by Steven Gore
Gage helped him guide the bar onto the crutches at the top of the roller tubes, then walked around and sat down on the next bench.
“Two twenty,” Gage said. “Not bad for a sixty-five-year-old.”
“Sixty-four,” Skeeter said, sitting up. He wiped his face with the bottom of his sleeveless sweatshirt, then swung his leg over the bench to face Gage. “What are you pushing up, youngster?”
“For reps? No more than one ninety. I don’t put these old joints at risk anymore.”
“What could you do if you did?”
Gage grinned. “Two twenty-one.”
“Smart-ass. You want me to spot you?”
“Just some information.”
Skeeter glanced up at the wall clock above the entrance. “Isn’t this a little early in the A.M. for gumshoeing?”
“I’m not a gumshoe. I’m a modern PI. This is called multitasking.”
Gage reached into his gym bag and handed Skeeter a water bottle.
“Thanks.” Skeeter flipped the top open and took a sip. “What task concerns me?”
“You remember the TIMCO case?”
“As if it was yesterday.” Skeeter’s mouth went tight. “Those assholes.”
“You mean corporate assholes in general, or this particular one?”
“This particular one. I’ve never seen a company try to torpedo its own employees that bad. You got four dead guys, three of them with kids. One with a great engineering career ahead of him…”
“Porzolkiewski.”
“Yeah… Porzolkiewski… Tom Fields helped me out on the case, may he rest in peace.”
“Fields is dead?”
“Heart attack at Pebble Beach. Eleventh hole. A family history of heart disease and he was seventy pounds overweight. Did it to himself. A waste.” Skeeter took another sip. “You know that kid Porzolkiewski was a paraplegic, right? A rookie cop chasing after a stolen car drop-kicked him out of a crosswalk. No lights. No siren. He was nineteen. A student at Berkeley.”
“Looks like nothing came easy in that family.”
“The kid used to haul himself up those huge fractionating towers hand over hand.”
Gage understood the technology, so didn’t ask for an explanation. Crude oil was heated at the base of the tower and the rising product was separated out by boiling point and then siphoned off.
“Forearms like piston rods. He was trapped a couple of hundred feet up when the thing blew.” Skeeter put the bottle down on the bench beside him. “It was a chain reaction. A pressure release valve failed on the line carrying kerosene. It sprayed onto a generator they were using to run scrubbers to clean a drain. Set the thing off. The fire ran up the tower, then exploded. The diesel line blew. The gasoline line blew. A firestorm. None of the guys could get down. They were like marshmallows on a stick. It still makes me heartsick to think about it.”
Skeeter lowered his head and rubbed his temples. His eyes were wet when he looked up.
“It was a tough case to lose…” Skeeter’s face hardened. “Except we didn’t lose it. It was stolen.”
“What do you mean?”
“We…” Skeeter paused, as if finding himself halfway down a trail he had no idea why he was taking, and it was heading toward a cliff. “Why are you interested?”
“I’m not sure about the why, but I can tell you the what. I’m trying to find out more about Brandon Meyer’s role in the case and I’m especially interested in Porzolkiewski’s father.”
“Interesting guy. Sounds born in the USA, no accent at all, but underneath he was a starry-eyed immigrant. The American dream and all that, but the explosion turned it into a nightmare. I go by his shop whenever I have an appearance in federal court. Every time I walk in I’m surprised he’s still there. I thought he’d have blown his brains out by now.”
“He took it that hard?”
“It wasn’t the money. It was losing his wife and kid, and plain old corporate betrayal. The company hired a PR firm before the fire was even out, got a lot of mileage saying how they were going to help the families, how they’d get to the cause of the explosion, how everybody would be taken care of, scholarships for all their kids. They even had Porzolkiewski appear with them at a press conference, televised around the world. I guess they were trying to reassure the folks at their foreign drilling operations and refineries. At the same time, their insurance carrier is lying in wait to attack, setting up to blame one of the dead guys, a pipe fitter-”
“To make it a workers’ comp case so the company wouldn’t be liable and wouldn’t have to pay out.”
“Exactly.”
“I imagine four dead guys would’ve been worth a lot of money once the jury got a peek at the autopsy photos.”
“That’s what we figured, too, but after we met Porzolkiewski and got a sense of him and his kid and what they’d been through, the case stopped being about money for us.”
“What was Meyer’s part in it?”
Skeeter tugged at the right shoulder of his sweatshirt, pulling it closer to his neck, then did the same with the other. Biceps and triceps pumped, skin tight.
“Can’t say.”
“You mean you don’t know?”
“I mean I have a trial starting in his court next week. I’m not even going to speak his name outside of the courtroom until the case is over.” Skeeter extended his open hands. “You know what happened the last time I appeared in front of him? I’ll tell you what happened. He screwed us all through trial and we lost. And we can’t appeal until this next trial is over because it means pointing the finger at him.”
“For what?”
“You know how he cuts off witnesses, then rephrases what they have to say? That’s what he kept doing all the way through the trial. And every time I’d object, he’d tell me to move on. Even if I got to ask the question again, the punks on other side would jump up and make some bogus objection and he’d sustain it. Every time. Chopped us off at the knees.”
Skeeter stood up, hands on hips. He glared down at Gage.
“You know what we found out when we interviewed the jurors afterward?” Skeeter jabbed the air. “You know what the critical evidence was for them? What they talked about in the jury room? The exact testimony that made them find against us?”
“Meyer’s restatement of what the key witnesses said.”
“That asshole. His version of the real testimony was a complete fiction, the whole thing constructed so the other side would win the trial.”
“But you can’t appeal based on jurors’ thought processes. You need actual jury misconduct.”
“I know. A couple of the jurors now realize what happened. They’ll help us. I’ll find something when this next trial is over. It’s a class action stock fraud. I’ve got half a million dollars invested in it. Slam dunk unless he screws us.”
“Then you’ll talk about Meyer’s role in TIMCO?”
Skeeter ripped off his lifting gloves, threw them into his gym bag, then reached down and yanked it over his shoulder.
“Who’s Meyer?”
T he manila envelope Tansy delivered to Gage’s office late in the afternoon turned out to be a whole lot thicker than he expected.
“This came by messenger,” she said, approaching his desk. She pointed at the handwriting on the front after setting it down. “What does ‘Graham Gage: 221 pounds’ mean?”
“I suspect it means I’m in for some heavy lifting.”
Chapter 18
Gage heard the floor squeak as someone inside crept toward the front door of the tiny shingled bungalow along Seventeenth Avenue in the flatlands south of Golden Gate Park. He leaned in toward the door as a hot afternoon wind gusted up the street and rattled leaves on the sidewalk. Another squeak. The curtain behind a wood-framed window to the right fluttered, then came to rest. Finally, a squeak close to the threshold. Gage watched the pinprick of light in the peephole vanish.
“Mr. Porzolkiewski?”
“Who is it?”
�
��My name is Graham Gage.”
“What do you want?”
“I’d like to talk to you about TIMCO.”
“Ancient history.”
“Two months ago isn’t ancient history.”
“What does two months ago have to do with TIMCO? It was fourteen years ago.”
“That’s when you talked to Charlie Palmer.”
Gage heard the floor squeak twice in the silence that followed, as though Porzolkiewski had rocked back and forth.
“Mr. Porzolkiewski?”
The floor squeaked again.
“Mr. Porzolkiewski?”
“I think you better leave now.”
“Can I give you my card?” Gage said, hoping that would get Porzolkiewski to open the door.
“Just leave it.”
“I’d rather hand it to you. I don’t want it to blow away.”
Gage reached into his shirt pocket and withdrew a business card, then held it up in front of the peephole. He heard the scrape and click of a dead bolt, then the rattle of the loose door handle as Porzolkiewski turned it. Gage could see the left side of Porzolkiewski’s face when he opened the door a few inches and reached out his hand. Eye moist and bloodshot, in a deep socket surrounded by pale and droopy skin. He looked as though he’d once been a boulder of a man, but had been eroded by tragedy.
“I’m sorry about your son,” Gage said, handing him the card.
“Lots of people were sorry. Didn’t bring him back.”
A Siamese kitten darted through the open door. Gage reached down and picked it up. Porzolkiewski slipped the card into his pants pocket, then stretched out his palm to receive the cat, but Gage cradled it on his left forearm, holding it hostage. Porzolkiewski dropped his hand to his side.
Since Porzolkiewski hadn’t denied talking to Charlie, Gage took a shot: “I really just came for the wallet.”
Porzolkiewski’s face didn’t react. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Look. If Meyer wanted to press charges, he would’ve. There were fifty-six depositions in the TIMCO case. You were with him at more than thirty.”
“I wasn’t with him. I was against him.”
“He was against you is more like it. In any case, he knows who you are. Lawyers tend to remember people who dive at them from across a conference table.”
“I don’t have it.”
“Where is it?”
“I gave it to somebody.”
“Palmer?”
Porzolkiewski glanced away for a second, then nodded.
“He said if I gave it back, I’d never be bothered again. They didn’t want any trouble because it would slop back on Landon Meyer’s presidential campaign.”
That explanation made no sense. Palmer never came at people without some kind of leverage to move them the way he wanted, and Porzolkiewski’s glancing away told Gage he wasn’t a good liar.
“You mean he promised you your probation wouldn’t get violated and you’d stay out of state prison.”
Porzolkiewski shrugged. “Something like that. Palmer said they could get me for robbery. But that’s not what happened. I didn’t steal the wallet, it just fell out during the scuffle. The little putz Meyer ran away. Just left it on the sidewalk and I picked it up.”
“A Good Samaritan.”
“Sort of.”
“What was the scuffle about?”
“You mean did I go hunting for him?”
“No. I wasn’t assuming anything. It was just a straight question.”
“I was on my way to the night drop at the bank. Meyer was coming the other way. I blocked the sidewalk just to see what the asshole would do.”
“And that was?”
“His eyes started darting around, but there’s no place to go. Stores closed, too much traffic going by. So he just stopped in his tracks, and then turned around and started scurrying away like a rat. I kind of lost it and went after him.”
“When did you give the wallet to Palmer?”
“He called me one morning. I met him that afternoon.”
“At the Ground Up Coffee Shop?”
Porzolkiewski’s eyes widened. “How do you know that? Palmer tell you?”
“I found the receipt.”
“I didn’t figure he’d tell you about the meeting.”
“Why not?”
“That’s for me to know and you not to find out.”
“You ever see him again?”
“No. And I never will. I saw the obituary. Good riddance.”
Gage extended his hand holding the kitten. Porzolkiewski opened the door the rest of the way, accepted it, and then rubbed its cheek against his own.
“You open the wallet?” Gage asked.
“I’m not a thief.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I was curious.”
“Anything unusual?”
“For a human being or for a scumbag like Meyer?”
“Either.”
“Isn’t he married?”
“Thirty-some years.”
Porzolkiewski smirked.
“There was a condom in there. New. I could tell by the expiration date. I sell them behind the counter. Twice as many as sandwiches. Lots of guys from the financial district slip into the Tenderloin for a nooner with a hooker.”
“Maybe you should have a daily special. Half a sandwich, a cup of soup, and a condom.”
“I hadn’t thought of that.” Porzolkiewski finally smiled. “Maybe I can franchise it like McDonald’s and KFC.”
“Why didn’t you call the Chronicle? At least embarrass him.”
“Because it would turn into a chess game I couldn’t win.”
Gage imagined lawyers ganging up on a man who’d seen more than his share of pinstriped suits.
“In Poland they say Kowal zawinil, a Cygana powiesili. The blacksmith was guilty, but they hanged the Gypsy-and I didn’t want to be the Gypsy.”
“Anything else in the wallet?”
“Driver’s license, credit cards, about seven hundred dollars, frequent flyer cards, a couple of scraps of paper, stuff like that. It was so thick, I figured it made him taller sitting down than standing up.”
“You make copies?”
Porzolkiewski looked away for a moment, then he smirked again, this time calculated. “You think I’d waste the paper?”
“I think you’re not an idiot.”
“There was no need for copies. It wasn’t like I was going steal his ID and order a bunch of iPads. I told you, I’m not a thief.”
P orzolkiewski isn’t coldblooded enough to shoot Charlie down in the street,” Gage told Faith when he arrived at their hillside home in the East Bay late that night. They stood in the kitchen, her in a robe, him in Levi’s and a sweatshirt and cutting on a smoked ham. Faith leaned back against the counter, her hair hanging loose. “But he lied to me about seeing Charlie only once.”
“How do you know?” she asked.
“First. There’s no way Charlie would’ve telephoned Porzolkiewski and asked him whether he robbed Meyer and whether he wanted to give back the wallet. He would’ve either showed up at his house and pushed his way in, or followed him somewhere and corralled him.”
“And second?”
“He flinched at the wrong times.”
“I’d have flunked you in Anthro 101,” Faith said in mock disapproval. “Flinching isn’t considered evidence at UC Berkeley.”
“Unless it’s a lab rat.”
Faith shuddered. She was on the university committee tasked with ensuring the humane treatment of research animals.
“Anyway, investigating isn’t a science.” Gage raised a cupped hand, then blew on his fingernails. “It’s an art.”
“So Van Gogh, what’s next?”
“I’m not sure, I’m waiting for inspiration.”
Faith untied her robe.
He raised his eyebrows and smiled.
“I’m suddenly inspired.”
Chapter 19<
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The screech of slammed brakes, the squeal of skidding tires, and the crunch of metal on metal propelled Shakir Mohammed out of his chair and toward his second floor office window facing the midnight street. Overhead halogen lights illuminated two cars jammed together nose to nose. A man lay sprawled on the pavement next to an open driver’s door.
Seconds later, a fist pounded on the back door and a man yelled, “Please, help! Please, help!”
The plea drew Shakir two steps at a time down the stairs. Four jabs at the alarm pad and he pushed the door open.
The first punch caught him under his rib cage.
T he call shook Gage and Faith awake at 2 A.M.
“Boss.” Alex Z’s voice was shaking, choking, verging on tears. “It’s about Shakir.”
Gage sat up.
“What happened?”
“He’s hurt. Really hurt. The ambulance is here. I’ll ride with him.”
G age called Viz as he and Faith drove toward San Francisco Medical Center.
“Looks like some crooks faked an accident to trick Shakir into letting them in. Head down to the office. Make sure the police don’t get into anything they shouldn’t. If you can’t control them, call Spike.”
Twenty-five minutes later they walked into the emergency room teeming with the night’s sick and damaged, the air a miasma of sweat and pain and fear. Alex Z sat in a plastic chair, staring at the cell phone in his hand. He looked over as they worked their way down the crowded aisle.
“I called his parents in Boston,” Alex Z said, then glanced at his watch. “They’ll take the first flight out they can get seats on.”
“What are the doctors saying?”
“Nothing. They won’t talk to me because I’m not family.”
Faith sat down and reached her arm around Alex Z as Gage strode toward the reception station. He scanned the on-duty board behind the receptionist as he approached. He stood by the counter until he was certain the clerk was ignoring his presence as she made notes in a chart, and then said, “I’d like to speak to Dr. Kishore.”
“I can’t call her,” the woman said, eyes still down.
“I’m her brother-in-law. There’s a family problem I need to talk to her about.”
The woman finally looked up. “Yeah, and I’m Mother Teresa.”
