The Firm

"Shut up and I’ll finish. Just suppose it’s all a ruse to get her outta town. To get her away from us. From what’s coming down. Follow?"

"You’re assuming he’s working with them?" asked Locke.

"I get paid for making those assumptions, Nat. I’m assuming he knows the phones are bugged, and that’s why they’re so careful on the phone. I’m assuming he got her outta town to protect her."

"Pretty shaky," said Lambert. "Pretty shaky."

DeVasher paced behind his desk. He glared at Ollie and let it pass. "About ten days ago, somebody makes a bunch of unusual copies on the fourth floor. Strange because it was three in the morning. According to our records, when the copies were made only two lawyers were here. McDeere and Scott Kimble. Neither of whom had any business on the fourth floor. Twenty-four access numbers were used. Three belong to Lamar Quin’s files. Three belong to Sonny Capps. The other eighteen belong to McDeere’s files. None belong to Kimble. Victor Milligan left his office around two-thirty, and McDeere was working in Avery’s office. He had taken him to the airport. Avery says he locked his office, but he could have forgotten. Either he forgot or McDeere’s got a key. I pressed Avery on this, and he feels almost certain he locked it. But it was midnight and he was dead tired and in a hurry. Could’ve forgotten, right? But he did not authorize McDeere to go back to his office and work. No big deal, really, because they had spent the entire day in there working on the Capps return. The copier was number eleven, which happens to be the closest one to Avery’s office. I think it’s safe to assume McDeere made the copies."

"How many?"

"Two thousand and twelve."

"Which files?"

"The eighteen were all tax clients. Now, I’m sure he’d explain it all by saying he had finished the returns and was merely copying everything. Sounds pretty legitimate, right? Except the secretaries always make the copies, and what the hell was he doing on the fourth floor at three A.M. running two thousand copies? And this was the morning of April 7. How many of your boys finish their April 15 work and run all the copies a week early?"

He stopped pacing and watched them. They were thinking. He had them. "And here’s the kicker. Five days later his secretary entered the same eighteen access numbers on her copier on the second floor. She ran about three hundred copies, which, I ain’t no lawyer, but I figure to be more in line. Don’t you think?"

They both nodded, but said nothing. They were lawyers, trained to argue five sides of every issue. But they said nothing. DeVasher smiled wickedly and returned to his pacing. "Now, we caught him making two thousand copies that cannot be explained. So the big question is: What was he copying? If he was using wrong access numbers to run the machine, what the hell was he copying? I don’t know. All of the offices were locked, except, of course, Avery’s. So I asked Avery. He’s got a row of metal cabinets where he keeps the real files. He keeps ’em locked, but he and McDeere and the secretaries have been rummaging through those files all day. Could’ve forgot to lock ’em when he ran to meet the plane. Big deal. Why would McDeere copy legitimate files? He wouldn’t. Like everybody else on the fourth floor, Avery’s got those four wooden cabinets with the secret stuff. No one touches them, right? Firm rules. Not even other partners. Locked up tighter than my files. So McDeere can’t get in without a key. Avery showed me his keys. Told me he hadn’t touched those cabinets in two days, before the seventh. Avery has gone through those files, and everything seems in order. He can’t tell if they’ve been tampered with. But can you look at one of your files and tell if it’s been copied? No, you can’t. Neither can I. So I pulled the files this morning, and I’m sending them to Chicago. They’re gonna check ’em for fingerprints. Take about a week."

"He couldn’t copy those files," Lambert said.

"What else would he copy, Ollie? I mean, everything’s locked on the fourth floor and the third floor. Everything, except Avery’s office. And assuming he and Tarrance are whispering in each other’s ears, what would he want from Avery’s office? Nothing but the secret files."

"Now you’re assuming he’s got keys," Locke said.

"Yes. I’m assuming he’s made a set of Avery’s keys."

Ollie snorted and gave an exasperated laugh. "This is incredible. I don’t believe it."

Black Eyes glared at DeVasher with a nasty smile. "How would he get a copy of the keys?"

"Good question, and one that I can’t answer. Avery showed me his keys. Two rings, eleven keys. He keeps ’em with him at all times. Firm rule, right? Like a good little lawyer’s supposed to do. When he’s awake, the keys are in his pocket. When he’s asleep away from home, the keys are under the mattress."

"Where’s he traveled in the last month?" Black Eyes asked.

"Forget the trip to see Capps in Houston last week. Too recent. Before that, he went to Grand Cayman for two days on April 1."

"I remember," said Ollie, listening intently.

"Good for you, Ollie. I asked him what he did both nights, and he said nothing but work. Sat at a bar one night, but that’s it. Swears he slept by himself both nights." DeVasher pushed a button on a portable tape recorder. "But he’s lying. This call was made at nine-fifteen, April 2, from the phone in the master bedroom of Unit A." The tape began:

"He’s in the shower." First female voice.

"Are you okay?" Second female voice.

"Yeah. Fine. He couldn’t do it if he had to."

"What took so long?"

"He wouldn’t wake up."

"Is he suspicious?"

"No. He remembers nothing. I think he’s in pain."

"How long will you be there?"

"I’ll kiss him goodbye when he gets out of the shower. Ten, maybe fifteen minutes."

"Okay. Hurry."

DeVasher punched another button and continued pacing. "I have no idea who they are, and I haven’t confronted Avery. Yet. He worries me. His wife has filed for divorce, and he’s lost control. Chases women all the time. This is a pretty serious breach of security, and I suspect Lazarov will go through the roof."

"She talked like it was a bad hangover," Locke said.

"Evidently."

"You think she copied the keys?" Ollie asked.

DeVasher shrugged and sat in his worn leather chair. The cockiness vanished. "It’s possible, but I doubt it. I’ve thought about it for hours. Assuming it was some woman he picked up in a bar, and they got drunk, then it was probably late when they went to bed. How would she make copies of the keys in the middle of the night on that tiny island? I just don’t think so."

"But she had an accomplice," Locke insisted.

"Yeah, and I can’t figure that out. Maybe they were trying to steal his wallet and something went wrong. He carries a couple of thousand in cash, and if he got drunk, who knows what he told them. Maybe she planned to lift the money at the last second and haul ass. She didn’t do it. I don’t know."

"No more assumptions?" Ollie asked.

"Not now. I love to make them, but it goes too far to assume these women took the keys, somehow managed to copy them in the middle of the night on the island, without his knowledge, and then the first one crawled back in the bed with him. And that somehow all of this is related to McDeere and his use of the copier on the fourth floor. It’s just too much."

"I agree," said Ollie.

"What about the storage room?" asked Black Eyes.

"I’ve thought about that, Nat. In fact, I’ve lost sleep thinking about it. If she was interested in the records in the storage room, there must be some connection with McDeere, or someone else poking around. And I can’t make that connection. Let’s say she found the room and the records, what could she do with them in the middle of the night with Avery asleep upstairs?"