David Ellis - In the Company of Liars

“So Sam unknowingly handed the money to Strauss,” McCoy says. “In the locker room before racquetball, before all three of them had lunch.”

“Exactly,” Benjamin says. “And Sam’s no dummy. He gets it. Mat Pagone’s telling him, if he has any inclination to squeal, Sam will go down with him.

“So Sam meets with me and tells me all about this. We don’t know what to do. So he calls you guys, the FBI. You know he called you. He wanted you to subpoena him before the grand jury.”

“Understood,” McCoy says. “But let’s back up. Back to what happened after Sam confronted Mat, and Mat threatened Sam.”

Walter Benjamin frowns. McCoy, after hearing all this, wants to focus on conversations between Benjamin and Sam Dillon.

“You’re not a target, Mr. Benjamin. You know that. Sam came to see you, you said. Start with that.”

“Okay.” The executive sighs. “Sam comes to my office and tells me that his worst suspicions have been, more or less, confirmed. Mat Pagone all but admitted to bribing these senators and threatened Sam if he cooperated with the feds. Sam swore to me that he didn’t know what was in that bag that he handed to Strauss. And I believed him. I’ll go to my grave believing that. Sam’s a trusting sort of guy. Yeah, he’s political, but-Mat hands him a gym bag and says, ‘Strauss left this in the locker room, last time we played,’ Sam’s going to believe Mat. He’s not going to assume there’s bribe money in there.”

“I believe you, Mr. Benjamin. I do. Sam Dillon was a good guy. What happened next? Next thing you remember, after meeting with Sam?”

McCoy sees Owen Harrick, in her peripheral vision, his pen poised. McCoy asked for Benjamin to repeat the entire story for cover; this is the only part she needs to hear again.

“The next thing I remember?” Benjamin looks at his lawyer. “Like, going home or whatever?”

“Like,” she elaborates, “did you speak with anyone about this conversation?”

“Not in any detail, no.”

“At all,” she insists.

“At-” Benjamin’s focus strays to the ceiling. “Well, right. I think I told you this before. The scientist who came to my office. We were going to have lunch together. This was right after Sam left my office.”

“Okay. What was his name again?” she asks, another attempt at cover.

“Doctor Neil Lomas,” Benjamin says.

“Right. That’s right. Okay. Tell me about that again.”

“Well, he could probably see the look on my face. He told me I looked upset. We were supposed to have lunch in the cafeteria-we did that once a week. I said I needed some fresh air. We went across the street to this Italian place. Neil-Neil and I-Doctor Neil Lomas,” he explains. “He’s one of our top researchers. Works in pediatric drugs.”

Oh, yes. McCoy knows all about Doctor Neil Lomas, one of the chief pediatric researchers for Flanagan-Maxx Pharmaceuticals.

“We’ve been pretty close, recently. Neil’s wife left him, just like that, about a year ago.”

Fourteen months ago, to be exact.

“And he’d gotten into some problems. He’d been-well, I don’t know if I-Neil came pretty unwound when his wife left. It was out of the blue. He was a train wreck. So-he’d been having some problems.”

Some problems.McCoy would react, visibly, under other circumstances. Yes, Doctor Neil Lomas has been having some problems. Cocaine for starters, a habit that set him back about twenty thousand dollars over the last year. McCoy doesn’t know if this was the result, or cause, of his wife’s rather hasty departure. Now he gambles, too, and he’s not very good at it. Self-destructive habits, both of them, and McCoy has always wondered whether addictive gamblers, deep inside,want to lose. Lomas has a second mortgage on his house and tough alimony payments to boot. Yeah, a few problems. He was into a bookie for over fifteen thousand before his debt was purchased by someone with another agenda, and he’s not off the cocaine yet.

A drug-addicted, distraught gambler. The perfect scientist to compromise. Buy his debt, supply him cocaine, whisper whatever bullshit into his ear that he needs to hear, and he’s yours.

Benjamin, given his audience, doesn’t want to mention Lomas’s narcotics use or gambling problems, and McCoy won’t force the issue. She won’t tell Benjamin that she knows the identity of the person who purchased Lomas’s gambling debts from the bookie Jimmy, that she knows that this is the same person who is supplying Lomas with cocaine on a daily basis, after work. McCoy wants, in fact, to give the impression that she is entirely unconcerned with Doctor Neil Lomas. But that may be difficult.

“So there was a history of confiding in each other,” Benjamin explains. “But I swear to you, I didn’t go into detail. I just told Neil there were some problems. That there was some possibility that someone had been doing something they shouldn’t, and that there would be a federal investigation.”

“And how did Doctor Lomas respond to that?”

“He was concerned. Like a friend should be.”

“Be specific, please, Mr. Benjamin. Word-for-word, if you could.”

“Word-for-okay. Well, he asked me questions. He wanted to know whatkind of investigation. He wanted to know what department was being investigated. He asked me who was interested. He wanted to know who had initiated this investigation. He wanted details.”

“Word-for-word, Mr. Benjamin.”

Benjamin closes his eyes a moment. “God. Okay. I said there might be a problem with something. I said someone outside our company had raised a very disturbing concern. He wanted to know who had raised the concern, he wanted to know what kind of concern. Well, he could pretty much figure out thewho part.”

“He could?”

“Well, he had seen Sam walk out of my office. In fact, out of common courtesy, I had introduced them.”

Jesus.McCoy’s stomach reels. This is new information, a seemingly innocuous detail from Walter Benjamin’s perspective. Benjamin had given Doctor Lomas a name, a name that Doctor Lomas had passed on.

“So,” McCoy says, with all the casualness she can muster, “Doctor Lomas knew that it wasSam Dillon who had some disturbing information.”

“Yeah. I mean, the name ‘Sam Dillon’ meant nothing to him. I just said, Sam had raised some questions.”

“And what did Doctor Lomas ask about that?”

“Well, he wanted to knowwhat questions. I said I didn’t know.”

“You lied?”

“Yes. I said I didn’t know, because if I told Neil Idid know, he’d keep pressing me. You have to understand Neil. You have to understand our relationship. I’ve been his confidant. The guy he talks to. He needs someone like that. So he would expect the same from me. He would expect me to be open with him. So I lied.”

“Tell me, Mr. Benjamin, exactly what you said.”

Walter Benjamin pauses. “I said, ‘I don’t know the details. All I know is that Sam told me something illegal was taking place, and he was going to report it to the U.S. attorney, and he wanted me to know in advance because the feds might be paying us a visit soon.’ ”

McCoy looks at her partner.

“And I told Neil, that was all I knew. I said I didn’t know any details. Sam had just paid me a courtesy call, I told him, so I wouldn’t have my pants down when the FBI showed up.”

“And this was Tuesday, February third?”

“Umm-right. Yeah. I remember that day mostly because it was the last time Sam and I spoke. It was, what, less than a week before he was mur-”

Benjamin’s face goes cold. The room is silent. McCoy tries to avoid his stare but she can’t; her eyes involuntarily move to the Flanagan-Maxx executive, staring at her, his mouth open.