by D. F. Bailey
“Wally was expecting you five minutes ago,” she said. An irritated frown crossed her face as she wrapped her arms in a knot across her chest.
“Sorry. I had to print this before I see him.” He shoved his laptop into his bag and waved a sheet of paper from one hand. “You in on the meeting, too?”
“Yes.” She led the way through the warren of cubicles, “the bog” as she called it. “And I’ve got something you should hear.”
“Like what?”
“Tell you later.” Olivia opened the door to Wally’s office and waved Finch ahead of her.
Wally glanced up from his computer. His eyes had a brooding expression. “You’re late.”
“Sorry.” He waited a moment, knowing that missing a deadline of any kind was a form of negligence. “But I think you’ll understand when you read this.” He passed the paper to Wally and sat in the same chair he’d occupied on Tuesday when Wally dismissed his freelance proposal. The editor had changed his mind then. Maybe he’d be flexible today, too.
Olivia sat beside him, and they exchanged a glance. She radiated an aura of disdain. But beneath that, he could feel some personal warmth from her. It was a mix of emotions that he couldn’t quite decode. As Wally read the article, Finch decided to let her stew.
“So you think the story has legs. It’s got up off the floor and started to run a marathon.” He passed the paper to Olivia and turned his attention to Will. “You’re saying Gio Esposito’s death is tied to Seamus Henman’s murder. And that an ex-con, Felix Madden, killed them both. And both murders are tied to Julian Blomquist. Really?”
The skepticism in Wally’s voice made Finch hesitate. “I think so.” He shook his head. Then leaned he forward. “I mean, I’m sure of it.”
“Julian Blomquist. You know who he is?”
Before he could reply, Olivia set the sheet of paper on the desk and sighed with exasperation. “We can’t print this. We’ll be sued as soon as the paper hits the street. We need a second source on every one of these allegations.” She pointed a finger at the story as if she couldn’t believe it was under consideration.
Wally settled her down with a nod. Be patient.
“He’s the CEO of TruForce Investments,” Finch said. “A hub of California wheelers and dealers. Look, the reason this story seems so big, is because it’s so bad.”
Wally paused for a moment.
“All right. So spell this out for us. There’re five or six moving pieces to this thing, and I want to see how the wheels align before we print a word.” He tipped his head forward to suggest Finch had one chance. Now or never.
“Can I use the whiteboard?”
“Be my guest.” He rolled his right hand toward the rectangular white board bolted to the wall.
Wally and Olivia turned in their chairs as Finch eased past them to the far end of the oak table. He took a blue marker in his left hand and studied the blank space before him. His head nodded up and down in barely visible ticks. Then he wrote three names in the center of the board, one on top of the other: Joanne Joleena, Gio Esposito, Seamus Henman. He drew a circle around the names. To the left of the circle he wrote Pushed, and below that, 5 Knives. To the right, TruForce / Blomquist. Above the ring he wrote 10 Phone Calls. Below it, Felix Madden (Photo).
“Let’s start with what we know.” He drew a breath. “Gio Esposito, owner of a one-man business called Esposito & Associates, bundled scores of mortgages together into stock packages called Mortgage Backed Securities. MBSs. He created two or three of these things a month. Simply roped them together — on paper, at least — for his chief client, TruForce Investments.”
He drew a line of dots connecting Esposito to Blomquist. “What’s the value of these things? Well, depends who you talk to.”
He stopped to glance at Olivia.
“Olivia and I both interviewed Adrian Shouldice, a mortgage broker who shared Esposito’s office. He says MBSs sell for billions around the world. But now they’re swirling around the toilet. You know who agrees with him?”
Finch paused to watch Wally offer an empty shrug.
“Warren Buffet. And guess what? This past summer, France’s biggest bank, BNP Paribas, refused to deal with any more MBSs.”
Finch turned away from the whiteboard and then circled back. “So Blomquist, looking ahead, knows Esposito’s securities will soon be worthless. He wants his money back before the market crashes. He threatens to ruin Esposito. How? Sexual blackmail. He hires Seamus Henman to videotape Esposito with Joanne Joleena, a seventeen-year-old foster child, half-naked and handcuffed to a bed.”
He ran a hand under his chin while he studied the board. “But then something went wrong with Henman’s setup — what, I don’t know yet — and Esposito was thrown through the window.” With the marker he tracked a line of dots between Gio Esposito’s name and the word Pushed. “But here’s the thing. There’s no way, on his own, that Henman could push Esposito to his death. Esposito was a six-foot, two-hundred-fifty-pound fisherman from Missouri. Henman was a lightweight teen-girl pimp. And smart enough to know he needed extra muscle for this play. So he goes back to the boss who arranged the blackmail sting. Julian Blomquist. And who does Blomquist recommend? Felix Madden.”
While Wally and Olivia absorbed the growing complexity of the conspiracy, Finch added a series of dots that linked Henman’s name to Blomquist. And another line connecting Madden to Blomquist.
“How do we know this?” Finch’s voice rose with a rhetorical flourish. “Because Henman’s and Blomquist’s numbers both appear in Gio Esposito’s telephone call list. Twice.”
Finch drew arrows from Blomquist and Henman to 10 Phone Calls, then paused to lift his camera from his bag. He took a moment to find the images of the phone numbers, passed it to Wally and then continued.
“There’s more. Scroll past the telephone numbers on the camera, and you’ll see a picture of Felix Madden. It’s from a fax that I found under Henman’s telephone. And the originating fax number?” — he drew another line of dots linking Henman to Blomquist — “Blomquist’s home fax machine in Nob Hill.”
Wally studied the images on the camera. “How can we be certain this is a picture of Felix Madden?”
“Because I interviewed Jojo again this afternoon. After the SFPD released her from custody, she was a little more inclined to talk to me. I’ve got the interview recorded.”
He pulled the digital recorder from his pocket and set it on Wally’s desk. Wally frowned at the device and nudged it aside. “I’ll listen to it later. Just tell me what’s missing.”
“What’s missing?”
“There’s always something missing. Something you don’t know. The Donald Rumsfeld conundrum: ‘Known unknowns. Unknown unknowns.’ What is it this time?”
Finch blinked, wondered what to add. Maybe if Jeremiah Rickets agreed to go on record, he could reveal the possible link to the killer in Iraq. But J.R. had rejected that idea and walked out on Will. Finch decided not to mention J.R. Then another problem occurred to him. “Esposito’s computer. I found printer and ethernet cables in his office, but no laptop.”
“His computer. Of course.” Wally rolled his eyes as if he expected this. “What about the five knives?” He pointed to the whiteboard. “The FBI is investigating Henman’s link to a ritualistic killer. But now you’re suggesting Madden killed him, instead.”
“Maybe,” Olivia said. This was the first word she’d spoken in five minutes. “I called the reporters in Wichita and Reno this afternoon. Just to see if they’d cough up anything they couldn’t print in their papers.”
“Really?” Finch’s face revealed his surprise. Calling the reporters was on his to-do list. Maybe this was the “something” she mentioned on the way into Wally’s office.
“Both of them hesitated. They’d been pressured by the FBI, too. And both of them refused to go on record with me. But apparently, the knife killings in Wichita and Reno were more savage than what happened to Henman. Much more.” She tipped h
er head toward the whiteboard. “The Reno and Wichita victims’ hands and feet were severed.” She paused and then added, “And their genitals too.”
A moment of silence weighed upon them. Finch decided that now was the time to mention his interview with J.R. “There’s one more thing,” he began. “I talked to a vet I knew in Iraq. In oh-four he investigated a similar set of knife killings in Baghdad. I don’t know if he’s the same psycho or not. My guy didn’t mention anything about amputated body parts. The problem is, he won’t go on record. In fact, I doubt he’ll even talk to me again.”
A puzzled frown crossed Wally’s face. “Why not?”
“PTSD. He’s got a bad case of it.”
Wally shook his head. His face revealed that he was all too familiar with the ravages of post-traumatic stress disorder. “Okay,” he whispered as he stared at the top of his desk. He turned his attention to Finch. “When you found Henman. Was he intact?”
“Yeah. At least his hands and feet were.” Finch shrugged to suggest that he hadn’t checked Henman’s genitals.
Wally took a long look at Olivia. “And the reporters in Wichita and Reno? Both reported the same thing? Independently?”
“Yes. And they’ve never talked to one another, either.”
Wally took another moment to consider her statement. Then he said, “And to you this means … what?”
“Could mean a copy-cat.” She tilted her head with a skeptical air. “Could mean more than that. If Madden killed Henman to eliminate a witness, it would make a clever head-fake. Make the cops believe Henman’s the victim of a serial killer. And that the Esposito and Henman murders aren't related.”
“A head-fake.” Wally spit up an empty laugh. “All right, all right, all right. I’ve had enough.” He waved a hand dismissively and anchored his elbows on the table. “Okay, this is what we do. Going forward, you two are working this together.” He set his eyes on Finch. “Will, do you get that? Together.”
“Yes. I get it.” Finch could feel the adrenaline rising in his body. He walked past the whiteboard and forced himself to sit in his chair.
“I want hard copies of this fax with Felix Madden and the telephone numbers you found on Henman’s office phone. Can you do that?”
“No problem.”
“Good. Now, this story that you wrote” — he waved the sheet of paper in the air and set it back on the table — “needs a complete re-write. This girl, Jojo, is no longer the lynchpin. Julian Blomquist is. Olivia, I want you to fact-check every word. And remember, we can’t mention the actual five knives until our deal with the FBI expires on Monday. Okay, anything else?”
Olivia raised a hand. “The apartment. It appears to be rented by a Raymond Smith. Which happens to be his real name. I spoke to him on the phone. He said that since the police talked to him, he won’t go on record about anything. But when I asked him if he knew Seamus Henman, he swore at me and hung up.”
“Ha-ha.” Wally grinned. “So you got a four-letter-word confirmation.”
She nodded.
“All right, keep that for background.” He turned to Finch and pointed at the story he’d written. “I want the new story on my desk by seven AM.”
“Right.”
“Then tomorrow we” — Wally waved a hand across the desk — “go to meet Julian Blomquist. We show him the mug shot of Madden he faxed to Henman. The list of phone numbers. And the front page story you are about to write. Then we offer him a chance to comment before we publish.”
“Both of us?” Will asked.
Wally frowned, worried that Finch still hadn’t embraced the concept of the editorial team. “No. All three of us.” Then he added, “And it’ll be a business meeting. So if you own a jacket and tie, throw them on, would you?”
Finch shifted in his seat.
“Okay, that’s it for now. Go get a sandwich or some coffee. Then call your loved ones to advise them you’ll be working late.”
Finch rolled his shoulders. He could see the battle coming. He felt ready for it. The good fight.
※
Will placed the latte and shrimp salad on Olivia’s desk and set the black Americano and burrito next to his telephone. While he’d made the food run, Olivia familiarized herself with the material evidence Finch had gathered on his camera.
“These pictures from Henman’s apartment, they’re just….”
She couldn’t finish her sentence. He understood. Since he’d duplicated the files and given the copies to John Biscombe, he’d tried to forget the stark images of Henman’s corpse. But they still haunted him.
“The knives? I know,” he said. He took a sip of coffee and unwrapped the top half of his burrito. “I haven’t been able to look at them again. Fact is, it’s hard to shake them from my head. It’s like things I saw in Iraq.”
“So you were there. In Iraq?”
He nodded. Since he’d already revealed this during the meeting with Wally, it seemed like an odd question. But he knew that some people took offense to the war — and to anyone who’d taken up the cause.
She studied him a moment and then turned away. She pushed a pair of earbuds into her ears and inserted the jack into the digital recorder. When she found the recording of his interview with Jojo, she paused to dig a fork from the bottom drawer in her desk, unraveled the plastic wrap from her salad and began to eat. From time to time she stopped the recording to scratch a few words on her notepad and then pressed on.
Meanwhile, Finch opened a new story file. Start from scratch, he told himself, and he made a numbered list of the essential story elements.
Esposito sold millions in MBSs to Blomquist
MBSs are collapsing on global markets
On record: Jojo said Henman set Esposito up for blackmail. She was the bait.
Henman had a photo of Madden faxed to him from Blomquist.
On record: Jojo identified Felix Madden in the apartment the night Esposito went through the window.
Esposito’s phone shows two calls each to Blomquist and Henman, one to Madden.
These were the bare-bone facts. Will decided to state things plainly. Make no accusations. No allegations. Let the reader join the dots. Then see how Blomquist responds tomorrow when they confront him.
After Olivia listened to the interview with Jojo, she put away the earbuds and turned to Finch.
“Wow. This’s something, Will.” She scooped the last leaf of lettuce into her mouth. “The photos, the recording. The DA’s team is gonna drool when they see it.”
“You think so?” He tucked the last wedge of the burrito into his mouth.
“Yeah. And I’ve got to say, Jojo is … well.” She patted her lips with a napkin. “She reminds me of myself.”
“How’s that?”
“I know a little bit about foster homes. More than, actually.”
He finished chewing, waited for her to continue.
“Let’s just say, some girls make it. And some don’t.” Her face showed that she could reveal a lot more about her past, but she decided to keep it to herself for now.
“The lawyer on this case, John Biscombe, he thinks Jojo can make it.”
“I hope so. I like her. At least the way she talks.” She shoved the empty salad plate aside and took a sip of coffee. “Okay, so can I recommend how we do this?”
“Shoot.”
“You start the main story. From the top, except this time work Blomquist into the lead. Meanwhile, I’m going to write two sidebars. First, what we know about the key players. Then another one on Mortgage-Backed Securities. Nobody gets them. MBSs — what are they? My boyfriend says they’re starting to wreck the stock market. That it’s already happening.”
My boyfriend. Finch was glad to hear it. But he wondered about her affinity for Jojo. Had Olivia come up through a foster home somewhere? And from there worked herself onto the crime beat at the Post? If yes, then there was a lot more to her than he’d imagined.
“Okay. Let’s do it that way,” he said and smiled
to himself. Here you are, pal. A team player on the San Francisco Post. The biggest story of the year in your lap. He turned his attention to his keyboard and began to type. An hour later he had the story nailed down tight.
A fax transmission from the home of Julian Blomquist, CEO of TruForce Investments, was discovered near the mutilated body of Seamus Henman in his Mission apartment on Tuesday evening.
The fax contained a photograph of Felix Madden, convicted of two assault charges and accessory to manslaughter in 1997. On January 15 of this year, he was discharged from Ironwood Prison.
According to Joanne Joleena, a witness interrogated by police following the death of Gio Esposito, Madden and Henman were present when Esposito fell from the eleventh floor of a Chinatown apartment on Monday night.
The partially-clad Joleena had been handcuffed to a bed in the apartment as part of an attempt to blackmail Esposito. She claims the blackmail was intended to force Esposito to refund the financial losses of TruForce Investments. She also confirmed the identity of Madden on the fax transmission.
The digital record of Esposito’s telephone calls from his office reveals that he had multiple phone conversations with both Blomquist and Henman in the days before his death.
Over the past year, Esposito packaged and sold a series of Mortgage Backed Securities (MBSs) to TruForce. MBSs are speculative investments sold for billions of dollars in North America, Europe, and Asia. Once dubbed “financial weapons of mass destruction” by Warren Buffett, MBSs have recently suffered significant losses that pared their value to a fraction of their initial prices.
Police investigations are ongoing. A formal statement concerning Henman’s death is expected next Monday.
※ — TWELVE — ※
FINCH SET HIS laptop on the breakfast table and settled into the wooden chair that overlooked his apartment parking lot. For the past few days, laden with rain and fog, the window provided a dreary view. But on evenings like this, the outside world completely vanished in the ink of night. The bleak outlook suited his mood, and he prepared to spend two or three hours digging up what he could about Julian Blomquist.
