When The Devil Whistles (27 page)

Her throat seemed swollen shut and her tongue felt like a giant sausage in her mouth. She stared at his shoes. Expensive-looking Cordovan leather lace-ups. Perfectly shined, of course.

“Well? Why did you do it?”

She felt the tears coming, but pushed them back. She wasn’t going to cry her way to forgiveness, and she didn’t want him to think she was trying to. “I’m sorry, Connor,” she said to his shoes. “I’m so, so, so sorry. I just… I didn’t mean to hurt you or the firm or any of that.” She shook her head. “It’s just that they were blackmailing me. So I… I did something stupid and wrong and I’m really, really sorry.”

“Who was blackmailing you?”

What could it hurt to tell him the truth now? Every bridge she had ever crossed with him now lay smoldering behind her. “It was Blue Sea—the place I worked before I went to Deep Seven. They told me that if I didn’t go to work at Deep Seven and find fraud there, they’d tell everyone I was behind Devil to Pay and—” Might as well let it all out. “Well, you know Erik smoked meth, right? He also sold some. One night while we were on the road with his band, he sold to a teenager.” Her throat constricted again as she remembered Jason Tompkins’s face smiling at her from his yearbook picture.

“He died,” she forced out. “I broke up with Erik after I found out about that, but Blue Sea wouldn’t leave me alone. They said if I didn’t find a way to sue Deep Seven for government fraud, they’d tell the cops and I’d go to jail. I didn’t want to go to jail, so I—” She shrugged. “You know the rest.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?” It was an accusation more than a question. “I could have helped you!”

Sudden anger burned in her chest and she glared at him. “Helped me what? Go to jail for the rest of my life?”

Righteous indignation turned to confusion in his eyes. “What are you talking about?”

“Don’t you remember? ‘If you commit a crime, you should pay the price. Every. Single. Time. No excuses, no compromises.’ You expect me to trust the man who said that? To come to him when I’m in trouble?”

Something cracked in his face, but then it hardened again. “Maybe you didn’t trust me, but I trusted you. My mistake.”

His expression made her feel like an insect. The kind you squash with an old newspaper because you don’t want it on your shoe. She couldn’t bear that look. It was worse than anything he could have said.

“I didn’t have any choice!” she insisted.

He shook his head in disgust. “You always have choices, Allie. What you really mean is that the right choice was hard, so you want to pretend it didn’t exist. Well, it did and you blew it. You blew everything. And now I’m going to have to go back and pay the price.”

He turned and walked toward the door.

The tears came now, flooding down her face as great gasping sobs choked her. She buried her face in her hands and wished she could die, that she’d never lived.

The door opened and shut, and she was alone with her agony.

44

C
ONNOR SAT IN A WINDOW SEAT IN THE FIRST CLASS SECTION OF A
U.S. Airways Airbus A319, watching Lynden Pindling International Airport slip away beneath him. For a moment they were over the sun-drenched suburbs of Nassau. The beach flashed past and then the light blue coastal waters, dotted with pleasure boats. Then the blue darkened as the water deepened, and a featureless navy carpet stretched to the horizon.

He turned away from the window as the flight attendant walked by. He stopped her and asked for a glass of cabernet sauvignon. She returned with it a moment later, smiling the entire time.

He took a sip. Cheap stuff and too warm, but he wasn’t in a discriminating mood. He drained the glass in three large swallows and ordered another. The smiling attendant refilled his glass and he downed that as well.

He hadn’t eaten anything since a croissant at breakfast, and he felt the wine in a hot pool in his stomach. The alcohol reached his brain after a few minutes. He started on a third glass and drank it more slowly.

He usually didn’t drink when he was flying. No point in pouring mediocre booze down his throat just to make the trip go faster. He could do that by working or watching a movie. But he needed a drink today. He needed to wash away the taste of what he had said to Allie.

She deserved it, of course. And more. What she had done to him and the firm was bad enough, but that was nothing compared to what she told him today. He could hardly believe it. Looking the other way when her boyfriend sold drugs was bad, but looking the other way when he sold to
children
? And then not even turning him in when one of those children died? He shook his head and made a mental note to have Julian look into it. That kid deserved justice. As for Allie—well, whatever happened to her, she had it coming. And to think she’d tried to pin some of the blame on him, claiming she couldn’t trust him to help her. That was as low as it got.

And yet…

He remembered his last image of her, glimpsed as he looked back before walking out the door. Her scuba tank was still ridiculously strapped to her back. Seawater dripped from her lank wet hair, forming little puddles around her feet on the tile floor. Her head was bowed, her face in her hands, her bare shoulders shaking.

He took another sip of his wine. She had made her choices, and those choices had painful consequences. It was hard for him to see her like that, but she had brought it on herself.

He thought back over their conversation again. Had he really said that thing about everyone who commits any crime going to jail every single time? It sounded a little like him. It also sounded a little like a fascist Pharisee, if there was such a thing. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

Best not to dwell on it. He would keep Allie in his prayers, of course, but otherwise do what he could to put her out of his mind.

It was time to look to the future, to think of the road ahead. The first step on that road was obvious: formally withdraw from representing Devil to Pay. He already had a draft motion ready to file. It recited the applicable ethics rules prohibiting lawyers from representing clients who bring lawsuits “without probable cause and for the purpose of harassing or maliciously injuring any person.” It stated in general terms that he had just discovered that his client was doing exactly that. The court probably wouldn’t insist on details, so Connor hadn’t included them.

The whole humiliating story would come out soon enough, though. He’d get deposed in Deep Seven’s lawsuit against the firm, and then he’d have to testify at trial if the case got that far. Tom Concannon and ExComm had already decided what their defense would be: he and the firm were innocent because they had acted reasonably and were pursuing what they thought was a legitimate lawsuit. “Improper motive,” an essential element of a lawsuit for abuse of process, simply didn’t exist. If they could prove that Connor had thought Deep Seven really had violated the California False Claims Act, that would be a complete defense. So Connor would have to testify about how he had worked closely with Allie for years, how he had come to trust her, how she had lied to him this time, and how he had believed her.

It would probably work. The firm would beat Deep Seven’s lawsuit. Connor’s career would survive. Sure, he’d take some punches along the way. Deep Seven would ask insinuating questions about his relationship with his pretty client and he’d have to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. The truth wasn’t that bad: one evening together, one kiss, their corny tradition of telephonic victory dinners, a dozen or so meetings, and hundreds of basically professional e-mails and calls. Talking about it would be awkward, and the legal newspapers might even take an interest. But then it would be over. He’d be embarrassed, but undamaged—or at least that’s how he hoped it would turn out.

He took another sip from his glass and pushed his thoughts beyond the unpleasant aftermath of his entanglement with Allie. Tom had a big case going to trial next spring, and he had talked about possibly bringing on Connor as colead. That would be fun. The two of them hadn’t handled a case together since Connor was a junior associate, and he relished the idea of working with his mentor as an equal. It sounded like a fun case too—interesting legal issues, high stakes, a client who cared more about good work than low bills, and most important, he would get to wear the white hat. No everyone-is-entitled-to-a-defense rationalizations.

Even if that didn’t work out, there would be other options, other ways to cleanse his mental palate. He might even join Max at DOJ. He imagined what it would be like to work next door to Max and then found himself wondering how thick the office walls in the State building are. He also remembered Max complaining because he couldn’t get reimbursed for an $89 room at a Holiday Inn Express, which the accounting office thought was too expensive. Connor had difficulty picturing himself lasting long in a world where a night in a Holiday Inn Express was a forbidden luxury.

Okay, maybe the California Department of Justice wouldn’t be such a good fit. The U.S. Attorney’s Office might be fun. Or maybe the SEC. Even if they all had Dilbertesque accounting trolls, they had one big advantage over private practice: no clients. He could choose his own cases, do the investigations himself, and only sue the defendants who deserved suing. He’d only have to trust himself.

He held his wine glass in the shaft of fading sunlight that slanted in through his window. Sullen reds glinted in its depths like coals of a dying fire. He drained his glass and closed his eyes.

45

W
AKE UP
!”
A VOICE HISSED IN
M
ITCH
’
S EAR
. S
OMEONE SHOOK HIS SHOUL
der. “You must wake up!”

He opened his eyes and saw a blurry face beside him. It was very dark in the bunkroom, and he couldn’t make out the features. He pushed himself up on one elbow, his mind not yet functioning. “Wha’s goin’ on?” he asked in a loud slur.

A hand covered his mouth. He struck out clumsily, but another hand soon pinned his wrist. He thrashed in a vain attempt to get free.

“Wake up!” the voice repeated in an urgent whisper. “You must get up now.”

He heard movement in the bunk below him, followed by Ed’s gravelly whisper. “I’m up. What are you talking about, Cho?”

Mitch stopped struggling and Cho released him.

“You must go to the radio room right now,” Cho said in the darkness. “There will be one man there, but you can surprise him. Lock the door and call your navy. I talk to men outside so they don’t kill you.”

“Hold on a sec,” said Ed. “What’s going on? What are you talking about?”

“There is no time! All are your enemies. They come for you soon. Go, do your plan now!”

A quick movement in the darkness and Cho was gone. The door clicked shut behind him.

Now wide awake, Mitch pulled himself out of bed and dropped to the floor. He had no idea what to make of what just happened. Ed was sitting on his bunk, pulling on pants.

Mitch took his clothes off a hook in the wall and followed Ed’s example. “Are we gonna do what he said?” he asked as he pulled a sweatshirt over his head.

“Still sortin’ that out.” Ed grunted as he bent over to tie his shoes. “I don’t trust him, but what could he be up to? And we’ve gotta do somethin’—he knew what we said to Jenkins, which is very bad news.” He stood up and took a deep breath. “Okay, let’s go.”

They opened the bunkroom door and slipped out into the empty hallway. It was narrow, dark, and full of places where someone could be hiding. Plus, what if there were other bugs or cameras around—like the one that must have captured their conversation with Jenkins? Mitch hoped that Cho had warned the first mate too.

“Let’s go out on deck,” Mitch whispered.

Ed nodded and opened an exterior door. A gust of chill air and rain blew in. Mitch shivered, but at least they would almost certainly have the deck to themselves.