The Rooster Bar

  Lucero family still lived on Orange Street in south Baltimore. Thus, York & Orange Traders came to life via the astonishingly efficient incorporation laws of Mark’s home state. For $500, paid by credit card, the charter was granted online, and the fledgling company used as its business address one of the many corporate services available in Delaware. Once up and running in the U.S., York & Orange Traders immediately began to expand. It looked southward and chose the Caribbean nation of Barbados as its first branch. For a fee of $650, the company got itself registered in the Lesser Antilles.

  Opening a bank account there, though, would not be as easy as registering a business.

  After weeks of online research, Mark and Todd knew better than to try their luck with Swiss banks. Any whiff of ill-gotten gains, and the Swiss would refuse to do business. As a whole, their banks were wary of the U.S. regulators, and many flatly refused new business from the States. Things appeared to be a bit more laid-back in the Caribbean.

  —

  WALL STREET LIKED the news of the proposed settlement. Swift Bank opened sharply higher and continued to rise on heavy trading throughout the morning. By noon Wednesday, it had doubled and was nudging $27 a share.

  Swift’s lawyers were scrambling to get approvals from the six federal judges handling the class actions. Not surprisingly, at least not to Mark and Todd, who were monitoring minute by minute with several court watch apps, the judge in Miami crossed the finish line first and signed off on the deal before 2:00 p.m., less than twenty-four hours after Swift announced its plans.

  Not long thereafter, Marvin Jockety called Mark and, with strained politeness, said, “Please call Barry Strayhan.”

  “Sure. The number?”

  Jockety gave him the number and went away. Mark immediately called Strayhan, who said, “We’ve upheld our end of the bargain. What about you?”

  “We’ve canceled our meeting with the Times. We’ll sit on things until the money comes through, then we’ll go away. Just as we promised.”

  “What’s your angle with the settlement?”

  “Harvard Law School, right, Mr. Strayhan? Class of 1984?”

  “Correct.”

  “Didn’t they teach you at Harvard to avoid questions that will not be answered?”

  The line was dead.

  —

  ON WEDNESDAY MORNING, Idina Sanga presented herself at the jail and announced to the clerks that she was not leaving until she had consulted with her clients. And, she had the name and phone number of a ranking judicial minister at the ready. She made as much noise as possible for an hour and was finally led to a wing filled with tiny rooms, most of which she had seen before. There were no windows, no fans, no draft of any sort, and for another hour she waited in the thick and sweltering heat until Bo was brought in, handcuffed. His left eye was swollen and there was a small cut over it. His guards left but the handcuffs remained in place.

  “I’m fine,” he said. “Please don’t mention this to Zola or my mother.”

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “The guards, just having some fun, you know.”

  “I’m sorry. Should I complain?”

  “No, please. It will only make matters worse, if that’s possible. I’m in a cell with five other men, all sent back from the U.S. Conditions are not good but we’re surviving. Complaints complicate things.”

  “And no sign of Abdou?”

  “No. I have not seen my father and I’m worried about him.”

  “Have you been interrogated?” Idina asked.

  “Yes, this morning, by a ranking officer. Just the two of us, no one else was in the room. They think my sister is a wealthy American lawyer, and, of course, they want money. I tried to explain that she is only a poor law student with no job, but he doesn’t believe it. He called me a liar. They have the proof. They found the cash in Zola’s box at the hotel. He called that a down payment, said he wants more.”

  “How much more?”

  “Ten thousand U.S. for my father, eight thousand for my mother, another eight for me.”

  “That’s outrageous,” Idina said, stunned. “Bribery is not uncommon, but not in those sums.”

  “Again, he thinks Zola is wealthy. If she came here with a lot of cash, then there must certainly be more back home.”

  “What about the six thousand they’ve already taken?”

  “He said that’s the price for Zola. I argued that she’s an American citizen who’s already signed in at the U.S. embassy down the street. He was not impressed. He said they plan to arrest her and my mother if the money is not paid.”

  “This is preposterous. I have important friends in the government and I plan to call them at once.”

  Bo shook his head and grimaced. “Don’t do that, please. Two men died here last week, so I’m told. Things can get a lot worse. We hear screaming occasionally. Again, if we complain, who knows what will happen.” With his wrists stuck together, Bo awkwardly wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I have friends in the U.S., but they’re all working people like us, with little money. My brother, Sory, lives in California now, but he never saves his money and is always broke. I can’t think of anyone to call. My boss, or my ex-boss, is a good man but he will not get involved. No one wants to get involved when illegals are rounded up and sent back. We were in the detention center for four months and lost contact with almost everyone on the outside. Once your friends know you’re getting removed, they are no longer your friends. It’s every man for himself.” He closed his eyes and frowned as if in pain. “I don’t know of anyone to call. You’ll have to ask Zola.”

  —

  THE METS WON the first two games at Yankee Stadium. The next two would be at Citi Field. Once again, Mark and Todd bought the cheapest seats possible and found themselves high in left field, far above the action. Hyped as it was, the third game was far from a sellout.

  They sipped beer, watched the game, cheered for neither team because Todd was an Orioles fan while Mark pulled for the Phillies, and quietly planned the next few days. In the morning, they would take the train to D.C., and meet with Phil Sarrano, who would talk to the prosecutor and get a feel for his mood.

  Todd was buying a bag of peanuts when Mark’s phone buzzed. It was Zola, still holed up in a grungy hotel where nothing was certain. Either Mark or Todd had spoken with her every day, though the chats were brief. They used e-mails for updates, but were careful not to put everything in writing. On the topic of bribery, it was best to correspond by phone.

  “Serious trouble,” Mark said as he put away his phone. He summarized what she’d told him, and finished with “She needs $26,000. She has six in her bank in D.C. That’s twenty from the firm account.”

  Todd thought for a second and said, “The old firm account is taking a beating these days. Plenty of outflow with nothing coming in.”

  “Balance is $31,000, right?”

  “Just over. How good do you feel about wiring twenty thousand to anyone in Senegal?”

  “She wants it sent to her lawyer’s trust account. From there, who knows, but I’m sure Zola can figure it out.”

  “What if they bust her for bribery?”

  “I’m not sure anyone gets busted for bribery over there. It’s a chance we’ll have to take.”

  “So, we’re doing it? Just like that? Saying good-bye to twenty thousand bucks earned the hard way, hustling drunks in city courts?”

  “Well, most of it came from the taxpayers, if you’ll recall. We pooled our loans meant for living expenses. We’re in it together, Todd, nothing has changed. Zola needs it. We have it. End of conversation.”

  Todd cracked a shell and tossed some peanuts into his mouth. “Okay. But they can’t arrest her, can they? She’s registered with our embassy.”

  “You’re asking me what the police can and cannot do in Dakar, Senegal?”

  “No, as a matter of fact, I’m not asking you that.”

  “Good. She’s an American kid, Todd, just like us, and
we’re sitting here enjoying a baseball game while she’s sweating it out back in Africa, a place she’s never seen before. We’re worrying about facing an unfriendly judge on Friday while she’s worrying about being thrown in jail, where anything might happen. Can you imagine the guards when they get a look at her?”

  “Are you lecturing me again?”

  “I don’t know what I’m doing, really, except drinking beer. We owe her big-time, Todd. Five months ago her life was pretty good. She and Gordy were having fun. She was about to finish law school and do whatever the hell she thought she was going to do. Then we came along. Now she’s in Senegal, terrified, broke, unemployed, freshly sued, soon to be indicted, and on and on. Poor girl. She probably curses the day she met us.”

  “No, she loves us.”

  “She’ll love us a lot more when we wire over the twenty grand.”

  “She’s probably more fragile than we realize.”

  “I think you’re right. Good thing you and I are not fragile. Crazy maybe, but not fragile.”

  “I’ll go with crazy. A couple of lunatics.”

  “Do you ever ask yourself why we did it?”

  “No. You spend too much time looking back, Mark, and maybe I don’t spend enough. But what’s done is done. We can’t go back and change anything, so stop thinking about it and trying to make sense of it. It happened. We did it. We can’t unwind it. Hell, we have enough to think about in the near future.”

  “No regrets?”

  “I don’t do regrets, you know that.”

  “I wish I could just turn it off like that.” Mark took a sip of beer and watched the game. After a moment, he said, “I regret the day I showed up at law school. I regret borrowing all that money. I regret what happened to Gordy. And I’ll really regret things if they give us six months in the slammer and label us as convicted felons.”

  “Great. Now you have regrets. What’s the benefit of whining about them now?”

  “I’m not whining.”

  “Sounds like it to me.”

  “Okay, I’m whining. And if you end up in jail, you still won’t have any regrets?”

  “Mark, you and I both know that we are not going to jail. Period. Some judge might one day sign an order sentencing us to jail, but we will not be in the courtroom when that happens. We will not be in the city, probably not the country. Agreed?”

  “Agreed.”

  39

  At nine Thursday morning, Mark and Todd entered their new bank on Fulton Street as it opened. They had an appointment with an account manager and soon fed her a convoluted tale of their urgent need to wire $20,000 to a law firm in Senegal. Zola had e-mailed the precise wiring instructions. The manager had not yet performed such a task in her brief career. She made a few phone calls and learned, as did Todd and Mark, that the exchange rate between U.S. dollars and West African francs was important. The dollars were first converted to francs, then the wire was authorized by Mr. Lucero, senior partner. The wire was initiated and the money would arrive in Senegal in about twenty-four hours, if all went well. The transaction took an hour, plenty of time for Mark and Todd to charm the account manager with their clever remarks and winning personalities.

  With the money on the way, Mark and Todd took the train into Manhattan and eventually arrived at Penn Station. Killing time and in no hurry whatsoever to return to D.C., they boarded at noon and napped all the way home.

  Home? Though they had been gone for only five days, D.C. seemed like a different world. For years it had been their chosen ground, the place where they would begin and build their careers in the midst of endless opportunity, a city brimming with lawyers and firms and young professionals, all moving up. Now it was the place where they had failed miserably, with the damage meter still clicking away. They would soon leave D.C. in a hurry, and in disgrace, and with people looking for them, and so they found it difficult to gaze at the city from the backseat of a cab and feel any twinge of nostalgia.

  Phil Sarrano’s office was on Massachusetts Avenue near Scott Circle. He was one of four associates in a ten-member firm that specialized in white-collar criminal defense, work that usually meant nice fees from well-heeled politicians, lobbyists, or government contractors. Somehow the firm found time for two dropouts who’d made a rather brazen raid into the city’s proud legal profession and were too broke to hire a more experienced lawyer.

  Phil was only one year older than Todd and Mark. He had finished law school at Foggy Bottom in 2011, the year they had started. Looking around his office, though, they could see no diploma from the diploma mill. On the Ego Wall behind his desk was a handsome, framed certificate from the University of Michigan conferring upon him a degree in liberal arts, but nothing from Foggy Bottom. It was a nice office in a nice little firm that gave every impression of being prosperous and engaging. Phil certainly seemed to enjoy his work.

  Where had they gone so wrong? Why had their careers fallen off the tracks?

  “Who’s prosecuting?” Todd asked.

  “Mills Reedy. Know her?”

  “Nope. Never slept with her. Did you?” he asked Mark.

  “Not that one.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Phil said.

  “Sorry, inside joke,” Todd said.

  “Better keep it inside.”

  “Is she tough?” Mark asked.

  “Yes, a real ballbuster,” Phil said, reaching for a file. “She sent over the file and I’ve gone through it. They have copies of all of your court appearances, with those other names of course, so I gotta ask the question that I don’t usually ask: Do you guys have any defense to these charges?”

  “Nope,” Mark said.

  “None whatsoever,” Todd said. “We’re guilty as hell.”

  “Then why’d you do it?” Phil asked.

  “Isn’t that another question you’re never supposed to ask a client?” Todd asked.

  “I suppose. Just curious, that’s all.”

  Mark said, “We’ll talk about that later, maybe over a drink. My question has to do with the prosecution. Are they really serious about this crap? It’s such a minor little crime. In fact, in half the states unauthorized practice is not even a felony. It’s a low-grade misdemeanor.”

  “This ain’t half the states,” Phil said. “This is D.C. and, as you would probably know if you actually had licenses, the Bar Council takes its work very seriously. And it does a good job. I’ve had one conversation with Ms. Reedy and she was all business. Reminded me that the max is two years in jail and a $1,000 fine.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Todd said.

  “We’re not serving time, Phil,” Mark said. “And we gave our last $6,000 to you, so we’re even broker.”

  “Had to borrow it from my grandmother,” Todd said.

  “You want it back?” Phil asked, bristling.

  “No, no, you keep it,” Mark said. “We just want you to know that we’re broke and we’re not going to jail, so write that down somewhere.”

  Todd said, “And we can’t post a bond either.”

  Phil was shaking his head. “I doubt that’ll happen. So, if you have no defense and you won’t accept any of the penalties, what exactly do you want me to do?”

  “Stall,” Mark said.

  “Delay,” Todd said. “Drag it out, let it blow over. If you asked for a trial date what would you get?”

  “At least six months, maybe a year,” Phil said.

  “Beautiful,” Mark said. “Tell Ms. Reedy we’re going to trial and we’ll have plenty of time to work a deal.”

  “You guys sound like a couple of real lawyers,” Phil said.

  “We were educated at Foggy Bottom,” Todd said.

  —

  AFTER DARK THEY sneaked into their apartment above The Rooster Bar, to check on things and perhaps settle in for the night. But it was even gloomier than they remembered, and after an hour they