Reign in Hell Read online

  “Why are we having dinner, Mr. Vail?”

  “Marty.”

  “I think I’ll stick with Mr. Vail.”

  “I want to talk to you about your future.”

  “My future’s fine. Got a good job, got it for life…”

  “That’s what Lakeside’s telling you? That’s where you went to work when you left the county, right?”

  “That’s right, in the real estate department.”

  “And you’re in for life.”

  “That’s right.”

  “They must think very highly of your management skills.”

  “Guess they do.”

  “How long did you work for the county again?”

  “Eighteen years.”

  “And what were you making when you left?”

  “Ninety-two five. Why?”

  “Making a hundred and twenty-five at Lakeside, right?”

  “So?”

  Vail waved his hands. “Just asking. You must be very good at what you do.”

  Dinner came and the waiter had trouble opening the bottle of wine. The cork broke off and he finally shoved part of it into the bottle. A geyser spewed out all over the waiter’s shirt. Vail looked down and rolled his eyes.

  Herman bowed his head and said grace.

  Nice touch, Vail said to himself.

  “One twenty-five,” Vail said, continuing the conversation. “That’s a lot of money for a guy who misappropriated funds, lost records—”

  “That’s what you say,” Kramer said angrily.

  “I’m sorry. Allegedly did all those things.”

  “Maybe I ought to call Mr. Jarmon…”

  “Mr. Jarmon’s job is to put you at ease, Herman,” Vail said, and started to eat. “Mr. Jarmon’s job is to make sure you stick to the story they’ve manufactured. Mr. Jarmon’s job is to protect their clients. I’m sure he wouldn’t tell you you’re looking at perjury and possibly accessory to murder after this trial is over.”

  Herman almost threw up. “Murder? What—What—” he stammered. “We’ll get to that. I have some questions about some of your answers in the deposition with Ms. Parver.”

  “No, no. What’s that about murder, what do you mean?”

  “Remember a fellow named Doc the Fox?”

  He turned pale. “Fox?”

  “Yeah. Doc the Fox. His real name is Jimmy. Maybe you knew him as Jimmy Fox.”

  “I don’t—”

  “He’s doing life in Joliet for killing a man named Morgan.”

  “Bob Morgan.”

  “Right. Remember him now?”

  “I knew Bob Morgan for a couple of years.”

  “I mean Jimmy Fox. You remember Jimmy Fox, don’t you?”

  Beads of sweat bubbled out of the pores along Kramer’s brow. His fork with a piece of lamb was poised in midair.

  “Short guy, kind of skinny. At least he is now. I guess five years in Joliet will take it off you.”

  “I don’t remember…”

  “Let me reconstruct it for you. You drove up to a little town called Tallman. A motel called the Bavarian Inn. It was a Thursday night. Ten o’clock. Room, uh… Ill, on the first floor. The room had a connecting door to 112. You tapped on the connecting door, Jimmy Fox opened it, ID’d himself with his driver’s license, and you gave him a package. Is it coming back to you?”

  “I think maybe he’s talking about somebody else.”

  “According to the hotel’s computer records, you registered in your name. Herman A. Kramer. Paid with your personal credit card.”

  Kramer’s mouth was dry. He gulped down half a glass of water and followed it with a sip of wine. “It isn’t… coming, uh, back to me.”

  “Like signing the contract with the county and not reading the small print? You remember that, don’t you, from your deposition?” Kramer licked his lips and took another drink of water. “Yeah. Kinda. That was a while back. What, four, five months ago? Anyway that was, you know, just an oversight. Let me tell you, Mr. Vail—”

  “Marty.”

  “Marty, right. Okay, sorry.” He chuckled nervously. “Y’know, I rarely ever missed a day. Had the flu once, that’s about it.”

  “That’s admirable, Herman. You had a contract with Grand County for what?”

  “First was for three years, renewed it for seven, then six.”

  “And your contract with the county stipulated that you were fully aware of all the state laws involved in performing your job, right?”

  “Look, I straightened all that out. About not reading the contract before I signed it and all that. I straightened that out.”

  “And you understand the law now?”

  “Oh yes, I do understand it now.”

  “Suppose you explain it to me.”

  “Well, it means… say, you can’t take monies from one government pot and put them in another. What I mean, you can’t move these monies around at whim.”

  “So, you have a government grant for educational purposes, you can’t put those funds in, say, the general fund, correct? Or anyplace else but the purpose for which they are assigned, correct?”

  “Yes. I straightened all that out.”

  “Not really, Herman. See, that’s where we have one of our problems. You stated earlier that you didn’t understand that rule.”

  “I understand it now.”

  “But you didn’t at the time of the deposition, even though it’s the law, and when you took the county administration’s job you took an oath which included a statement that you knew the law and were familiar with your responsibilities.”

  “Uh…”

  “See, where we have this new problem is that your job as administrator required… required that you understood and would abide by the laws and procedures in dealing with state and government funds. As administrator you frequently dealt with designated state and federal monies. And in order to carry out your duties lawfully and legally, you had to know what the rules were.”

  “I told you I straightened that out.”

  “Uh-huh. One more time, Herman, you accepted the job as administrator without being aware of the legal responsibilities of that job. When you told Ms. Parver in your deposition that you were not aware of the consequences of mixing funds, you were committing a felony. Didn’t Jarmon straighten you out on that?”

  “Felony?”

  “It’s a violation of the state RICO act to accept a position which involves handling regulated monies if in accepting that position you attest to the fact that you do understand all regulations that go along with the job. So if you lied about that and then misappropriated such funds, you are guilty of two felonies—misappropriation and perjury.”

  “Perjury!”

  “Either you lied when you said you didn’t understand the law when you accepted the job, or you committed a felony if you did understand the law, and went ahead and misappropriated those funds.”

  “I don’t know what’s going on here.”

  “I’ll tell you what’s going on,” Vail said. “You think you have all the big shots behind you? Wake up, Herman. They’re going to dump you faster than you can cook a set of books, because they are going down and they’re going down hard, and unless you get smart, you’re not only going down with them, when this trial is over we’ll have to take you down for accessory to murder. And peijury. You’re looking thirty, forty years hard time in the eye. No parole.”

  Herman put his fork down on his plate. “Maybe I better call Mr. Jarmon,” he said in a half whisper.

  “Mr. Jarmon doesn’t give two hoots in hell about you. Mr. Jarmon would dance in the street if you took a gun right now and blew your brains out.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Jarmon’s only interest in you is to keep you in line. Make sure you keep lying on the witness stand. You think he’ll take care of you when the trial’s over? Who’s gonna pay his thousand-dollar-a-day fee? Western Pulp and Paper? Atlas Chemical? Get smart, Herman, t
he tooth fairy’s dead. But…”

  Vail took out his cellular phone and laid it in front of Kramer.

  “If it’ll make you feel any better, give Jarmon a call. Then I’ll pay for dinner and be on my way, and the next time we’ll talk is when you’re sitting in the box.”

  “Box?”

  “The witness box.”

  “He says I may not even have to testify. He says he may not even call me.”

  “If he doesn’t, I will. Think about it while you finish your lamb chops.”

  “I’m, uh… I’m getting full.”

  “Losing your appetite?”

  Kramer did not answer. He stared down at his plate and absently stirred the remaining food with his fork.

  “What am I doing here?” he whispered finally.

  “I want you to wake up. Realize your only responsibility here and now, in this room, is to Herman Kramer and nobody else. Right now you’re looking at several counts of malfeasance, misappropriation, perjury… it goes on and on. But I’m more interested in the good old boys that are behind this. The boys Dillmore and Jarmon really represent. The boys that told you what to do and when to do it. You just did what you were told to do, isn’t that right, Herman?”

  No response.

  “And I want you to think about Jimmy Fox and the package you delivered to him at the Bavarian Inn in Tallman. You know what was in that package, Herman?”

  Herman slowly shook his head.

  “Ten big ones. Ten thousand dollars. That’s what it cost to ice Bob Morgan.”

  “I never looked in the package, Mr. Vail, I swear to God. I didn’t know what it was for.”

  “Who gave you the package?”

  Kramer’s Adam’s apple bobbed like a cork on a fishing line.

  “Who gave you the package and told you what to do that night, Herman?”

  “They’ll kill me, too,” he said hoarsely.

  “Nobody’s going to kill anybody else. You do the right thing, nobody will touch you. That I will promise you.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Simple. Tell the truth. Don’t take the Fifth. Just tell the truth. It’s easy. You don’t have to remember any lies, don’t have to be afraid of making a mistake. You just tell it the way it happened.”

  “How about all those charges? How about the murder thing?”

  “I can’t make any promises. But if you tell it the way it happened, I will promise you this. I will work with the judge to see that you don’t do any time.”

  “Including the murder case?”

  “Who gave you the package?”

  “Jeffrey Summers.”

  “The vice-president of the Lakeside Company?”

  He nodded. “Jeffrey Summers.”

  “Anybody see him give it to you?”

  “There was one other guy there.”

  “Commissioner Stewart.”

  “You knew that, too, huh?”

  “He made the original contact with Fox.”

  “We were in Sid’s car in a parking lot behind the theaters in the shopping mall. It was about eight-thirty at night.”

  “What did they tell you?”

  “Just to drive up to Tallman and check into the Bavarian Inn. Sid said he made the reservations. He said Jimmy Fox would identify himself with a driver’s license. Then give him this package and come back.”

  “Real friends, Herman. These are the people who are going to get you off, huh? They set you up as a murder accessory.”

  “I never wanted to get mixed up in all this. Mixing the funds and everything. But they had the power, Mr. Vail. They ran everything. It was like… they could fix anything. Everybody was under their thumb.”

  “Bob Morgan wasn’t.”

  Kramer looked at Vail and tears welled up in his eyes. “You say I helped get him killed.”

  “You didn’t know what you were doing. Forget that. Just spit it out when you get in the box. Say it like it happened. Let me tell you what’s going to happen next, Herman. We finish our dinner, I pay the bill, and Mr. Stenner and Mr. Flaherty take you home. After you leave tonight, I’m not going to have another word with you until I cross-examine you. You think about all this. Talk it over with your wife. You don’t mention our meeting with anyone. And remember, it’s never too late to start over.”

  “Can I get in that witness protection thing?”

  “You do the right thing. Then we’ll talk about your future. It’s your decision. Finish your dinner.”

  “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, my name is Martin Vail. I am the Attorney General of the state of Illinois. First of all, let me thank you for sacrificing your time and the time of your families to serve on this jury. I will not delude you, this will be an arduous and time-consuming experience. But in the end, I hope it will also be a gratifying, illuminating, and satisfying endeavor for all of you.

  “The case I bring before you was indictable under the statutes of the state Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations act, otherwise known as RICO. It will be a complicated case and so I will endeavor to explain and to illustrate why the crimes I will present to you violate this act. I know most of you probably think of racketeering as involving gangsters—the Mafia, drugs, gambling, and prostitution— but under the RICO act, racketeering activity is defined as any act or threat involving murder, kidnapping, arson, robbery, bribery, extortion, embezzlement of state funds, bank fraud; tampering with a witness, victim, or an informant; laundering of monetary instruments, violation of the state environmental laws, or any other felony connected to the above activities.

  “Sounds like a mouthful, doesn’t it? Well, it is. This state has the toughest and most comprehensive RICO law in this country.

  “And this case involves a great many of the crimes included in that act.

  “The victims of these crimes were the taxpayers, home owners, and voters of Grand County. People like you, who trusted their elected officials and their business leaders and were betrayed, victimized, and in some cases put in deadly jeopardy because of that trust. The acts we will prove are despicable and often beyond comprehension.

  “The state will prove by a preponderance of hard facts, supported by circumstantial evidence, that the defendants in this case, over a period of the last ten years, conspired to violate most of these laws with ardent contempt for those who trusted them.

  “Some of these defendants are people of prominence, important people; some of them even famous. Some of the defendants are elected officials. Some of these defendants are state and county employees— your employees. Some are felons with long prison records.

  “In order to prove this case, we must prove that at least two of these racketeering acts involved all the defendants. In other words, the people named in this indictment worked together to knowingly weave a web of deceit, lies, and criminal activity over a period of years that cost the taxpayers and voters of Grand County millions of tax dollars, damaged their health and well-being, and controlled their wages and property values. The defendants cheated on their taxes and deprived the people of the county of their rightful voice in their own government.

  “We will show that three corporations colluded to carry out these acts. That they systematically and knowingly poisoned the air, water, and land of the county, subverted hospital records that revealed tragic birth defects and deaths caused by these violations. That they endangered the lives of their friends, their neighbors, and their own employees. That they bribed county and state officials, covered up dangerous violations of the laws that protect citizens from pollution, which endangered the health of all the people in the community. That they violated the local zoning ordinances for their own benefit and the benefit of their coconspirators. That they corrupted department heads, newspaper reporters, lawyers, doctors, and other citizens like yourself in order to continue this illegal and criminal enterprise. And finally, that they misappropriated state and federal funds to their own benefit.

  “I will take you back ten yea
rs to prove to you that this racketeering activity is insidious and perpetual.

  “We will prove to you that three men, chief executive officers of three of the most powerful and respected corporations in America— Tom Lacey of Western Pulp and Paper, Harold Grossman of Atlas Chemical, and Warren Smith of the Lakeside Company—knowingly and maliciously collaborated and directed these activities… a pattern of greed and violation of public trust that is shocking, sickening, and a tragic comment on the immoral abuse of power. A pattern so insidious that we demanded and got a change of venue here from Grand because we could not trust the judges and law officials of Grand County.

  “Do not be deceived by the positions or titles of these people, by their fame or their charm. They are criminals whose crimes destroyed the home place of innocents like yourself, people who trusted them and were deceived, deluded, and betrayed by that trust. We will show that when challenged by innocent people hoping to make a change, these men, with their venal and fragile egos, often responded by maliciously destroying the lives and careers of those who dared to question their methods. No one was immune to their avarice and arrogance.

  “I ask you to study the evidence carefully. I implore you not to be deluded by names and titles. I ask you to put yourself in the position of the citizens of Grand County.

  “We will guide you through this maze of deception, fraud, and duplicity with charts and exhibits showing how these crimes were connected. So, while the law itself may be hard to understand, the facts will not be.

  “Finally, I ask you to bring down a plague on these felons and send a message to the rest of the country that the decent people of the land will no longer abide criminals who disguise themselves as leaders of the community.

  “Thank you for your attention and for your time.”

  For five weeks Vail and his cocounsels, Shana Parver and Dermott Flaherty, presented witness after witness, court documents, bank records, evidence heaped on evidence that gradually built a net around Grossman and Lacey and the Lakeside Co. Employees testified about midnight acid dumps in the rivers, accidental spills that were downgraded, toxic levels in the plants that were covered up. Darryl Hamilton, an inspector for the state’s Environmental Safety Division, admitted he had been wooed by Lacey himself at a party and then bribed to falsify environmental reports. Newspaper reporters testified that their stories were altered or killed. Commissioners were bribed with everything from a new set of false teeth to a farm in Ohio. In the vortex of this eddy of corruption were the four county commissioners. If the big shots were the orchestrators of the deceit, the commissioners were the players.