“So what did you do?”
“What could I do? I paid.”
“How much?”
“Chet said he would take a hundred grand to start, and then the same amount each month or so. And then he said the councilman would like a large part of it in cash so he could pay it out to the neighborhood organizers that were instrumental in running the programs.”
“How did you pay?”
“About once a month the councilman would call and give me an update on the project, how the bills were progressing through City Council. And then he would set up a meeting for me with Concannon. I would meet Concannon at various places around the city. We’d talk about the deal, sometimes we’d have lunch. Everything was very friendly, you know. And then I’d pay him.”
“What would you give him?”
“A check made out to CUP for fifty thousand and the rest of that payment in cash in a manila envelope. What I did was set up a credit account at a couple of the casinos in Atlantic City and take out enough chips in bits and pieces over an evening to make up the fifty thousand. Then I’d cash out, asking for hundreds. Concannon told us the councilman liked the cash to be in hundreds and cleaned through the casinos.”
“To pay the neighborhood activists?” asked Eggert with a wry smile.
“That’s what Chet said.”
“And what happened in Council?”
“Oh, the councilman was true to his word. The project was moving through the system. It got stalled here and there, which you got to expect, it’s the city after all. And I was already running short of cash because of the delays, but the councilman was doing his part. But then, along with my money problems, Zack found out about the payments.”
“You mean Mr. Bissonette?” asked Eggert.
“Yeah, right. I had given him a small piece of the club in exchange for his name and every now and then he’d take a look at the books. When he saw these payments to the casinos and CUP he went crazy. He was a good guy, Zack, and I couldn’t really blame him. Said he wouldn’t be involved in anything that wasn’t completely legal, said he wouldn’t let profits from his club be used to bribe a councilman.”
“Objection,” said Prescott. “We don’t need to hear Mr. Bissonette’s interpretation of the legality of Mr. Ruffing’s campaign contributions to CUP. In any event, it’s hearsay.”
“Sustained,” said the judge.
“Fine,” said Eggert. “Did Mr. Bissonette get involved in the waterfront deal?”
“Yes,” said Ruffing. “When I told him I needed to keep paying Concannon because I couldn’t afford any more delays he said he could raise all the bucks I needed as long as I stopped giving any payments to the councilman. I was running out of cash for development. It didn’t help that I was dishing out about a hundred grand a month to Moore and Concannon. I needed a partner, so I said sure.”
“And he came up with the money.”
“Surprised the hell out of me, don’t know how he did it, but yes, he did. Enough to keep the options alive and the mortgage commitments going, which was what I needed. So I agreed to stop paying the money demanded by Moore and Concannon.”
“By that time, how much had you paid?”
“I had given CUP half a million dollars, exactly.”
“How did you stop making the payments?”
“I called up Moore and told him it was over.”
“What was his reaction?”
“He was apoplectic, what do you think? He told me he would send Chet over to talk with me.”
“Did you talk to Chet?”
“Sure, I told him I had no choice. I explained the thing with Bissonette. Chet told me if I stopped paying the deal was dead and that was just the start of it. He told me to think of the poor and the underprivileged, the drug addicted youth who had begun to rely on my payments. And then he told me if I stopped paying it wasn’t only the deal that would be dead. He told me the club could have licensing problems and other problems. He told me the councilman could no longer guarantee my safety. When he left, I was shaking I was so scared.”
“What did you do?”
“I didn’t have no choice. I had sunk everything I had into the development project and the only way it could go forward was with the money Bissonette brought in and Bissonette said no more payments to Moore. So I stopped paying. I thought maybe they was bluffing. Boy, was I ever wrong about that.”
“Objection,” said Prescott.
“Sustained,” said the judge. “Just tell us what happened after you stopped the payments, Mr. Ruffing.”
“One night, about two weeks after I stopped paying, in the club, we were closed then, it was after two and we were closed, I saw the councilman’s limo pull up and it looked like Moore and Concannon getting out. Bissonette was still there. I told Bissonette that I was getting out of there, but he said he’d stay and talk to them. As they approached the back door I got out the front. My car was in the back but I didn’t dare go back there. I took a cab home. Later that night I was called by the police and told that Bissonette had been beaten to near death and was in a coma. Just a few days ago he died, poor guy.”
“Anything else?”
“Yeah. A month later my club burned down. Arson.”
“And what happened to the waterfront development deal, Mr. Ruffing?”
“It’s gone, like the club. With Bissonette in the hospital and the plan delayed in Council I ran out of money. It would have been beautiful, but it all turned to crap. So I ended up with nothing, which is what I got right now, a lot of nothing. You know, when the councilman called me over, told me to sit with him, and said he could be the best friend I ever had, I was on top of the world. I had a hot club, I had a partner I admired and trusted in Zack Bissonette, you know how hard it is to find a partner you can trust? I had a waterfront deal in the works that was going to make me a name as big as Rouse, as big as Levitt. I had everything going for me. Nine months after getting the councilman on my side I’m broke, the club is gone, the development deal has disappeared, and Bissonette is dead. With friends like that, Jesus.”
29
THE NIGHT BEFORE RUFFING’S cross-examination I was in the offices of Talbott, Kittredge and Chase, sitting at the long marble conference table, drinking one of those free Cokes, enjoying the luxury of it all. But I wasn’t there to work on the Concannon case. The Bishop brothers had insisted we spend that very evening going over the paperwork for their Valley Hunt Estates deal, so I was once again reviewing the documents that we would be putting into the prospectus, spreadsheets, pro forma projections, performance data on prior Bishop Brothers deals, a list of limited partners who had already committed to purchasing shares. I was sitting there alone at that conference table, drinking my Cokes, when a secretary opened the door and ushered Beth into the room.
She looked around. “Fancy,” she said. “Like a mausoleum.”
“Never been here before?” I asked when the secretary had left. “Look at all this stuff. Pens with Talbott, Kittredge and Chase embossed in gold, all the yellow pads you could ever want. Why don’t you take some back to the office in your briefcase? You want a soda?”
“No, thank you,” she said.
“It’s free. Come on, have one. Diet Coke?”
“Doesn’t this place give you the creeps, Victor?” she asked. “How many trees had to die to panel these walls? How many deserving plaintiffs were screwed to pay for all this? I don’t like it here.” She shivered. “I feel like I’m in a wax museum after hours.”
“We should get ourselves a marble conference table,” I said. I pointed to the antique prints of Philadelphia landmarks, City Hall when it was still young and clean, Independence Hall, the Second Bank of the United States. “And some artwork just like this. What do you say?”