Power Surge

by Ben Bova

  Jake went to his desk and opened his laptop. On an impulse, he called Steve Brogan, at his home in Dayton.

  As soon as Brogan’s baggy-eyed face appeared on his screen, Jake realized he was probably interrupting the man’s dinner.

  “If this is a bad time to talk…”

  Brogan shook his head. “My wife’s on an overnight visit to the clinic, and my son’s out with his hoodlum pals.”

  “Clinic?” Jake asked.

  “Tests, checkups,” said Brogan, with an air of helpless acceptance. “She seems to be holding her own, the Alzheimer’s isn’t getting any worse. Or maybe I’m not noticing any changes.”

  “I hope she’s okay.”

  “Yeah. Me too. So, what can I do for you, Jake?”

  Jake spent the next quarter hour talking about his frustrations.

  “Santino and McGrath?” Brogan looked incredulous. But then he said, “It must have been something big to get those two hollering at each other.”

  “So big that nobody knows anything about it.”

  “Or they’re not telling you what they know.”

  “So what do I do?” Jake asked.

  “Dig. Snoop around.”

  “I’ve tried talking to people. Nobody admits to knowing anything. Most of them are just as surprised about this as you were.”

  Brogan looked disappointed. “Jake, you’ve got to learn how to twist arms.”

  “I can’t force people to talk.”

  “No, but you can dig into Santino’s background. And McGrath’s.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They have medical records, don’t they? They file income tax returns, don’t they? Santino was in the Marine Corps, I think. Look him up!”

  “I don’t have access to that kind of information.”

  “You’re a legislative aide to a United States senator,” Brogan said. “Use that power, for god’s sake.”

  “You think that would work?”

  “You won’t know until you try it.”

  * * *

  With some misgivings, the next morning Jake began telephoning the Social Security Administration, the Department of Veterans Affairs, even the Internal Revenue Service.

  He was impressed with how every bureaucrat he spoke with wanted to cooperate with a US senator’s aide. Records were opened to him, files made available, information flowed in.

  “Always glad to help the United States Senate,” said more than one of the people Jake talked to. He began to understand how the National Security Administration and other federal agencies could acquire so much data on ordinary citizens. It wasn’t really difficult to do.

  But poring through the avalanche of data was another matter. Jake didn’t dare tell Tomlinson or O’Donnell what he was doing. He was getting reams of information, but if there was anything significant or useful in it, he would need a team of analysts to ferret it out.

  He had only himself. And Tami.

  Night after night they scrolled through years of data about Santino and McGrath.

  “My god,” Jake exclaimed as he studied Santino’s military record. “The Little Saint was a Marine rifleman. He was in the invasion of Grenada in 1983. He got a Good Conduct Medal.”

  “Of course,” she answered dryly.

  “And a Purple Heart.”

  Tami looked up from her laptop screen. “He was wounded?”

  “Hurt in a truck accident.”

  She returned to the records she was scanning.

  The Navy also provided medical records. With a little judicious telephoning, Jake found that Santino still availed himself of the VA’s medical services. He could find nothing significant, though. The Little Saint’s health was fine, for a man his age. A minor heart murmur was the only significant finding.

  The hardest nut was the IRS. They refused to release the income tax returns for either man without a court order, although they assured Jake that neither McGrath nor Santino had ever been audited or under suspicion of tax evasion.

  “He really is a little saint,” Tami concluded, bleary-eyed from searching computer files.

  Jake reluctantly admitted defeat. “There’s nothing here that could possibly be a reason for their argument.”

  “There’s got to be something,” Tami said. She got up from the futon and stretched the stiffness from her back.

  “What we need is a real data analyst,” she said. “Maybe a team of data analysts.”

  Jake shook his head. “We can’t let anybody know we’re digging into their backgrounds. If that leaked out, my name would be three grades below mud.”

  A week later, Jacobi phoned.

  Warning

  It was the first day of autumn on the calendar, but as Jake leaned back in his desk chair and glanced out his office window, it still looked like summer in Washington, DC. The trees were in full green leaf, people were walking along the street in short-sleeved blouses and splashy sports shirts, the sun was shining brightly out of a blue sky marred only be a few fat cumulus clouds.

  Jake’s phone rang.

  “How’re you doin’, kid?” Bert Jacobi’s voice. Unmistakable.

  Jake suddenly felt shaky. “I’m okay,” he said slowly, trying to keep the tremor out of his voice. “You?”

  “I’m in town for a few days. We oughtta talk.”

  “What about?”

  He could sense Jacobi’s lopsided face scowling. “I’ll tell ya when I see ya. How about after work, six o’clock?”

  Jake nodded and said, “That’d be fine.”

  “Where you wanna meet?”

  Someplace very public, Jake thought. Someplace where there would be plenty of witnesses.

  “How about the bar at the Hilton Hotel?”

  Jacobi was silent for a moment, then he replied, “Nah, too fancy. Make it Murphy’s Pub. Nice neighborhood dump. It’s a coupla blocks from your apartment.”

  “I know where it is,” Jake said, his insides clenching.

  “Six o’clock.” Jacobi hung up.

  Jake held the phone receiver frozen in his hand. He knows where I live, he realized. The thought frightened him badly.

  * * *

  Murphy’s was indeed a nice neighborhood spot. Jake and Tami had gone there often for hamburgers or fish and chips. Jake drove home and told Tami about Jacobi.

  “Jacobi?” she asked. “He’s connected to Santino, isn’t he?”

  Jake said, “Yeah. The last time I saw him, I got mugged a few nights later.”

  She nodded knowingly. “Jacobi. The muscle guy.”

  “I’ll make it quick,” Jake promised. “We can have dinner afterward.”

  She caught the obviously worried expression on Jake’s face. “Do you want me to come with you?”

  “No! I don’t want you anywhere near Jacobi.”

  “All right,” she said. “I’ll give you ’til seven o’clock, then I’ll come after you.”

  “You stay here. I’ll be home by seven, I’m pretty sure. If it looks like I’m running late, I’ll phone you.”

  Tami looked dissatisfied, but she murmured, “Seven o’clock.”

  * * *

  Jake got to Murphy’s a few minutes after six. Jacobi was already sitting in one of the booths that ran the length of the bar, nursing a dark beer. His burly frame seemed to be wedged into the narrow booth; his dark suit jacket looked a size too small for him. The expression on his strangely uneven face seemed darker than both the suit and the beer.

  Jake made his way past the crowd at the bar and slid into the booth opposite him.

  Jacobi’s lips twisted into what might have been a smile. Or a sneer. “I was startin’ to think you was standin’ me up.”

  “It’s only five after,” Jake said.

  “Yeah.”

  “So what’s this all about?”

  One of the harried bartenders hustled up to them. Before he could ask, Jake ordered a glass of pinot grigio.

  “You like Italian wine?” Jacobi asked.

  “
Some.”

  “My uncle useta make wine. Grew the grapes in his backyard.”

  “Was that legal?”

  Jacobi shrugged. “Long as the local cops got a few bottles every Christmas, it was legal.”

  The bartender plunked a wineglass in front of Jake, then swiftly headed back to the busy bar.

  Hunching over the table, Jake said, “You didn’t come here to talk about wine, did you?”

  “Hell no.”

  “Then what?”

  His scowl returning, Jacobi said, “You been stickin’ your nose where it don’t belong.”

  Jake’s mouth went dry. “Oh?” he managed to say.

  “The VA, the Marines, you been snoopin’ into Santino’s background.”

  “Nothing illegal about that.”

  “Maybe it ain’t illegal, but it sure ain’t healthy.”

  “Are you threatening me?”

  “Just what the fuck are you lookin’ for?” Jacobi demanded.

  He knows what I’ve been doing, Jake said to himself. Of course he knows! You think that out of all those faceless bureaucrats you talked to, not one of them told Santino’s people that you were poking into his records?

  “Well?” Jacobi insisted.

  Trying to put as positive a spin on the matter as he could, Jake answered, “Senator Santino had a big blowup with Senator McGrath. I was afraid that Perlmutter might use whatever it was that caused the argument against Santino, hold it over his head.”

  “Santino and Perlmutter buried the hatchet.”

  “For how long?” Jake asked. “If Perlmutter knows something that could hurt Santino—”

  “He don’t.”

  “Are you sure? How can you be certain?”

  For the first time, Jacobi seemed slightly taken aback. But he said, “Don’t bullshit me, kid. You want to find something about Santino that you can hold over his head.”

  “No,” Jake objected. “That’s not—”

  “Drop it,” Jacobi said flatly. “Just drop the whole business. You could get yourself mugged again. Or worse.”

  “Are you threatening me?” Jake repeated.

  “I don’t make threats, kid. I make promises.”

  With a bravado that he really didn’t feel, Jake said, “You just proved to me that Santino has something he wants to keep hidden.”

  Lowering his voice to a guttural growl, Jacobi warned, “Just drop the whole business, kid. It’s bad for your health. Yours, and your Jap girlfriend’s, too.”

  “She’s got nothing to do with this!”

  “The hell she don’t. Like I said, drop this business, or both of you’ll be sorry.”

  Collision Course

  “He threatened me?” Tami looked more angry than afraid.

  Miserable, Jake nodded.

  He had returned home as soon as Jacobi left Murphy’s—without paying for his beer—and told Tami what had happened.

  Sitting next to him on the futon, Tami said, “Bert Jacobi. He’s bad business, Jake. I started looking into his relation to Santino when I was doing that environmental story that got me fired from Reuters.”

  “He can be pretty scary,” Jake admitted.

  “So what are you going to do?”

  Jake looked into her almond eyes. “I can’t risk your getting hurt.”

  Strangely, Tami smiled. “That’s a good out, isn’t it? You’ll do what he wants because you don’t want me to get hurt.”

  “It’s the truth,” Jake said.

  Taking both his hands in hers, she asked, “Jake, if I weren’t involved in this—”

  “But you are. I involved you.”

  “If I weren’t involved in this,” Tami repeated. “If we had never met and I didn’t know you from Adam, if you had to face Jacobi by yourself, what would you do?”

  “I’d drop the whole business. One mugging is enough.”

  “That’s not the truth, Jake.”

  “The hell it isn’t.”

  With a shake of her head, Tami insisted, “If you were in this by yourself, you’d push ahead, wouldn’t you? Jacobi’s threats wouldn’t stop you.”

  “Don’t kid yourself, Tami. I’m no hero.”

  For a long moment, Tami said nothing. She stared at Jake, as if trying to X-ray him with her eyes.

  Finally she repeated, “So what are you going to do?”

  “Exactly what Jacobi told me to do: stop snooping into Santino’s past.”

  Tami looked disappointed. But before she could say anything, Jake added, “We’ve already got reams of information here. We don’t have to go out and get more. We’ve got so much now that we can’t digest it all.”

  “Oh! So we keep sifting through it, looking for something significant.”

  Jake nodded. “And we start sifting through the information I got about Jacobi, last spring. Maybe what we want is in his files, not Santino’s.”

  “You think?”

  “Let’s see.”

  * * *

  As far as the world beyond their basement apartment could tell, Jake had stopped prying into Santino’s past. The first cold rains of autumn stripped leaves off the trees, and Washingtonians began wearing raincoats over their sweaters.

  The Senate’s energy committee conducted hearings on Senator Tomlinson’s gutted energy plan. Everything chugged along smoothly. Santino chaired the hearings, smiling benignly as representatives of the fossil fuel lobbies gave their somewhat reluctant approvals to what was left of the plan.

  Jake and Tami spent their nights scrolling through the data they had acquired about Santino—and Jacobi.

  The days grew shorter, the nights frostier. As Halloween approached, Tami was ready to admit defeat.

  “There’s nothing here, Jake,” she said. “Let’s give it up and go out for dinner.”

  “To celebrate our defeat?” he said.

  “We’ve been at it for more than two months, and we haven’t found anything useful.”

  With a reluctant sigh, Jake got up from his desk chair and crossed the living room. He reached out his hand and helped Tami to her feet.

  “You’re right,” he admitted. “Let’s treat ourselves to a decent meal.”

  Dinner was almost pleasant, but as they walked home arm in arm through the chilly shadows, Tami said, “I still think Jacobi’s the key to all this.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “News reporter’s instinct,” she said. “It was when I started poking into Jacobi’s background that Santino got Reuters to can me.”

  “Coincidence, most likely.”

  “Maybe,” she said. But she didn’t sound convinced.

  As soon as they got back to the apartment they immediately went back to searching the data they had accumulated.

  An hour or so later Tami muttered, “That’s funny.”

  “What’s funny?”

  “The Rhode Island records don’t have a birth certificate for Jacobi.”

  “You’re searching Rhode Island files?” Jake yelped, alarmed. “I thought we were just going to search the stuff we’ve already accumulated.”

  Tami soothed, “Public records, Jake. Everybody’s got a right to scan them.”

  “If Jacobi finds out…”

  “He won’t. Besides, there’s no birth certificate for him on record.”

  “Maybe he wasn’t born. Maybe he was built in a laboratory, like Frankenstein’s monster.”

  She made a disparaging face. “I found a birth certificate for Santino without trouble. But nothing for Jacobi.”

  “Maybe he wasn’t born in Rhode Island.”

  “According to a newspaper article about him, he was. They even gave the date. It was a piece about his twenty-first birthday celebration, when his father took him in as a full partner in Jacobi and Sons.”

  Jake felt his brows knitting into a frown. He got up from his desk and went to bend over Tami’s shoulder.

  “Maybe Umberto isn’t his original name. Try looking just for Jacobi.”

  Tami wor
ked her laptop’s keyboard for a moment. Then, “Here it is! Baby boy born to Mrs. Caterina Jacobi, the right date.”

  Jake sat down beside her.

  “But look,” Tami said, pointing to the image of the birth certificate, “there’s no name listed for the father.”

  “That’s kind of weird,” Jake said.

  “Strange, at least.”

  Suppressing a yawn, Jake said, “Come on, let’s go to bed. I’ve got to be at the committee hearing tomorrow morning.”

  Still bent over her laptop, Tami said, “You go brush your teeth. I’ll come in after you’re finished.”

  Jake let the yawn come out, then turned and headed for the bedroom. He undressed, brushed his teeth, thought about turning on one of the late shows, decided against it.

  As he was getting into bed, he heard Tami exclaim, “Aha!”

  He started to come around the bed, but Tami appeared in the doorway, glowing with triumph.

  “You found something?” Jake asked.

  Smiling hugely, she said, “I used my old newshound muscles.”

  “Huh?”

  “I figured that Jacobi might have been adopted. So I pulled up the Catholic adoption agency’s records. They’re computerized and, sure enough, there’s an adoption file for Umberto Jacobi, the right birthdate.”

  “But his birth certificate said his mother was Mrs. Jacobi, didn’t it?”

  “Yes, but his father wasn’t Mr. Jacobi. Not until they adopted him.”

  Jake stared at her. “Wait a minute. His mother…”

  “She had an affair! She gave birth to an illegitimate boy!”

  “And Jacobi senior adopted the boy.”

  “Right. Because the boy’s father was his old friend Mario Santino, just returned home from the invasion of Grenada! With a Purple Heart!”

  Sinking onto the bed, Jake asked, “You think?”

  “That’s what made McGrath turn against Santino. Mr. Straight Arrow couldn’t condone a scandal like that!”

  “Santino had an affair with Jacobi senior’s wife, and the old man adopted the baby?”

  “And forgave his wife. He must have been a bigger saint than Santino.”

  “But it all happened more than thirty-five years ago.”

  “McGrath couldn’t support Santino with that little secret in the Little Saint’s past,” Tami insisted. “Imagine how much fun the bloggers would have with that juicy tidbit!”