Chapter 23
I parked behind it, entered through the door into the larger garage, and found Lorna and Cisco talking to two uniformed officers. Lorna broke away from them and walked up to me with urgency.
“Oh my God, I thought something had happened to you,” she said. “Why haven’t you been answering your phone?”
“It’s dead,” I said. “I was so tired last night I forgot to plug it in. You called the cops because I didn’t answer my phone?”
“No, there was a break-in last night. We discovered it when we got here today. The door was wide open.”
She pointed toward the door I had just entered through.
“Shit,” I said. “What was taken?”
“We’re not sure yet,” Lorna said. “But it looks like nothing’s gone.”
“What about the cage?”
“Same thing. Can’t tell yet if anything’s gone.”
“The hard drive?”
“I took it home last night.”
“Good. Did anybody check the cameras?”
“You had them turned off, remember?”
I had been worried about Tidalwaiv hijacking the feed.
“It was them,” I said.
“Who?” Lorna asked.
“Tidalwaiv. Had to be.”
“Why? Everything we have came from them in discovery.”
“Not the stuff we got from Naomi.”
We had dispensed with use of the code name Challenger, since Naomi Kitchens had been revealed and approved as a witness.
“But isn’t all of that copies of stuff she sent to them?” Lorna said. “So they would already have that.”
“Not if they purged it,” I said.
I nodded toward the two officers talking to Cisco. One was writing on a clipboard.
“Are they calling in the detectives?” I asked.
“They said they’ll give the report to the burglary squad for follow-up on Monday,” Lorna said. “From Central Division.”
“I won’t hold my breath. This is like the Grant High break-in. Nothing missing, but they were here and they want us to know it. Do I need to talk to them or are you two handling it?”
“We can handle it. I think they’re about to go.”
“Then I’ll be in my office. After they leave, I need you and Cisco in there for the meeting.”
“Okay. They said don’t touch the safe in case the detectives want to send a tech to look for fingerprints.”
“Did you tell them it has no locking mechanism and we don’t keep valuable stuff in it?”
“Yes, but they said the burglars might not have known that.”
I walked by the cops and Cisco to the office.
The first thing I did when I got there was plug my dead phone into the charging line on my desk.
Then I leaned in through the open door of the Mosler.
The contracts McEvoy had signed as well as a few other case files seemed to be untouched.
I sat down at the desk, picked up the landline, and called Jack McEvoy, who was up in Palo Alto. I put the call on speaker.
“Our meeting is going to be slightly delayed,” I said. “The cops are here. Somebody broke into the warehouse last night.”
“Shit, what did they get?” McEvoy asked.
“We still don’t know. Maybe nothing. Have you talked to Naomi yet?”
“Uh, no, not since last night. I was going to go over after our all-hands call.”
“Go over now. Make sure everything’s okay and call me back.”
“Why wouldn’t everything be okay?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I want you to check.”
I reached over and dropped the phone into its cradle, ending the call.
I checked my cell phone and saw it already had enough juice to be opened as long as I kept the charger plugged in.
There had been five missed calls and voicemails since nine a.m. Four of the voicemails were from Lorna that morning, her voice growing more intense with each call as she panicked about why I wasn’t responding and wasn’t at the office.
The fifth was from Marcus Mason, and it had been left at one minute after nine. He didn’t bother identifying himself.
“Haller, call me. We need to talk.”
I got up from the desk and closed the door, then went back and hit the Return Call button. It was Mason’s cell and he answered right away.
“Haller, we have to meet,” he said.
“Mason, I just got your client’s message,” I said.
“What? What message?”
“The little break-in at my office last night.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Of course not.”
“Look, never mind that, we have to meet.”
“About what?”
“We have a new offer. A final offer.”
“You know how to make a federal judge mad as hell? You settle a case after she’s spent two days picking a jury.”
“Doesn’t matter. When can you meet?”
“Marcus, what happened to ‘I’m going to tear you apart next week and love every minute of it’?”
“I would have. But the company wants this over. Too much at stake to put the outcome in the hands of twelve idiots. When can you meet? Where?”
“I’m not meeting you, Marcus. I’ve got too much to do today.”
“It’s your obligation to listen and deliver a settlement offer to your clients in a timely fashion.”
“We don’t have to meet. Give it to me and I’ll deliver it. Simple.”
There was a long pause as Mason decided what to do.
“Fifty million,” he finally said. “Your clients decide how to chop it up. The company doesn’t care. Same conditions as the previous offers.”
Now I paused. I felt ashamed because my first thought was about what my cut of fifty million dollars would be. Mason seemed to know this.
“What’s that mean for you, Haller?” he asked. “Twenty million? You should be able to convince them to take it for that.”
I actually had a sliding scale. The higher the settlement, the lower my percentage went until it hit 20 percent.
In this case, that meant I’d get ten million if my clients took this deal.
It was more money than I’d earned in my entire career.
It would be more than enough to retire on and to build back better Maggie’s home.
I shook off these thoughts and regained focus.
“What are they scared of, Marcus?” I asked.
“I told them I have this in hand,” Mason said. “But they just want it to go away.”
I said nothing for a long moment.
“Take it to them, Haller,” Mason said. “You have just over six hours. The offer expires at five. All parties must agree. No split settlement. You understand?”
“I understand,” I said. “Put it in writing and email it to me so I have something to show them.”
“I just did.”
“Then I’ll review it and—”
Mason disconnected.
“Fuck you too,” I said.
I opened the email app on my phone and saw the offer on top.
I read it, looking for any discrepancy between what Mason had just said and what he had written.
There was none. The email was a duplicate of the previous settlement offer except that the number had changed and it contained the additional line about the clients deciding how to divide the money.
I wondered what was behind that line. Had the Masons been back-channeling with the Coltons?
Did the opposition think that giving the Coltons the possibility of a bigger chunk would help bring the sides to agreement?
There was a single knock on the door and Lorna walked in.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“Are they gone?” I asked. “The cops?”
“Yes. Cisco walked them out. We can start our meeting when he gets back. Should I call Jack?”
“I just talked to him. He’s checking on Naomi and then he’ll call back.”
“Challenger.”
Lorna pointed to the ceiling as if that might be where Tidalwaiv had planted listening devices.
“Tidalwaiv knows about her from court,” I said. “No need for code words anymore.”
“Right,” Lorna said. “What is Jack checking on?”
“I don’t know. We had a break-in here. I just want to make sure she’s okay up there.”
“Mickey, you really think Tidalwaiv is behind this? It’s not the greatest neighborhood, you know.”
“If it had been a real break-in, we would have noticed things gone. The place would have been torn up. There’s two thousand dollars in copper netting over the cage, plus the laptops are in there. This was Tidalwaiv, Lorna. They were looking for something.”
“What?”
“I don’t know. Or maybe they were just trying to send a message.”
“What message?”
“That they’re playing hardball? I’m not sure.”
“And they call it civil court.”
“Ain’t that a joke.”
I heard the front door of the warehouse close and soon Cisco entered the office.
“What’s happening?” he asked.
“Cisco, I want you to sweep the warehouse again,” I said. “If they didn’t take anything, then maybe they left something behind.”
“On it,” Cisco said.
“And we just got another settlement offer from Tidalwaiv,” I said.
“How much?” Cisco asked.
“Fifty million,” I said.
“Holy shit!” Lorna said.
“Yeah,” I said. “I have to tell our clients.”
Cisco dropped into the chair across the desk from me.
“Think they’ll go for it?” he asked.
“I think I would if I were them,” I said. “Too bad, though. It would have been a fun trial.”
“But hard to walk away from fifty mil,” Cisco said.
“No,” Lorna said. “Brenda’s going to say no. She’s a rock.”
I nodded. Lorna was probably right. My cell buzzed. It was McEvoy. I answered.
“Jack, you’re on speaker,” I said. “Things have changed.”
“Fucking A, they have,” he said. “Naomi’s backing out.”
“What happened? Why?”
“She’s a mess. Her daughter called from school. A man came to her dorm room last night and scared the shit out of her. He told her that if her mother testifies, her mother dies. That’s all he said, but it was enough.”
I saw Lorna bring her hand to her mouth.
“Goddamn them,” I said.
“What should I do?” Jack asked.
I stood up because I couldn’t sit anymore. I put both hands on the desk and leaned over the phone.
“Listen, things are happening here,” I said. “We might be settling this today.”
“They can’t fucking settle!” Jack yelled. “Not after this.”
“It’s the clients’ call,” I said. “I need you to stay up there until we know. Are you still at Naomi’s?”
“No,” Jack said. “She told me to get the hell out. She blames us for this.”
I nodded. Naomi was right. We had brought all of this to her door.
“Okay, just stand by,” I said. “We’ll know what’s happening soon.”
“Got it,” he said.
I disconnected and stood up straight. I started pacing, trying to think how I should present the offer. I would go to the Coltons first, then Brenda Randolph. I saw a stack of file folders on a side table near the safe.
“What’s all of this?” I asked.
“That’s the Snow case,” Lorna said. “Yesterday I went down to archives under the CCB and copied what they still had.”
I had been so consumed by jury selection that I pushed Cassie Snow and her father’s case completely out of my head.
“Were any of the exhibits still there?” I asked.
“Some,” Lorna said. “Like what?”
“Cassie Snow’s X-rays.”
“Yes, I made copies, though they aren’t as good as the real things. They’re in one of those files.”
“We’ll have to petition a judge to let us have the originals.”
“No, what I mean is I made copies of copies. The original X-rays weren’t there.”
“That doesn’t make sense. Where are they?”
“I don’t know. Could they have been filed with the appeals?”
“Maybe. We’ll have to deal with that later.”
I moved my attention out of the Snow case and back into Tidalwaiv.
“Okay, you two can clear and I’m going to call the clients,” I said. “Cisco, depending on how this goes, I might need to send you up to San Francisco to watch over Naomi’s daughter until we can get them both down here and safe.”
“Just say the word,” Cisco said.
“Mickey, Naomi said she’s out,” Lorna said. “You heard. She kicked Jack out of her house.”
“In the heat of the moment,” I said. “She might change her mind if her fear turns back to anger.”
“Good luck with that,” Lorna said.
“Yeah,” I said. “We’re going to need it.”
They cleared out of the office and I closed the door. Before calling the clients, I called Bambadjan Bishop on the burner phone. I didn’t bother with a greeting.
“Are you still up north?”
“Uh, no. Got home last night. Was going to call you about getting my money.”
“I’ll bring it to you tomorrow. So you weren’t in San Francisco last night?”
“No, man, I got back here about eight. What’s going on in San Francisco?”
“Nothing. Never mind. I’ll call you tomorrow and we’ll meet.”
I disconnected and for a few minutes sat with what had happened over the past seventy-two hours.
I had used Bishop to help convince Naomi Kitchens to testify. Somebody else had just convinced her to change her mind. I realized that Tidalwaiv had taken a page from my own playbook and followed it with a fifty-million-dollar chaser.