by Steven Gore
“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
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.
The 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.”
Gage 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.”
Gage glared at her. “You want to make the call or roll the dice?”
He’d never understood why, but the phrase seemed to unnerve people more than an actual threat.
The woman snorted, then picked up the phone and punched a three-number extension.
“There’s a guy here to see Dr. Kishore.” She smirked at Gage. “What’s your name, brother-in-law?”
“Graham Gage.”
She repeated his name into the receiver.
Ten minutes later, Dr. Ajita Kishore walked through the ICU double doors, still wearing her surgical scrubs. She smiled as she approached Gage. It wasn’t the first time they’d talked in that hallway.
“How was the flight from Mumbai?” Kishore’s British-Indian tone was droll.
“Quick.”
“What can I—”
“Shakir Mohammed.”
Kishore’s smile died. “I didn’t work on him myself. I only saw the before and after. Somebody really beat on him. We had to remove his spleen and sew up a puncture to his left lung. Forty stitches on his face. He’ll remember this night every time he looks in the mirror.”
Gage exhaled. At least Shakir would live to remember it. He nodded at Alex Z, who clasped his hands together.
“He arrived in a lot better shape than your friend Jack Burch,” Kishore said. Gage had first met Kishore when the international corporate lawyer was gunned down in a gangster’s attempt to contain a securities fraud investigation. “And his recovery will be a lot quicker.”
“When can I talk to him?”
“It’ll be a couple of hours.” Kishore glanced back at the double doors. “I’ve got to get back inside. I’ll make sure someone calls you if anything changes.”
Gage turned as Faith and Alex Z walked up after Kishore returned to the ICU.
“He’ll be okay,” Gage told them.
Alex Z hung his head.
“It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have left him there alone. He’s too new.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know. I stopped by on the way back from our gig at Slim’s to check on him. The back door was open. But not like somebody busted it. I found Shakir in his office. Tied to a chair. Unconscious. Soaked with water.” Faith reached up and covered her mouth as the same horrifying thought entered each of their minds: The burglars had knocked out Shakir, and then tried to revive him in order to interrogate him further; maybe they even succeeded.
Alex Z dropped his head into his hands and started to cry. He wiped his eyes on his sleeve and said, “Sorry, boss.” He swallowed hard. “And there’s something else. His and my computers are missing.”
Shakir gazed from his ICU bed at Gage and Alex Z. It had been seven hours since the surgeon had finished putting him back together. Faith had gone back across the bay to teach a morning class.
Gage could see only Shakir’s eyes, the bottom of his nose, and his mouth. The rest of his face with its dark, delicate features was wrapped in bandages. Two IVs fed into his arms. One for saline, the other for morphine.
Gage took his hand and sat down next to the bed.
“Tell me what happened,” Gage said.
“Car accident . . . pounding on back door . . . I thought injury . . . men rushed in . . . wanted files.”
“Could you recognize them again?”
“Masked.”
Shakir tried to lick his lips. Gage wet the sponge end of an oral swab and moistened Shakir’s mouth.
“Voices?” Gage asked.
“One . . . New York. . . . One . . . kind of Southern.”
“Why’d they beat you up?”
“Security code for . . . for the storage room.”
Gage looked at Alex Z, who shook his head. He hadn’t given Shakir the number. No matter how or how long they tortured him, they’d never get it.
“What files?”
“Charlie Palmer’s.”
“Did they get your computer password?”
Shakir nodded. “I’m sorry. My computer, too.”
Alex Z spoke up. “No problem. Everything is replaceable. We have backups on the server.” He looked down at Shakir. “Did they get your file encryption key?”
A flicker of a smile appeared on Shakir’s bruised lips.
“No.”
Gage and Alex Z stood in the hallway outside Shakir’s room.
“Stay with him,” Gage whispered. “The nurse has notified the detectives he’s awake. Tell Shakir it’s okay to talk about the antitrust case, but play dumb about what else you two were working on. Otherwise this thing might spin out of control. I don’t want to see Brandon Meyer’s name on the front page of the Chronicle tomorrow.”
Gage turned as footsteps came to a stop behind him. He faced a man who appeared to be a twenty-five-year-older version of Shakir and three inches shorter. His eyes were red, his brown suit was rumpled, the oversized knot of his tie hung an inch below his collar, and his fists were locked at his sides.
“You . . .” The M
iddle Eastern–accented voice caught. Behind him a woman stood twisting a handkerchief in her hands. A black hijab framed her face. “You . . . you did this.”
“It was my fault,” Gage said. “I didn’t do a good enough job of teaching him our security procedures. I hope you and your wife will forgive me someday.”
Shakir’s father didn’t respond, just stood there looking up at Gage.
His mother stepped forward and asked, “How is he?”
“He has a long road ahead of him, but the doctor says he’ll be fine.”
“Can we . . .”
Gage nodded, and then Alex Z opened Shakir’s door and Gage followed them inside.
When Gage returned to the waiting room he spotted Alex Z sitting with a thirty-year-old uniformed Filipino cop. He first thought the officer was trying to pry information from Alex Z, but then noticed the officer’s eyes were vacant, his slim body was rigid in his seat, and his hands were folded in his lap.
Alex Z caught the motion of Gage walking toward them and rose. The officer followed.
“This is Rodrigo, he’s . . .” Alex Z glanced toward the ICU where Shakir’s parents remained. “He’s Shakir’s partner.”
Rodrigo shook Gage’s hand, then shrugged, his face pained.
“Shakir’s parents don’t know,” Rodrigo said. “His father couldn’t deal with it.” He took in a long breath, then exhaled. “And he’s a hard man. He’d never let Shakir see his mother again.”
“You work swing shift?” Gage asked.
“How’d you guess?”
“It explains why Shakir wanted to.” Gage read Rodrigo’s nameplate: R. Balatico. “Your name is familiar. You have a relative in the department back when I was there?”
Rodrigo shook his head.
“He was on the news a couple of months ago,” Alex Z said. “The armored truck robbery outside of Macy’s at Union Square.”
Gage smiled. “It didn’t cross your mind to duck behind a car when those crooks came running out of the store?”
Rodrigo blushed, then tilted his head back to emphasize the six-inch height gap between him and Gage. “I figured I was a small target.”
“Not for a shotgun.”
Rodrigo sighed. “So I realized in my nightmares for the next week.”
Gage reached out and gripped Rodrigo’s upper arm.
“Be careful,” Gage said. “There’s a guy down the hallway who needs you.”
Chapter 20
Boots Marnin stared at the two computers standing together in the corner of his Mariner Hotel room, thinking life was a whole lot simpler when you could get everything you wanted by sticking a gun in your target’s ear. Now most of the guys who made the big bucks at his end of the market never left their keyboards, they just hacked their way in, mined for information, then sold it on contract or to the highest bidder.
I’m a forty-year-old dinosaur.
He inspected his alligator-skin Tony Lamas, then smirked at the irony.
Maybe it’s survival of the fittest after all.
He reached for his cell phone and scrolled to a number. The man on the other end of the line didn’t answer so much as grunt.
“It’s me,” Marnin said. “I got it.”
“Palmer’s computer?”
“A couple of Gage’s. Everything from Palmer’s was copied over to it. A kid decided to cooperate and told us.”
“What about Palmer’s?”
“We’d need explosives to get to it.”
“Then let’s cross that bridge when we come to it. First we need to find out what kind of records Palmer was keeping. We can torch Gage’s place if we have to.”
“Where should I—”
“Evergreen Security in San Jose. We got an ex-NSA guy down there who can break into anybody’s hard drive. Somebody’ll meet you in the parking lot.”
“I don’t know why they’re going through all this. Why don’t they just wipe the slate clean and start over with a new team? Couple of bodies. Done in an afternoon—and their mistakes buried with them.”
“That would be sheer genius. You know the last time somebody got away with killing a federal judge?” He paused. “I’ll tell you. Never.”
Chapter 21
Gage sat alone at his breakfast table, drinking coffee, and reading Skeeter Hall’s fourteen-year-old file about the refinery explosion: the Richmond Fire Department reports recounting the recovery of the nearly incinerated bodies, the OSHA investigation showing that the root cause of the explosion was a failed pressure release device, the depositions of the TIMCO International Petroleum officers and refinery managers, and, finally, the deposition of John Porzolkiewski and his repeating over and over, “Money won’t bring my son back.” And Brandon Meyer, then the TIMCO lawyer, demanding, “What do you want?” And Porzolkiewski answering, “Nothing. I want nothing.”
Gage next examined the court file, the transcript of the Superior Court Judge’s Order of Dismissal, an apologetic:
My hands are tied. This is simply a workers’ comp case. The people of California made a trade a generation ago. In exchange for guaranteed compensation, they waived their right to sue their employers in the event of their own injury or the death of a loved one.
The Plaintiffs have failed to prove the exceptional circumstances required by law. Even the minimal threshold, showing prima facie that management had created unsafe working conditions, has not been met by the Plaintiffs.
Notwithstanding how horrendous the consequences may have been, the Occupational Safety and Health investigation is dispositive: This is simply a matter of “accidents happen.” Maybe even an accident waiting to happen. Nonetheless, this incident appears to be precisely what was envisioned by the Workers’ Compensation Law.
Case dismissed.
Clearly, Gage thought, John Porzolkiewski didn’t believe OSHA’s claim that this was an accident that just happened. What he surely believed was that the root cause of his suffering wasn’t a faulty valve and a spark, but Brandon Meyer—and that he wasn’t acting alone.
Five minutes after Gage left the Sacramento Delta home of Ray Karopian later that afternoon, the retired OSHA inspector drove to a pay phone two miles away. But like a shoplifter in Home Depot, he noticed a thousand eyes but not the ones actually watching him.
“A private investigator was just here about TIMCO,” Karopian told the man at the other end of the line.
“What did you tell him?”
“You think I’m an idiot? You think I suddenly made up a new story after all these years?”
“Okay, okay. Take it easy. What’s his name?”
“Graham Gage from—”
“I know where he’s from.”
“How do you—”
“I don’t have time to talk about it. Call me if he comes back. And don’t use your real name.”
Viz and Alex Z were sitting at Gage’s conference table when he arrived at the office from the Sacramento Delta.
“What’s going on with Shakir?” Gage asked Alex Z, after he sat down.
“Dr. Kishore came by to see him this morning when I was there,” Alex Z said. “She seems satisfied with his progress. She grinned at me just before she left and asked when your return flight to Mumbai was.” He made a show of scratching his head. “I didn’t have a clue what she meant.”
Gage shrugged, then smiled. “I’m sort of like her brother-in-law.”
“I still don’t get it.”
Viz reached over and squeezed Alex Z’s shoulder, “Don’t worry kid, I think this is one of those times where we’re just gonna have to go with the flow.” He then pointed at Gage’s TIMCO file. “What did the OSHA man say?”
“That the pressure release device on the valve failed and the whole thing blew apart. Kerosene splashed down onto the scrubber motor and a spark set off the fire. They never even found all the pieces.”
“Then how do they—”
“They pulled one off another line afterward and concluded that’s all it could’v
e been.”
“What about the plaintiff’s experts?”
“They couldn’t come up with anything definitive to counter it.”
“What about maintenance records?” Alex Z asked. “When was the last time they inspected the valve before it blew?”
“About a month. They did the annual turnaround, shut the tower down and inspected—” Gage caught himself. “Makes me wonder how well they inspected it.”
“I’m no expert in workers’ comp law,” Viz said, “but that would still be just a screw-up on the part of some worker. How would that implicate management in creating dangerous working conditions?”
“It doesn’t, but it’s a place to start.” Gage looked at Alex Z. “They deposed a welder in the shop, Wilbert Hawkins. He testified he inspected the release valve, but didn’t see anything wrong with it. He went off to work in an oil field in Pakistan. Find out where he is now.”
Viz pointed at Skeeter Hall’s file. “What do you think the case would’ve been worth if the judge hadn’t dismissed it?”
“Skeeter thinks TIMCO would have settled for ten million dollars, but he could’ve taken it to trial and got thirty.”
“If they could have gotten the case to a jury.”
“Yeah,” Gage said. “If . . .”
Alex Z appeared at Gage’s door two hours later, shaking his head.
“Hawkins never came back from Pakistan, boss. It’s like he evaporated.”
Chapter 22
The strap of Jeannette Hawkins’s yellow-flowered shift slipped off her shoulder as she pulled open her front door. Her half-exposed left breast lay sagging against her chest like a flag at half-mast. She shifted her Budweiser bottle into her left hand, hoisted up the strap, then looked up at Gage standing on her porch.
“I paid it already,” she said.
“I’m not—”
“I paid the car note. Leave me alone.”
Gage glanced over at the 1993 faded red Ford Fiesta parked on the hard-packed front yard of the hillside bungalow in north Richmond. He then took in the cracked concrete leading to the sagging front steps and the tan paint peeling from the weathered clapboard siding. The front right corner of the roof was covered with a blue tarp. Cigarette butts littered the porch like spilled popcorn.
