The Justice Game Read online

  Jason knew Lassiter was overreacting a little. Minority shareholders could audit the books to ensure that profits weren’t being hidden. Still, the urgency in Lassiter’s voice was unmistakable. This wasn’t really about the money.

  “What reason did they give?” Jason asked.

  Lassiter spent several minutes describing his meeting with Sherwood. He got sidetracked for a few minutes explaining why the miscalculation in the drug patent case wasn’t his fault. The formulas worked fine, and his prediction would have been right if the real-life lawyers had done their job. Unfortunately, the defense lawyers had been pitiful.

  Back on track, Lassiter detailed the terms of the proposed severance agreement. Two point five million might sound like a lot, but it was a pittance compared to the real worth of the company.

  Jason listened patiently, asking appropriate questions as he tried to figure out what he should do. He felt a special bond with Andrew Lassiter. Others at Justice Inc. had a strictly business mind-set. They sweated over P&L statements, the intricacies of stock deals, budgets for the mock trials.

  Lassiter, on the other hand, was more like Jason. Their obsession was figuring out what made juries tick. For Lassiter, being wrong on a jury verdict was like being unfaithful to your wife. It was a character flaw, not just a bad business prediction.

  In a way, that compulsive behavior made Andrew Lassiter a kindred spirit. Normally, Jason, who had his own obsession with winning, would go out of his way to help.

  But not when it meant taking on Robert Sherwood. The man had his faults, but he wasn’t the personification of evil that Lassiter was making him out to be. He was a tough business executive, and the squeeze play on Lassiter did not entirely surprise Jason. But Robert Sherwood also had a heart. He genuinely cared about social justice. And he had certainly helped Jason in the three months he had been on his own.

  “What do you want me to do?” Jason asked.

  “Represent me,” Lassiter said, his voice tense, a half octave higher than normal. “I need somebody to file suit—somebody who won’t be intimidated.”

  “You don’t need me,” Jason protested. “You need somebody with experience in business law. Somebody who hasn’t worked for the company.”

  This brought silence on the phone line, followed by the trademark throat-clearing to which Lassiter resorted under pressure. When Lassiter finally spoke, his voice was cracking, the raw emotion coming to the surface. “You’re wrong, Jason. You care about the same things I care about. This case will be tough. Other lawyers could be bought off or intimidated. I need somebody I can trust.”

  Jason swallowed hard. He hadn’t asked for this—the plea of a desperate man. He felt like a kid in the middle of a nasty divorce.

  “I’m not asking for a favor, Jason. I’ll pay whatever your rate is.”

  Jason tried to imagine himself suing Robert Sherwood. The only way to get Andrew Lassiter reinstated would be to threaten the entire business plan of Justice Inc. Perhaps Jason could challenge the non-compete that Lassiter had signed, freeing him up to start a similar business. If other companies could use the same micromarketing formulas to predict these seminal cases, Justice Inc.’s business would take a major hit.

  But Justice Inc. had treated Jason fairly. If not for Robert Sherwood, Jason wouldn’t be where he was now. His biggest clients had all been referrals from Sherwood. And what had Andrew Lassiter done for him?

  “Andrew, I’m sorry. I just can’t take the case. I’ve got too many conflicting loyalties.”

  Jason waited. The silence became awkward.

  “You’re better off with another lawyer,” Jason insisted. “Somebody without the conflicts.”

  “Thanks for your time,” Lassiter said, his voice cold. Before Jason could respond, his friend hung up the phone.

  Jason walked over to the window and stared at the street below. He rubbed the back of his neck and watched the small flakes of snow dot the afternoon sky, a novelty in Richmond, particularly in December.

  Was he intimidated by Robert Sherwood? A little. Was that the reason he had turned Lassiter down? Not really. It was a business decision. Jason had acted in spite of fear many times in the past. If he had to take on men like Robert Sherwood, he would do it.

  At least that’s what he told himself.

  This wasn’t the case of a little guy like Lassiter being taken advantage of by a powerful man with all the resources. If it were, Jason would feel compelled to intervene. Wasn’t that one of the things he had learned at Justice Inc.—the Robin Hood philosophy of justice?

  No, this was just a business dispute, and Jason didn’t need to get in the middle of it. Besides, Andrew Lassiter would land on his feet. The guy was a certifiable genius.

  But the questions wouldn’t go away—that gnawing in the pit of his stomach. Was he just scared? Was he betraying a friend?

  It was just a business dispute, he reminded himself. Between two grown men.

  24

  The day before Christmas, Jason boarded a plane in Richmond for his second flight to Atlanta in less than two weeks. He ended up sitting next to a mom and her elementary-age son, who was excited to see his grandparents. When Jason deplaned in Atlanta, Hartsfield-Jackson was jammed with people, thousands of smiling and excited faces dragging kids and luggage through the terminals. Jason always felt an extra stab of loneliness and envy this time of year.

  What would it be like to go home to a normal family—a mother who showered unconditional love on her kids, a father who didn’t try to control and manipulate, a sister who was there more than once every three years?

  He would never know. For Jason, this Christmas would once again consist of arguments with his dad, followed by long periods of uncomfortable silence. The traditions and expectations of Christmas had a way of magnifying family shortcomings, like watching an episode of Father Knows Best followed by The Osbournes.

  On his way to the baggage claim, Jason checked his messages. His father had called. He would be working the three-to-eleven shift, covering for an officer whose wife had been recently diagnosed with cancer. Detective Corey would pick Jason up at the airport. His dad left Corey’s cell number and said he was looking forward to seeing Jason later that night.

  From the tone of his father’s voice, Jason doubted it.

  * * *

  Detective Matthew Corey was one of the youngest-looking forty-five-year-old men Jason knew. For starters, Corey spent about ninety minutes a day in the gym, tossing around the big plates, sculpting his muscles and toning his already impressively flat abs. He had thick dark hair, bushy black eyebrows, and skin that looked like it belonged on a shaving commercial. The only concessions to his age—particularly to his twenty-two years on the Atlanta police force—were the wrinkles starting to spiderweb away from the corners of his eyes.

  “Thanks for coming,” Jason said.

  “You’re family,” Corey said. He put on his turn signal and pulled away from the curb. “You’re lookin’ great,” he added, without conviction. It was a perfunctory greeting from a man whose favorite hobby was checking himself out in the mirror. He was probably fishing for a return compliment.

  “You look like you’re getting a little flabby,” Jason responded.

  Corey smiled. “Always the smart aleck. Glad to see law school hasn’t changed you.”

  Years ago, as a rookie, Matt Corey had drawn Jason’s dad as his patrol partner. At least two times and maybe more, depending on who was telling the stories and how many beers they had polished off first, Jason’s dad had saved Corey’s life. Even after both men were reassigned—Jason’s dad as a homicide detective, Corey to the narcotics unit—they had remained tight.

  “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for your dad,” Corey had told Jason. “Nothing. I mean that.”

  On the way to the house, they filled the ride with idle talk—Jason’s job, the investigations Corey was handling, Corey’s family. Corey had a need to impress even someone as insignificant as Jason, so he
spent a fair amount of time bragging about this case or that drug bust, especially the arrests where the suspects put up a fight… and lived to regret it later.

  When they were about five minutes from the house, the conversation turned to Jason’s dad.

  “He’s drinking more,” Corey said. “Alone. And he’s been missing work.”

  The news didn’t surprise Jason, but he was at a loss about what to do. His father had been drinking for years. The alcohol made him brood and loosened his tongue. He lashed out at those who tried to talk with him about it. Jason’s solution was to stay away.

  “He’s proud of you, Jason,” Corey said, keeping his eyes on the road. “He probably never says anything to you, but he’s always bragging about you—his son, the big-shot lawyer.”

  If Corey had just said he’d married the queen of England, Jason wouldn’t have been more surprised. Jason’s dad never said such things around Jason. He only criticized, always nitpicked. Words of praise were not in his vocabulary.

  “That surprises me,” Jason said.

  “He would rather have you wearing the white hat, of course. But he’s still proud of you.”

  He hides it well, thought Jason. Nevertheless, he appreciated Detective Corey’s telling him this. It might make the next twenty-four hours a little more bearable. All Jason had ever gotten from his dad was a deep sense of disappointment. He wanted Jason to play football, but Jason chose soccer. He wanted Jason to become a Navy SEAL, and Jason wanted to act. When Jason entered law school, his father talked about the prosecutors he respected. Now Jason was a defense attorney.

  They reached the house, and Corey pulled into the driveway. “It’s great to see you doing so well,” he said. He turned and looked straight at Jason. “I’m glad you took advantage of your second chance. I knew at the time you were a good kid.”

  Jason had been half expecting Corey to bring up that night from ten years ago, the night that had changed Jason’s life forever. It was the night he learned that cops sometimes write their own laws. But still, the words made his stomach clench.

  Once every few years, Corey mentioned it. Jason sensed the detective was trying to make sure his secret was still safe, that Jason still acknowledged a debt he could never fully repay.

  “I’m not so sure about that,” Jason said. He stared out the front window, the guilt pressing in on him. This was the reason he didn’t like being around Corey; it was a constant reminder of the worst night of Jason’s life. “Good kids don’t betray their friends.”

  “Everybody makes mistakes,” Corey said emphatically. “And one stupid mistake shouldn’t haunt you for life.”

  Jason nodded. He knew there was no sense arguing the point. He ought to be grateful to Detective Corey, not resentful.

  “I know,” he said.

  He swallowed the words he really wanted to say. It’s haunting me for life anyway.

  25

  Jason only made it home once or twice a year. The last few times, he had been struck by how much the place had changed. It was a small, one-story brick house in one of the few older Alpharetta neighborhoods. Jason’s father had bought the place to escape the home that held so many memories of Jason’s mom.

  It made Jason sad to see the gradual deterioration of this house—the weeds overtaking the yard, the stained carpeting that needed to be replaced, the faded tile on the bathroom and kitchen floors.

  The house smelled like stale beer.

  In a halfhearted nod to the season, his dad had moved a chair in the living room and erected a fake Christmas tree. He had not bothered to decorate at all on the outside, making the house an oddity in a neighborhood that sparkled with all manner of gaudy outdoor lighting.

  Jason threw his stuff in his old bedroom, a room that now doubled for storage, and stepped around the extra furniture, the old StairMaster, and the boxes that cluttered the floor. He thought about calling a few high school friends but remembered that they usually had family activities planned. Instead, he alternated between TV and surfing the Internet on his dad’s desktop computer.

  Next year, he would think of a good excuse to skip Christmas in Alpharetta altogether.

  At 11:30, Jason’s dad came home and apologized for being late. He had traded shifts with a young detective who had a sick wife, and Jason resisted the urge to make a snide comment. He could smell the alcohol when they shook hands, his father placing his left hand on the outside of Jason’s shoulder—a Noble family “hug.”

  After his father changed clothes, he immediately poured himself a beer… almost certainly another beer. “Want one?” he asked.

  “No, thanks.”

  “Loosen up, Son. It’s Christmas.”

  Jason had sworn off drinking ten years earlier. He wasn’t about to start up now, especially seeing what it had done to his dad. “I’ll just take some soda.”

  His father shook his head and mumbled something that Jason didn’t catch. He handed Jason a two-liter bottle of Coke from the refrigerator, and Jason poured himself a glass. The Coke was flat.

  They took seats at opposite ends of the kitchen table like two gunslingers squaring off for a fight.

  Jason studied his father—the old man’s deterioration seemed to match the house. Jason had his mother’s build, her average height, high metabolism, thin bone structure. His father was broad and stocky, about three inches shorter than his son, powerful as a bull. He had put on a little more weight in the last year, and his skin had the red, splotchy complexion of an alcoholic, matched by a large nose and perpetually bloodshot eyes. He looked older than fifty-two.

  “Tell me about your practice,” his father said.

  His tone said he might actually be interested, despite the disappointment he had expressed when Jason opted for a career as a private lawyer. Jason remembered Detective Corey’s comments and decided to start by describing the gun case he had just landed. His dad worshiped at the altar of the Second Amendment. There had been guns in the Noble house for as long as Jason could remember, though Jason himself had never fired one. This case might help break his dad’s perception that Jason was just defending a bunch of crooks and cop killers.

  “You remember the shooting that occurred in that television station in Virginia Beach—the one everybody played live on the air?”

  “Yeah.” His dad was wasting no time downing the beer.

  “That reporter’s husband filed suit against the gun manufacturer for allegedly knowing about the illegal sale of their firearms and doing nothing to stop them.”

  “MD Firearms,” his dad murmured as he took another drink.

  “Right. They asked me to represent them. Some say this could be the biggest Second Amendment case in years.” Jason took a sip of his Coke as his dad made a face and digested the news.

  “What do you know about them?”

  “What I’ve read online and in the papers.” Jason decided to omit the fact that he had toured their plant, just a short drive from his father’s house.

  “Maybe you ought to investigate a little more before you take that case.”

  The tone deflated Jason. He hadn’t taken the case in order to gain his father’s approval, but he hadn’t thought it would hurt. “Meaning?”

  His father played with his beer glass for a few seconds, apparently deciding whether to proceed. “Have you heard about what they did with silencers?”

  Jason shrugged. He didn’t even know they made silencers.

  “Buncha years ago, your potential client decides to make a few extra bucks by diversifying into silencers. The only problem is that, according to ATF guidelines at the time, anybody who orders a complete silencer has to register it. So MD Firearms—which was back then called Buford Arms Corp., or something like that—went into partnership with some other Georgia companies to sell parts for a silencer. I think your client sold the tubes and the others sold the internal parts.”

  Jason’s father paused to take another drink. “Finally the ATF got a warrant and raided the facilities of
all these companies. They seized records showing something like six thousand sales of silencer parts, but only four buyers had registered their silencers, and about fifty of ’em were sold to folks with prior felony convictions.”

  Jason listened intently, knowing that this information would be paraded around by the plaintiff’s lawyers. This kind of rule bending seemed out of character for the Melissa Davids he had met at MD Firearms.

  “So the ATF gets all this evidence and takes these companies to court to revoke their licenses, but the judge throws it out—says nobody can prove they intended to violate the registration laws. Might have just been legitimately trying to sell silencer parts.” Jason’s dad snorted. “What a crock.”

  “Was Melissa Davids there at the time?” Jason asked.

  “She was working there.” Jason’s father went to the refrigerator for his second beer, on top of who knew how many earlier that night. “A few years later, her husband’s family helped her buy the company from the original owners and she promised to clean it up. But all she did was change the name of the company and the guns. Right up until the assault weapons ban, they pumped out their MD-9 by the truckload, knowing that people were converting it to a fully automatic. The ATF traced hundreds of converted guns to crimes, including one here in Forsyth County where a cop got mowed down by a drug gang. When the ban expired five years ago, they brought the MD-9 back in all its glory, more popular than ever.”

  Now Jason understood why his father recalled all these facts. Forsyth County was right next door. A police officer had been killed. A line had been crossed.

  Jason’s father sat down with a thud and twisted the cap off his drink. This time, he didn’t bother with the glass.

  “Do me a favor, Son. Don’t take that case.”

  He stared at Jason, waiting for a reply.

  “Son?”

  Jason looked down. He didn’t want to trigger his dad’s temper. Not tonight. It was Christmas Eve. They hadn’t seen each other in months. One cross word and the Noble men would be at each other’s throats with dizzying speed.