by Steven Gore
Now one was investigating the attempted murder of the other.
A break in the rain had allowed Gage to uncover the barbecue on the redwood deck and cook salmon steaks while Faith made rice and fixed a salad. They carried their plates to the dining room, where windows framed San Francisco against the backdrop of offshore cumulus clouds and a variegated pink, yellow, and red sunset.
Gage propped his forearms on the table and rested his chin on his interlaced fingers as he stared out at the bay.
Faith reached over and rested her hand on his shoulder. “He may make it. The doctors are telling Courtney it’s going to be a long haul.”
“Come on. I was there. That wasn’t a prognosis, it was just a way to muzzle her and keep her from demanding answers they don’t have.”
He filled Faith’s wineglass, then outlined what he’d learned about Burch’s role in SatTek.
“I love Jack as much as you,” Faith said, “but I’ve got to ask. Why are you so sure he wasn’t at least partly responsible? Maybe the lesson he learned from Courtney’s illness was that the world’s not a fair place, so there’s no reason not to grab what you can.”
Gage shook his head. “Not Jack. He never believed money was a substitute for immortality.”
“Maybe, but he wouldn’t be the first to express rage against the world as greed.”
“I don’t see it.”
“Maybe you don’t want to see it.”
Gage pulled back and looked at Faith out of the corner of his eye. “Ouch.”
“When it comes to Jack, you have a way of overlooking how impulsive he can be. It’s been that way since we were in graduate school. You, the philosopher forgiving human folly, and him, the reckless daredevil.”
“He’s just a little adventurous.”
Faith threw up her hands. “See?”
Gage smiled. “Touche.”
“And there’s something else.” She reached over and took his hand. “Loyalty sometimes comes at a price that’s too high to pay.”
“You don’t mean bailing out-”
“No. Just be careful. That burglar at Jack’s office could just as well have shot his way out.” She pointed at Gage’s bruised shoulder. “You can pretend that doesn’t hurt, but I wince every time you take your shirt off.”
They sat quietly, watching the horizon drain of color. Fog wormed its way through the Golden Gate, led in by three oil tankers making for the Chevron Refinery along the north bay.
Faith spooned salad on each of their plates, then broke the silence. “Anyway, isn’t it possible that somebody in the natural gas deal was behind Jack’s shooting?”
“Others are asking the same question,” Gage said. “I returned a call to Ambassador Pougachev yesterday morning. State Security reported to him that I’d been seen with Jack in Moscow-”
“State Security?”
Gage waved off the implication. “Since the cold war ended, they have a lot of time on their hands.”
“Graham…”
“Nothing to worry about. All Pougachev wanted to know is whether Jack brought me in to fix something that was broken. He was preparing for interviews with Agence France-Presse and Der Spiegel. They weren’t satisfied with the Russian president’s answers at the press conference about whether Jack’s shooting would interfere with completing the joint venture. Winter is coming and houses need to be heated.”
“Does he think there’s a connection?”
“I don’t know. Pougachev is less interested in the causes than the effects.”
Gage cringed as the world narrowed to twin images of Burch lying helpless in the hospital and of a self-satisfied Pougachev sitting across from them in a Washington, D.C. restaurant a few months earlier, sucking on crab legs.
“Jack’s being gunned down means nothing to him,” Gage said.
“But after that dinner you two had with him, Jack said-”
“He’s never been able to understand that for the Russian elite, people are nothing more than a means to an end. He actually believed those bureaucrats from the finance and energy ministries when they expressed sympathy for Courtney and all she went through. They were really just probing for weaknesses. It was painful to watch, but I couldn’t take it away from him.”
He pointed at Faith’s plate, wanting to lighten the moment. Nothing he could say now could reverse what happened back then.
“You should have a little more salmon,” he said. “I’d hate to think this poor fish gave his life in vain.”
Faith ate a small piece, then pushed on. “Does Pougachev know that you met with organized crime bosses?”
“That’s another bit of information he got from State Security.”
“Did he ask if Jack brought you into this?”
“I told him Jack didn’t bring me into anything.”
“Did you tell him you volunteered?”
“He wasn’t perceptive enough to ask.” Gage smiled. “He doesn’t have your skills in cross-examination.” He watched Faith blush. “In any case, he knows he can’t get heavy-handed. I know too much. He tried to pursue it gently with a ‘We have our ways’ in a German accent, but ended up sounding like a cartoon character, so he had to let it go.”
“Jack’ll get a kick out of…” Faith’s voice trailed off. An image of Burch struggling for life entered both of their minds.
Gage quickly filled the silence. “We’ll tell him.”
Faith returned to her probing. “But how can you be sure those gangsters didn’t change their minds and demand a cut? Shooting Jack might buy them some time.”
“I’m not sure they’d want to raise the stakes that high. Interfering with the flow of natural gas into Western Europe right now would be seen as much as an act of terrorism as blowing up a power plant-and it would mean destroying the wall between domestic law enforcement and international intelligence they’ve always taken refuge behind.”
Faith pushed her plate away. “I don’t know, they’re unpredictable people.”
Although she was an anthropologist, she wasn’t offering a description, but a warning.
“I’ll be careful,” Gage said, reaching over and squeezing her hand. “But I’m not going to figure out who shot Jack until I figure out why. And that means retracing Jack’s steps and trying to spot whatever came out of the shadows to blindside him. If it was road rage, then the trail will end where he fell. If not…”
Gage ended the sentence with a slow shake of his head. They both knew there was no way to finish the thought, so they sat in silence, the weight of inevitability pressing down on them.
Faith picked up her wineglass again and stared into it before speaking. “In some ways I have a hard time fixing Jack in my mind anymore. He’s changed so much. Like the Afghan Medical Relief dinner last fall. Accepting an award for charity work was out of character for him. It was almost like grandstanding.”
“I asked him about it on the flight back from Moscow. Turns out he saw something Courtney wrote for her cancer support group, a phrase about invisibility being oblivion. He wanted an excuse to put her on a podium; talk about her in front of all of their friends. In retrospect, it was a very dangerous thing to do.”
“Dangerous?” Faith said, glancing over, her eyebrows raised. “The dinner was in the grand ballroom of the St. Francis Hotel, dear, not at some falafel stand in Baghdad.”
“Not that kind of dangerous. He risked drawing attention to the offshore bank accounts and front companies we used to smuggle medical supplies through Pakistan, and those are exactly the kinds of deceptions the U.S. Attorney might accuse him of using in SatTek.”
Gage flashed on an image of Burch and him sitting with a Pashtun jirga near the Afghanistan border three years earlier; Burch extending his hand holding a hundred thousand dollars of his own money, the first of a series of payoffs to tribal leaders so they’d let the material pass unmolested through their territories.
“To say nothing of currency smuggling and bribery.”
“Bu
t that wasn’t part of any fraud,” Faith said, voice rising in their defense. “Just the opposite.”
“But it was fraudulent. And we could’ve gotten twenty years in Lompoc.”
Faith flinched. “I wish you wouldn’t say things like that.”
“Sorry. As Jack would say, no worries. No U.S. Attorney would dare go after us for what we did over there. Anyway, SatTek may be the case that proves the rule.”
“Which one is that?”
Gage reached for Faith’s plate, set it on top of his, then looked over and winked the same exaggerated wink with which Jack Burch always preceded his punch lines. “If they ever get us, it’ll only be for something we didn’t do.”
CHAPTER 11
M r. Hackett, there’s a Mr. Peterson on line one.”
Daniel Hackett hesitated before picking up the receiver. He lived for these calls, but despised them all the same. He knew he’d get what he wanted; it was just that the whole thing made him feel like a weakling and a fraud. Peterson had the power, so he could play it and Hackett however he wanted. And the only way to keep his dignity was to sign on, join the team, ally himself with the prosecutor against his own client.
“I think we can do a deal,” Peterson said. “I’ve talked it over with the case agent. We’re convinced Matson can give us Granger and Burch, and I know you won’t let him keep talking for free.”
Hackett adopted a firm tone; his first move in a fox-trot where Peterson had already taken the lead. “You got that right. I think I’ve let him say as much as I should without something on the table.”
“But there’s too much money involved to let him walk.”
“I warned him that would be your position.”
“It’s not my position,” Peterson said. “The Corporate Fraud Task Force wants everybody in this case doing jail time.”
Hackett knew that Peterson really meant it wasn’t the task force’s position alone.
“So what’s next?” Hackett asked.
“A plea agreement. It’ll be sealed until I’ve indicted the others. And he’ll have to plead to the sheet.”
Peterson said the word “sheet” as if the indictment would be handed down like the Ten Commandments, not spit out of his own computer-but Hackett didn’t challenge him. The dance wasn’t over. “What will it be?”
“Conspiracy to commit securities fraud, conspiracy to file false reports with the SEC, and money laundering.”
“Money laundering?” Hackett feigned surprise. “You’ve got to be kidding. The sentencing guidelines are ridiculous. He’d rather roll the dice.”
Peterson paused as if deciding whether to drop the money laundering count. As if. They both knew before the conversation even began that Peterson wouldn’t insist on it. The pretense of negotiation was merely a bone tossed for the sake of Hackett’s dignity and to give him leverage with his client. Now he could tell Matson that he hung tough with Peterson, made him dump the heaviest charge.
“Okay,” Peterson finally said. “No money laundering, but it’ll have to be all the rest.”
“What about time? Uncertainty is stressing the guy out. Let’s agree on something now, at least a range.”
“No can do. His sentence will depend on his performance. Heads on a platter. Can you sell him on the fraud and false reporting?”
“Probably. It’s just that I don’t think he’s clued in his wife yet. And he better be wearing riot gear when he does. She thinks he actually earned it all.”
“And I’ll bet she’s been spending like he did.”
“Her personal shopper at Neiman Marcus has been named Employee of the Month like clockwork since the day she first laid down her credit card.”
Peterson laughed. “When this is over, she’ll be doing layaways at Kmart. No way she really believed your client earned that kind of money on his own.”
Hackett leaned forward in his chair, as if Peterson was actually in the room to observe the significance of what he was about to say.
“Don’t underestimate the guy. Matson may have started out as a kind of a Silicon Valley used car salesman. And I know he looked pathetic during his Queen for a Day-all these guys look that way spilling their guts. But once Granger got him started, it didn’t take him long to learn to play the offshore game. He even got pretty good at it. That’s why he’ll be a damn good witness for you. He’s a lot lighter on his feet than you think.”
“Take it easy, Hackett, you don’t need to sell me on the guy, except for one thing. Matson seemed to get a little squirrelly when we got to talking about Burch. Is he afraid Burch will try to cut a deal and roll back on him?” Peterson didn’t wait for an answer. His voice hardened as he pushed on. “You can tell him I’m not making any deals with Burch. If he ever walks out of that hospital, he’s gonna spend the rest of his life in federal prison-whether your guy delivers him up or somebody else does.”
Hackett wanted it to be Matson, needed it to be Matson. He wasn’t about to humiliate himself losing the case in trial. “When can you send over the plea agreement?”
“This afternoon. Most of it’s boilerplate. I just need to plug in a statement of facts.”
“And those would be?”
“Granger laid out the overall stock fraud strategy and Burch executed it using the dummy offshore companies.”
“Sounds fair. I’ll get Matson in here to sign it.”
“And we want the money. All of it.” Hackett visualized Peterson pounding his forefinger on his desk. “If we catch him lying about where it is, there’s no deal and the money laundering comes back in.”
Hackett had already given Matson that lecture.
“When do you want him in court?”
“Day after tomorrow. The sooner I can get him in front of the grand jury, the sooner I’ll get the indictment. United States of America v. Burch, et al. All the Burches of the world do is help fraudsters like Matson and Granger, and they make an obscene amount of money doing it. When the rest of them watch Burch doing the perp walk past the TV cameras with his tail between his legs, being hauled off to the joint, they’ll all be closing up shop. Every one of them.”
“You mean if Burch survives long enough to get convicted.”
“No. He just has to live long enough for me to get him indicted.”
Hackett set the phone back on its cradle, then looked through his window past San Francisco’s western avenues toward the Pacific Ocean. He never quite understood the arrogance of jingoistic prosecutors like Peterson, amateurs who didn’t have a clue about international business. How, exactly, could U.S. corporations operate in dozens of different tax jurisdictions, dozens of national sovereignties, accommodating dozens of competing masters around the world, without lawyers like Burch?
His gaze settled on the Transamerica Building. What about Transamerica International registered in Bermuda? Or Bank of America Securities in London, Santiago, Singapore, and Taipei? Did these arms of U.S. companies spring out of foreign soil through spontaneous generation?
Why were the tough-guy prosecutors like Peterson always so damn naive? Hackett already knew the answer: It was because they lived in a simple, unambiguous world, structured by simple rules. They believed who they wanted and what they wanted and did so absolutely.
Hackett comforted himself with the thought that he saved Matson’s ass because that’s what he got paid to do, and had gotten paid almost half a million dollars to do it. Anyway, he didn’t know the truth. He hadn’t been there, in Burch’s office. He didn’t know what Burch said, what Matson said. It was all he said, she said. That was the law of conspiracy. Nothing more. Nothing less.
Did Burch cross the line once in a while? Maybe. Maybe not. Who knows? But Peterson taking the word of Matson? Did he really believe that stunted, pastel-packaged liar was reborn a saint when he slithered into the Church of the U.S. Attorney, the Chapel of Cooperation? It was worse than merely naive; it was damn stupid.
Hackett leaned back in his chair, wondering what would be the cost to Bu
rch of that naivete, that stupidity-but not for long. Hours spent thinking about abstract matters weren’t billable, and the clock was ticking. He reached for the intercom, then hesitated and dropped his hand to the desk.
Decades of criminal defense work painted a picture in his mind; it showed him how it would end. Even if it was just a failure of due diligence: Burch too preoccupied with his wife’s illness to pay attention. Peterson would make not knowing look like not wanting to know; and make not wanting to know into greed. Using the hammer of his office and the anvil of a jury composed of peons looking for someone to blame for their own liabilities and others’ enormous assets, Peterson would metamorphize Burch’s negligence into willful conspiracy. That would be the price Burch would pay.
Burch is already judicial roadkill, Hackett thought. Even his pal Graham Gage won’t be able to yank him out of the way of this steamroller.
Gage. Shit. He’d forgotten about Gage. Every insider in the legal community knew how close they were. And he was out there, somewhere-
But there’s nothing Gage can do for Burch. Conspiracies are about words, and the words Peterson is listening to are Matson’s.
Hackett breathed again and a blurry future snapped into focus: One way or another, guilty or innocent, Burch would have to take a plea. Despite Peterson’s grandstanding about giving Burch life, he’d offer twenty years, maybe twenty-five, and Burch would take it. Only idiots go down in flames.
And while Burch might be a crook, he wasn’t an idiot.
CHAPTER 12
G age and Spike were working the Take Back the Streets rally in Pacific Heights. Neither had spoken the words, but both knew they needed a witness to do what Burch might not live to do: identify the shooter.
Four hundred joggers and cyclists blocked the sloping intersection of Webster and Pacific. Uniformed officers ceded the street at Spike’s order and redirected traffic to the surrounding neighborhood. Television reporters with trailing camera crews worked the crowd, searching for anyone who knew Burch or Courtney, reaching for fragments of fact and grasping at rumors.