"That's me again."
"Call me when you get there?"
"Tell Patrick I still love him, even after going to jail."
"I'll see him tonight. Be careful."
"Thanks."
WITH SUCH HEAVYWEIGHTS in town, Mast couldn't resist the opportunity to impress them. The evening before, after they had taken possession of the documents and tapes, he'd arranged for his staff to call every member of the sitting grand jury and inform them of an emergency session. With five of his assistant U.S. attorneys, he had worked with the FBI in scouring and indexing the documents. He had left his office at three in the morning, and returned five hours later.
The federal grand jury meeting was at noon, with lunch provided. Hamilton Jaynes decided to hang around long enough to sit through it, as did Sprawling from the Attorney General's office. Patrick would be the only witness.
Pursuant to their agreement, he was not transported in handcuffs. He was hidden in the back of an unmarked Bureau car, and sneaked through a side door of the federal courthouse in Biloxi. Sandy was at his side. Patrick wore large khakis, sneakers, a sweatshirt; clothing Sandy had purchased for him. He was pale and thin, but walked with no visible impairment. Actually, Patrick felt great.
The sixteen grand jurors sat around a long, square table, so that at least half of them had their back to the door when Patrick walked through with a smile. Those not facing him quickly turned around. Jaynes and Sprawling sat in a corner, intrigued by their first glimpse of Mr. Lanigan.
Patrick sat at the end of the table, in a chair used by witnesses, and seized the moment. He needed little prodding from Mast to tell his story, or at least some of it. He was relaxed and lively, in part because this panel could no longer touch him. He had managed to free himself of the tentacles of any federal law.
He started with the law firm, the partners, their personalities, clients, work habits, and slowly built his way to Aricia.
Mast stopped him, and handed over a document which Patrick identified as the contract between the firm and Aricia. It was four pages long, but could be reduced to a basic agreement of the firm getting one third of anything Aricia got by filing his claim against Platt & Rockland Industries.
"And how did you get this?" Mast asked.
"Mr. Bogan's secretary typed it. Our computers were interfaced. I simply pulled it off."
"Is that why this copy is unsigned?"
"That's correct. The original is probably in Mr. Bogan's file."
"Did you have access to Mr. Bogan's office?"
"Limited," Patrick answered, and explained Bogan's zealousness for secrecy. That led to a digression about access to the other offices, then to the fascinating story of Patrick's adventures in the world of sophisticated surveillance. Because he was very suspicious of Aricia, he set out to gather as much information as possible. He educated himself on electronic surveillance. He monitored the other PC's in the firm. He listened for gossip. He quizzed secretaries and paralegals. He went through the wastepaper in the copy room. He worked odd hours in hopes of finding open doors.
After two hours, Patrick asked for a soft drink. Mast declared a fifteen-minute break. The time had gone so fast because the audience was enthralled.
When the witness returned from the rest room, they settled in quickly, anxious to hear more. Mast asked some questions about the claim against Platt & Rockland, and Patrick described it in general terms. "Mr. Aricia was quite skillful. He set up a scheme for double billing, yet was able to pass the blame on to people in the home office. He was the secret moving force behind the cost overruns."
Mast placed a stack of documents at Patrick's side. He took one, and with only a glance knew everything about it. "This is a sample of the fictitious labor New Coastal Shipyards was paid for. It's a computerized labor summary for one week in June of 1988. It lists eighty-four employees, all bogus names, and gives their wages for the week. The total is seventy-one thousand dollars."
"How were these names selected?" asked Mast.
"At the time, there were eight thousand employees at New Coastal. They selected real names that were common-Jones, Johnson, Miller, Green, Young- and changed the first initial."
"How much labor was falsified?"
"According to Aricia's filing, it was nineteen million dollars over a four-year period."
"Did Mr. Aricia know it was falsified?"
"Yes, he implemented the scheme."
"And how do you know this?"
"Where are the tapes?"
Mast handed him a sheet of paper on which the tapes of over sixty conversations had been cataloged. Patrick studied it for a minute. "I think it's tape number seventeen," he said. The assistant U.S. attorney in charge of the box of tapes produced number seventeen, and inserted it into a player in the center of the table.
Patrick said, "This is Doug Vitrano talking to
Jimmy Havarac, two of the partners, in Vitrano's office, on May 3, 1991."
The player was turned on, and they waited for the voices.
FIRST VOICE: How do you pad nineteen million dollars in bogus labor?
"That's Jimmy Havarac," Patrick said quickly.
SECOND VOICE: It wasn't difficult.
"And that's Doug Vitrano," Patrick said.
VITRANO: The labor was running fifty million a year. For four years it was over two hundred million. So they were just tacking on a ten percent increase. It got lost in the paperwork.
HAVARAC: And Aricia knew about it?
VITRANO: Knew about it? Hell, he implemented it.
HAVARAC: Come on, Doug.
VITRANO: It's all bogus, Jimmy. Every aspect of his claim is bogus. The labor, the inflated invoices, the double and triple billing for expensive hardware. Everything. Aricia planned this from the beginning, and he just happened to work for a company with a long history of screwing the government. He knew how the company worked. He knew how the Pentagon worked. And he was shrewd enough to set up the scheme.
HAVARAC: Who told you this?
VITRANO: Bogan. Aricia's told Bogan everything. Bogan's told the Senator everything. We keep our mouths shut and play along, and we'll all be millionaires.
The voices went silent as the tape, well edited by Patrick years ago, came to the end.
The grand jurors stared at the tape player.
"Could we hear some more?" one of them asked.
Mast shrugged and looked at Patrick, who said, "I think that's a marvelous idea."
With Patrick's play-by-play commentary and sometimes colorful analysis, it took almost three hours to listen to the tapes. The Closet tape was saved for last, and played four times before the grand jurors would let it go. At six, they ordered dinner from a nearby deli.
At seven, Patrick was allowed to leave.
While they ate, Mast discussed some of the more telling documents. He addressed the various federal laws involved. With the voices of the crooks captured so vividly on the tapes, the conspiracy was laid bare.
At eight-thirty, the grand jury voted unanimously to indict Benny Aricia, Charles Bogan, Doug Vitrano, Jimmy Havarac, and Ethan Rapley for conspiring to commit fraud under the False Claims Act. If convicted, each could face up to ten years, and be fined up to five hundred thousand dollars.
Senator Harris Nye was named as an unindicted co-conspirator, a temporary designation that would most likely change for the worse. Sprawling, Jaynes, and Maurice Mast fashioned a strategy of first indicting the smaller fish, then pressuring them to cut a deal and squeal on the big one. They would aggressively go after Rapley and Havarac because of their hatred of Charles Bogan.