“Mm-hmm?” he answered around a mouth full of turkey and swiss cheese.
“I know no one likes the rat squad, but why didn’t anyone at DHS tell you about RAGS?”
Naya mouthed, “rat squad?”
Rat squad. Nick Martino, a narcotics detective she’d met in the corridor at the courthouse and dated for a few weeks, had told Sasha he’d turned down a promotion because it would entail a transfer to internal affairs, also known as the rat squad. Nick had explained he preferred to associate with drug dealers and gang bangers than with the scumbags on the rat squad who investigated their fellow officers.
As it turned out, Nick’s strong opinions had extended beyond his views on his workplace. After a heated discussion about the merits of legalizing marijuana that ended with Nick calling her a retard, Sasha volunteered to handle a series of depositions in Wichita and informed him that she’d be gone for at least a month. That was the last she saw of the detective.
She waited for Connelly to swallow and answer.
“Presumably because no one at DHS knows about it.” He wiped his mouth with a paper napkin and reached for a cookie.
“According to my client, the NTSB has known since yesterday evening. I thought you said the agencies were getting better at sharing information.”
Connelly chewed his cookie, unperturbed. “They are. You must have bad information.”
Naya looked from Sasha to Connelly and back. She folded her napkin in a square and picked up her plate and empty soda can. “I think I’ll check on the trial team.”
She tossed her plate in the trash and the can in the recycling and hurried out of the room before it got any uglier.
“I doubt that,” Sasha said. “Are you lying to me or are your bosses lying to you? Which is it?”
“Maybe your client is lying.”
“Why would anyone at Hemisphere Air lie to me? They can tell me anything, remember? Attorney-client privilege.”
“Which you violated by telling me about RAGS, remember? Maybe they thought if you believed the government already knew, you’d back off. They don’t know you told me.”
They glared at each other. She was pretty sure he hadn’t lied to her. Sasha wasn’t quite the mind reader Naya was, but she’d questioned enough witnesses to have a sense for when she was being lied to. Connelly was far too calm.
“It’s possible. Unlikely, but possible,” she conceded. “But, if they did tell the NTSB and someone is sitting on it, we have a big problem.”
“Yes, we do,” he agreed.
“That means Irwin or Collins has help from inside, right?”
“It would have to be someone pretty high up the food chain, though. What do you know about Collins?”
“Not much. He’s a very successful plaintiff’s attorney. Used to be married to a federal judge. Drives an Aston Martin. He’s a local kid made good. I think he went to Carnegie Mellon for undergrad and Pitt for law school.”
Connelly looked blank. “I don’t know, Sasha. Let’s table it for now. You need to somehow find the modified planes in that mountain,” he said, pointing to the piles of binders and folders that Naya had gotten out file storage, “and I have my own fruitless search to finish.” He tossed his plate in the trash and picked up the laptop.
Sasha knew he was right. Identifying the modified planes was her first priority. The second priority was to find the second guy. Dealing with Collins, Irwin, and their goons was a distant third at this point.
She opened a closing binder. She and Naya had agreed the best course was to review all the deal documents they had on hand for Hemisphere Air. It was the likeliest place to find something out of place.
Whenever a company sold or bought another company or expensive assets (like airplanes), merged, or entered into any sizeable investment arrangement (stock purchase or offering, venture capital deal, private placement, or commercial loan), the zombie hordes otherwise known as junior corporate associates had the thankless task of reviewing all the underlying documents and drafting a diligence memo. It was a tedious, soul-crushing, and vital job.
Based on the due diligence review and resulting memo, the client would decide whether to go forward with a transaction, how much to pay, and which assets or liabilities to include or exclude.
From Sasha’s vantage point, a due diligence review was just about the only task that made a privilege review look pleasant. She’d also heard from friends that preparing a Hart-Scott-Rodino filing to get antitrust clearance was pretty much hell on earth. But, for her money, nothing could be worse than a diligence review.
In a due diligence review, if the associate did her job properly, there was no recognition, no credit, no bonus. If she missed the smallest detail, the ramifications could be huge. Lawsuits, firings, delisting from the stock exchange. As far as Sasha was concerned, it explained why corporate associates tended to be anal, short-tempered, and prone to stomach ulcers.
The
only
time she had broken her no lawyers dating rule had been to date a corporate associate. It went against her better judgment, but her law school roommate had vouched for the guy. When she called it quits, Joseph had presented her with an itemized schedule of expenses he’d incurred in the course of their three dates and a suggested formula to divvy up the costs based on their respective incomes, who had suggested each date activity, and who he determined had enjoyed it more. Her old roommate had laughed so hard when Sasha showed her the schedule that she’d snorted beer through her nose. She picked up the tab that night, too.
Sasha was certain if evidence existed to show which planes had been modified, some dead-eyed corporate associate had found it.
Chapter 26
The federal courthouse
Anton was in bad shape. Gregor wasn’t feeling too hot himself, but he was worried about his younger partner.
Once he was able, Gregor had crawled over and rested against the cool, pink marble wall. He figured he’d catch his breath and wait for Anton to regain consciousness.
The first part was proving to be a problem because his fall had fractured a couple of his ribs. Every time he took a breath, fire spread across his torso.
The second part was a problem because Anton wasn’t coming around.
Gregor made his way over to Anton, rolled him onto his back, and winced. From the stabbing pain and from looking at Anton’s face. The little bitch had really done a number on him. In fact, he didn’t look much better than that kid they’d killed by mistake the night before.
He leaned in and listened. Anton was breathing.
Now what? Gregor tried to think. The pounding in his head made it hard.
He stared at Anton.
In a dim corner of his brain, he thought he remembered that a shattered cheekbone could kill a guy if pieces of bone got driven into the brain. Was that true? Gregor sighed. If it was true, it wasn’t like he could do anything about it.
He needed to get Anton out of here before someone had a nicotine fit and snuck into the stairwell for a cigarette.
He pulled Anton up and draped his body over his left arm, ignoring the screaming heat in his ribs. He half dragged, half carried his partner down the stairs.
It was slow going. He had to stop on the third floor landing to rest. He leaned Anton against the wall, braced his palms on his knees, and took some shallow breaths, riding the wave of pain in his ribs. Then he slung Anton over his shoulder and resumed his creeping descent.
When they hit the second floor landing, Anton started to moan.
“I got you, Anton.”
Gregor pushed on. He stopped at the door leading out to the lobby to catch his breath again. Panting and sucking in air.
Anton was getting louder.
“Listen, we’re almost out. Be cool.”
Gregor squared his shoulders as best he could and pushed the door open. He led Anton to the wall across from the security station and propped him up, trying to turn his face away from the desk.
He hurried over to the guards. “Hi, can I get these two cell phones back now, please?” He handed the older guy the ticket stub, very glad he’d checked both phones together.
The guy took the stub. He ambled over to the wooden box behind him and reached into one of the slots. Pulled out the phones. Took his time checking the numbers on the two halves of the claim ticket.
Gregor jiggled his leg.
The old guy peered up at him as he handed over the phones. “You and your buddy okay, sir?” His head tilted toward Anton slumped against the wall.
“We’re fine. Fine. My friend is diabetic. He went into insulin shock and took a tumble down the stairs. Lucky me, I broke his fall.” Gregor forced a chuckle.
The guard didn’t look convinced, but he didn’t look like he cared too much either way.
“Okay, well you take care of your friend.”
“Yes sir, I will.”
Gregor collected Anton before he fell over, then he shouldered his way out the courthouse door.
Chapter 27
The offices of Prescott & Talbott
Naya found it.
They’d been working for several hours with no breaks and none of the empty chatter that usually accompanied a document review. Connelly had struck out with his database queries. He’d fielded a call from the valet, but it was nothing exciting: the guy was going to leave for the day; the car was still there; and he’d put an overnight ticket under the windshield wiper so it wouldn’t be towed.
He agreed to pay another fifty dollars for the same arrangement if the car was still there in the morning then hung up with the valet.
“It’s getting close to five. Why don’t we work until seven and then get some dinner. Maybe go out and grab something quick?”
He’d been fidgeting for the last hour or so; now, he paced around the small room in a loop. Sasha imagined he didn’t spend much time trapped behind a desk. She was stiff from her encounter on the stairwell and could use a brisk walk and some air.
She was about to agree, when Naya slapped a binder down in front of her.
“Look at this.”
Naya had the closing files from an asset purchase agreement from 2007. Hemisphere Air had sold off eight older 747s from its fleet to Blue Horizons, one of the budget carriers. The binder was open to a draft of the agreement, which, if Sasha understood the firm’s document retention policy, should have been shredded, not hole-punched, placed in a tabbed, three-ring binder, and sent to storage.
A deal, any deal, goes through multiple negotiated revisions. She knew from sharing a printer with a corporate partner that the lawyers for the parties exchanged their proposed edits as redlines. Each side’s lawyer would make changes to the file, save the changes, and generate a redline version that showed the additions as underlined bold text and the deletions as text with a line struck through it. Along with the substantive changes, formatting changes would show up, as well as any comments or questions posed by the reviewer. The result was almost always unreadable.
Trial attorneys engaged in a similar process to negotiate confidentiality agreements, stipulations, and settlement agreements. But their work product usually involved a much lighter edit. Adversaries in a courtroom battle were more likely to look at a wall of text indicating lots of changes to their proposed terms and to tell one another to go pound salt than were partners in a financial transaction.
Sasha skimmed the draft and immediately got lost in all the strikeouts and inserts.