City of Endless Night (Pendergast #17)(71)
“I’ll be brief, Mr. Harriman,” he told the reporter as he looked over the papers. “After all, at this point there really isn’t much to say. First, the bad news. The district attorney has an airtight case against you. The paper trail has been all too easy to establish. They have the records of your opening the Cayman Islands account, along with a video of you entering the bank, they have records of you secretly transferring all the funds from the foundation, and they have evidence of your intent to flee the country the day after tomorrow, in the form of a one-way plane ticket to Laos.”
This last was news to Harriman. “Flee the country? To Laos?”
“Yes. Your apartment has been searched by order of the court and all documents and computers seized. It’s all in there, Mr. Harriman, as clear as day, along with the electronic ticket.”
Greenbaum’s voice had taken on a sorrowful, even reproachful tone, as if he wondered why Harriman had been quite so thickheaded.
Harriman groaned, put his head in his hands. “Look, it’s all a setup. A frame job for blackmail. Ozmian created all this out of thin air. He’s got the best hackers in the world working for him, and they staged this whole thing! I told you about my meetings with Ozmian, how he threatened me. There will be records that I was in the building, not once but twice.”
“Mr. Ozmian admits you were in the building, but states you were simply looking for more information on his daughter for a new article.”
“He did this to me as pure revenge because of what I wrote about his daughter! The man texted me right as I left the building, telling me what he did and why!”
The lawyer nodded. “You are, I take it, referring to the text that cannot be located on your phone or anywhere else.”
“It’s got to be somewhere!”
“And I agree. That’s the problem. In my experience—and no doubt, that of the prosecution—texts simply don’t delete themselves. There’s always some trace left somewhere.”
Harriman slumped in his chair. “Look, Mr. Greenbaum, I hired you to defend me. Not catalog all this phony evidence of guilt!”
“First of all, please call me Lenny. I’m afraid we’re going to be working together for a long time.” He put his elbows on the table and leaned forward, his voice sympathetic. “Bryce, I will defend you to the utmost. I’m the best in the business and that’s why you hired me. But we have to face facts: the DA has an overwhelming case. If we insist on going to court, you’ll be convicted and they will throw the book at you. The only chance you have—the only chance—is to plead.”
“Plead? You think I’m guilty, don’t you?”
“Let me finish.” Greenbaum took a deep breath. “I’ve spoken with the DA, and under the right circumstances he’s inclined to be lenient. You’ve got no priors, and you’ve led an upstanding, law-abiding life so far. In addition, you’re a well-known reporter who has provided a public service to the city with this recent case. As a result, he might be willing to think of this as a onetime aberration, albeit egregious. After all, stealing funds from a charitable foundation for cancer patients, established under the pretext of memorializing a deceased friend…” His voice trailed off.
Harriman swallowed. “Lenient? Lenient how?”
“That’s to be decided—if you give me authority to negotiate. The fact is, none of the extradited money was actually spent, and you did not flee the country. I could get you off with intent. If you were to plead guilty to that, with luck I’d say you’d have to do no more than—oh, two years, three, tops.”
With another groan, Harriman let his head sink back into his hands. There was no other word for it, this was in fact a living nightmare—a nightmare that, it now seemed, he would not wake from for at least a couple of years.
50
SEVERAL MILES TO the north of the Manhattan Detention Center, Marsden Swope stood next to a tarp spread in the center of the Great Lawn. He waited with a thrill of satisfaction mingled with a sense of humility as people began emerging from walkways, stands of trees, and nearby avenues and—slowly, haltingly, as if sensing the gravity of the occasion—walking across the vast lawn to gather silently around him. A few passersby, hurrying to their destinations in the cold January air, slowed to stare at this motley and growing assemblage. But so far they had not attracted the attention of the authorities.
Swope knew his message had reached a varied group, a real cross section of America, but he could not have imagined just how diverse it would be. All ages, races, creeds, and income brackets were now quietly surrounding him in a deepening circle. People wearing business suits, headdresses, tuxedos, saris, baseball uniforms, kaftans, Hawaiian shirts, gang colors—it went on and on and on. This was what he had so fervently hoped, that the one percenters and ninety-nine percenters would unite in their rejection of wealth.
“Thanks be to God,” Swope whispered to himself. “Thanks be to God.”
Now the time had come to start the bonfire. He would do it fast, so that the cops would not have time to stop it or push through the crowd to douse the fire.
He rose to full height, standing in the middle of a circular clearing, already surrounded by pilgrims ten to fifteen deep. With a gesture that was both dramatic and—he hoped—deferential, he threw off his cape to reveal a garment he had woven himself over many painstaking evenings: a hair shirt made of the roughest, coarsest animal hair he’d been able to acquire. Next, he took hold of the tarp and snatched it away, revealing a large white X he had spray-painted on the grass. Beside it were two jerrycans of kerosene.