To Save a Son (10 page)

“You mean Pascara's a gangster!” erupted Franks, uncaring now whether he stopped the other man.

Nicky sniggered, showing his uncertain control. “I always thought that was a word in movies,” he said.

“It's a word that means what it says,” insisted Franks. “Does Pascara's money come from crime?”

Nicky nodded reluctantly. “Poppa only knew about how it was in his time. Didn't know about now, of course. Thought Pascara might have gone legitimate.…”

“Didn't you try to find out?” said Franks. “You're a lawyer, for Christ's sake! Maybe not a criminal one, okay. But a lawyer. Couldn't you have made some inquiries?”

“I wasn't being asked to do anything illegal,” said Nicky. “Everything was out in the open.”

“Crap!” rejected Franks, remembering the man's earlier remark. “‘Made my name,' you said. You knew what he was and where the money came from, but it was business that made you look good and so you went along with it!” Franks swept his arm out, gesturing around the office. “You wanted all this. You wanted all this and the title on the door and a load of secretaries who jumped when you said jump.”

“So maybe I did,” fought back the other man. “Maybe I was sick and tired of having you held up to me as the big tycoon, an example to be followed. Just as I was sick and tired of having to be as good as you when we were kids and as good as you when we were at college.…” Nicky broke off, his voice blocked.

He scrubbed his hand across his eyes, and Franks wondered if he was going to cry openly. All these years and he had never known—never guessed—that it had been for Nicky just as it had been for him. Worse, in fact, from the blurted, near tearful admission. Franks didn't give a damn, not now. All that mattered was understanding about the investigation, and at the moment he didn't understand. “How does this involve me?” he said.

“It became an agreement between us that if ever I heard about something that looked good I should talk to them about it. The hotel idea seemed good. I knew that the money would be available. Better than banks.…”

“Wait!” stopped Franks, actually holding up his hands. “Just wait. By the time I talked to you about expanding into Bermuda and the Bahamas, you knew what Pascara was. And because they came to you through him you knew—guessed at least—what Dukes and Flamini were.”

Nicky nodded dumbly.

“Say it!” yelled Franks.

“I knew it,” said the lawyer.

“Bastard!”

“I've said I was sorry.”

“Sorry!” said Franks, still shouting. “You set me up. Trapped me into God knows what!”

“I didn't think there was any risk. I honestly didn't think there was any danger at all.”

“Everything,” insisted Franks. “I want to know every single thing that happened.”

“I approached the banks first—you know I did—and found out how much the money would cost. And then I let them know. All three said at once they wanted in.”

“Did you tell them what the banks' rates were?”

“Yes,” said Nicky.

“So they could undercut?”

“I suppose so.”

Christ how easy it had been for them, thought Franks. He said, “What about when I held back? When you went down to the islands yourself? Did they ever intend to go it alone?”

Nicky swallowed awkwardly. “Christ, Eddie. I'm sorry.”

“Tell me!” shouted Franks again.

Nicky made an uncertain shaking gesture with his head. “I said I didn't want to do it, that it was stupid. That's when Pascara said he was calling in the debts, for the help he'd given Poppa, all those years ago, and for everything he'd put my way.”

“You didn't have to do it!”

“He threatened to take his money out of everything I'd set up for him. Dukes and Flamini, too. They said they'd get another firm to do it and spread the word that I'd fouled up for them. You know how small Wall Street is; what rumors can do. It would have broken me, Eddie. It didn't matter that it wasn't true. We're talking about a lot of money. Millions. Suddenly shifting that, all at once, would have registered.”

“Bloody fool!”

“Don't you think I realize that now!”

“So what was the point of going down?”

“To force you along.”

Franks felt physically sick and swallowed against the sensation. A puppet, he thought. A puppet jerking and dancing to whatever string they chose to pull. “They never wanted control?”

“Never,” said Nicky. “They always wanted the public impression to be that it was your company.”

Franks burned with humiliation as he remembered all the discussions and talk at the board meetings. It had all been a charade, every bit of it. He'd imagined they were giving way to his pressure and all the time he'd been doing exactly what they wanted, creating the shield behind which they could hide. “What about the gambling?” he said in abrupt recollection.

“That was the eventual aim,” disclosed Nicky.

“I don't understand.”

“The FBI came here yesterday. Two guys. I don't know what they've found but they said they've been investigating for months. They know about the credit linkup between Las Vegas and Nassau. Said it was the classic way these guys get money out. All they do is make the deposit in Las Vegas and draw it from us, in the Bahamas. Gamble a little, to make it appear genuine, cash up the rest, and put it into an offshore account.”

The feeling of sickness came to Franks again, at a further realization. The discussion about installing the casino had occurred when Nicky was away on his honeymoon. Informal, they'd said. No reason to keep any notes. So any investigation would show the initiative to the Bahamas government to be his, with the formal company discussion only occurring afterward. Franks' mind stayed on records. He said, “What documentation is there that I haven't seen? Stuff beween you and Pascara? With any of them?”

Nicky licked his lips, not moving.

“Give it to me!” yelled Franks.

Hesitantly the lawyer took a slim folder from a desk drawer, sliding it across the table toward the other man. “I wasn't keeping it from you,” he said.

“Liar.” said Franks. “You
have
kept it from me. What's here?”

“Dukes' bank transfer, for the original company creation. Came from an offshore account in the Netherlands Antilles. Instructions from Pascara, for dividend payments. That's offshore, too. An account in the Bahamas …”

“Into which goes the casino money?”

“I don't know,” said Nicky. “There's also my own notes, about the formation. What I was asked to do. Some stuff about Pascara's other investments, too.”

Franks looked down at the folder and then back up to Nicky. “Didn't the FBI ask for this?”

“They probably would have done if they'd known about it. They just wanted the company books; said if I refused they'd get them by subpoena.”

Franks sat back in his chair, trying to analyze everything. It was a mess. An embarrassing, humiliating mess that was going to tarnish his reputation badly and probably destroy Nicky's. Which the bloody man deserved anyway; he felt no sympathy for him. Thank God he'd kept the companies separate from everything in Europe.

“How were things left with the investigators?”

“They told me not to get in touch with Pascara, Dukes, or Flamini. Said they'd want to talk to you and wanted to know when you'd next be in America.”

“We'll cooperate,” decided Franks. He lifted the unopened folder. “Make this available and anything else they might want. It'll wreck the company, of course. We'll get some sort of price for the hotels but we won't cover ourselves. We'll need lawyers, naturally. The best. You must be able to get the names. Do that this afternoon.”

“I'm not sure,” said Nicky.

“Not sure about what?”

“Cooperating.”

“What are you talking about! We've been suckered—I have, at least. I don't like it and I like even less the thought of it becoming public knowledge. But it's going to become public knowledge. There's nothing we can do about it. The important thing now is to salvage what little we can.”

“There's nothing wrong with the public affairs of the company,” said Nicky. “Nor the hotel company or the casino holding. We took an investment in good faith and operated strictly according to the law.”

“You know—and now I know—that it was crooked money! We've been set up, as a front, for criminals to operate,” protested Franks. “Are you suggesting we become criminals too?”

“There's been nothing criminal in the operation of the company,” insisted the lawyer.

“Surely in American law it's criminal to withhold information in a criminal investigation?”

“I'm not a criminal lawyer, as you said,” agreed Nicky. “But my understanding is that we comply with the law if we respond to the requests that are made of us. But no more.”

“What are you saying?”

“Just that,” said Nicky. “We comply, but we don't offer any more than what's asked of us.”

“You mean there might not be any prosecution?”

“I've no idea if there's going to be any sort of prosecution. Certainly, from what was said yesterday, they seem to know a lot, but it's a lot about Pascara and Dukes and Flamini. It's not about this company. And that's our only involvement. The hotels and the subsidiary casino operation.”

“Through which they've washed their money!”

“Is it provable?” asked Nicky.

Franks waved the folder at the other man. “The offshore accounts listed here would probably make it so.”

“We haven't been asked for that.”

“Are you suggesting we go on fronting for a bunch of gangsters?”

“No,” said Nicky. “I'm suggesting that we try to protect ourselves. In every way. If there's no prosecution, then we quietly withdraw and divest ourselves of the holding.”

“What if there is a prosecution?”

“Then we're innocent victims. Stupid maybe, but still people who were cheated.”

Franks shook his head. “That won't work.”

“Why not?”

“Are you prepared to lie on oath?”

“Yes,” said Nicky, without any hesitation. “I don't give a damn about perjury if I'm thinking about survival; I went to church to get christened, confirmed, and married.”

He didn't have any religion, thought Franks. So did perjury matter if it meant minimizing the damage that was likely? “What would you say?”

“Nothing,” said Nicky. “That I only knew them as business investors with whom every dealing was absolutely satisfactory.”

“That sounds like a character reference.”

“To me it sounds like common sense.”

“I asked for anything that wasn't in me official company records. Because it seemed obvious mat there
would
be something. What happens if me investigators ask as well?”

Nicky spread his hands. “I don't have it anymore.”

“Don't be glib,” said Franks.

“Let's destroy it, while we've got the chance,” said Nicky, suddenly urgent.

“I haven't looked at it yet.”

“Take my word for what's there.”

“I took your word. And got trapped because of it. Don't be fucking stupid.”

“You're not in England now, Eddie. Here things are different. Pascara and Flamini and Dukes aren't small time. They're important,
really
important. We're not talking of bicycle thefts and parking tickets.”

“What are we talking about?”

“We're talking about getting killed.”

“Don't be ridiculous!” Franks' rejection was automatic but there was an immediate feeling of chill. He'd read about gangland assassinations, in newspapers and magazines. Read about them in fictionalized books, too, and seen the films. But that's what it was. Newspaper stories about other people. And fiction. Not something that happened to him.

“I'm not being ridiculous, Eddie. I'm being desperately serious.”

“Are you telling me that you won't testify against them if a case is made?”

“Exactly that.”

“How can you!”

“Easy,” said Nicky. “I acted for clients believing they were reputable businessmen. I'm shocked and dismayed to find that they're not. Embarrassed, too. But as I know nothing about any criminality, I can't give evidence about it.”

“What about me?” demanded Franks. “What about my being the majority stockholder in both companies. The man who negotiated the casino agreement?”

“You thought they were reputable businessmen too. You
did
, until today.”

“Not anymore I don't.”

“Because I chose to tell you. Because I owed it to you.”

“It's lying.”

“It's living.”

“I still think that's ridiculous.”

“I don't want my sister to be a widow. Or David and Gabriella to be orphans.”

“Isn't it a bit late to think like that?”

“I deserve anything you feel like saying,” capitulated the lawyer.

Franks was engulfed in a fresh wave of anger, a feeling of impotence. He wanted physically to hit the man but guessed he wouldn't fight back that way, either. “You're a shit!” he said. “A complete, lying shit. I hope you get everything that's coming.”

“All those things,” agreed Nicky. “I wanted to be like you and I couldn't, not in a million years. Now it's atonement time. I'm not asking for forgiveness. Don't expect it. But I am sorry. Once it started, I couldn't stop. Okay, I admit it. I didn't want it to stop. It was a ladder to climb and I got to the top.”

“You didn't have to involve me,” said Franks bitterly.

“I didn't think there could ever be any risk,” repeated the lawyer. “Everything else before had been so smooth and so easy.…” There was a pause. “I wanted you to see me as a big-time fixit lawyer with a big office, able to pluck millions out of the air with a phone call. There wasn't any maybe about it,” he concluded, completely prostrating himself.