Dark Rivers of the Heart (47 page)

“My
best
chance? At this rigged hearing?”

“Not rigged exactly. Just in front of
their
judge.”

“What’s the difference?”

Darius nodded wearily. “Not much. And once forfeiture is approved in that hearing, if you didn’t have a criminal trial in which to state your case, you’d have to initiate legal action, sue the FBI and the DEA, to get the forfeiture overturned. That would be an uphill battle. Government attorneys would repeatedly attempt to have your suit dismissed—until they found a sympathetic court. Even if you got a jury or panel of judges to overturn the forfeiture, the government would appeal and appeal, trying to exhaust you.”

“But if they dropped the charges against me, how could they still keep my house?” He understood what his brother had told him. He just didn’t understand the logic or the justice of it.

“Like I explained,” Darius said patiently, “all they have to show is evidence the
property
was used for illegal purposes. Not that you or any member of your family was involved in that activity.”

“But then who would they claim was stashing cocaine there?”

Darius sighed. “They don’t have to name anyone.”

Astonished, reluctantly accepting the full monstrousness of it at last, Harris said, “They can seize my house by claiming someone was dealing drugs out of it—but not have to name a suspect?”

“As long as they have evidence, yes.”

“The evidence was planted!”

“Like I explained already, you’d have to prove that to a court.”

“But if they don’t charge me with a crime, I might never get
into
a court with a suit of my own.”

“Right.” Darius smiled humorlessly. “Now you see why I hope to God they don’t drop the charges. Now you understand the rules.”

“Rules?” Harris said. “These aren’t rules. This is
madness.
”

He needed to pace, work off a sudden dark energy that filled him. His anger and outrage were so great that his knees were weak when he tried to stand. Halfway to his feet, he was forced to sit again, as if suffering the effects of another stun grenade.

“You okay?” Darius worried.

“But these laws were only supposed to target major drug dealers, racketeers, Mafia.”

“Sure. People who might liquidate property, flee the country before they went to trial. That was the original intent when the laws were passed. But now there are two hundred federal offenses, not just drug offenses, that allow property forfeiture without trial, and they were used fifty thousand times last year.”

“Fifty thousand!”

“It’s becoming a major source of funding for law enforcement. Once liquidated, eighty percent of seized assets goes to the police agencies in the case, twenty percent to the prosecutor.”

They sat in silence. The old-fashioned wall clock ticked softly. The sound brought to mind the image of a time bomb, and Harris felt as though he were, in fact, sitting on just such an explosive device.

No less angry than he had been but more in control of his anger, he said at last, “They’re going to sell my house, aren’t they?”

“Well, at least this is a federal seizure. If it was under the California forfeiture law, it’d be gone ten days after the hearing. Feds give us more time.”

“They’ll sell it.”

“Listen, we’ll do everything we can to overturn before then….” Darius’s voice trailed away. He was no longer able to look his brother in the eyes. Finally he said, “And even after assets are liquidated, if you can overturn, then you can get compensation—though not for any costs you incurred related to the forfeiture.”

“But
I
can kiss my house good-bye. I might get money back but not my house. And I can’t get back all the
time
this will take.”

“There’s legislation in Congress to reform these laws.”

“Reform? Not toss them out completely?”

“No. The government likes the laws too much. Even the proposed reforms don’t go far enough and don’t have wide support yet.”

“Evicted my family,” Harris said, still gripped by disbelief.

“Harris, I feel rotten. I’ll do everything I can, I’ll be a tiger on their ass, I swear, but I ought to be able to do more.”

Harris’s hands were fisted again on the table. “None of this is your fault, little brother. You didn’t write the laws. We’ll…just cope. Somehow, we’ll cope. The important thing now is to post bail, so I can get out of here.”

Darius put the heels of his coal-black hands to his eyes and pressed gently, as if trying to banish his weariness. Like Harris, he hadn’t slept the previous night. “That’s going to take until Monday. I’ll go to my bank first thing Monday morning—”

“No, no. You don’t have to put up your money for bail. We’ve got it. Didn’t Jessica tell you? And our bank’s open Saturdays.”

“She told me. But—”

“Not open now, but it was earlier. God, I wanted out today.”

Lowering his hands from his face, Darius met his brother’s eyes with reluctance. “Harris, they’ve impounded your bank accounts too.”

“They can’t do that,” he said angrily, but no longer with any conviction. “Can they?”

“Savings, checking, all of it, whether it was a joint account with Jessie, in your name, or just in her name. They’re calling it all illegal drug profits, even the Christmas-club account.”

Harris felt as if he’d been hit in the face. A strange numbness began to spread through him. “Darius, I can’t…I can’t let you put up all the bail. Not fifty thousand. We have some stocks—”

“Your brokerage account’s impounded too, pending forfeiture.”

Harris stared at the clock. The second hand twitched around the face. The time-bomb sound seemed louder, louder.

Reaching across the conference-room table, putting his hands over Harris’s fists, Darius said, “Big brother, I swear, we’ll get through this together.”

“With everything impounded…we have nothing but the cash in my wallet and Jessica’s purse. Jesus. Maybe just her purse. My wallet is in the nightstand drawer at home, if she didn’t think to bring it when…when they made her and the girls leave.”

“So Bonnie and I are putting up bail, and we don’t want any argument about it,” Darius said.

Tick…tick…tick…

Harris’s entire face was numb. The back of his neck was numb, pebbled with gooseflesh. Numb and cold.

Darius squeezed his brother’s hands reassuringly once more, and then finally let go.

Harris said, “How are Jessica and I going to rent a place if we can’t put together first month, last month, and security deposit?”

“You’ll move in with Bonnie and me for the duration. That’s already been settled.”

“Your house isn’t that big. You don’t have room for four more.”

“Jessie and the girls are already with us. You’re just one more. Sure, it’ll be tight, but we’ll be fine. Nobody’ll mind if it’s a bit of a squeeze. We’re family. We’re in this together.”

“But this might take months to get resolved. My God, it could take
years,
couldn’t it?”

Tick…tick…tick…

Later, as Darius was about to leave, he said, “I want you to think hard about enemies, Harris. This isn’t all just a big mistake. This took planning, cunning, and contacts. Somewhere, you’ve got a smart and powerful enemy, whether you realize it or not. Think about it. If you come up with any names, that might help me.”

Saturday night, Harris shared a windowless four-bed cell with two alleged murderers and with a rapist who bragged about assaulting women in ten states. He slept only fitfully.

Sunday night, he slept much better, only because he was by then utterly exhausted. Dreams tormented him. All were nightmares, and in each, sooner or later, there was a clock ticking, ticking.

Monday, he was up at dawn, eager to be free. He was loath to let Darius and Bonnie tie up so much money to make his bail. Of course, he had no intention of fleeing jurisdiction, so they wouldn’t lose their funds. And he had developed a prison claustrophobia that, if it continued to worsen, would soon be intolerable.

Though his situation was dreadful, unthinkable, he nevertheless took some solace from the certainty that the worst was behind him. Everything had been taken away—or soon would be taken. He was at the bottom, and in spite of the long fight ahead, he had nowhere to go but up.

That was Monday morning. Early.

At Caliente, Nevada, the federal highway angled north, but at Panaca they left it for a state route that turned east toward the Utah border. The rural highway carried them into higher land that had a stark, cauldron-of-creation quality, almost pre-Mesozoic, even though it was forested with pine and spruce.

As crazy as it sounded, Spencer was nevertheless completely convinced by Valerie’s fear of satellite surveillance. All was blue above, with no monstrous mechanical presences hovering like something out of
Star Wars,
but he was uncomfortably aware of being watched, mile by lonely mile.

Regardless of the eye in the sky and the professional killers who might be en route to Utah to intercept them, Spencer was ravenous. Two small cans of Vienna sausages had not satisfied his hunger. He ate cheese crackers and washed them down with a Coke.

Behind the front seats, sitting erect in his narrow quarters, Rocky was so enthusiastic about Valerie’s way with a Rover that he expressed no interest in the cheese crackers. He grinned broadly. His head bobbed up and down, up and down.

“What’s with the dog?” she asked.

“He likes the way you drive. He has a need for speed.”

“Really? He’s such a frightened little guy most of the time.”

“I just found out about this speed thing myself,” Spencer said.

“Why’s he so afraid of everything?”

“He was abused before he wound up in the pound, before I brought him home. I don’t know what’s in his past.”

“Well, it’s nice to see him enjoying himself so much.”

Rocky’s head bobbed enthusiastically.

As tree shadows flickered across the roadway, Spencer said, “I don’t know what’s in your past, either.” Instead of responding, she eased down on the accelerator, but Spencer persisted: “Who are you running from? Now they’re my enemies too. I have a right to know.”

She stared intently at the road. “They don’t have a name.”

“What—a secret society of fanatical assassins, like in an old Fu Manchu novel?”

“More or less.” She was serious. “It’s a nameless government agency, financed by misdirected appropriations intended for lots of other programs. Also by hundreds of millions of dollars a year from cases involving the asset-forfeiture laws. Originally it was intended to be used to conceal the illegal actions and botched operations of government bureaus and agencies ranging from the post office to the FBI. A political pressure-release valve.”

“An independent cover-up squad.”

“Then if a reporter or anybody discovered evidence of a cover-up in a case that, say, the FBI had investigated, that cover-up couldn’t be traced to anyone in the FBI itself. This independent group covers the Bureau’s ass, so the Bureau never has to destroy evidence, bribe judges, intimidate witnesses, all that nasty stuff. The perpetrators are mysterious, nameless. No proof they’re government employees.”

The sky was still blue and cloudless, but the day seemed darker than it had been before.

Spencer said, “There’s enough paranoia in this concept for half a dozen Oliver Stone movies.”

“Stone sees the shadow of the oppressor but doesn’t understand who casts it,” she said. “Hell, even the average FBI or ATF agent is unaware this agency exists. It operates at a very high level.”

“How high?” he wondered.

“Its top officers answer to Thomas Summerton.”

Spencer frowned. “Is that name supposed to mean something?”

“He’s independently wealthy, a major political fund-raiser and wheeler-dealer. And currently the first deputy attorney general.”

“Of what?”

“Of the Kingdom of Oz—what do you think?” she said impatiently. “First Deputy Attorney General of the United States!”

“You’ve got to be putting me on.”

“Look it up in an almanac, read a newspaper.”

“I don’t mean you’re kidding about him being the first deputy. I mean, about him being involved in a conspiracy like this.”

“I know it for a fact. I know
him.
Personally.”

“But in that position, he’s the second most powerful person in the Department of Justice. The next link up the chain from him…”

“Curdles your blood, doesn’t it?”

“Are you saying the attorney general knows about this?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. I hope not. I’ve never seen any evidence. But I don’t rule out anything anymore.”

Ahead, in the westbound lane, a gray Chevrolet van topped a hill and came toward them. Spencer didn’t like the looks of it. According to Valerie’s schedule, they weren’t likely to be in immediate danger for the better part of two hours yet. But she might be wrong. Maybe the agency didn’t have to fly in thugs from Vegas. Maybe it already had operatives in the area.

He wanted to tell her to turn off the road at once. They had to put trees between themselves and any fusillade of machine-gun fire directed at them. But there was nowhere to go: no connecting road in sight and a six-foot drop beyond the narrow shoulder.