36
Jason
Jason sits next to the man who owns Metropolis as they both wait to speak to a detective. He knows this because he overhead the man’s conversation with the receptionist when he came in. Zach Davidson is his name, and Jason is surprised that he’s so young. He hadn’t thought much about it, but now he realizes he always assumed whoever owned the building was some pudgy older guy, vaguely Italian. Even those who are stereotyped are guilty of stereotyping, for Davidson is fit, somehow clearly hip, and he’s probably no more than ten years older than Jason.
As Jason stealthily checks him out, he realizes that Davidson’s age is probably closer to his own, that it’s the man’s exhaustion and obvious anxiety that have added a decade. And who can blame the poor guy? Although Garrett Haines is still alive, his condition is critical and he could die at any time. If there’s negligence involved, which seems more than likely, Davidson is sure to be facing some serious charges. A tough break. Really tough.
A woman in an unflattering beige uniform leans out the office door and calls, “Jason Franklin?”
Jason forgets all about Davidson’s problems as he worries about possibly digging himself into an even deeper hole, risking both his law license and his freedom for hiding Marta’s presence at Garrett’s fall from the police. This is further complicated by the fact that, as far as the police are concerned, he’s in the questionable position of being seen as both a witness and Liddy’s lawyer, although he’s neither.
Before the EMTs and police arrived, he had advised Liddy to say nothing to anyone. When she struggled to follow his advice, he interceded, which is how the police developed this impression. Jason didn’t want her to say anything about Marta. Nor did he want her to incriminate herself if she had purposely pushed Haines, a question he didn’t ask. No lawyer would.
They sit down, and the detective immediately begins the interrogation, his tone curt. “Describe what you saw when you went up to the fourth floor.” He’d asked Jason to do this last night.
“Liddy Haines was sitting on the landing in front of the closed elevator. She was sobbing and almost incoherent, but she managed to tell me enough to call nine-one-one.”
“What else did she say?” Also previously asked and answered.
“‘It’s Garrett. He fell in.’”
“And you knew who both Ms. Haines and Garrett were?”
“Yes.”
“How did you know this?”
“Ms. Haines has a storage unit at Metropolis, where my office is.”
“I’ve never heard of a lawyer with an office in a storage unit.”
Jason wants to point out that he’d actually heard of a lawyer with an office in a storage unit at least three times last night, but he resists. “It’s odd, but it works for me.”
“And you claim you went to Harvard?”
“Yes.” As annoyed as Jason is at the detective’s unrelenting suspicion, he’s relieved that there doesn’t appear to be any speculation that Liddy might not have been alone. So Jason says nothing more. Finally, with a wave of frustration, the detective dismisses him.
Jason heads toward Metropolis to pick up the computer, files, and clothes Marta asked him to bring to her. Scattered snow showers were forecast, but it’s coming down much more heavily than that, bringing the streets to a standstill. As he sits locked in traffic, he switches on the radio. It’s the top of the hour, and a meteorologist is talking about how little accumulation there will be. Jason watches the air turn thick with snow, the bushes and grassy areas hugging the sidewalks growing completely white. Then a news announcer comes on and begins reporting on Garrett Haines’s accident.
“W. Garrett Haines the Third, the well-known Boston real estate executive and philanthropist, is in critical condition at Mass General after a two-story fall down an elevator shaft at the Metropolis Storage Warehouse on Mass Ave in Cambridge last night. Mr. Haines is currently undergoing surgery. As of now, the fall is being labeled an accident, but a person familiar with the investigation, who did not wish to be identified, indicated police are not ruling out foul play.”
Jason switches off the radio. If they’re talking about foul play, they have to be talking about Liddy.
Jason flips open his computer a little before six the next morning. The Boston Globe is reporting that Jason Franklin, attorney at law, accompanied Lidia Haines when she spoke to police at her husband’s bedside at the hospital, where W. Garrett Haines III is in the ICU that’s named after him. The article adds that Mr. Franklin, an attorney, was also with Ms. Haines at the time of Mr. Haines’s accident, and goes on to mention that Franklin’s office is located at the Metropolis Storage Warehouse in Cambridge, where the incident occurred.
Despite the fact that there are some inaccuracies and false insinuations in the article, like he hadn’t been with Liddy at the hospital and he’s not her attorney, shit is going to hit the fan. His cell begins to explode with the ding of emails, the tritone of texts, and the chime of calls, followed by the pulse of voicemails. He mutes all of the sounds and puts the phone in his pocket, but it vibrates, and he turns this feature off too. Not that he believes silencing his phone is going to change anything. It’s just that he needs time to prepare for the onslaught.
He had explained to the police, both at Metropolis and at the station, that he wasn’t representing Liddy, that he was just a friend helping her through a difficult time and that she’d be retaining another attorney for that job. He’d hoped this would keep his name out the papers, but clearly it had not.
Jason punches in his mother’s number. He knows his parents are getting ready for a day of teaching, and that they’ll be startled to see a call from him this early.
“Jason!” his mother cries. “Is everything all right? Are you okay?”
Jason would smile at her predictability, but smiling isn’t a possibility when he knows how much his news is going to upset her. “I’m fine, Mom,” he says. “Perfectly fine. Everyone is fine. There’s nothing to worry about.”
“Then why are you calling this early?” The suspicion and fear in her voice are palpable. “What’s wrong?”
“There’s one small thing I need to tell—”
“I knew it. Is it cancer?”
“No, Mom, I told you nobody’s sick. It’s nothing like that. It’s about my job.”
“Your job? What about your job?”
“It’s about Spencer Uccello . . . I’m not working there anymore.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that I’ve gone out on my own.”
“On your own,” she repeats, hesitates. “This doesn’t seem to be enough of a reason for a six a.m. call. What aren’t you telling me?”
There’s no other alternative, so Jason dives in. “There was an incident at the firm, and we decided to part ways. I was working for one of our big corporate clients, defending the business against an immigration violation, when I discovered that two of the vice presidents in the company were involved in human trafficking. They were financing the people bringing in these migrant women and girls and then selling them off to—”
“What do you mean ‘part ways’?”
“I anonymously leaked the information about the trafficking to a federal government official, who stepped in and stopped it.”
“Well, then you did the right thing.” His mother sniffs. “Are you saying Spencer Uccello would have just let them get away with it?”
“No one knew about it but me, and if I’d kept it to myself, no one at the firm would have known either. Which is what would have made me a team player and gotten me a partnership.”
“I don’t understand what you did that didn’t make you a team player.”
“It wasn’t what I did so much as how I did it. I used materials protected by attorney-client privilege to back up my claim, which is illegal for a lawyer to do. When it all came down, it didn’t take much to figure out who had given the feds the materials, which I admitted when they asked. In the end, the client—”
“It’s good you told the truth. It makes me proud.”
“In the end, the client never found out the firm was behind the arrests, which was exactly the way Spencer Uccello wanted it to stay. But they couldn’t keep an attorney who had knowingly broken the law, especially one who had been disloyal to a client and, in their minds, to the firm.”
“They fired you for that!” she cries, full of indignation. “I think that’s just—”
“Mom, it’s over. They didn’t fire me. I walked away. We made a deal everyone could live with, and it was all very hush-hush. No one outside of a few of the higher-ups at the firm knew anything about it. Spencer Uccello had a reputation and a big client it wanted to keep. I had a reputation and a license I wanted to keep. It’s been over a year, so there’s no reason—”
“Over a year? This happened over a year ago, and you didn’t tell us?”
Jason can hear her injured tone, and he wants to kick himself. He’d tried to convince himself he was keeping this a secret out of consideration for his family’s feelings, that he didn’t want to deprive them of the joy they took in his success. But now he understands he was ashamed of his fall from grace. It was all about him, not about them. “I’m sorry. I should have told you but I, I didn’t want to upset everyone. Disappoint everyone.”
“We’re your family! It’s okay to upset your family. That’s what we’re here for.”
“I know. I was wrong. And it would have been—”
“Why are you telling me this now? Why this very moment?”
Jason sighs. “There was another incident. Happened a few days ago. I was—”
“Another incident related to human trafficking?”
“No, no. Completely different. Nothing to do with Spencer Uccello. It happened in the building where my new office is. And it’s in the news. The Globe. A man fell down an elevator shaft. Horrible thing. But I’m mentioned in the article. And so is my office.”
“That philanthropist? I heard about that. You’re right—it was horrible, just horrible. But wasn’t he in some kind of self-storage place? I thought it sounded odd that there was an elevator. Aren’t those usually just garages lined up next to each other?”
“This is a building. The units are inside the building. It’s big, and there are five floors, so—”
“Are you telling me your new office is in a storage unit?”
“That’s what I’m telling you,” Jason says miserably. “I’m sorry, Mom. I—”
“Oh, Jason, I thought I raised a smarter boy. Why would we care where your office is?”