by Steven Gore
“But let’s keep this among ourselves; the rest of the staff doesn’t need to know yet. Everyone’s jobs are secure, and I don’t want them distracted from their work.”
“It’s not our jobs we’re worried about,” Alex Z said.
“I know.” Gage folded his hands on the table and tapped his thumbs together. “I’ve got lymphoma. It’s a blood cancer that attacks the immune system. It seems I’ve had it a long time, but it’s only now showing itself.”
Alex Z and Sylvia leaned forward.
“Have they decided on what kind of treatment you’ll get?” Sylvia asked.
“Not yet. I have more tests coming up.”
“But it’s going to be all right,” Alex said. “I mean, they’re going to stop it, aren’t they?”
“There’ll be some ups and downs, but it’ll be okay in the end.”
Alex Z exhaled. “You had me scared for a minute.”
Gage watched Sylvia’s gaze lower and he knew what she was thinking. Unlike Alex Z, who’d spent years only questioning data, Sylvia had spent her career questioning people, listening to them lie.
Sylvia slammed her fist on the table, then looked up again. “It’s not fair. How come the scumbags live forever and it’s the good people that get hammered like this.”
Gage shrugged. “There are a lot worse kinds of cancer. I wish I’d found out sooner, but that’s life.”
Alex Z looked at Sylvia. “What do you mean?”
Gage answered for her. “She just means that it may be a tough road.”
Sylvia didn’t respond for a moment, and then said, “Yeah. Sure. That’s just what I meant.”
GAGE WATCHED HIMSELF as they returned to the conference room after filling their coffee cups in the kitchen. He felt a hollowness, as if work had become abstract and he with it. He knew he’d always had a tendency to see the world in relationships, almost graphically, but now he felt himself to be at once the artist, the object, and observer.
He sat down across from Alex Z and Sylvia. “Why don’t you take us through what you picked up from Winston.”
Despite the gray haze of cancer that filled the room, Sylvia began.
“The key things seem to be Ah Tien’s passport, a visa application, part of a cell-phone bill, and a bunch of incomplete invoices and bills of lading for a company called Sunny Glory and shipping instructions to InterOcean customs brokers.”
Sylvia slid over a packet of forms.
“These bills of lading are for garlic from a Sunny Glory branch in Taiwan to their branch in the U.S. There are more for rare mushrooms, but the names of the companies are left blank. Ah Tien listed someone named Chau at Sunny Glory in Taiwan as a reference on his business visa application when he renewed it a couple of months ago.”
“What about his passport?”
“It reads like a road map. Taiwan, Hong Kong, China. Five trips in the last five years. The passport control stamps show he always entered China through Shanghai.”
Gage examined the papers lying on the conference table. He didn’t want to try to draw too many conclusions from them, but one thing seemed clear.
“Either he was too grief-stricken to know what he was doing when he packed his briefcase or he was trying to send a message that only someone looking for it would understand.”
He tapped the Sunny Glory forms.
“And my guess is the latter. He knew he was taking a risk by coming back to San Francisco. He held Ah Ming’s whole offshore operation in his hands. He’s the guy the FBI would want to catch and roll. He knew it and Ah Ming knew it.”
Gage imagined Ah Ming as a wolf caught in a steel trap, chewing off one of his own arms to escape. Except he knew Ah Ming was the sort of monster who could grow another one.
“If Ah Tien was able to bury his father and get out, then these papers wouldn’t mean anything. Even if Ah Ming happened to get a look at them, it would only appear that Ah Tien had been sloppy.”
“Why didn’t he just send a letter to somebody he trusted outlining the scheme?” Alex Z asked. “Like in the movies. Don’t open unless something happens to me.”
“First, because it would be evidence of disloyalty. Ah Tien might’ve been wrong about Ah Ming’s intention to kill him. And second, it’s a matter of face, not face like mianzi, what the Chinese call prestige, but lien, moral character, personal responsibility. He would’ve risked the life of whoever he sent it to.”
“Moral character?” Sylvia said, her tone rising in sarcasm. “Tell that to Peter Sheridan’s mother.”
“Take it easy.” Gage raised a palm toward her. “You need to look at this from within Ah Tien’s world and try to understand what he was thinking and what he was likely to do.” He pointed at her. “You really think he’d put it all in a letter?”
“Based on what we know now . . .” Sylvia shrugged. “Not very likely.”
“And there’s something else. If we go out hunting because we wrongly believe a letter exists, Ah Ming will find out and start looking, too. And if the letter doesn’t exist, the body count could get pretty high while he fails to prove the negative.”
“And Winston and his mother will be lying on the bottom of the pile.” Sylvia bit her lower lip for a moment. “I think I screwed up. I should’ve set up security for Winston.”
“The time may come, but it’s too soon. Ah Ming has no reason to think anyone has focused on him in connection with either Ah Tien’s murder or the chip robbery.”
Gage gestured toward the papers.
“Ah Tien left us a road map. The question is whether it represents the road he already followed or the road we’re supposed to follow to catch his killer.”
“There’s another question,” Sylvia said. “Don’t we need to turn all this stuff over to SFPD?”
“They had a chance to take the briefcase and chose not to. We’re under no obligation to give it to them. That’s the law. For now it’s ours. If Winston tells us the detectives have come back for it, then we’ll return it to him to turn over to them.”
“You’re talking like you’ll be able to finish this,” Sylvia said. “You think you’ll be able to?”
Finish.
The word startled him. He almost didn’t hear the question that followed it. He knew what she meant: finish Ah Ming. But he knew that in her sense he hadn’t even begun. He’d told himself from the start he was only going halfway. Just far enough to make the link between Ah Ming and the robbery, then get out.
He thought of his coming medical appointments, the staging of the disease to determine how far it had spread, and the coming decisions about treatment.
He knew that either way, the answer would be the same.
“That’s out of my hands.”
CHAPTER 22
Any change from last time?” Dr. Louisa Stern asked Gage after she entered the examining room in the cancer center.
Her words echoed in the sparse room. Cabinets. Pneumatic exam table. Sink. Chairs. The click of hard heels and the squish of soft soles on the linoleum-floored hallway beyond the closed door.
“Not as bad.”
“Nausea?”
“A little.”
“Dizziness?”
“Occasionally.”
“Unbutton your shirt. Let me check for any changes in the lumps.”
Stern felt along the inside of Gage’s collarbone, under his chin, and pressed hard into his armpits.
“Where’s Faith today?”
“She had a class to teach. I told her I’d bring her back a sucker.”
Stern laughed. “Sorry, I’m fresh out.” Then she tilted her head toward two bone marrow biopsy syringes laying on the counter. “You ready?”
“Have you been working out?”
“Every day.”
“Then I guess I’m ready.”
“I can give you a muscle relaxer. That may make it easier.”
Gage shook his head. “I’ll pass. I need to be alert later. I’m working on something.”
&nbs
p; Stern pointed toward the end of the exam table.
“Take off your belt and unbutton your pants, then lean over and slide yourself up. I need good access to your lower back and hip.”
Gage did as instructed.
Stern pulled down Gage’s slacks just far enough to expose his hips, then rubbed alcohol over his right hipbone and injected a local anesthetic.
“I’m going after some of the liquid, then after the bone marrow itself.”
Stern poked at Gage’s anesthetized skin with the needle and asked, “Can you feel that?”
“Only pressure, no pain.”
Gage then felt all of Stern’s hundred and thirty pounds lean into his hip and the corkscrew motion of the needle. He caught his breath as the hollow needle broke through the outer shell of the hipbone and drove into the marrow. She aspirated some of the liquid marrow, detached the plunger from the syringe, and set it on the counter. He then heard her attach another one.
“Now comes the hard part. Try to stay relaxed.”
Stern began rotating the needle, driving it harder, forcing a sliver of bone and marrow up into the needle.
“Hang in there, I’ve almost got it.”
Then she released the pressure.
Gage breathed out and pain iced through him as she extracted the needle.
“Jeez . . . I didn’t expect that.”
“That’s the one you’re supposed to get the sucker for. Too bad I’m—”
“Fresh out.”
Gage belted his pants, then took a few steps around the examining room, testing his right leg.
“I don’t think you’re the squeamish type. You want to see what I took out?”
Stern held up a liquid-filled glass vial in which there stood an inch-and-a-half sliver of bone and marrow about the thickness of a small nail.
“Don’t worry, it’ll grow back.”
“I’m not worried.” Gage flashed a smile. “I didn’t figure you’d break something you couldn’t fix.”
“I’ll have the results the day after tomorrow. Then I’d like to bring in a few youngsters and put together a treatment plan.”
“A little show-and-tell?”
“We’re a research and teaching hospital after all and we need the Graham Gages to keep the kids entertained.”
Gage eased down onto a chair next to Stern’s. “I’ve been doing a little research myself. No one seems to know why normal cells mutate into cancer cells. It seems like an evolutionary misfire.”
“All evolution, good and bad, is fundamentally a matter of mutation. It’s just that this mutation makes a particular individual less able to survive in the environment.”
“I think that’s what Charles Darwin called extinction.”
“It would be, except he didn’t know about chemotherapy.”
“But why lymphoma? I can’t find anyone who claims to have found what causes it.”
“There is no known cause. Not pollution, smoking, diet. It’s nothing you did to yourself.”
Gage smiled again. “So it’s like a guilt-free cancer?”
“No one has ever described it that way before, but you’re right. A guilt-free cancer.”
“Lucky me.”
Stern smiled back. “No one has ever said that, either.”
CHAPTER 23
Gage picked up Faith at the Montgomery Street BART Station in San Francisco to drive to the closing dinner of the annual meeting of the International Fraud Investigators Association.
“How was class?”
“Like pulling teeth, but at least no one was drilling into my bones.”
“Intro?”
“Yeah. And I finally figured out why all those football players registered for it. They signed up when they thought Alistair was still going to teach it. Looks like he’s been giving free honey to the Golden Bears for the last ten years. By the time he got suspended for that ménage à trois in the library, it was too late for the team to drop the class.” Faith laughed. “One of them is a smart aleck with a neck and face like a walrus. He asked me if he could do a term paper on what he called the function of voluntary associations in generating team loyalty in major college athletics.”
“You mean he wants to study cheerleaders?”
“You betcha.”
“Will you let him?”
“Why not? I might learn something. I’ve never understood that whole pom-pom thing.”
A few minutes later, Gage pulled into the driveway of the Mark Hopkins, a Spanish renaissance hotel on the crest of Nob Hill overlooking the city. He retrieved a file folder from the backseat, then handed his ignition key to the valet.
Jacques Matteau, the association president and director of the French Brigade Centrale de Répression des Fraudes Communautaires, spotted them as they entered the lobby.
“Why the limp?” Jacques said after kissing Faith on each cheek and shaking Gage’s hand. “I hope you haven’t gone back to fighting crime with your body instead of your mind.”
“It just got a little rough on the basketball court yesterday. A pick-and-roll that didn’t work out right.”
The Peacock Court room was nearly full with the thousand conference attendees seated at the round banquet tables or milling about in the spaces in between, glasses of wine in their hands. As Jacques guided Gage and Faith toward the head table, members waved at Gage or came forward to greet him.
Jacques seated Gage and Faith to the right of the podium on the elevated, flower-adorned table, then walked to the microphone and banged a gavel. The gunshot-like cracks of mahogany on oak shut mouths and turned heads toward the front.
“I’d like to welcome all the members and guests to this closing dinner and thank everyone who made this conference such a success. Represented here tonight are the premier fraud investigators in the world, representing hundreds of law enforcement agencies and investigative and security firms from over sixty countries. The most representative group ever. I know you’re anxious to hear from our keynote speaker, but first things first.”
Jacques signaled the waiters poised at the doorways, then seated himself to the right of Faith. Gage overheard them talking as he ate his salad and reviewed his speech, writing in some changes. He sensed Faith peeking at him, then set down his pen, reached under the table, and rested his hand on her thigh.
It’s okay.
Later, when his dinner plate had been removed, Gage’s eyes fell on the evening’s agenda.
Opening remarks
Dinner
Awards
In Memoriam: Juan Cortez-Sanchez
In Memoriam. Gage had forgotten about that part of the annual program. With a couple of thousand members worldwide, some die every year. Usually they retire and leave the organization before they do, so nothing is said. But Juan, Spain’s most skilled terrorist financing investigator, was still a member and way too young to die.
Keynote Speaker: Graham Gage
Gage suffered a morbid dyslexia. The text morphed, appearing to read “Keynote Speaker: Juan Cortez-Sanchez. In Memoriam: Graham Gage.” He forced himself to look away, trying to focus on the chandeliers hanging bright and heavy from the ceiling. But he could just as well have been looking up at a rain cloud, and for a moment he wished it was and that he and Faith were back in Costa Rica.
As Jacques resumed his role as master of ceremonies, Gage felt his mind wandering off, abandoning his body.
“Juan was a twenty-year member . . . a friend to many in this room . . . selfless . . . brilliant . . . too young . . . long bout with cancer . . . his wife is here to accept . . .”
“Graham Gage . . . our keynote speaker . . . youngest recipient ever of the Lifetime Achievement Award . . . received last year at the Paris meeting . . . I present to you the man I like to call the diagnostician of deception and the philosopher of fraud.”
Jacques moved back from the podium and gestured Gage to approach. No one in the room could have failed to notice Gage’s smile transform into a grimace as pain attacked his hip
when he straightened up. After he stepped up to the podium, he steadied himself by gripping the raised edges of the top until he felt his leg hold firm.
Jacques leaned over and pulled the microphone toward him.
“If Graham is going to insist on continuing to play basketball, perhaps we can add another training session to next year’s schedule: The proper execution of the pick-and-roll.”
Gage felt his face redden in response to the crowd’s laughter. He wondered which was worse: being rightly known to be undergoing a painful search for the extent of his cancer or being viewed as physically incompetent. He shook off the thought, then held up his hand, acknowledging the laughter.
Gage adjusted the mic, then looked about the room at the many familiar faces. An image of Juan slid into his consciousness. Blanket covered, hunched over in a wheelchair at a Spanish hospice, gray, shriveled, hollow eyed, waiting to die. He felt a restlessness in the crowd, opened his file folder, and began.
AS GAGE CAME TO THE END of his prepared speech he realized he couldn’t remember much of what he’d said. He recalled moments of applause and laughter and, more than anything, two thousand eyes peering up at him and him wondering what they were seeing, or maybe who they were seeing, for he knew that he wasn’t exactly the same man they had seen in Paris.
Jacques approached the podium clapping. He put his left arm on Gage’s shoulder and said, “How about a few questions?”
Without waiting for a response, Jacques pointed at a young woman at the nearest table, whose words were lost in the mumbling crowd.
Voices from the back yelled out, “We can’t hear . . . speak up.”
“Let me repeat the question,” Gage said. “It was about my references to the evolution in fraud and the methods used by crooks. And did I have something deeper in mind.” Gage paused, the thought still unfinished in his mind. “The short answer is, yes. The slightly longer answer goes something like this: We typically catch crooks because most frauds, in fact most crimes, are cookie-cutter jobs. They’re based on paradigms, so to speak. The crooks who are a little smarter than the rest combine these paradigms, sometimes in unusual ways.”
An image of Ah Ming flickered in his mind.
