She never touched her food.
WHEN HE FINISHED, she asked, "Would you like some coffee?"
"We'll probably need it, won't we?"
"Yes."
They removed the plastic rental dishes from the table and left them in the kitchen. Leah made coffee while Sandy inspected the house. They met in the dining room, where the coffee was served and the polite talk, such as it was, came to an end. They sat facing each other across the glass table.
"How much do you know about the Aricia matter?" she asked.
"He was the client whose ninety million got snatched by Patrick, if you believe the papers. He was an executive with Platt & Rockland, who had squealed on the company for overbilling. He filed a charge under the False Claims Act. Platt & Rockland got caught to the tune of something like six hundred million. His reward, under the act, was fifteen percent of that. His lawyers were Bogan and company, where our pal Patrick worked. That's about it. The basics."
"That's pretty good. What I'm about to tell you can all be verified by these documents and tapes. We'll go through them, as it will be necessary for you to know this material inside and out."
"I've actually done this before, you know." He smiled, but she didn't. No more lame efforts at humor.
"The Aricia claim was fraudulent from the very beginning." She spoke deliberately, there was no hurry. She waited until he absorbed this, which took a few seconds. "Benny Aricia is a very corrupt man who conceived a scheme to defraud both his company and his government. He was assisted by some very capable lawyers, Patrick's old firm, and some powerful people in Washington."
"That would be Senator Nye, Bogan's first cousin."
"Primarily, yes. But, as you know, Senator Nye has considerable influence in Washington."
"So I've heard."
"Aricia carefully planned his scheme, then took it to Charles Bogan. Patrick was a new partner then, but he knew nothing of Aricia. The other partners were brought into the conspiracy, everyone but Patrick. The law firm changed, and Patrick knew something was different. He started digging and eavesdropping and eventually found out that this new client named Aricia was the cause for all the secrecy. He was patient. He pretended to notice nothing, and all the time he was gathering evidence. A lot of it is in here." She touched the box when she said this.
"Let's go back to the beginning," Sandy said. "Explain how the claim was fraudulent."
"Aricia ran New Coastal Shipyards in Pascagoula. It's a division of Platt & Rockland."
"I know all that. Big defense contractor with a shady past, a bad reputation for bilking the government."
"That's it. Aricia took advantage of its size to implement his plan. New Coastal was building the Expedition nuclear submarines, and things were already over budget. Aricia decided to make matters worse. New Coastal submitted fraudulent labor records, thousands of hours at union scale for work that was never done, for employees who never existed. It procured materials at grossly inflated prices-lightbulbs for sixteen dollars each, drinking cups at thirty dollars each, and on and on. The list is endless."
"Is the list in this box?"
"Only the big items. Radar systems, missiles, weapons, things I've never heard of. The lightbulbs are insignificant. Aricia had been with the company long enough to know exactly how to avoid detection. He created a ton of paperwork, little of it with his name on it. Platt & Rockland had six different divisions involved with defense contracting, and so the home office was a zoo. Aricia took advantage of this. For every bogus claim he submitted to the Navy, he had written authorization signed by some executive at the home office. Aricia would subcontract for the inflated materials, then request approval from a higher-up. It was an easy system to work, especially for a shrewd man like Aricia, who was planning on screwing the company anyway. He kept meticulous records, and later gave them to his lawyers."
"And Patrick got diem?"
"Some of them."
Sandy looked at the box. The top flaps were closed. "And this has been in hiding since he disappeared?"
"Yes."
"Did he ever come back to check on it?"
"No."
"Did you?"
"I came two years ago to renew the rental at the storage facility. I looked in the box, but didn't have the time to examine the contents. I was scared and nervous, and I didn't want to come. I was convinced these materials would never be needed because he would never be caught. But Patrick always knew."
The cross-examiner in Sandy was ready to burst with another round of questions unrelated to Aricia, but he let the moment pass. Relax, he told himself, don't appear eager and maybe the questions will get answered eventually. "So Aricia's scheme worked, and at some point he approached Charles Bogan, whose cousin is an asskicker in Washington and whose old boss is a federal judge. Did Bogan know Aricia had caused the overruns?"
She stood, reached into the box, and removed a battery-operated tape player and a rack of neatly labeled mini-cassettes. She picked through the cassettes with a pen until she found the one she wanted. She inserted it in the tape player. It was obvious to Sandy that she had done this many times before.
"Listen," she said. "April 11, 1991. The first voice is Bogan, the second is Aricia. Aricia had placed the call, and Bogan took it in the conference room on the second floor of the firm's offices."
Sandy leaned forward on his elbows. The tape began to play.
BOGAN: I gotta call from one of Platt's New York lawyers today. A guy named Krasny.
ARICIA: I know him. Typical New Tfork ass.
BOGAN: Ifes, he wasn't very friendly. He said they might have proof that you knew about the double-billing on the Stalker screens New Coastal bought from RamTec. I asked him to show me the proof. He said it would be a week or so.
ARICIA: Relax, Charlie. There's no way they can prove that because I didn't sign anything.
BOGAN: But you knew about it?
ARICIA: Of course I knew about it. I planned it. I set it in motion. It was another one of my wonderful ideas. Their problem, Charlie, is that they can't prove it There are no documents, no witnesses.
The cassette went silent, and Leah said, "Same conversation, about ten minutes later."
ARICIA: How's the Senator?
BOGAN: Doing well. Yesterday he met with the Secretary of the Navy.
ARICIA: How'd it go?
BOGAN: Went well. They're old friends, you know. The Senator expressed his strong desire to punish Platt & Rockland for its greed, yet not harm the Expedition project. The Secretary feels the same, and said he would push for a stiff penalty against Platt & Rock-land.
ARICIA: Can he speed things up?
BOGAN: Why?
ARICIA: I want the damned money, Charlie. I can feel it. I can taste it.
Leah pushed a button and the recording stopped. She removed the cassette and placed it back in the rack. "Patrick started recording early in '91. Their plans were to cut him out of the firm at the end of February, on the grounds that he was not generating enough business."
"Is that box full of tapes?"
"There are about sixty of them, all carefully edited by Patrick, so you can listen to everything in three hours."
Sandy glanced at his watch.
"We have a lot of work to do," she said.
Chapter 28
PAULO'S REQUEST for a radio was declined, but when they realized he simply wanted music they brought him a well-used tape player and two cassettes of the Rio Philharmonic Orchestra. Classical was his preference. Paulo turned the volume low and flipped through a stack of old magazines. His request for books had been taken under consideration. The food so far was more than adequate; they seemed anxious to keep him happy. His captors were young men working for someone else, someone Paulo knew he would never see. If they in fact released him, the young men would flee and prosecution would be impossible.