First, Kill the Lawyers, page 8
“You’re the one who said we shouldn’t have taken the money.”
“I never said that. I just asked what we were willin’ to do t’ earn it.”
“It’s still a good question.”
“Yeah, well, while you’re ponderin’, Mickelson said he can meet with you at ten this mornin’.”
Freddie held up a pink slip of paper taken from the pad we use to jot down phone messages, $9.49 for two dozen at OfficeMax. I crossed the office and snatched it from his fingers.
“Have you talked to Sara?” I asked.
“She said she’ll bop in later this mornin’. Or maybe Steve. You never know with them. Do you really think our clients are surveilling us?”
“Someone is.”
“O’Neill wouldn’t give ’em up?”
“He’s not afraid of me.”
“I shoulda talked to ’im.”
“Yeah, you’re a bad man.”
“Naw, I’m not. I got the rep, though, and sometimes that’s enough. What’s the plan?”
“I’ll keep on the lawyers. Once you’re caught up with our other clients, why don’t you go ahead and cross-index the five cases, where were they tried, who were the prosecutors, the judges, the bailiffs, I don’t know what else. Might be the hacker is someone in the legal system that’s witnessed so much bullshit he finally snapped. It could happen, right?”
“I’m surprised it doesn’t happen all the time. My thing, though—I still think it’s about blackmail. If not, why hasn’t NIMN uploaded all those documents by now?”
“Authentication. They’re trying to verify that the documents are legit.”
“In that case, time’s a-wastin’.”
* * *
Associates and Kaushal consisted of six attorneys with a single office in downtown St. Paul, and yet if it wasn’t the best-known law firm in Minnesota, it was in the top three. Hannum, Hillsman, and Byers employed over 250 attorneys with offices in eleven locations in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, and China, but I doubted one person in a hundred had ever heard of it. It made me wonder if that was on purpose.
Its Minneapolis headquarters was actually located in Plymouth, about thirteen miles west of the city. I arrived ten minutes early and waited twenty-five minutes before Mickelson would see me.
A young woman who wore her dress the way tomatoes wear their skin led me to his office. She noticed my eyes occasionally drifting to her backside as we walked, yet she didn’t seem to mind. She announced my name when we entered the office, but not the names of the three people who were waiting for me. That was left to Mickelson. Introductions were made and hands were shaken. The four of us sat in a circle around a low glass coffee table not unlike the one in John Kaushal’s office, and I wondered if lawyers all shopped at the same furniture store.
Mickelson was on my right, Mary Feeney, the mayor of the City of Minneapolis, was on my left, and across from me was Bryan Daggett. All I was told about him was that he represented Ryan-Reed Inc.
The woman found a chair outside the circle, crossed her slender legs, and began recording every word that was spoken in a green steno book. I kept glancing at her. There was nothing sexual about it, though. The woman wasn’t that pretty. It was because she gave me an idea that made me go “Hmm.”
“We are greatly distressed by the events that have transpired,” Feeney said.
“I don’t blame you, Madam Mayor, Ms. Mayor—how should I address you?”
“Mary is fine. As I was saying, if certain documents were made public, the consequences would be quite embarrassing.”
“Yes,” Daggett said. “Very much so.”
He was looking directly at Mickelson when he spoke, and it occurred to me that Ryan-Reed would not hesitate for a moment to sue its own law firm in retaliation for failing to secure the firm’s private data. Mickelson, though, didn’t seem to mind the stare or the veiled threat.
“Have you made any progress?” he asked me.
“We’ve identified a number of possibilities that seem promising.”
“I know poli-speak when I hear it,” Feeney said. “Are you telling us the truth or just blowing smoke?”
“I’m telling you the truth, Madam—Mary. We do have a few ideas that we’re pursuing. The problem is time. If my partner is right and this is all part of an elaborate extortion scheme, good. We can deal with that one way or another. If, however, the hacker keeps his promise to upload the material on NIMN … I’ve been checking the website every couple of hours.”
“I’ve been doing it every ten minutes.”
“Tell us what you know,” Daggett said.
“I will,” I said. “First, though, tell me what you know.”
“You have the facts.”
“I want to hear the story. In your own words. My experience, how you say something is almost as important as what you say.”
The way they squirmed in their chairs, neither the mayor nor Daggett seemed comfortable with that idea. Mickelson, on the other hand, spoke right up.
“Are you familiar with the Supreme Court decision that vacated the conviction of former Virginia governor Bob McDonnell?” he asked.
“No.”
“McDonnell was originally convicted of federal corruption charges. It was proved that he accepted a hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars’ worth of goods, including a Rolex watch, and over twenty thousand dollars’ worth of designer clothes for his wife from a supporter who ran a company that manufactured nutritional supplements. In exchange, he texted an aide and told him to make sure that the supporter got the meetings he wanted with certain state officials.
“The court ruled, however, that the Virginia jury was wrong to think that McDonnell’s actions counted as official corruption. Instead, it said, to prove bribery there must be an official act that involved the formal exercise of governmental power. Setting up a meeting with regulators, telling a government worker to listen to the supporter, issuing a directive that says the supporter should be assisted in every way, none of these things are official acts. According to the court, it’s merely access. That’s why the charges against Mayor Feeney were dropped.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Taylor, should I explain to you the nature of politics in America?” Feeney asked.
“If you like.”
“Everyone wants access. Everyone wants to be heard. Conscientious public officials arrange meetings for constituents all the time so that they can be heard. We contact other officials on their behalf. We include them in events. That’s part of our job. Should I ignore even the most commonplace requests for assistance, should I blow off citizens with legitimate concerns, simply because they might have donated money to my campaign? Of course not.
“I personally believe that business is overregulated. I believe if we want to grow the economy, we must get government off the backs of business owners. That’s the platform I ran on. Ryan-Reed agreed with me and donated two hundred and fifty thousand dollars to my election. I won, by a seven-point margin, I might add. Afterward, Ryan-Reed contacted my office and asked to discuss the possibility of building a new plant on the North Side. Should I have refused to take the meeting?
“It’s routine political courtesy, Taylor. It’s part of the everyday functioning of elected officials. What I’m doing is allowing citizens to participate in the democratic process. So what if Ryan-Reed helped pay for my daughter’s wedding reception or gave me the use of a Lexus convertible? So what if they provided me with a fifty-thousand-dollar no-interest loan?”
“If you want government to listen to you, you have to pay up,” Daggett said. “That’s what the Supreme Court ruled.”
“Are you sure that’s really what it had in mind?” I asked.
“The federal prosecutor claimed my actions were improperly influenced by Ryan-Reed,” Feeney said. “But she couldn’t prove there was a direct exchange of an official act for money. That’s why the charges were dropped. From the outset, I strongly asserted my innocence before God. I swore that I did not betray the sacred trust bestowed on me by the citizens of Minneapolis. I was right to do so.”
“Why, then, is everyone worried about our hacker?” I asked.
Mickelson eventually ended the long pause that followed my question.
“The mayor likes to make to-do lists,” he said. “She writes down items of importance, tracks their progress, and checks them off when completed.”
“So does my mother.”
“Did your mother ever begin proceedings to evict sixty-two at-risk families from their low-income housing so that Ryan-Reed could build a plant at a location with easy access to the freeway? Did she do it on the same morning that fifty thousand dollars was deposited in her private account?”
“The plant would bring much-needed jobs and tax revenue to the city,” the mayor said.
“Whose side are you on, anyway?” Daggett asked.
“Don’t mind me,” Mickelson said. “I’m just playing devil’s advocate.”
I was shocked, not by the idea that the mayor of the City of Minneapolis would take a bribe. C’mon. It’s politics in America. I was surprised that she put it in writing. I said so.
“I like to keep track of things,” Feeney said.
“How many deals like this are you involved in, that you need written notes to keep track?”
“That’s an insulting question,” Daggett said. “I demand that you apologize to the mayor. Apologize, I say.”
“What are you going to do?” I asked. “Challenge me to a duel?”
“Taylor,” Mickelson said. “Cut it out.”
“How many people knew about this?” I asked.
“The plans for Ryan-Reed to expand to the North Side or my notes?” the mayor asked.
“Both?”
“The plans were common knowledge in my office. Certainly once we began evictions from public housing and eminent domain proceedings they became well known. The media covered it extensively. As for my practice of note keeping, it was never something I talked about, just did. People who knew me might have been aware I kept them, but they weren’t available to anyone else. No one read them but me. The federal prosecutor was unaware that they even existed, and once we learned she was snooping around, I destroyed them.”
Meaning it wasn’t one of her people who ratted her out, I told myself. If so, they wouldn’t have waited until now. They would have done it when the prosecutor first began asking questions.
“What about your people?” I asked Daggett.
“Expanding our operation was not a secret by any means,” Daggett said. “It was discussed at our shareholders meeting. As for the details, I expect that most of the people in our corporate offices knew at least bits and pieces of what we were attempting to accomplish. Plus there were architects and construction firms involved, and lenders.”
“Was Minnesota River State Bank one of them?”
“I believe so, yes. Is that significant?”
“I couldn’t say. It’s a name that keeps popping up.”
“We weren’t trying to be secretive,” Daggett said. “We weren’t deceiving anyone. Why would we? We did nothing wrong. This is simply how business works.”
“Apparently the federal prosecutor disagreed.”
“She’s incapable of seeing the big picture,” Feeney said. “Making sure that Ryan-Reed remains in Minneapolis is for the common good of our citizens. Does she think that having them move to St. Paul—or Wisconsin, for God’s sake—is a more desirable outcome?”
“None of this is important,” Mickelson said. “What’s important, Taylor, is that the mayor’s notes might prove to a jury that the quid pro quo relationship that the Supreme Court believes is essential to proving official corruption existed between her and Ryan-Reed.”
“Nonsense,” Feeney said.
“Even if it doesn’t, this affair will not survive the smell test. The mayor’s deal with Ryan-Reed will probably collapse. The possibility of her remaining in office past her current term is problematic at best. That’s assuming she’s not impeached.”
“Scott,” Feeney said. She was clearly shocked by Mickelson’s assessment of her situation.
“These notes must not, cannot be revealed,” he added. “Do you understand, Taylor?”
“Perfectly,” I said. “But if they were destroyed…”
“The content of the notes—and thus the fact they were kept in the first place—was on the server the hacker hacked.”
“How did that happen?”
Mickelson’s eyes flickered onto the young woman sitting outside of the circle and flicked back.
Daggett was staring at Mickelson again when he said, “There is much at stake.”
“For me, too,” Mickelson said.
“On advice of counsel, we have not intervened. That might change.”
Mickelson didn’t respond to Daggett’s warning.
“Personally, I think this is all much ado about nothing,” Feeney said. “I’m innocent.”
“That’s the spirit,” I said.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Neither Daggett nor Mickelson appreciated my cavalier attitude, but that was okay. The idea of getting fired from the case didn’t bother me a bit.
I told everyone I’d be in touch and left Mickelson’s office. The young woman in the tight dress escorted me to the lobby. The idea that had formed when she first opened her steno book came back to me.
I asked, “Do you make the record at all of Mickelson’s meetings?”
She smiled slightly. I think she was impressed that I knew the technical term for what court reporters and legal stenographers do.
“It depends,” she said. “Sometimes Mr. Mickelson wants a record but not a recording.”
“No stenograph machine?”
She smiled at that, too.
“Again, it depends on the meeting. If we’re taking a deposition we’ll use a stenograph as well as digital recording equipment. I can type three hundred and ten words a minute with a ninety-eight percent accuracy rate.”
“Were you making the record at the meeting when the mayor first told Mickelson about her notes?”
“Uh-huh. I remember because it was after the federal prosecutor filed charges, and Mr. Mickelson was angry that she didn’t tell him about the notes way before that.” Her voice dropped three octaves. “It was my record that was stolen.”
“Who did you tell about it?”
The woman stopped in her tracks and turned to face me.
“What?”
“Who did—?”
“No one. Never. Mr. Taylor, maintaining a client’s confidentiality and security is everything. That’s why we’re all so upset that we were hacked. I used to be a court reporter, and I was taught that I’m not just making the record, I’m the guardian of the record. What happens in a deposition room stays in the deposition room. Always and forever.”
“You never tell stories? You never tell friends about some of the funny things you’ve seen and heard?”
“No.”
“I’m not saying you identify specific cases, or even use real names, just say things like, I don’t know, ‘This silly woman charged with bribery, she put it in writing, do you believe that?’”
The woman hesitated before answering. Her eyes looked away and then found mine again.
“No,” she said.
“Miss—I don’t even know your name.”
“It’s April Herron.”
“See, I didn’t need to know your name. I don’t want to know your name. I’m certainly not going to talk to your boss about any of this. I just want to know who you told.”
“No one.”
“Okay. I just hope you remember that I gave you a chance to cooperate when everything starts going south.”
“Wait. Are you saying I’m in trouble?”
It was a trick that I learned on the job and tried to perfect after I went private. Give suspects something to worry about and then wait for them to come to you.
“Forget I said anything.”
I started moving down the corridor. April skipped in front of me and said, “This way.” She kept looking back at me, though, and I could see the muscles in her face working as we walked. She stopped again and pivoted toward me.
“Wait,” April said. “You work for Mr. Mickelson, too.”
“Yes, I do.”
“So the same rules of confidentiality apply to you that apply to me.”
“Of course.”
She hesitated for a moment and said, “Mr. Mickelson doesn’t need to know this, does he?”
“I promise.”
“I told a joke, just like you said, during happy hour with my friends, people I used to work with when I was a court reporter.”
“Other court reporters?”
“Uh-huh. I said almost what you said, that this woman kept a detailed record of her crimes, including times and dates, and one of my friends who knew the people I work with, she said, ‘Do you mean the mayor?’ And I said, ‘I’m not naming any names.’ My friends and I, we never name names.”
“Who were you talking to?”
“I don’t want to get anyone in trouble.”
“Neither do I.”
April looked up and down the corridor to make sure no one was watching, then recited two names.
I thanked her.
She walked me to the lobby. At the door she leaned in close.
“Please,” April said.
“I promise,” I said again. “This will never come back on you.”
From the look on her face, I don’t think she believed me.
* * *
There was a three-story parking ramp adjacent to the building that housed the Hannum, Hillsman, and Byers law offices. My car was parked on the first floor in a slot reserved for visitors. My cell phone rang as I climbed in. The caller ID recognized Clinton Siegle.
“Mr. Siegle,” I said.
“Taylor, Mr. Taylor, you said to call.”
“What is it?”
“I’m being watched.”
“By whom?”
“I don’t know, but I saw a man sitting in his car a few houses down from mine this morning when I was walking my dog. Later, I noticed he was still there. And now it’s past noon. He’s been there for at least five hours. Maybe I’m being paranoid, but after talking to you yesterday…”
