“Stay down! Stay down!” he screamed.
“Jesus Christ, Ben, what’s going on?”
The noise was terrifying—deafening. Bullets ricocheted everywhere, thudding into the cabinets and walls. The large Palladian window was gone. The house alarm was blaring. Everyone was screaming, faces pressed into the floor. The noise was so frightening and seemed so close, directly over them, Kate had the terrifying sense whoever was shooting had climbed into the room.
She was certain she was about to die.
Then suddenly she heard voices. Yelling. The same paralyzing thought occurred to everyone at once:
The kids. Upstairs.
Kate’s father arched up and shouted above the frenzy, “Em, Justin, don’t come down! Get on the floor!”
The barrage continued. Maybe twenty, thirty seconds, but it seemed like an eternity to Kate, huddled with her hands over her ears, her heart pounding out of control.
“Hold on, hold on,” Kate’s father kept repeating, blanketing them. She heard screaming, crying. She didn’t even know if it was hers. The window was wide open. Bullets were still flying in every direction. Kate just prayed: Whoever you are, whatever you want, please, God, please, just don’t come inside.
And then there was silence. As quickly as it had begun.
Kate heard footsteps retreating, an engine starting up, and a vehicle lurching away.
For a long time, they just clung to the floor. Too afraid to even look up. The silence was just as terrifying as the attack. Sharon was whimpering. Kate was too frozen to speak. There was a steady pounding very close by, loud, above the shrieking of the alarm.
Gradually, almost joyously, Kate realized that it was the sound of her own heart.
“They’re gone. They’re gone.” Her father finally exhaled, rolling off of them. “Sharon, Kate, are you all right?”
“I think so,” Kate’s mother muttered. Kate just nodded. She couldn’t believe it. There were bullet holes everywhere. Shattered glass all over the floor. The place looked like a war zone.
“Oh, my God, Ben, what the hell is going on?”
Then they heard voices coming down the stairs. “Mom … Dad …?”
Justin and Emily. They ran into the study. “Oh, thank God …” Sharon literally leaped up, throwing her arms around them, smothering them with kisses. Then Kate, too. Everyone was crying, sobbing, hugging each other in tearful relief. “Thank God you’re all all right.”
Slowly the panic began to recede, and in its place was the horrifying sight of what had happened. Sharon looked around at the devastation of their once-beautiful home. Everything was shattered. They were lucky to be alive.
Her eyes came back to her husband. There was no longer terror in them. There was something else—accusation.
“What the hell have you done to us, Ben?”
“The purpose of this meeting”—James Nardozzi, the U.S. Attorney, stared across the table, focusing on Mel—“is for you and your client to fully understand the seriousness of the charges facing him. And to determine a path of action that would be in his best interest. As well as the best interest of his family.”
The conference room in the U.S. Attorney’s office at Foley Square in lower Manhattan was glass-paneled and narrow, its white walls decorated with photos of George W. Bush and the attorney general. Booth and Ruiz were seated across from Mel and Raab. There was a stenographer at the far end of the table, who looked like a prim schoolteacher, taking everything down. Raab’s family was sequestered at the house, which was now cordoned off and being guarded by the FBI.
“First, Mr. Raab believes he has done nothing wrong,” Mel was quick to reply.
“Nothing wrong?” The U.S. Attorney ruffled his brow as if he hadn’t heard correctly.
“Yes. He denies ever knowingly being part of any scheme to launder money or defraud the U.S. government. He’s never once concealed any monies he’s made from these transactions. He’s even up-to-date in his taxes on them. Whatever business took place between Mr. Kornreich and Mr. Concerga was totally without my client’s consent.”
Special Agent Booth looked back at Mel, surprised. “Your client denies knowing that Paz Export Enterprises was a company set up to receive altered merchandise intended to launder money for the Mercado drug cartel? And that his actions did not serve to aid and abet these felonies when he introduced Paz to Argot Manufacturing?”
Raab stared nervously at Booth and Ruiz. Mel nodded at him.
“Yes.”
The U.S. Attorney sighed impatiently, as if this were wasting his time.
“What my client does admit to,” Mel explained, “is that he may have been foolish, if not even a bit misguided, not to suspect that something was afoot given the regular and generally lucrative result of Mr. Concerga’s business. But the mere acceptance of payment doesn’t constitute knowledge of who the end user was or what the finished product was being utilized for.”
Special Agent Booth scratched his head for a second and nodded patiently. “As Mr. Nardozzi explained, Mr. Raab, what we’re trying to do is give you a chance to keep your family together—before we go at this another way.”
“The RICO statutes very specifically state,” Mel said, “that a suspect must willfully and knowingly contrive—”
“Mr. Kipstein,” Agent Ruiz cut Raab’s lawyer off in midsentence, “we know what the RICO statutes state. The man we introduced your client to yesterday is a special agent of the FBI. Agent Esposito identified himself as a business acquaintance of Luis Trujillo. Your client offered to do business with him in the same manner he assisted in the altering of gold for Paz. That’s money laundering, Mr. Kipstein. And conspiracy to commit fraud.”
“You set my client up,” Mel was quick to charge. “You lured him into an illicit act. You put his life, and the life of his family, in danger. That’s entrapment. It’s more than entrapment. It’s reckless endangerment in my view!”
Booth leaned back. “All I can say is, maybe your view’s a little cloudy over there, Counselor.” He had a face like someone concealing a winning poker hand.
Booth nodded to Ruiz, who reached inside his folder and came out with a cassette. “We have his voice on tape, Mr. Kipstein. Your client has made six visits to Colombia in the past eight years. Do you want me to play what was said?” He slid the tape across the table. “Or can we just get down to the business we came here for today, which is saving your client’s life?”
“Be my guest,” Mel Kipstein said.
The agent shrugged and reached forward for the recorder.
Raab put his hand on his lawyer’s arm. “Mel …”
The lawyer stared at him.
Raab always knew that one day this would happen. Even when he pretended every day that it would never come. That it would go on forever.
They had his relationship to Argot, the monies he’d received. They had his voice on tape. The RICO statutes only needed to establish a pattern of racketeering. Just the knowledge alone of such activity would be enough to get a conviction. Under the kingpin statute, they could put him away for twenty years.
He knew. He always knew. He just wasn’t prepared to feel so empty inside. He wasn’t prepared to have it hurt so much.
“What is it you want from me?” He nodded