Critical Mass

by Steve Martini

  “Let Thorn worry about that. Besides the Russian is supposed to handle all of that. He is well trained. Knows what he is doing.”

  “Yeah. So well trained he’s sitting in some county jail as we speak.”

  “The Russian’s my problem,” said Oscar.

  “Your problem?”

  “Thorn has a plan to get him out.”

  “He’d better do it quickly. I’m not handling that bomb.”

  “You worry too much.”

  “That’s what they said in Chernobyl. Now they’re all producing children with four legs and a single eye in the middle of their forehead. It’s just that I would like to have at least one more child,” said Henry. “And not be shooting blanks into the wife.”

  “We’d be doing posterity a favor,” said Oscar.

  They both laughed. Henry would have laughed harder if he wasn’t so concerned about the risks.

  “In the meantime, as the good old boys say over in Deming, ‘Get me two ass-chewin’ dogs.’ Got it?” Oscar mimicked the tough talk of the rednecks who believed they had hired him.

  Henry nodded. The meeting was over. Oscar headed back toward his truck.

  “Ah,” he turned around. “I almost forgot. We are going to need some raw sewage. Get somebody to bring in one of those portable latrines. You know the kind? Set it up out front there and tell everybody in here to use it. Better yet, lock the latrine around back so they don’t have a choice.”

  “What for?”

  “Never mind. Just do it.”

  TUKWILA, WA

  Oscar Chaney knew he was going to get it, one way or the other: either an exploding dye pack or the infamous electronic wafer.

  After he’d gone fifteen blocks and nothing blew up inside his car, he figured it had to be the wafer.

  There were a lot of stupid crimes but none quite as witless as bank robbery, and Chaney knew it. Still, he had no choice. It was the one sure way to get busted by the Feds. Bank robbery was a federal offense. They would lock him up at Kent. The federal government had a contract with the county to house its prisoners at the Kent jail pending trial. The Russian was there, and Chaney had to get him out before the FBI discovered who they had.

  Chaney had warned Chenko to keep a low profile. Instead the Russian started visiting the red light district downtown. Three days ago, Chenko tried to use Russian rubles to pay a hooker for services rendered. He had gotten drunk and abusive. The woman had made a scene, and her pimp had gotten involved. Chenko got a cut lip. The pimp ended up looking down the business end of a Taurus .45 automatic. Fortunately only loud words were exchanged, no gunfire. But by then cops had shown up. Chenko and the pimp both had been taken into custody. A check with immigration had shown the Russian was in the country illegally. That and the weapons charge had landed him in the Kent jail.

  Chaney kept looking at the brown paper bag on the front seat next to him. He had allowed the teller to pick and choose. He knew that she’d given him one of the “bait packs.” They were usually stacks of hundreds, something a robber wouldn’t turn down. The old technology was the dye pack: an exploding bundle of bills containing an indelible dye, usually a bright neon color, orange or green, with a little tear gas mixed in for good measure. If it exploded, it would be all over Chaney as well as the inside of his car. It was the kind of forensic evidence a prosecutor loved. Tell your lawyer to explain that to the jury.

  The dye pack had one drawback. If it exploded early, inside the bank, an edgy robber with a gun could panic and take hostages or, worse, start shooting.

  The newest rage among the law enforcement set was the electronic wafer. Pasted between two hundred-dollar bills, the credit-card-sized transmitter was triggered by the spring-loaded wheel of the cash drawer. As soon as the teller pulled it out, the transmitter started sending a silent signal that the cops could track.

  Chaney figured they were already behind him, a train of unmarked cars following slowly in traffic. Why do a high-speed chase when you could beat the suspect and meet him at his house? The cops operated through a Violent Crimes Task Force, a mix of local, state, and federal agencies, a SWAT team packing automatic weapons. For this reason, Chaney didn’t carry a gun. He figured the teller wouldn’t ask to see it if he put his hand in his pocket and threatened her. The idea was to get busted and booked into the Kent jail, not to get shot.

  He had only two days to find the Russian and get him out. Without Chenko, the entire plan would have to be called off. Only the Russian could assemble the device and make sure it would work.

  Chaney turned the corner and saw the lights: blue, red, and white flashing from five patrol cars at the end of the street. They had it barricaded off. Shotguns and rifles pointed.

  Three more cars screeched up behind him and blocked the intersection. With their doors open for cover, the cops took up positions with weapons drawn and the bullhorn came out.

  “Step out of the car with your hands up. Where we can see ‘em. Now.”

  Chaney had all ten fingers out through the open window of the car before they finished talking.

  FOUR

  FRIDAY HARBOR, WA

  When Joselyn got to the law office in the morning, she noticed that Sam’s car was already in the garage. Sam was early. Samantha Hawthorne was her landlady and her best friend on the island.

  Sam was hard-core. She was immune to island fever, a survivor who could find a niche in hell if she had to. She had been in Friday Harbor for fifteen years and, therefore, was almost a native.

  Samantha was forty-five, and looked thirty, buxom and brunette, too mean to be married, a person to be reckoned with. On her office door was a wooden placard, carved and painted. Under her name were the words:

  COUNSELOR AND HYPNOTHERAPIST

  When Joselyn headed down the corridor to her office, she saw Sam’s door open. Sam was sitting inside behind her desk and a large pile of papers.

  “Glad you could make it,” said Sam. “Sleep in, did we?”

  Joss looked at her watch. “It’s only nine o’clock.”

  “Yes, and some of us have been working. Heavy date last night?”

  “Right. With a corporate form book.” Joselyn had spent the evening until the wee hours working up the documentation on Belden’s corporation.

  “Your phone’s been ringing off the hook all morning,” said Sam.

  They shared a telephone system that Sam had installed when she moved in. She was hopeful of picking up a few more tenants so that they could soon share the cost of a receptionist.

  “I finally answered it in self-defense,” she said. “Couldn’t get any work done.” She pushed a pink telephone slip across the top of her desk. Joselyn walked in and picked it up.

  “Cup of coffee?” Sam asked.

  The telephone message was from Dean Belden.

  “No. I had some on the way in. Was it urgent?”

  “Hmm?”

  “The message?” Her week to get the job done had not yet passed, and he was calling already.

  “Not what I would call desperate,” said Sam. “Just judging from the tone of voice, I would say he’s not the type to panic.”

  Sam was a quick study, even with only a voice on the phone to work with. She poured herself a cup of coffee from the machine on the credenza behind her desk.

  “Yeah. But did he say what he wanted?”

  “We didn’t get that intimate.” She sipped her coffee and looked at Joselyn over the top of the mug. “He wants you to call him. What is he? Domestic? Criminal?”

  “Nothing you’d be interested in.”

  “How do you know? He sounded pretty good on the phone.”

  “He’s a business client. And he pays up front.” Joss shot Sam a wicked grin.

  “Then I’m definitely interested. Business is always filled with stress.” Sam winked across the desk at her. “Perhaps he could use a little counseling.”

  “Don’t get your hopes up. Dean Belden doesn’t seem like the kinda guy who lets a little stres
s get in his way. What are you doing for lunch?”

  “Give me a call,” said Sam.

  Joselyn headed to her office, opened the door, and dropped her purse and briefcase on the chair. She dialed Belden’s number. On the first ring, he picked it up.

  “Yeah.” The tone was somewhat more harsh, less refined than at their last meeting.

  “Mr. Belden. Joselyn Cole. You called.”

  “Ah. Ms. Cole.” His voice turned softer, more polished. “I have a problem,” he said. “I have to see you today.” It was more like a command than a request. Belden seemed used to telling people what to do.

  “As soon as possible,” he said.

  He wanted his money back. Joselyn could smell it. He’d found another lawyer.

  “I’ve started work on the documents,” she told him.

  “That’s good.”

  “Filed for corporate name identification already. I’ve reserved the name.”

  “Excellent,” he said.

  “I thought we were going to get together next week. Everything should be done by then.”

  “This has nothing to do with that. Something has come up.”

  “I see. Well, when do you want to meet?”

  “Right now. I’ll be in your office in twenty minutes.”

  Before she could say another word, he hung up.

  Fifteen minutes later, Joselyn heard footsteps on the landing outside her office. The door to reception opened and closed.

  “I’m in here.” She yelled through the closed door to her office.

  Belden poked his head through a couple of seconds later. “I hope I’m not interrupting your day too much. Thanks for meeting me on such short notice.”

  “It’s all right. Come on in. What’s the problem?”

  “I don’t know how to explain it,” he said. “I’m a little embarrassed. I’ve never had anything like this happen to me before. Not even a traffic ticket in ten years.”

  “What is it?”

  He sat down in one of the client chairs across from her desk.

  “Yesterday I was in my office, finishing some paperwork. This man walks in. He was dressed in a blue suit and black cowboy boots. He had a big mustache. Anyway, he was somewhat disheveled. He asked me if I was Dean Belden. Looking at the guy, I wasn’t sure if I should say yes or no. You understand?”

  She nodded.

  “He was big. Not very polite, pretty beefy, mostly around the middle. Like a potted-out policeman. I told him I was Belden. What else could I do?”

  “And?”

  “And he hands me this.” Belden reached into his inside coat pocket and pulled out an envelope. “Then, just like that, the man turned and walked out of my office.”

  He reached across the desk and handed her the envelope. It was already slit open across the top by something sharp.

  Joselyn pulled a single folded piece of paper from the inside, and spread it out on her desk.

  It was wrinkled and folded and had several coffee stains with the round imprint of a mug where it was picked up and laid down on top of the paper. Some of the typed letters were smudged.

  “What in the world happened to this?”

  “I got a little coffee on it,” said Belden.

  “A little? I can’t read the date of the appearance,” said Joselyn.

  “Wednesday,” he told her. “I assume you’re free?”

  She looked at her calendar but didn’t answer the question.

  “So I guess the guy was a process server,” said Belden. “How was I supposed to know?”

  “Either that or a U.S. marshal.” She tried to read between the lines of what was on the page, as well as what was on Belden’s face, in his eyes. The paper was brief and his expression an enigma.

  “What’s it about?” she asked.

  “Search me.”

  “I mean, you must have some idea why they want to talk to you?”

  “I don’t have a clue.”

  She was not sure she believed him.

  He put two fingers up like some kind of scout. “I swear.”

  Typical of a federal grand jury, the subpoena compelling Belden to appear in Seattle disclosed nothing about the substance of the government’s inquiry. In this country, a federal grand jury probe is the closest thing to Courts of Inquisition or a Star Chamber that exists. There are few rights, nothing that comes close to cross-examination, and no right to counsel inside the jury room. There are no real rules of evidence. The only thing they can’t do is torture you, and on that you must take the government’s word.

  “Was there anything else inside the envelope?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like a letter? Any instructions?”

  “No. Just what you see.”

  “That’s probably good news,” she told him.

  “Why?”

  “There’s no target letter.”

  “What’s that?”

  “If you were the target of their investigation, they’d have to notify you, give you what is called a target letter. Informing you of your rights. Mostly the right to remain silent. The fact that you didn’t get one probably means they’re looking at somebody else. You’re just a witness.”

  “What should I do?”

  “First thing is not to discuss the subpoena with anybody else. You haven’t, have you?”

  “No.”

  “Good. If you were a target I would advise you to take the Fifth Amendment. Make an appearance so they can’t hold you in contempt, but say nothing. You can still do that of course, and it might be prudent.”

  “Won’t they think I’m guilty of something if I refuse to cooperate?”

  “What they think can’t hurt you. Only what they can prove.”

  The problem with a federal grand jury probe was its range. Irrelevance was a concept that did not exist. They could turn your life upside down, subpoena all of your neighbors and business associates, spend a year defaming you by inference, and produce nothing but a sizable grease spot on your good name.

  “In searching for someone else’s crime, they may find one of your own,” she told him.

  “I’ve never done anything wrong.”

  “Saint Belden,” said Joselyn. “I see.” She looked at him, her own dark eyes matching the emerald look that stared back from across the desk. “And your tax returns,” she said. “I suppose all of those are up to snuff, too? Never claimed any deductions you can’t justify?”

  He looked up almost whimsically toward the ceiling. “Ah, now, let me see.” He thought for a moment. Put a single forefinger to his lips. “I don’t think so. No. I’m sure of it. My only offense is one of lust, and that unfortunately has been committed only in my heart.”

  Joss couldn’t help herself. She fought back laughter.

  “Please,” she said. “This is serious.”

  “I know.”

  “If you want to cooperate with them, that’s fine. But I would get something in return.”

  “I’m trying,” he said.

  “Please, Mr. Belden.”

  “Call me Dean,” he told her.

  “Dean. You could get in real trouble. A good lawyer would demand immunity, just to be safe.”

  “If that’s what you think we should do.”

  “If you’re not a target, the government shouldn’t care about granting you immunity. Perhaps use immunity.”

  “What’s that?”

  “As opposed to transactional. What it means is that the government can’t use anything you say before the grand jury to prosecute you, as long as you tell them the truth.”

  “The trouble you can get into just doing what the government says. What’s it all about?” said Belden. “I mean what are they looking for?”

  “You don’t have any idea?”

  He shook his head.

  “They must think you have information they want.”

  “What information?”

  “Think,” she told him. “Anything to do with your business?”


  He shook his head slowly, as if searching his memory for some clue.

  “What kind of business were you in before you came to the islands?”

  “Electronics. It’s always been electronics. I’ve never done anything else. It’s my business. All I know.”

  “Maybe someone you did business with?”

  Suddenly there was a glimmer of light in those green eyes. He slapped his forehead with one hand. “Of course! Why didn’t I think of it?”

  “Think of what?”

  “Max Sperling. That’s it. It has to be.”

  “Who’s Max Sperling?”

  “I had some business dealings with him two years ago. Or was it three?” He thought for a second. “Yeah, probably closer to three. He was a supplier of electronic parts out of the Silicon Valley. I heard he had some trouble with the law about a year ago, dealing in some stolen microchips or something. I didn’t pay much attention at the time. I wasn’t doing business with him anymore.”

  “What did you buy from him?”

  “Microchips.”

  Bells started going off in Joselyn’s head.

  “How many?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Couple of hundred thousand dollars’ worth. It was a small order. He was a small supplier among independents. Moved up and down the coast.”

  She had visions of this guy selling out of the trunk of his car, and she wondered what Belden really knew.

  “He traveled. His warehouse was down in the Bay Area. At least that’s what he told me. At the time chips were hard to come by, especially the items he had.”

  “What made these chips special?”

  “They were for switches, specially designed stuff for certain kinds of electronics.”

  The next question she framed with extreme delicacy.

  “At the time that you bought these chips from Mr. Sperling, you didn’t have any reason to suspect that they were stolen?”

  She led him with a wink and a nod. You never want to know with absolute certainty that your client committed a crime, especially one with as many avenues of escape as receiving stolen property.

  He shook his head solemnly. “No. Never. Not the slightest hint.”

  “Let’s talk about the price you paid for these chips,” she told him. What Belden thought was one thing. What a jury might think was something else.