Chapter 49

Strangely, Eric felt more at ease now that Kitani was in the house, even though Kitani was a bad guy, too. Eric led Morgan and Andrews into the kitchen to rinse their faces, while Kevin called the cops. Kitani went to get Katherine and David who were still outside, waiting for the all-clear signal. After all, the door had been open when they had arrived at the house. Not to mention that a strange motorcycle had been parked on the walk.

Eric sat limply on a kitchen chair with Andrews’ gun in his hand and Morgan’s gun on the table. His hands were both burning just from touching the guns the two of them had been holding. He had thought he was dead there for a minute, but it had only been a scare. This proved it. He would never die. His stomach tightened in anxiety.

His sister rushed into the kitchen. “What have you been doing?” she wanted to know.

“You have another set of slip covers for the sofa pillows, don’t you?” he asked, hopefully.

She looked at him in disbelief. “Say what?” she replied.

“I didn’t know you were on a date tonight,” he added. “Why didn’t you let me know?”

“What’s Kevin Reseanor doing in our living room in a leather jacket and jeans?” she countered.

“You know that guy?”

“I work with him,” she said. She lowered her voice. “He’s dishy, but I think he’s gay.”

Morgan and Andrews, their faces rinsed and dried on paper towels were now facing Eric and eying the guns. “Down on the floor,” Eric ordered. “Face down. Kiss the Armstrong tile.”

“I don’t think it’s Armstrong,” Katherine rebutted, shocked to hear him speaking like that to the two.

Eric stood. He pointed the gun at his prisoners to show he meant business. Kitani came in and went to Katherine’s side. “I’m helping David get ready for bed,” he told her.

Eric sat down. “I don’t feel that great,” he admitted.

“Maybe you’re getting a cold,” Katherine suggested hopefully.

“No, that bastard over there shot me in the hip about an hour-and-a-half ago.” He pointed with the gun.

Morgan smiled, his cheek against the cold flooring.

The front doorbell rang. “You’re kidding,” said Katherine.

“I’ll get the door,” Kitani offered, going out.

Kevin came in, the dog beside him. Apparently, the two had made up their differences. “Katherine’s your sister?” Kevin asked Eric.

Eric looked at him. He was too worn out to speak. A fellow attorney would be great for his sister, better than a cop. But if Kevin was gay, he supposed the idea was a nonstarter.

Helen rushed into the kitchen. “I took a cab all the way over. What the hell happened?” She caught sight of the two men face down on the floor. “Oh,” she said. “They caught you.”

“Look, honey, I caught them.” He waved the gun. “I’m the one with the weapon. They’re the ones lying down.” He sort of wished he was the one lying down right about now.

She laid her hands on his neck. “That wasn’t the plan… Oh look, you still have the dog.” She petted Hiroshi. “It’s a good thing I didn’t bring Frannie.” She laughed.

“I think someone ought to take me to the hospital,” he interrupted. He felt faint. He handed her the gun.

He stood partway, then lay down on the floor, not too far from Morgan and Andrews—only Eric lay face up. That was the difference. The good guys get to lie face up. He groaned.

“I’ll call an ambulance,” said Katherine, alarmed.

“I don’t suppose my insurance at Westlake kicked in yet?” he mused. He had his own policy, but he wasn’t sure if using it meant the premiums would go up. Was it like auto insurance?

“Don’t move a hair, you bastard,” warned Helen pointing the gun, not at Eric, but at Andrews.

“I’ll call 911,” suggested Kevin, picking up the phone in the kitchen. The doorbell rang.

“Should I get that?” asked Katherine uncertainly, not moving.

“I’ll get it,” Eric told her sarcastically. Katherine walked out. He looked up at Helen. “We could get married on Valentine’s Day,” he suggested. “On the eightieth floor of the Empire State building.” He stopped speaking. He felt sick to his stomach, too.

“Great,” she said. “Then we can parachute down to our honeymoon.”

He saw, in surprise, that she was crying. “You told me that you like to parachute,” he mumbled. He closed his eyes, then fluttered them open again.

David ran into the kitchen. The kid was too fast for Kitani, it seemed. “What’s wrong, Dad?” At least that’s what Eric understood him to say.

“Just kidding,” Eric whispered. Kevin scooped David up and took him away from his father.

Steinberg and Klein walked into the kitchen. Eric pointed at Morgan and Andrews. “They kidnapped me and shot me,” he accused.

“You’re under arrest,” Steinberg said. He stopped. “You’d better arrest them,” he told Klein. “We’re out of my jurisdiction.”

Klein was bending over Eric. “Where were you hit?” she asked.

He put his hand on the wound. He could hear the siren wailing as it approached.

“You’re under arrest,” Klein told Morgan and Andrews. She recited their Miranda rights.

The EMS team came into the room. Hiroshi growled. Eric smiled. Katherine and Kitani came in holding hands, followed by two men in Larchmont Police uniforms and Lieutenant Haliburt. The doorbell rang.

He lay in his bed at home feeling glum. Had he accomplished anything at Westlake, really? It hadn’t been a flawlessly tied-together investigation, like you read about in the newspapers. It had ended almost as ambiguously as it had begun, although an FBI financial crimes investigator was now pouring over the computer Morgan had left in his hotel room and a few computer flash disks. Maybe something would come of that. All right, Eric had plugged a potential leak at Westlake, but maybe there wouldn’t have been any flow of information to Morgan from the company anyway. Maybe no employees were willing to sell the Brits information. Not everyone was corrupt. (Well…)

The real problem at Westlake was Kitani and had been all along. Kitani was the guy who had stolen Sommers’ designs and who had planted the bugs. So the investigation wasn’t over; it had barely begun. And Ryan wanted Eric off the team. He hated Eric. Why? Either because Ryan was part of the pipeline to Kitani or, more likely, because he was simply an incompetent jackass. Somehow, Eric couldn’t picture Kitani dealing with the Westlake security director. Kitani was too smooth to do business with a nonentity like Captain Terry Ryan. (Ryan had probably seen Eric with Helen while they were out “for a smoke.”)

But wait, it got worse. Katherine was enamored of Kitani. She thought he was swell, a real gentleman. And Eric liked Kitani too, on one level. So even if he could get the evidence against the Moritomo executive, he didn’t know if he would bring it to the feds. Maybe he would; maybe he wouldn’t. However, he didn’t see how he would be able to get the hard copy on Kitani. The guy was always two or three steps ahead.

Helen stood in the doorway. She had come up to Larchmont to look after Eric when the hospital had kicked him out. Having patients on the inside made the medical people nervous—something to do with money and the number of days of care for which the insurance companies were willing to pay. His sister was handling his insurance stuff. He was covered by workers’ compensation, she said. He didn’t understand exactly. Workers’ compensation? For a gunshot wound? Job-related, she insisted, filling in the forms.

“Do you want some pancakes?” Helen offered.

“Gluten-free with blueberries,” he said.

“Gluten-free?” She frowned.

“Come and lie down here, next to me,” he requested. She came and sat on the bed. “So, are we getting married next Monday? On Valentine’s Day?”

“No. When I get married, it’s going to be in Boston. With my family there.”

“We can get married in a swan boat on the Commons.”

“In church,” she added. “In the church where my father is the minister.”

Oh. “I’m glad you finally got to meet David. You like him, don’t you?”

“He’s sweet,” she agreed. She gazed at Eric as if she were peeking into his soul. “You never seem to feel bad about him.”

He looked away from her. “I can’t allow myself to see it that way. I have to do my best with him, that’s all. He’s got a whole life to live, and my responsibility is to make sure he has a chance to grab on to something in it.”

She stretched out beside him and took his hand. “That’s nice,” she said.

Dr. Sommers came by, at Eric’s request. Sommers was the only one at Westlake Eric respected in the slightest. And the scientist had some power there.

Eric was watching a talk show when Dr. Sommers came in—an eighteen-year-old girl married to a seventy-year-old man was on with the husband and her concerned family. People in the audience were beside themselves with outrage, upset over the girl’s stupidity in marrying the old guy who, truth to tell, was a nasty, unattractive old fart.

Eric switched off the set and invited Dr. Sommers to sit beside him on the sofa. Katherine had been surprisingly nonchalant about the bloodstains. She had turned the pillow upside down. She seemed to have sort of enjoyed the excitement of that evening. No wonder she always thought he was having fun! Mayhem was her idea of entertainment.

“Thank you for coming,” Eric said. He offered Dr. Sommers some raspberry-flavored club soda. The engineer declined but picked up the bottle and examined it—no doubt for trade secrets. The way the plastic bottom was constructed with an overlay seemed to catch his interest. “Dr. Sommers, when we talked before, you told me you wanted proof that Moritomo had stolen your design. Truthfully, I doubt if we can get clear-cut evidence at this point. In fact, I’d be very surprised if any of the original material taken from Westlake is still intact.”

Sommers nodded. “No physical documents were taken, to the best of my knowledge. I believe my work was stolen electronically, either on-line or on a USB drive, which may or may not still exist somewhere. Possibly, however, the original designs with my notes may still be in the Moritomo system, even though they may have been erased. They may still be present in old backup tapes, or they may even be resident somewhere in the system memory itself. Many times, documents thought to be erased are revived by experts—especially during litigation, I’m told.

“I understand from our lawyers that these electronic documents are discoverable—meaning if a court permits it, we theoretically could have our computer experts comb their systems for my material.” Sommers smiled. He seemed to be imagining himself strolling barefoot through the sands of the Japanese firm’s system, stooping down to examine particularly appealing bits of data before moving on to the next flotsam and jetsam of Moritomo cyberspace.

“Is it essential you win the suit?” asked Eric, awkwardly.

“Absolutely essential.” Sommers was surprised. “Very difficult, however. Despite the fact that the material we’re talking about may be made open to our purview according to a U.S. court order, it’s questionable as to whether we will ever actually gain access to the complete and entire system as it now stands—there are so many ins and outs of the law and so many possibilities of destruction of evidence by Moritomo.”

“But the design is yours.”

“It’s utterly unique and it was created by me,” swore Sommers. “You can’t imagine what it feels like to have something you have worked so hard on stolen. I love doing what I do, but I also feel entitled to what is supposed to follow from that. Not simply the money and recognition—although everyone likes those—but the feeling that I have made something tangible that works, and that will be appreciated by anyone implementing my technology. I can’t feel that if it has another company’s trademark on it.”

Once and for all, that defined the issue for Eric. Kitani was wrong; stealing the Westlake designs was wrong. “Okay, Dr. Sommers, suppose I could do something that would make it impossible for Moritomo to use your particular design anymore. At least I think I could do that. Would you want me to? It’s a little bit of a long shot, and we should both forget we ever had this conversation today, because it’s not exactly aboveboard, but is that what you would like? Westlake wouldn’t receive any compensation from the Japanese, but you could forget about the lawsuit and forget about their competing in that market. You don’t have to answer right now, if you don’t want.”

“It would be a dream come true,” said Sommers. “The end to a nightmare. But I don’t understand how that would be possible.”

“I’m going to try,” said Eric. “But I would like to get paid. Ryan let me go. I don’t know if you knew that. Let’s say that if I do this, Westlake pays me another week’s salary and one week vacation—maybe my honeymoon. And a week for my bride.”

“Your bride?” asked Sommers. Such a novel consideration seemed foreign to his way of thinking.

“Helen Robbins. She’s in the kitchen now. All I have to do is ring this.” Eric picked up the crystal bell sitting on the coffee table—a bell of the type used in some homes to summon a servant. He held onto the clapper. He didn’t really dare shake it. He’d be much better off hobbling into the kitchen on his cane, if he wanted anything. He knew that.