He looked toward Faith as if to say he wasn’t ready for this conversation, then back at Courtney. “I don’t think so, at least not intentionally.”
She shook her head. “You’re not telling me everything. I need to know. It’s my life, too.”
Gage tried to fend her off, not with a lie, but with the truth. “I don’t know the whole story yet.”
“Tell me what you do know.”
“I need to look into a few more things.”
Courtney’s eyes were still fixed on him. “Please.”
He felt his resistance break under the recognition that if he was in her place, he would’ve demanded the truth, too. Without it there’d be no firm ground on which to stand in the face of the gathering storm.
“Let’s sit down.”
He led them to a corner of the waiting room, where they huddled in chairs under an indoor palm. Gage outlined what he’d learned, and how the case was closing in around Burch. By the end Courtney was no longer looking at him, her head hung, eyes focused on her interwoven fingers resting on her lap. Faith reached her arm around Courtney’s shoulders.
“I think Peterson is aiming at a conspiracy case based on the substantive offenses of wire fraud, securities fraud, and money laundering. That way he can go after Jack for crimes committed by the others, even if he didn’t know exactly what they did. Peterson just needs to show what the others did was foreseeable.”
Courtney looked up. “But if he wasn’t part of it, how can anything they did be foreseeable?”
“That’s the burden of proof in conspiracy cases.”
“But what’s that based on?” Courtney’s face bore the bewilderment of a person lost in a maze of underground tunnels. “I mean, how do they prove-”
“Words. Conspiracies are words. And proof in conspiracy cases is how the words are repeated.”
“But that’s hearsay. I thought-”
“Conspiracies are the exception to the hearsay rule.”
Courtney’s shoulders slumped. “So it’s whatever Matson says.”
Gage nodded. “And to be of value to the government, Matson needs to say that Jack was a coconspirator. That’s what the government wants to hear. In fact, that’s all they’ll accept. Peterson has spent a lot of time and a lot of the government’s money on this case and it all hinges on Matson.”
Courtney turned fully toward Gage. “But you still haven’t answered my question.”
Gage searched his mind for a way to begin that wouldn’t end by crushing her determination to fight. He decided to start at a distance.
“Part of what Jack does is tax law. In fact, that has a lot to do with how Jack structured SatTek’s offshore companies. He set them up so that the profits from sales made outside of the U.S. wouldn’t be taxed here.”
“But he didn’t know they were all fake.”
Gage nodded and took her hand. “Of course he didn’t.”
“But-”
Gage held up his palm. “Let me finish.”
She nodded.
“Everybody knows what a burglary is. It’s just a matter of overlaying the law onto the facts. But tax law is different, it’s made by people testing limits. And that’s because there is no way the U.S. Congress or the Russian Duma or the Hong Kong Executive Council can anticipate all the inventive ways people do business.
“The problem is that Jack sometimes works the way he skis. Naively. Overconfidently. Always on the edge. And his clients are always trying to push him over, sometimes just by not telling him exactly what they’re up to. Then, if the client gets in trouble, he says, ‘My lawyer told me it was all right.’ It’s cowardly, but that’s what they do.”
“But this is a lot more serious than a tax case.”
“Yes.”
“How serious?”
Gage shrugged. “I don’t know for sure.”
“Graham.” Her eyes searched his face.
“I haven’t figured it out. The sentencing guidelines are about a thousand pages long. Then you need to do a lot of calculating. Points are added for some things, deducted from other things. And you have to figure in the amount of the loss. So it’s very complicated.”
“Graham, I need to know.”
“Courtney-”
“Please.”
Gage looked up at Faith. She nodded. Courtney needed an answer.
“If Peterson got the indictment he wants and Jack got convicted of everything, it would be kind of long…”
“How long is long?”
“Maybe about…” Gage hesitated, hating to say the words that would stab at Courtney’s heart. “Twenty years.”
Faith drew her close as Courtney’s eyes filled with tears.
“But I know he didn’t do it,” Courtney said, voice rising. “Jack doesn’t work for money. It’s all just play for him. You know that, Graham, don’t you?”
“I know that. So does everybody who knows Jack. But our first chance to prove it to everyone else may not be until the trial.”
Courtney lowered her head, then wiped her eyes with a tissue. Gage and Faith sat silently, not diminishing her by backtracking, and pretending the truth was otherwise.
After a minute, Courtney looked up. She took Gage and Faith’s hands. “Thank you.”
“This case has turned into a steamroller,” Gage said to Faith as they drove away an hour later. “Between Washington wanting a whipping boy for corporate crime and the class action lawyers looking to make a killing, I don’t think there’s a way to stop it.”
“What do you know about Simpson amp; Braunegg?” Faith asked.
“That they’re disgusting. It’s one of those firms that deceives itself into thinking it’s on the side of truth and justice, when it’s really just after the money-sometimes ruthlessly. It almost makes you respect gangsters like Matson’s pal Gravilov. At least they don’t pretend to be serving the public good.” Gage exhaled and shook his head as he stared at the car taillights in front of them. “Simpson amp; Braunegg will sue Jack whether they believe he was in the wrong or not. He has deep pockets and his firm has deep pockets.”
“Why didn’t they just name him now?”
“Because they don’t want a big fight over his files. They want him to believe that he’s just going to be a witness. They’re hoping he’ll give them everything if he thinks it’ll keep them from naming him.”
“Jack may be weak at the moment, but he’s not stupid.”
“And you know what else?” Gage wasn’t looking for an answer. “I think Peterson fed them the case.”
Faith’s head swung toward him. “But isn’t that un-ethical? U.S. Attorneys aren’t supposed to do that, are they?”
“No, they’re not. But we won’t be able to prove it and, even if we did, nobody’ll care. Not with Simpson amp; Braunegg on the courthouse steps showing off a bunch of retirees who lost everything.”
“Can you do anything?”
“I don’t know.” Gage felt the pressure of two clocks ticking. The criminal case and the civil suit, each counting down toward explosions that would rip Jack and Courtney’s lives apart. “There’s one thing I do know. I need to buy some time.”
CHAPTER 43
D errell Williams, an ex-FBI special agent who’d worked with Gage for almost a decade, intercepted him as he walked from his car toward the front steps of his building.
“Hey, Chief. I had a meeting over at the U.S. Attorney’s Office on your antitrust case. The good news is that they were so thrilled to have the thing handed to them in a package that they did a little more tongue wagging than they should’ve.”
“And the bad news?” Gage asked, eyes fixed on Williams.
“You better watch your back. The word is that Peterson is pretending to be playing the SatTek case like it’s a game of Sunday touch football, but inside his four walls he’s been screaming that you’re screwing up his indictment and that he’s going to hammer you.”
Gage nodded. “Thanks for the heads-up.”
Williams smiled. “That’s what you always say, and then you do whatever you were going to do anyway.” His smile faded. “But I’m not sure that’s a safe way to go this time. My old partner was at the meeting. On the way out, he whispered that Peterson asked him whether there’s a connection between you and a Hong Kong company called TD Limited. He thought it was chickenshit. But it sounds to me like Peterson is following your tracks, trying to get you into his crosshairs.”