by Steven Gore
“I didn’t do it,” Norbett said. “Whatever it is, I didn’t do it.”
It was Gage’s turn to smile. “I know you didn’t.”
“Didn’t do what?”
“Whatever it was you said you didn’t do.”
Norbett straightened up, stuck his cigar in his mouth, and then reached out his hand.
“I think we’ve had this conversation before.”
“Three years ago, almost to the day. And you really didn’t do that one.”
Gage shook his hand, then glanced around for a cocktail waitress.
“Forget it,” Norbett said, “let’s get out of here.” He ducked his head as he scanned the crowd. “I don’t want to ruin my reputation by being seen with you.”
“What about my reputation?”
“I’m not sure it’s all that good with the offshore money laundering crowd anyway.”
Norbett led Gage across the terrace and through the lounge to the hotel lobby.
“What are you hungry for?” Norbett asked.
“Up to you. My treat.”
“I assumed it would be.”
Five minutes later the cab dropped them in front of the Copper Falls Steakhouse.
Gage pointed up at the restaurant sign. “How come here?”
“A free martini with every entree.”
“I guess that means you get two.”
Norbett winked. “Just what I was thinking.”
N orbett raised his martini to Gage’s soda water as they faced each other in the high-backed leather booth.
“To whatever.” Norbett set down his drink, then folded his hands on the tablecloth. “So, what’s whatever?”
“How’s business?”
“You get right to the point, don’t you? Since I got indicted in Miami last year, it’s been lousy.” Norbett pulled the toothpick out of his glass and sucked off the olive. “But I suspect you guessed that.”
“I thought your case was over.”
“It is. Dismissed.”
“How come?”
“It was all a misunderstanding.”
“And you clarified things for the government?”
“Let’s say, we had some discussions and they were satisfied with my explanations.”
Gage picked up his menu. He’d gotten the first bit of information he came for. What Norbett called discussions were what others called debriefing, snitching, and the suspicion he’d done so was probably the reason he was being treated as a pariah at the conference.
“What are you having?” Gage asked.
“I think the New York strip steak. I always liked New York, at least some parts.”
“You mean the Bank of New York.”
“They were good customers. Or at least their customers were good customers.”
“They’re not sending you their offshore trust business anymore?”
“They didn’t like seeing their name and mine in the same Wall Street Journal article under the headline: ‘Cayman Island Accountant Indicted in U.S. Tax Fraud Conspiracy.’ ”
Gage raised his glass. “To loyalty.”
“Not much of it around anymore.”
“Have you thought about going back to Toronto and starting over?”
“I’m too old, and I let my Canadian license lapse.”
The waitress delivered a second martini to Norbett, then took their orders.
“You pick up any business at the conference?” Gage asked.
Norbett spread his hands and shrugged. “Did it look like I picked up any business?” He leaned back in his seat. “Okay. Enough foreplay. What are you on the prowl for?”
“Information.”
“About what?”
“A group of companies run by Leonard Quinton.”
“I haven’t worked with Quinton for ten, twelve years. Even then I didn’t get all his work. Most of it, but not all.”
“You doing anything with him now?”
Norbett lifted his martini. “What were you saying about loyalty?” He took a sip, then set it down.
“I’m looking into Pegasus Limited,” Gage said.
Norbett’s eyebrows narrowed. “Pegasus?”
“Did you do the accounting?”
“For all the companies?”
“Any of the companies. I went to the Company Registry. There were three companies that made up the group-”
“Four.”
“Four?”
“One is in Bermuda. That’s where the insurance company finally ended up. They figured out it was better if the right hand didn’t know what the left hand was really doing, or at least how they were doing it.” Norbett smiled. “The bank account was here, but the company was there.”
“Let me guess. Cayman Exchange Bank.”
Norbett spread his hands. “Who else does Quinton use?”
They fell silent as the waitress delivered their salads and walked away.
Norbett stabbed at a piece of spinach and then locked his eyes on Gage’s.
“How about we cut to the proverbial chase?”
Gage nodded. “What’s your hourly rate?”
“For accounting?”
“For what we’ll call research.”
Norbett drummed the table with the fingers of his left hand. “I would say… maybe… ten thousand as a retainer and two hundred an hour.”
“I take it the retainer would be nonrefundable.”
“Call it catastrophic medical insurance. Because if anybody finds out…”
Chapter 65
" I’m picking up drumbeats from all over,” Brandon Meyer told Gage in his chambers in the San Francisco Federal Building the next day.
Gage had responded to Meyer’s voice mail demanding he call back by dropping by an hour and a half after his flight from the Caymans landed at SFO.
“Good ears.”
“I haven’t had a thing to do with Pegasus since I left my law firm, and the worst anyone can say is that what we did was in a gray area of tax law.” Brandon pounded his desk with his knuckle. “The IRS never even published a notice prohibiting the practice until two years after I was appointed to the bench.”
“That’s not the question the drums were asking,” Gage said, from where he stood near the window overlooking the city and the Pacific Ocean beyond. “The question is whether you had anything to do with the payoffs to Wilbert Hawkins and Ray Karopian in TIMCO.”
“And I assume the next accusation is I had something to do with the deaths of those two and recruited John Porzolkiewski to poison them.” Brandon smirked. “That verges on the ludicrous.”
“I’m not making that accusation. But I’m also not sure Porzolkiewski did it.”
“There was enough probable cause to arrest him. Despite your rather jaundiced view of how some judges do their work, none of us would sign a search warrant unless the probable cause was convincing.”
“Aren’t you worried about how convincing the evidence might be? And who might be implicated?”
Brandon’s face twisted with anger. “There’ll be hell to pay if my name is in it.”
“Your name isn’t. Anston’s is.”
Brandon rocked himself out of his chair and walked over to the bar. He poured two fingers of bourbon into a highball glass. He didn’t offer any to Gage. He took a sip as he turned back.
“You don’t have a clue about the relationship between Anston and Palmer, do you?” Brandon asked.
“I know exactly what their relationship was.”
“I don’t think so. You think there was ever a time in the twenty-some years they worked together that Marc Anston called up Charlie and said, ‘Get rid of the witnesses.’ It’s the same on both sides. You think any DEA agent has to skirt the law by telling a snitch to go search somebody’s house and check if the drugs are there before the agent bothers to get a warrant? The snitch knows what to do.”
“It’s not the law that’s rough, it’s how some people practice it.”
Brandon turned away and walked t
oward his desk.
“I don’t know why we’re talking about this,” Brandon said. “You can’t prove what Anston does has anything to do with me.”
“We’ll see.” Gage rose to his feet. “Did you get your wallet back from SFPD?”
“Yes.”
“Everything there?”
Brandon’s face colored as he slid onto his chair.
“I believe so.”
“Including the-”
“I said everything was there.”
Gage persisted. “Including the Cayman Citibank credit card?”
“Yes, including the credit card.”
“How do you pay the charges?”
“I don’t believe it’s any of your business.”
“You’re right, it’s not my business, except to the extent it’s paid for by money you and Anston received offshore for making TIMCO and other cases disappear.”
“It doesn’t make any difference where the firm received legal fees as long as it paid taxes on the income. And as far I know that was always done.”
“I’m not sure anyone would call the money you got from TIMCO a legal fee.”
“That’s neither here nor there since I’ve received no compensation, directly, indirectly, or deferred since I left the firm.”
“The money had to come from somewhere.”
“Don’t play naive. There are few things judges may do to earn money beyond their salaries. Books, lectures, and investments. And I don’t write books and I don’t give lectures.”
“Then why make the investments offshore?”
“Tax planning, man. What else?”
“There are lots of other possibilities.”
Brandon held up a palm toward Gage. His face went dark.
“Don’t even go there. I challenge you to find one instance where I profited from a decision in a case.”
“Thinking back over the records, there seem to be lots of payments to Pegasus from companies appearing in your court.” Gage waited a beat. Brandon’s expression remained fixed. “Aren’t you supposed to look offended now?”
Brandon waved away the accusation.
“The suggestion is too ludicrous. While I have no direct knowledge, I suspect you’ll find they were clients of Anston. Remember, he’s not a trial lawyer. He’s hired to advise on corporate issues. It was between him and his clients if he suggested offshore insurance is a wise investment. Countless U.S. corporations are engaged in self-insurance and he happens to be an expert in the field.”
“And your investment portfolio doesn’t include any of those corporations?”
“Yes, it does. But you’ll find I recused myself in each case involving those corporations. Check the dockets.”
“Look, there’s a reason why all these companies hire Anston to play trial lawyer, especially on cases in your court. They figure they’ll get something for their money.”
“That’s a crock. He files motions, the other side responds, then I decide them on the merits. The Ninth Circuit has never reversed me. Never. I make every decision with twenty-eight appeals court judges peering over my shoulder. I don’t control the entire game.”
Brandon rose again, then put his shoulders back and glared at Gage.
“I’m starting to lose patience with this little exercise,” Brandon said. “I have no need to explain my finances to you.” He pointed at Gage. “And I’m warning you. Make any of your accusations public and I’ll bury you. Anston will be more than happy to disclose whatever Pegasus bank records are required to show I didn’t receive a dime since I left the firm.”
Gage let the threat slide by.
“So Pegasus is Anston’s company?”
“Does it make a difference who owns it? I don’t know whether it was Anston’s or Charlie’s or somebody else’s. I never inquired.” Brandon paused and a half-smile came to his face. “Let’s just say Charlie and I had sort of an investment club. In exchange for his managing the fund, I let him piggyback off my investments.”
“Socorro doesn’t seem to have any record, not even a clue, what were the investments that funded her annuity and the life insurance policies for her kids.”
“That’s not my problem. Charlie apparently chose not to include her in on his financial decisions any more than I include my wife in mine.”
H e just walked out of the building,” Brandon Meyer told Marc Anston in a telephone call a few minutes after Gage left his chambers. “I can see him crossing Golden Gate Avenue, heading toward the parking lot.”
“What happened?”
“I conceded what I couldn’t deny. The plan worked perfectly. He’ll be spending the next month trying to prove you’re paying me off through Pegasus for decisions.”
“What about the credit card?”
“He’s still hung up on it. Just like he was when he went to see Quinton.”
“And TIMCO?”
“He’s obsessed with tying it to me, and me alone. You could’ve driven Hawkins to the airport yourself and he wouldn’t care.”
“Are you sure he hasn’t started to put it all together?”
“As sure as I can be.”
Chapter 66
The pattern is there, boss,” Alex Z told Gage as they sat with Shakir around the worktable in the Oakland loft. “I can match up fifty cases involving companies that made offshore insurance payments to Pegasus and appeared in Meyer’s court, some before and some after the money came into its CEB account.”
Alex Z pointed at the list of company names. “Nearly every company was a defendant in some kind of civil or criminal action. Toxic spills, industrial accidents, insider trading.”
“And at least some of them, like TIMCO, used Pegasus as a tax-deductible slush fund to pay off witnesses.”
“That’s what it looks like.”
“But it doesn’t get us anywhere unless it leads back to Brandon himself.”
“There are a hundred other companies that bought insurance that didn’t have cases in front of Meyer,” Alex Z said. “That seems to suggest this was solely an Anston-operated scam. Tax or otherwise.”
Gage thought back on his last meeting with Brandon and realized he was no longer sure what had been the judge’s purpose, now troubled, wondering whether it was a defense or a deflection.
“Why not just narrow our focus?” Alex Z said. “Go after Anston and try to reopen TIMCO and Moki’s cases? Maybe sic the IRS on the fake insurance scam?”
“Because everything that’s happened began with the wallet. It’s a link between Charlie and Brandon and led to Charlie’s death. I’m sure of it. And Socorro won’t be safe until we figure out why.”
Gage scanned the list of Pegasus star names to which Alex Z had added the wire transfer information from Joe Casey.
“Quinton referred to what Charlie was doing as investments,” Gage said. “And Brandon said he and Charlie had a sort of investment club.”
Shakir spoke up. “Sounds like they’re trying to push you in that direction-”
Gage smiled. “Us.” He pointed at Shakir. “You’re in this, too, kid.”
Shakir smiled back. “Thanks, boss.”
“And they’re succeeding in moving us that way,” Gage said, “either because they’re clean or because it’s a dead end.”
“It seems like a dead end,” Alex Z said. “None of the acronyms match the names of any of the companies that appeared in his court or were part of the insurance scam. And we haven’t been able to match them with the cases Anston handled.”
Gage leaned forward, resting his elbows on his thighs and interlinking his fingers. He closed his eyes, thinking.
Finally, he opened them.
“Maybe they really did have a little investment club,” Gage said, “and they’re more than happy if we spend our time investigating it. There’s nothing illegal about him and Charlie investing together.” He glanced at Alex Z, and then pointed at the star list. “Did you compare those acronyms with Charlie’s retirement account statements?”
Gage shook his head. “We’re not seeing something. It could be something as simple as Brandon not wanting it exposed in the press that he’s using offshore money to make investments. It would remind voters that Landon is a child of privilege and not a regular guy.”
“I don’t know,” Alex Z said. “We’ve had lots of wealthy presidential candidates who swaggered around like itinerant cowboys and golly-gee-whiz farmers and voters bought the act.”
“Maybe times have changed.” Gage rose and said to Alex Z, “Run GRID and the rest through the code-breaking program again. See if any meaningful words emerge unrelated to either cases or investments.”
Gage stepped toward the door, then turned back and smiled as he pointed down at Shakir’s forearm.
“I like the tattoo,” Gage said.
Shakir grinned and held it out. “Mighty Mouse.”
Chapter 67
" I wish I could’ve delivered a clean victory, Mr. President,” Landon Meyer told President Duncan in the Oval Office, “but it doesn’t appear possible. The vice president will have to break the tie, assuming there’s no filibuster.”
Duncan rose from his desk chair and walked the few steps toward the window facing the South Lawn. He centered himself as though the pose would be memorialized someday as part of a Smithsonian retrospective on presidential decision making.
Landon almost turned his head toward the door to see whether the White House photographer had slipped in behind him.
“I don’t see a filibuster in the works,” Duncan said. “None of the Democrats would even mention the word on the Sunday talk shows.”
“Still, all it takes is one and we’ll have a constitutional showdown. It’s one thing to filibuster a district court judge, another to filibuster a justice of the Supreme Court.”
Duncan returned to his desk. He picked up the telephone and pressed the intercom. He listened, and then said, “I need you in here.”