Extraordinary Powers

PROLOGUE

The story begins, appropriately enough, at a funeral. The coffin of an old man is being lowered into the ground. The mourners surrounding the grave site are as somber as any funeral-goers, but they are conspicuously well dressed, radiating power and wealth. It is an odd sight: on this gray, drizzling, cold March morning, in a small rural cemetery in Columbia County in upstate New York, you can see United States senators, Supreme Court justices, the various scions of the New York and Washington power establishments, picking up wet clods of soil and flinging them atop the coffin. They are surrounded by black limousines, BMWs, Mercedes, Jaguars, and the assorted other vehicles of the rich, powerful, and elect. Most of them have come a long distance to pay their respects; the graveyard is miles from anywhere.

I was there, of course, but not because I am famous, great, powerful, or elect. I was at the time merely an attorney in Boston—for Putnam & Stearns, a very good firm, and earning a respectable salary—and I felt distinctly out of place among the luminaries.

I was, however, the deceased’s son-in-law.

My wife, Molly—more formally, Martha Hale Sinclair—was the only child of Harrison Sinclair, a legend of the American Establishment, an enigma, a master spy. Hal Sinclair had been one of the founders of the Central Intelligence Agency, then a renowned Cold Warrior (a dirty job, but someone had to do it), later a Director of Central Intelligence, brought in to rescue the foundering Agency during its post-Cold War identity crisis.

Like his friend William Casey before him, Sinclair died during his tenure as director. We are all fascinated by the specter of a CIA director dying while in office—what secrets, one wonders, did the old spymaster take with him to the grave? And indeed, Hal Sinclair took an extraordinary secret with him when he went. But on the cold, overcast morning of his funeral, neither Molly nor I nor any of the VIPs gathered so mournfully knew it.

Without question, the manner of my father-in-law’s death seemed suspicious. He had perished a week earlier in a car accident in rural Virginia. It was late at night; he had been driving to an emergency meeting at CIA headquarters in Langley, and the car had been run off the road by an unidentified vehicle, then exploded in a ball of flames.

One day before the accident, his executive assistant, Sheila McAdams, had been found murdered in an alley in Georgetown. The Washington police concluded that she’d been the victim of a mugging—her purse and jewelry were missing. Molly and I, to be honest, suspected from the start that both her father and Sheila had been murdered, that there was no mugging, and no accident, and we were not alone in our suspicions. The Washington Post, The New York Times, all the television networks, hinted as much in their coverage. But who would have done such a thing? In the bad old days, of course, we would all be quick to blame the KGB or some other dark, mysterious arm of the Evil Empire, but the Soviet Union no longer existed. American intelligence no doubt still had its enemies—but who would want to assassinate, if that’s the right word, the director of the CIA? Molly also believed that her father and Sheila had been having an affair, which isn’t quite as scandalous as it seems, since Sheila was single, and Molly’s mother had died some six years before, leaving Sinclair a widower.

Although Hal Sinclair was a remote, even cryptic figure, I had always felt a closeness to him, from the first time Molly introduced us. Molly and I had been friends in college, more like pals—she was a freshman when I was a senior—and there was unquestionably a spark of attraction between us, but each of us was involved with another. I was seeing Laura, whom I married immediately after college. Molly was involved with some lunk she tired of after a year or so. But Hal Sinclair took to me, and recruited me to the Agency upon my graduation from Harvard, nudging me toward the clandestine service, apparently figuring me for a better spy than I turned out to be. As it happened, this line of work tapped into a dark and violent side that made me a superb if reckless operative—much feared, including by myself.

So for two very tense years before I entered Harvard Law, I worked for the Central Intelligence Agency as a clandestine operative. I did quite well at it too—until the tragedy in Paris. That was when I quit the Agency and went into the law, not regretting the decision for a moment.

It wasn’t until I returned from Paris a widower, after the incident I still find hard to speak of, that Molly and I began to see each other seriously. Molly, the daughter of the man who was soon to become the Director of Central Intelligence, applauded my decision to leave the espionage business behind me. She had seen firsthand, after all, what it could do to a family, the strains it had put upon her own family, and she wanted no part of it.

Even after Hal Sinclair became my father-in-law, I saw little of him, and never got to know him well. We saw each other only at the occasional family gathering (he was the quintessential workaholic, a committed Company man), where he seemed to regard me with a certain warmth.

But as I said, the story begins at Harrison Sinclair’s funeral. It was there, as the mourners began to disperse, shaking hands with one another under their black umbrellas, walking quickly back to their cars, that a tall, lanky man in his early sixties, with tousled silver hair, slipped up to me and introduced himself.

His suit was rumpled, his tie askew, but beneath all the sloppiness, his clothes were expensive: a double-breasted charcoal wool suit of impeccable tailoring and a striped shirt that looked like it had been custom-made for him in Savile Row. Although I’d never met him, I recognized him at once as Alexander Truslow, an old CIA man of considerable renown. Like Hal Sinclair, he was a pillar of the Establishment, with a reputation for moral rectitude. For a few weeks during the Watergate scandal of 1973–74, he served as acting Director of Central Intelligence. Nixon disliked him—largely because, it was said, Truslow refused to play ball with the Nixon White House and involve the CIA in the cover-up—and moved swiftly to replace him with a political appointee more to his liking.

Soft-spoken and elegant in his slightly disheveled way, Alex Truslow was one of those well-mannered, well-bred WASP Yankee types, like Cyrus Vance or Elliot Richardson, who radiate fundamental decency. He had retired from the Agency after Nixon passed him over, but naturally he never aired any gripes about the President; that would be ungentlemanly. Hell, I would have called a press conference, but that was not Alex’s way.

After casting around a bit, doing the lecture circuit, he had formed his own international consulting firm, based in Boston, which was known informally as the Corporation. The Corporation advised corporations and law firms around the world on how to deal with an ever-changing, ever-baffling world market. Not surprisingly, given Truslow’s upstanding reputation in the intelligence community, the Corporation also worked quite closely with CIA.

Alexander Truslow was one of the most respected, eminent men in the intelligence community. After Hal Sinclair’s death, Truslow was known to be on the shortlist to replace him. For reasons of morale in CIA’s ranks alone, Truslow should have been named, so popular was he among the younger officers and the old boys alike. True, there were grumblings about Truslow’s work in the private sector. And then there were those with good reason to fear a new broom. Even so, as he introduced himself to Molly and me, I silently wagered that I was shaking hands with the next Director of the CIA.

I’m terribly sorry, he said to Molly. Truslow’s eyes were moist. Your father was a wonderful man. He’ll be sorely missed.

Molly only nodded. Did she know him? I couldn’t tell.

Ben Ellison, is that right? he said, shaking my hand.

Good to meet you, Mr. Truslow, I said.

Alex. I’m surprised we haven’t run into each other around Boston, he said. You may know I’m a friend of Bill Stearns’s. William Caslin Stearns III is the senior partner of Putnam & Stearns, and himself an old CIA man. Also, my boss. Such were the circles in which I moved.

He’s mentioned you, I said.

A few minutes of awkward chat followed as we walked toward where the cars were parked, and then Truslow got to what was clearly his main point. You know, I’ve mentioned to Bill that I’d be very much interested in having you do some legal work for my firm.

I smiled pleasantly. I’m sorry, but I haven’t had anything to do with CIA or intelligence or anything of that sort since I left the Agency. I don’t think I’m the one you want.

Oh, your background has nothing to do with it, he persisted. It’s purely business, and I’m told you’re the best intellectual-property attorney in Boston.

You’ve been badly misled, I said with a polite chuckle. There are lots better than me.

You’re too modest, he replied gently. Let’s have lunch sometime soon. He gave a lopsided smile. All right, Ben?

I’m sorry, Alex. I’m flattered—but I’m afraid I’m not interested. My loss.

Truslow looked directly at me with his sad brown eyes. They reminded me of a basset hound’s. He shrugged, and shook my hand again.

"Then it’s my loss, Ben," he said, smiled forlornly, and disappeared into the back of a black Lincoln limousine.

I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised that it wouldn’t end there. But I could not help thinking it odd that he would want to hire me, and by the time I understood why, it was too late.

PART

I

THE CORPORATION

THE INDEPENDENT

Is Germany on the Verge of Collapse?

FROM NIGEL CLEMONS IN BONN

In the bleak months since the stock market crash that has plunged Germany into its worst economic and political crisis since the 1920s, many here have come to believe that this country, once Europe’s powerhouse, is on the verge of collapse.

In a violent demonstration yesterday in Leipzig, over one hundred thousand people protested the economic privation, plummeting standard of living, and sudden loss of thousands of jobs throughout the nation. There were even widespread calls for a dictator to restore Germany to its former greatness.

In recent days there have been food riots in Berlin, outbreaks of neo-Nazi and right-wing extremist terrorism, as well as an enormous rise in street crimes especially in what was formerly West Germany. The nation is nearing the end of a fiercely contested election of the next chancellor, and ten days ago the head of the Christian Democratic Party was assassinated.

Government sources here continue to blame the recent German crash on the global recession as well as on the fragility of the recently integrated national stock market, the Deutsche Börse.

Some observers pointedly recall that the last economic crisis of this magnitude, during the Weimar era, gave rise to Adolf Hitler.

ONE

The law offices of Putnam & Stearns are located in the narrow streets of Boston’s financial district, amid granite-fronted bank buildings: Boston’s version of Wall Street, with fewer bars. Our offices occupy two floors of a handsome old building on Federal Street, on the ground floor of which is a respectable old Brahmin bank famous for laundering money for the Mafia.

Putnam & Stearns, I should probably explain at this point, is one of the CIA’s outside law firms. It’s all perfectly legitimate; it doesn’t violate the Agency’s charter (which prohibits them from domestic shenanigans; international shenanigans are apparently okay). Fairly often, the CIA requires legal counsel in matters involving, say, immigration and naturalization (if they’re trying to spirit an intelligence defector into the country) or real estate (if they need to acquire property, a safe house, or an office or anything else that can’t be traced to Langley). Or, and this is Bill Stearns’s particular expertise, moving funds around, in and out of numbered accounts in Luxembourg or Zurich or Grand Cayman.

Putnam & Stearns, though, does a lot more than the CIA’s dirty work. It’s a general practice, white-shoe firm comprising some thirty lawyers, twelve partners, who practice a range of law from corporate litigation to real estate to divorce to estates to tax to intellectual property.

That last item, intellectual property, is my specialty: patents and copyrights, who invented what, who stole whose invention. You remember a few years back when a famous sneaker manufacturer came up with a gimmick that allowed the wearer to pump the shoe up with air, for a cost of a mere hundred and fifty dollars a pair. That was my handiwork—the legal work, I mean; I devised an ironclad patent, or as ironclad as you can realistically get.

For the last several months I had been keeping twenty-four large dolls in my office, which no doubt disconcerted my stuffier clients. I was helping a toy manufacturer out in Western Massachusetts defend his Big Baby Doll line of products. You probably haven’t heard of Big Baby Dolls. This is because the claim was settled against my client; I’m not proud of it. I did much better restraining a cookie company from using in its TV ads a little animated creature that suspiciously resembled the Pillsbury Doughboy.

I was one of two intellectual-property lawyers at Putnam & Stearns, which officially makes us a department, if you count the paralegals and legal secretaries and all that. This means the firm gets to advertise that we’re a full-service legal corporation, here to handle all your needs, even your copyrights and your patents. All your legal needs serviced under one roof. One-stop shopping.

I was considered a good attorney, but not because I loved it or took much interest in it. After all, as the old saw has it, lawyers are the only persons in whom ignorance of the law is not punished.

Instead, I am blessed with a rare neurological gift, present in less than 0.1 percent of the population: an eidetic (or photographic, as it’s colloquially known) memory. It doesn’t make me smarter than anyone else, but it certainly made my life easier in college and law school, when it came time to memorize a passage or a case. I can see the page, as if it were a picture, in my mind. This capability is not something I generally let people know about. It’s not the sort of thing that wins you many friends. And yet it is so much a part of who I am, and always has been, that I must constantly be mindful not to let it set me apart from others.

*   *   *

To their credit, the founding partners, Bill Stearns and the late James Putnam, spent nearly their entire earnings their first few years on interior decoration. The office, all Persian rugs and fragile antiques from the Regency period, exudes a stifling, hushed elegance. Even the ring of the telephone is muted. The receptionist, who’s (naturally) English, sits at an antique library table whose surface is polished to a high gloss. I have seen clients, real estate moguls who in their own lairs strut around barking orders to their minions, walk into our reception area as cowed and discomfited as chastened schoolboys.

It was a little over a month since Hal Sinclair’s funeral, and I was rushing to a meeting in my own office. I passed Ken McElvoy, a junior partner who had been enmeshed in some unspeakably dull corporate litigation for almost six months. He was carrying a huge stack of depositions and looked miserable, like some wretch out of Bleak House or something. I gave poor Dickensian McElvoy a smile and headed for my office.

My secretary, Darlene, gave me a quick wave, and said: Everyone’s there.

Darlene is the funkiest person in this firm, which isn’t hard to accomplish. She usually wears all black. Her hair is dyed a jet black; her eye shadow is midnight blue. But she’s fiercely efficient, so I don’t give her any grief.

I had called this meeting to resolve a dispute that had been carried out through the mail for more than six months. The matter concerned an exercise machine called the Alpine Ski, a magnificently designed device that simulates downhill skiing, giving the user not only the aerobic benefits you get from something like the NordicTrack, but at the same time, a serious muscular workout.

The Alpine Ski’s inventor, Herb Schell, was my client. A former personal trainer in Hollywood, he had made a bundle with this invention. Then suddenly, about a year ago, cheaply produced ads began to run on late-night television for something called the Scandinavian Skier, unmistakably a knockoff of Herb’s invention. It was a lot less expensive, too: whereas the real Alpine Ski sells for upward of six hundred dollars (and Alpine Ski Gold for over a thousand), the Scandinavian Skier was going for $129.99.

Herb Schell was already seated in my office, along with the president and chief executive officer of E-Z Fit, the company that was manufacturing Scandinavian Skier, Arthur Sommer; and his attorney, a high-powered lawyer named Stephen Lyons, whom I’d heard of but never met.

On some level I found it ironic that both Herb Schell and Arthur Sommer were paunchy and visibly in lousy shape. Herb had confided to me over lunch shortly after we met that, now that he was no longer a personal trainer, he’d grown tired of working out all the time; he much preferred liposuction.

Gentlemen, I said. We shook hands all around. Let’s resolve this thing.

Amen, Steve Lyons said. His enemies (who are legion) have been known to refer to him as Lyin’ Lyons and his small, aggressive law firm as the Lyons den.

All right, I said. "Your client has blatantly infringed on my client’s design, down to the last claimed feature. We’ve been through all this dozens of times. It’s a goddamned Chinese copy, and unless this is resolved today, we are prepared to go into federal court and seek an injunction. We’ll also seek damages, which, as you know in cases of willful infringement, are treble." Patent law tends to be a very mild, rather dull way to earn a living—the bland leading the bland, I like to call it—and so I cherished my few opportunities to be confrontational. Arthur Sommer flushed, presumably with anger, but said nothing. His thin lips curled up in a small, tight smile. His attorney leaned back in his chair: ominous body language if ever there was such a thing.

Look, Ben, Lyons said. Since there really isn’t any cause of action here, my client is generously willing to make a courtesy settlement offer of five hundred thousand. I’ve advised him against it, but this charade is costing him and all of us—

Five hundred thousand? Try twenty times that.

Sorry, Ben, Lyons said. This patent isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on. He clasped his hands together. We got an on-sale bar here.

What the hell are you talking about?

I have evidence that Alpine Ski went on sale more than a year before the patent filing date, Lyons replied smugly. Sixteen months before, to be exact. So the damned patent’s not valid. On-sale statutory bar.

This was a new approach on his part, and it was unsettling. Up to now, all we’d been hashing out, in letter after letter, was whether Scandinavian Skier materially resembled Alpine Ski: whether it infringed the claims of the patent, to put it in legalese. Now he was citing something called the on sale doctrine, under which an invention can’t be patented if it was in public use or on sale more than a year before the date that the patent was applied for.

But I did not let on my surprise. A good attorney must be a skilled bullshit artist. Nice try, I said. "That’s not really use, Steve, and you know it." It sounded good, whatever it meant.

Ben— Herb interrupted.

Lyons handed me a legal file folder. Take a look, he said. Here’s a copy of a newsletter put out by the Big Apple Health Club in Manhattan that shows their latest piece of equipment—the Alpine Ski—almost a year and a half before Mr. Schell applied for his patent. And an invoice.

I took the folder, glanced at it without interest, and handed it back.

Ben— Herb said again. Can we talk for a minute?

I left Lyons and Sommer in my office while Herb and I talked in a nearby vacant conference room.

What the hell is this all about? I asked.

It’s true. They’re right.

You sold this thing more than a year before you applied for a patent?

Two years before, actually. To twelve personal trainers at health clubs around the country.

I stared at him evenly. Why?

Christ, Ben, I didn’t know the law. How the hell are you supposed to test these things out unless you get it out there? You have no idea the kind of abuse machines like this take in gyms and health clubs.

So you were able to make improvements along the way?

Well, sure.

Ah. How fast can you get me a document from your corporate headquarters in Chicago?

*   *   *

Steve Lyons was beaming with triumph as we came in. I assume, he said with what he probably took to be sympathy, that Mr. Schell has filled you in.

Yes, indeed, I said.

Preparation, Ben, he said. You ought to look into it.

The timing was exquisite. At that moment my personal fax machine rang and squealed and began to print out a document. I walked over to the fax, watched it print out, and as it did so, I said: Steve, I only wish you’d saved us all the time and expense by doing a little reading in your case law.

He looked at me, puzzled, his smile dimming somewhat.

Ah, let’s see, I said. It would be 917 Fed Second 544, Federal Circuit 1990.

What’s he talking about? Sommer audibly whispered to Lyons. Lyons, unwilling to shrug in my presence, merely stared at me, uncomprehending.

Is that true? Sommer insisted.

Lyon’s facial expression did not change. I’d have to look it up.

The fax machine cut the paper, a staccato punctuation mark. I handed it to Lyons. Here’s a letter from the manager of the Big Apple Health Club to Herb Schell, containing his thoughts about the Alpine Ski, his notes on how it was holding up and what about it might be reconfigured. And suggestions for modifications.

At that point Darlene walked in, silently gave me a book—Federal Reporter 917, 2d Series—and left. Without even looking at it, I handed it to Lyons.

This some sort of game you’re playing? Lyons managed to stammer.

Oh, not at all, I replied. My client sold prototypes during a period of testing, and gathered performance data from the sold version. Therefore the ‘on-sale’ doctrine doesn’t apply, Steve.

I don’t even know where you’re getting this—

Manville Sales Corp. v. Paramount Systems, Inc. Fed Second 544.

Oh, come off it, Lyons retorted. I never even heard of—

Page 1314, I said as I returned to my chair, leaned back, and folded my legs. Let’s see. In a monotone, I recited: The policies that define the on sale and public use bars do not support invalidation of the patent even though, more than one year prior to filing a patent application, the patentee installed a fixture at a state highway rest station under construction. A period of outdoor testing of the invention was necessary to determine whether it would…

Lyons, in the meantime, sat with the book open on his lap, following along, mouthing the words. He finished the sentence for me: it would serve its purpose.

He looked up at me, slack-jawed.

See you in court, I said.

Herb Schell left that morning much happier and almost ten million dollars richer. And I had the pleasure of a parting colloquy with Steve Lyons.

You knew that fucking case word for word, he said. Word for word. How the hell did you do that?

Preparation, I said, and shook his hand firmly. Look into it.

TWO

Very early the next morning I had breakfast at the Harvard Club in Boston with my boss, Bill Stearns. Which was when I learned I was suddenly in some serious trouble.

Stearns had breakfast there every morning: Mrs. Stearns, a wan Wellesley housewife, apparently did little else beside serve as a volunteer for the Museum of Fine Arts. I imagined that she slept late, with an eyeshade on, and that since the time their two kids had left the nest for their foreordained lives as junior Boston Brahmins (Deerfield, Harvard, investment banking, alcoholism), he hadn’t had a single breakfast at home.

His table at the Harvard Club was always the same, against the plate-glass window overlooking the city. Invariably he’d have the Harvard Club’s special shirred eggs (Stearns considered the late twentieth-century aversion to cholesterol an evanescent fad, like the sixties). Sometimes he’d eat by himself, with The Wall Street Journal and The Boston Globe, sometimes with one or more of the senior partners, to discuss business and golf.

Every once in a long while I’d join him. In case you suspect we engaged in conspiratorial, old-boy-network chitchat about the Central Intelligence Agency, I should make it plain that Bill Stearns and I normally talked about sports (which I know just enough about to banter) or real estate. Occasionally—this morning, for instance—there was something of gravity Bill wanted to discuss.

Stearns is the sort of person who’s considered avuncular by those who don’t know him. He’s in his late fifties, gray-haired, ruddy-faced, bow-tied, somewhat potbellied. His two-thousand-dollar suits from Louis of Boston look, on him, as if they came off the wrong rack at Filene’s Basement.

The truth is that after those two nightmarish, violent years of clandestine CIA work, I found the very safeness of my legal career at Putnam & Stearns deeply reassuring. But it was my service at CIA that got me recruited to Putnam & Stearns. Bill Stearns was formerly Inspector General of the Central Intelligence Agency under the legendary Allen Dulles, the Director of Central Intelligence from 1953 to 1961.

When I was hired at Putnam & Stearns nine years ago I made it very clear that my intelligence background notwithstanding, I would refuse to have anything to do with the CIA. My brief CIA career was the past, I told Bill Stearns, and that was that. Stearns, to his credit, had shrugged theatrically and said, Who said anything about CIA? There was, I’m convinced, a twinkle in his eye. I think he figured that in time I’d relent, that it would be easy business for me. He knew that the Agency feels much more comfortable in dealing with its own, that there’d be all kinds of pressure on me to do whatever legal work the Agency wanted, and that I’d give in. Why else would an ex-field officer like me come to work for an old-boy firm like Putnam & Stearns? The answer, of course, was the money, which was substantially more than any other firm was offering me.

I didn’t know why Bill Stearns had invited me to breakfast that morning, but I strongly suspected something was up. I busied myself with my blueberry muffin. I’d had way too much coffee already, and I figured a little solid matter in my stomach would anchor me. I’ve always hated business breakfasts; I believe Oscar Wilde had a point when he said that only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.

As our food arrived. Stearns pulled a copy of The Boston Globe from his briefcase.

You read about First Commonwealth, I assume, he said.

His tone immediately alarmed me. "I didn’t see the Globe this morning," I said.

He slid it across the table.

I scanned the front page. There, just below the fold, was a headline that made me feel immediately queasy.

INVESTMENT FIRM CLOSED BY FEDERAL GOVERNMENT it read. And in smaller letters: FIRST COMMONWEALTH ASSETS FROZEN BY SEC.

First Commonwealth was a small money-management firm based in Boston which managed all my money. Despite the grandiose name, it is a tiny place, a boutique firm run by an acquaintance of mine, with fewer than half a dozen clients. It was the firm that paid my mortgage each month, the place where virtually all my money was stashed.

Until this morning.

Unlike Stearns, I am not rich. Molly’s father left an insignificant amount of cash, some stock certificates and bearer bonds, and the title to his house in Alexandria, which was mortgaged to the hilt. He also left her, curiously, a document he’d signed and notarized, giving her full and absolute right of beneficiary to all accounts in his name foreign and domestic under the laws of blah blah blah … The details would numb your brain, as would most details pertaining to the law of estates and trusts. I say curiously because, as Harrison Sinclair’s only surviving heir, she was automatically entitled to beneficiary rights. No piece of paper was necessary. All right, so maybe Sinclair was the overly cautious type.

Me, he left exactly one item: an autographed copy of the memoirs of CIA director Allen Dulles, The Craft of Intelligence. It was a first edition, and it was inscribed For Hal, With deepest admiration, Allen. A nice bequest on Sinclair’s part, but hardly a fortune.

When my father died some years back, I inherited a little over a million dollars, which after estate taxes immediately became half a million. I transferred all of it to First Commonwealth because of its good reputation. The head of the firm, Frederick Doc Osborne, I knew from various legal dealings, and he always struck me as shrewd. Was it Nelson Algren who said, Never eat at a place called Mom’s and never play cards with a guy named Doc? And that was before the days of money managers.

You may wonder, of course, why someone as shrewd as I’m supposed to be would put all his money in one place. I have often wondered the same thing myself, to be frank, and still do. The answer, I suppose, is twofold. Doc Osborne was a friend, and he had a terrific reputation, and therefore it seemed unnecessary to diversify. And I had always treated my inheritance as a nest egg, a chunk of money I preferred not to touch, since I was making a decent salary. And I suppose, too, it’s like that old saw about the shoemaker’s children never having any shoes: the guys who work with money are often pretty mindless about their own.

I dropped my fork, felt sick to my stomach. Rapidly calculating, I realized at once that unless I could somehow wrest my money back from First Commonwealth, I would immediately go bankrupt—my salary, generous though it was, wouldn’t even cover my mortgage. In the present soft real estate market in Boston, I’d be unable to sell my house except at a tremendous loss.

The veins at my temples throbbed. I looked up at Stearns.

Help me out here, I said weakly.

Ben, I’m sorry— Stearns said through a mouthful of shirred egg.

What does this mean? This stuff isn’t my expertise, you know that.

He took a swallow of coffee and set down the cup noisily in the saucer. Here’s what it means, he said with a sigh. Your money’s frozen, along with that of all other First Commonwealth clients.

By whom? Who has the authority to do that? And for what? I ran my eyes wildly up and down the Globe article, trying to glean some sense from it.

The Securities and Exchange Commission. Plus the U.S. Attorney’s office in Boston.

Frozen, I said dully, disbelieving.

The U.S. Attorney’s office isn’t saying much—they said it’s a pending investigation.

"Investigating what?"

All they said was something about securities law violations and RICO statutes. They said it might take at least a year to release the assets, pending the outcome of the SEC’s investigation.

"Frozen, I said again. My God. I ran a hand across my face. All right. What can I do about this?"

Nothing, Stearns said. Nothing except wait this out. I can have Todd Richlin talk to a friend of his at the SEC—Richlin was Putnam & Stearns’s resident financial genius—but I wouldn’t hold my breath.

I looked out the window at the miniature streets of Boston thirty-some floors below us—the green of the Public Garden and the Common resembling the green-sprayed lichen of a toy train set; the magnificent tree-lined Commonwealth Avenue; and running parallel to it, Marlborough Street, where I lived. If I were the suicidal type, it would have made a good spot from which to jump. Go ahead, I said.

Both the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department, acting through the U.S. Attorney’s office in Boston, have shut down First Commonwealth, apparently for alleged drug ties.

Drug—?

Well, the word is that Doc Osborne’s involved in some kind of money-laundering scheme for drug types.

"But I have nothing whatsoever to do with whatever shit Doc Osborne is into!"

It doesn’t work that way, he replied. Remember when the Fed shut down that big discount brokerage in New York, Drexel Burnham? They literally went in and put handcuffs on people and put a sticker on the door. I mean, you could take a tour of the place a year later and you’d see cigarettes still in ashtrays, half-full cups of coffee, all that.

But Drexel’s clients didn’t lose their cash!

Well, look at Marcos of the Philippines, or the Shah of Iran—sometimes they just seize all the money and let it earn interest—for good old Uncle Sam.

Seize all the money, I echoed.

First Commonwealth literally has a padlock on the door, Stearns went on. Federal marshals have seized all the computer equipment, all the records and documentation, sequestered—

So when can I get my money?

Maybe in a year and a half you’ll be able to pry the money loose. Probably longer.

What the hell am I going to do?

Stearns exhaled noisily. I had a drink last night with Alex Truslow, he said. Then, daubing his mouth with a linen napkin, he added casually: Ben, I want you to free up time for Truslow Associates.

My schedule’s a little cramped, Bill, I said. Sorry.

Alex could mean upward of two hundred thousand dollars in billable hours this year alone, Ben.

We’ve got half a dozen attorneys as qualified as I am. More qualified.

Stearns cleared his throat. "Not in all