Chapter 5 - The Council at the Federal Building
The private conference room on the ninth floor of the Everett McKinley Dirksen United States Courthouse in downtown Chicago was an altar of cold, mathematical preparation.
It was 2:30 PM on Tuesday.
Through the panoramic plate-glass windows, the gray waves of Lake Michigan churned beneath a driving winter sleet that washed the soot from the limestone facades of Dearborn Street.
Sitting around the twenty-foot walnut conference table were six people:
myself, wearing an impeccably tailored dark emerald wool overcoat over an ivory silk blouse, my dark hair swept back into an austere chignon, my forensic accounting laptops humming on the blotter;
Detective Patricia Wells;
Agent Marcus Vance;
United States Attorney Sarah Lin, the chief of the Northern District’s Public Integrity and Financial Crimes Unit;
and Arthur Sloan, my personal trust litigator.
On the sixty-inch digital wall display, a sprawling forensic financial flowchart mapped out the complete, systematic demolition of the Rodriguez-Foster corporate syndicate.
"The asset recovery is ninety-eight percent complete, Elena," Sarah Lin reported, her laser pointer tracing a bright green line across the offshore banking nodes. "Thanks to the encrypted decryption keys you pulled from his safe at one o'clock this morning, the federal marshals executed an emergency freeze against the Grand Cayman accounts before the local banks opened."
She pulled up a certified banking balance sheet stamped with the gold seal of the Bank of Nova Scotia:
SEIZED LIQUID ASSETS: $3,412,880.00
DOMESTIC ESCROW (NORTHERN TRUST): $418,000.00
REAL PROPERTY (442 SYCAMORE LANE): $1,250,000.00 (Unencumbered)
TOTAL FORFEITURE RECOVERY: $5,080,880.00
"And the clients?" I asked, sipping black tea from a porcelain cup.
"Every single dollar stolen from the Peterson estate and the other three accounts has been restored in full," Sarah Lin smiled, closing her folder with a satisfying thwack. "The Peterson family board sent an official letter to the United States Attorney thirty minutes ago. They have dismissed all civil liability claims against Morrison & Associates... and they have formally requested that you, Elena, be appointed as the independent forensic auditor to oversee their entire corporate endowment."
Arthur Sloan let out a low, gravelly chuckle from the corner of the table, his hands folded comfortably over his three-piece tweed waistcoat.
"A sixty-thousand-dollar salary was an insult to your intellect, Elena," Arthur said, his eyes twinkling with ancient, sovereign pride. "The Peterson retainer alone carries a base consulting fee of two hundred and forty thousand dollars a year, plus an equity performance bonus."
My phone chimed on the table.
It was an automated notification from the Cook County Department of Corrections inmate locator service:
INMATE STATUS UPDATE: Name: Rodriguez, Thomas E. Booking ID: #26-CR-9914 Housing: Division 11 – Maximum Security Protective Custody Bail Setting: DENIED (Flight Risk / Economic Danger) Next Appearance: Formal Grand Jury Indictment – Courtroom 22A.
I stared at the glowing text for two seconds.
I didn't smile. I didn't cheer.
I remembered sitting in that sterile kitchen two weeks ago, looking at my termination notice while my husband sipped imported beer and told me that my survival was not his problem.
I remembered how small he had tried to make me feel.
How weak.
How entirely dependent on his magnificent, untouchable generosity.
"What is his defense team proposing, Sarah?" I asked, looking up at the prosecutor.
"Thomas’s public defender called my office forty minutes ago," Sarah Lin replied, her tone turning dry and surgical. "His private lawyers dropped him the moment his retainers were frozen under the RICO seizure order. He is offering to enter a full, unconditional guilty plea to seven counts of wire fraud and grand larceny... in exchange for a recommendation that he be placed in a minimum-security camp in Minnesota."
"And your response?"
Sarah Lin stood up, walked to the window, and looked down at the icy streets below.
"My response," she said, her voice dropping into a register of cold, absolute finality, "was that under the federal sentencing guidelines, a man who attempts to frame an innocent woman for a thirty-year federal felony does not go to a camp.
May you like
He goes to the federal penitentiary in Pekin.
And he stays there until his hair turns as white as that snow."
