by Steven Gore
“It was more than that. He felt…”
In grasping for words, Gage saw what habit and familiarity had obscured when he’d spotted Burch three weeks earlier climbing out of a limousine in front of the tsarist-era Baltschug Hotel in Moscow. His cheeks hung on his thinned face, his square shoulders had rounded, his gray tailored suit was ill-fitting and misshapen. Where they once faced each other eye-to-eye at six-two, Gage remembered looking slightly down as they waited to check in.
A lump in Gage’s throat caught him by surprise when he found the word. He swallowed hard. “Fragile,” Gage finally said, struggling to keep his voice even. “I think he felt fragile for the first time in his life.”
Spike folded his arms across his chest, as if trying to resist seeing Burch, and maybe himself, through the eyes of Gage, a man who’d never felt the least bit invincible, even as a young cop kicking doors and always the first one in.
“Jack was terrified that he might leave Courtney a widow,” Gage said, “sick and alone. So he kept himself out of harm’s way and tried to control everything around them.” His eyes caught the glitter of fine drops now settling on Spike’s roof. “He would’ve stopped the rain when she stepped out of the house if there was a way to do it. They just adored each other.”
“Why was he willing to leave her and go to Russia?”
“He wasn’t,” Gage said. “She insisted because she missed the joy he took in his work. He recovered some of the old Jack in Moscow, and life seemed secure enough to start running the hills again when he got back.” Gage glanced in the direction of Pacific Heights, then shook his head slowly. “I wish he hadn’t, or at least—”
“Don’t even think it. You can’t be everywhere.” Spike flipped his notebook closed. “I know it looks grim, but it’s not over yet. There’s still a chance he’ll make it.”
Gage looked up at the ICU, then down at Spike. “How many shootings did we work together?”
“Hundreds, I guess. Would’ve been thousands by now if you hadn’t gone private.” Spike’s eyes widened as he finished the sentence, knowing Gage had trapped him.
“And how many victims survived slugs in the chest?”
“Well…I mean…there must—” Spike threw up his hands. “Your heart’s aching over what life did to Jack even before he got shot, but your mind keeps churning like a goddamn mainframe, calculating the odds of whether he’ll survive.” Spike’s face reddened in frustration, almost in anger. “And nobody’s gonna see the rage you feel until the end of this thing, and maybe not even then. Sometimes you scare the hell out of me.”
Spike pulled out his car keys and gripped them in his hand.
“Ever since we were kids you thought differently than me; saw the world differently. Different from anybody I ever met. For a while I fooled myself into thinking we were following the same path when SFPD recruited us, but we weren’t.
“I’ll help you however I can, Graham. But for the first time in our lives I think you’re holding things back from me.” Spike’s lips went tight for a moment, then he took in a long breath and exhaled. “It makes me afraid that the road less traveled is going to take you off a cliff.”
CHAPTER 3
Stuart Matson, president of SatTek Incorporated, faced Assistant U.S. Attorney William Peterson across a conference table on the eleventh floor of the San Francisco Federal Building. Peterson was flanked by an FBI agent on one side and an IRS agent on the other.
On Matson’s right sat his attorney, Daniel Hackett. His other flank was exposed.
Thunder reverberated through the steel-framed building and into the book-lined room as Peterson pushed aside his unfinished morning coffee. He aligned two government-issued Paper Mates along the top edge of his legal pad, and said, “Mr. Matson—”
“Just call me Scoob,” Matson said, attempting the ingratiating smile that had begun to fail him a week earlier when he found himself in the crosshairs of a securities fraud investigation.
“Mr. Matson, this is what we call a Queen for a Day. It’s your one and only chance to convince me to allow you to cooperate with the government.”
Matson curled his hands inward toward his chest and adopted the practiced indignation of a professional salesman. “I thought you were asking for me to cooperate.”
Peterson shifted his eyes to Hackett. “Your client doesn’t seem to grasp that we’d just as soon take this case to trial.” He turned to the FBI agent at his side. “What’s the loss?”
“Almost three hundred million dollars.” The agent’s voice was flat. He fixed his gaze on Matson, his face as expressionless as a spreadsheet. “And counting.”
“So we’re talking what? Twenty years? Thirty?” Peterson looked back at Hackett. “What do you think, Counselor? I’m sure you’ve done the math.”
Matson thought back to the day the SEC suspended trading in SatTek stock. Sitting in Hackett’s office. The lawyer’s black-haired, hawkish little head bent over the thousand-page Federal Sentencing Manual, working his mental calculator, then summing the total in a nightmarish bottom line: Unless Matson won at trial or delivered others to Peterson’s chopping block, he’d spend the next three decades sleeping in a concrete box, eighteen inches from a lidless steel toilet.
Peterson glared at Matson. “I don’t have time to waste on this.” He then pushed himself to his feet and reached down to gather his files.
As the six-one and two-hundred-thirty-pound former NFL linebacker loomed over him, Matson saw himself as he knew Peterson did: the twenty extra pounds bunched around his small frame, his soft hands with their manicured fingernails, and his face that fell just short of handsome; a chin just a shade too small, eyes just a shade too narrow, and a nose just a shade too large.
Matson blinked away the image and embraced another, one he’d earned through four decades of struggle, of standing outside his body, of molding it and training it: the steady gaze, the ingratiating smile, the trustworthy handshake, even the perfect golf swing.
“Wait.” Hackett shot his palm up toward Peterson. “Wait. Scoob wants to continue.” He swung fully toward Matson. “Right, Scoob? You do want to continue?”
Matson clenched his jaw, face reddening, furious that his freedom might hinge simply on whether the prosecutor turned toward the door. He answered, staring at Hackett, not at Peterson. “Sure. I wanna continue.”
Peterson jabbed his forefinger down at Matson. “And that means no more game playing about why we’re here.”
Matson knew that was exactly what he’d done, made a couple of preemptive moves, trying to avoid becoming Peterson’s pawn, but he looked up and said, “I’m not playing a game. I just want to know where I stand.”
“Does that mean you’re ready to listen?” Peterson asked.
“Yeah. I’m ready to listen.”
Peterson sat down, laid out his files, and then fixed his eyes on Matson.
“You know, I know, and your attorney knows that you’ve been lying for years. To the SEC, to shareholders, to your employees, and to your family. The first thing you need to prove to me is that you’re ready to step up, be a man…”
Matson imagined the prosecutor mentally pulling back his fist, then pausing before the punch.
“And just tell the truth.”
The jab landed, and the expression of satisfaction Matson saw on Peterson’s face meant that he’d seen it hit.
Matson straightened in his chair and folded his arms across his chest. He reminded himself that this wasn’t a done deal; he could still walk out, hire a half-dozen Hacketts to fortify the defense table and force Peterson to prove an intricate securities scheme to jurors whose credit card balances testified to their inability to understand even compound interest.
And Matson realized something else: It wasn’t just him sitting there wanting something, Peterson wanted something, too.
“I won’t ask you everything,” Peterson continued, “only enough to decide whether to allow you to go forward with your cooperation. And what…exa
ctly…does that mean?”
Matson smiled to himself; it wasn’t a question, but a setup. He felt a comforting familiarity in the cadence, the beats between the words. He’d done it a thousand times himself, motivating sales teams pushing everything from silicon switches to SatTek stock: And what…exactly…does an activity quota, or a unit target, or a sales goal mean to you?
Peterson snapped him back to the present. “It means you better prove you can give us people we couldn’t indict without your testimony. If we’ve got them anyway, we don’t need you. We’ll make a deal with somebody else. And trust me, the ladies are already lining up.”
Matson cringed as a half smile flashed on Peterson’s face. He felt shaken and weakened rather than repulsed by the prosecutor’s scorn.
Voices in the hallway penetrated the conference room; muffled words followed by laughter. Matson imagined it was a joke another prosecutor would later share with Peterson. And in that moment, Matson grasped that life would go on unchanged for Peterson regardless of what happened to him. And with that realization, the balance shifted: He knew he wanted it more than Peterson did.
“If we accept your proffer, we’ll work out a plea agreement with Mr. Hackett. That’s why we call this a Queen for a Day, like the old TV show.” Another half smile appeared on Peterson’s face. “The one who tells the best story wins the crown and goes home with all the goodies.”
Matson blew past the sarcasm and reached for the prize, overcome for a moment by the urge to just give in, say whatever the prosecutor wanted, and escape the mess his life had become—
But Peterson yanked it away. “Of course, there’s no way it’ll guarantee you won’t go to the joint.”
Matson gritted his teeth against the suffocating nightmare of toilet fumes wafting toward his face.
“It comes down to this,” Peterson said. “The more people you give us, the less time you’ll do.”
Matson pasted a smirk on his face. “And who makes that little decision?”
“Me,” Peterson said. “I do.”
Matson rolled his eyes. “I figured.”
“You have a problem with that?”
“Technically, the court decides on the sentence,” Hackett said, looking back and forth between the two.
“Technically.” Peterson said the word with a dismissiveness that told Matson that there wasn’t a judge in the entire Northern District who’d rise up on his hind legs to challenge Peterson—at least not over SatTek.
“Technically,” Matson repeated, shaking his head slowly and picking at a fingernail.
“Your attorney and I have agreed that you’ll proffer information regarding the involvement of others in the stock fraud itself and in the use of offshore companies to accomplish it. Is that also your understanding?”
Matson nodded, now panicked by the admissions Peterson would extract from him and wanting to push away from the table and bolt toward the door—but he could feel neither his arms nor his legs.
“You also need to understand that the government appreciates that you have a Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. And it’s no secret to anyone in this room that by implicating your coconspirators you’ll be incriminating yourself.”
Matson found himself continuing to nod, as much to Peterson’s words as to his even tone; there was no pulling back of a rhetorical fist, no rising toward a setup; there was just a relentless pushing forward.
“But in exchange for you waiving that privilege, nothing you say to me will be used against you unless…are you listening?” Matson nodded a final time, then lowered his head. “Unless we reject your proffer, you proceed to trial, and your testimony conflicts with what you say in this room.”
Matson’s head jerked up, eyes betraying the bewilderment of a rodent snared in a steel trap. “Are you saying I won’t be able to testify in my own defense?”
Peterson leaned forward and crossed his forearms on the table. He glanced at Hackett, then bored down on Matson.
“If you had a defense, Scoob, you wouldn’t be sitting here.”
Peterson took Hackett aside just outside the conference room after they broke for lunch. He remained silent until the agents had directed Matson out through the lobby door at the end of the long hallway.
“I’m concerned about security at SatTek,” Peterson said, “but we can’t keep U.S. Marshals down there forever. I need your assurance that pissed-off employees won’t try to get even with Matson through sabotage or try to cushion their fall into unemployment through theft. For all I care, they can steal every stapler and coffeemaker in the place, but if I discover that any military-grade hardware has slipped away, I’ll make sure the judge hammers Matson regardless of whether he cooperates in the fraud investigation.”
Hackett tilted his head toward the inside of the room. “After what just happened in there, the last thing Matson wants is to have both you and the judge ganging up on him. Trust me, if anything gets smuggled out, it’ll be over his dead body.”
CHAPTER 4
We heard it on the news, boss.”
Gage looked up from where he sat in the sparsely occupied ICU waiting room. In his hand was a notepad on which he had outlined the reassignment of his own cases to his staff. Although time stood still for him, it surged forward for his corporate clients around the globe, and the enemies that threatened them wouldn’t be calling a truce because of a shooting on a San Francisco street.
Hector McBride, an ex-DEA agent, and Derrell Williams, an ex-FBI agent, pulled up chairs close to him.
“How’s he doing?” Williams asked, peering up at Gage through wire rims that glinted in the overhead fluorescent lights.
“Not good,” Gage said.
McBride hunched his huge frame forward, then tilted his head toward the door. “We saw some of Burch’s people heading toward the elevator.”
“I sent them away. They were so distraught, I was afraid they’d scare Jack’s wife. There’s nothing they can do here anyway.”
Gage handed Williams the list. “The only urgent one is my antitrust case. If we don’t move fast, the client is out of business. Take care of it yourself.” He then looked at McBride. “Get out to the Richmond District. See if your old informants have heard anything.”
“You think it’s Russians, and not road rage like the news said?” McBride asked.
“I don’t know yet, but it’s all we’ve got to go on.”
The three of them rose. McBride scanned the other people in the room, then leaned in toward Gage and lowered his voice.
“We’re right behind you, boss, and we’re gonna get this asshole. There’s no fucking place he can hide.”
Faith caught Gage’s eye as she climbed down from her SUV in the hospital parking lot. He walked around and opened the passenger door and immediately understood. Courtney Burch’s clear, sweet eyes told him that the tidal wave of the attempted murder of her husband hadn’t yet hit her.
The women were still dressed alike in plaid shirts and jeans for a clear fall day along Hat Creek, now darkened by gunshots. In Gage’s mind, they had always been opposites bound together like the north-south poles of a magnet. Faith: tall, slim, auburn hair; hazel eyes that peered out at the world as if it was composed of puzzling fragments, each to be held up for inspection. Courtney: diminutive, olive-skinned, black-haired, soft features; a woman for whom life was to be taken whole.
Gage hugged them both, then reached his arms around their shoulders and guided them through the hospital entrance and up to the second floor ICU to await permission to see Burch.
“Have the police found out anything more about who did this?” Courtney asked, after they sat down together in a corner of the reception area.
Gage shook his head. “Not yet, but they’ll pass on everything they learn. Spike is keeping the case himself.”
Courtney’s face drained of color. She looked up at Gage. “But Spike is in homicide.”
“They handle assaults, too,” Gage said quickly, hoping she wo
uldn’t ask why.
Courtney caught the motion of a patrol officer checking in with hospital security, then heading through the double doors into the ICU. The meaning registered on her face. “Is he safe here?” Panic rose in her voice as her eyes darted around the room, then froze toward the hallway as if masked men were about to storm the hospital. “Graham, is he safe?”
Gage reached around her shoulders and squeezed her tightly. “I’ll make sure he’s safe.”
Courtney looked up at Gage as if searching for a handhold in a tsunami. Her shoulders slumped as she burst into tears and buried her face in her hands.
The seawall had finally crumbled.
“I called Spike while I was in the cafeteria,” Gage said, handing cups of tea to Faith and Courtney a half hour later. “There’ll be a Take Back the Streets rally tomorrow where Jack was shot. Spike and I’ll be there trying to turn up more witnesses. All they’ve got so far for an ID of the shooter is that he’s slim and was wearing a Giants baseball cap.”
He sat down next to Courtney. Both he and Spike needed a question answered, one that made the shooting less anonymous and more terrifying.
“Was there anyone Jack was afraid of?” he asked.
“Is that why there’s an officer protecting him?” Her eyes locked on his. “You mean this wasn’t random, that it wasn’t road rage?”
“No. That’s not what I’m saying.” Gage held her gaze and offered her reassurance he didn’t feel. “It’s only in case the shooter thinks Jack would recognize him. Nothing more.” He tried again. “Was Jack troubled by anything at work?”
Courtney took a sip of tea, then gripped the paper cup in both hands, close to her chest. “More than troubled. Furious. The Russian finance minister tried to backdoor Jack after you two left Moscow.”
Gage’s eyes narrowed. “What was that about?”
“Nepotism and money.” She turned toward Gage. “The minister tried to have his son appointed managing director of the natural gas joint venture, positioning himself to divert funds. But Jack called him the day before yesterday and backed him down.”
