Chapter 9: The Morning After the Dinner
The call to the district attorney's office lasted forty minutes.
Warren made it from a small conference room the hotel manager had opened for them — the same manager Elena had mentioned, who had come to find them after the event coordinator called him, and who had listened to a two-minute summary from Warren with the expression of a man calculating exactly how much liability was currently sitting inside his building.
He gave them the conference room without being asked twice.
Beth Nakamura — that was her full name, Warren confirmed it — met them there at half past ten.
She was in her mid-thirties, wore a dark coat over her event clothes, and carried a leather portfolio that she set on the table without preamble.
"I have three years of calendar records," she said.
"Devereux's meeting with the notary who supposedly stamped that document — the retired one — is not in his calendar because it never happened.
But his meeting with a document preparation service in March of last year is.
I have the invoice."
She opened the portfolio.
Warren looked at the invoice.
He looked at it for a long time.
"This is the service that prepared the forged document," he said.
"I believe so," Beth said.
"I didn't know what it was for at the time.
I booked the appointment.
I filed the invoice.
I didn't ask questions." She looked at Adrian.
"I'm asking them now."
"Why?" Adrian said.
She met his eyes.
"Because I watched her grab your chair and tell you to roll yourself out.
And I watched you sit there and not give her the reaction she wanted.
And I thought—" She stopped.
"I thought, these people are going to walk away from tonight and nothing will happen to them.
And that felt wrong."
The room was quiet for a moment.
"It won't," Warren said.
"Walk away."
Beth nodded once.
She turned back to the portfolio.
"There's more.
Garrett's office communicated with Devereux's office fourteen times in the past four months.
I have the email threads.
Devereux's assistant — me — was copied on most of them.
The subject lines are vague, but the content is not."
She laid the printed emails on the table in a row.
Warren read them standing.
He didn't sit down for the entire time he was reading.
When he finished, he looked at Adrian.
"This is enough," he said.
"This is more than enough."
Adrian looked at the documents spread across the conference table.
The invoice.
The emails.
The forged agreement still in its envelope.
Elena's recordings.
The parking structure audio.
The photographer who had shot the truth by accident.
"What happens now?" Elena asked.
"Now," Warren said, "I file an emergency motion to freeze any action on the Harwick parcel pending fraud investigation.
I send the recordings and documents to my contact at the DA's office tonight.
In the morning, I contact the state bar regarding Devereux's involvement, and I file a formal complaint with the city ethics board regarding Councilman Garrett." He paused.
"And I call Soren Adler."
"The photographer," Adrian said.
"A photographer who works for a publication owned by the man who just committed fraud on tape," Warren said.
"I suspect, when that's explained to him clearly, he'll be very interested in cooperating with the investigation rather than being named as a participant in it."
Beth closed her portfolio.
"What do you need from me?"
"A formal statement," Warren said.
"Tonight if possible.
I have a colleague who can take it properly." He looked at her.
"You understand that giving this statement will end your employment."
"My employment ended the moment I sat down at this table," Beth said.
"I'd rather it ended for the right reason."
Warren made the call.
His colleague arrived at eleven fifteen.
Adrian and Elena waited in the corridor while the statement was taken.
The hotel had quieted around them — the dinner was long over, the ballroom being cleared by the same staff who had served three hundred guests their salmon and their sorbet and their carefully arranged white roses.
"You should go home," Adrian said.
"It's late.
You've been here since—"
"Since four o'clock this afternoon," Elena said.
"Yes." She leaned against the wall.
"I'll go when this is done."
"It may not be done until—"
"I'll go when this is done," she said again.
Not impatiently.
Just clearly.
Adrian looked at her.
"The job offer," he said.
"I meant it."
"I know you meant it."
"I'm not asking for an answer tonight."
"Good," she said.
"Because tonight I'm still a banquet attendant and you're still a man in a wheelchair in a hotel corridor at eleven thirty, and neither of us has eaten a proper dinner."
He almost laughed.
It had been a long time since something had almost made him laugh.
"There's a diner two blocks from here," he said.
"Open until two."
She looked at him.
May you like
"After the statement," she said.
"After the statement," he agreed.
