Authors: Steven Gore
Power Blind (10 page)
B
oots Marnin stared at the two computers standing together in the corner of his Mariner Hotel room, thinking life was a whole lot simpler when you could get everything you wanted by sticking a gun in your target's ear. Now most of the guys who made the big bucks at his end of the market never left their keyboards, they just hacked their way in, mined for information, then sold it on contract or to the highest bidder.
I'm a forty-year-old dinosaur.
He inspected his alligator-skin Tony Lamas, then smirked at the irony.
Maybe it's survival of the fittest after all.
He reached for his cell phone and scrolled to a number. The man on the other end of the line didn't answer so much as grunt.
“It's me,” Marnin said. “I got it.”
“Palmer's computer?”
“A couple of Gage's. Everything from Palmer's was copied over to it. A kid decided to cooperate and told us.”
“What about Palmer's?”
“We'd need explosives to get to it.”
“Then let's cross that bridge when we come to it. First we need to find out what kind of records Palmer was keeping. We can torch Gage's place if we have to.”
“Where should Iâ”
“Evergreen Security in San Jose. We got an ex-NSA guy down there who can break into anybody's hard drive. Somebody'll meet you in the parking lot.”
“I don't know why they're going through all this. Why don't they just wipe the slate clean and start over with a new team? Couple of bodies. Done in an afternoonâand their mistakes buried with them.”
“That would be sheer genius. You know the last time somebody got away with killing a federal judge?” He paused. “I'll tell you. Never.”
G
age sat alone at his breakfast table, drinking coffee, and reading Skeeter Hall's fourteen-year-old file about the refinery explosion: the Richmond Fire Department reports recounting the recovery of the nearly incinerated bodies, the OSHA investigation showing that the root cause of the explosion was a failed pressure release device, the depositions of the TIMCO International Petroleum officers and refinery managers, and, finally, the deposition of John Porzolkiewski and his repeating over and over, “Money won't bring my son back.” And Brandon Meyer, then the TIMCO lawyer, demanding, “What do you want?” And Porzolkiewski answering, “Nothing. I want nothing.”
Gage next examined the court file, the transcript of the Superior Court Judge's Order of Dismissal, an apologetic:
My hands are tied. This is simply a workers' comp case. The people of California made a trade a generation ago. In exchange for guaranteed compensation, they waived their right to sue their employers in the event of their own injury or the death of a loved one.
The Plaintiffs have failed to prove the exceptional circumstances required by law. Even the minimal threshold, showing
prima facie
that management had created unsafe working conditions, has not been met by the Plaintiffs.
Notwithstanding how horrendous the consequences may have been, the Occupational Safety and Health investigation is dispositive: This is simply a matter of “accidents happen.” Maybe even an accident waiting to happen. Nonetheless, this incident appears to be precisely what was envisioned by the Workers' Compensation Law.
Case dismissed.
Clearly, Gage thought, John Porzolkiewski didn't believe OSHA's claim that this was an accident that just happened. What he surely believed was that the root cause of his suffering wasn't a faulty valve and a spark, but Brandon Meyerâand that he wasn't acting alone.
F
ive minutes after Gage left the Sacramento Delta home of Ray Karopian later that afternoon, the retired OSHA inspector drove to a pay phone two miles away. But like a shoplifter in Home Depot, he noticed a thousand eyes but not the ones actually watching him.
“A private investigator was just here about TIMCO,” Karopian told the man at the other end of the line.
“What did you tell him?”
“You think I'm an idiot? You think I suddenly made up a new story after all these years?”
“Okay, okay. Take it easy. What's his name?”
“Graham Gage fromâ”
“I know where he's from.”
“How do youâ”
“I don't have time to talk about it. Call me if he comes back. And don't use your real name.”
V
iz and Alex Z were sitting at Gage's conference table when he arrived at the office from the Sacramento Delta.
“What's going on with Shakir?” Gage asked Alex Z, after he sat down.
“Dr. Kishore came by to see him this morning when I was there,” Alex Z said. “She seems satisfied with his progress. She grinned at me just before she left and asked when your return flight to Mumbai was.” He made a show of scratching his head. “I didn't have a clue what she meant.”
Gage shrugged, then smiled. “I'm sort of like her brother-in-law.”
“I still don't get it.”
Viz reached over and squeezed Alex Z's shoulder, “Don't worry kid, I think this is one of those times where we're just gonna have to go with the flow.” He then pointed at Gage's TIMCO file. “What did the OSHA man say?”
“That the pressure release device on the valve failed and the whole thing blew apart. Kerosene splashed down onto the scrubber motor and a spark set off the fire. They never even found all the pieces.”
“Then how do theyâ”
“They pulled one off another line afterward and concluded that's all it could've been.”
“What about the plaintiff's experts?”
“They couldn't come up with anything definitive to counter it.”
“What about maintenance records?” Alex Z asked. “When was the last time they inspected the valve before it blew?”
“About a month. They did the annual turnaround, shut the tower down and inspectedâ” Gage caught himself. “Makes me wonder how well they inspected it.”
“I'm no expert in workers' comp law,” Viz said, “but that would still be just a screw-up on the part of some worker. How would that implicate management in creating dangerous working conditions?”
“It doesn't, but it's a place to start.” Gage looked at Alex Z. “They deposed a welder in the shop, Wilbert Hawkins. He testified he inspected the release valve, but didn't see anything wrong with it. He went off to work in an oil field in Pakistan. Find out where he is now.”
Viz pointed at Skeeter Hall's file. “What do you think the case would've been worth if the judge hadn't dismissed it?”
“Skeeter thinks TIMCO would have settled for ten million dollars, but he could've taken it to trial and got thirty.”
“
If
they could have gotten the case to a jury.”
“Yeah,” Gage said. “If . . .”
A
lex Z appeared at Gage's door two hours later, shaking his head.
“Hawkins never came back from Pakistan, boss. It's like he evaporated.”
T
he strap of Jeannette Hawkins's yellow-flowered shift slipped off her shoulder as she pulled open her front door. Her half-exposed left breast lay sagging against her chest like a flag at half-mast. She shifted her Budweiser bottle into her left hand, hoisted up the strap, then looked up at Gage standing on her porch.
“I paid it already,” she said.
“I'm notâ”
“I paid the car note. Leave me alone.”
Gage glanced over at the 1993 faded red Ford Fiesta parked on the hard-packed front yard of the hillside bungalow in north Richmond. He then took in the cracked concrete leading to the sagging front steps and the tan paint peeling from the weathered clapboard siding. The front right corner of the roof was covered with a blue tarp. Cigarette butts littered the porch like spilled popcorn.
“I'm not here about the car,” Gage said. “I'm looking for your husband.”
“
Ex
. . . Ex-husband . . . Ex-son-of-a-bitch husband.” She inspected Gage. “Who're you?”
Gage reached into the pocket of his brown corduroy workshirt and pulled out his business card. She accepted it in her veined hand, but ignored it. Instead she stared at his shirt.
“That a Carhartt?”
He nodded.
“Son of a Bitch used to wear Carhartt every day over at TIMCO. Like a uniform.” She squinted at Gage. “You're not from TIMCO, are you? I already got my check. I don't figure I have to keep saying thanks in person.”
Gage pointed at his card in her hand. “I'm a private investigator.”
“Big deal.” She looked down at it, then extended it in front of her to allow her fifty-plus-year-old eyes to focus. “Anybody can make one of these. You got some ID?”
Gage reached into his front jeans pocket, withdrew his ID case, then flipped it open, displaying his California private investigator's license. She grabbed for it, but he pulled it away. “Sorry. No touching.” He didn't want to wrestle with her to get it back.
“Why do you want to talk to Son of a Bitch?”
“It's about something that happened a long time ago,” Gage said. “You know where he is?”
Jeannette lifted the beer to her mouth and took a sip while peering at him with narrowed eyes. The bottle made a popping sound when she pulled it away.
“What thing that happened a long time ago?”
She said the words in a tone communicating that other than Son of a Bitch running off, only one thing of any significance had ever happened in her life, and she had only been at the edge of it.
“Over at the refinery,” Gage said.
“Can't help ya, pal. He's gone, gone, gone.”
“As in dead, dead, dead?”
“Naw, just dead gone.” She grinned, then eyed his left hand. “You married?”
“You looking?”
“Does pork fat come off a pig?”
Two Harley-Davidsons downshifted up the short hill; the syncopated chugging of their V-twins vibrated the house. Gage turned to see black Hell's Angels vests disappear over the crest.
“You wanna come in?” Jeannette asked.
Gage smiled. “You're not going to try to seduce me, are you? My wife won't let me go out and play anymore.”
Jeannette winked. “We'll see.”
Gage followed her as she backed into the house. It smelled of beer, cigarette ashes, and dog pee, the odors Gage went to sleep with as a rookie cop the night after his first day on the job. It couldn't be washed off and stuck to those old wool uniforms like epoxy. That was one of the reasons he'd decided to wear a cotton shirt and Levi's.
She pointed to the couch. “You can move those newspapers.”
Gage was surprised. He hadn't taken her for a reader, and she wasn't. They were months-old
Auto Trader
s she apparently used to shop for the Fiesta.
“You wanna beer?” she asked, walking toward the kitchen and stepping over a Slurpee cup.
“Sure.”
Gage watched her open the refrigerator, pull out two Budweisers, then twist off the caps. She headed back with the two bottles and handed one to Gage. He lifted it toward her, then took a sip.
As she lowered herself into a green upholstered Barcalounger, her shoulder strap slipped off again. She left it there, then peeked over at Gage and grinned.
“It do anything for you?”
Gage shook his head. “I'm not allowed to look.”
She pulled it up.
He took another sip, then waited for her to take one.
“You know where he is?”
“Sorta. He's in one of them rag-head countries.”
“You know which one?”
“I'm not good with geography. My son is though.”
“Is he around?”
“Nope. County jail.”
“How come?”
“Got wrongly accused of touching a little girlâat least that's what he says. But I don't believe him about that any more than I believed his father about anything.”
“Has Wilbert called lately?”
Jeannette's brows furrowed. “Wilbert?”
She said the name with such puzzlement Gage thought for a half second he'd misremembered Hawkins's first name.
“Wilbert?” She laughed. “I've been calling him Son of a Bitch for so many years I almost forgot his name was Wilbert.” She shook her head, a smirk twisting her mouth. “What a stupid name for a guy born in Marin County.”
She squinted toward the tan phone hanging on the kitchen wall.
“Yeah, he called three years ago. On my daughter's thirteenth birthday.” She snorted. “He should've spent the money on child support.”
“Where is she?”
Jeannette stared at the clock on the mantel of the trash-filled fireplace. “Let's see, she got off work at Wendy's about a half hour ago, then she was going to pick up my pills at the Walgreens . . . Let's see . . .” She tapped her finger against her chin as if thinking through her daughter's after work route, then looked back at Gage. “I know exactly where she is. She's screwing her thirty-six-year-old biker boyfriend in the garage he calls an apartment.”
Gage glanced up at framed baby photos of the children on either side of the clock, innocent eyes gazing out at the wreckage their lives had become, and then changed the subject.
“Did Son of a Bitch leave an emergency number?”
Jeannette lowered her bottle to the armrest. Her eyes slid from Gage's face to his Carhartt shirt, then held there. She breathed in and out like a kid gathering up courage to race across a railroad track just ahead of a train.
“Yeah, you can have it. I don't owe any of them shit. None of them suits from TIMCO ever sat down in my house and had a beer with me.”
I
sn't this kind of a long shot?” Faith asked as she drove Gage toward the San Francisco International Airport. They were traveling south past the 49ers' stadium, dropping down to the gray stretch of freeway bordering the bay. The afternoon traffic crept along, more stop than go.
“Of course it's a long shot,” Gage said. “But at worst it costs the price of a flight and a few days of jet lag.”
Faith flicked on the radio to check the traffic report in order to decide whether to slip onto the frontage road and skirt the backup. It was tuned to National Public Radio broadcasting one of a series of interviews of leading presidential candidates. It was Landon Meyer's turn. She reached to change to the
A.M.
news channel, but Gage said, “Hold on. Let's see what he has to say.”
“I'd like to start with your first campaign for Congress, your victory over Democratic incumbent Nelson Hedges. It's still the closest race in California history.”
“It stands as a lesson that every vote counts.”
Landon chuckled.
“Well, at least the last twelve.”
“Were you aware during the campaign that Congressman Hedges had been diagnosed with ALS?”
“I didn't learn about it until his announcement on the day he left Congress.”
Gage shook his head. “Amazing guy. He's still keeping his promise even though Hedges has been dead for years. I'll bet he's never even told Brandon.”
Hedges had called Landon to come to his hotel near Stanford Hospital at midnight on the day he was diagnosed. The two talked and prayed together until past midnight. Landon promised neither to disclose nor to exploit it during the campaign.
“Did you learn any lessons from that election, Senator?”
The night concierge had spotted Landon exiting the lobby elevator at 2
A.M.
, a step behind a familiar prostitute from a local escort service.
Landon had called Gage moments after the first extortion attempt eight hours later.
“Yes. An extremely useful one. Elections often turn on events the public never sees.”
Gage discovered the night's surveillance tape missing. He tracked it to the apartment of the guard who'd been on duty, where it was hidden with a dozen other tapes of guilty public figures who'd been blackmailed, and innocent ones like Landon who'd been extorted.
“And they depend on people you've never met before, but who become trusted friends for life.”
Faith pointed ahead to a stalled car on the shoulder a quarter mile ahead and the traffic clearing beyond it, then glanced over at Gage.
“There are just too many ifs to justify a trip halfway around the world,” Faith said.
“They're either ifs or they're links in a chain.” Gage switched off the radio. “Porzolkiewski is the key to Charlie getting shot and I'm pretty sure he's got a copy of whatever was in Brandon Meyer's wallet.”
“Is this about Charlie or Brandon? For a while I was wondering whether you were being driven by self-reproach for not insisting that Tansy let you prove it was Charlie who subverted the prosecution of those kids. But now I'm starting to think it's really about Brandon.”
“Brandon's a pipsqueak. Landon never should have gotten him appointed in the first place. Sometimes Landon is just blind to what he's really doing.” Gage's voice hardened. “And it wasn't the first time someone in the Meyer family sacrificed the public good to a private one.”
“That makes me think you might be looking for a way to turn this into your father's last revenge.”
One of the first things Faith had learned about Gage's father was his fury at the Meyer family, once the General Motors of the arms manufacturing industry. As a combat surgeon during World War II, George Gage witnessed the consequences of their weapons sales to Germany, many made after the Nazis' criminal intentions were clear. Only the intervention of the secretary of state prevented the indictment of Brandon and Landon's grandfather in 1941 under the Trading with the Enemy Act.
“I'm not looking to punish Brandon for his family's sins,” Gage said, “and I certainly don't want to hurt Landon. And I'm only interested in Brandon to the extent he's the link between Porzolkiewski and Charlie.”
Gage fell silent. He watched a plane rise from the runway, then his eyes lowered to an unseeing stare at the dashboard.
“What?” she finally asked. “Porzolkiewski?”
Gage nodded.
“Your heart goes out to him, doesn't it.”
He turned toward her. “What could be worse than believing somebody got away with killing your child? I don't think anything has felt real to him since the day his son died. The only thing now connecting him to the world is anger.”
“You think he'll be able to see his way clear to cooperate with you when you get back?”
“I don't know. At least he didn't go running out of the coffee shop yesterday when I sat down at his table to tell him I was going to look for a way to reopen the TIMCO case. The most important thing in his life is finding out what happened.”
“You mean confirming what he already believes.”
“He's not the only one. I reread the superior court judge's order dismissing the suit. I know judge-speak. He said âmy hands are tied' and âthis incident appears' to be an accidentânot
is
, only
appears
âand he said the explosion was âmaybe even an accident waiting to happen.' Which tells me he didn't believe TIMCO. It was just that Porzolkiewski's lawyers hadn't made a strong enough showing so the judge could've let the case go to a jury.”
“I don't know.” Faith shook her head, then glanced over again. “How can you be so sure Porzolkiewski will tell you what really happened with Charlie if you deliver on your promise? What if the truth about TIMCO isn't what he thinks it is? Accidents waiting to happen can still be just accidents.”