Power Blind (8 page)

Chapter 15

H
e's here,” the late morning caller whispered. “He's here.”

“Who's he?” Gage asked, leaning forward in his desk chair.

“Mr. Comb-Over. At the table by the front window.”

“Hold on.”

Gage pressed the conference call button on his landline, then punched in a cell phone number.

“Viz, start driving to the thirty-two hundred block of Geary Street.”

“Toby?” Gage asked.

“Still here.”

“I've got a guy named Viz on the line. Was Comb-Over walking or driving?”

“Driving,” Toby said. “At least there's a brown Corona that looks like his parked across the street.”

“What's he wearing?”

“Dark green sweater, baggy gray pants. A San Francisco Giants cap . . . I mean the cap is on the table.”

“What's he doing?”

“He's waiting for me to bring over his coffee.”

“Viz, how far away are you?”

“Fifteen, twenty blocks . . . Asshole.” Gage heard tires skidding. “Not you, boss, some guy cut me off.”

Viz's gunning motor filled the silence.

“I got around him.”

“Toby,” Gage said, “keep Comb-Over there.”

“I'll make a show of brewing up a new pot.”

“Viz. First get the license plate of the Corona, then set up to follow him.”

“Shit,” Toby said. “I gotta go. He just got up and is heading my way.”

G
age spotted Viz's blue-green Yukon at Geary near Thirty-third Avenue as he pulled up to the corner of Thirty-second. Viz was parked facing west, four cars ahead of the Corona, at a meter in front of a Russian bakery. Gage slipped into a space next to a Chinese produce market.

“What's cooking?” Gage asked Viz over his cell.

“Nothing. He's just drinking his coffee. Lots of it.” Viz laughed. “Like it'll grow hair on his head.”

“You get the plate?”

“I called it in to Alex Z. It's registered to a John, normal spelling, Porzolkiewski . . . Por-zol-kiew-ski. Normal spelling.”

“You win the spelling bee for today. Where's he live?”

“The car's registered to a P.O. box downtown. But Alex Z did some database searches and found a street address, a house on Seventeenth Ave about a mile south of Golden Gate Park.”

Gage saw Viz lean toward his window and peer into the side-view mirror.

“Boss. Two guys in a blue Ford Explorer came charging up and pulled in behind you, three cars back. Neither got out.”

“What do they look like?”

“Too much reflection on their windshield, but the guy drives hard like a cop. What do you want to do?”

“Sit tight until I find out whether they're tailing me or are here on something else.”

“What should I do about Comb-Over?”

“If they're following me, let him go. I don't want them making a connection between him and us.”

Gage put a couple of quarters into the meter, then strolled along the storefronts past Viz's truck. He took a right onto Thirty-third, walking by pastel stucco bungalows and two-story apartment buildings. When he neared the end of the block, he climbed the steps onto the recessed landing of a duplex, then called Viz.

“The passenger walked up to Thirty-third and peeked around,” Viz said. “He crossed the street to get a view down the block, probably trying to see where you stopped, then went into that kosher market.”

“What's he look like?”

“Late thirties, blond hair, six feet, plus or minus, Levi's, oversized plaid workshirt.”

“Cop or ex-cop?”

“My guess he's ex. He's wearing the 1990s undercover uniform.”

“What's he doing now?”

“Pretending to take an interest in the after–Rosh Hashanah sale items in the window as he keeps an eye on the street.” Viz chuckled. “I never would have guessed. He seems like a mayonnaise and white bread kind of guy.”

“I've been up here long enough,” Gage said, then walked back down the steps. “I'm heading your way. Hit me when he comes out of the market.”

Gage's cell phone rang as he walked on Geary back toward his car.

“He's thirty yards behind you,” Viz said, prompting Gage to duck into a liquor store to let the man pass. After buying a soda to make the stop seem authentic, rather than countersurveillance, he continued walking to his car.

“I'll drive back toward the financial district,” Gage said, pulling into the street, “but I'll loop around and lead them by you first.”

The Explorer remained five car lengths behind him as he passed by Viz and circled the block.

“I'm almost back to Geary,” Gage told Viz. “Get ready. We'll be coming by you in about thirty seconds.”

Viz turned his ignition, then asked, “Why are they following you?”

“My guess? It's either Charlie or an antitrust case I'm working on.”

Gage paused in the intersection to let traffic pass, then turned onto Geary, driving east slow enough for the Explorer to catch up. He glanced over at Viz's Yukon. Viz was staring down toward his floorboard where he had anchored a six-inch monitor fed by a camera hidden in his oversized side mirror. He controlled it by a joystick attached to his steering column.

“Got 'em,” Viz said.

“How's the reflection?”

“Son of a bitch.”

Gage saw Viz jerk his hand up to cover the left side of his face as the Explorer approached, then lower his head as if he was reaching for something on the floor.

“What is it?”

“A scumbag named Boots Marnin is driving.”

“Who's he?”

“Ex-DEA. Started about the same time as me.”

“Did he see you?”

“I'm not sure.”

“Why scumbag?”

“He got indicted for taking kickbacks from an informant he put on the payroll. About two hundred grand.” Viz sat up after the Explorer passed. “Boots would get a lead on where some dope was and feed the information to the informant. He'd then use the guy as his snitch, seize the dope, and apply to Washington for a reward for the informant—”

“And they'd divide up the money.”

“Right. Until he got caught.”

Gage watched his rearview mirror as he drove. The Explorer was gone. “What's going on?” Gage asked.

“Boots dropped out. He pulled into the Jack in the Box lot.”

“I don't see anybody close enough behind who could stay with me.” Gage looked ahead. “I think they may have someone in front of me. Maybe the brown Ford Taurus. It has a hesitant feel about it.”

Gage watched the Taurus slow, then pull into the curb lane. Gage took the hint and passed it. The Taurus kept slowing until it was half a block behind Gage, then matched his speed.

“You're out of my view, even with the zoom,” Viz said. “Where are you headed?”

“Down to the marina, then along Fisherman's Wharf to see if any other cars are involved.”

“What about Comb-Over?”

“We're going to have to let him go for now.”

Gage checked his mirror again. The Taurus was still matching his twenty-nine miles an hour.

“So, how'd Boots get caught?” Gage asked.

“His partner figured out the informant couldn't be in two places at the same time, comatose from an OD in the county hospital and in the Hip Sing Tong basement watching China white heroin being cut. Boots got two years in the federal pen. Out eight years ago. I thought he went back to Texas. I'm surprised to see him around here.”

“Call Alex Z. Give him everything you've got on Boots and the license plates of the Explorer and Taurus. Then head back to the office and get the van. Call me when you're ready and I'll lead him up the Embarcadero so you can get behind him.”

“I think you're reading him right, boss, he was always too arrogant to look over his shoulder. That's why he got caught.”

“Have somebody else drive so he doesn't spot you.”

“How long should we stay with him?”

“Until you're sure you know where we can find him when the time comes to kick in his door.”

Chapter 16

W
hat rhymes with Porzolkiewski?” Alex Z said as he walked into Gage's third floor office.

“Don't tell me you're trying to work it into a song,” Gage said, looking up from his desk.

“Just practice. I'm thinking if I could find a rhyme for a name like Porzolkiewski, I could find one for anything.”

Gage checked his watch. Six forty-five
P.M.

“Isn't it past going-home time?”

“Sorta. We've got the first of a week of gigs at Slim's tonight. I figure I'll keep working until we have to go set up. Shakir the night owl will be here, too. I'm letting him work from 6
P.M.
until 3
A.M.
”

Gage's phone beeped with a text message. He glanced at it. It was from Viz telling him he'd run the surveillance car license plates by Spike. They were both stolen.

Alex Z sat down in a chair across from Gage. He slid a binder across the desk and kept a matching one for himself.

“That's what I've got so far on Comb-Over,” Alex Z said. “Pretty tragic life. Wife died of cancer. Son died in an explosion over at the TIMCO refinery about fourteen years ago. Kid was an engineering student at Cal, working a summer job when it happened.”

“I remember it. Some other workers were killed, too.”

“Porzolkiewski came to the U.S. from Warsaw when he was eleven years old. Lived with an aunt in Chicago. I don't think the American dream turned out to be what he'd hoped. He now runs a market-slash-sandwich shop on Turk Street. It's on the bottom floor of one of those skid-row hotels. The Milton.”

Alex Z pointed at the binder. “It's all in a probation department presentence report. It's the second tab. He got busted for aggravated assault. He beat up some homeless guy who tried to steal an egg. One of those hard-boiled ones they sell over the counter. The public defender got him a no-time deal. Just restitution to SF Medical for them treating the victim, and they made him take anger management classes.”

“What kind of business owner gets a public defender?”

“The kind who's not making any money, or at least not much. He was supposed to pay them a couple hundred dollars after the case was over, but he never did. I guess the PD doesn't send out bill collectors.”

Gage flipped to the TIMCO tab. The first document was the wrongful death complaint filed by the families of the dead workers. He skimmed through it.

“This is pretty vague,” Gage said. “Like they filed the complaint before they knew exactly what happened, before the root cause investigations were even completed.”

Gage turned to the twenty-five-page, single-spaced court docket, then jumped to the end.

“It was dismissed,” Alex Z said. “No trial. No settlement. The judge ruled it was just a workers' comp case because they were working within the scope of their regular duties and because it was just an accident.”

“So they had no standing to sue.”

Alex Z nodded.

Gage flipped to the next tab, a medical malpractice suit.

“What about this one?”

“He settled for fifty-five thousand. The doctors gave his wife one course of the wrong chemo for pancreatic cancer, but the experts agreed she would've died within a year anyway.”

“Which means after he paid his lawyer, the experts, and the deposition costs, he didn't net anything.” Gage looked up at Alex Z. “How'd you find out about the settlement amount? The insurance companies usually insist on secrecy as a condition of agreeing to pay out.”

“The clerk forgot to pull out the judge's notes before she gave us the file.”

“But those are sealed.”

“Somebody had already gotten to it. They slit open the envelope, probably with a razor. You could hardly tell.”

“Charlie? Maybe before he met with Porzolkiewski at Ground Up?”

“No way to tell. They don't keep a record of who checks out files.”

“What about the TIMCO file? Any tampering?”

“Not that I could see, but we've only gone through the first and last volumes. There are fourteen altogether. I've got two people on it and expect them to be done tomorrow.”

Gage thumbed farther into the binder. “What are these code violations?”

“Just the usual ones low-end food service businesses get. A few health citations. And one electrical. I guess there was a fire in the kitchen. Too many appliances plugged into the same outlet. And one for blocking the back door with supplies.”

Gage closed the binder, then gazed through the brick-framed casement window at a tugboat guiding a Hanjin container ship through the San Francisco Bay toward the Port of Oakland. A week earlier, a similar monster had crashed into the supports of a two-hundred-foot-tall crane. Six workers injured. Four million dollars in damage. Even before the sun had set, competing news conferences displayed blame already shifting in tides of legal argument.

“Who represented TIMCO?” Gage asked, reaching again for the binder. He turned to the first page of the docket. His eyebrows rose as he read it aloud:

“Anston & Meyer.”

“Marc Anston was the attorney of record,” Alex Z said.

“Was Brandon in on any depositions?”

Alex Z nodded. “Lots and lots.”

“Porzolkiewski's?”

“Big time.”

Chapter 17

F
rom just inside the entrance, Gage scanned Stymie's Gym in East Oakland at five forty-five the next morning until he caught sight of trial lawyer Skeeter Hall in a corner struggling under an Olympic bar. Gage tossed down his gym bag and slipped around the back of the weight bench to spot him.

“Breathe out, Skeeter,” Gage said, looking down at his grimacing face, “or you're going to bust a gut.”

Air exploded through Skeeter's clenched teeth.

Gage helped him guide the bar onto the crutches at the top of the roller tubes, then walked around and sat down on the next bench.

“Two twenty,” Gage said. “Not bad for a sixty-five-year-old.”

“Sixty-four,” Skeeter said, sitting up. He wiped his face with the bottom of his sleeveless sweatshirt, then swung his leg over the bench to face Gage. “What are you pushing up, youngster?”

“For reps? No more than one ninety. I don't put these old joints at risk anymore.”

“What could you do if you did?”

Gage grinned. “Two twenty-one.”

“Smart-ass. You want me to spot you?”

“Just some information.”

Skeeter glanced up at the wall clock above the entrance. “Isn't this a little early in the
A.M.
for gumshoeing?”

“I'm not a gumshoe. I'm a modern PI. This is called multitasking.”

Gage reached into his gym bag and handed Skeeter a water bottle.

“Thanks.” Skeeter flipped the top open and took a sip. “What task concerns me?”

“You remember the TIMCO case?”

“As if it was yesterday.” Skeeter's mouth went tight. “Those assholes.”

“You mean corporate assholes in general, or this particular one?”

“This particular one. I've never seen a company try to torpedo its own employees that bad. You got four dead guys, three of them with kids. One with a great engineering career ahead of him . . .”

“Porzolkiewski.”

“Yeah . . . Porzolkiewski . . . Tom Fields helped me out on the case, may he rest in peace.”

“Fields is dead?”

“Heart attack at Pebble Beach. Eleventh hole. A family history of heart disease and he was seventy pounds overweight. Did it to himself. A waste.” Skeeter took another sip. “You know that kid Porzolkiewski was a paraplegic, right? A rookie cop chasing after a stolen car drop-kicked him out of a crosswalk. No lights. No siren. He was nineteen. A student at Berkeley.”

“Looks like nothing came easy in that family.”

“The kid used to haul himself up those huge fractionating towers hand over hand.”

Gage understood the technology, so didn't ask for an explanation. Crude oil was heated at the base of the tower and the rising product was separated out by boiling point and then siphoned off.

“Forearms like piston rods. He was trapped a couple of hundred feet up when the thing blew.” Skeeter put the bottle down on the bench beside him. “It was a chain reaction. A pressure release valve failed on the line carrying kerosene. It sprayed onto a generator they were using to run scrubbers to clean a drain. Set the thing off. The fire ran up the tower, then exploded. The diesel line blew. The gasoline line blew. A firestorm. None of the guys could get down. They were like marshmallows on a stick. It still makes me heartsick to think about it.”

Skeeter lowered his head and rubbed his temples. His eyes were wet when he looked up.

“It was a tough case to lose . . .” Skeeter's face hardened. “Except we didn't lose it. It was stolen.”

“What do you mean?”

“We . . .” Skeeter paused, as if finding himself halfway down a trail he had no idea why he was taking, and it was heading toward a cliff. “Why are you interested?”

“I'm not sure about the why, but I can tell you the what. I'm trying to find out more about Brandon Meyer's role in the case and I'm especially interested in Porzolkiewski's father.”

“Interesting guy. Sounds born in the USA, no accent at all, but underneath he was a starry-eyed immigrant. The American dream and all that, but the explosion turned it into a nightmare. I go by his shop whenever I have an appearance in federal court. Every time I walk in I'm surprised he's still there. I thought he'd have blown his brains out by now.”

“He took it that hard?”

“It wasn't the money. It was losing his wife and kid, and plain old corporate betrayal. The company hired a PR firm before the fire was even out, got a lot of mileage saying how they were going to help the families, how they'd get to the cause of the explosion, how everybody would be taken care of, scholarships for all their kids. They even had Porzolkiewski appear with them at a press conference, televised around the world. I guess they were trying to reassure the folks at their foreign drilling operations and refineries. At the same time, their insurance carrier is lying in wait to attack, setting up to blame one of the dead guys, a pipe fitter—”

“To make it a workers' comp case so the company wouldn't be liable and wouldn't have to pay out.”

“Exactly.”

“I imagine four dead guys would've been worth a lot of money once the jury got a peek at the autopsy photos.”

“That's what we figured, too, but after we met Porzolkiewski and got a sense of him and his kid and what they'd been through, the case stopped being about money for us.”

“What was Meyer's part in it?”

Skeeter tugged at the right shoulder of his sweatshirt, pulling it closer to his neck, then did the same with the other. Biceps and triceps pumped, skin tight.

“Can't say.”

“You mean you don't know?”

“I mean I have a trial starting in his court next week. I'm not even going to speak his name outside of the courtroom until the case is over.” Skeeter extended his open hands. “You know what happened the last time I appeared in front of him? I'll tell you what happened. He screwed us all through trial and we lost. And we can't appeal until this next trial is over because it means pointing the finger at him.”

“For what?”

“You know how he cuts off witnesses, then rephrases what they have to say? That's what he kept doing all the way through the trial. And every time I'd object, he'd tell me to move on. Even if I got to ask the question again, the punks on other side would jump up and make some bogus objection and he'd sustain it. Every time. Chopped us off at the knees.”

Skeeter stood up, hands on hips. He glared down at Gage.

“You know what we found out when we interviewed the jurors afterward?” Skeeter jabbed the air. “You know what the critical evidence was for them? What they talked about in the jury room? The exact testimony that made them find against us?”

“Meyer's restatement of what the key witnesses said.”

“That asshole. His version of the real testimony was a complete fiction, the whole thing constructed so the other side would win the trial.”

“But you can't appeal based on jurors' thought processes. You need actual jury misconduct.”

“I know. A couple of the jurors now realize what happened. They'll help us. I'll find something when this next trial is over. It's a class action stock fraud. I've got half a million dollars invested in it. Slam dunk unless he screws us.”

“Then you'll talk about Meyer's role in TIMCO?”

Skeeter ripped off his lifting gloves, threw them into his gym bag, then reached down and yanked it over his shoulder.

“Who's Meyer?”

T
he manila envelope Tansy delivered to Gage's office late in the afternoon turned out to be a whole lot thicker than he expected.

“This came by messenger,” she said, approaching his desk. She pointed at the handwriting on the front after setting it down. “What does ‘Graham Gage: 221 pounds' mean?”

“I suspect it means I'm in for some heavy lifting.”