I looked out the windshield and thought for a moment, then turned back to Mick. “So Gates could be part of the executive branch, maybe even the chairman?”
Mick said, “I guess so.”
“This is starting to make some sense. Let’s assume Gates is the chairman and sent you the kill orders. He’s the dirty agent behind this conspiracy. He showed up at the wharf to make sure you finished the job.”
Mick nodded. “It’s a definite possibility, very likely even.”
“Now we have to figure out why he sent you after Stanley and me. Why would a federal agent want us dead? I think we…” I stopped mid-sentence because Karla jammed out of the Chevron station and raced toward the car. By the time she reached our vehicle, Mick and I were standing on either side of the hood.
She gasped a little. “Stanley’s gone.”
“What do you mean ‘gone’?” I said.
“I mean, gone, gone,” she replied. “He crawled out the bathroom window on the other side of the station. It was left wide open.”
“What? Why?” Mick said.
Karla motioned us toward the bathroom. “You have to see this.”
We followed her into the men’s bathroom. I stopped when I saw the message hastily scrawled across the mirror with a soapy finger.
It read: ‘DONT KNOW WHAT’S REAL ANYMORE. SORRY’.
CHAPTER 21
What’s not real?” I said. “I don’t get this kid. Not at all. What reality is he unsure of?”
Mick looked out the bathroom window. “We need to find the kid and ask him. He’s only had a five-minute head start. He must’ve gone north out the window, otherwise we would have seen him. I’ll go on foot.”
I followed Mick out of the bathroom. “Karla and I will take the car. We’ll drive straight north for five, then grid our way back. Let’s meet back here in twenty minutes or so.”
Mick nodded and took off. Karla beat me back to the car. I jumped in and peeled out of the parking lot, only to stop a second later.
“What’s wrong?” Karla asked.
“I have a bad feeling about something.”
I hopped out, popped the trunk, and rummaged around. After a thorough search, I slammed the trunk and crawled back into the driver’s seat.
“He took a gun,” Karla said. “Didn’t he?”
I nodded. “Your Colt.”
“That punk,” Karla said. “So that’s why he took his back pack. What is he up to?”
I jammed on the accelerator and headed north on the street directly in front of the gas station. “I don’t know. All I know is the kid was acting strange when we got into this car. I’m not imagining that, right?”
“You’re right. He was even more fidgety than usual.”
“And it wasn’t that hot in here, was it?”
“No, he was clearly stressed. He wanted out of this car, using the bathroom as an excuse.”
“Don’t know what’s real anymore.” I drummed my fingers on the wheel. “Strange thing to write, isn’t it?”
“Sort of.”
“What do you mean, sort of?”
“Well, he kept asking Mick if he was ‘really’ trying to kill him.”
“True, the kid was having a hard time with reality.”
“Why would he think none of this was real, though? That’s what I don’t get.”
I nodded. “What I don’t get is if the kid had finally started to grasp the reality of his situation, why would he leave us? We’re trying to protect him. Does he think the Colt is going to protect him better than us?”
Karla eyed me. “There’s more to his story than he’s letting on.”
“Absolutely. We have to find him.”
“We will.”
“Another odd thing; he left his laptop in the trunk.”
Karla scratched her head. “That is weird.”
I nodded. “I have no idea what Stanley Tuchek is up to.”
I drove north for another two minutes, then turned and headed east for a couple of minutes. After that, I headed south until the next cross street. I turned right onto that street and worked my way west for a few minutes, then headed south and turned east. I followed that same pattern and worked back toward the gas station. Karla and I didn’t talk. We kept glued to our respective side windows. It took twenty-three minutes to arrive back at the Chevron.
When I pulled in and parked, I turned to Karla. “He’s gone.”
“Little jerk,” she said.
“Maybe Mick tracked him down.”
“No such luck.” Karla pointed past me, toward the station.
Mick trotted out of the bathroom and headed our way. A moment later, he slipped into the back seat.
“No sign of him?” I asked.
Mick shook his head. “What’s this kid up to? We’ve got to find him. We’ve got to end this. For my family’s sake, for everyone’s.”
“We will.” I pulled out the backup snapcell Stanley had given me. I dialed his number. Turning to Karla, I said, “It’s worth a shot.”
No answer, however. I didn’t bother leaving a voicemail. Instead, I dropped the gearshift into drive and squealed out of the lot.
“Where are you going?” Karla asked.
“The kid’s not stupid enough to go back home, is he?”
“There’ll be a team at his house,” Karla said. “I don’t think he’s that dumb. Should we call it in? Do we trust Hornsby or Frank?”
“I trust Frank,” I said. “But I’m not ready to call him yet. I have a better idea.”
Karla looked at me. “Which is?”
I thought for a second, just to make sure it was a good idea, then said, “We go to his father. We can trust him. We know he’s not involved in a plan to murder his own son. Plus, he may have an idea where Stanley’s scampered off to.”
Mick leaned forward. “There’ll probably be a team there.”
“Good point,” Karla said.
“Where would the governor be?” Mick asked. “I know he’s in LA because of Stanley, but his home is in Sacramento, isn’t it?”
“He has a big place in the valley,” Karla said. “Hop north on the 605, I know where it is. I met the governor there yesterday. He wanted to meet before I ran the investigation.”
It took twenty minutes to get there. Along the way, we theorized about what Stanley was up to. We came up with nothing promising. No decent theories at all. We all agreed we simply had to find Stanley and grill the kid.
When we arrived at the governor’s house, I drove past the front gates and parked down the street. His place was beyond big; gargantuan, in fact. The property was hillside and surrounded by old sycamore trees. A six-foot iron fence encircled the whole perimeter. The actual house was nowhere to be seen from the road.
“If we don’t trust the feds,” Karla said, “we can’t drive up to the front gate and announce our presence. Everyone will be tipped off before the gate opens.”
“If a team is here,” I said. “They could have left by now. It’s late.”
“Someone is likely to be around,” Mick said. “Why don’t you guys sit tight and I’ll go see what vehicles are here.”
Karla nodded.
Mick was the obvious choice for reconnaissance. We didn’t need to remind him to be careful. Staying undetected was what he did for a living.
After Mick closed the door, Karla and I sat in silence for a few minutes.
Finally, she turned and said, “I’ve been thinking.”
“Uh-oh.”
“You never did tell me about the ‘Mag’ nickname. You were about to, but we got interrupted.”
“You’re right,” I said. “The kid interrupted us with his call, didn’t he?”
“Let’s hear the story then.” Karla shifted and put her back against the passenger door.
I unbuckled my seatbelt and turned to my right. “You already know the YouTube story, so I might as well.” I smiled. “I’m sure your opinion of me is awfully low, and this story will keep it there.”
&nb
sp; She smiled back. “I admire your vigilantism.”
“Perhaps you’ll admire me more then. This story makes it look like I went easy on that soldier.”
She waved her hand. “Go on then.”
“The nickname comes from a case I worked a couple of years ago.” I paused because it felt weird telling the story. The only person I’d told the full story to was Doc Jules.
“Which case?”
I cleared my throat. “I was lead investigator on the Giovanni Russo case.” I didn’t say anything else, wanting to see how long it would take Karla to connect the dots.
Exactly twelve seconds. That was when her eyes went wide.
“So you were that guy?” she said. “You were responsible?”
I nodded.
She did something I didn’t expect; she smiled.
Her eyes lit up. “Tell me how it went down. It’s been a couple of years and my memory is a little foggy.”
Barely anyone knew exactly what had gone down. There was a lot of speculation over the incident, and still was, so I laid the truth out for her.
“As I’m sure you know, Giovanni Russo owned the nationwide Motel 7 chain, which he made a decent living from. But the real money he made came from the deal he had with the government.”
Karla nodded. “He took in criminals and gave them a place to live, I remember that.”
I held up my finger. “But not just any criminals. Violent sexual offenders were his specialty, offenders who had recently been released from prison or paroled. The freaks that no cities or neighborhoods or communities would take. But Russo saw a good business opportunity. His West Coast motels were suffering a lot since the 2008 economic meltdown. On average only 35% of the rooms were booked on any given day. So Russo knew he had plenty of space to house these criminals. Since the problem of where to house the criminals was nationwide, every state struggled for placement. Russo knew that California would be a big draw for these perverts. Which makes sense. Wouldn’t you rather live in California than the middle of Nebraska?”
“Absolutely,” Karla said.
“So Russo brokered a deal with the prison system and parole board. He’d take these criminals into his motels—”
“For a big price tag, I imagine.”
“Sure,” I said. “A huge kickback from the feds. Initially, everything appeared above board. Lengthy contracts were drawn up and huge stipulations were in place.”
Karla furrowed her brow. “Like what?”
“The housing was to be transitional. Three months at most. Only a limited number of criminals in any motel, in any location, at any given time. Nowhere near an elementary school, that sort of thing.”
“Got it. So what happened?”
I paused for a moment, then said, “Pico Rivera happened.”
Karla looked out the side window. “Right, a child was abducted and raped from that school in Pico Rivera. I remember that.” She looked back.
I nodded. “And the culprit was a registered sex offender. Except the guy was registered in Iowa. He was supposed to be living in some sleepy little city in the middle of that state. But he turned up in California doing his dirty business. That fact triggered the feds’ involvement. Which is where I came in. I was with the Violent Crimes division of the local field office at that time. I was tasked with the investigation.”
“This was before the YouTube affair, I guess.” Karla tapped my knee.
I laughed. She had a knack for getting away with things. I imagined she could call me Gary and I wouldn’t mind.
“It was,” I said. “Anyway, it was a long, drawn-out investigation. I spent every waking hour figuring out the racket. Wouldn’t let any detail go.”
“What was the gist?”
“Russo’s motels had become flooded with violent sex offenders. He housed approximately 1,000 offenders, but he was only supposed to have a hundred, maximum. Of course, the official books said he only housed a hundred, so those books were clearly being cooked. It was basically a giant shell game. If you went online to look at where these offenders were living, everything looked spread out across the country. But in reality, nine hundred sex offenders were living where they weren’t supposed to be. And Russo was contracted to receive two grand a month per offender.”
Karla held out her left hand. “Wait a second. Two grand a month per offender, and he had unofficially a thousand. That’s two million a month.”
My eyes went big. “I know.”
She squinted at me. “How’d they get away with this? Must’ve been a huge government conspiracy. Right?”
“That’s where things get tricky.”
“Tricky? How so?”
“Clint Clemens, the head of the third branch of government, the federal judiciary, had his signature and handiwork all over this thing. He and Russo were supposedly in cahoots.”
“Just the two of them?”
I shrugged. “Clemens probably had a few other officers to help with the paperwork. But when the officers were questioned, they naturally pointed up the chain and said they were just following orders. Nobody really knows who Clemens involved, it’s still speculation to this day. Clemens’ office had a second set of books and files for these nine hundred offenders. In these files, paperwork for a California transfer was completed and signed, except no dates were on the form. So if anyone questioned why a registered offender wasn’t in the proper locale—”
“Clemens would falsify the date, then produce the paperwork.”
“Exactly. Clemens would simply say the paperwork was just filed and the offender’s whereabouts hadn’t been updated in the system yet.”
Karla leaned forward. “You mention the books. What about the money?”
“The accounting appeared legit, but ultimately the funds were funneled through a variety of shell organizations and sent to a few offshore and Swiss accounts which were traced back to Russo’s name.”
Karla cocked her head at me. “Sounds like a major conspiracy still.”
“It is, and the feds knew it, but still it’s a little tricky. The director and deputy director of the FBI wanted Clemens big time. They knew they couldn’t absolve the government of any wrongdoing; they were well beyond that stage. I’m sure ideally they wanted to pin everything on Russo, but since they couldn’t do that, they wanted to pin everything on Clemens. In particular, they wanted to stress that he acted alone in this, that there was no widespread conspiracy. Here was where it got really bad—”
“Let me guess,” Karla said, shaking her head. “They turned Russo against Clemens.”
I banged my fist onto the steering wheel. “Yup, they were willing to cut Russo a lightened sentence if he turned state’s evidence against Clemens. The bastards even approached me and told me to offer Russo the deal.”
Karla’s eyes went wide. “Did you?”
“I had to. I was lead investigator and this came directly from the top. And Russo, the slimy prick, had the balls to negotiate with me.”
“What do you mean?”
“He wanted to dictate the terms to us. Said he would turn over all the evidence on Clemens provided he got no jail time and the feds didn’t touch his money.”
Karla sat back. “This guy is something else.”
“I’m not sure who’s worse, Russo or the feds. Because the feds basically agreed to all his terms.”
She blew out a breath. “You’re kidding.”
I banged the wheel again. “I’m not. They agreed to no jail time and said he could keep his offshore money. The feds didn’t want to admit it was there anyway. They made Russo sell the motel chain, which he made a fortune off of, then they made him leave the country. He’s not allowed back into the U.S., ever. That’s the only original term they stuck to.”
“Unbelievable,” Karla said. “But it still sounds like a pretty cut and dried conspiracy. You said Clemens was supposedly in cahoots with Russo. What do you mean by supposedly?”
“In all this, we, including me, thought Clemens was beyo
nd corrupt, that he was skimming money or getting a kickback from Russo. Somehow the guy must’ve been profiting from all this corruption. Otherwise, why do it? The problem was we couldn’t find a trace of any money coming back to him. In fact, the guy was squeaky clean and living pretty much below his means. Most of his salary went toward college tuition payments for three of his kids. The guy drove a four-year-old Subaru Outback and his wife drove a five-year-old Honda Odyssey. And they hadn’t been on a vacation in over six years. It didn’t add up. Also, when Clemens was arrested, he totally shut down. Never sought legal counsel, never made a formal or informal statement about his involvement. Never claimed innocence. It was strange. He represented himself at his arraignment, too.”
“Naturally you followed up,” Karla said.
I nodded. “Of course, but initially Clemens wouldn’t even let me visit him in prison. So I visited his family. Right away I knew something was wrong.”
Karla narrowed her eyes. “How so?”
“They seemed nervous that I was even there. And I was asking pretty innocuous questions, nothing to get nervous about. After ten minutes, I figured it out; they weren’t nervous, they were scared, terrified really. That’s when it dawned on me that Russo had probably threatened Clemens or his family, or both. He was blackmailing Clemens. As soon as I asked if Russo had threatened them, the eldest son demanded that I leave. Actually, he pointed at the door and told me to get the hell out. I didn’t want to upset them more, so I left. Went right back to the prison, but Clemens refused to see me again. So I bribed a guard to pass a note to Clemens.”
Karla smiled. “I love how nonchalantly you say ‘I bribed a guard’. What did the note say?”
I paused, remembering the exact words. “ ‘I know Russo threatened your family. Let’s talk’.”
“And that worked?” Karla asked.
I nodded. “Sure did. Clemens met with me within five minutes of getting that note. And he came right out of his shell. Begged me to drop everything and leave him alone. Like his son, he told me to get the hell out and stay away. I wouldn’t, of course, but Clemens wouldn’t talk either, about anything specific or acknowledge any threats that had been made. We reached a stalemate. By that point, though, I knew for sure Russo had him by the balls because Clemens was terrified, just like his family. I could see it in his eyes. I could tell he would probably never talk. In the end, we struck a deal. If he talked and told me the true story, I promised not to pursue Russo nor go public with anything; to basically drop everything and periodically check in on his family.”
The Greatest Good Page 17