Steve Martini - The Enemy Inside

When I finally got through to his office, Proffit’s secretary told me that her boss was back east, in their Washington office on business. She said that he was likely to be there for some time. I got the number and called it.

When I told the receptionist what it was about, that I represented the man who was involved in the accident with Serna, my call was instantly routed, the transcontinental express from my lips to Proffit’s ear in a nanosecond.

The man was full of jovial good cheer, what you might expect from a leader who’d spent the last several years screwing over other lawyers. He told me that Serna’s death was a great loss to the firm, that she was a very special person, and that he would have an exceptionally difficult time finding someone to fill her shoes. He called it a tragedy at least three times in two sentences, and said that he hoped that my client was not too seriously injured.

For someone who had lost an irreplaceable cog in the firm’s wheel, Proffit didn’t seem terribly perturbed that I was calling him on behalf of the drunk, at least according to the early news reports, who had turned his partner into a piece of crisp bacon.

I told him that Ives was fine, but that he was facing some serious charges. I asked him for a meeting.

He wanted to know why.

I told him that I wanted to discuss Serna’s involvement with the firm, the nature of her practice. What she was like, any volunteer activities in the community in the event that we might ultimately have to deal with “victim impact statements”-that is, if my client was convicted. Just general background stuff, I told him. The information any prudent lawyer might gather regarding the victim in such a case.

There was a long pause at the other end of the line. Proffit then suggested that perhaps it could wait until he returned to Los Angeles. He told me that with Serna’s sudden death and all the reorganization in their Washington office that, at the moment, he was simply too busy.

I told him that I already had a ticket to fly to Washington on Thursday morning. Three days from now.

Proffit said he was certain that wouldn’t work. He couldn’t fit me into his schedule. It was impossible. Besides, he hated to see me travel all the way across the country on such a mundane matter.

I told him that I wasn’t, that I already had a meeting scheduled in Washington with another party on Thursday afternoon to gather other information in the case.

In the breathless pause that followed I might have thought Proffit had wrapped the coiled wire from his phone’s receiver around his head. Such were the palpable brain waves resonating at my end: “What other party?” “What information?”

He asked me to hold for a moment. When he came back on the line, it was to tell me that he had conferred with an assistant and that, as a courtesy to me, to avoid inconvenience, they would rearrange his calendar to fit me in. The first step in this process was to find out what time my other meeting was.

I told him that, if necessary, I could probably reschedule it. Nonsense, he said. It was clear that he wanted to meet with me after I had met with whomever else I was seeing. It sounded as if Proffit might want to tie me to the wall in his office and work me over with his stapler to find out who I was meeting with and what they had to say.

When I told him my other appointment was set for Friday afternoon, Proffit immediately said he was busy all morning. Would it be possible for me to hold over or to meet that evening? We set the meeting for seven, at a restaurant near his office. He gave me the name and address, said he would have one of their secretaries schedule the reservation in his name. I thanked him, and we hung up.

I couldn’t be sure whether Proffit knew anything or if he had something to hide. But I could smell the worry on his breath, even over the phone. There was something about a silk-socked lawyer in the midst of an organizational meltdown in his firm who takes the time to turn on the charm for a perfect stranger. Adjusting his calendar for my convenience. It makes you want to grab your wallet and hang on.

Something was bothering him. Whatever it was, it had Serna’s name all over it. And unless I missed my bet, it had nothing to do with filling her high heels at the firm. Proffit wanted to know what I was looking for in Washington. More to the point, he was desperate to find out who the other party was I was meeting with.

Ana Agirre had lost her ability to track her equipment or the people who had it. With the death of the man near the van and the discovery that the vehicle contained only the satellite antenna and its tripod, she was at a dead end. The van was a rental. She knew that would lead nowhere.

The people she was looking for had the computer and the software, but without the antenna they couldn’t use it. And without a signal, Ana couldn’t track them. She wanted it, all of it, and now. Time was running out on the European contract.

She thought about it for a while, racked her brain. The only lead she had left, and it was a long shot, was the original accident out in the desert. One of the parties had survived. She knew this because she had followed the news surrounding the accident from the moment the tracking signals told her that her equipment had been used and where. She knew Ives’s name because she had taken notes. He was charged with the death of the woman who had no doubt been murdered.

Ana headed to a local library. Online she checked the local newspapers going back a few weeks. There she found the name of the lawyer representing Ives-Paul Madriani. She Googled the name and found the location, the law firm of “Madriani and Hinds,” an address on Orange Avenue in Coronado. She set up to watch the place, at first from a distance from her car in a parking lot across the street, and later from a table in a restaurant very near the entrance to the office where she could see people come and go.

It was probably just another dead end, but if anyone knew anything about the accident that might give some clue as to who had her equipment, it would be either the local authorities or the lawyers involved in the case.

What she saw was a guy who came and went regularly and who occasionally stopped in the restaurant where she was seated having coffee. The waitresses always greeted him by name, Harry. This she assumed was one of the lawyers, Harry Hinds.

She watched and waited. For two days there was no sign of his partner, Paul Madriani. Ana considered her options, whether to approach them under some false guise to see what she could learn about the case, or to try to enter the office at night to look for notes or files that might give her more information. She started casing the office at night, checking the routine of the janitors, taking notes on who worked late.

Ana was hunched down at the office door in the shadows of the small garden plaza fishing for the set of lockpicks in her bag. It was after two in the morning. Dressed in a navy blue sweater, dark pants, and a pair of black running shoes, she blended easily into the night. She was preparing to break into the law office. The restaurant and its bar were closed, everything dark, when she heard the noise behind the building. She moved quickly without a sound along the path, toward the gate leading to the service area behind the office.

Through a crack in the gate she saw him. One man, all alone inside the garbage bin, rooting around, occasionally scraping against the inner steel walls. At first she thought maybe he was some transient. But as she watched she realized whoever it was wasn’t hunting for discarded cans or bottles or other treasures of the destitute. He had taped a large trash bag to the outside lip of the bin. Whenever his hand emerged over the opening it was to stuff papers, what looked like documents, into the bag. He was looking for something, and it wasn’t recyclables.