PLUMMET: A Novel Read online

  All characters appearing in this work are fictional. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  PLUMMET © Michael Zarocostas, All rights reserved, MMXII

  Table of Contents

  chapter 1

  chapter 2

  chapter 3

  chapter 4

  chapter 5

  chapter 6

  chapter 7

  chapter 8

  chapter 9

  chapter 10

  chapter 11

  chapter 12

  chapter 13

  chapter 14

  chapter 15

  chapter 16

  chapter 17

  chapter 18

  chapter 19

  chapter 20

  chapter 21

  chapter 22

  chapter 23

  chapter 24

  chapter 25

  chapter 26

  chapter 28

  chapter 29

  chapter 30

  chapter 31

  chapter 32

  chapter 33

  chapter 34

  chapter 35

  chapter 36

  chapter 37

  chapter 38

  about the author

  Stolen waters are sweet, and

  bread eaten in secret is pleasant.

  But he knoweth not that the dead are there;

  and that her guests are in the depths of hell.

  Proverbs 9:17, 18

  1 Wednesday

  * * *

  Gabe Weiss felt more like a crooked Teamster than a corporate defense litigator with his boxer's nose, silvery brilliantine hair, and impeccable Brioni suit. He was wiping a smudge from the mirror of his wingtips, sitting in a dilapidated conference room that smelled like burnt coffee, and asking himself, Who has offices in Hell's Kitchen? Nobody, that's who. At least not anyone who concerned him.

  He glared across the table at the two opposing lawyers with their ten-dollar haircuts and their fat baby faces. They couldn't be more than thirty years old, thirty-two tops, their little cherub noses in legal pads full of amateurish questions straight out of a cheap handbook. They hadn't bothered to schedule the deposition with Gabe's consent. They had just served "notice" and picked a date that was convenient for them and their little shareholder plaintiff.

  Gabe was used to his usual Manhattan practice of litigation, and these two greenhorn, second-rate plaintiff's attorneys were screwing up his three-decade ritual. They should have telephoned him, asked for acceptable calendar dates, and then waited while he ignored their calls and exchanged nasty letters until, months later, they acquiesced to a morning deposition in Gabe's office tower. Instead, they immediately pushed for the deposition and complained to the judge's law secretary, but still Gabe had ignored them. He knew exactly how far he could go before a Commercial Part judge would become annoyed. And even then, he could always blame it on the client. "They're a multi-national corporation, Your Honor. I apologize, but it's not easy to schedule one of their executives for a deposition."

  Gabe's client was a Fortune 100 company, and it was supposed to send an employee who should have been knowledgeable about the facts of the case. But did they ever send a knowledgeable envoy? No, they always handpicked a virgin to sacrifice to the litigation volcano. A Disposable Schmuck, Gabe liked to say. And the shrewd clients usually took their sweet time selecting the Disposable Schmuck because there were internal documents to gather and review and shred, and valuable execs to advise and protect from exposure.

  But this time, Gabe was dealing with opposing attorneys who wouldn't allow the customary delays, who weren't the usual greedy plaintiff's shysters. In the broad spectrum of plaintiff's attorneys, Gabe didn't mind the extremes. He dealt infrequently with the low class TV advertising buffoons looking for a quick buck from a whiplash victim. And he dealt daily with the megafirms like Milstein Katz that filed securities fraud class actions any time a corporate accountant farted. These guys were neither. No, these plaintiff's attorneys sitting across from him now were the worst kind in the universal spectrum of ambulance chasers. They were in it for truth, justice, and the American way. Moral Crusaders. At least with the other kinds of plaintiff's lawyers, Gabe could delay because he knew they were in it for the money. And they knew if they waited patiently, they'd get the Almighty Attorney's Fees. The thirty-three and one-third percent of whatever juicy settlement a deep-pocket company was willing to shell out. But the Moral Crusaders didn't care as much about the Almighty Attorney's Fees. That's why they could drive you crazy.

  Like today. Gabe had ignored them as planned, but the Moral Crusaders made a motion to compel. As punishment for Gabe's dilatory tactics, the judge allowed the Moral Crusaders to pick their own date and time for the deposition in their shitty hovel of an office. Gabe floated an old excuse that his client was busy during business hours, so the judge ordered the depo to start at 4:00 p.m. on a Wednesday afternoon and to continue in the evening hours for as many days in a row as necessary. Gabe had to scramble and cajole his client to immediately send a Disposable Schmuck to Manhattan, and there he sat to the right of Gabe's elbow in this conference room. Some nerd named Irwin or Irving Shifflet, a pimply kid with a freshly-inked M.B.A. diploma and a newer title, Assistant Vice President of the accounting department. What opposing counsel didn't know was that almost everyone was an Assistant Vice President at this defendant company. The title was a joke. So this kid didn't know shit, and that made him the perfect deponent in Gabe's mind.

  Gabe just sat back and polished his already pristine wingtips and laughed to himself while opposing counsel interrogated his client. Irwin or Irving kept saying, "I don't recall," every time he was asked a routine question. Gabe had ten other cases worth millions more, but still the Moral Crusaders fascinated him. He pretended not to listen as his shoe tapped a drumbeat on the floor.

  "Now, Mr. Shifflet," the older Moral Crusader said, looking down at his cheat sheet, "you were working in the accounting department two years ago, weren't you?"

  "Uhm, yes, I was." Shifflet thrown off kilter, Gabe guessed, by a question he could actually answer.

  "As the assistant to the Senior Vice President of the finance division of C-REX Industries, Inc.?"

  "That's right."

  "Let's pause right there, counselor," Gabe interrupted. "Your questions concerning anything two years ago are not relevant to this derivative lawsuit."

  "Mr. Weiss, please don't filibuster. You're filibustering. My questions are clearly and reasonably calculated to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence-"

  "Yeah, thanks for reciting the rule. Now, if you want to ask my client, Mr. Shifflet here, anything related to your current claims, then do so. Off the record. He's not going to discuss events two years ago or five years ago or the prehistoric period of cavemen and dinosaurs and woolly fucking mammoths."

  The young woman transcribing the deposition peeked up from her computer and bit back a laugh. Both Moral Crusaders glanced at her, astounded, and the older one made an announcement like a grade school principal.

  "Back on the record please," he said. "Mr. Weiss, my questions relating to events two years ago involve a restatement of your client's earnings and are therefore relevant to your client's current false statement of earnings. It's a pattern of misstatements, accounting fraud, corporate waste and mismanagement that your client is guilty of-"

  "You heard me. I'm instructing the witness not to answer the question."

  "What? On what grounds?" The younger Moral Crusader's soft baby face shook violently. A colic attack. "There's a court order directing your client's responses on this issue. Your previous objections were overruled. You're violating that order."

  "I disagree
." Gabe ignored the younger one, focused on the older Moral Crusader. "If your associate had read that order, he would know that it addressed your document requests. Not this deposition." He leaned over the conference table to intimidate them. "You didn't mention anything about events two years ago in your notice of deposition. He's not our designated representative for anything two years ago. So he's not answering the question."

  Then Gabe addressed the stenographer. "Off the record one more time."

  The stenographer's fingers froze, her eyebrows crinkled.

  "Counselors," Gabe continued, a croaky Brooklyn accent surfacing in his anger, "you got a problem with my objection? You know where the courthouse is. And don't ever notice a deposition again without asking me first."

  "Excuse me?"

  "Come on, Irving," Gabe said, "this conference room smells like shit." He shut his briefcase, gestured to the baffled Disposable Schmuck to stand and led the kid out the door.

  "Wait a minute, Weiss. You can't walk out on this deposition. We agreed to go with this until eleven o'clock tonight. Hey!"

  The stenographer was smirking when Gabe shut the door on the Moral Crusaders' flabbergasted faces.

  $ $ $

  Gabe rode in a fat black Cadillac from the Firm's car service and dropped the Disposable Schmuck off at his Midtown hotel. It was almost 7:30 p.m. He tried Rachel on her cell. No answer. She was upset. He thought about trying to make it to her charity art show in Williamsburg, but it was probably over by now. She'd mentioned that the Mavros family may be there. Deep down, Gabe was thinking of going all the way out to Brooklyn for that reason, for business instead of Rachel. Which made him decide not to go at all. He was also irked because she'd invited several other partners from the Firm. Stu Greenbaum, Max Goldberg, Tim O'Brien, even some young associates like Bianco and Grayson.

  He tried to convince himself that he would have gone if it weren't for the deposition and the Moral Crusaders. He wouldn't find Rachel and her guests anyway. They were definitely at some bar by now, soaked in cocktails on a Wednesday night with no concern for Thursday. He would have felt completely out of place, silently uncomfortable in their drunken joviality.

  He caught himself making tight, painful fists, thinking about how good the liquor bottles would all look behind the bar. He growled at the driver, "Take me back to the office."

  The Cadillac eventually pulled up to the curb beneath hundreds of lighted office windows at the corner of Times Square, and Gabe felt like he was home. When he set foot in his office in the Sullivan & Adler tower, there was a note on his computer.

  I know you won't be happy about this, but our floor's server is down tonight for emergency maintenance. No exceptions – not even for you. Sorry. They said it will be back up first thing in the morning. Cherise.

  Gabe exhaled, realized there was nothing for him to do. He thought about going home early, which made him instantly uncomfortable. He couldn't remember the last time he'd been home before midnight. With Rachel at her show and Sarah spending the night with a friend, he'd be alone. Exactly what he dreaded. The one thing he loved about the office was that he never felt alone there. There was always someone working, always some activity, even if it were a temp proofreader poring over one of his memoranda of law. He thought about logging onto the Firm's network from home through a remote, encoded system that made him feel like a Luddite. Maybe by the time he got home, the Firm's servers would be back up and running without any problems.

  He walked out of his office, glanced at Cherise's cubicle wall. Her desk drawer was open, and the picture of her gap-toothed daughter was missing. Night staff must have used her desk, he thought. He reached behind the computer monitor and found the photo of Cherise's daughter, cute kid with red beads in pigtails. He tacked it back up in the right spot on the bulletin board before he left.

  Orange and crimson streaks bled across the sky as Gabe's shiny Porsche jerked along the West Side Highway. He wiped sweat from his forehead and watched the sun grudgingly drop. It seemed to hang in the air like a blazing red eye, watching him, wondering why he wasn't at work. He stared at the horizon and grumbled into his cell phone.

  "I got your message, Chandler. I was in the depo."

  "Hell, I don't care about that little case," Chandler Rex Whitney said in his high-pitched Texas twang. "I'm worried about our takeover in Delaware, damn it."

  "We already discussed this." Gabe glanced at The New York Times on the passenger seat, two glaring front-page headlines. "NASDAQ Composite Rises" and "Repriced Stock Options Make Billionaire Nick Mavros #1 CEO." He tried to read the article about "Nine Zero Nick" Mavros, juggle the conversation, and thread through city traffic.

  "Look, Chandler, this other lawsuit won't have any impact on the deal," Gabe said into his cell. "They haven't rejected your tender offer yet. Period."

  "What if they're just stalling to lock up with a White Knight? I wouldn't blame them after that Times article said 'Chandler Rex Whitney is the kinda man who circles vultures.'"

  "You file a lawsuit now, and they'll reject your offer for sure."

  "I wanna be ready if their board screws us with a poison pill. I want that company."

  "That's why I have an associate working on the motion for Delaware Chancery Court." Gabe steered his Porsche toward signs for the George Washington Bridge. "He'll have a draft of the injunction papers by morning."

  "By morning? Hot damn, I love it." C-Rex chuckled in his ear. "Hey, how come you're not pulling an all-nighter and sharing a futon with him?"

  "Because the associate's billed out at four hundred bucks an hour. I'm a thousand. Which one of us would you rather stay?"

  "Touché. Hey, that reminds me of a joke. There's this famous lawyer, and he finds himself at the Pearly Gates, right?"

  "Uh-huh," Gabe mumbled through clenched teeth.

  "So this lawyer starts raisin' hell, demandin' to speak to St. Peter, right? St. Peter pops up like a piece of toast, and this lawyer says, 'Hey, this has gotta be some kinda mistake, Pete. I can't be dead, I'm too young to die . . . I'm only forty-six years old!' St. Peter looks at his notes and goes, 'That's odd 'cause according to the hours you billed, you're a hundred and twenty!"

  Laughter trickled out of the cell phone. Gabe gunned his Porsche in front of a cab. He cut off another car, wedging into the gridlocked G.W. and a wave of honking horns.

  "Cute, very cute. Listen, Chandler, I gotta run. I haven't been home this early in years. My wife's gonna die when she sees me."

  "You really goin' home early? You're losing your edge, partner."

  "I'll call you tomorrow morning, Chandler. Bye." Gabe tossed his cell phone on the passenger seat, turned up a country music station on the radio. "Prick."

  He was stuck in traffic as night fell in around him. The metal chain of cars slowly dissipated in Jersey, and he stopped at a convenient store to buy Rachel a bouquet of sunflowers and a pint of her favorite Ben & Jerry's ice cream, Chubby Hubby. His version of an apology.

  He slowed the Porsche down a quiet lane of hazy street lamps and pulled in front of his home. Rachel had insisted on a white brick house with gold trim, and it reminded him of a monstrous jewel box. Her black convertible BMW blocked the driveway. She must've taken a cab again to drink, he thought, sighing and parking along the curb. He got out of his car, briefcase in hand, The Times in the bag with the flowers and ice cream. An armada of fire flies hovered above the dark lawn and trailed him to a side door to the garage.

  Inside the garage, he walked past Sarah's Ford and approached the door to the kitchen. He was trying to remember the password to log onto the Firm's system from his desktop. He glanced at the mezuzah on the doorway and froze.

  Someone was humming inside. It was an unfamiliar voice. A man's voice.

  Gabe leaned against the door and gingerly pressed it open a few millimeters. He peeked through the thin rectangle of space and his eyes widened.

  A naked man was standing before the refrigerator.

  The only
light shone from the bulb in the fridge, casting a halo around the figure and hiding the man's face. But Gabe could see that he was sipping a bottle of beer between humming a tune and rummaging for food. The chutzpah of this guy. Gabe knew immediately what was going on, and the shock wrapped itself around his rib cage and clenched him in its depth. He slowly set down his briefcase and the bag. The naked man was oblivious as Gabe carefully pushed the door and quietly slipped inside. He waited at the edge of the counter, the refrigerator's buzz filling up the room. The butcher block was a few feet away. It had been a gift for Rachel, and the knives were unused, sharp as the day he'd brought them home.

  Gabe's hand inched along the counter, his breathing slowed.

  When the man leaned down and clanked bottles in the fridge, Gabe pulled a knife from the wooden block. He moved closer, feeling his breath rush through his flattened nose. He squeezed the handle, afraid he might drop it.

  Another step, and the heel of his wingtip grazed the floor. Still the man's back was turned. Gabe moved closer. He was within reach, close enough to see the hairs on the man's neck. He pointed the knife at the spine, counted the nubs of vertebra in the neck, waiting for something. He didn't know what to do now, still trying to sort it out. Did she do it to hurt him? Was it the first time? A minute seemed to pass while neither moved.

  The man spun around.

  A familiar pair of eyes.

  The man gagged and choked down a mouthful of food.

  "You?" Gabe whispered, feeling his face tingle. The refrigerator buzzed louder.

  "This wasn't . . . my idea."

  Gabe glanced at the man's crotch. "How many times?"

  He didn't cover himself. "Once or twice."

  "How long has it been going on?" Gabe felt the sweat forming on his own face. He wanted an apology, to see him squirm and beg for forgiveness. "How long?"

  "I don't know." The calm response rang like mocking laughter. "Just once."

  "Which is it?" Gabe looked at the knife in his own fist. Images of Rachel flashed in his mind, her positioned on top of the man, effortlessly in control. "You don't know or once?"