Power Blind (12 page)

Chapter 27

T
his time John Porzolkiewski opened his front door wide. He surveyed Gage, then shook his head and smiled.

“You look like hell.”

“A little jet lag is all.”

Porzolkiewski's smile faded.

“You got something new,” Porzolkiewski said, “or are we just going to be like hamsters chasing each other around in one of those wire wheels.”

“Something new.”

Porzolkiewski shrugged, then stepped back. “Suit yourself.”

Gage walked inside and found a living room reminding him of his grandmother's in Nogales in the 1970s, except for the cats rubbing their sides against his legs. Not a sofa, but a huge flowered davenport covered in plastic. Not wing chairs, but two brown leather recliners facing an old-style television in a console. He had the feeling that Porzolkiewski had preserved the room just the way it was on the day his wife died.

Porzolkiewski directed Gage toward a lace-covered dining table. He walked to the head and pushed aside his half-eaten chicken and rice dinner, then motioned Gage to sit to his left and sat down.

Gage reached into his suit pocket and set his digital recorder on the table between them.

Porzolkiewski held his palms up to Gage. “Even if I had something to say, which I don't, I wouldn't say it on tape.” He folded his arms across his chest.

“It's not for recording,” Gage said, “it's for playing.”

Porzolkiewski's face brightened. It struck Gage that he was probably once a charming man.

“But,” Gage continued, “I want to cut a deal. Part of what you have for part of what I have.”

Porzolkiewski's eyes narrowed. “Why only parts?”

“Because if you knew it all, you might get a gun and kill someone.”

“So I guess one part isn't you trying to get me to say I shot Charlie Palmer.”

“For the moment, let's classify his death as a kind of suicide.”

“Now I'm confused. I thought Palmer was the point of you coming by the first time.”

Gage shook his head. “Not entirely.”

“Then what is it you want?”

“Judge Meyer's wallet.”

“I told you I don't have it.” Porzolkiewski paused, and then pointed a forefinger at Gage. “I'll give you something for free. And it's really true. Two guys came by after Palmer did. They gave me ten grand and I gave it to them.”

A piece fell out of the puzzle Gage had put together in his mind. Meyer already had his wallet back when he called Gage in. Gage shoved the piece back in a different direction. Maybe Meyer just didn't want to explain how he got it.

“How about copies?” Gage asked.

Porzolkiewski smiled. “Let's see your part first.”

“If it accounts for what happened at TIMCO, will you give them to me?”

“If I believe it.”

Gage didn't like making decisions when he was jet-lagged, but he had years of reading faces and he knew that underneath Porzolkiewski's anger was a very sad man.

He pointed at the recorder. “Wilbert Hawkins.”

Porzolkiewski's eyes hardened as he repeated the name. “My lawyer hired a private investigator to look for him after the judge dismissed the case. He wanted to file a motion for reconsideration. But the guy disappeared . . . gone. Where'd you find him?”

“Can't say. That's one of the parts you don't get.”

Porzolkiewski opened his mouth to object, and then closed it. He stared at length at the recorder. Finally, he said, “Okay.”

“Portions are beeped out, like where he is. And this is not all of it, just what you need to know at this point.”

Porzolkiewski nodded.

Gage turned it on:

“My name is Graham Gage. I'm a private investigator from San Francisco, California.” I'm in BEEEEEEP talking to Wilbert Hawkins. I need you to identify yourself for the tape.”

“My name is, uh, Wilbert Hawkins. I was a welder at TIMCO fourteen years ago.”

“That's the asshole,” Porzolkiewski said. “I still recognize his fake Okie accent.”

“How long had you been working at TIMCO before the explosion?”

“Nineteen years.”

“My understanding is that there was a turnaround a month before the valve failed on the kerosene line on Fractionating Tower 2.”

“Yeah, there was.”

“Explain what a turnaround is.”

“It's, uh, when we shut down the tower for maintenance. You know, take apart the critical components and then make whatever repairs are needed. Takes a couple of weeks.”

“Tell me what happened when you examined the pressure device on the valve.”

. . .

“Answer the question.”

“I need a lawyer. Even a lawyer from BEEEEP.”

“You're not getting a lawyer.”

Porzolkiewski smiled.

“Answer the question.”

“I . . . I took the valve apart and, uh, found the pressure release was corroded.”

“You tell anybody?”

“My . . . uh . . . supervisor. Then me and him went to the, uh, plant manager. The tower was old. Nobody made that valve anymore. It was gonna cost maybe fifty grand to make another one from scratch—and we'd have to replace dozens of them, all over the refinery. We knew from experience that this one going bad meant that all of them had gone bad. He needed the plant manager to make the decision 'cause it meant shutting down all the fractionators for a couple of months.”

“And . . .”

“And TIMCO would've lost millions of dollars. We had kerosene, diesel, jet fuel, and gasoline coming off those towers. Huge amounts. Big contracts from buyers already signed.”

“What did the plant manager tell you to do?”

“He talked to the big bosses in Dallas, then called me in . . . He . . . he . . . uh . . . told me to pull out the release device and . . . uh . . . weld over the hole and try to keep the pressure in the pipe down once the tower was back in service.”

“What happened?”

“We didn't keep it low enough. And with no pressure release . . . the . . . . uh . . . the . . . uh  . . .”

“The what?”

“The whole valve blew.”

Gage switched off the recorder and watched Porzolkiewski finish the story in his mind. Kerosene spraying down onto the scrubber, flames exploding back up the tower. His son and three other men incinerated because a hundred-billion-dollar company didn't want to lose a few bucks.

Porzolkiewski closed his eyes, then lowered his head. Jaws clenched. Face flushed. Fighting back tears. Hands gripped together on the table. His whole body shuddered, then he buried his face in his palms. Muffled crying, almost hysterical.

Years of outrage had dissolved into immeasurable grief.

Gage reached over and gripped Porzolkiewski's shoulder. “I'm sorry you turned out to be right,” Gage said. “I wish it had been just an accident.”

A few minutes later, Porzolkiewski looked up, then wiped his eyes with the back of his sleeve. “I never . . .” He cleared his throat, then took in a breath and exhaled. “I never cried for him like that before . . . I guess I was always too angry.”

Porzolkiewski pushed himself to his feet and walked into the kitchen. Gage heard him open the refrigerator, then the inside freezer door, expecting him to return with ice water. He came back carrying a Ziploc bag and handed it to Gage.

“This is what you want.”

Gage removed a dozen eight-and-a-half-by-eleven folded pages. Gage laid them out. They warmed in the dining room air.

Displayed before them were photocopies of Brandon Meyer's life, in paper and plastic.

A
s Gage lay in bed that night next to Faith, too jet-lagged for sleep, he didn't regret traveling halfway around the world to obtain something that all along had lain hidden in a freezer just miles from his office.

Then an image came to him: Porzolkiewski weeping at his dining room table.

And Gage's last thoughts before finally drifting off to sleep were of a father's grief finally anchored—forever anchored—to the truth about the corporate murder of his son.

Chapter 28

S
enior Special Agent Joe Casey stood by the printer in the Federal Building office of the FBI, watching the last of the search warrant print out. He felt a moment of regret, wishing he could give Gage a heads-up that the sledgehammer he raised when he retrieved the jilted Oscar Mogasci from Switzerland was about to fall. He shielded the machine with his body, for other than himself, only one other special agent, the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California, and the head of Criminal Division of the Justice Department in Washington knew its contents. Even the team of FBI and IRS agents and forensic computer experts standing by in the warehouse staging area in San Jose didn't know where they would execute the warrant. Casey would only tell them OptiCom was the target after the judge signed it.

Casey checked the wall clock. Five forty-five
P.M.
He imagined the judge was also watching the time, and selecting from his repertoire of disagreeable faces the one he'd assume when Casey finally arrived. This judge wouldn't have been Casey's choice, but these kinds of cases were always assigned to that judge since he had the expertise to evaluate them.

He removed the search warrant and his affidavit, then turned toward the copy machine and dropped them into the feeder, stapling the collated copies as they came out.

As he walked toward the elevator, Casey glanced into the conference room and nodded to the two agents guarding Mogasci, sitting at the table, his head facedown on his folded arms like an eight-year-old child in school detention. The long linoleum hallway reminded Casey of the one he'd walked two weeks earlier after badging his way past the TSA booth at the San Francisco Airport to meet Gage when he arrived back from Zurich. He'd spotted Gage directing Mogasci toward the glassed-in booths like an owner shepherding a puppy who'd soiled the carpet in the living room. And Mogasci's expression told the world he knew he'd done wrong.

Gage had returned Mogasci's passport as they approached the Customs and Border Patrol window. Casey intercepted Mogasci on the other side and waited for Gage to pass through. Casey then badged them past the baggage screeners and out into the arrivals hall, where another agent was waiting to escort them to a Ford Expedition parked at the curb and guarded by airport security.

Only small talk between Casey and Gage accompanied the ride up Highway 101 toward Gage's Embarcadero office, and there wasn't much of that. They mostly stared at the smog suffocating the bay and eclipsing the afternoon sun, the gray sky seeming to capture the enormity of what was about to happen.

Gage had climbed out of the SUV in his parking lot, leaving behind a briefcase filled with the trade secrets Mogasci had stolen from FiberLink and the Swiss bank account records Mogasci had surrendered to Gage in his Zurich hotel room three days earlier. Also inside was a flash drive containing an incriminating call between Mogasci and the president of OptiCom that Mogasci hoped to trade with Casey for his freedom.

C
asey shook off the memory, then glanced at his watch as he stepped into the elevator. Six
P.M.
He got off on the eighteenth floor, then knocked on the office door of the judge's clerk, who let him in. Her purse and coat were piled on her desk, a not so subtle reminder it was an hour past quitting time. She escorted Casey into chambers, where he found the judge sitting on a couch next to a window framing a view of the Marin Headlands and Golden Gate Bridge, the evening traffic bunched up on the deck.

The judge nodded, accepted the search warrant and supporting affidavit, then directed Casey to a side chair. Casey checked his pants pocket for his car keys. In fifteen minutes he'd be out of there and on his way south to San Jose. In twenty-five years, first as a police detective, then as an agent with the FBI, he'd never actually seen a judge read a search warrant affidavit all the way through.

A half hour later, Judge Brandon Meyer was still reading the fifty-five pages.

Another half hour after that, Meyer looked up and said, “I'd like to think about this overnight.”

Fury mushroomed inside Casey. It was a righteous case. Probable cause up the wazoo. But all he said was, “Yes, Your Honor,” and then rose and left chambers.

Casey's stomach twisted as he walked toward the elevator, wondering if he'd forgotten some element of the crime, some proof of federal jurisdiction, some link in the causal chain—and there was also the embarrassment of calling the staging warehouse to send the agents home because he couldn't get the goddamn judge to sign the goddamn search warrant.

Casey thought of Gage.

What was Gage going to think when he learned the judge he called the pipsqueak had tossed his clients into a judicial never-never land?

A
fter notifying the U.S. Attorney and the search team of the delay, Casey drove the ramp from the garage underneath the Federal Building. He spotted Judge Meyer walking uphill toward the Tenderloin, head down in thought, oblivious to his surroundings, as if it was a regular evening stroll.

Going for a walk to think through a complex case made sense
, Casey thought,
but wading through drug dealers and hookers while doing it was damn stupid
.

Casey was tempted to pull up alongside Meyer to warn him to head another direction, but then changed his mind.

Fuck him
.

Chapter 29

M
orning sunlight flowing into Gage's office illuminated the copies Porzolkiewski had made of the contents of Brandon Meyer's wallet. Gage had laid them out on his conference table and organized them by type: credit cards, medical cards, business cards, identification, phone cards, scraps of paper with telephone numbers, notes, lists of names, cash, receipts, and a slim address book.

Porzolkiewski had even photocopied the condom.

Gage knew Spike Pacheco would be thrilled. The only thing missing from Spike's mental re-creation of Meyer's adventure in the Tenderloin was the Viagra.

Gage reached for the telephone. Alex Z arrived forty minutes later, accompanied by a bodyguard who waited in the hallway.

“How do you like your new office?” Gage asked.

Gage had set up Alex Z in a loft on the Oakland waterfront. He wasn't going to take a chance that whoever pummeled Shakir would get him, too.

Alex Z smiled. “It's a block from the best Thai food in the Bay Area. It feels like a vacation home. I may not move back.”

“Just be careful when you go out.”

Alex Z glanced toward the door. “Him and his buddies cover me. I feel like a rock star.”

“You are a rock star, at least in San Francisco.”

Alex Z shook his head. “More nerd than star.”

He leaned over the table and surveyed the photocopies. He grinned when he spotted the copy of the condom, then locked onto the page next to it. When he straightened up, Gage was already nodding.

“Why does a federal judge need phone cards?” Alex Z asked.

“Spike would say that he doesn't want calls to a hooker showing up on his cell phone bills.”

Gage passed Alex Z copies of two pages from Meyer's address book displaying a mix of corporate and political telephone numbers.

“On the other hand, maybe it's just political paranoia,” Gage said. “Fear the Democrats might snoop in on his cell phone calls and catch Senator Meyer's little brother engaging a little too deeply in electoral politics.”

Alex Z skimmed down the list. “I take it you believe Meyer is secretly managing Landon's presidential campaign.”

“Judge by day, Machiavelli by night.”

“Why not? They're brothers.”

“The appearance of a conflict of interest. The real money around here is in Silicon Valley and Brandon mostly handles complex civil cases like securities fraud, intellectual property, unfair competition. Executives in any company appearing in Brandon's court would wonder whether contributions to Landon's campaign might improve their chances. What they call a velvet cash register. One thing they know for certain is that they could improve them further by hiring Brandon's ex-partner for cases appearing in his court. And they do it case after case after case. They know it's hard for Brandon to look down from the bench at Marc Anston and rule against him.”

Alex Z drew back. “And everybody knows this is going on?”

“Sure.”

“Why don't the attorneys on the other side of Anston's cases recuse Brandon and ask for another judge?”

“You can't recuse federal court judges. Judges have to recuse themselves. You're stuck with whoever the clerk assigns the case to.”

Alex Z looked again at the corporate telephone numbers.

“Does Landon know he could be getting money coming from a kind of extortion?” Alex Z asked.

“I suspect the possibility hasn't even crossed his mind. Their family fortune was built on conflicts of interest. During World War II, his grandfather was the majority shareholder of Longridge Arms at the same time he was serving in the War Department handing out contracts. Longridge went from a couple of thousand employees in 1939 to over a hundred thousand by 1943 and became the largest supplier of tanks and armored vehicles to the army—and he wasn't the only political family that went that route. The wealth of one of our former presidents came from his grandfather serving on the War Industries Board during World War I and giving his own company contracts for making guns and ammunition.”

“What about Landon and Brandon's father, was he in on it?”

“He was sort of a transitional figure, like most other Cabinet members. Work in government for a few years, feed contracts to corporations that support the party, leave government to take positions in those same companies, build a personal fortune by exploiting political connections, then back into government at a higher level, then back into industry—but that's not Landon's game. For him it's all about the public good, not about cashing in later. He's a decent man. Always has been.”

Gage smiled to himself.

“Remember during the first few years of the Iraq War, all those government officials talking in jargon about optics and metrics and boots on the ground?”

Alex Z nodded.

“Landon once pointed down at the secretary of state during a committee hearing, and said, ‘Stop calling them boots. They're soldiers, human beings—our sons and daughters.' Then he paused for a beat and said, ‘Boots, Madam Secretary, do not feel pain.' She flinched like a bullet was heading her way and looked like she was getting ready to dive under the table. The scene was almost Shakespearean.”

“But I thought Landon was an ideologue. That's his reputation anyway.”

“Only in the sense that he's not afraid to follow political ideas to their logical conclusion, even if it sometimes ends in nonsense. When he was first in the House of Representatives he introduced a bill to make it illegal for companies engaged in interstate commerce to use any language but English in conducting their business.”

Alex Z laughed. “You mean if Pedro Gonzalez in California e-mails his brother's market in New Mexico to tell him the tortillas are on the way, he'd have to write it in English? That's ridiculous. Anyway the Constitution gives us a right to privacy.”

“The problem is once you start from the premise that English is the national language, it's where an honest thinker can end up. The difference in Landon between then and now is he's learned not to try to turn every logical conclusion into legislation.”

“What about his brother?”

“For Brandon, it's about power. I think that's why he became a judge. He was never going to match his father's fortune on his own, so he needed a kind of authority his father couldn't buy, at least directly.”

Gage scanned the copies laid out on the table. His eyes came to rest on the list of telephone numbers.

“How about doing a little research?” Gage said. “Find out whether any of these corporations match plaintiffs or defendants in cases Brandon's old firm handled or match contributors to Landon's campaigns.”

“No problem.”

Gage continued examining the copies as Alex Z turned to leave.

“Of course—” Alex Z turned back. Gage was holding up the photocopy of the condom. “Maybe Meyer was desperate to get his wallet back only because he was worried about getting caught cheating on his wife.”

G
age picked up his phone and punched in a number after Alex Z left.

“Skeeter, this is Graham.”

“Hey, man. I was about to give you a call about Brandon Meyer.”

“I guess you won your trial.”

“How do you figure?”

“You said his name.”

Skeeter laughed. “Not exactly. The other side settled just before the case went to the jury. Even Meyer couldn't save their corporate asses.”

“Congratulations.”

“Thanks.”

“You work out yet today?”

“Nope. Early court appearance.”

“How about meet me tonight at Stymie's?”

Skeeter laughed again. “We're finally gonna find out who lifts how much, partner.”