Power Blind (13 page)

Chapter 30

I
t pisses me off.” Skeeter threw his gym bag at the side of his silver Mercedes in the night-shadowed gym parking lot. “You blew past me like I'm the kid who gets sand kicked in his face.”

“Don't take it so hard,” Gage said. “You're ten years older than I am.”

Skeeter shook his head. “Well, at least I'm better-looking.”

Gage laughed. “We both know that's not true.”

“Well, maybe once.”

“Okay, you can have that.”

Skeeter popped open his trunk and tossed the bag in. The glow of the neon sign of the auto repair shop next door revealed a sober expression when he returned to stand next to Gage.

“I'm not sure there's any way to reopen the Porzolkiewski case,” Skeeter said. “I'll have some associates do the research and let you know.” He slammed a fist into his palm and his voice hardened. “I knew Hawkins lied in his deposition, I just couldn't prove it, and I suspected Charlie Palmer had something to do with getting him out of the country.”

“Why didn't you ask me to find out?”

Skeeter threw up his hands. “Don't you think I wanted to? Almost every time I've called in the last twenty years, you've been between nine and fifteen time zones away. And that's probably what happened back then.”

“Sorry.”

“It's not your fault. It's my frustration. But I'll tell you this . . . if I could connect the dots all the way to Brandon, I'd get his ass impeached.”

“Don't we both wish.”

Skeeter leaned back against his car. “I've been thinking about your talk with Wilbert Hawkins. What's he been living on?”

“A flat million-dollar payoff. It'll last ten lifetimes in India.”

“What about his wife? Is she getting some of it?”

“Nope. He signed over his retirement to her. He only had nineteen years in, but he was vested and she lives cheap. Just beer and McDonald's.”

“Any way to link the million to TIMCO?”

“Hawkins said the money went through a Caribbean account. Even if he could've remembered the name and the island, we'd never get the records, but we're going through Charlie's computer and all his files, not just for that but, for anything suspicious.”

“That links to Brandon?”

“He's just one of the names. Charlie left lots enemies behind.”

Gage joined Skeeter in leaning against the car, then folded his arms across his chest.

“Let me try something out on you,” Gage said.

“Shoot.”

“Just between us.”

Skeeter nodded.

“Everybody seems to agree that some of Brandon's rulings are bizarre, but they're always solid enough to withstand appeal.”

“He's a master of making a record that boxes in the Ninth Circuit,” Skeeter said. “His main trick is to make uncontestable factual findings that force appeals court judges to frame the issues exactly the way he wants them to. But his so-called facts of the case are usually pure fantasy. Fan-ta-sy . . . that asshole.”

Gage looked over at Skeeter. “You ever wonder if Brandon is taking payoffs?”

Skeeter whistled. “That's heavy.”

“I know.”

“You mean through Marc Anston?”

“He's the attorney of choice for nearly every company that either gets sued or criminally charged in Brandon's court. An inflated fee, then a wink and a nod and the money ends up in Brandon's bank account.”

“Sure would explain a lot,” Skeeter said. “But really hard to prove. Maybe impossible.”

“You have a couple of associates you can trust with something like this?”

“What do you have in mind?”

“We're putting together a list of all of the companies that have appeared in Brandon's court. Maybe your people can analyze Brandon's rulings in those cases and can detect a pattern.”

“I've got a couple of kids who can do it, but . . .” Skeeter raised his eyebrows.

“But you're wondering if they'll end up like Shakir.”

“Yeah, I heard about what happened. How's he doing?”

“He'll be out of the hospital in a couple of days. I wouldn't worry about your associates. The guys who went after Shakir were after something secret, not something anybody can find in a court file—”

“But only if they knew what they were looking for.”

“Right. If they knew what they were looking for.”

Chapter 31

F
inally.” Joe Casey leaned back in his desk chair, gazed heavenward, and spread his arms. “Thank you Lord and the skies above.”

Judge Brandon Meyer had signed the OptiCom search warrant.

Casey called the agents to reassemble at the staging area, then walked from his office to the elevator. He glanced at his watch. Eleven-thirty
A.M.
Given the size of the OptiCom facility and the breadth of the authorized search, he knew he wouldn't be getting home until the following morning.

Meyer's clerk was standing at her office door as he approached, hand outstretched holding the warrant. She shook her head like she was watching a mudslide sweep away a hillside of houses.

“This is a big one,” she said when he came to a stop in front of her.

Casey nodded as he took the warrant from her hand. “A multibillion-dollar bubble will burst as soon as the media learns we've shown up at their door. Watch the news tonight.”

She pointed at the packet of papers. “Check the signature. The judge's hands were shaking when he signed it.”

Casey figured he'd take a look later. “You know what the delay was?”

She looked over her shoulder toward the door to Meyer's chambers, then lowered her voice. “You're asking to search the whole facility.” She cocked her head toward the end of the hallway. “You hear what happened to Judge Spurling last week?”

Casey shook his head.

“The Ninth Circuit slapped him silly in a drug case, ruling he let the DEA go on a fishing expedition. They ridiculed him, wondering in writing whether he'd never read the Constitution, then tossed the whole indictment. It's got all the judges nervous. Judge Meyer went over your affidavit line by line, making sure there was specific probable cause for each place you want to search.”

Casey felt a wave of annoyance, not because Meyer was second-guessing him, but because the first thing he'd always think about after a judge signed a search warrant was whether a defense attorney would later find a way to get it tossed. It pissed him off. Mostly because it got him second-guessing himself.

“I don't care if it gets suppressed,” Casey said. “These gals are going to get their invention back, and OptiCom isn't going to make a dime off their sacrifices.”

I
t was hours after daybreak when Casey walked into his silent Peninsula home. His kids were long grown and out of the house. His wife was at work. The cat was on its neighborhood prowl and the dog had already begun its first nap of the day. He went into the kitchen where his vacationing neighbor's bug-eyed goldfish swam in anticipation to the surface of its small bowl, then hung there in disappointment as Casey passed by the counter on his way to the refrigerator.

He felt like drinking a beer, but pulled out a V8, then glanced over at the kitchenette where a
San Francisco Chronicle
lay spread out, along with a bowl of cereal, a spoon, the TV remote, and a note from his wife.

I waited as long as I could. Have a snack, then get some sleep. XX

He traded the juice for milk, then sat down at the table and reached for the television remote and located CNBC. An OptiCom stock trading chart filled the screen. A female voice-over announced that the SEC had suspended trading after the share price crashed on the news of the raid.

A male voice chipped in,

“By my calculation, Chelsea, it would be a loss of . . . let me see . . . three point two billion dollars.”

“Do you think it'll recover?”

“Of course. As soon as OptiCom cuts FiberLink in on the European contract, the price will regain most of its value.”

“When will it happen?”

“My guess? In about an hour—if there's anyone with half a brain left running the show at OptiCom.”

C
asey stared at the television as he decided whether to eat or sleep. It regained his attention with crashing music and an explosion of red and yellow with the words “News Alert” pulsing at the bottom of the screen. The woman appeared next to an inset box displaying a profile of President William Duncan.

“We've just received word the president is planning to announce his nominees to fill the soon-to-be-vacant Supreme Court seats.”

Casey felt a wave of tiredness, even relief, glad as always that his part of doing justice was merely to return things to the way they were, not remake the world to match somebody's political imaginings. He flicked off the television, then returned the cereal to the box and the milk to the refrigerator, and went to bed.

Chapter 32

P
resident Duncan emerged from a side door and strode to the podium in the East Room of the White House; trailing him were alias Starsky and Hutch, his nominees to the Supreme Court. All three met with a racket of applause from staffers, party leaders, and members of Congress that overwhelmed the collective gasp from the press.

Starsky was forty-two-year-old Judge Phillip Sanford from the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Hutch was thirty-nine-year-old Judge Julian Heller from the Fifth Circuit, covering Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi.

Landon Meyer watched on television from his Dirksen Building office. He smiled as the cameras panned the audience, the faces of the White House press corps, feeling themselves the victims of a mechanized assault, transforming from shock to awe. He understood what they thought they were seeing: two white males who melded the extremes of their personal religion and their personal politics into a determination to remake the country in their judicial image.

But that wasn't what Landon saw, and what he knew to be the truth: Their religion was the country's religion and their politics were those of the Founders, and it was the melding of the two that had once shaped a great nation and would do so again. He remembered the last political discussion he had with Gage up at his cabin, wondering aloud why conservatives had stopped reading American Christians like James Fenimore Cooper and had turned instead to foreigners like the Russian atheist Ayn Rand and why they were blind to how it distorted their thinking and caused them to bow to a metaphorical Atlas instead of to a real God. These two new justices would restore both the law and the culture.

Landon refocused on the screen. He found himself worrying that Duncan would engage in a rant that would expose the desperation that had characterized their meeting in the Oval Office. But he didn't. His comments were standard and respectful toward the constitutional process of confirmation, treating the coming hearings as part of a legislative flow, not the flash flood Landon knew it would be.

Neither the president nor the nominees answered questions. The two offered obligatory thanks to the president and appreciation for the support they'd received from their wives and colleagues, and then stepped back in turn.

It was over in three minutes.

Landon's cell phone rang. It was Brandon.

“Turn to NBC,” Brandon said. “James Bissell just keeps repeating the same thing over and over. It's hilarious.”

Landon changed the channel.

“A gauntlet has been thrown,”
Bissell was saying
, “President Duncan's entire legacy hangs in the balance.”

Landon knew those words would echo for a generation.

“It's not clear to me how the Democrats can oppose nominees they confirmed less than a year ago—but they will because they have no choice. It's as if the president laid a trap back then, only to spring it now.”

“Did you hear that?” Brandon said. “Laid a trap. Duncan couldn't lay a trap without lopping off an arm. Congratulations, Landon. Brilliant move.”

“The next step,”
Bissell continued
, “is the Senate Judiciary Committee. Landon Meyer is the chairman. I have no doubt he was consulted in advance, but still, the task of moving these nominees through to confirmation will give him the fight of his career.”

An inset box appeared on the screen showing a reporter standing with the White House behind him.

“It makes you wonder, James, whether Justices Martinez and Fairstein are sitting in their living rooms wishing they hadn't decided to retire. If confirmed, these two nominees will roll back nearly everything they've accomplished in the last thirty-years. It's only a question of how long it will take.”

The reporter paused, then skimmed his notes.

“You also have to consider what effect this will have on Landon Meyer's campaign for the presidency. He may win this battle for President Duncan, but lose his own war for the top job.”

“It's hard to say. New Hampshire is still months away. That's a lifetime in American politics.”

Chapter 33

D
ark clouds pressed down on the city and a light rain fell as Gage walked up the steps to Socorro Palmer's Russian Hill Victorian. He glanced toward the eastern hills and saw the morning sun still shining on his neighborhood, but not for long. It had been there during dinner on his deck looking across the bay and over San Francisco that Faith told him she'd called and convinced Socorro it was time to talk about Charlie and his final days. Gage had wanted Faith to come along with him, but it was midterms at Cal, so she had tests to grade and final papers to read.

Standing at the front door, Socorro seemed thinner, her eyes dark and sunken. In her saggy sweatpants and loose fleece pullover, she gave him the impression she hadn't left the house since the day of the funeral.

Even though Gage had planned to go into his office afterward, he wore Levi's and a sport shirt, a way of communicating that he was more a friend visiting than an investigator questioning.

Socorro was her mother's daughter. Her first words were “Have you had breakfast yet?”

Gage nodded as he stepped across the threshold, and said, “But coffee would be fine.”

She led him to the enclosed back porch where a carafe and two mugs stood on a table between the same green wicker chairs they'd sat in the last time. She poured for both of them and they sat down.

Gage pointed at the telescope in the corner. A dust rag was draped over the crossbar of the tripod. An open packing box lay on the slate floor next to it.

“Getting that ready for your son?” Gage asked.

Socorro nodded. “It's about all they shared. Camping in the Sierras above the city lights, looking at stars.” She sighed. “The sad thing is that the only real connection between them was made through little specks of rock millions of light-years away.”

They sat in silence for a long moment, the raindrops tapping the roof above them.

Finally, Gage asked, “How have you been holding up?”

He already knew from Viz that a truthful answer would be:
It's been the worst time in my life
.

“I'm getting along,” Socorro said. “You know how these things are.”

“Faith and I were thinking we'd like you to spend a weekend with us up at the cabin, maybe a change of scenery would—”

She cut him off with a shake of her head. “I don't think I'm ready.” She looked back at the kitchen, then toward the flower garden. “Somehow I feel like I'd be abandoning him and . . . and there's kind of a mystery in this house that has to be solved.”

“A mystery about what? The burglary?”

“About who my husband really was.” Her voice was flat, as if the words were born of a nighttime resolution. “My brother told me you spoke to someone who Charlie might've harmed in some way. A man named John Porzolkiewski. He said when the time came you'd tell me about it.” She fixed her eyes on Gage. “The only way I'll ever understand Charlie is by knowing the kinds of things he did.”

Gage thought back on his conversation with Faith as they'd walked to their car after the funeral. Maybe Faith had been correct. That Socorro had been blind—perhaps by choice—to the life Charlie had lived. And he wondered what would be the psychological consequences of now coming to see and to accept who Charlie had been from the beginning, even as they'd held hands or shared a dessert on their first date.

“Are you sure you're ready for this?” Gage asked.

Socorro reached under her chair and withdrew a manila file folder. She opened it on her lap. The top page was a retirement account summary of cash, bonds, and equities. She handed it to Gage. His eyes followed the column of figures to the bottom: two and a half million dollars.

“From the little I know of his practice,” Gage said, “this seems about right.”

She handed him another folder. Inside was a letter from AmeriWest Annuities to Charlie saying he and she would be receiving income of thirty thousand dollars a month, effective six weeks earlier. A three-hundred-and-sixty-thousand-dollar-a-year annuity meant Charlie had probably purchased it for about seven million.

Socorro didn't wait for Gage to comment on it, instead she asked, “Where did he get the money?”

“You mean, what did he do for it?”

She nodded.

Gage flipped the folder closed and handed it back. She accepted it as if he was handing her a lab test revealing that she had cancer.

“I'm not sure I'm the best person to do this,” Gage said. “There's a lot I don't know about his work.”

“How about start with Porzolkiewski and his son.”

The solidity and resolve in her voice pushed Gage past his internal resistance. He described the trail leading from Jeannette Hawkins in Richmond, to Wilbert in India, then back to Porzolkiewski and his descent toward hysteria on hearing the truth about his son's death.

Tears formed in Socorro's eyes, but her face remained determined, so he pushed on.

“And Charlie covered it up by paying off the OSHA inspector, packing up Hawkins after his deposition and taking him first to Pakistan, and then a few months afterward to India.”

“India? Why India?”

“Because . . .” Gage hesitated to say the words to the mother of a daughter, but she wanted the whole truth and seemed ready for it. “Because that's where the girls were.”

“Young girls?”

“Very young.”

“Did Charlie know about that?”

Gage shrugged and said, “I have no idea,” and then turned the conversation back to TIMCO.

“Basically, they paid out a couple of million dollars to Brandon Meyer's firm, Charlie, the OSHA inspector, and Hawkins to save thirty million in a civil judgment and prevent the prosecution of the plant manager and corporate officers for manslaughter.”

Socorro reached out and touched his arm. “I need to go see Mr. Porzolkiewski. I need to apologize for . . . for us.”

“That's not a good idea. I didn't tell him about Charlie's part in it. I was afraid he'd use it as a bridge to Brandon Meyer and walk over it carrying a gun. He's—” Gage caught himself. He wasn't going to tell her he was almost certain Porzolkiewski shot Charlie.

“He's what?” Socorro wiped her eyes.

“He's . . . a very angry man.”

She drew back. “You don't think he'd go after Brandon?”

“He might—despite there being no evidence linking Brandon to what Charlie did. It could've been someone else in Brandon's firm. Maybe just a deal between TIMCO and Charlie directly without the firm involved.”

“Did Charlie . . .” She searched his face. “Did Charlie do this kind of thing a lot?”

“A lot? That I don't know.” Gage knew he did, but she only needed to know about one other. “There's a woman whose son was beaten up in Pacific Heights.”

“Tansy? The woman who answered when Charlie telephoned.”

“Yes, Tansy.”

“Is it because of Charlie that she works for you?”

“Indirectly.”

They fell silent, listening to the rain, watching flower petals beyond the screen bounce as drops struck. Socorro's aging golden retriever ambled in and rested its head in her lap. She petted it without looking down.

Gage picked up their cold coffees and emptied the cups into the kitchen sink. He returned and refilled them from the carafe and sat down.

“Do you know what was on Charlie's mind when he called me?” Gage asked, looking over at her.

“He wouldn't say,” Socorro said, gazing out toward the garden. “But my guess is regret. I think for the first time in his life, he understood what suffering was. I think it's why he broke down when he heard Moki's name.”

Socorro paused and her eyes went blank.

“All those years as a police officer,” she finally said, “he was oblivious to what it meant to be a victim. I mean he said the right words in the right tone. Sympathy. Understanding. But he didn't mean them.”

She blinked and then looked over at Gage.

“I noticed the change in him about a week before he died. Brandon called. They argued about something. When Charlie hung up his face was white, like he'd suddenly found himself at a cliff edge, looking down. He seemed defeated afterward.”

“Could you tell what the argument was about?”

“Specifically, no. But generally about trust. Something had broken down between them. That, and somebody had been chosen to do the work Charlie used to do. Something important had to be done and Brandon was tired of waiting for Charlie to get better.”

“What exactly was Charlie doing?”

Socorro shrugged. “I don't know. But not doing it left him feeling abandoned.”

She lowered her gaze, seeming to finish a thought in her head, then nodded and reached into her sweatpants pocket. She pulled out a folded check and held it out toward him.

“I need you to find out where Charlie's money came from.”

Gage shook his head. “I can't let you hire me.”

“I'm not. The people whose lives he ruined are hiring you. I merely wrote the check. Even if money can't remake the past, at least they can learn the truth of what it really was. That's what you did for Mr. Porzolkiewski.”

He accepted the check from her. Fifty thousand dollars.

“I'll charge my expenses,” Gage said, “and give you back the rest.”

Gage folded it and slid it into his jeans pocket.

“And there's one more thing.” Socorro pulled out another folder from under her chair. “Charlie left an insurance policy with the children as beneficiaries.”

“From who?”

“A company I hadn't heard of until Charlie showed me the paperwork. It's called Pegasus Limited. It's in the Cayman Islands.”

“How much was the policy for?”

“Two million. One for each of them.”

“Has it been paid out yet?”

“I haven't notified the company of Charlie's death. I'm not sure I want them to have the money if it's . . .”

“Tainted?”

“Yes, tainted.”

Socorro rose from her chair. She wobbled and reached a hand toward the armrest. Gage stepped forward and put his arm around her waist, then guided her to a sofa in the living room and laid an afghan over her. She stared up at the ceiling and closed her eyes.

“There was something else I was going to tell you,” she said. “But my mind has gone blank. I can't think.”

“When was the last time you ate?”

She opened her eyes again. “I don't know. I guess yesterday.”

“Or the day before?”

She forced a smile. “Maybe.”

Gage walked into the kitchen and fixed an omelet and brought it to her. She was sitting up when he returned.

“I know what it was,” Socorro said. “The key.” She pointed at the low table by the front door. “It goes to a storage locker. It was in an envelope with the rental agreement.” Her brows furrowed. “I didn't even know Charlie had it.”

“Have you gone inside the locker?”

“No. I just found the key last night.”