The Insider (32 page)

Will needed to find a way to positively link Richard to Boka's organization. If he was going to get out of the crosshairs of the DOJ, the SEC, the SFPD, and Homeland Security, he had to give them someone better to focus on. He would give them Richard Grogan. Will decided it was time to visit Claire, who knew almost as much about the Jupiter-Pearl merger and the workings of the firm as he did. Perhaps Claire could help him make the connection that was eluding him.

He was still standing in the aisle of the Russian grocery, and the proprietor was now eyeing him suspiciously from behind the register. Will replaced a can of imported salmon on the shelf and hurried outside, a bell jangling as the door smacked shut.

Will pressed the buzzer in the doorway of Claire's Jackson Square apartment building and shoved his hands into his jacket pockets. The temperature was already beginning to drop as the afternoon sun hung low, bouncing an orange glare off the windshields of the parked cars on the street.

Claire's voice crackled through the intercom. “Who's there?”

“It's Will.”

The buzzer sounded. By the time he reached the second-floor landing, Claire was standing in her doorway, wearing a gray sweatshirt and sweatpants. Her blond hair was disheveled. Pulsing dance music was coming from the stereo, and on the television a suburban ninja army of a dozen men and women in aerobics outfits were throwing punches at the air in unison.

“My Tae Bo DVD,” she gasped. “Let me turn this off.”

The music stopped, and the figures on the screen froze mid punch.

Will grabbed her by the shoulders and gave her a kiss. “I've missed you. I wanted to come sooner, but I wasn't sure if it was a good idea with the kind of scrutiny we're under.”

“I'm glad you did.”

“How did your interviews with the SEC and DOJ go?”

“I really couldn't tell. That's why I was working out—to relieve the stress of not knowing.”

“What did you tell them?”

“The truth, or at least parts of it. I said that we were seeing each other, that you took me out to that hotel by the park, and that I was kidnapped by the Russians. I left out the part about me stealing the encryption keys from Jupiter. And I said you didn't really tell me what was going on.”

“You lied to federal agents. We need to make sure they never figure that out.”

“I know. But the alternative was calling a lawyer. If I had done that, they would have viewed me as a suspect.”

Will told Claire about his meeting with Boka and his theory that Richard Grogan had set him up.

“Well, I always thought Richard was evil,” Claire said, completing an orbit of her small apartment. “But I thought he was just law-firm-partner evil, not FBI's-Most-Wanted evil.”

“Did you ever notice anything, or hear anything, about Richard that would suggest that he could be involved in something like this? Maybe some bit of gossip among the associates?”

“I've got nothing,” Claire said. “Maybe you should think of this like a legal research project, like you were searching for a case on Lexis. What you need is another term to narrow your search.”

Will walked to the window and looked down at Jackson Square. After a moment, he turned and pointed to Claire's computer. “Do you mind if I use this?”

Claire nodded. “Have a seat.”

Will connected to the Internet and went to the Reynolds Fincher website. Claire watched the monitor over his shoulder for a while, then went into the kitchen and started putting dishes in the dishwasher. “I find it calming,” she explained.

He was not optimistic that he would find any clues on the website, but now that he was an outsider to the firm, his resources were limited. Will began by looking at the biography of Richard Grogan.

Will found nothing but the usual recitation of degrees and honors. He was not surprised to see that Grogan's biography was far too long to fit on a single webpage, a sure sign of an unchecked ego.

He tried another tack, Googling his own name along with the word
Russia
, hoping that the Internet might, in Ouija board-like fashion, reveal the nexus between himself and the
mafiya
. Although the search results failed to turn up anything, he was surprised to find that the browser still produced links to his bio on the Reynolds Fincher website. The browser obviously used archived pages for its searches because all references to him had been immediately expunged from the website after his firing. Maybe, in this alternate Internet universe, there was still a version of himself showing up for work each day at Embarcadero Center.

Will returned to the law firm's website and explored it like someone peering in the windows of a house where he once lived. On the home page, he noticed that the website had a search feature. He typed in the search term
Russia
.

Seconds later, he was presented with five search results. First, there was a link to the brochure for the firm's international law practice, touting representation of a U.S.-based oil company that did business in Russia. Next were the bios of three attorneys who claimed to speak Russian. Last, and most surprisingly, was a link to the bio of Sam Bowen.

A shot of Sam appeared on the screen, alongside a list of his credentials. Duke Law School. Articles editor,
Duke Law Review
. Experience in mergers and acquisitions. Will froze when he saw one of the last items: “Author, ‘Doing Business in Russia: Opportunities and Perils in the Post-Soviet Economy,'
International Lawyer
, February 2000.”

As Will studied the grinning photo, he reflected on his dealings with Sam over the years for signs of something sinister behind the hail-fellow-well-met demeanor. Did he see corruption in the professionally lit face in the photo? He definitely recognized in Sam someone who might pursue a lucrative opportunity, whether in the post-Soviet economy or elsewhere, and, through an overabundance of confidence in his own abilities, fail to recognize the perils. However, an article in an obscure legal journal was hardly proof of Sam's involvement with the
mafiya
.

Will called out to Claire, “You worked on some deals with Sam Bowen, right?”

“That's right. You don't think it's Sam, do you?”

“I don't know yet. He does international transactions. Do you know if he's ever done one in Russia?”

“No, I don't think so.” Claire paused with a dish in her hand, then placed it on the counter. “Wait a minute . . . he did start one, but it never went anywhere. I was going to be on the deal team.”

“What kind of transaction?”

“A joint venture that was going to bring U.S.-style supermarkets to Russia.”

“Supermarkets?”

“Yeah, a regional chain in the Midwest, Branson's, was going to share some of their distribution and supply-chain management know-how with a group of Russian entrepreneurs who understood how things get done over there.”

“So what happened?”

“I don't know. My guess is that Branson finally figured out how screwed up the Russian economy is. One day Sam was calling us from Moscow, giving us a travelogue about seeing the Kremlin and Red Square, stuff like that. Then all of a sudden, he was back in the office. When anybody asked, he just snapped at them, which was unusual for him.”

“Sam is nothing if not a nice guy.”

Katya had lied to him about many things, but he didn't doubt that she had been speaking the truth when she told him the story of Nikolai “the Grocer” and his brief success in the thuggish world of Moscow commerce. He did not know how Nikolai and Sam had crossed paths, but he was certain that the failed U.S.-Russian joint venture was the connection. It was Sam who had brought Nikolai and Yuri into his life. Sam, with whom he'd worked daily since he was a first-year associate. Sam, his mentor.

Will turned off the computer and stood up.

“So does this mean you think Sam is the one, not Richard?”

“I think so, yeah.”

Will moved toward the door. Claire came around the kitchen counter to block his path.

“Where do you think you're going?” she asked, mopping a strand of blond hair off her cheek.

“I just need some time to sort this out. Figure out what to do next.”

“I'm going with you.”

“I'm fine, really.”

“I know you probably want to go and threaten Sam Bowen or something silly like that. Well, I'm not going to let your raging testosterone get you into trouble.” She blocked the door, her chin up and a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.

“Raging testosterone, huh?”

“Totally raging,” she affirmed.

He laughed, for the first time in quite a while. It was nice to have someone on his side.

Claire quickly washed up in the bathroom and changed into a pair of jeans and a yellow T-shirt. As she was picking up her purse from her desk by the window, she paused, looking out at the street.

“That's funny,” she said.

“What?” Will asked.

“There are these two guys outside wearing Puma tracksuits. And they really don't look like they're members of a track team.”

Will dashed across the room to the window.

“What did I say? It's not
that
weird.”

“Where were they?”

Claire pointed to the sidewalk across the street. “Right there. They were there just a second ago.”

“We need to get out of here,” Will said.

“I think better when I drive,” Will declared, hopefully, as he maneuvered his BMW through the traffic on Kearney. Studying the rearview mirror through a succession of abrupt turns, he was finally convinced that he wasn't being followed by the Russians. In the space of a few blocks, they had gone from the Italian enclave of North Beach to the outskirts of Chinatown. San Francisco was a lot like Disneyland—a series of colorful, tourist-ready attractions jammed together for easy access. All the city needed was a monorail.

“So, how's it going then? Any ideas?” Claire asked.

“Well, I could confront Sam, but if I did, he'd probably just deny everything. And then I'd have given away my one advantage—the fact that they don't know I know.”

They stopped briefly at the Hyatt Regency so that Will could go to his room and pick up the memory stick with the encryption keys. He'd been keeping it in the hotel room's safe, which was far too obvious a hiding place if he was ever found.

When Will returned, they drove south to Mission Street. They were approaching the Transbay Terminal, where he had purchased the locker on the day he was fired to store his office furnishings.

He parked in a driveway in front of the bus station. “Let's stop for a second. I'm going to hide the memory stick in a locker that I got here.”

Will left Claire in the car while he made his way inside, past two homeless men who were erecting a cardboard fortress around their sleeping area on the sidewalk. Inside, the dim electric lights and falling darkness made the air of the vaulted station lobby seem dense and oppressive. The terminal had the modernist architectural flourishes of a WPA project, but in its current state it was difficult to imagine the place as anyone's idea of progress.

He struggled with the padlock on the locker door, finally opening it with a clang. He began to worry about attracting attention. There was movement in the shadows that draped the corners of the lobby. Will had crumpled the cardboard box to fit it into the locker, and now he struggled to press it back into shape to hold his belongings.

Back at the car, he handed the box to Claire, who placed it on her lap. As they drove away, she began sifting through his things.

“What's this?” Claire asked.

“Six years of my life. It's what left from my office at Reynolds.”

Claire hefted the battered copy of
Black's Law Dictionary
. “You ever actually use this thing?”

“Not really.”

“Me neither.”

“Everyone thinks it's a good idea to get one before they go to law school, and it's just too big and impressive-looking to ever throw away.”

While they were waiting for a stoplight to change, Claire removed a tiny silver key from the box. “What's this?”

“Key to my gym locker.”

They drove past the office towers of Spear Street and headed south on the Embarcadero toward AT&T Park. At the next stoplight, Will examined the keys hanging from the ignition.

“What is it?” Claire asked. “Did you lose something?”

“No. I didn't.” He turned off the car and held up a tiny silver key that was identical to the one that Claire had found in the box. “
This
is the key to my gym locker.”

“It looks just like this one, though. Is it a duplicate?”

“No.”

“Then who do you think it belongs to?”

The light had turned green, and the car behind them honked.

“You asked me about the last thing that Ben Fisher said to me. Remember what I said?” Several drivers behind them were now leaning on their horns.

“Oh my God,” Claire said. “He asked you if you'd seen the key to his gym locker.”

The day before he died, Ben had asked Will about his lost gym locker key for a reason. The key had never been lost. Ben had placed it in Will's office so that he would find it later—if something happened to him. Will started the car and drove away fast, making a U-turn on the Embarcadero and heading back to Embarcadero Center and the gym that he and Ben had belonged to.

The Athletic Club was favored by professionals who worked in the adjoining office towers of Embarcadero Center. It was eight P.M., so the place thrummed like a factory to the sound of machinery turning—in this case, treadmills and elliptical trainers.