Michelle forced a smile. “I’m glad to hear it.”
As they followed Shane’s Tesla through the San Francisco streets, losing the taillights now and again in the fog, Michelle tried to figure out how to tell Caitlin the truth, or at least to come up with a story that would make sense. One that Caitlin would believe.
“People are responsible for their own choices.”
Troy let out a sharp sigh, almost a huff. “That’s a thing with you masters of the universe, isn’t it. You’re in control, and if you’re not, you’re weak.”
He leaned back in the booth, in that still, coiled way Michelle already recognized. “You know, for most people, getting lectures about choices when they don’t have opportunities isn’t all that useful.”
He was clearly irritated, and Michelle couldn’t blame him. Shane had been going on since they’d arrived about paths to success and personal freedom, a conversation that had presumably started in the car on the way over, and Michelle was already tired of it.
She wanted to get out of there. She needed to figure out what to do. She was going to have to call Gary, for one. Caitlin’s reversal of Safer America’s positions in this election was bound to get back to him, and if she didn’t get in front of that, he’d take it out on her, and he’d take it out on Danny. She was sure of that.
The private bar of the speakeasy was down a flight of stairs, in a bricked basement that they claimed was used to smuggle booze during Prohibition. Who knew if that was really true? It was the kind of story Michelle could see making up to add a little burnish to your marketing. They’d gone with the theme down here, using old whiskey barrels for stools and installing a long, wooden bar scarred with cigarette burns.
“You’re disadvantaged, you don’t have a support system, you gotta make all the right choices, not slip up once,” Troy continued. “There’s no margin for error. Meanwhile, some people have the privilege to fuck up over and over again and still come out on top. You gonna talk to them about choices?”
“Life ain’t fair.” Shane raised his craft bourbon cocktail with its hand-chipped ice and sipped.
“That’s your answer?”
Shane put down his drink and sat up straight, like he was suddenly energized. “Look at it this way. The ones who do make it through, who make all the right choices and succeed … they’re going to be the best of the best. They’re ones who push us all forward. What’s that line by Hemingway, they are strong in the broken places.”
“Oh lord,” Caitlin said, rolling her eyes. “Let me tell you something. When some things get broken, they aren’t stronger. They’re just broken, healing up crooked and limping along as best as they can.”
“Here’s what I don’t get,” Troy said, jabbing his finger at Shane. “If you believe in some kind of survival of the fittest, you tell me how it is that most of the people making decisions in this country are the ones who’ve grown up being protected from their own mistakes. You tell me how that works.”
Shane laughed. “Not very well. Tell you what.” He leaned forward, elbows on the table, chin in hand. “If you have some opportunity-based programs in mind, let me know. Maybe we can help each other here.”
“How’s that?”
“I want both of these propositions to pass. I think that position is on the right side of history. It’s also the position that’s going to make me a lot of money. If you want to get the message out about how passing these propositions strengthens communities, I’ll put some money into those efforts.”
“Even though you don’t care about the communities.”
“Talk me into caring,” Shane said with a grin.
Michelle stood. “Excuse me. I’ll be right back.”
The restrooms were upstairs. A good excuse to step outside the speakeasy and make a call.
It was chilly in the fog. A homeless man pissed against the wall just to the left of the bar’s hidden entrance. The Tenderloin was a dicey neighborhood surrounded by gentrification, million-dollar lofts popping up here and there on its blocks like mushrooms after a rain.
Michelle buttoned her jacket and called Gary. She hoped he wouldn’t answer.
“Hello?”
Shit.
“I don’t have time to talk right now,” she said. “But you might be hearing some things about the fundraiser tonight. Caitlin said she’s on the fence about continuing to fund the Protect our Communities campaign.”
“You mean No on 275 and 391?”
“Right.”
“Tell me exactly what happened. This couldn’t just have come out of the blue.”
“I told you, I have to go. I’m with Caitlin. Let’s talk tomorrow.”
“Wait—”
“No. You don’t want me to blow this, do you? I’m hanging up now.”
“Okay, okay. Tomorrow. First thing.”
“I’ll call.”
Then she disconnected.
When she got back downstairs, Troy was standing at the bar, peering at the shelves of liquor. “Oh, good,” he said. “Thought I’d get the next round. Wanted to see what kind of whiskey they had. What would you like?”
“Oh. Just a glass of wine.”
“You have a preference?”
“The Napa cabernet. Thanks.”
They stood in silence as the bartender, a twentysomething with a beard, tattoos, wearing a striped vest and suspenders, mixed what looked to be a complicated cocktail.
“You know,” Troy said, “I get the feeling you maybe think I’m bad news for your boss.”
Michelle’s stomach lurched. This night wasn’t going to get any easier. What should she say to him?
“I … I don’t think that at all.”
She risked a glance over at the table where Shane and Caitlin sat, Caitlin in full charm mode, leaning forward slightly, a bright smile on her lips.
“You just … you need to be careful,” she said in a low voice. “Both of you. Some of the people involved with Safer America …”
Christ.
“They’re not great people.”
Troy rested his elbow on the bar and leaned back, looking at her with a puzzled, appraising expression. “What do you mean, exactly?”
The bartender turned in their direction. “Hi, folks. What can I get for you?”
Michelle shook her head. “That’s all I can say.”
And she probably shouldn’t have said it.
Shane offered to drop Troy at his hotel—“It’s on my way.”
When the town car pulled up to the corner in front of the speakeasy, Caitlin and Troy hugged briefly. A friendly, collegial hug, Michelle thought. Maybe that was all there was to it.
“Talk tomorrow?” Caitlin asked him in a low voice.
“Definitely.”
He glanced over at Michelle. Their eyes met briefly.
Just be careful.
Caitlin stretched in her seat in the back of the town car.
“What a night,” she said.
Caitlin had been quiet on the ride back. Michelle was guessing that she had a lot to think about. She’d just more or less blown up Safer America’s mission in California, and there was no way that wouldn’t have larger consequences.
Just not necessarily the ones Caitlin was expecting.
Caitlin sighed. “I am gonna catch so much shit when we get back to Houston.”
“You’ll be fine,” Michelle said automatically. “I mean, it’s your organization. They have to go along with what you want, don’t they?”
“Not necessarily. The board has the power to fire me, if they want to. But that could get pretty ugly too, if I want to make it ugly.” Caitlin chuckled. “Who knows, maybe I do.”
Michelle nodded. Things were building up to something very ugly, she was sure of it, but how could she talk Caitlin out of the confrontation? She had no leverage, no argument, other than a truth that sounded too crazy to believe.
x x x
“Let’s just meet for lunch tomorrow,” Caitlin said, as they waited for
the elevator in the hotel lobby. “I’m worn out. In a good way.” She smiled. There was something thoughtful about the expression. “I can’t tell you what a relief it is, to finally just … cast off this weight I’ve been carrying. Stop being this symbol all the time. Whatever happens when we get home … it’s worth it.”
It’s not worth it if they kill you, Michelle almost blurted out.
You don’t know if that’s what they’re planning, she told herself.
She smiled and nodded and said: “That’s so great to hear.”
But later, lying in bed, unable to sleep, she couldn’t stop thinking about it.
If Caitlin really did intend to pull Safer America’s resources out of the California campaign, or worse, put them on the other side of the propositions … Kicking her out of her own nonprofit might not be enough. Those kinds of battles often went public, and in Caitlin’s current frame of mind, Michelle could see her relishing that fight.
Killing Caitlin made a sick kind of sense, the kind of sense Gary made.
And don’t make it look like an accident, she thought. No. Make it a murder. Make it vicious. Senseless.
Caitlin O’Connor, tragic survivor, victimized a second time. A martyr.
A very useful symbol.
Think of the campaign ads and appeals for donations you could run with that.
It was too easy, putting herself in Gary’s head.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The advantage to calling Gary last night was that she’d done her job, technically. Now she could control the timing of when she called him again. She couldn’t put him off for too long, she knew, but she could keep both her iPhones switched off until she was ready for the conversation. She needed to think about what to say, a way to word it that would be less damaging to Caitlin, if that was even possible.
Besides, she had things she needed to do first.
Lotus had a tiny business center, for those who needed to print or fax and for the very few people who traveled without laptops or tablets or smartphones. The center was in an alcove, not even a separate room, to the side and behind the Buddha fountain.
6 a.m. The lobby was fairly quiet. A few guests sipped coffee and read newspapers in the couches and chairs adjacent to the bar.
“Just enter your name and room number on the screen,” the desk clerk said, “and we’ll charge it to your room.”
“Actually, is there some way I can pay cash instead? My employer’s covering my room, and this is my own business.”
“Sure, not a problem. Type in ‘Guest’ and ‘Guestroom1234’ and tell me when you’re done.”
She’d given it a lot of thought. She couldn’t trust that sending a flash drive to her old LA attorney would be enough. Maybe they’d find out what she was doing here, but that might not be an entirely bad thing either—it might distract them from looking into an obscure figure from her past. Or, it might make them think that she could have stashed this information in so many places that they’d never find them all.
Or, the whole thing was an exercise in futility.
But she had to take the chance, as bad as the odds were. Just going along with Gary and Sam and hoping that things would somehow work out gave her no chance at all.
Evergreen did email newsletters for subscribers, advertising seasonal menus, special events and deals, using a free web-based service. There weren’t all that many subscribers, under two hundred last time she checked, but it was easy to add other addresses to the email list. She did that now, going to websites like the New York Times and the Washington Post, Mother Jones, The Nation, the San Francisco Chronicle and the LA Times, the Wall Street Journal, Reason, a few alternative online publications and local weeklies, finding a reporter’s or editor’s email address and adding it to the Evergreen mailing list.
Next, she opened a simple template and titled it: “A story you might be interested in.”
Her heart was thudding hard now, sweat prickling her skin. If there was spyware on this computer … if they were monitoring it …
She drew in a deep breath and inserted the extra flash drive to which she’d copied Danny’s logbook.
The PDF of the letter he’d written in the back opened immediately. This computer had Acrobat Pro installed. Good, she thought. You couldn’t insert PDFs into one of these newsletters; she’d tried it before, and you had to use JPEGs or PNG files (whatever those were). She saved the file as a JPEG and uploaded it to the file manager section of the email service, where it appeared as a thumbnail above other thumbnails of images she’d used in newsletters past: Her shot of the redwoods, an artfully arranged plate of seasonal root vegetables, a staff photo celebrating Christmas last year.
She went back to the newsletter she’d started. If she’d had more time, she would have written something better, more persuasive, more informative. But she didn’t have time.
She wrote:
My name is Michelle Mason. For the last two years I was known as Emily Carmichael, and I owned and operated the Evergreen Bistro in Arcata, CA. I lived with a man people knew as Jeff Gregerson. His real name is Daniel Finn.
This is a crazy-sounding story, and if you’d tried to tell it to me a few years ago I never would have believed it. I wouldn’t have even listened. But it’s true, and the materials linked to this email can prove it. I’ve sent other people this infomation as well.
She inserted the JPEG of Danny’s note below that.
The email service offered file-hosting, where you could upload documents and then insert links to them in your email blasts. Using Acrobat, she combined the two hundred PDFs from Danny’s logbook into nine files. She kept the links in her newsletter simple. “Captain Daniel Finn’s Logbook, Part 1.” “Part 2.” “Part 3.”
She’d send it to everyone on the email list. The more the better. Maybe there were a few conspiracy theorists among Evergreen’s clientele.
The last thing she did was schedule the email to go out in seven days.
When she cleared the browser and logged off, it was just after 8:30 a.m.
The Bank of America branch near Union Square opened at 9:00 a.m. Bank of America was where Emily had her checking account. With $10,000 of the cash she’d brought from Arcata, she purchased a cashier’s check made out to Derek Girard. She wasn’t sure how much of the original $10,000 retainer was left at this point, something she should have asked about but had been too distracted to even consider. He’d said the ten thousand would be more than enough to cover the costs if the case didn’t go to trial, when he’d thought they’d bail Danny out and get the case dismissed or make some kind of deal. Now? With visits to jails six hours away from Houston? Who knew what the tab would be?
Next, she headed to a different bank, Chase, where Michelle had a bank account. On her way, she used one of her new burner cells to call Alan Bach.
“Michelle, good to hear from you.”
She was a little surprised that he wasn’t busy, that he took her call. If he hadn’t been able to talk to her, she would’ve gone ahead to the bank and gotten another cashier’s check and sent it to him anyway. She had no idea how much was appropriate for this situation, but where could you look up the going rate for receiving tinfoil-hat material that might get you killed?
“Hi, Alan. Thanks so much for taking my call. How’s everything?”
“Great, fine.” A pause. “I got your package.”
“Oh, good. That’s why I was calling, actually.”
“Ah. Yeah. You know, I have to say, it’s not every day I get that kind of … James Bond scenario in the mail.”
She faked a chuckle. “I know, I know. That must have seemed … just completely melodramatic.”
“Well, a little out of the ordinary.”
“Yeah. It’s … a complicated story. But I just wanted to make sure you got it, and I also wanted to let you know that I’m sending a retainer for any expenses you might have.”
“For this?” He sounded in equal parts amused and puzzled. “Listen, why do
n’t you save the money until you actually need me to do something? I know how difficult things have been for you.”
“Well, I do have some money now. And … just in case … I’m going to send you something.”
He laughed. “In case you need me to open this in a week and a half and do … something?”
“Hah, yeah, I know, it sounds a little … crazy, but … yes. Just in case.”
“Okay, sure. If that’s what you need, happy to do it for you.” A pause. “And I meant what I said about it being good to hear your voice. The way you vanished a few years ago, as bad as things were … well, I’m glad that things seemed to have turned around for you.”
Michelle laughed. “Yes. Things have definitely changed.”
At the Chase Bank, she purchased a $5,000 cashier’s check for Alan Bach.
Next, she went to the FedEx office on Kearny and sent the checks off to her two lawyers.
There was a Starbucks just around the block on Montgomery. She stood outside it and stared through the tinted windows. Not too long a line.
10:35 a.m. Plenty of time to do what she needed to do next.
She just was scared to death of doing it.
You have to, she told herself. It’s either this, or go back to the hotel, pack your bag, take all the cash you have left out of the safe in the closet and run. Run, and don’t look back. Leave Danny where he is and hope the $10,000 is enough for Derek and Marisol to work his case. Leave them to explain to the court why “Emily” had vanished without a word. Leave Caitlin to whatever fate Gary had in mind for her.
Or roll the dice and make the phone call.
“Sam. Hi. It’s Michelle.”
She’d called him from the same burner she’d used to talk to him on Wednesday. She’d called Alan on one of her new phones. No way she wanted Alan associated with a number she’d used to call Sam.
“Do you have news?”
“I do,” she said. “Danny’s still at the Weaver Detention facility. It wasn’t a mistake. They’re putting pressure on him, and on me. I need you to do something about it.”
“In other words, nothing’s changed since our last conversation. I already told you how we should proceed.”
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