have a rich client in serious trouble, who also paid the firm a huge retainer. Lowell wants me to fight the feds on everything, generate so much damn work and hassle that the bureaucrats get worn down. We figured they’d cave in eventually with a nice plea agreement like they always do.

“
This goes on for about eight months. I never had the full file, because I didn’t need it. Lowell was handling the client, and frankly I didn’t care about the details. I was just cranking out the briefs and motions, billing the absolute shit out of that file.

“
And then one day, I’m sitting in this bar and on the television screen pops up the picture of Senator Ted Faith of Rhode Island, the Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee and a one-time presidential aspirant. Then, the logo of Krane Engineering comes up on the screen, which I immediately recognize because this executive from Boca Raton is none other than Joshua Krane, the CEO and founder of Krane Engineering.

“
Although Lowell and I had known about Senator Faith and Krane all along, we didn’t know the feds had it all on tape. There it was: the good senator taking bribes from our client, Mr. Krane.

“
In exchange for golf trips to Hawaii and private meetings with high priced D.C. call girls, the federal contracts would be awarded to Krane. All this juicy stuff recorded by the FBI, taped right there in a restaurant owned by a big-time K Street lobbyist.

“
And, what makes this interesting to me is that Senator Faith is ratting out his colleagues in the Senate as well as Mr. Krane. That’s a beltway first.

“
The plea agreement with the senator changed everything, all of a sudden our leverage is gone because we can’t really offer the feds a United States Senator anymore, since the senator already spilled his guts. Meanwhile the stock in Krane Engineering is tanking. At one point the stock was trading at $80 a share, and towards the end it was trading at $5 and then at pennies.

“
The Securities and Exchange Commission is going crazy. You have thousands of employees at Krane Engineering who lost their retirement. There are major accounting problems at the company, and there are allegations that Mr. Krane not only gave bribes, but now there are rumors of mafia ties and that he embezzled close to one-and-a-half-billion dollars from the company over the course of ten years – a billion and a half.

“
For Lowell and me, despite our publicly professed anger and outrage at the federal government for not revealing the whole scope of their investigation, we were privately ecstatic. Overnight, the case becomes front page news, which is great publicity for the firm, and the potential legal bills quadrupled. For me, that meant more billable hours, a bigger year-end bonus, and one step closer to partnership.

“
So we go on for another year. I am only working on the Krane file and this one other case called
Maltow
, which was a separate deal. But, it was the Krane file that was my focus. It’s us and the government lawyers, pissing back and forth. We do a ridiculous number of depositions and document dumps, and then finally the trial comes.”

Michael stopped, took a breath, and then started, again. He felt the weight starting to lift away.

“
Nobody wants to go to trial. At trial somebody wins and somebody loses, and no lawyer wants to lose after working on something for two or three years. So everybody is starting to get anxious to deal. The trial is scheduled to start on Monday, and on Sunday night the Assistant U.S. Attorney, who now happens to be U.S. Attorney Brenda Gadd, floats a nice offer. It’s the first legitimate deal we receive: Ten years in prison, full cooperation with the investigation of the other senators, and the return of $750 million.

“
We are all in Lowell’s huge office. It’s eleven o’clock at night, and Lowell is just hammering on Krane to take it. Finally, Krane looked up at Lowell and told him that he didn’t have $750 million and Lowell said, ‘Of course you can’t pay $750 million, who has $750 million just sitting around?’ And then Lowell asked how much Krane could pay so that we could do a counter-offer.

“
Krane shook his head, shrugged, and then said, ‘Maybe $500 million.’ There was a long silence in the room. Neither Lowell or I expected that much, maybe Lowell had an idea, but I didn’t. Anyway, I was thinking that the guy may have stolen $15 million over ten years and had spent most of it, maybe had a couple million left. That’s usually how it worked with the white-collar types.

“
But Krane hadn’t spent it. He had squirreled it away in a number of foreign bank accounts that only he knew of and the accounts were supposedly for the purpose of ‘avoiding taxes’ and ‘eventual reinvestment in the company.’ This was coming from a born-again Christian of humble means, who only months earlier swore under oath to God in a deposition that he didn’t take a dime. I guess it depended on what your definition of ‘take’ was.

“
Lowell got on the phone and in a matter of minutes a new plea agreement was faxed over by Gadd at the Department of Justice. Lowell told Krane that he needed proof of the money before the feds would accept the deal. Krane told Lowell that it was impossible, but Lowell kept at him.

“
Finally, Krane divulged that he had the account numbers and recent bank statements in a safe deposit box at the Bank of America on Broadway. Although the safe deposit box was under his kid’s name, he had the keys and access to get in there twenty-four hours a day.

“
Lowell said that he was going to revise some of the language in the plea agreement, and that Krane and I should go down to the bank, get the account numbers and statements, and come back to the office so that the final details could be worked out and then we could sign the agreement that night.

“
Krane protested, but Lowell said that we could redact the account numbers and locations from the statements and fax them to the feds as proof. Krane continued to resist, but eventually agreed. He was going to jail no matter what, and something told me that our wonderful client had another account floating out there, waiting to be tapped on the day he leaves prison.

“
Krane and I took the elevator down to my car. I don’t know why, but I volunteered to drive, maybe I wanted to impress Krane with my new little BMW roadster or maybe I just wanted some control, but I volunteered to drive and I think Krane liked having people shuttle him around. So we get inside, Krane puts his briefcase next to mine in the non-existent backseat, and then he gets into the passenger side and we go.”