“Like, going to jail for a long time screwed,” Marty said.
“Why?” Casey asked.
Marty looked up and blinked. “They owe the IRS about twenty million dollars.”
“All together?” Casey asked.
“No,” Marty said, “each.”
Jake let out a low whistle.
“Scary thing is,” Marty said, riffling through more of the pages from Casey’s pile, “they might not even know they did anything
wrong.”
“Oh, honest crooks,” Jake said, patting Marty and returning to the bag of Chinese, placing it on the table between the piles
of papers.
“Kind of,” Marty said.
“I was kidding,” Jake said.
“What do you mean, Marty?” Casey asked.
Marty shrugged and said, “These guys might not have even known. Graham sends the K-1s to their accountants, and active deductions
for oil and gas leases are pretty commonplace, but you have be actively involved, actually working at the company to qualify,
which these guys aren’t. They’ve just been cashing the checks and not worrying about the taxes. I’m sure their accountants
never claimed a dime of income because Graham has been showing them losses equal to the income they’ve received. Everyone’s
happy, except the IRS.”
“Why the hell would Graham do it?” Jake asked.
“It’s like a Ponzi scheme,” Marty said. “You get people to invest, start sending them money they think they don’t have to
pay taxes on, they tell their friends, and next thing you know, they want in, too. You don’t even have to make money to make
the thing work. If people keep investing, you just pay the original partners with the new investment. If no one pays any taxes,
there’s a lot left over that you can do all kinds of things with.”
“Like fly around in a Citation X,” Casey said.
“Or give some away to get your face on TV,” Jake said.
“Or buy up other companies for cover,” Marty said. “For all we know, Graham is funding his whole empire on the money these
guys are stealing from the IRS. He might be more of a con man than the brilliant businessman you read about in the
Wall Street Journal
.”
“Why would he keep this?” Casey said, resting her hand on the papers in front of her.
“Blackmail?” Marty said.
“But his partners,” Jake said, “they didn’t really do anything wrong. Graham gave them the statements.”
“Right, but the IRS doesn’t care about that,” Marty said. “I’ve seen it. You don’t pay taxes like this? It’s no one’s fault
but your own. It’s
your
responsibility. These guys would go to jail in a heartbeat.”
“Like Al Capone,” Jake said. “Murder, bootlegging, extortion, but they got him on tax evasion. That’s how they put him away.
If the FBI got wind of this gang, they’d be back on them like white on rice, which reminds me, breakthrough or no, I’ve got
to eat before I pass out.”
Jake dug into a wax bag of egg rolls and passed them around.
“There’s something else,” Casey said, dipping the end of her roll into a little foam dish of duck sauce.
“Something else, what?” Jake asked.
“This is Graham’s Get Out of Jail Free card,” Casey said.
“How so?”
“You said the FBI is investigating him?” Casey said. “I promise you, whatever they have on him, this would get him out of
it.”
“What
ever
?”
“This would serve up a dozen or more people with ties to organized crime,” Casey said.
“They’re, like, retired, though, right?” Marty said. “These guys left the dark side.”
“You think the FBI cares?” Casey asked. “These guys dodging them for all those years? FBI agents are like elephants with this
stuff. They’d be all over it. If Graham was my client and we offered them John Napoli and his gang? I’d get him total immunity,
maybe even a pat on the back from the Justice Department, witness protection, whatever we wanted. Are you kidding? This is
Graham’s free pass if anything happens to him.”
“Jake said it’s something worth killing for,” Marty said, “and it is. But if Napoli finds out, Graham won’t be the only one
who’d kill for it.”
Jake scowled for a moment before he held his egg roll up in the air as if he were making a toast.
“To blackmail, then,” Jake said, touching his roll to Casey’s and then Marty’s before crunching it in his mouth, “because
it works both ways.”
C
ASEY WORKED with Marty until the early morning hours, drafting the documents she needed to make their plan work. She let Marty
and Jake out of her room and saw that the sky was already growing pale. She didn’t think she could sleep, but after removing
her shoes and lying flat on her back, the next thing she knew, morning light was filtering through the crack in the dark brown
curtains. She jumped up and found her toothbrush, spreading a towel on the sticky linoleum floor in the bathroom so her feet
wouldn’t have to touch it. She pulled aside the mildewed plastic curtain but thought better of a shower after one glance at
the rusty fixtures and the permanent ring around the inside of the tub.
She found a washcloth, more gray than white, but that smelled clean enough for her to brave a sponge bath in the sink before
changing into some fresh clothes from her luggage. She stepped outside, where the damp air held a chill. Casey shivered at
the sound of traffic droning by on the Thruway she couldn’t see through the mist. She stood, trying to decipher it until she
smelled coffee and wheeled around.
“Morning,” Jake said, removing a paper cup from his carrier and offering it to her. Under his arm was a folder of documents.
“Morning,” she said, taking the coffee.
“You’re thinking.”
“The mist,” she said. “When I represent people, everything seems clear. Sometimes I get impatient with them, the confused
looks when I tell them what to say and how to say it, but this…”
She waved vaguely out over the railing before gripping its slick surface.
“It’s a lot,” he said. “Someone says they’re one thing and you believe them, then they turn out to be something totally different.”
“Totally evil,” she said. “This whole thing. It’s humiliating.”
“People who know you, they know,” he said, placing a hand on hers. “I know.”
“Thank you,” she said, breathing easier before nodding at the folder tucked under his arm. “You got everything printed?”
“I did.”
Casey asked, “What are you telling your show?”
“That I’m working on one hell of a story,” Jake said, blowing into his lid before taking a sip. “They believe me.”
Casey took a sip of her own and said, “You know who we need to sit down with.”
Jake stared off into the mist. “I think I’ll have a better chance to get the story I need if I do this part of it alone.”
“Well, thanks for not coming right out with a John Wayne imitation,” Casey said. “My uncle used to imitate John Wayne and
we all thought it was funny till we learned he got a head injury in the war. Just be real.”
Jake looked somewhat startled. “I am real. For good or bad, I’ve been in this kind of shark tank before.”
“Look, I had a client who was a serial killer and a US senator taking pages out of Joséf Mengele’s playbook who wanted me
dead,” she said. “So thanks for the coffee, but don’t patronize me, and next time I’ll take it with milk.”
Jake gave her an amused smile. “I am
not
taking the kid.”
“He works on traffic tickets.”
“I thought he was your lawyer,” Jake said.
“And you never want to do anything stupid in the presence of your lawyer,” Casey said, pulling open the door to her room.
“We going right now?”
“Napoli told me ten o’clock,” Jake said. “I figured I’d take my coffee for the road.”
Casey gathered her things and got into Jake’s Cadillac.
“You going to tell him?” Casey asked, nodding toward Marty’s room.
“I left him a note,” Jake said, backing out.
They took the Thruway to Buffalo. Bambino’s Espresso was a small brick building on the edge of downtown with a dirty glass
storefront window and a red neon sign shaped like Italy. Napoli’s silver G55 sat in front like a dog on the stoop. A thick-necked
man sat behind the wheel, reading a paper until he put it down to watch them and scan the street. In front of that was a black
Lincoln Navigator and a midnight blue Bentley Coupe.
Jake got the door for her. A bell tinkled, announcing their entrance, and an old man in a white apron and a paper hat looked
up from his tray of biscotti before darting his eyes across the empty tables toward the corner. Fresh cigar smoke clouded
the corner, its smell mixing with that of freshly ground coffee and warm dough from behind the counter. Next to the wizened
old man in a wheelchair sat a man so large that his face seemed small and lost in its cowl of fat. The old man, Casey knew,
was Napoli. On his other side sat a beefy brute in a tailored suit with slicked-back hair, a pinkie ring, and manicured nails.
When they approached the table, no one stood up or offered a hand, but the fat man nudged the metal leg of an empty chair
with his toe as if to offer it up. He spoke in a high voice that belied his great size.
“You have something for us?” he said, more as a statement than a question.
“We have something,” Jake said.
The fat man nodded, rolling a lit cigar in his stubby fingers before marrying it to his pink lips. Jake pulled out a chair
for Casey before sitting down beside her in a cloud of fresh smoke. Casey placed the file on the table in front of her.
“I know John Napoli,” Jake said, gesturing to the old man and then the beefy one, “and Massimo D’Costa, but I don’t know who
you are.”
“And you don’t have to,” Napoli said, struggling upright in his wheelchair, a fire in his eyes.
The fat man considered Napoli, slowly nodding his encouragement.
“On the phone, you talked about Buffalo Oil and Gas,” Napoli said, crushing a small piece of lemon rind and dropping it into
his tiny cup before taking a sip.
“Niko Todora,” Casey said, watching the fat man’s eyes widen just a hint, otherwise he remained impassive. “Chicken wings,
plumbing fixtures, and gas leases.”
Todora looked at Napoli.
“Our group has varied interests,” Napoli said.
“Your group may be under indictment,” Casey said. “Every one of you.”
“I saw you on TV,” Napoli said, squinting, “and I told Mr. Todora you reminded me of Louie Fitch’s assistant. Louie was a
magician in the day, and his assistant had red hair like you, pretty, too. He’d saw her in half and bingo, he’d put her back
together and there’d she’d be with those terrific legs in that black fishnet. You got some tricks of your own. I see that.”
“And your partner Robert Graham is the magician,” Casey said, holding his pale green eyes with her own, “but you’re not going
to like his tricks.”
“Like?”
Casey looked at Jake. He inclined his head to her.
“Graham has a file of income reports that you haven’t seen,” Casey said. “You put your money into the company, and you collect
your checks. Big checks. The problem is how he’s reporting the income he pays out to you and your partners. He makes it look
like it’s not taxable, but it is.”
Casey looked around at them, Massimo D’Costa and John Napoli scowling, Niko Todora passive with the cigar hanging limp from
his lips.
“So we didn’t pay taxes,” Napoli said.
“But you should have,” Casey said.
Napoli’s lower teeth showed like small yellow posts as he looked from one of his partners to the other.
“That’s his problem,” Massimo said in a rumble.
“No,” Casey said, “really, it’s yours. He’s been holding these files like an ace up his sleeve. If he never needs to play
it, fine. No harm, no foul.”
“But if he ever goes down,” Jake said, “and he will go down—the FBI has an active investigation going on Graham—then he uses
the file to give you up instead.”
“The FBI would much rather put a bunch of reformed”—Casey, searching for the right words, said—“would much rather toss all
of you in jail than one well-known philanthropist. It doesn’t matter that you all thought what you were doing was legitimate.
He’s your partner. You’re expected to know. Graham has personally made millions off you and your other partners.”
“Jail?” Massimo said, placing his meaty fists on his thighs and leaning forward.
“Tax evasion,” Casey said, “to the tune of about 120 million dollars. That’s how they got Al Capone.”
Napoli set his jaw, and the ember on the tip of Niko Todora’s cigar blazed. His eyes shifted around. He squinted at her through
the smoke.
Todora removed the cigar from his mouth and leaned forward, pointing with it at the folder in front of Casey. “Is that the
file?”
“That’s not
the
file,” Jake said, drawing a vicious stare. “Of course we have it.”
“But you want us to have it,” Todora said.
“Graham is a problem,” Jake said.
“He’s our partner,” Napoli said. “He has a fiduciary duty to our money. He shouldn’t be punished for that.”
“Your money’s gone,” Casey said. “Graham stole it and tried to get it back by fixing the outcome of
The Nature Conservancy v. Eastern Oil & Gas
, the court case that shut down the Marcellus Shale drilling. I’m sure you know. I’m sure he asked you to get rid of Judge
Rivers, which, to your credit, you wanted nothing to do with. Everyone inside the gas business knew those leases would be
worthless unless Eastern won their appeal. Graham bought them up at a huge discount. You thought you were getting a twenty
to thirty percent return on investment? All Graham did was give you back some of your own money. The rest he spent on airplanes
and champagne.”
Todora looked at Napoli. “True?”
“It could be,” Napoli said, gumming his lip.
Todora sat back and sighed, flicking his ashes on the floor. “Graham. He’s like a toxic waste. Massimo knows all the landfills,
so I think that’s something we can take care of.”
“That’s not what we want,” Casey said, shaking her head.
Todora glowered. “Money?”
She shook her head. “I have a reputation.”