I was back at my office before I remembered to check my mail. It was consistent with the rest of the day. The first two letters were from Hartex stockholders reminding me that I had sold them down the river. The less enthusiastic one was from an ex-stockbroker taking exception to my police state methods, with a copy to the American Civil Liberties Union. The return address on its envelope read “Danbury Federal Penitentiary.” I filed it in my wastebasket. Then I scrawled “Attention: Joseph P. McGuire” on the Hartex letters and put them in the interoffice mail. It seemed the least I could do.
The telephone message was better. Jim Robinson had something for me, it said. I cut through hallways left, then right, and knocked on the door marked “James H. Robinson, Senior Investigator.”
“Come in.”
Robinson sat in a rabbit warren of an office, wearing glasses and his habitual look of quizzical bemusement. It changed to a grin when he saw me through the stacks of paper on his desk. “Christopher Kenyon Paget,” he intoned. “Last of the independent men.”
“More like ‘eunuch to the King.’ See the Hartex settlement?”
He nodded, still smiling. “Sit down, Chris. This one may be better.”
I sat, glad to see him. Robinson was late thirtyish, round faced, and his short brown hair was dashed with early grey. The quizzical look gave an impression of ineffectual kindness. It hid a retentive memory and an encyclopedic knowledge of stock swindles. These traits served an indispensable talent: a feeling for the logic of events. Robinson could do with three or four facts what prehistorians achieved with stray dinosaur bones: project a complex structure revealing the hidden whole. I had tried this analogy on him once at the end of a tough case. He had grinned then, too, and told me that I had much the same talent. It was one of the finer compliments I’d ever had.
Robinson was waiting. It struck me that he seemed pretty pleased with himself.
“Get a break on the Lasko case, Jim?”
“Maybe. Remember Sam Green?”
“Sleazy Sam? Sure. The kind of guy who would hang around playgrounds with candy bars if he didn’t have stock fraud to keep him busy. What does he have to do with this?”
Robinson donned a magisterial expression. “I’ll take it in order. First, the price of Lasko stock rose sharply between July 13 and 15. Six points in two days, from ten to sixteen. But there weren’t any big developments, good news, or any other reason why the price should go up like that. The price went up because the volume of stock transactions on the Exchange nearly doubled. There was a hell of a lot of demand for the stock. Again, no reason. But all that artificial demand drives the price up. So, I checked the records from McGuire. It turns out that three brokerage firms had big buy orders for Lasko stock on the fourteenth and fifteenth. Between them, they account for the doubled volume. So I called friends at the firms. Guess who placed each order?”
“Green?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Any notion why?”
“There are several possibilities. I’ll give you one. I got to thinking about the dates-why the fourteenth and fifteenth. I remembered them from somewhere else. So I checked our files on Lasko Devices. On July 16 Lasko Devices offered 300,000 new shares to the public. Because the price of new shares is based on the market price of the stock the day before the offering, each share sold at $16 instead of $10, which was the market price two days earlier. Six more bucks multiplied by 300,000 shares means that Lasko Devices made an extra $1,800,000 on the offering. All because of Sam Green.”
“So your thought is maybe someone at the company put him up to it.”
“It’s possible.”
I leaned back. “Let’s see how that works. Green could have waited for the offering and bought it cheaper. So the timing stinks. What bothers me is Lasko. Lasko Devices doesn’t need another $1,800,000. They’re making money. And with his antitrust problems over at Justice, he doesn’t need more problems with us. Besides, it’s pretty crude.”
Robinson took off his glasses and inspected them for smudges. He found one and rubbed absently. “I never would have found it except that McGuire got that tip.”
“Still, I wonder why my genius boss, Feiner, didn’t catch it. He has market watch people monitoring the stocks for things like this.”
Robinson shrugged. “I never speak ill of the dead. It’s my theory that Feiner suffered brain death years ago.”
I smiled. “OK. A few questions. Why would the company go to Sam? And what’s in it for him? As I recall, he had one foot in jail the last go-around, before he wangled immunity by trading in his friends.” I paused. “How many shares did Sam buy?”
“About 20,000.”
I multiplied. “Even accounting for the rise in price, that’s about $300,000. Where did he get all that money?”
Robinson looked curious himself. “Which is why you should run Sam in here for some questioning, under oath.”
“I’ll do that.”
Robinson was looking at me askance, waiting. I went ahead, anyhow. “Did you check out Mary Carelli?”
He thought for a second, then faced me with bright, candid eyes. “Anyone else, Chris, and I’d figure this for bureaucratic dirt gathering. But you neglect your self-interest to the point of irresponsibility. You’re investigating Mary Carelli like you’re investigating Lasko. Look, you’re the brightest lawyer I’ve seen here. Don’t screw yourself up. You’ve got to learn to let things go that can’t be helped.”
I tried to find a way to ask for help. And to tell him that I appreciated the concern. But I couldn’t seem to combine them. He saw my confusion. “Chris, what do you want to be doing five years from now? Private practice? You could make a lot of money. You could do well here, too, if you wanted. You’ve got a great record.”
Hearing the alternatives out loud gave me a bleak, wasted feeling. “So where am I?”
He answered me indirectly. “I hear you had another hassle with McGuire this morning.”
“News travels fast.”
“You gave Ike Feiner fifteen minutes alone to chortle.”
“I didn’t know he was capable of chortling.”
Robinson gave a smile which didn’t connect with his eyes. “Look, McGuire and Feiner are already pissed at you. If you start rattling the wrong cages, they could really screw you. On the outside too. Don’t think the firms in this town don’t ask around before they hire a government lawyer. If McGuire lets the word out you’re not welcome here, you’ll be as popular as the clap.”
That was right, I knew. But the rewards of good behavior seemed weightless. I didn’t know what I wanted and didn’t want what I could have. Perhaps McGuire was right about people like me. “I appreciate what you’ve said, Jim. But I just got it tucked to me on the Hartex case. The next time I go down kicking and screaming.”
He looked disturbed. “That may happen.”
“I’m running out of time here, anyhow.”
“It’s the only career you’ve got. I wouldn’t take it so lightly.”
“Believe me, I don’t.”
Robinson stared at me thoughtfully. “OK,” he finally said. “I called a friend of mine at Civil Service. Carelli got out of law school when you did. University of Chicago, top 10 per cent. Scholarship student. The records show that she went to work as a staffer on the Senate Commerce Committee, the bunch that keeps tabs on us. So I called a guy I know over at the committee. Turns out he knew her, but not as well as you might think. She keeps her private life to herself. He did say that she is very tough and very partisan. She didn’t have any rank on him, but he crossed her up on something and nearly lost his job. Turned out she had some senator’s ear. So my buddy’s not her biggest booster. But he admits that she is very smart. So that’s it,” he concluded in an unimpressed tone. “A typical Washington biography. If you hanged people in this town for being political, you wouldn’t have anyone left to answer the phone.”
He was still eyeing me. “All right,” I smiled, “I’ll put her on the back burner.”
Robinson looked relieved. I rose, then remembered McGuire’s lunch. “I heard a rumor,” I fabricated, “that one of the commissioners was leaving.” If one really was, it was news to me. “But I forgot who. Heard anything?”
“Yeah. I had lunch with Ludlow’s assistant the other day. He says Ludlow’s going back into private practice. But keep that down. He hasn’t announced it yet, and the White House hasn’t come up with a replacement.”
Joe McGuire would do nicely. “That’s too bad. I liked Ludlow. Well, I’d better get to work on a subpoena for Sam Green. Next Monday OK with you?”
“Fine.” He leaned back. “You know, this kind of case only makes careers in reverse. So stick to Lasko and leave the other alone.”
I knew what he meant. Robinson liked thinking about Green and Lasko much better than thinking about Mary Carelli. He had organized his world long ago. Carelli, he, and I were all “shirts” Green and Lasko were “skins.” I couldn’t really blame him. It made keeping score a lot easier.
I took some files back to my office to work on Green’s subpoena. Debbie had a phone message from Mary Carelli. The first tug on my leash. I thought about ignoring it. Then I headed out to see what she wanted.