Alibi (38 page)

“All right, then,” said Jed, taking a breath before shifting his umbrella to his left hand and placing his right in his pocket, then retrieving it again to shake David’s outstretched hand.

“And you know . . .” he said. David felt it immediately. Matheson was squashing something into his palm. “I will do anything to help my son.”

David released Matheson’s grip and, to his own surprise, curled his fingers around the hard flat object, making no attempt to look at it before opening his car door and climbing inside.

“I understand,” he said shutting the door behind him. “I’ll be in touch.”

“Yes,” said Jed Matheson. “I expect you will.”

Tony Bishop was nervous as all hell. And it wasn’t because this special meeting included his boss and firm partner Gareth Coolidge. It was the two men across from them that saw his heart now up a beat, or more specifically one of them, in the form of Peter Nagoshi.

Bishop had gone to his boss first thing this morning. The Nagoshis were contacted and asked to attend a meeting on the stately twenty-ninth floor Financial District offices of Williams, Coolidge and Harrison at their earliest convenience. They had decided to hold this little gathering in the more contained setting of Coolidge’s harborview office. Smaller than the firm conference room, it offered an intimacy perhaps more appropriate to delivering the extremely sensitive information they had to share. And so here they were, grouped around the small meeting table, backed by the extensive views across the now-deep gray waters that met the horizon in a blur of offshore rain.

Tony glanced around the table—at Peter looking like some Hannibal Lecter impersonator with a large white bandage across the middle of his face, at the normally expressionless John Nagoshi who was perhaps also showing the slightest signs of uneasiness, and at Gareth Coolidge, the coolest attorney Tony had ever known, now carrying the beginnings of circular sweat rings under the arms of his pristinely pressed Brooks Brothers shirt.

“We have a problem,” Tony began after Coolidge gave him the nod. “This morning I received a call from Terrance Tan, one of the senior attorneys at our office in Singapore. Mr. Tan is Chinese with an extensive history in Chinese business law and he has been assisting me with the legalities of the establishment of your operations in Guangdong.”

Tony took a sip of the ice cold water before him, stealing a quick glance at Peter Nagoshi, whose dark brown eyes were set on him with a new intensity.

“Mr. Tan told me he heard a rumor. No,” added Tony, knowing there was no way to sugarcoat this thing. “Not a rumor, more confirmation that Tsohuang Manufacturing were about to release a new compact car, ‘The Apple,’ to the local market—a car that, according to Mr. Tan, is an exact replica of the Nagoshi ‘Dream’ CC250.”

“What?”
said Peter, sitting forward in his seat.

“ ‘The Apple,’ ” Tony went on, needing to get this all out before he had to deal with what he knew would be the Nagoshis’ anger, “is not only visually identical to the ‘Dream,’ but according to Mr. Tan’s contacts, also contains numerous identical parts and components. It will be released to the Chinese market within the month, flooding local car dealers with vehicles priced at seventy-five percent of what you planned to charge.”

And then he saw it—the utter devastation on their faces. Despite the fact that Peter’s features were largely concealed, the visible portions were now distorted in an expression of rage. Tony found himself placing his palms on the edge of the table, as if bracing himself in preparation for the possibility that the younger Nagoshi might leap across the table and . . .

“How did this happen?” asked John Nagoshi at last. His tone even, his voice showing only the slightest trace of a quiver.

“All too easily, I am afraid,” said Gareth Coolidge, speaking for the first time.

“John,” he went on, leaning over the table. “You knew in order to base this plant in Guangdong, you would have to enter into a joint agreement with a Chinese manufacturer—fifty percent is as much as the Chinese government will allow foreign operators, and that leaves you open to all sorts of confidentiality risks. I am not saying your Shanghai Holding’s partners were at fault,” Coolidge went on. “But they have joint ventures with other foreign automobile manufacturers, who in turn have joint ventures with other Chinese companies—including outfits like Tsohuang. I am afraid technology theft is a rampant reality in China, John, so much so that it is becoming almost impossible for foreign companies to keep secrets from global competitors.”

Coolidge paused, obviously leaving an opening for Nagoshi to ask another question.

“These are not answers, Mr. Coolidge,” said Peter, obviously miffed that their attorney saw fit to address his father directly, effectively excluding him from a conversation on China—
his
China, his undeniable success! “I hear what you are saying but it does not equal reason. Plans for each part of the Nagoshi ‘Dream’ have been kept separate, individual, so that this might be prevented. We have gone to the greatest lengths to assure our security,” he said, his nasally voice now rising a notch. “Even the prototypes have been kept under lock and key, and constantly guarded by security workers.”

“Yes,” said Tony. “But there were other prototypes, initial testing models, which were left on the plant floor. You have to understand, Peter, that the Chinese are masters at reverse engineering. They do not need plans. All they need is access to the finished product, or close enough to it, and they work backward part by part. And then they start from scratch, building an identical copy, socket for socket, plug for plug.”

“Are you saying one of our workers is responsible for sharing our knowledge?” Peter’s fist hit the table, causing the ice in their crystal tumblers to chink in a musical scream of protest. “Because I can assure you our employees are loyal, dedicated . . .”

“Happy? Yes, so I hear.” Tony could not help himself. Peter Nagoshi was an arrogant son of a bitch and Tony was sick of his egotistical demands and holier-than-thou attitude, especially considering he may well be responsible for the most unspeakable of crimes.

“Look,” said Coolidge at last, perhaps feeling the need to throw a little water on what was becoming a very heated discussion. “I know this is hard to hear but if you recall, Peter, I did warn you of these potential problems when you decided to base the plant in China.”

Tony noted a slight twitch in John Nagoshi’s left eye. Perhaps Coolidge’s warnings were not passed on from son to father—from subordinate to chief.

“You saved costs, sure,” Coolidge continued. “But the reality is, there is no way to protect your technology on the great Asian continent. Honda, General Motors, Volkswagen, Toyota, Nissan and many others have been bitten by piracy of their logos, parts, trademarks, technologies—and, like Nagoshi Inc.—even entire cars.”

“What is our legal recourse?” asked John Nagoshi, his voice low and tempered.

“The Chinese are setting up tribunals to hear the foreign manufacturers’ disputes,” responded Coolidge. “But in all honesty, a true judicial system monitoring technology theft is years, maybe decades away.” Coolidge looked to Bishop.

“They are making too much money, Mr. Nagoshi,” said Tony, taking his superior’s lead. “Billions of dollars to be exact. The problem isn’t going to go away. Rip-offs like Tsohuang’s ‘Apple’ will be overproduced in a country where the people are keen to buy but the streets are narrow and already congested with vehicles. We hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but our job is to tell you everything we know and give you the best advice we can.”

“Which is?” Peter countered. “Tell me, Mr. Coolidge, Mr. Bishop, what do you advise?”

Tony looked at his boss and nodded, letting him know that he was willing to be the one to see this thing through. He had been the one to stumble across the technology theft in the first place, after all—when he was doing some private investigations of his own.

“You have a few options,” Tony began. “You can tweak the ‘Dream’ and class it more upmarket, or you can leave it as it is and reduce the price.”

Peter shook his head, incredulous.

“But in all honesty, our advice would be to move your automobile manufacturing operations onto Japanese soil. That way, at least you will own the plant one hundred percent and the risk of another copycat usurper would be reduced to a minimum. Costs would be higher, granted, but once you reestablish yourself, six to twelve months down the track you . . .”

“Father, this is outrageous,” yelled Peter. “We do not need to listen to the false words of . . .”

But John Nagoshi raised his hand, calling for his son’s silence in no uncertain terms.

“You think we should cut our losses?” John Nagoshi asked Tony at last.

“Yes, sir,” Tony replied, looking the older Nagoshi directly in the eye. “Our advice is—
my
advice is—you have to get out, and you have to get out now.”

“Call home,” she said, moving the salt and pepper shakers aside so that she might push her cell phone across the surface of the lime green tabletop toward him.

Sara had texted him just as he was leaving the Mathesons’, the tiny cassette tape Jed had given him now packed safely in a side pocket of his brown leather briefcase. She asked him to meet her at Myrtle’s for a late lunch so that she might fill him in on the goings-on at this morning’s hearing and he might do the same in regards to his news of the search.

“Sara,” he began. “I am just getting over the news that our innocent client is headed for trial and you are asking me to call our apartment when the only two people who live there are . . . well . . . sitting right
here
?”

“I know the indictment is bad news, but in all honestly it is no surprise,” she said. “There was no way Katz wasn’t going to convince at least twelve of them that he had evidence enough to warrant the criminal charges. It was just a formality.”

She was right. It was a blow but it wasn’t unexpected. What was, however, was Sara’s strange insistence that he call home. But given he was feeling like crap, the cold and drizzle just visible beyond Mick McGee’s now steamy glass windows only adding to his somewhat depressed demeanor, he figured he had nothing to lose. So he dialed the number.

He heard the ring and then the click of their answering machine as it kicked into gear. Then he heard Sara’s voice asking him to leave a message, as the real Sara took his hand and squeezed it. “Retrieve our messages,” she said.

He pressed the three-digit code to bring up their voicemail and was told there were two new messages—the first from his mom in Jersey asking if he and Sara could make it home for Thanksgiving, and the second a message of sorts from the most unlikely of callers—Suffolk County Assistant District Attorney Roger Katz.

“Listen to me,”
said Katz, his voice direct and low
. “We don’t have much time so you have to focus and take this in as quickly as possible.”

“All right,”
said a second voice, younger, but just as confident.

“What new information?”
asked a confused second voice, another young man David guessed could only be Heath Westinghouse.

“It’s something I remembered this morning, Westinghouse
,” said Simpson, a sliver of impatience in his voice.
“I haven’t had a chance to tell you about it
.

“I don’t understand,”
Simpson went on, obviously turning his attention back to Katz.
“I thought that was why we were here—to provide as much information as possible.”

“Yes,”
interrupted Katz.
“But I am sure a savvy young legal mind such as yours knows that occasionally a prosecutor sees the benefits of, shall we say, rationing the goods. I have the indictment in the bag, gentlemen, and I intend to save this lovely little bombshell for trial.”

There was a pause then, a static hum as, David gathered, the two boys were taking this in.

“I’m not sure about this, Katz,”
said a new voice, an older man with a tone of authority.

The man, who David guessed to be Westinghouse’s father, failed to reply.

“All right,”
said Katz after a beat. “
You’re up first, Heath, and I’ll close with H. Edgar. And don’t worry, everything will be fine. There will be no surprises, just straight as we rehearsed.”

There was another pause then and David sensed that perhaps Katz was not getting the positive affirmation he desired from his prized witness number one.