Джозеф Файндер - Judgment

They both nodded, and Markowski said, “Understood. We’d like to apologize, first, for taking your time on this matter once again, but we’ve received some new information we’d like to ask you about.”

Detective Krieger busied himself writing on a clipboard.

“Let’s start with the decedent’s hotel, the, uh, Home Stay Inn in Allston. We’ve had a chance to review the hotel’s surveillance tape, and we wanted to clear up a couple of points. Did you say you’ve been to this hotel?”

“Asked and answered,” Martie said, before Juliana could say anything.

Markowski feigned a confused look. He’d already asked her, and she’d denied ever being there. He was trying to entrap her. They wanted her to think they had her on videotape, so she’d no longer dare try to deny it.

But she knew better. They had no tape. He was bluffing.

“As I’ve already told you, I have not been to that hotel,” Juliana said.

Martie scowled but said nothing. She obviously didn’t want Juliana to talk.

Markowski seemed to be studying his notepad, as if the right answer were there. The other man looked from his partner to Juliana and back again.

Markowski said, “Judge, have you recently taken a trip out of town?”

“I went to Chicago last week for a conference,” she replied, and she thought: They’ve pulled my credit card records .

“Which hotel did you stay at?”

“The Peninsula.” Which they must know if they’d done their homework.

“Did you at any time encounter the decedent during your stay at that hotel?”

She suddenly felt a chill. They’ve pulled my credit card records and know that Matías Sanchez and I were at the same hotel at the same time, the same bar at the same time, she thought. Were there eyewitnesses? All she and Matías had done in public was to sit and talk.

“You don’t have to answer this,” Martie said.

“That’s all right. No. I had no idea — was he there?”

She remembered: We were both on the rooftop terrace at the same time, having drinks. Did we use our credit cards at the same time too? That she didn’t recall. Had Matías paid for the drinks? She thought so, but she wasn’t sure. She had been on her second glass of wine by then.

That made her think of her mother, reliably soused at night after work or on the weekend, and she wondered again whether she should maybe stop drinking. She was fairly certain she didn’t have the alcoholic gene, but growing up with Roz Brody as your mom, you had to wonder if her drinking problem might have been passed on.

“That’s what I found interesting, that you both stayed at the same hotel at the same time. Quite the coincidence.”

Martie smiled at Juliana, then turned to Markowski. “Two lawyers at a national legal conference.” A frosty smile. “Some coincidence. Gentlemen, do you have anything else for Judge Brody?”

“We’re still trying to figure out how Judge Brody’s sunglasses ended up in Mr. Sanchez’s hotel room.”

“Well, best of luck with that, and do let us know when you have an answer. Are we done here?”

“That’s all we have,” said Markowski.

“If you’re done processing the sunglasses,” Juliana said, “I’d like them back.”

“You didn’t need me,” Martie Connolly said later.

“No. But it was good to have you there. For moral support.”

“If they could place you there at the hotel consorting with Sanchez, they would have said so.”

“True.”

“I don’t think they’re going to be able to connect you with him outside the courtroom. And I don’t think they’re coming back.”

Juliana nodded. “I hope you’re right. But as long as I have that sex tape hanging over my head, this isn’t over.”

She went to her room a short while later to check e-mail one last time and get ready for bed. When she opened her laptop and signed into her e-mail, she found a new message from an address she didn’t recognize. The sender was a Richard Donegan, followed by a string of numbers, at Gmail. The subject was “Your Recent Visit.” Curious, she clicked on the link in the e-mail. It opened slowly, and she saw that it was a color photograph, large and high-resolution. She had to reposition her cursor several times to get to the center of the image.

She was instantly overcome by dread. It was an image capture from a surveillance tape. Her face was half-turned toward the camera, clearly recognizable despite the hat. Her right hand was poised in midair, knocking at a door whose number, 322, was also clearly discernible.

“Oh, dear,” Martha said when she saw it, a few moments later. “So the surveillance video wasn’t missing after all.”

“I assume the police don’t have this.”

“Yet.”

“A way to remind me of the leverage they have over me. They can prove I lied to the police.”

“Exactly.”

“I’ve dragged you into this, and for that I’m deeply sorry.”

“Honey, I’m retired. There’s nothing that can be done to me.”

“Your reputation. You know I lied to law enforcement.”

“I’ve done worse. Someday I’ll tell you.” She put a hand on Juliana’s. “But we don’t know who’s doing this to you, do we?”

Juliana shook her head.

“Philip hasn’t found out who’s behind all this?”

“Nope.” She fell silent for a long time. She could hear the ticking of Martie’s grandfather clock in the foyer.

“You’d tell me if you knew, wouldn’t you?”

Juliana looked at her sharply. “Of course. But I think I know someone who does. Someone who might know what’s really going on.”

Martie raised her eyebrows.

“Marshak,” Juliana said.

Martie’s eyes went wide, an incredulous look on her face. “Ray Marshak? That’s crazy. That man is your mortal enemy.”

“Maybe so. But no one knows more about financial subterfuge.”

“With him you may be putting yourself in even greater danger, Juliana. From what I’ve heard, anyway. What are you thinking?”

For a long time, Juliana didn’t reply.

Then she said, “I’m desperate, Martie. Do you understand that?”

Martie nodded slowly. “And desperate times call for desperate measures. I get it. But please, Juliana. Be careful.”

Raymond Marshak had made his fortune in something called risk arbitrage, though the real secret to his success was illegal insider trading. It was an open secret. For years he had gotten away with it. Until Juliana Brody came along.

As a young assistant US Attorney, Juliana had heard the rumors and decided to do something. But Marshak was a slippery bastard. Getting anything on him seemed impossible. Everyone was afraid to testify against him. He went around in a low-hanging fog of suspicion, yet he repeatedly eluded prosecution. Finally Juliana was able to nab him on a technicality: he’d sent confirmation slips through the mail that didn’t disclose the fact that a commission was included in the price. Piddling, but that constituted mail fraud. A felony.

Her boss, the US Attorney, Kent Yarnell, wanted her to drop the case. She couldn’t win, it would look bad; Marshak was too high-profile, too well connected. Yarnell was always most concerned about his scorecard. Better a guilty man go free, he probably believed, than be embarrassed by an acquittal. He wouldn’t go ahead with a case unless he had 95 percent certainty that it would result in a conviction. And Juliana admitted there probably was only an 80 percent chance she’d win.

So instead of going up against Kent and getting fired, Juliana reached out to a law school friend in the Justice Department in Washington, Aaron Dunn, who worked in the Securities and Financial Fraud Unit. Dunn’s unit was supremely interested in bringing down the notorious Ray Marshak, however they could do it. Hell, they got Al Capone on tax evasion; if mail fraud was what it required to take down Ray Marshak, go for it. Now she had the air cover to pursue her case against Marshak, no matter how Kent Yarnell felt about it. Kent was pissed off, but he’d been neutralized. He couldn’t stop her.