No Accident (17 page)

Chip Odom walked next to Luke. Petra and Crash came behind. The symphony hall was crowded, and so they stayed close together.

It was slow going. Luke was stopped every few steps with greetings from one acquaintance or another, all of them interchangeable old men in tuxedos. The greetings mostly came with words of encouragement.

“Even for the newspapers, what the
y’re doing to you is outrageous . . .”

“Let me know if
I can help . . .”

“Give ’em hell, Luke
 . . .”

“We’ve pulled our ads from
The Chronicle
, just so you know . . .”

Whenever Luke had the chance he introduced Chip as well, as a friend and an up-and-comer at Rampart Insurance. By the time they reached Luke’s box overlooking the stage, Chip was beaming from the attention. Petra was sulking from a lack of it. Luke and Chip took the two front chairs. Behind them, Crash and Petra headed for the two chairs in back. Crash unchivalrously barged ahead of Petra, but Petra took the initiative anyway, darting past Crash to take the further chair and giving Crash a quick pinch on the ass as she did so. She didn’t bother looking back to acknowledge his glare.

“With all these friends, I’m surprised you use a bodyguard,” Chip said to Luke.

Luke looked puzzled for a moment before he replied. “Oh, you mean Crash
—he’s an old friend. I don’t bring him for protection, though that’s within his repertoire. I bring him because he loves the music. You’ll see.”

The audience was reminded to turn off their mobile phones. Luke twisted around and smiled at Petra, touching her knee to draw her attention from a text message she was tapping out with red-lacquered thumbnails that fell like little hammers.

“Everything all right?” he said.

“I turn ringer off, darlink,” she said without looking up. Luke turned back around.

The orchestra began to play, softly at first, with gentle strains that seemed to Chip to radiate from the walls, enveloping him in sound from all directions. Soon a sound coming from behind him stood out. Chip turned to find Crash, his head tilted back and his eyes closed, moaning softly and swaying with the music. Petra smirked contemptuously at him.

“You weren’t kidding,” Chip said to Luke. “He loves the music.”

Luke chuckled. “He’s full of surprises, and often misunderstood. But more than anyone I know, he understands the importance of what Liberty is doing for the environment.”

Chip smiled weakly and cast another glance back at the enraptured giant.

“He’s also my most loyal friend,” Luke said. “With a divorce . . . well, you learn who your friends are. It makes you appreciate those who stick by you. Popularity’s overrated, don’t you think?”

Chip smiled at Luke in acknowledgment, then stifled a cough.

“You may have started to find this in your own career,” Luke said, “but having responsibility sometimes means pissing people off.”

Chip laughed loudly, and a bejeweled old woman whose eyes flashed with malice leaned out from the box to their right and ostentatiously shushed them. Unchastened, Luke smiled and waved.

“We can keep talking,” Luke said quietly to Chip after the woman’s wrinkled face had withdrawn into the box. “She thinks her seat on the board lets her shush anyone, but she’ll be fast asleep by the end of the first movement. After that, nothing’ll wake her but the tympani.”

Chip tried to smile, but his eyes were watering and he coughed again. Now his face had flushed and he had begun to sweat. He tugged at the collar of his tuxedo shirt. “Ugh, this thing is killing me. You mind?”

Without waiting for an answer, Chip unclipped his bow tie and unfastened the top button on his shirt to release his fleshy neck from its torment. Luke patiently untied his own bow tie and popped his top button open with his thumb and forefinger.

“Reminds me of one of your father’s contemporaries, Jamie Backman,” Luke said. “Always took his tie off as soon as he sat down for a meeting. You ever meet him?”

Chip shook his head.

“Impressive guy,” Luke said, and Chip nodded avidly.

“Thanks again for inviting me,” Chip said. “I love it. I actually played piano when I was a kid.”

Luke laughed amicably. “I have a hard time imagining your father at a piano recital.”

“Yeah, more Mom’s thing than Dad’s. I was pretty good, but I didn’t have the fingers for it.” Chip fanned out his stubby digits in his lap to illustrate.

“I thought you’d enjoy this. There’s something I wanted to talk to you about
—and keep this under your hat—but a spot may be opening up soon on the symphony board.”

“Oh, you mean
—well, I guess our neighbor doesn’t look very healthy.” Chip cocked his head toward the next booth, where the shushing old woman sat.

“Oh, not her,” Luke said. “That shriveled viper will live to a hundred. No, what I mean is my wife sits on the board too, as you probably know, and with the divorce, it looks like she’ll be transitioning off.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Chip said, but he smiled discreetly.

“I’ve floated your name to some of the other members
—hope you don’t mind . . . I think it could be good exposure for you.”

“Thanks for thinking of me. I’d be delighted.”

“You know, you and I have more in common than a love of music,” Luke said. “This accident last Christmas—the sports car, the gardening truck, one of my vans . . .”

“Right,” Chip said, catching on. “The Cummings case. We insured the sports car. Man, the press just won’t let it go.”

“I know, can you believe it? These insurance policies on the employees were just a tax shelter put in place years ago by an old VP of Finance—Wharton M.B.A., by the way, smart as a whip. Anyway, I’d forgotten all about them, and now the press is acting like I personally
murdered
those people.”

“Same thing for us,” Chip said. “We had good grounds for rescission and so denied coverage on the sports car. But all the press cares about is how the widow was left without liability coverage. Dad was furious. Luckily I’ve been able to avoid the fallout.”

Luke gave Chip a little wink. “It’s good you could navigate that. You have a lot of rivals at Rampart?”

“In every cubicle.”

“Tell you what I’d do,” Luke said, finally getting around to his point. “If I were your old man? I’d give the squeaky wheel some oil.”

Chip look confused, then said, “You mean pay off the Cummings widow?”

“Exactly—fighting that poor woman is a no-win situation. You’ve got to understand the public just sees guys like us as faceless corporations, always trying to screw the little guy, even when all we’re trying to do is follow the rules.”

“I don’t know
 . . . settling seems risky.”

Luke shook his head vigorously. “Chip, I’ve been through this sort of thing probably a dozen times. The only risk here is to Rampart’s image
—and you guys are getting killed in the press.”

“True
 . . .”

“Actually, if it was me? I’d go even further. I’d pay off that plaintiffs’ lawyer who’s suing the widow and
—”

“No way I’d pay that guy.”

“Fine, but I’ll tell you what—it’d vaporize your public relations problems. No helpless beleaguered widow, nothing for the reporters to sink their fangs into.”

“Vaporize
 . . . I like the sound of that.” Chip said with a lopsided smile. Then he shook his head emphatically. “But Dad would never go for it. He gets his teeth into something and he doesn’t let go.”

Luke nodded. “Founders are like that. You know, it takes a different mindset to build something from nothing than it does to guide a larger company. That’s part of how Liberty Oil became Liberty Industries. Remember ‘Mack’ MacNeill?”

“Vaguely. Didn’t he have that marble fountain on his estate that spouted oil instead of water?”

Luke smiled in reminiscence of the profligate MacNeill children. “No, that was one of his sons. I don’t think old Mack ever spent a dime on luxury
—he was still driving his old Model T in the Fifties. Classic ‘founder,’ just like your dad. Stubborn as hell, and I mean that in a good way.”

Chip looked skeptically at Luke, who smoothly went on.

“I could never have done what Mack did, build something from scratch like that. But Liberty eventually got to a size where it needed a different skill set, and the second generation didn’t have it.”

The two sat in silence for a few moments while the music swelled toward a climax.

“It’s interesting to think about how wealthy the MacNeills would be now if they’d been able to pass the helm to someone in the family,” Luke said.

“I went to high school with one of the MacNeill grandkids.” Chip shook his head. “Not an impressive guy.”

Luke smiled. They turned their attention to the stage as the orchestra reached its finale in an ecstatic torrent of sound.

Then the music ended, the cheering began, and to Luke and Chip’s right, the ancient lady awoke, jumped to her feet like a startled squirrel and launched immediately into speedy, percussive applause.

Chip nodded in the woman’s direction. “She’s energetic for a woman her age.”

“It’s hard for some people to let go,” Luke said.

After a minute the applause died down, and people began to file out of the concert hall. Luke and Chip moved toward the exit, with Crash and Petra behind them.

“About the Cummings case,” Chip said.

“Yes?” Luke said.

“I’ll have a talk with my Dad, see if I can get him to see reason.”

Luke clapped Chip on the shoulder. “I think that’s the right move.”

*
* *

Working from a tip from a man whose attention was focused by the prospect of bodily harm, Crash found the apartment complex in which Beto’s girlfriend was supposed to live. He parked his silver SUV across the street, where he had a good vantage of the complex and its entrance. The apartment building was fronted by a row of palm trees whose tops had been cut or had fallen off. But the trunks still stood, taller than the rooftop and solid and thick, like a row of columns in classical ruins that once supported a proud structure.

From the privacy of his SUV, Crash watched residents enter and leave the complex. As the day progressed, the thin shadows cast by the palm trees swiveled inch by inch around the trunks and swelled with the hastening afternoon.

People came home from work and found no reason to notice Crash. Crash waited until dark and watched as, one by one, the apartment windows lit up from inside
—all of them but Beto’s. Luke wanted Crash to trace the blackmail back to its root and then destroy the entire rotten weed. Beto couldn’t hide forever.

Rampart restored Mrs. Cummings’ insurance coverage. That’s what the newspaper said, at least. Brad set the newspaper down on his desk and sighed. He had enjoyed reading articles day after day that dragged Luke and Liberty Industries through the mud, but this latest development, he thought, would take a lot of the heat out of the story. Plus, the papers had settled on a narrative that Liberty’s insuring the lives of its employees was a macabre but entirely innocent practice.

Oh, well
, Brad thought,
it was fun while it lasted.
Back to real life, which, Brad admitted, wasn’t so great about now. These days Brad felt like he never left his office. Not that he had much to show for all his work—Sheila still wasn’t getting any money from Luke, and Brad spent his days, nights and weekends doing paperwork for the case.

And what paperwork. Brad looked around his small office with dismay. It was a battlefield strewn with paper, each sheet a casualty in the grinding war of attrition being waged by Alan Matthews and the other lawyers from Boswell & Baker. There were tall piles of paper, rising in unstable stacks from his desk and floor, springing from crumpled manila folders stuffed desperately into open boxes. Brad had documents cataloging his documents, and still he couldn’t keep track of them all.

Luke’s lawyers had served him with interrogatories, questions that Sheila had to respond to in writing. Like everything Luke’s lawyers did, the questions were over the top, asking for disclosure of all Sheila’s assets, every job she had ever had, her college grades, details of every charity board she sat on—requests for a mountain of data that either didn’t matter or that Luke already knew.

This was the kind of legal practice that Brad hated, and the reason he had stayed away from the big firms like Boswell & Baker that his law school classmates had eagerly flocked to
—weeks of parrying back and forth with motions and countermotions, piling on pretexts for creative ways to embarrass and harass, a desk jockey’s take on jiu-jitsu. No dramatic cross-examination, no definitive confrontation, just each side waiting for the other to lose heart. Brad knew that’s just what Alan Matthews wanted. The longer Alan dragged this case out, the more financially hard up Sheila would become, and the more willing she would become to settle with Luke for a lower amount than she deserved.

But Sheila wouldn’t do that.
I won’t let her
, Brad thought. All this passive-aggressive paper pushing just made Brad angry. He wanted another chance to go toe to toe with Alan Matthews in open court, just one more chance. While Brad had spent hundreds of hours arguing before judges and juries, forest-razing cases like this one were the only kind that Alan did.

The office door swung open fast. Brad looked up to see Cindy.

“Another box from the copy shop,” she said. She was frowning. Brad missed the fleeting smiles she used to share with him. She hadn’t signed up for this much stress. She had also stopped wearing the little necklace Brad gave her for Christmas.

The box was a small one made from heavy cardboard that was built for stacking when the lid was on. But the lid wouldn’t fit on this one, because its open top sprouted the long ends of legal-size papers like flowers from a vase. Brad took the box from Cindy, leaning his shoulders back to offset the weight.

“Careful with your back,” she said.

“Got it.” Brad’s words emerged as two shallow grunts.

The new box didn’t have an obvious place to go. The two chairs Brad kept for visitors already hosted boxes of their own. Brad sighed and, reluctantly, set the box down on his own chair. Now he didn’t have anywhere to sit, either. He took that as a sign it was time for lunch.

“Sorry about all this,” he said to Cindy, gesturing helplessly at the mess around him. “Let me make it up to you. Lunch at Chez Henri?”

Cindy’s eyes widened on hearing the name of a pricey French restaurant, but her response was subdued.

“Brad, I couldn’t. Thanks. I mean, after this case settles.” She managed a smile. “Oh, I forgot to tell you, the guy at the copy shop asked about the outstanding balance again.” Cindy offered Brad another sympathetic smile.

“Whoa, don’t tell me you’re packing up.” It was Walt Peters, Brad’s officemate, who had poked his head in Brad’s open door. As usual, he was using his outdoor voice. “You’re not calling it quits, are you?”

“No, Walt, just trying to get some work done,” Brad said.

Walt whistled in mock awe. “It’s like I tell the guys. This is what happens when cases don’t settle soon enough. Anyway, I knew you wouldn’t be packing up and leaving just like that. Not without paying your share of this month’s rent.” Walt winked at Brad, then turned to Cindy. “Ready for lunch?”

The phone rang on Brad’s desk. Brad waved Cindy and Walt out of his office, picked up the phone, and wearily confirmed his identity.

The man on the other end said, “I’m calling from the office of Grant Steele, United States Attorney.”

“And your name is?”

“I’d like to ask you some questions.”

Brad rolled his eyes. He could tell this conversation was going to be more take than give. “What is it you’d like to know?”

“It’s better that we speak in person.”

A second question of mine ignored
, Brad thought. “Tell me what it is you want to talk about.”

“I’d like to have a conversation with you about Luke Hubbard.”

“That’s going to be a short conversation. Luke is on the opposite side of a divorce case that I’m involved in.”

“I know. That’s why I’m calling you.” A pause. “It’s better that we speak in person.”

Mr. “In Person” insisted on coming at seven in the evening, when no one else would be around. He had a thin build and light brown hair and entered the office suite without knocking. The man took off his fedora, gave Brad a look that dared him to make a joke about the fedora, then tossed the fedora on a coat rack from a distance of half a foot.

“I’m Brad.” Brad offered the man a business card. The man took it.

“Jeff Smiley,” the man said. He showed Brad his business card, then took it away again when Brad reached out to take it.
He’s just weird enough to actually wear a fedora
, Brad thought.

Inside Brad’s private office, Smiley spoke without prompting. His voice was reedy and slightly nasal, which made it hard for Brad to take him seriously.

“What I am going to tell you is confidential, and disclosure of what I am going to tell you is a violation of federal law that my office will have no hesitation to prosecute.” Smiley paused. When Brad didn’t object, he continued. “My office is investigating Luke Hubbard and his company for a long list of federal crimes, and we’d like to confirm—”

“You can stop right there,” Brad said. “The discovery materials in the Hubbard divorce are under court seal. I can’t confirm anything that relates to the case.”

“Can’t you?” Smiley arched an eyebrow.

“Enough with the Jedi mind tricks, Mr. Fedora. It’s late and I’ve got work to do. What do you want?”

Smiley was not amused. “I only want details on what you’ve already told the public. Tell me what you know about Luke’s relationship with Petra P and her son. We believe both of them are in this country illegally.”

Oh, brother
. Brad was already in enough trouble over his spur of the moment claim that Luke was the boy’s father. If Brad said any more about that to anyone, it would strengthen Luke’s defamation case against him. “No,” Brad said. “I won’t discuss it.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Smiley said. “Because if that’s your answer, we will have no choice but to open an investigation of you for being an accessory to immigration violations.”

“That’s ridiculous!” Brad stared hard at his visitor, who, for the first time, smiled.

“You know,” Smiley continued, “the whole shebang
—subpoenas, grand jury testimony, we interview all your clients and friends, take your computers in for analysis . . . I hear it’s hard to run a business that way.”

“I can’t help you. Full stop.”

Smiley looked around. “You’ve got a lot of paper around here. I can take care of this mess for you. I’ll come tomorrow with a truck and some beefy FBI agents and cart it all away . . .” He was still smiling.

Brad wasn’t. The little twerp had him beat. The little twerp sat politely while Brad slowly made peace with that fact.

“Look,” Brad said finally, “I’ve got nothing on the mistress or her kid, but how about some details on Luke’s personal finances?”

“That sounds
 . . . interesting. Yes. Yes, that would be helpful.”

Brad went to one of his overflowing boxes of paper and pulled out a manila folder. “Take a look at this.”

Smiley took the folder and looked through it. “
Very
interesting.” Smiley closed the folder and got up as if to leave.

“No,” Brad said, “you read it here.”

Smiley sat down again and opened the folder. When Smiley saw Brad watching him, he glared at Brad. Brad turned away and looked awkwardly toward the ceiling.

Brad was sure he was breaking about half a dozen ethical rules. Jeff Smiley was breaking them, too, but that didn’t make it any better. Brad thought of the library at law school, and the eight foot tall oil paintings of judgmental old Yankees on the wall. Langdell. Story. Holmes.
This isn’t the sort of thing they teach you at Harvard Law
, Brad thought. This is the sort of thing you figure out on your own. What was it Holmes said? “The life of the law has been experience.” Something like that.
Yeah,
well, experience is what happens when no one’s looking
.

*
* *

In an empty conference room perched above the smog, Luke Hubbard and Jim Branford paced in tight, meandering patterns. Guests were expected.

The door swung open and four Arab businessmen in flowing white robes and headdresses entered. They were escorted by Crash, who stood a head taller than any of them. Luke and Jim eagerly approached them.

The initial pleasantries gave way to a morning of insistently friendly conversation into which candor made an occasional awkward intrusion. By a quarter to twelve, everyone was ready for lunch, and they all looked hopefully toward the door when it lurched open.

“My name is Grantham V. Steele, and I have a warrant to search these premises.” Steele was accompanied by four FBI agents in dark gray suits who filed in and spread out around the room.

Steele pointed at the Arabs. “Search them,” he said to the agents.

The agents pulled Luke’s guests to their feet, and they glared at Luke with indignant betrayal. Then the agents frisked Luke and Jim, too. Crash quietly disappeared before anyone had a chance to frisk him. The visiting businessmen relaxed when it became clear that Luke and Jim were the ones being harassed, not them. After a tense minute or two, everyone sat down again.

Luke spoke softly and calmly to his guests, proposing that they move the meeting offsite until the unexpected misunderstanding with the authorities was cleared up.

Steele overheard and flung himself to the table where they sat. “No one is leaving this room until we’ve searched the entire building.”

“This is ridiculous,” Jim said.

Steele cocked his head. “You know what’d be even more ridiculous? You handcuffed to your chair. How about it?”

The door swung open again, this time thrust inward by the skinny backside of an attendant who struggled with a lunch cart. His elongated earlobes were pierced with round wooden plugs that bounced merrily with his clumsy efforts. He finally got the cart through without losing a plate, but flinched when he faced his audience.

“Whoa,” he said. He turned his head to count the men, muttering the numbers to himself, and the jagged edge of a tattoo on his neck ventured skittishly from under his collared shirt. “I was told there would only be six?”

“Everyone heard how good your sandwiches are,” Luke said drily.

“I don’t make them, I just get them from the cafeteria.”

“Why don’t you go get a few more?”

“No,” Steele said. “You people eat your lunch. One of my men will go out and buy sandwiches for my team.” He scanned the faces of the agents, as if willing one of them to volunteer.

“I thought you said no one was leaving this room,” Jim said wryly.

Steele’s face turned red, all at once and all over, like someone fooling with the color on a television set. “No one likes a smart ass,” Steele said finally, “especially one who’s a suspect.” Jim snatched the search warrant from the table and anxiously flipped the pages in search of his name.

Another cart came in, this one pushed by a woman. She looked annoyed when she saw the other cart already there. The two attendants began bickering about which cart was supposed to go where.

“Leave both carts here,” Luke said. To the group he said, “Lunch is here. Apparently we’ll all be here for a while, so we might as well eat.”

The attendants then delivered to all, the invited and the uninvited, plates laden with salad, steamed chicken and some sort of chutney. The seated Arabs eyed the offering skeptically.