Kiss the Girls and Make Them Cry Page 14

  “Read the papers or watch the news. Two million is cheap. Frankly, I’m surprised they’re not demanding more.”

  “How much more and when will you need it?”

  “Another six million dollars within a month. That will be enough for the time being.”

  Sherman sighed. “I’ll get it done. We’re finished.”

  “No, we’re not,” Carter responded. “If you really want to know everything I’m doing, we need another way to communicate. Use cash to buy yourself a cheap laptop. Get a new email address, obviously not using any part of your name. Use only the new computer to contact me at this email address,” he said, as he finished scribbling on a slip of paper that he handed to Sherman. “When this is over, throw the laptop in the Sound or any river. Water destroys everything electronic. Then cancel the email address and no one will be the wiser.”

  This will save me some time, Carter thought to himself. Junior and Sherman both want to know everything I’m doing. I can send the same emails to each of them.

  “One last thing,” Carter continued, looking Sherman squarely in the eyes. “The next time we meet it will be at a time that’s convenient for me at a location of my choosing. I don’t want to make you late for your trainer. You’re free to go.”

  As Carter stepped out of the car to walk toward the station entrance, Sherman resisted the overwhelming temptation to use his two-ton Teutonic vehicle to crush Carter.

  One less lawyer, he thought, would make the world a better place.

  46

  Michael Carter stretched out in his first-class seat for the flight from Billings, Montana, to Minneapolis. After a forty-five-minute layover he would be on his way to JFK in New York.

  Christina Neumann, one of the victims named by Matthews, now lived in Billings. From the time he was a little boy, Carter had always been fascinated by dinosaurs. After touring Yellowstone National Park, he had visited the Museum of the Rockies and its world-class fossil collection.

  It had been an effort to get Neumann to respond to him. Fortunately, most people never change their cell phone number. For a fee, of course, his contact at Verizon had confirmed that her cell number was the same as when she was at REL and provided her current billing address.

  Neumann had ignored the first three texts he had sent her. She broke her silence after he promised in a fourth text that if necessary, he would come to Billings unannounced and knock on her door. She had called him back the same day.

  No, he had told her, he was not interested in her vague assurances that she had made her peace with what happened and had just moved on. His job, he reasoned, was to conclude settlements. Somebody who’s content letting bygones be bygones today might feel differently tomorrow. The loss of a job, an expensive divorce, a parent goes bonkers with Alzheimer’s and needs expensive care. Stuff happens; and all of a sudden dredging up the past in favor of a big payday is not such a bad idea.

  He still didn’t know why people insisted on sharing their deepest vulnerabilities with their adversaries. She had confided in him that she had not shared what happened to her at REL with her husband. He had confided in her that if she refused to meet with him, perhaps her husband would be more amenable. They had agreed to a date when her husband would be away on a business trip.

  He smiled as he thought of sitting across from Christina Neumann. A petite blonde with a gorgeous figure, she was by far his easiest settlement to date. In and out of his rented office space in less than thirty minutes. She was not aware of any other victims. Neumann was adamant that her husband not find out what had happened to her at REL. And it was obvious that she didn’t need the money. She barely read the settlement before signing it. Her instruction was that the two million dollars be wired to the ASPCA. What a dope, he thought to himself, wondering for a moment if she would follow up to assure he had sent the money.

  As his army friend from Alabama used to joke, “This is as easy as holding up the Piggly Wiggly with a gun.” He was convinced that if she had been left alone, Neumann never would have come forward. But he saw no need to share that with Sherman and Junior.

  Opening his laptop, he began writing the email he would send about the three days of arduous negotiations that had finally resulted in Christina Neumann agreeing to a settlement.

  47

  Michael Carter sighed in frustration as he made another note on the second page of his legal pad. Persuading the women to settle wasn’t always easy. In his first conversation with Cathy Ryan, she had literally told him to take a hike. But he was confident he could browbeat and wear her down the way he had done the others. Finding the women and getting the conversation started had always been a snap, until now.

  He looked again at Mel Carroll’s personnel file. Matthews would have made the job so much easier if he’d only stuck to abusing Americans, Carter thought.

  Carroll had been an intern in a REL News international exchange program. She had come over at age twenty-three after working for one year at REL’s affiliate in South Africa.

  The two women she listed as emergency contacts were no help. Both were South African nationals living in New York City. They had no idea where Carroll went after leaving REL.

  The South African Consulate had tried to help. They had also given him a copy of her birth certificate, which included both her parents’ names. She had been born in Genadendal.

  There was some evidence she had returned there. When she resigned eleven months earlier, she left wiring instructions to send her final pay to a bank in her birthplace, a small town ninety minutes east of Cape Town. There was no guarantee she was living in that area now, but at least it was a place to start.

  Carter chuckled as he tried to imagine what Sherman’s reaction would be upon hearing that he would be heading to South Africa at REL’s expense. To hell with him, he thought to himself. He had a job to do, and he planned to do it right. If he had a little fun along the way, that was his business. He opened his computer and typed in the SEARCH screen, “Best Safaris in South Africa.”

  48

  Houston, we have a problem was how Michael Carter began his email to Sherman and Junior. Right from the beginning, he had recognized it as a potential flaw in his plan to buy the silence of Matthews’s victims. It was a what-if? that he had never broached with either man because he didn’t have a good answer regarding how to handle the situation. Truth be told, his recommendation would be more Band-Aid than solution. Twenty months after notching his first agreement with Lauren Pomerantz, he and they would be forced to confront the issue head on.

  He continued typing.

  After agreeing to a settlement a year and a half ago, Paula Stephenson contacted me. She wants more money. After leaving REL she was hired as an on-air reporter at a cable station in Dayton. A few months later she resigned. In reality she had been fired for being intoxicated while on the air. She relocated to Durham where she purchased a condominium. Shortly thereafter, she lost a large sum of money on an investment in a software company.

  She is delinquent on homeowners association payments, car loans, credit cards, etc. In our conversations she cited the higher sums paid to Me-Too victims by other media companies. Although she would not share names, she claims other Matthews victims would validate her story if she came forward.

  If she goes public, her accusations might be dismissed as the ranting of an alcoholic. But if in addition to her settlement document, the $2 million she received is traced to Carter & Associates and further traced to REL News, her story will be very credible.

  Stephenson has agreed to remain silent until she meets with me on Monday in Durham. I suggest an interim solution. A one-year deal where each month she will receive a wire of $50 thousand. This will see us well-past the IPO and buy time to think. It will also prevent a repeat of the cycle where she squanders away a large sum of money all at once.

  Your silence will be regarded as approval of this plan.

  After sending the email, Carter leaned back in his chair. He had an uneasy
feeling about the upcoming meeting. The sit-downs with the other victims were battles of wits, chess matches where each side had strengths and vulnerabilities. But in Stephenson he sensed a quiet defiance. He thought of the line in the Bob Dylan song. “When you ain’t got nothing, you got nothing to lose.” Despite being broke and a drunk, Stephenson was holding all the cards.

  49

  Carter had his laptop open on the desk in the temporary office space he had rented in Durham. He gave one final read to the settlement document he would discuss with Paula Stephenson. He pressed a key and heard a whirring noise behind him. The synching of his computer and the printer had been achieved.

  The receptionist had buzzed a few minutes earlier to inform him that the notary public had arrived. Why did I even bother? he thought to himself. The very fact that he was here today reminded him how unenforceable these settlement agreements were. He had used the standard legal language, “now, and for all of time,” to describe the signer’s commitment to adhere to the terms of the contract. In Paula Stephenson’s case, “for all of time” had lasted less than fifteen months.

  Neither Sherman nor Matthews had responded to his email. That was both a surprise and a relief. He had anticipated incoming fire from Sherman about the prospect of paying more to someone who had already settled. He also thought at least one of them would ask why he was waiting five days to meet with Stephenson.

  The answer would not have pleased either of them. After he agreed to represent his army buddy in his wrongful termination suit, he had negotiated a quick and lucrative settlement. It had led to more business. If his work for REL came to a halt, maybe he could segue into doing that full-time.

  Stephenson had wanted to meet right away. He had put her off because he had two days of depositions scheduled on one of his employment cases.

  “Where are you, Paula?” he said aloud as he glanced at his watch. She was now thirty-five minutes late for their eleven o’clock appointment. She had not responded to a text, and his call had gone straight to her voice mail. He checked his phone again. She had made no attempt to contact him.

  When he’d told her where and when they would meet, he’d given that information over the phone. Could he possibly have misspoken? He doubted it. She had asked him to repeat it several times and she sounded reasonably sober. Even if she got the date and time wrong, why wouldn’t she respond to his messages?

  At noon the receptionist buzzed. Did he still want the notary to wait? “No, send her in,” he said. He paid her for her time. The receptionist gave him the name of a Chinese food place that delivered.

  At two o’clock he had a decision to make. Sitting here was accomplishing nothing, and he didn’t want to miss his 6:30 direct flight to Newark. He clicked on his laptop and pulled up the address of Paula Stephenson’s condominium. According to Waze, he could be there in twenty minutes. If she’s changed her mind about meeting me, what’s the point? he asked himself. But there was one viable scenario. After a night of heavy boozing, she could be in bed in a dead sleep. It’s worth a shot, he thought, as he opened the Uber app.

  * * *

  “Don’t pull in. I’ll get out here,” Carter ordered as the Uber driver eased to the side of the road opposite Stephenson’s condominium. Across the lawn on both sides of the front entrance he could see a parked police cruiser with its overhead lights flashing. Between the two vehicles a medical technician in a white jacket was opening the rear doors of an ambulance. Two other white-coated individuals were wheeling a stretcher to a halt in back of the ambulance. A human figure with a sheet covering the entire body was motionless atop the stretcher.

  Trying to look inconspicuous, Carter walked slowly down the driveway and settled in behind a group of voyeurs. He was hoping to find out what had happened without asking any questions.

  “Sometimes the pressure just gets to be too much,” one woman sighed. “I hear the condo association was pressing her hard to get caught up on her payments.”

  “Did she really kill herself?” another asked.

  “I was doing work on that floor. I heard the police say she hung herself. That’s got to be an awful way to go,” a man with paint splattered on his shirt and blue jeans shared. His truck, with the logo of a painting business on its side, was parked about one hundred feet away.

  “Does anybody know her name?” Carter asked, trying to sound disinterested.

  “Stephenson,” a woman said. “Her unit was up there on the fourth floor.”

  Carter eased his way from the group and started to backpedal up the driveway. He made eye contact with a police officer who held his gaze. The travel bag in his hand made him feel uncomfortable. It was as if the officer was sensing that something inside the bag was linked to what happened to Stephenson. Carter gave a half smile, turned, and began to walk away. With each step he expected a whistle to blow and a loud voice to order him to stop. He reached the street without looking back and turned right. His mind was racing, and he needed the opportunity to think things through.

  Problem solved had been his first thought when he learned that Paula Stephenson was dead. Another loose end tied off, this time at no expense to REL. No more worries about a drunken, loose cannon. But was there another scenario that was not nearly so rosy? The police would keep looking until they found her parents, a sibling, some relative who would volunteer to come in and take charge of her personal effects. In plain view, on top of a desk or a kitchen counter could be her settlement agreement with his name on the letterhead. What will happen if some relative shows up and takes the time to read it? Why did this group, Carter & Associates, give her $2 million?

  There had been a steely resolve in Stephenson’s voice when Carter had spoken to her only five days earlier. His attempt to bully her into adhering to the original settlement had gone nowhere. If anything, it had backfired. She had laughed at him, saying derisively, “If I hire a lawyer, what are you going to do, Mr. Carter, sue me?” She then mentioned three prominent New York law firms that had negotiated huge payouts for their abuse clients. She insisted on reciting the amount each woman had received. “If we don’t work something out and fast, I’m going to call one of these firms.” Ironically, Paula Stephenson’s last words to him when they had agreed to meet at eleven o’clock were “Be on time.”

  It just didn’t make sense. Far from being afraid, Stephenson seemed to be spoiling for a fight. How can somebody in five days go from being so gung ho to putting a rope around her neck?

  Carter came to an abrupt halt as a sickening thought swept over him. “Oh my God,” he said aloud. Suppose somebody else put that rope around her neck. How convenient for REL that a troublemaker, a woman who was threatening to go public with her accusation, had taken her own life.

  A few minutes ago, the thought of a relative finding the settlement agreement had been a concern for Carter. Now it was far more ominous, particularly if the police got hold of it and considered the possibility that she had been murdered. He had a motive to kill her. His airline ticket and hotel reservation were in his name, so they could establish that he was in Durham around the time she was killed. The receptionist and the notary public could confirm the time he spent at the temporary office space, but that wouldn’t do him any good if she were killed in the wee hours of the morning. He berated himself for taking the early flight to Durham the previous day to give him time to visit the Museum of Life and Science. If he had flown down this morning, all of his time would have been accounted for.

  Stop, he said to himself. He knew he didn’t do it. The question was, who did? There was only one choice. Sherman. After initially not wanting to know the details of Carter’s work, the CEO had reversed himself and wanted to know everything. He was setting Carter up as the fall guy if the police started investigating. Sherman would be too smart to do it himself. He’d be in Connecticut with a rock-solid alibi while somebody he hired dispatched Stephenson.

  A sickening thought entered Carter’s mind. Killers get a morbid sense of satisfaction when
they watch the police investigate the crime they committed. They often return to the crime scene, fueled by a sense of power that they alone know what happened to the victim. If the police reviewed the records from Uber, they’d find that he was driven to the building just in time to watch the body being taken away. The image of the police officer staring at him flooded into his mind.

  Calm down, he ordered himself. Stop playing Dr. Phil. Any number of factors could have caused Stephenson to snap and take her life after he spoke to her. The most important thing for him was to focus on self-preservation.

  50

  Dick Sherman was alone in his office on the third floor of his Greenwich mansion. Tonight he was happy to have the house to himself.

  Using the computer he kept in a locked file cabinet, he had just finished reading the email from Carter summarizing his trip to Durham. Paula Stephenson dead, an apparent suicide. Perfect, he thought to himself. Stephenson could have been a real headache for him and for REL. Now she was in a drawer in a morgue with her mouth the way it should be. Shut. He had no patience for anyone who reneged on agreements. Good riddance!

  But Stephenson’s trip to the Great Beyond did not solve all his problems. Not by a long shot.

  Matthews’s arrogance infuriated him. Instead of gratitude and cooperation, “America’s anchorman” had left it to Sherman to clean up the mess he had made. I should have left that hayseed at the southern Virginia cable station where I found him twenty years ago, he sneered to himself.

  Sherman still didn’t trust Carter as far as he could throw him. But he’d painted himself into a corner with the two-bit lawyer. Fire him, and he’d have to hire somebody else to finish the job. And that would make Carter another person who knew too much and who couldn’t be counted on to keep his mouth shut. Were lawyers the professionals who committed suicide the most, or was that dentists? he wondered.