Kiss the Girls and Make Them Cry(44)

One less lawyer, he thought, would make the world a better place.





46





Michael Carter stretched out in his first-class seat for the flight from Billings, Montana, to Minneapolis. After a forty-five-minute layover he would be on his way to JFK in New York.

Christina Neumann, one of the victims named by Matthews, now lived in Billings. From the time he was a little boy, Carter had always been fascinated by dinosaurs. After touring Yellowstone National Park, he had visited the Museum of the Rockies and its world-class fossil collection.

It had been an effort to get Neumann to respond to him. Fortunately, most people never change their cell phone number. For a fee, of course, his contact at Verizon had confirmed that her cell number was the same as when she was at REL and provided her current billing address.

Neumann had ignored the first three texts he had sent her. She broke her silence after he promised in a fourth text that if necessary, he would come to Billings unannounced and knock on her door. She had called him back the same day.

No, he had told her, he was not interested in her vague assurances that she had made her peace with what happened and had just moved on. His job, he reasoned, was to conclude settlements. Somebody who’s content letting bygones be bygones today might feel differently tomorrow. The loss of a job, an expensive divorce, a parent goes bonkers with Alzheimer’s and needs expensive care. Stuff happens; and all of a sudden dredging up the past in favor of a big payday is not such a bad idea.

He still didn’t know why people insisted on sharing their deepest vulnerabilities with their adversaries. She had confided in him that she had not shared what happened to her at REL with her husband. He had confided in her that if she refused to meet with him, perhaps her husband would be more amenable. They had agreed to a date when her husband would be away on a business trip.

He smiled as he thought of sitting across from Christina Neumann. A petite blonde with a gorgeous figure, she was by far his easiest settlement to date. In and out of his rented office space in less than thirty minutes. She was not aware of any other victims. Neumann was adamant that her husband not find out what had happened to her at REL. And it was obvious that she didn’t need the money. She barely read the settlement before signing it. Her instruction was that the two million dollars be wired to the ASPCA. What a dope, he thought to himself, wondering for a moment if she would follow up to assure he had sent the money.

As his army friend from Alabama used to joke, “This is as easy as holding up the Piggly Wiggly with a gun.” He was convinced that if she had been left alone, Neumann never would have come forward. But he saw no need to share that with Sherman and Junior.

Opening his laptop, he began writing the email he would send about the three days of arduous negotiations that had finally resulted in Christina Neumann agreeing to a settlement.





47





Michael Carter sighed in frustration as he made another note on the second page of his legal pad. Persuading the women to settle wasn’t always easy. In his first conversation with Cathy Ryan, she had literally told him to take a hike. But he was confident he could browbeat and wear her down the way he had done the others. Finding the women and getting the conversation started had always been a snap, until now.

He looked again at Mel Carroll’s personnel file. Matthews would have made the job so much easier if he’d only stuck to abusing Americans, Carter thought.

Carroll had been an intern in a REL News international exchange program. She had come over at age twenty-three after working for one year at REL’s affiliate in South Africa.

The two women she listed as emergency contacts were no help. Both were South African nationals living in New York City. They had no idea where Carroll went after leaving REL.

The South African Consulate had tried to help. They had also given him a copy of her birth certificate, which included both her parents’ names. She had been born in Genadendal.

There was some evidence she had returned there. When she resigned eleven months earlier, she left wiring instructions to send her final pay to a bank in her birthplace, a small town ninety minutes east of Cape Town. There was no guarantee she was living in that area now, but at least it was a place to start.

Carter chuckled as he tried to imagine what Sherman’s reaction would be upon hearing that he would be heading to South Africa at REL’s expense. To hell with him, he thought to himself. He had a job to do, and he planned to do it right. If he had a little fun along the way, that was his business. He opened his computer and typed in the SEARCH screen, “Best Safaris in South Africa.”





48





Houston, we have a problem was how Michael Carter began his email to Sherman and Junior. Right from the beginning, he had recognized it as a potential flaw in his plan to buy the silence of Matthews’s victims. It was a what-if? that he had never broached with either man because he didn’t have a good answer regarding how to handle the situation. Truth be told, his recommendation would be more Band-Aid than solution. Twenty months after notching his first agreement with Lauren Pomerantz, he and they would be forced to confront the issue head on.

He continued typing.

After agreeing to a settlement a year and a half ago, Paula Stephenson contacted me. She wants more money. After leaving REL she was hired as an on-air reporter at a cable station in Dayton. A few months later she resigned. In reality she had been fired for being intoxicated while on the air. She relocated to Durham where she purchased a condominium. Shortly thereafter, she lost a large sum of money on an investment in a software company.