by Steven Gore
“Where’d he go?”
“The McCall Hotel,” Tansy answered in an excited whisper. “This is a kick. Why haven’t you let me do this kind of thing before? It’s like being invisible.” She laughed. “Except for the smell.”
“Did he meet anyone?”
“No. He didn’t even stop at the desk. He just walked right past and to the elevator.”
“Good work. Why don’t you go back to the office and get cleaned up.”
“You sure you don’t want me to hang—”
“No. Viz and I’ll take it from here.”
The thirty-something clerk behind the bulletproof reception window of the residential hotel glanced up at the sound of Gage’s knocking. He leaned forward in his chair and put down a worn paperback on the desk. Gage saw it was Jean Paul Sartre’s Being and Nothingness. Only in San Francisco, Gage thought, do hotel clerks read French philosophy.
The clerk reached for a registration card.
“You don’t need that,” Gage said. “I’m looking for someone.”
The clerk offered a bucktooth grin.
“Everybody’s looking for somebody, pal, but I can’t help you, unless you got a warrant or something.”
“We’re not cops.”
“Tough break.”
Gage heard the hotel door swing open fifteen feet away, then stayed silent as a skinny sixteen- or seventeen-year-old girl in pink hooker shorts walked behind them and toward the elevator. Two men sitting on soiled couches along the opposite wall tracked her like homeless men watching a ladle of mashed potatoes heading toward their plates at the Salvation Army dining room.
Gage looked back at the clerk. “How much for her?”
The clerk shook his head. “She’s taken.” He pointed toward the rooms above. “Got a regular. Maybe you can catch her on the way out.”
Gage shook his head. “Looks like jailbait to me.”
“I wouldn’t know. We don’t check IDs.”
“What about the ID of the guy in the Giants jacket who came by here a little while ago?”
The clerk’s face hardened. “What about him?”
“You know who he is?”
“Yeah, asshole. His name is John-Doe-who-pays-his-rent-on-time.”
“Hey, man,” Gage said. “Don’t get your back up. This isn’t about you.”
Gage reached into the inside pocket of his windbreaker, then made a show of looking at the clerk’s paperback. He pulled out two hundred dollars and held it against his chest so the men behind him couldn’t see it.
“You ever read Sartre’s Transcendence of the Ego?” Gage asked, then set the bills in the tray at the bottom of the window. “You should buy a copy.”
The clerk grinned and reached for the cash.
“Room 923.”
Viz took his phone out of his pocket as they rode the elevator and set it to take video. He cupped it in his hand when they stepped out on the ninth floor. Television shows and muffled arguments reverberated down the hallway as they walked along the stained and cigarette-burned carpet. Gage put his ear to the door when they arrived at 923, but couldn’t make out any sounds. He wondered whether they were a few minutes too early for the heavy breathing.
“Can you pop the door without kicking it?” Gage whispered. “Too noisy.”
Viz braced his shoulder against it. He gave it a push, but it didn’t budge. He straightened up. “It’s too solid.”
Gage nodded. Viz took a step back and then kicked the door just above the handle. The frame exploded and the door flew open. Viz rushed in, phone ready to take video.
Gage remained in the hallway, scanning up and down. He pointed at every face that appeared, then toward the inside of the resident’s room. Each in turn ducked back inside.
Only then did Gage step into the room. A condemned man strapped to a gurney in a gas chamber couldn’t have looked more terrified than Brandon Meyer.
Viz stood over him.
Gage reached for his cell phone.
“Joe, I’m at the McCall Hotel. You need to come over here.”
“Is it about Meyer?”
“Yeah.”
“I can’t. The U.S. Attorney told me—”
“Forget what he told you. It isn’t his career on the line.”
Chapter 84
Gage helped Brandon off the bed and into the desk chair. Brandon’s body trembled. He bore the shell-shocked expression of men who get snagged in undercover john operations or pedophiles who walk into news camera lights in suburban juveniles’ homes.
“Anybody else here?” Gage asked Brandon.
“No.”
Gage pointed at the closed bathroom door and Viz started toward it.
“I told you,” Brandon said, “there’s no one here.”
Viz glanced inside, then shook his head. The bathroom was empty.
Gage walked to the dresser and turned down the sound on the television. It was tuned to a news report about the pending confirmation vote.
A monitor on the desk showed an online stock trading Web site.
Flowcharts tacked to the walls tracked the money flow to Pegasus, then to Mann Trust, then to senatorial candidates. Next to them hung oversized spreadsheets titled “Confirmations” and “LM.”
Bookcases of slim binders stood next to the window: fourteen bearing the name Pegasus, eight in the star names, two labeled TIMCO, and dozens of others in the names of Fortune 500 companies.
Gage walked over and pulled the OptiCom binder off the shelf. He leaned against the wall as he thumbed through it.
Finally, Gage said, “I had it backward.”
Brandon didn’t say anything.
“What do you mean?” Viz asked.
“He sold short. He held on to the search warrant long enough to borrow and sell a million shares of OptiCom stock. Then he signed the warrant, Casey kicked in the door and the stock price collapsed. That’s when Brandon bought cheap shares to repay the expensive ones he’d borrowed. He cleared ten million dollars.”
Gage glared down at Brandon. “Is that about right?”
Brandon still didn’t say anything.
“The only question,” Gage said, “is whether you’re going to bring your brother down, too.”
This time, Brandon responded:
“Landon didn’t know anything about it. He didn’t. He thought we were still doing it through insurance.”
“What changed?”
Brandon lowered his head.
“I’m going to find out one way or the other,” Gage said.
Brandon looked up again, his eyes darting about the room. They paused for a second on Viz blocking the doorway, then focused on the window.
Gage stepped in front of it. “Suicide isn’t an option.”
Brandon swallowed hard, then licked his lips.
“We had to stop because of an IRS investigation. But . . .” He took in a breath. “But Mann Trust was overextended and the bank regulators went after us for not keeping large enough cash reserves. They threatened to shut us down. The whole thing would have collapsed.”
“You mean you own Mann Trust?”
Brandon shrugged. “In a way.”
“You needed a few million dollars and right then a warrant to search a high-tech company came walking into your chambers.”
Brandon didn’t react.
“It’s the star names,” Gage said. “Each one was a predecessor of OptiCom. An agent would arrive with a search warrant, you’d sit on it long enough to make a trade, then cash in.”
“I had no choice.”
Gage shook his head. “You had lots of choices.”
“You don’t understand what was at stake.”
Viz’ cell phone rang. He flipped it open. “What’s up?”
The color drained from his face. “When?”
He clenched his teeth. “I’m on my way.”
He snapped the phone shut. “Socorro’s disappeared.”
Viz stepped toward Brandon, grabbed him by his suit
lapels, and lifted him out of the chair. He held Brandon up, feet dangling, then stepped toward the window.
Brandon’s eyes turned wild.
“Gage. Stop him. You’ve got to stop him.”
Viz held Brandon against the curtain. “If anything happens to my sister I’ll break you in two.”
“Viz, put him down.”
Viz lowered Brandon to his feet, then backed away and turned toward Gage.
“Socorro left the ranch at nine o’clock this morning to go shopping in Nogales. She didn’t come back. And she isn’t answering her cell phone.”
Gage could feel fury begin to rage, at Brandon, at Anston, and at himself. Instead of protecting Socorro, he had led her into a trap.
Gage fixed his eyes on Brandon. “Where’s Boots Marnin?”
“Who?”
“Don’t play dumb. Where is he?”
“I . . . I’ve never heard of anyone named Marnin. I’m telling you the truth.”
Gage pointed at the desk chair and Brandon sat down, then he led Viz into the hallway. “Have you talked to her daughter?”
“Socorro called Sandy yesterday to say she was going shopping in town. Alex Z was watching the video feed this morning and saw her drive away. She was supposed to be back at the ranch by noon.”
Viz glanced toward the elevator. “I better get out there.”
Gage shook his head. “I know some ex-Border Patrol guys in Tucson. They’re tough and know the area.” He searched his cell phone contacts and connected the number. He introduced Viz, then handed him the phone.
Gage returned inside and pointed at Brandon. “I want Anston.”
Brandon slumped in the chair. “No way. He’s insulated himself. The paper trail seems to go to him, but once you look at it, it dead-ends with Palmer and with me. His intelligence training wasn’t wasted. I’m the one who went to the Caymans to first meet with Quinton fifteen years ago.”
Brandon’s eyes darted toward the bookshelf.
“Are we talking about TIMCO now,” Gage said, “or the campaign money?”
“Both.”
Viz walked back into the room.
“I’ve got to e-mail them some photos of Socorro.” Viz looked at Brandon, but spoke to Gage. “You going to be okay with this asshole?”
“Take off. Joe will be here in a few minutes.”
Viz glared at Brandon, now shrunk back in his chair.
“You better hope she’s all right. You’ve got no place to hide where I can’t find you. No place.”
Gage worked the fractured door closed after Viz left and then sat down on the bed.
“I thought we’d find a hooker in here,” Gage said.
Brandon shrugged.
“Your wife will be relieved. Maybe she’ll even visit you in prison.”
They both alerted to a knock at the door. Gage stood up, reached under his windbreaker, and rested his hand on his gun. He pulled the door open a crack, peeked through, then opened it the rest of the way and let Casey inside.
Casey surveyed the room. His eyes came to rest on Brandon. Gage filled him in on the scam and about use of the hotel room as a secret office, and about the urgency created by Socorro’s disappearance.
“What do you want to do?” Casey asked.
“Number one is to get Anston before he can hurt Socorro.”
“And number two is Landon?”
Brandon pushed himself to his feet.
“I told you. Landon had nothing to do with any of this. He doesn’t know anything about it.”
Casey pointed at Brandon.
“Sit down.”
Brandon dropped back into the chair.
“Why not Landon first?” Casey asked. “Maybe go public. Try to freeze everything in place.”
“Because then we’d never get Anston. Once this blows up, he’ll know he’s next and make a run for it, and he won’t leave any witnesses behind—starting with Socorro.” Gage felt his body tense. “If she’s still alive.”
Forty minutes after Gage called the Oakland loft, Alex Z and Shakir came through the hotel room door. Their bodyguards posted themselves in the hallway. They set up their laptops to catalogue everything in the office and copy the drives on Brandon’s computers.
Gage swept his hand from the bookcases to the computer on the desk to the file cabinet in the corner, then turned toward Brandon.
“Walk us through it.”
Chapter 85
Gage watched from inside the surveillance van parked a block west of the restaurant as a dinner crowd of black-suited men and women filled the entrance of Tadich Grill. Limousines were double-parked in front. Streetlights and neon signs shone down on pavement slick from an uneasy mist swirling down the street.
Brandon Meyer had difficulty working his way through the door. As he crossed the dining room, he saw Marc Anston set down his cell phone on the starched white tablecloth.
“Why are you sweating?” Anston asked as Brandon settled in his chair.
“I had to park six blocks away and I got a late start from court.”
“That’s not like you.”
“I set off some fireworks at the OptiCom hearing. The chief judge came by to kibitz. I couldn’t walk out on him.”
Anston smiled. “We neutralized Gage. Nobody will listen to anything he says.”
Brandon nodded. “And Casey, too.”
Anston pointed toward the restroom sign and picked up the phone. “I’ve got to go the john.”
Gage was seated on a metal chair bolted to the floor of the van. Shelves of electronic equipment stretched along the driver’s side: receivers, bugging devices, two-way radios. Viz was stationed at the rear window, binoculars pointed at the entrance, and Joe Casey sat in his Ford Explorer in a yellow zone a block to the east.
“The restaurant is noisy as hell,” Gage said to Viz after Anston left the table. “The wire on Brandon is picking up a lot of background sounds.”
Gage kept the headphones pressed against his ears trying to hear through the conversations at adjoining tables, the clink of glasses, and the clatter of dishes, waiting for Anston to return.
Viz looked toward Gage. “I’m sorry about that Socorro thing. I hope it didn’t get you in a jam with your pals in Tucson.”
“No problem. I’m just glad she finally called.”
“I should’ve told her we were watching the video feed from the ranch.”
“It’s not your fault. Neither one of us wanted to worry her.” Gage adjusted the sound level on his receiver. “Did she say what she was doing?”
“Visiting some friends in Tempe. Then she stayed overnight because she was too tired to drive back and then her cell phone battery died. She’s going to stay one more night and go to a play at the university.”
“You didn’t tell her about Brandon, did you?”
“No. She might’ve done something preemptive.”
Gage peeked through the curtains separating the cab from the interior of the van. He looked through the windshield, scanning the cars and sidewalks and the office and store windows.
“You see anything we need to worry about?” he asked Viz.
Viz raised his binoculars and peered out the rear window. “There are a lot of people on the street, but no George Str—”
“Hold on,” Gage said. “Anston’s back.”
How do we keep Gage quiet after the Senate vote tomorrow?” Brandon said. “I can’t keep OptiCom going forever and eventually Oscar Mogasci will roll back the other way. Casey will put him on a polygraph and he’ll fold.”
Anston leaned over the table. His voice turned hard. “I’m tired of Gage and I’m about an inch away from sending him the same way as Charlie Palmer.”
Brandon’s mouth went dry. He hadn’t believed Gage the night before. It was too absurd. His voice fell to a whisper.
“You’re insane. Completely insane. You didn’t kill—”
“TIMCO was a domino. If it fell, everything would’ve followed. I had no choice. We had no
choice.”
“There’s no ‘we’ in this.”
Anston laughed. “What is it about judges? The second they’re caught up in something themselves they forget what a conspiracy is. How many of those teenage Mexican wetbacks did you send to federal prison? You think any of them had a hand in any of the murders their narco-bosses committed? But you gave them prison terms like they’d pulled the trigger themselves.”
“I never signed on for this.”
“That’s what they all say.”
“What about Karopian?”
Anston shrugged.
“But Hawkins can show up any time—”
“That would be a helluva trick.”
“You mean—”
“Why don’t you grow up? You and your brother. Lives of pretending their hands aren’t stained by their family’s crimes.”
“Crimes. What crimes?”
“Stop it, Brandon. Don’t embarrass yourself. I saw it. All of it. The CIA doesn’t throw away anything.”
“I don’t want to talk about this.”
“Hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost defending the American way of life. A couple more is a small sacrifice to get where the country needs to go.”
They glanced up at the approaching waiter.
Anston looked back at Brandon.
“Give the nice man your order.”
Why’d Brandon cut it off?” Viz asked Gage.
“He knows the recording will eventually make the news. He doesn’t want Anston talking about his grandfather’s arms trafficking with the Nazis.”
“It’s not like he’s gonna have a reputation left after today.”
“I think he’s still trying to protect Landon, and he’s terrified by what Anston might say about Ed Lightfoot’s plane crash.”
Gage’s cell phone rang.
“Brandon didn’t tell you everything.” Alex Z was breathless. “But we hit a home run, boss. Charlie Palmer set up thousands of straw contributors over the years. Not just fake companies, but dead people, homeless people, institutionalized mentally ill people. Did it all through the Internet—”
“And charged offshore credit cards for the contributions.”
“Exactly. And scattered them all over the country so nobody would notice, then used the money to pay off the Mann Trust loans if anybody became suspicious.”
