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Authors: John Grisham
Tags: Fiction, legal thriller
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contracts again and insisted my firm be paid half of our fee. This was done, and Mr. Copeland and Mr. Reed were somewhat relieved.
When the contracts were finally signed, my client was an offshore company operating on the tiny island of St. Kitts, and I still had no idea who was behind it. The contracts were signed by an unseen corporate representative down there in the Caribbean and shipped overnight to my office. As per our agreement, my client would wire into our law firm trust account the sum of $450,000 and some change, enough to cover the lease payments for the first two months, plus the remainder of our fee, plus some miscellaneous expenses. I would in turn write a $200,000 check to the sellers for each of the first two months, then my client would replenish the account. After twelve months of this, the lease would be converted to a sale, with our little firm due another sizable fee.
When the wired funds hit our bank, the banker called to inform me that our trust account had just received $4.5 million, as opposed to $450,000. I figured someone got carried away with the zeros; plus, there could be worse things than having far too much money in the bank. But something didn’t add up. I tried to contact the shell company that was technically my client on St. Kitts but got the runaround. I contacted the law school pal who had referred the case, and he promised to look into the matter. I distributed the first month’s rent and the attorneys’ fee to our firm and waited for instructions to wire out the excess. Days passed, then weeks. A month later, the banker called to say that another $3 million had just landed in our trust account.
By this time, Mr. Reed and Mr. Copeland were deeply disturbed. I instructed my banker to get rid of the money—wireit back to the source from whence it came, and do so quickly. He grappled with this for a couple of days, only to find that the account in St. Kitts had been closed. Finally, my law school pal e-mailed me instructions to wire half the money to an account in Grand Cayman and the other half to an account in Panama.
As a small-time lawyer, I had zero experience wiring money to numbered accounts, but a few moments of light Google research revealed that I was walking blindly through some of the most notorious tax havens in the world. I wished I had never agreed to work for the anonymous client, in spite of the money.
The wire to Panama bounced back—some $3.5 million. I yelled at my law school pal and he yelled at someone up the line. The money stayed put for two months, drawing interest, though we could not ethically keep any of it. Ethics also required me to take all steps necessary to protect this unwanted money. It was not mine and I certainly made no claim to it, but, nonetheless, I had to safeguard it.
Innocently, or perhaps stupidly, I had allowed the tainted money of Barry the Backhander to rest under the control of Copeland, Reed & Bannister.
Once he had possession of the hunting lodge, Barry did a quick renovation, spruced it up a little, built a spa, and put in a heliport. He leased a Sikorsky S-76 helicopter, and it took about twenty minutes to haul ten of Barry’s best friends from D.C. to the hunting lodge. On a typical Friday afternoon, several shuttles were made and the partying began. By this time in his career he had cast aside most bureaucrats and lobbyists and concentrated primarily on congressmen and their chiefs of staff. At the lodge, everything was available: great food and wine, Cuban cigars, drugs, thirty-year-old scotch, and twenty-year-old women. An occasional grouse hunt got organized, but the guests were usuallymore preoccupied with the stunning collection of tall blondes at their disposal.
The girl was from Ukraine. During the trial—my trial—her handler said, in thickly accented English, that he had been paid $100,000 cash for the girl, who was taken to the hunting lodge and given a room. The cash had been handed over by a thug who
When the contracts were finally signed, my client was an offshore company operating on the tiny island of St. Kitts, and I still had no idea who was behind it. The contracts were signed by an unseen corporate representative down there in the Caribbean and shipped overnight to my office. As per our agreement, my client would wire into our law firm trust account the sum of $450,000 and some change, enough to cover the lease payments for the first two months, plus the remainder of our fee, plus some miscellaneous expenses. I would in turn write a $200,000 check to the sellers for each of the first two months, then my client would replenish the account. After twelve months of this, the lease would be converted to a sale, with our little firm due another sizable fee.
When the wired funds hit our bank, the banker called to inform me that our trust account had just received $4.5 million, as opposed to $450,000. I figured someone got carried away with the zeros; plus, there could be worse things than having far too much money in the bank. But something didn’t add up. I tried to contact the shell company that was technically my client on St. Kitts but got the runaround. I contacted the law school pal who had referred the case, and he promised to look into the matter. I distributed the first month’s rent and the attorneys’ fee to our firm and waited for instructions to wire out the excess. Days passed, then weeks. A month later, the banker called to say that another $3 million had just landed in our trust account.
By this time, Mr. Reed and Mr. Copeland were deeply disturbed. I instructed my banker to get rid of the money—wireit back to the source from whence it came, and do so quickly. He grappled with this for a couple of days, only to find that the account in St. Kitts had been closed. Finally, my law school pal e-mailed me instructions to wire half the money to an account in Grand Cayman and the other half to an account in Panama.
As a small-time lawyer, I had zero experience wiring money to numbered accounts, but a few moments of light Google research revealed that I was walking blindly through some of the most notorious tax havens in the world. I wished I had never agreed to work for the anonymous client, in spite of the money.
The wire to Panama bounced back—some $3.5 million. I yelled at my law school pal and he yelled at someone up the line. The money stayed put for two months, drawing interest, though we could not ethically keep any of it. Ethics also required me to take all steps necessary to protect this unwanted money. It was not mine and I certainly made no claim to it, but, nonetheless, I had to safeguard it.
Innocently, or perhaps stupidly, I had allowed the tainted money of Barry the Backhander to rest under the control of Copeland, Reed & Bannister.
Once he had possession of the hunting lodge, Barry did a quick renovation, spruced it up a little, built a spa, and put in a heliport. He leased a Sikorsky S-76 helicopter, and it took about twenty minutes to haul ten of Barry’s best friends from D.C. to the hunting lodge. On a typical Friday afternoon, several shuttles were made and the partying began. By this time in his career he had cast aside most bureaucrats and lobbyists and concentrated primarily on congressmen and their chiefs of staff. At the lodge, everything was available: great food and wine, Cuban cigars, drugs, thirty-year-old scotch, and twenty-year-old women. An occasional grouse hunt got organized, but the guests were usuallymore preoccupied with the stunning collection of tall blondes at their disposal.
The girl was from Ukraine. During the trial—my trial—her handler said, in thickly accented English, that he had been paid $100,000 cash for the girl, who was taken to the hunting lodge and given a room. The cash had been handed over by a thug who
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