teaser above the masthead about an article in the Style section on how to make tomorrow, Valentine’s Day, special. Mason had bought a card for Abby, signed it, stuck it in an envelope, and then thrown it away. He didn’t want to be like the nutrition bar and promise Abby something he couldn’t deliver.
An hour later he was in his office, behind his desk, staring at the dry erase board. He used circles, broken and solid lines, boxes, triangles and any other geometry he could think of to link the people and facts of a case, making room for what he knew or suspected and taking stock of what he didn’t know or feared. He studied the resulting graffiti, searching for a pattern that illuminated the answers to the five questions—who, what, where, when, and why. Before retreating to his desk chair, he circled Charles Rockley’s name and drew a solid line to nowhere, punctuating it with a question: Who told Rockley about the tape?
Blues was right. If Rockley had only been employed at Galaxy for a year, he couldn’t have known about the taped conversation between Ed Fiori and Judge Carter unless someone else at Galaxy had told him. Double-checking his reasoning, he pulled up Rockley’s personnel records from the arbitration file and reviewed Rockley’s employment history, comparing it to his testimony at the hearing.
Rockley was thirty-eight years old. He graduated from Ohio University with a business degree and worked a series of middle-level management jobs in unrelated industries before being hired by Galaxy a year ago. He was divorced and had moved around a lot, no job lasting more than a few years. Galaxy hired him to be a shift supervisor for blackjack dealers, a position that required more middle-level management skills than it did an understanding of when to hit on thirteen.
Rockley’s résumé was that of a flat-liner, someone who had topped out early, substituting lateral moves for advancement. He was an invisible employee, never leaving a mark or a memory. Asked at the hearing why he’d moved from job to job, he answered that each new job was a better opportunity. It didn’t look that way to Mason, but it was an innocuous answer that Vince Bongiovanni, Carol Hill’s lawyer, didn’t challenge.
In her defense of Galaxy, Lari Prillman underscored something that was missing from Rockley’s employment history. He’d never been the subject of a complaint for sexual harassment. He was, at least on paper, a model—though decidedly undistinguished—employee.
Rockley’s deposition testimony read like the milquetoast image Mason gleaned from his personnel file. He gave polite, simple, and direct answers to the lawyers’ questions, refusing to take Bongiovanni’s bait and fight with the opposing lawyer. Mason could practically see him looking Lari Prillman squarely in the eye as he denied Carol Hill’s allegations with a carefully calibrated hint of outrage at her accusations.
All of which made Mason’s question— Who told Rockley about the tape?— all the more compelling. Rockley was the kind of guy who would never be in the loop on something so sensitive. There was nothing apparent in his past or present to explain why anyone at Galaxy would share with him the explosive information about Judge Carter or Mason.
Perhaps, Mason speculated, he’d stumbled onto it, realized its value, and decided to blackmail the judge to save his job. If so, Mason had grossly underestimated Rockley’s paper persona. Maybe Rockley was one of those guys who showed up at work one morning with an assault rifle and mowed down half a dozen coworkers before the cops shot him, leaving the survivors to scratch their heads and comment what a quiet guy he had always been.
Re-examining the dry erase board, Mason highlighted the names of Al Webb, the casino’s general manager, and Lila Collins, the HR director. Mason assumed that Webb was more likely than Collins to know about the taped conversations, but he relocated their names
An hour later he was in his office, behind his desk, staring at the dry erase board. He used circles, broken and solid lines, boxes, triangles and any other geometry he could think of to link the people and facts of a case, making room for what he knew or suspected and taking stock of what he didn’t know or feared. He studied the resulting graffiti, searching for a pattern that illuminated the answers to the five questions—who, what, where, when, and why. Before retreating to his desk chair, he circled Charles Rockley’s name and drew a solid line to nowhere, punctuating it with a question: Who told Rockley about the tape?
Blues was right. If Rockley had only been employed at Galaxy for a year, he couldn’t have known about the taped conversation between Ed Fiori and Judge Carter unless someone else at Galaxy had told him. Double-checking his reasoning, he pulled up Rockley’s personnel records from the arbitration file and reviewed Rockley’s employment history, comparing it to his testimony at the hearing.
Rockley was thirty-eight years old. He graduated from Ohio University with a business degree and worked a series of middle-level management jobs in unrelated industries before being hired by Galaxy a year ago. He was divorced and had moved around a lot, no job lasting more than a few years. Galaxy hired him to be a shift supervisor for blackjack dealers, a position that required more middle-level management skills than it did an understanding of when to hit on thirteen.
Rockley’s résumé was that of a flat-liner, someone who had topped out early, substituting lateral moves for advancement. He was an invisible employee, never leaving a mark or a memory. Asked at the hearing why he’d moved from job to job, he answered that each new job was a better opportunity. It didn’t look that way to Mason, but it was an innocuous answer that Vince Bongiovanni, Carol Hill’s lawyer, didn’t challenge.
In her defense of Galaxy, Lari Prillman underscored something that was missing from Rockley’s employment history. He’d never been the subject of a complaint for sexual harassment. He was, at least on paper, a model—though decidedly undistinguished—employee.
Rockley’s deposition testimony read like the milquetoast image Mason gleaned from his personnel file. He gave polite, simple, and direct answers to the lawyers’ questions, refusing to take Bongiovanni’s bait and fight with the opposing lawyer. Mason could practically see him looking Lari Prillman squarely in the eye as he denied Carol Hill’s allegations with a carefully calibrated hint of outrage at her accusations.
All of which made Mason’s question— Who told Rockley about the tape?— all the more compelling. Rockley was the kind of guy who would never be in the loop on something so sensitive. There was nothing apparent in his past or present to explain why anyone at Galaxy would share with him the explosive information about Judge Carter or Mason.
Perhaps, Mason speculated, he’d stumbled onto it, realized its value, and decided to blackmail the judge to save his job. If so, Mason had grossly underestimated Rockley’s paper persona. Maybe Rockley was one of those guys who showed up at work one morning with an assault rifle and mowed down half a dozen coworkers before the cops shot him, leaving the survivors to scratch their heads and comment what a quiet guy he had always been.
Re-examining the dry erase board, Mason highlighted the names of Al Webb, the casino’s general manager, and Lila Collins, the HR director. Mason assumed that Webb was more likely than Collins to know about the taped conversations, but he relocated their names
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