1

CONNOR NORMAN LOVED A GOOD FIREWORKS SHOW. HE ESPECIALLY liked the ones that took place once or twice a year in the conference rooms at the California Department of Justice. Some executive or general counsel whose company was under investigation would come in for a witness interview, would lie, and would get caught. Then Deputy Attorney General Max Volusca would go off and the show would start. DAG Volusca did not suffer liars gladly. Fools he would tolerate, often longer than Connor. But if Max felt he was being misled, he soon lived up to his nickname, “Max Volume.”

Connor didn’t mind it when Max got loud. In fact, he liked the DAG’s outbursts because they usually rattled whoever was sitting across the table from him. And that usually meant more money for Connor and his qui tam clients. A qui tam plaintiff is a whistleblower who sues on behalf of the government and gets a cut (generally 15-20 percent) of whatever the government recovers. Better yet, if the Department of Justice likes a case, it takes on the lion’s share of the work. Envious defense counsel sometimes complained to Connor that he wasn’t really litigating these cases, just riding a gravy train driven by DOJ. Though Connor never told opposing lawyers, the real fun wasn’t the train ride so much as tying corporate criminals to the tracks in front of the engine.

Today, Connor’s client was Devil to Pay, Inc., a shell company he had created to bring qui tam lawsuits while protecting the identity of its owner. Most contractors assumed that Connor was the force behind Devil to Pay and that he recruited new whistleblowers for every lawsuit. In fact, all those suits were the work of a single woman: a professional whistleblower named Allie Whitman.

The corners of Connor’s mouth twitched. Allie was probably the most widely hated and feared woman in California’s government contracting industry, even though no one knew she existed.

The person who probably hated Allie most at this particular moment was Hiram Hamilton, the CEO of Hamilton Construction. He was sitting at a cheap wood table in conference room 11436 at the San Francisco office of the California Department of Justice, where he was being grilled by Max Volusca.

Connor sat next to Volusca and let him do all the talking. While the DAG asked questions, Connor watched Hamilton and the brace of lawyers who flanked him. One of the lawyers was Joe Johnston, Hamilton Construction’s general counsel. The other was Carlos Alvarez, a high-priced defense lawyer with a reputation for playing hardball with the government.

Hiram Hamilton was a gregarious, open-faced man of about fifty-five who smiled a lot when he spoke. But Connor suspected those traits were the result of practice rather than character, and that raised warning flags. In his experience, men who tried to appear candid rarely were.

“So, how many cost-plus state contracts has your company bid on over the past ten years, Mr. Hamilton?” Max asked.

“I don’t remember—at least two dozen.”

“And you do know what cost-plus means, right?”

“Sure,” Hamilton said with a nod and a genial smile. “It means the contract price is my cost plus an agreed percentage of profit.”

“Has your company ever inflated its costs in order to get a higher profit percentage than your contract allows?”

“No, of course not,” the witness replied without letting his smile waver.

Max stared at him in silence for several seconds. “Do you or do you not realize that you’re under oath, Mr. Hamilton?”

Alvarez grimaced and stirred. “Look, Max, we’re trying to be cooperative and give you the information you want. There’s no reason to badger my client.”

Max kept his eyes on Hamilton. “Are you trying to be cooperative, Mr. Hamilton?”

“I… uh, sure.”

“And provide the information requested in the state’s subpoena?”

“Absolutely. We gave you everything you asked for.”

Here we go. Connor glanced at Max. The DAG’s face had darkened and his bull neck swelled against the collar of his white dress shirt.

“Then WHY didn’t you give me these?” Max demanded, his voice rising several decibels as he thrust a stack of photocopied documents at the witness.

Hamilton’s grin vanished and his eyes widened. “I, I… I’m not sure what these are.”

“Really? Take a good look at them.” Max leaned forward and pointed at the stack with an accusatory finger.

Hamilton flipped through the documents in silence for half a minute as Alvarez engaged in a staring contest with Max. Hamilton looked up again. “These look like the invoices backing up our costs for the work on the DMV building in Oakland,” he said with strained nonchalance. “We gave you all of these already.”

“No, you gave me FAKE invoices for that project! Invoices that had been doctored to make the numbers in them match the numbers you reported to the state,” Max shot back. “These are the REAL invoices.”

Alvarez put a hand on his client’s arm to signal him not to respond. “I object to this harassment, and I’m not going to let it go on any longer. We came here in good faith to answer questions, not listen to you shout at Mr. Hamilton. If you can’t behave civilly, we’re leaving.”

“Before you do, make sure to write down Mr. Hamilton’s shirt and pants size.”

“What? Why?”

“So we can have an orange jumpsuit waiting for him the next time we meet.”

“This is outrageous!” Alvarez stood up and his client and the company’s general counsel followed suit. Max also hefted his sizable bulk upright, his face now beet red. Connor stayed seated, letting his body language say that he was staying out of the fight. At some point, he might need to play “good cop,” and it didn’t hurt to start telegraphing his reasonableness now.

“It’s outrageous alright!” Max rejoined, his voice now at near-bullhorn level. “This is a civil investigation right now, but if you and your client aren’t real careful, there’s going to be a criminal referral. Giving false evidence during an investigation by the Attorney General is a felony under Penal Code section 132.”

Connor fought back the urge to smile as his ears rang. Max Volusca only hauled out section 132 when he was really mad. It was the legal equivalent of the old belt Connor’s father had kept in the back of the hall closet to threaten particularly incorrigible sons. He almost never used it, but its mere appearance worked wonders of attitude adjustment.

Alvarez jammed papers into his briefcase. “I’m not going to dignify that with a response!”

Max put his fists on the table and leaned forward. “Yeah, well I’m going to dignify it with an indictment!”

Hamilton and his lawyers packed in frosty silence for half a minute. Then Alvarez grabbed the stack of photocopied invoices.

“What do you think you’re doing?” demanded the DAG.

“These are company property,” said Alvarez as he shoved the invoices into his briefcase. “And I am reclaiming them.”

“No they aren’t, and no you’re not!”

Alvarez ignored Max and walked toward the door, trailed by Hamilton and Johnston. Max pushed a button on the speakerphone on the conference room table. “Ruby, there are three men leaving conference room 11436. Ask security to arrest them and search them for stolen state property.”

“Yes, Mr. Volusca,” said the receptionist in a bored voice.

Hamilton and his lawyers stopped in the conference room doorway. “You can’t be serious,” said Alvarez.

“Go downstairs and find out,” said the DAG. “I hope you brought your toothbrushes.”

Alvarez’s face turned the same shade of crimson as Max’s, but he reached into his briefcase, pulled out the documents, and slammed them down on the conference room table. “You are nothing but a schoolyard bully,” he said through clenched teeth.

“No, I am the state of California,” Max thundered, “and I hit a lot harder than any bully you ever met! And I promise you that I will absolutely DESTROY you and your client unless I start getting REAL cooperation REAL fast!”

Alvarez opened his mouth, but Johnston spoke first. “Look, let’s all take a deep breath and try this again. You’ve got questions about Hamilton Construction’s billing practices and we want to answer them. If there’s a problem with the documents, just send us a letter and we’ll look into it. You mentioned the Oakland DMV project—were there any other contracts you’d like us to, um, take a second look at?”

“ALL of them!” The DAG turned his glower to the company’s general counsel.

“Okay. All right. We’ll do that,” replied Johnston in the placating let’s-fix-this tone Connor had come to expect from GCs caught in a fraud investigation. “Did you have any more questions for Mr. Hamilton? He is the company CEO and doesn’t spend much time with the accounting paperwork, so I don’t think he’ll be able to help you much on this point. Was there anything else you’d like to ask him about?”

“Yes,” said the DAG in a calmer tone, “but let’s wait until this document problem has been solved. I also strongly suggest that you talk to your client about the importance of being completely candid in his dealings with DOJ. I wasn’t kidding about the criminal referral.”

“I understand.” Johnston nodded as he spoke. “Hopefully once we’ve got this document issue nailed down, there won’t be any need to discuss referrals.”

Hiram Hamilton and his lawyers packed up and left a few minutes later. Hamilton had begun to recover his composure and had forced his habitual smile back onto his face. But large rings of sweat adorned each armpit of his suit coat and he wiped his palms on his pants at least once a minute.

Once they were alone, Max stretched, sat down, and turned to Connor. “So, what did you think?”

“I was watching Hamilton, and he didn’t look angry or surprised when you brought up orange jumpsuits. He just turned pale. And when you put that stack of invoices in front of him, I got the impression that he was shocked to see them but not shocked by your description of what was in them.”

Max nodded. “He was in on it. I went into this thinking we might be looking at some low-level guy trying to boost his revenue numbers by ripping off the government on one or two contracts. But if the CEO is in the loop, it goes way beyond that.”

Connor nodded. “And they’re desperate to know what we know. First, Alvarez tried to walk out of here with your documents. Then Johnston tried to get you to give him a list of the projects you’re looking at.”

Max leaned back in his chair and stroked his jowls. “Good point. That’s another reason to think this isn’t limited to the Oakland DMV building. Plus, this guy Hamilton really ticks me off—sitting there grinning and making noises about how cooperative he’s being, and the whole time he’s lying through his teeth. I love hammering guys like that.”

Connor smiled. “And we’re happy to help in any way we can, Max. Any way at all.”