“Safe deposit boxes?” she asked a young woman behind the information desk. The girl pointed to a corner in the far right.
“Thanks,” she said, and strolled toward it. The lines in front of the tellers were four deep to her left, and to her right a hundred busy vice presidents talked on their phones. It was the largest bank in the city, and no one noticed her.
The vault was behind a set of massive bronze doors that were polished enough to appear almost golden, no doubt to give the appearance of infinite safety and invulnerability. The doors were opened slightly to allow a select few in and out. To the left, an important-looking lady of sixty sat behind a desk with the words SAFE DEPOSIT BOXES across its front. Her name was Virginia Baskin.
Virginia Baskin stared at Darby as she approached the desk. There was no smile.
“I need access to a box,” Darby said without breathing. She hadn’t breathed in the last two and a half minutes.
“The number, please,” Ms. Baskin said as she hit the keyboard and turned to the monitor.
“F566.”
She punched the number and waited for the words to flash on the screen. She frowned, and moved her
face to within inches of it. Run! Darby thought. She frowned harder and scratched her chin. Run, before she picks up the phone and calls the guards. Run, before the alarms go off and my idiot cohort comes blazing through the lobby.
Ms. Baskin withdrew her head from the monitor. “That was rented just two weeks ago,” she said almost to herself.
“Yes,” Darby said as if she had rented it.
“I assume you’re Mrs. Morgan,” she said, pecking on the keyboard.
Keep assuming, baby. “Yes, Beverly Anne Morgan.”
“And your address?”
“891 Pembroke, Alexandria.”
She nodded at the screen as if it could see her and give its approval. She pecked again. “Phone number?”
“703-664-5980.”
Ms. Baskin liked this too. So did the computer. “Who rented this box?”
“My husband, Curtis D. Morgan.”
“And his social security number?”
Darby casually opened her new, rather large leather shoulder bag, and pulled out her wallet. How many wives memorized their husband’s social security number? She opened the wallet. “510-96-8686.”
“Very well,” Ms. Baskin said properly as she left the keyboard and reached into her desk. “How long will this take?”
“Just a minute.”
She placed a wide card on a small clipboard on the desk, and pointed at it. “Sign here, Mrs. Morgan.”
Darby nervously signed on the second slot. Mr. Morgan had made the first entry the day he rented the box.
Ms. Baskin glanced at the signature while Darby held her breath.
“Do you have your key?” she asked.
“Of course,” Darby said with a warm smile.
Ms. Baskin took a small box from the drawer, and walked around the desk. “Follow me.” They went through the bronze doors. The vault was as big as a branch bank in the suburbs. Designed along the lines of a mausoleum, it was a maze of hallways and small chambers. Two men in uniform walked by. They passed four identical rooms with walls lined with rows of lockboxes. The fifth room held F566, evidently, because Ms. Baskin stepped into it and opened her little black box. Darby looked nervously around and behind her.
Virginia was all business. She walked to F566, which was shoulder-high, and stuck in the key. She rolled her eyes at Darby as if to say, “Your turn, dumbass.” Darby yanked the key from a pocket, and inserted it next to the other one. Virginia then turned both keys, and slid the box two inches from its slot. She removed the bank’s key.
She pointed to a small booth with a folding wooden door. “Take it in there. When you finish, lock it back in place and come to my desk.” She was leaving the room as she spoke.
“Thanks,” Darby said. She waited until Virginia was out of sight, then slid the box from the wall. It was not heavy. The front was six inches by twelve, and it was a foot and a half long. The top was open,
and inside were two items: a thin, brown legal-sized envelope, and an unmarked videotape.
She didn’t need the booth. She stuffed the envelope and videotape in her shoulder bag, and slid the box back into its slot. She left the room.
Virginia had rounded the corner of her desk when Darby walked behind her. “I’m finished,” she said.
“My, that was quick.”
Damned right. Things happen fast when your nerves are popping through your skin. “I found what I needed,” she said.
“Very well.” Ms. Baskin was suddenly a warm person. “You know, that awful story in the paper last week about that lawyer. You know, the one killed by muggers not far from here. Wasn’t his name Curtis Morgan? Seems like it was Curtis Morgan. What a shame.”
Oh, you dumb woman. “I didn’t see that,” Darby said. “I’ve been out of the country. Thanks.”
Her step was a bit quicker the second time through the lobby. The bank was crowded, and there were no security guards in sight. Piece of cake. It was about time she pulled a job without being grabbed.
The gunman was guarding the marble column. The revolving door spun her onto the sidewalk, and she was almost to the car before he caught her. “Get in the car!” she demanded.
“What’d you find!” he demanded.
“Just get outta here.” She yanked the door open, and jumped in. He started the car and sped away.
“Talk to me,” he said.
“I cleaned out the box,” she said. “Is anyone behind us?”
He glanced in the mirror. “How the hell do I know? What is it?”
She opened her purse and pulled out the envelope. She opened it. Gray slammed on the brakes and almost smashed a car in front.
“Watch where you’re going!” she yelled.
“Okay! Okay. What’s in the envelope!”
“I don’t know! I haven’t read it yet, and if you get me killed, I’ll never read it.”
The car was moving again. Gray breathed deeply. “Look, let’s stop yelling, okay. Let’s be cool.”
“Yes. You drive, and I’ll be cool.”
“Okay. Now. Are we cool?”
“Yes. Just relax. And watch where you’re going. Where are you going?”
“I don’t know. What’s in the envelope?”
She pulled out a document of some sort. She glanced at him, and he was staring at the document. “Watch where we’re going.”
“Just read the damned thing.”
“It makes me carsick. I can’t read in the car.”
“Dammit! Dammit! Dammit!”
“You’re yelling again.”
He yanked the wheel to the right and pulled into another tow-away zone on E Street. Horns honked as he slammed his brakes. He glared at her.
“Thanks,” she said, and started reading it aloud.
It was a four-page affidavit, typed real neat and sworn to under oath before a notary public. It was dated Friday, the day before the last phone call to Grantham. Under oath, Curtis Morgan said he worked in the oil and gas section of White and Blazevich, and had since he joined the firm five years
earlier. His clients were privately owned oil exploration firms from many countries, but primarily Americans. Since he joined the firm, he had worked for a client who was engaged in a huge lawsuit in south Louisiana. The client was a man named Victor Mattiece, and Mr. Mattiece, whom he’d never met but was well known to the senior partners of White and Blazevich, wanted desperately to win the lawsuit and eventually harvest millions of barrels of oil from the swamplands of Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana. There were also hundreds of millions of cubic yards of natural gas. The partner supervising the case for White and Blazevich was F. Sims Wakefield, who was very close to Victor Mattiece and often visited him in the Bahamas.
They sat in the tow-away zone with the bumper of the Pontiac protruding perilously into the right lane, and were oblivious to the cars swerving around it. She read slowly, and he sat with his eyes closed.
Continuing, the lawsuit was very important to White and Blazevich. The firm was not directly involved in the trial and appeal, but everything crossed Wakefield’s desk. He worked on nothing but the pelican case, as it was known. He spent most of his time on the phone with either Mattiece or one of a hundred lawyers working on the case. Morgan averaged ten hours a week on the case, but always on the periphery. His billings were handed directly to Wakefield, and this was unusual because all other billings went to the oil and gas billing clerk, who turned them in to accounting. He’d heard rumors over the years, and firmly believed Mattiece was not paying White and Blazevich its standard hourly rate. He believed the
firm had taken the case for a percentage of the harvest. He’d heard the figure of ten percent of the net profits from the wells. This was unheard of in the industry.
Brakes squealed loudly, and they braced for the impact. It barely missed. “We’re about to be killed,” Darby snapped.
Gray yanked the gearshift into drive, and pulled the right front wheel over the curb and onto the sidewalk. Now they were out of traffic. The car was angled across a forbidden space with its front bumper on the sidewalk and its rear bumper barely out of traffic. “Keep reading,” he snapped back.
Continuing, on or about September 28, Morgan was in Wakefield’s office. He walked in with two files and a stack of documents unrelated to the pelican case. Wakefield was on the phone. As usual, secretaries were in and out. The office was always in a state of disruption. He stood around for a few minutes waiting for Wakefield to get off the phone, but the conversation dragged on. Finally, after waiting fifteen minutes, Morgan picked up his files and documents from Wakefield’s cluttered desk, and left. He went to his office at the other end of the building, and started working at his desk. It was about two in the afternoon. As he reached for a file, he found a handwritten memo on the bottom of the stack of documents he had just brought to his office. He had inadvertently taken it from Wakefield’s desk. He immediately stood, with the intention of returning to Wakefield. Then he read it. And he read it again. He glanced at the telephone. Wakefield’s line was still busy. A copy of the memo was attached to the affidavit.
“Read the memo,” Gray snapped.
“I’m not through with the affidavit,” she snapped back. It would do no good to argue with her. She was the legal mind, and this was a legal document, and she would read it exactly as she pleased.
Continuing, he was stunned by the memo. And he was immediately terrified of it. He walked out of his office and down the hall to the nearest Xerox, and copied it. He returned to his office, and placed the original memo in the same position under the files on his desk. He would swear he’d never seen it.
The memo was two paragraphs handwritten on White and Blazevich internal stationery. It was from M. Velmano, who is Marty Velmano, a senior partner. It was dated September 28, directed to Wakefield, and read:
Sims:
Advise client, research is complete—and the bench will sit much softer if Rosenberg is retired. The second retirement is a bit unusual. Einstein found a link to Jensen, of all people. The boy, of course, has those other problems
.
Advise further that the pelican should arrive here in four years, assuming other factors
.
There was no signature.
Gray was chuckling and frowning at the same time. His mouth was open. She was reading faster.
Continuing, Marty Velmano was a ruthless shark who worked eighteen hours a day, and felt useless unless someone near him was bleeding. He was the heart and soul of White and Blazevich. To the power
people of Washington, he was a tough operator with plenty of money. He lunched with congressmen, and played golf with cabinet members. He did his throat cutting behind his office door.
Einstein was the nickname for Nathaniel Jones, a demented legal genius the firm kept locked away in his own little library on the sixth floor. He read every case decided by the Supreme Court, the eleven federal appellate courts, and the supreme courts of the fifty states. Morgan had never met Einstein. Sightings were rare around the firm.
After he copied it, he folded his copy of the memo and placed it in a desk drawer. Ten minutes later, Wakefield stormed into his office, very disturbed and pale. They scratched around Morgan’s desk, and found the memo. Wakefield was angry as hell, which was not unusual. He asked if Morgan had read this. No, he insisted. Evidently he mistakenly picked it up when he left his office, he explained. What’s the big deal? Wakefield was furious. He lectured Morgan about the sanctity of one’s desk. He was a blithering idiot, rebuking and expounding around Morgan’s office. He finally realized he was overreacting. He tried to settle down, but the impression had been made. He left with the memo.
Morgan hid the copy in a law book in the library on the ninth floor. He was shocked at Wakefield’s paranoia and hysterics. Before he left that afternoon, he precisely arranged the articles and papers in his desk and on his shelves. The next morning, he checked them. Someone had gone through his desk during the night.
Morgan became very careful. Two days later, he
found a tiny screwdriver behind a book on his credenza. Then he found a small piece of black tape wadded up and dropped in his trash can. He assumed his office was wired and his phones were bugged. He caught suspicious looks from Wakefield. He saw Velmano in Wakefield’s office more than usual.
Then Justices Rosenberg and Jensen were killed. There was no doubt in his mind it was the work of Mattiece and his associates. The memo did not mention Mattiece, but it referred to a “client.” Wakefield had no other clients. And no one client had as much to gain from a new Court as Mattiece.
The last paragraph of the affidavit was frightening. On two occasions after the assassinations, Morgan knew he was being followed. He was taken off the pelican case. He was given more work, more hours, more demands. He was afraid of being killed. If they would kill two justices, they would kill a lowly associate.
He signed it under oath before Emily Stanford, a notary public. Her address was typed under her name.
“Sit tight. I’ll be right back,” Gray said as he opened his door and jumped out. He dodged cars and dashed across E Street. There was a pay phone outside a bakery. He punched Smith Keen’s number and looked at his rented car parked haphazardly across the street.