Brad Meltzer - Dead Even

“But you’re going to,” Guff said. “Just take it. It’s not a big deal.”

Sara grabbed the file folder. “This better not get me in trouble.”

“It won’t,” Guff said as they darted to the door.

By the time Evelyn returned to her desk, Guff and Sara were gone. And so was the file marked for Victor Stockwell.

“Have you been listening to anything I’ve said during the past half hour?” Jared asked. “Four hundred thousand’s not even close. If you’re going to stick with numbers like that, we’ll see you downtown.”

“Jared, I’m getting tired of this,” Hartley said with a sigh. “You say you want to settle, but you thumb your nose at everything I put out there.”

“That’s because you’re putting out nonsense. There’s-” Jared was interrupted by the electronic ring of his phone. He had given Kathleen strict instructions: He should be interrupted only if Barrow called. Lenny Barrow was Jared’s best private investigator. While prosecutors had entire precincts of police officers and detectives to dig up dirt on the opposing party, defense attorneys were forced to rely on private investigators for their snooping needs. For the past week, Barrow had been searching for information on Hartley’s client. And now, Jared smiled to himself, he would finally have the information to force a reasonable settlement. As always, the research would pay off. Picking up the receiver, Jared wondered if even fifty thousand was too much. Maybe twenty-five and an apology was sufficient. Or just twenty-five. “Jerry, please excuse me for a moment,” Jared said, lifting the phone to his ear. “Hello. Jared Lynch.”

“J, it’s me,” Barrow said in his usual calm voice.

“I was wondering when you’d call. Any good news?”

“Actually, I couldn’t find a thing. Nothing dirty, nothing juicy, nothing controversial. The woman’s a regular yawn convention.”

“That’s just wonderful,” Jared said, trying to look like he was getting good news. “I’ll tell him as soon as we hang up.”

“You got Hartley in your office?” Barrow asked.

“Oh, yeah,” Jared said, smiling. “Right in front of me.”

“Then let me add this to your plate. Because I love you, I also did a little extra homework. The guy Hartley filed the claim against – your client?”

“Yeah?”

“He’s a real scumbag, J. At the last company he worked for, he had four complaints lodged against him – two of them proven. You just better pray Hartley doesn’t have good friends like me, because the way this is going, you’re in for some pain.”

“No, that’s even better,” Jared said. “What more can I ask for?”

“Listen, I’m sorry, boss,” Barrow said. “Send my love to Hartley. And to Sara.”

“I definitely will. And thanks,” Jared said as he hung up the phone. Looking across his desk at Hartley, he forced a grin. “Sorry about that – just getting some info on your client. Now let’s get back to those numbers.”

Sara and Guff raced up the hallway. “Let me see it,” Guff said.

“Not here,” Sara said, checking over her shoulder. “In the elevator.”

“Oh, man, I bet it’s a great one. A brutal homicide. No, wait – even better – a double homicide.”

“Can you please try to control your blood lust?” Sara asked.

The elevator was empty when Sara and Guff stepped inside. Guff repeatedly pushed the door-close button: “Close, close, close, close, close, close, close,” he demanded. As the doors finally shut, Sara opened the file and flipped to the section marked Description of Crime . Struggling to decipher the arresting officer’s bad handwriting, Sara read the facts of the case. “Oh, no. This can’t be happening. Please tell me I’m reading this wrong,” she said, handing the file to Guff.

“What? What is it?”

As Guff read the report for himself, Sara said, “I can’t even believe it. It’s not a double homicide, it’s not a single homicide, it’s not even an assault. Some guy named Kozlow was caught breaking into someone’s house on the Upper East Side. The case that’s supposed to secure my future is just an idiotic little burglary. No gun, no knife, no nothing.”

“It’s definitely a loser,” Guff said as the elevator reached the ground floor. “But look at the bright side: At least you have a case.”

“I guess,” Sara said as they headed out of 100 Centre. “I just hope it’s not a whole new headache.”

Victor stood in front of Evelyn’s desk. “There was a case that was supposed to come in for me. The defendant’s name was Kozlow.”

“Kozlow, Kozlow, Kozlow,” Evelyn repeated, flipping through the newest set of booking sheets on her desk. “I don’t see it here. Sorry.”

“What about this pile?” Victor asked indignantly, pointing to Evelyn’s in-box.

Evelyn riffled through the new stack in her in-box. Still nothing. “Sorry. Haven’t seen it.”

“It was a burglary case. Kozlow was the defendant.”

“I heard you the first time,” Evelyn said. “And I still don’t have it. Have you checked with any of the other ADAs?”

“Let me ask you something,” Victor said, his eyes narrowing with anger. “Do I answer to you, or do you answer to me? Or to make it even easier, which one of us is the ECAB supervisor?”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean-”

“I don’t care what you meant. All I care about is getting that case. So I want you to go through this office, and I want you to find out who has it. Now.”

“SO WHAT DO WE DO NOW?” SARA ASKED, SITTING IN her office and staring at the Kozlow booking sheet.

“What do you mean, ‘what do we do?’” Guff asked. “What kind of question is that?”

“I mean, this case is garbage, so how can I get rid of it? Can we return it? Can we go back and get another one?”

“You can’t return a case once you catch it. It’s like buying a pair of pants and having them shortened – once you’ve messed with them, you can’t bring them back.”

“But I didn’t mess with these pants. I just pulled them off the rack.” Waving the Kozlow booking sheet in the air, Sara shouted, “These are perfectly good pants!”

“Well, you still can’t return them. No refunds, no exchanges.”

“Why?”

“Because if we operated on a return policy, the small crimes, which are the majority of crimes in this city, would never get prosecuted. Everyone would be waiting for the good stuff.”

“Guff, I really don’t care what the policy is, I need to find a way out of this. Now let’s back up. Are you telling me I can’t walk right back into ECAB, drop this file on the receptionist’s desk, and say, ‘Sorry, the delivery guy handed me this by mistake’?”

“I guess you could,” Guff hypothesized. “As long as-”

Sara’s phone started to ring.

“As long as what?” Sara asked, ignoring the phone.

“As long as the ECAB receptionist doesn’t know it’s gone. But if she finds out…”

“Hold on a second,” Sara said to Guff as she picked up her phone. “This is Sara.”

“Sara, this is Evelyn from ECAB. Do you have a burglary case for a defendant named Kozlow? If you took it, I need to know. It’s important.”

“Can you hang on a second?” Sara asked. She put Evelyn on hold and looked up at Guff. “We’re in trouble.”

“Two hundred and fifty thousand?” Marty Lubetsky asked, his face flushed red with anger. “What the hell kind of settlement is that?”

“Considering the facts of the case, I think we did okay,” Jared explained, trying to put a positive spin on his negotiation with Hartley. “He was originally asking for seven hundred.”

Marty Lubetsky was the partner at Wayne & Portnoy who supervised the Rose Microsystems account. “I don’t give a shit that they were asking for seven hundred thousand – they could’ve been asking for seven hundred million for all I care. Your job is to bring them down to where our client is comfortable. On that endeavor, you failed. Miserably.”