House Justice (13 page)

He had decided the best thing for him to do was simply disappear. If he stayed where he was, Yuri was going to bleed him dry and he’d most likely be implicated in Yuri’s crimes. And although Yuri had said he’d kill Marty’s family, he’d only do that if Marty did something to put Yuri in jail. But if Marty just walked away from everything—from the company, his family, and the cops— Yuri would have no reason to go after his family. And to make sure of this, he would send Yuri a note before he left telling him that if anything happened to the people he loved, he’d come back and do whatever was necessary to put Yuri behind bars.

But what he couldn’t do—what he
wouldn’t
do—was flee empty-handed.

He couldn’t sell his stock because Yuri—via that pedophile Bollinger —would know if he tried and, as a major shareholder in the company, there were SEC controls that prevented him from simply calling
up a broker and cashing out. And he didn’t have much cash left in his bank accounts—just a few hundred thousand—because Yuri kept asking for “loans.” But he had a lot of
stuff
: a yacht worth a couple of million; the sailboat, which was worth half a million; three houses (Yuri was currently living in one of them); five or six high-priced cars (two of which were now in Yuri’s possession); some absurdly expensive pieces of art; and a ranch in Arizona that he’d never seen. He even had a racehorse. The horse, even though it had won only a couple of races, had turned out to be a pretty good investment because when they put the animal out to stud Marty had made more money selling the horse’s semen than he ever made when the animal was racing.

If he waited too long to escape, Yuri would eventually take away everything he owned. In fact, he was surprised Yuri hadn’t already begun to liquidate his assets. He assumed the only reason he hadn’t was because Yuri was still making a ton of money off the company, but at some point, he’d go after the rest of Marty’s things. The good news was that while Yuri knew about some of his possessions, there were others Marty was pretty sure he didn’t know about, like the horse and the land in Arizona. He figured if he sold everything he owned, he could get twenty to thirty million without even haggling over prices; the houses alone would bring in ten or twelve million, even in the current market.

But he had to find a way to do it that Yuri wouldn’t see. He couldn’t have a real estate agent show up at the house that Yuri was currently occupying and start showing it to potential buyers. He knew a guy, though, a broker, and he was pretty sure the guy could sell his stuff in some under-the-radar way.

But say he sold everything and got the money. Then what? He couldn’t just get on a plane and fly to Tahiti. Yuri might track him down, and when he found him, he’d make him suffer like God’s worst enemy. So he needed a new identity—a passport, a driver’s license, and credit cards made out in some other name—but he had no idea who to contact to get those things. And even a false ID might not be enough. He had a pretty famous face so he’d have to see a plastic
surgeon. He knew one in Rio, one that a couple of his ex-girlfriends had used—but he really didn’t want to do that. He liked the way he looked; women
loved
the way he looked.

After he spent a couple hours thinking about all that depressing shit, it felt like his head was just gonna explode—and that’s when he took out the tequila and his laptop and tried to hack into a Wells Fargo computer. He wasn’t planning to steal anything; hacking was just something he did to relax, to have a little fun—to make him feel like he did in the old days before Yuri had taken over his life.

And at that moment, as if the devil had been eavesdropping on his thoughts, he felt the sailboat move as someone climbed on board. He turned his head and saw Yuri walking toward him.

Yuri, as usual, was beautifully dressed: designer sunglasses, a lightweight linen suit, a silk T-shirt, and Italian loafers sans socks. Marty had no idea how much of
his
money Yuri spent on clothes. He reminded Marty, particularly when he wore sunglasses, of that actor Viggo Mortensen. Or maybe Yuri reminded him of Viggo only because Viggo had once played a Russian mobster in a movie.

Yuri ignored him. He walked over to the rail of the sailboat, lit a cigarette, and admired the harbor view for a moment. Finally, he turned and said, “I want you to call Diller. Use a public phone, not your cell phone. Tell him to meet you at the ranger station at the Cuyamaca Rancho State Park tonight at nine.”

“Why do you want me to meet with Diller?” Taylor asked.

“I don’t want you to meet him,” Yuri said, and crushed his cigarette out on the deck Marty had just buffed.

Conrad Diller looked at his watch again. It was nine thirty. Where the hell was Taylor? He was half an hour late, but then Marty was a flake and had never been known for being punctual. Diller decided he’d wait ten more minutes and then he’d leave.

He wasn’t surprised Marty had wanted to meet him late at night and in an out-of-the-way place. The old lawyer, Porter Henry, had
told them to avoid contact with each other prior to the trial so they couldn’t be accused of collaborating on a story. He was guessing the reason Marty wanted to see him was that Marty was going to try to convince him to hang tough and not hand him over to the federal prosecutor for a get-out-of-jail deal. Well, good luck with that. He’d tell him the same thing he’d told the lawyer: he wasn’t doing time for Marty Taylor.

What a debacle the Iranian thing had been. He’d been called to Marty’s office one day, and with Marty was the CEO, Bollinger, and a guy he’d never met who was introduced only as John, a consultant who specialized in foreign business opportunities. Bollinger had told him that they wanted him to take a vacation to the Middle East and, for the most part, it
would
be a vacation. He could visit Jerusalem, Damascus, Cairo, and anyplace else in the region he wanted, and the company would pay for the trip. His last stop would be Tehran.

“Tehran?” he had said, having not a clue where this discussion was going.

“Yes,” Bollinger had said. “We want you to explore the possibility of, uh, interfacing our control systems with the Shahab-3.”

The Shahab-3 missile had been developed by the Iranians, most likely with some outside help, but everybody knew it was a piece of shit. Kids flinging stones with slingshots had a better chance hitting what they were aiming at.

Naturally, the first question he had asked was, “Isn’t that illegal?”— knowing damn good and well it was.

To which Bollinger had responded, “If we actually sold them the technology, it would be. Today, that is. But we’re not talking about an immediate sale. You see, things with Iran are starting to change a bit, not quickly, but gradually. Some folks I know back in Washington have said that maybe, some time in the future, we might actually be able to work with the Iranians. You know, if they back off on building nukes, we might be able to help them with conventional weapons designed only for defense of their homeland.”

Diller knew this was all bullshit. He suspected that the company was in so much financial trouble they were actually thinking about making an under-the-table deal with Iran. But he’d been smart enough not to say anything; he had just sat there waiting for Bollinger to tell him why he, Conrad Diller, should put his young ass on the line in this way. But Bollinger wasn’t through with his spiel.

“All we want you to do,” Bollinger had said, “is sit down and talk with them. Talk to them about how we could improve the performance of the Shahab, and”—Bollinger meant tell ’em how T&T’s technology would allow them to put one of their missiles right in the Israeli prime minister’s back pocket, if that’s what they wanted to do— “and get an idea of how much they’d be willing to pay. If they’re interested, we’ll work out the details later. You know, how to upgrade their systems, tech support, any issues we might have with U.S. export laws, stuff like that.”

“I see,” Dilller had said, still waiting to hear the magic words. And then they came.

“We were thinking,” Bollinger had said, “that if you do this and you’re successful, a bonus of two hundred thousand might be appropriate.”

He had sat there for almost thirty seconds, until the silence in the room became strained, and he had noticed that John—the guy hadn’t said a word during the meeting—was starting to look a little perturbed. Well, fuck John.

“I’m thinking half a million might be more realistic,” he’d finally said, already envisioning himself sitting on the deck of a condo on Lake Tahoe that he and his wife had seen last year.

Then something odd had happened. Bollinger, instead of looking over at Marty Taylor to see if he wanted to meet his price, looked over at John, and John nodded his approval. His immediate thought had been, Who the hell is this guy? So he asked.

John explained, in an accent that sounded Eastern European, that his job was to put Diller in touch with the right people when he arrived
in Tehran. And meet the right people he did—and then that article appeared in the
Daily News
and ten days later he was arrested. It had never occurred to anyone that a damn CIA agent would attend the meeting.

After he was arrested, Taylor upped his “bonus,” saying he’d give him five million if he didn’t implicate the company in his Iranian vacation. Well, he had decided that five million wasn’t enough. After he met a third time with Porter Henry, he concluded the old lawyer was right: the government was going to have a tough time convicting him based on the word of a dead spy. So if the case went to trial he might win, but if he saw things weren’t going his way, then he’d give the government Marty Taylor and Andy Bollinger—and that John guy, although he suspected John wasn’t the man’s real name.

The way he looked at it, he was currently making two hundred grand a year and if he worked twenty more years, and if the market performed the way it normally did, five million was about what he would have made during that period. But who said he was going to stay at the two hundred grand per year level? With his brains, he could eventually be the chief executive of some big company and in a twenty-year period could make tens of millions, maybe hundreds. Now, of course, with the Iran case hanging over his head, he wasn’t going to be the chief of anything. So he figured, considering his lifetime earning potential, that five million wasn’t anywhere near enough. He was thinking twenty million was a more reasonable number. Yeah, he was glad Marty Taylor had wanted a meeting—but he wished the guy would hurry up. It was getting cold, and it was sort of creepy in this place, too.

It was pitch black in the woods surrounding the ranger station and there were no streetlights around the gravel parking lot. The only light was a porch light near the ranger station door, and he had parked fifty yards away from the door. There was another car in the lot, which surprised him, considering the hour. When he had first arrived, he had thought it might be Marty’s car, although it wasn’t the sort of flashy thing that Taylor usually drove. Then he took a closer look at
the parked car and noticed the driver’s-side window was broken and some wires were hanging down near the steering column. It looked like the car might have been stolen and abandoned at the ranger station. Whatever.

“Mr. Diller,” a cheerful voice called out, and he almost crapped his pants.

He spun around, the adrenaline surging through him, making his entire body tingle, and he saw a man—and the son of a bitch was
huge
. The guy looked like he could have been an offensive tackle for the Chargers but somehow, despite his size, he’d managed to get within three feet of him without making a sound.

“You are Mr. Diller, correct?” the man asked, moving even closer to him.

He had read somewhere that adrenaline was a hormone that preceded a “fight or flight” decision—and every instinct he had was
screaming
at him that this was a flight situation. He needed to get away from this monster.

“Uh, yeah. Did Marty Taylor send you?” Diller asked, but he was looking over at his car, wondering if he could get back inside it before the man could react. The problem with that bright idea was the big bastard was standing too close to him, and before he’d be able to open, close, and lock the car door, the man would certainly get him. No, his best bet would be to forget about getting back into his car and just run like hell. He was sure he could beat a guy this size in a flat-out foot race.

“Not exactly,” the man said.

Fuck this
, Diller thought, and he pivoted on his right foot to run, but when he did, the guy’s hand shot out like a steam-driven piston and grabbed him by the throat. He tried to break the man’s grip but he couldn’t, even using both of his hands, and when he tried to kick him the man just squeezed harder and shook him like a doll.

Then the guy put his other hand around Diller’s throat and really began to squeeze.

At midnight, the florist finally gave up on DeMarco returning home that night and drove to Derek Crosby’s house in Fairfax. The lights were off in Crosby’s home and hopefully this meant that Crosby was in bed and asleep and not out of town.

He put on a black ski mask, exited his car, and took the silenced .22 out of the trunk. There was a small patio at the back of Crosby’s house and the house could be entered from the patio through a sliding glass door. Using the butt of the .22 he broke the glass in the door, reached inside, and unlatched it. No alarm. He waited a moment to see if the sound of the glass breaking had awakened anyone. It apparently had not.

He didn’t know if Crosby had a wife or children. If he did, that would complicate things but, since he was armed, the situation was manageable. Using a penlight, he walked quickly through the small house, through the kitchen, the living room, and a bedroom that had been converted to an office. The fact that the bedroom was used as an office was good; this made it seem unlikely that Crosby had children living with him. At the back of the house was a closed door that he assumed was Crosby’s bedroom.