The First Law
Page 44
This reporter has learned that yesterday's raid, which netted over $1.5 million in cash and nearly thirty pounds of cocaine and heroin, followed a six-month investigation into alleged money laundering and drug trafficking activities occurring out of several homes in the Mission, Diamond Heights and St. Francis Wood neighborhoods, activities financed by diamonds from Georgia AAA, which in turn had been smuggled out of the Russian treasury by that country's own minister of Precious Gems and Metals, and delivered here to San Francisco in diplomatic pouches carried by commercial airliners.
Also implicated in the scheme, and arrested in yesterday's raids, was Wade Panos, another influential political donor, whose company, WGP Enterprises, Inc., provided formal security for Georgia AAA, as well as the pool from which the Diamond Center selected its drivers. Mr. Panos's drivers allegedly coordinated and executed the actual deliveries of contraband among the various drop houses.
Sources with the police and FBI confirm that the initial investigation into irregularities at Georgia AAA commenced last November when Lieutenant Abraham Glitsky inadvertently stumbled upon two of Mr. Panos's drivers acting in a suspicious manner. On a hunch, he followed them to several addresses. When local authorities, many the recipients of Panos's political contributions, declined to act, Glitsky forwarded the information to federal authorities.
On a related front as the story grows, and in light of the principals involved, Lieutenant Marcel Lanier of homicide expressed concern and interest in reopening the investigation into the so-called Dockside Massacre of last November. Two of the victims in that gunfight, Nick Sephia and Julio Rez, had been couriers for Georgia AAA and a third, Roy Panos, was employed by his brother at WGP. Speaking on condition of anonymity, highly placed police sources have opined that these two men, Sephia and Rez, were the security guards who originally attracted the suspicion of Lieutenant Glitsky. Additionally, Sephia was a nephew to Wade Panos.
The FBI believes that several of the employees of Georgia AAA may in fact have been recruits from organized crime syndicates within Russia, and that the intimate and perhaps conflicting connections between the Panos group and these people may have played a significant role in the Pier 70 gunfight where five men, including homicide's Lieutenant Barry Gerson, were killed. Police have theorized that as many as seven more people, besides the five victims, took part in the battle. None have been arrested to date, and Lanier does not dispute the possibility that they may have used some sort of diplomatic immunity—and the Diamond Center's helicopter—to perpetrate the slaughter and then leave the country.
Finally, lawyer Dismas Hardy has asked that the police reopen the investigation into the death of Sam Silverman that led to a warrant for the arrest of John Holiday, who was a client of Hardy's and one of the men killed at Pier 70. Hardy is confident that the evidence upon which his client's murder warrant was issued was planted by Sephia and Rez. Hardy could not explain Holiday's presence at Pier 70, but noted that Lieutenant Gerson 's presence has been equally confounding to authorities. Hardy offered the possibility that, in possession of evidence linking Rez and Sephia to the crimes for which Holiday had been charged, Holiday had arranged his surrender to Gerson, and that the Panos group had somehow been tipped to the plan, and ambushed them.
"He was a great guy," Hardy said. "I'd like to see his name cleared."
Often, in early June, snow remains in the high passes on the John Muir Trail.
Michelle Maier and her companion had packed out of Tuolumne Meadows in Yosemite yesterday, camping last night at Lyell Fork. Though the rangers going out had warned them that the way would be snow-blocked, today's goal was to get over Donohue Pass, elevation 11,056 and then descend a thousand or so feet down the other side.
This early in the season, the sight of other campers up here wasn't always a daily event, and neither Michelle nor her companion had seen a soul all day.
Michelle was planning to spend four more days in the back country, then get to San Francisco in time to catch her flight to Barcelona, where she'd enrolled in a gourmet cooking class for the entire summer. This had entailed giving up the apartment she'd kept since college. Possibly she could have sublet the thing, but she didn't want to be bound to return to the Bay Area when the class was complete. What if she got offered a sous-chef job somewhere?
Or just wanted to stay overseas?
Her companion was a new friend. Gina was the first new friend, although not the only one, she'd made since John Holiday's death. Michelle had thought it was probable she'd be the only person at John's burial in Colma; certainly she expected to be the only woman there. But Gina Roake had been at the gravesite with some men, one of whom had been John's lawyer.
After the interment, they'd invited her to an Irish bar.
Thinking Roake must have been another of John's girlfriends, Michelle didn't want to go at first, but then Gina's situation had become clear—she had lost her own fiancé, also to violence, and evidently on the same day John had died. So all of them from the gravesite sat and talked until it got dark and the men had to go home. She and Gina had stayed on at the bar. Gotten smashed.
The next day, both of them dying of alcohol poisoning, she had accompanied Gina to her fiancé's funeral, attended by the same three men who'd been at John's, as well as about six hundred other close personal friends and acquaintances of David Freeman's, who had evidently been somebody important, although Michelle had never heard of him.
But the connection between the two grieving women had become strong. They'd gone on their first hike together—a couple of miles around Tilden Park in Oakland—last January. A few weeks ago they'd walked the Bay to Breakers race. Getting in shape. Having some fun. At least once every two weeks they went out to dinner, usually at someplace Michelle would recommend.
The first time, they'd gone to Jeanty at Jack's. Michelle had shown up in her usual camo gear and afterward felt like a bit of a fool. Gradually, she rethought her style, or lack of. Recently, both women had taken to dressing up for these dinners. Even in San Francisco, where the odds did not favor single women, to say the least, they would almost always have the clear opportunity to meet men. Offers to buy drinks. None of these advances had gone anywhere, but they were flattering nonetheless. Nonthreatening.
Michelle wondered what in the world she had been so afraid of.
And knew the answer, of course. Everything. Her funky, stupid hide-me clothes. Hiding out in the corners of restaurants and libraries. Communicating by email. The small, familiar world of her small, familiar apartment.
Now, well into early evening, the two women had been hiking in long shadows for an hour or more when they came around a bend in the path and found themselves suddenly squinting into the sunlight that reflected off a field of ice that covered the entire trail.
"At least now we know why we haven't seen anybody coming the other way," Roake said. She unshouldered her pack and took a long drink of water. Grimaced. "This iodine pill thing. I don't think I'm getting very used to the taste."
"I stopped using it," Michelle said.
Roake stopped in mid-drink. "Then why am I still gagging on this stuff? I thought there was giardia"—a particularly unpleasant intestinal parasite—"everywhere up here."
"There is, I suppose. But my dad used to hike up here all the time and he never used it, either. And never got sick." She shrugged. "If I've learned anything the past year, Gina, it's that the world's a dangerous place. It's never really been safe, although it's comforting to pretend it is.
But really there's risk everywhere. Might as well embrace it and enjoy the days. So I'm going to drink the goddamned good-tasting, non-iodized water."
Roake took another pull at her canteen, made another face. "Will you think I'm a wimp if I don't?"
"Absolutely." A big grin. "But who cares what I think?
You do it your way; I'll still like you."
Michelle stood up, brushed off her bottom, stared at the ice shelf looming up ahead of them. "Talk about risk," she s
aid. "Do you want to go for this? Maybe we should give it up?"
Roake, too, was on her feet. "And miss the best view in the Sierra? I'd rather die trying."
"So we go?"
"Lead on, girlfriend, lead on."
Table of Contents
PART ONE
PART TWO
PART THREE