Page 34 of Pro Bono

Vesper stepped closer and leaned down to look at the screen. “Those are the wives? They’re pretty.”

He leaned in and looked at the picture again, as though to evaluate her statement. “I’ll grant them that. The point I was interested in is the family connection. It might explain why two men in different companies have been ripping off the same client.” He went back to the four-shot.

“Oh no. Kids? Both couples have kids?”

“And there are two more. I saw them when I was sneaking around the Ollonsun house tonight.”

“I can’t help feeling bad for them.”

“It’s not in our power to send anybody to prison. At most we’ll be filing civil suits against the companies. It’s hard to say what any criminal prosecutors might do, if there are any.”

“It was gutsy of you to go out there to find out all this tonight. Thank you, Charlie.” She leaned close and hugged him.

He was surprised, but he remained still while the hug lasted. Then he stood, went to the counter, and took the tea she had made. “Thanks for this—”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to freak you out just now.”

“You didn’t. I’m sorry if I gave you that impression. It’s just that attorneys aren’t supposed to step across certain lines with clients. I know you weren’t thinking about that, but I’m the one who has the ethical responsibility, according to the bar association.”

“Well, I was going to go to bed over an hour ago, so I’ll do that now and let you get back to work.” She turned and walked into the hall toward her room. He watched her fade into the dark end of the hall and close the door behind her. He couldn’t tell her the part that mattered, which was that her hug had felt better to him than it was supposed to.

15

Patrick Ollonsun held up his crystal whisky glass and looked at the patio light through the amber single-malt scotch. He loved the glow, the strong natural scent that seemed to strengthen in the still summer air as he swirled it around in the glass, the solid feel of the glass itself, the thick bottom adding weight in his hand. “Cheers.” He took a sip and savored the liquor flowing along the top of his tongue, just enough of it to warm it and then stream into his throat. He leaned back in his Adirondack chair and cradled the glass on the top of his slight middle-aged belly.

“Cheers,” Ronald Talbert said. He took a sip of his scotch, and then set the glass on the low circular table between them. He lifted his head and turned to look over his shoulder at the kitchen window. Francesca and Christina were doing something at the kitchen counter, their blond heads just visible through the window. They were having an animated conversation, talking and then turning toward each other and laughing.

“Don’t worry about them,” Ollonsun said. “If we don’t stop them, they’ll talk all night. Chris is always saying they don’t get togetherenough anymore. Time changes everything. When the kids were all little, it was easier to herd them around together.”

“Yeah,” Talbert said. “I keep thinking about how old my kids might be before I see them again if I go to prison. It keeps me awake at night.”

“A better use of your brain power would be to help figure out how to keep us out of prison. I’ve taken a few precautions already, but as this goes on, we might need to do more.”

“What do we have to do?”

“We’ve got to start with the assumption that no matter what, people are going to be taking a very close look at both of us. If you have anything at all in your past that won’t look good, you have to fix it.”

“I never did anything that was illegal until I met you,” Talbert said. “Don’t look at me like that. It’s the truth.”

“I don’t doubt it, Ron. I trust what you say. I just think that at this point the blaming stuff doesn’t help. We’ve got to pull together and defend ourselves and each other from this threat. I acknowledge that I was the one who got you involved in this. What I’m doing now is trying to help get you out of it.”

“At the time you told me you already had ways to make sure we wouldn’t get caught.”

“I remember. It was about a year or two after you married Francesca. You took me aside at a birthday party and said you were scared she was going to dump you because you weren’t making enough money. I said that marrying a Welbrower sister was a commitment to come up with what it costs to stay married to one. I told you all about how I stayed on the good side of Christina, helped you learn the tricks, how to step over the land mines.”

“That’s exactly what I was talking about,” Talbert said.

“That was how long ago? Let’s see. I think that was Zelda’s fourth? No, third birthday. Zelda is now seventeen. So the methods I taughtyou worked without a hitch for fourteen years. You’re still married to Fran—happily, right? People go out of their way to congratulate anybody who’s been married for twenty years like they ran a marathon on their elbows, and you’re only about four or five years from there. And this is the first time there was anything worth worrying about.”

“I appreciate that,” Talbert said. “And Fran hasn’t been the spoiled princess she was when I met her. She’s been a great partner.” He took a too-large gulp of his scotch, and it made the soothing liquid turn fiery. He winced as though he’d swallowed medicine.

Ollonsun took a sip of his scotch. “Every time before, if a client thought there was something wrong with his account, he would call me, I would promise to take a look, and I’d transfer funds to make it right that day. I said it was the damned new computer program that hadn’t been tested sufficiently, or a digit in the fifteen-digit account number had been misread by the electronic reader—whatever fit best. If, instead of contacting his account advisor—me—the client called customer service and a case number was assigned and it got shifted to the fraud pipeline, I would fix the discrepancy as though I’d already caught the mistake by myself. I taught you all of this, and I’m sure you did it.”

“Of course I did,” Talbert said. “A number of times.”

“And it worked, right? It’s like picking pockets. If the guy feels your hand or notices he doesn’t feel his wallet, you release it, back off, and pretend you bumped him by accident. But usually, he doesn’t notice. You get away with it. Most of the time, investing is money somebody puts away in a retirement or long-term account and looks at once a year. If the total is a little higher than last year, he doesn’t even read past the first pages, never looks at individual stocks and bonds. He puts it in a drawer and goes back to whatever he does for a living.”

“I know,” Talbert said.

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