The Missing Piece (21 page)

Linda scowled, then, after Mark sank back into the clerk's box, plucked another saltine from the sleeve. She was still nibbling when the courtroom doors opened and Robert Pinter slumped in dragging his litigation bag behind him.

In the gallery, Foxx stirred into action. He slid smoothly toward the doors, checked the corridor, then took up a position just inside the well. Pinter, meanwhile, parked his cart and yanked back his chair. Rather than sit, he planted his hands on the table and leaned heavily forward. He looked haggard and slack, his suit jacket wrinkled, his belly straining against his belt buckle.

“I apologize to the court and to fellow counsel,” he said. “Something came up.”

“An emergency, we understand,” said Linda. “Did you attend to it?”

“Not quite,” said Pinter. “I don't know how to say it, so I'll just say it.” He pushed up off the table. “My witness, Grotzky, is dead.”

The words sank through the silent courtroom, and Linda felt herself sinking with them. She started to speak, then realized she would not be able to form a coherent sentence. Finally, as Pinter lowered his hands back onto the table, she pulled up over the front rail and told the court reporter she wanted everything taken down on the record.

“All right, Mr. Pinter,” she said. “Tell us what happened.”

“I was to have breakfast with him this morning,” said Pinter, “but he did not answer the door. I became concerned, so I asked the concierge to let me in. Grotzky was on the kitchen floor, still dressed in the same clothes as when I saw him last evening. The police came. They are treating it as suspicious.”

“Suspicious as in murder?” said Linda.

“That's the only type of suspicion I know,” said Pinter. “And it wouldn't be the first time someone with direct knowledge of the treasure's discovery was murdered.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” said Billy Cokeley, jumping to his feet.

“You know exactly what that's supposed to mean,” said Pinter. He did not move or raise his voice, as if too weary to exert himself.

“Counselors,” said Linda. “Whether the death was a murder, or an accident, or from natural causes has no bearing on the trial right now, other than what effect the unavailability of the witness has on the admission of the letter Hungary seeks to present as evidence.”

“I will brief you on that,” said Pinter.

“Do,” said Linda. “I expect additional briefs from all of you addressing this new issue. Nothing fancy. They can be letter briefs, but they need to be delivered to chambers by nine thirty tomorrow.”

The lawyers all nodded.

“Fine,” said Linda. “Give me five minutes, and we'll start.”

Alone in the robing room, Linda phoned Bernadette.

“Big doings,” she said. “Hungary's new witness. Grotzky. The guy who had that letter all these years. He's dead.”

“Seriously?” said Bernadette. “You think it's related?”

“The cops think it's suspicious. If it is, I'd lay money it's related.”

“That simplifies my research. No Grotzky, no way the letter gets into evidence.”

“Not so fast,” said Linda. “I want that letter in evidence.”

“But how?”

“I don't know right now. I just asked for additional briefs.”

“You have a conference? I didn't know you had a conference today.”

“Arthur Braman asked for it. I don't know why, and he won't say just yet. You're busy with more important things right now, so I asked Mark to act as a second set of eyes and ears. He can handle that.”

“When are the new briefs due?”

“First thing tomorrow.”

“But you promised your ruling tomorrow.”

“I'll move it to Friday,” said Linda. “If we get jammed, there's always Monday.”

She hung up. A moment later, Foxx opened the door. He had the most striking blue eyes, and right now those eyes stared so intently that Linda looked away. When she glanced back, the stare was gone, and she wondered whether the effect had been the light, or her indigestion, or her nerves.

“Mr. Braman wants to see you alone,” he said.

“Very well,” said Linda. “Send him in. Mark, too.”

Foxx held the door open as Braman and then Mark filed in.

“Please have a chair, Mr. Braman,” said Linda.

Braman sat directly across the desk from Linda, while Mark dragged a chair to the right and slightly behind the lawyer. Different angle, different view, different take, thought Linda. Maybe Mark wasn't so dumb.

With everyone settled, Foxx gave Linda an ironically courtly bow and receded into the courtroom. As soon as the door closed, Braman exhaled wearily.

“I have a serious problem,” he said. “My client wants out. He does not want a trial. He wants to recoup his investment and go home.”

“That certainly is a major change in your client's position,” said Linda.

“Well, just among us.” Braman turned slightly to include Mark. “My client's personal funds went only to purchase the first two of the fourteen pieces. The other twelve purchases were bankrolled by a consortium of investors.”

“I sense air quotes, Mr. Braman.”

“You sense correctly, Your Honor.” A smile flickered on Braman's face. “These investors are not the type of people Lord Leinster's father would have approved of. They have been problematic right from the start, but my client has been able to, if not control them, at least mollify them. The theft of the urn changed the landscape. Basically, my client has been in hiding ever since.”

“From his investors?”

“They are not happy that their investment has been tied up in court. They even think that my client may have arranged for the theft as a means of diminishing their return and increasing his.”

“I don't follow,” said Linda. “Maybe I'm dense.”

“You're not dense, Your Honor. The idea makes no sense to me, but I can't control what people think.” Braman took a deep breath as if shifting gears. “Anyway, Leinster was attacked last weekend.”

“Physically?” said Linda.

Braman nodded. “In the middle of nowhere. The back of beyond, as the Irish call it. He's taken up painting. Believe it or not, he's actually quite good. He was painting when two people posing as tourists approached him. They broke his ankles.”

“Ankles?” Linda said, emphasizing the plural. “How?”

“It is too horrific for me to repeat,” said Braman.

Linda glanced at Mark. This was not the type of talk anyone expected to hear in the robing room, or coming from the genteel Arthur Braman.

“So, what do you propose?” said Linda.

“As I said, my client wants out. He wants to recoup his investors' stakes, pay me, and go off somewhere by himself and continue painting without constantly looking over his shoulder.”

“This would cost, what?”

“Fifteen million,” said Braman. “He relinquishes all title and claim to the treasure, and Hungary and Croatia can continue to litigate.”

“So, we are not talking a global settlement.”

“No. This is a divestment.”

Linda ran the ramifications of the offer through her head.

“All right,” she said. “Let me talk to them.”

Braman left the robing room.

“What do you think?” Linda asked Mark.

“Interesting,” he said.

“I think it's crazy, but,” she said, “sometimes crazy works.”

The door opened, and Cokeley and Pinter entered and sat down.

“As it turns out, Mr. Braman wants to talk settlement,” said Linda. “Lord Leinster offers to divest himself of all title and claims to the treasure for a price that your two clients would share and the trial would continue between the two of you.”

Cokeley looked at Pinter, who stared down at his own lap.

“Anybody?” said Linda.

“What price is Lord Leinster asking?” said Cokeley.

“In the fifteen- to twenty-million-dollar range,” said Linda.

Cokeley guffawed. Pinter kept staring down.

“Split between us?” said Cokeley.

“Precisely,” said Linda. “The treasure as an aggregate was worth, what? Seventy?”

“That was before the heist,” said Cokeley.

“So, what's the value now? Sixty? Fifty-five?”

“Depends on who you speak to,” said Cokeley.

“But no matter who you speak to, the value of the treasure is significantly higher than the cost to each of you of letting Leinster out of the case.”

Cokeley grunted. Pinter shrugged. Linda looked at Mark, who arched his eyebrows.

“Either of you want to speak to me privately?”

“I do,” Pinter said quietly.

Cokeley slapped his knees, then stood up and left the robing room.

“Look, Judge,” said Pinter, “this might be a creative way to handle this case, but it's just not going to fly. I have my evidence, Cokeley has his. If my evidence is good enough to prevail over his, it's good enough to prevail over Leinster's. Same if Cokeley prevails over me. So why would either of us pay to get Leinster out of the case?”

 

CHAPTER 24

McQueen covered two rooms in the subbasement before the damp air started to clog his lungs. One room had three shelves with more boxes of steno notes and the other was the old presidential bunker. He approached the steno notes as he had the previous day, starting out by diligently removing enough paper bricks to feel for the urn and then gradually devolving into lifting and dropping the file boxes to gauge their weight. The bunker was an easier and more interesting search. There were no shelves, no boxes, just the old wooden desks, the broken radios, and the skeletal remains of the cots. It would have taken him all of about five minutes to open and close all the drawers. But then he began finding stuff. First came the old bottles of Anacin and Alka-Seltzer and Tums. Real bottles made of glass, not crappy plastic. Then came the old issues of the
Daily News
, faded and moldy but still readable. He spread one from December 1964 on the top of the desk. He had forgotten how bad the Giants were in the mid-sixties. But there it was in black and white, the final NFL standings with the Giants in the cellar of the Eastern Conference at 2-10-2.

He found a few issues of
Life
magazine, and would have pored over the pictures if he hadn't started to wheeze. He went back to the courtyard, then up the circular stairs to the basement level, then out to a stairwell. As he opened the door, he heard a voice speaking in the harsh, guttural sounds of a foreign language. He had studied two years of Spanish, now long dormant in his brain. He could recognize French and knew a smattering of German from a summer of hanging out in some bars in Yorkville. This was nothing he'd ever heard before.

A man stood on the landing. He leaned heavily into the corner, his left arm extended to brace himself against the wall. For a moment, McQueen thought the man was sick and he instinctively thumbed the intercom attached to his shoulder. Then he recognized the man was Pinter. He wasn't sick; he had someone—a much smaller person—pinned to the wall.

Pinter went silent until McQueen started up the stairs. He resumed talking, lower now, but in that same guttural language. As McQueen turned onto the next flight, he could see down into the corner. The man Pinter had pinned to the wall was Ivan.

*   *   *

Ivan was at the bottom of the stairwell, lining a trash can with a fresh plastic bag, when he heard a voice speak the name he hadn't heard in years.

“Istvan.”

He turned to see Pinter descending the stairs, his cart clopping behind him, each footfall jolting his entire body. At bottom, Pinter hip-checked the trash can out of the way and plowed toward Ivan, who avoided a collision by ducking into the corner.

“You must help me,” Pinter said in Hungarian. His hand shot over Ivan's head and thudded against the wall.

“I cannot help you.”

“You owe me.”

“I owe you nothing.” Ivan tried to worm his way out of the corner, but Pinter slammed his other hand against the wall and bent his elbows to pin Ivan's head between them.

“Grotzky is dead.”

“Who is Grotzky?”

“He was sitting with me outside the courtroom yesterday morning. I saw from the way you stared that you recognized him. Your neighbor from the old country. Your neighbor, and Karolina Szabo's neighbor.”

Ivan went still, and Pinter relaxed his elbows.

“I brought Grotzky in to testify at the trial. He had a letter that Karolina Szabo wrote the day she was murdered. It is an important letter. Now that he is gone, I need another witness to swear to seeing her write it. You were her neighbor, too.”

“I was only a boy,” said Ivan.

“But old enough to remember.”

“I saw no letter. I will not lie.”

“You will not lie, huh?” said Pinter. “All of a sudden, you are an honest man? Let's see how you feel when Teresita crawls out of the woodwork, looking for cash. I'm sure she won't lie, either.”

“I haven't seen her in years.”

“Doesn't mean she's not waiting for the right moment to come back into your life.”

Ivan went perfectly still.

“I thought so,” said Pinter. “Luis will be in touch. He'll prep you and show you a copy of the letter to refresh your recollection. I don't expect you to testify till next week at the earliest. You work in the building, so it's not like you'll need a whole lot of time off. What could be more convenient than that?”

Pinter slapped Ivan lightly on each cheek. Then he grabbed his cart and trudged up the stairs, leaving Ivan slumped against the wall.

*   *   *

Arthur Braman was barely back at his office before the world, or at least the world as defined by the Roman silver trial, crashed around him. Leinster had phoned again in his absence, a call that his secretary described as “demanding and abusive.” The settlement conference had been a disaster. Sure, Pinter and Cokeley each dutifully promised to convey Leinster's offer to their respective clients and recommend that they consider it carefully. But Braman knew bullshit when he heard it; if he were in their shoes, he wouldn't recommend that offer, either. Next up were the pretrial rulings, which were certain to go against him. The single bright spot was the untimely death of Pinter's witness, but even that was negligible because weakening Hungary's case only strengthened Croatia's.