Chapter 14 Two Black Briefcases

'So you want to rent a small office?' the agent. She smiled and nodded.

He showed her the small two-room office. She liked it. They negotiated a price - a good price for even a small office in the famous Cotton Shipping Building. She signed the forms 'Doris Greenwood'.

By noon the next day the furniture was in place. There was a knock at the door. 'Who is it?' she asked. 'It's your photocopier,' a voice answered.

She opened the door. Two men wheeled in a machine. 'It's a big copier for such a small office,’ one of them remarked. 'This is the most modern machine. It does ninety copies a minute.'

After they had gone she locked the door and walked to the window. She looked north, along Front Street. A quarter of a mile away, on the opposite side, the Bendini Building was visible.

♦

On a Tuesday morning Mitch's secretary checked that he had everything for his meeting with Frank Grin in 15 minutes. Mitch, sitting at his desk, pointed at a large black briefcase. He signed the letters, picked up the briefcase and a thin document case and left the building. He checked that the briefcase was in his right hand and the document case in his left. That was the signal.

On the ninth floor of the Cotton Shipping Building, Tammy moved away from the window, put on her coat and left the office.

Mitch entered the building and went straight to the lifts. Mulholland's office was on the seventh floor. Mitch pushed the button. He was not alone in the lift, but he didn't think they had followed him here. He put the briefcase down on the floor by his foot.

Tammy got into the lift on the fourth floor. She had brought with her exactly the same kind of briefcase that Mitch had. She didn't look at Mitch but stood next to him and put her briefcase down on the floor next to his. On the seventh floor Mitch picked up her briefcase and left the lift; on the ninth floor Tammy picked up his briefcase and went to her office.

The briefcase was full of files from Bendini, Lambert & Locke. There were seven thick files. She laid them on the table next to the copier. She took the papers out of the first file and put them into the copier. She pushed the 'Print' button and watched the machine make two perfect copies of every page.

Mitch's meeting with Mulholland went well. They shook hands at the end and arranged another meeting next week.

The lift stopped on the fifth floor and Tammy walked in. It was empty except for Mitch. When the door closed he said, 'Any problems?'

'No. Two copies are locked away.'

'How long did it take?' 'Thirty minutes.'

The lift stopped on the fourth floor and she picked up the empty briefcase. 'Midday tomorrow?' she asked.

'Yes,' he replied. The door opened and she disappeared on to the fourth floor. He rode alone down to the ground floor and walked, with a briefcase in each hand, looking just as a lawyer should, back to his office.

Chapter 15 Secret Talks

Past cont

A week later Mitch was having lunch with the partners in their fifth-floor dining-room. Each year every associate member was invited twice. Throughout lunch Mitch knew that he was being watched very closely. They were looking for any signs that he was a less keen member of the firm than he used to be. So he forced himself to smile and to eat the food they offered him. It was impossible for him to forget the pictures of him and the girl in the sand.

Oliver Lambert had never been so charming. He told stories about past members of the firm, congratulated Mitch on the hours he was working and the amount of money he was earning the firm, and said he deserved the holiday he was taking next week.

'You and your wife are off to the Caymans, I hear,' Royce McKnight said. 'You'll love it there.'

'Do you dive?' asked Lambert.

'No, but we plan to do plenty of swimming,' Mitch said.

'If you want to learn to dive,' Lambert went on, 'there's a man called Adrian Bench who has an excellent diving school on the north end of the island. It's worth a visit.'

In other words, stay away from Abanks, Mitch thought. 'Thanks. I'll remember that,' he said.

'But be careful, Mitch,' Lambert said. 'It brings back memories of Marty and Joe.'

The partners looked down sadly at their plates. They had killed Marty and Joe for doing exactly what he was doing. He wanted two million from the FBI. There were a couple of other things he wanted too. ♦

At the same time that Mitch was having lunch with the partners, Tammy parked her dirty brown Volks­wagen behind the shiny Peugeot in the school car park. She left the engine running. She got out of the car, pulled a key from her pocket, opened the back of the Peugeot and took the heavy black briefcase out. Then she drove away in her own car.

At a small window in the teachers' lounge Abby drank coffee and stared through the trees into the car park. She smiled and checked her watch. Twelve-thirty, as planned.

Tammy drove back to her office. There were nine files this time. She copied them all. On the way back to the school she took all the copied files to the small storage room she had rented in her name. ♦

At three o'clock in the morning Mitch got quietly out of bed and got dressed. Without a word he kissed Abby, who was awake, and left the house. He had a meeting at an all-night cafe twenty-five miles out of town. At this time of night no one would follow him.

Tarrance and he completed their negotiations. They agreed on two million dollars.

'I want a million now and a million later,' Mitch said. 'I'm already copying all my files. No lawyer is allowed to do that: as soon as I give them to you, it's the end of my career. So when I give them to you I want the first million. We'll discuss the details later.' 'How are you going to get the files to us?' Tarrance asked. 'You can't just walk around with them.'

'That's right,' Mitch said. 'When I hear that the first million has gone where I want it to go, then I'll give you the key to a storage room somewhere in the Memphis area.' 'And the second million?' Tarrance asked. 'When you and I and Voyles decide that I've given you enough documents to make the arrests you want, then I get half. After I appear in court as a witness for the last time, I get the other half'

'Agreed,' Tarrance said.

'And there's one other thing I want, Tarrance.' 'Yeah?'

'I want my brother Ray out of Brushy Mountain Prison.'

'That's ridiculous, Mitch. We can't do that.'

'You can find a way. If you can't do it by bending the rules, then you can help him escape. But you can do it. The FBI can do anything, remember?'

'I'll see what I can do,' Tarrance said helplessly. 'But Voyles isn't going to like it.'

'Tell him that he doesn't get to see anything - not a single file — unless he promises to get my brother out. Not even a file on one of my clean clients. I don't know why you want those files anyway.'

'Because when we've got them,' Tarrance said, 'we've got you. Actually, you're probably already working with criminal clients without knowing it. It makes it easier for the firm to persuade you later to do whatever they say, because they'll tell you that you've already done enough to go to prison.'

Chapter 16 No Kiss

can

At eight o'clock on the morning after Mitch and Abby returned from the Caymans, Oliver Lambert and Nathan Locke were allowed through the metal door on the fifth floor. They went to DeVasher's office.

'I talked to Lazarov yesterday in Las Vegas. He's still worried. He wants you to make sure that any associates who don't know about our real business here work only on clean files.'

'OK. What about McDeere?' Lambert asked.

'He had a wonderful week with his wife. They stayed in the other house, of course. You should see her in a string bikini! We took some pictures, just for fun.'

'I didn't come here to look at pictures,' Locke said angrily.

'All right, all right. They spent a whole day with our friend Abanks. We don't know what they talked about. Whenever we got someone close to them, they were only talking about fishing or something. But I don't like it at all.'

'What can they talk about?' said Lambert. 'Of course they'll talk about Hodge and Kozinski, but there's no harm in that. They can't find anything out, can they?'

'No,' DeVasher admitted, 'but I still don't like it. I know McDeere tells lies. I know he lied about that shoe shop. And Chicago is worried, so I'm worried. That's my job. As long as the FBI are around, I'll be worried.'

♦

It was very unusual for wives to appear at the Bendini Building. Abby arrived there unexpectedly. The receptionist phoned up to Mitch's office and his secretary came down to explain that Mitch was in a meeting.

'He's always in a meeting,' Abby replied. 'Get him out of it!' She waited in Mitch's office. He was on the third floor, in Avery's office, helping him prepare for another visit to the

Caymans. Probably taking cash for the Moroltos, Mitch thought.

His secretary found him there and told him about Abby.

He walked down to his office, where Abby was walking up and down.

'Mitch, I have to go and see my parents,' she said. 'My father just called me at school. My mother's ill. She's got to have an operation tomorrow.'

'I'm sorry,' Mitch said. He didn't touch her. She wasn't crying.

'I've told the school I'll be away for a while,' she said. 'How long?'

'I don't know. Mitch, we need some time away from each other. I think it will be good for both of us.'

'Let's talk about it.'

'You're always too busy to talk. I've been trying to talk to you for six months, but you can't hear me. I'll be back, I promise. I just don't know when. I love you, Mitch.'

He watched her open the door. There was no kiss.

♦

On the fifth floor an engineer pushed the emergency button for DeVasher's office. He came immediately and put headphones on. He listened.

'When did this happen?'

'Two minutes ago. In his office, second floor.'

'She's leaving him, isn't she? Hell! She's our best lever. What good are those photographs if she's leaving him anyway?'

Abby started for Kentucky but didn't arrive there. She made sure that she wasn't being followed and then went to Nashville Airport. From there she flew to the Caymans.

Avery finished his business at the Royal Bank of Montreal and, after changing his clothes, made his way to Rumheads Bar. Just after he arrived Tammy nervously entered the crowd and sat at the bar. She was wearing a bikini which hardly covered her body. She was forty, but twenty pairs of hungry eyes followed her to the bar, where she ordered a soft drink and lit a cigarette.

She went over to Avery's table and asked if she could sit down. He couldn't believe his luck; of all the men in the bar she had picked him.

'I'm Avery Tolleson. From Memphis.'

'Nice to meet you. I'm Libby.'

'What brings you here?' Avery asked.

'Just looking for fun,' she said, with a suggestive look in her eyes.

For three hours they dined, drank and danced, each time a little more closely. She got him drunk. At ten o'clock she led him from the bar to the firm's beach house where he was staying. He attacked her at the front door and they kissed long and deeply.

When they were inside she suggested that they should have one more drink. He left the room to go to the washroom. She took a small plastic packet from her bag and dropped some sleeping-powder into his drink. Mitch had told her it was enough to put him to sleep for ten hours. When he returned, she watched closely as he swallowed his drink. He was too drunk to taste a thing. Within minutes he was in a deep sleep.

She pushed him off the chair and pulled him into the bedroom. She laid him on the bed and took his clothes off. She kissed him goodnight.

In his jacket pocket she found two key-rings, with eleven keys on them. Downstairs, in the hall between the kitchen and the sitting-room, she found the mysterious metal door which Mitch had noticed when he stayed in this house with Avery last year. From the arrangement of the upstairs rooms Mitch guessed that there was a small room behind the door.

She opened the door, waited a full ten minutes for any alarm and then turned on the light. Inside the room were twelve cupboards for files, a desk and three large briefcases.

She checked that Avery was still deeply asleep. Then she went back downstairs, grabbed the three briefcases, turned off the lights and left through the front door. It was a short walk across the car park to where the neighbouring hotel started. She was sweating from the weight of the briefcases by the time she reached Room 188 and knocked on the door.

Abby opened the door. 'Any problems?' she asked.

'No.' Tammy put the briefcases on the bed and went to get a Coke.

'Where is he?'

'In bed. I think we've got until six in the morning. There are a hell of a lot of files in that room. We'll be lucky to finish by six.'

Room 188 was a single hotel room. All the furniture had been pushed against the walls to make room for the photocopier Abby had rented.

Tammy began to photocopy the files from the briefcases while Abby went out in her car and had the keys copied by a man she had found earlier. When she came back she continued with the photocopying, while Tammy went back to the beach house. She filled two suitcases with files from the cupboards. By the time she got back to the hotel Abby had finished with the briefcases, and Tammy took them back. Her arms soon ached from carrying the suitcases full of files from one place to the other.

They managed to copy the files from ten of the cupboards before Avery showed any signs of beginning to wake up. She left the files they were copying with Abby, went back to the beach house, locked the metal door and returned the keys. Then she took off her bikini top, got into bed beside him and waited.

♦

Avery finally woke up a few minutes after nine. He felt terrible. He was late for an appointment.

'Hello, big boy,' Tammy said. 'You were wonderful.'

Avery tried to remember something about last night. He failed.

'Was I?' he said.

'Yeah, the best,' she said. He began to believe her.

'Listen,' he said. 'I have to take a shower and then go to work. Shall we meet tonight at the bar?'

'I'll be there, lover,' she said.

He went off to the shower. She slid across the bed to the phone and called Abby.

'He's in the shower.'

'Are you OK?'

'Yeah. He couldn't do it if he had to.'

'Does he suspect anything?' 'I don't think so. He's in pain.'

'How long will you be?' 'About ten or fifteen minutes.' 'OK. Hurry.'

They put their phones down. Under the roof, a recorder switched itself off and was ready for the next phone call.

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 575