Gage wasn’t at all sure, but the answer wasn’t one Spike could help him get, so he fixed his eyes on his friend and answered, “Yes.”
Spike held his gaze for a moment, then conceded by drawing a line across his pad.
“What else was Jack up to?”
“IPOs. Bank mergers. Nothing anybody goes to war over.”
Gage glanced down the long hospital driveway toward the street. Commuter traffic inched by. Overfilled trolleys crawled along the wet pavement. Another ambulance rolled up to the emergency entrance followed by a patrol car, lights flashing, arriving with the last of the night’s victims.
Spike followed Gage’s eyes, then pointed at the windows lining the ICU and sighed. “I always figured it would be you or me lying in there.”
“Until two years ago, I had no doubt it would be Jack.” Gage made a steep gliding motion with his arm. “The way he used to rocket down the ski slopes like some oblivious teenager. But that all changed when his wife was diagnosed with breast cancer. First he flared up the way he always would, ready to take on the forces of nature. But two weeks in, he realized it was all about chemistry and physiology, not force of will. Courtney’s or his. It crushed him, really crushed him.”
“Tough for a guy like that to feel helpless.”
“It was more than that. He felt…”
In grasping for words, Gage saw what habit and familiarity had obscured when he’d spotted Burch three weeks earlier climbing out of a limousine in front of the tsarist-era Baltschug Hotel in Moscow. His cheeks hung on his thinned face, his square shoulders had rounded, his gray tailored suit was ill-fitting and misshapen. Where they once faced each other eye-to-eye at six-two, Gage remembered looking slightly down as they waited to check in.
A lump in Gage’s throat caught him by surprise when he found the word. He swallowed hard. “Fragile,” Gage finally said, struggling to keep his voice even. “I think he felt fragile for the first time in his life.”
Spike folded his arms across his chest, as if trying to resist seeing Burch, and maybe himself, through the eyes of Gage, a man who’d never felt the least bit invincible, even as a young cop kicking doors and always the first one in.
“Jack was terrified that he might leave Courtney a widow,” Gage said, “sick and alone. So he kept himself out of harm’s way and tried to control everything around them.” His eyes caught the glitter of fine drops now settling on Spike’s roof. “He would’ve stopped the rain when she stepped out of the house if there was a way to do it. They just adored each other.”
“Why was he willing to leave her and go to Russia?”
“He wasn’t,” Gage said. “She insisted because she missed the joy he took in his work. He recovered some of the old Jack in Moscow, and life seemed secure enough to start running the hills again when he got back.” Gage glanced in the direction of Pacific Heights, then shook his head slowly. “I wish he hadn’t, or at least-”
“Don’t even think it. You can’t be everywhere.” Spike flipped his notebook closed. “I know it looks grim, but it’s not over yet. There’s still a chance he’ll make it.”
Gage looked up at the ICU, then down at Spike. “How many shootings did we work together?”
“Hundreds, I guess. Would’ve been thousands by now if you hadn’t gone private.” Spike’s eyes widened as he finished the sentence, knowing Gage had trapped him.
“And how many victims survived slugs in the chest?”
“Well…I mean…there must-” Spike threw up his hands. “Your heart’s aching over what life did to Jack even before he got shot, but your mind keeps churning like a goddamn mainframe, calculating the odds of whether he’ll survive.” Spike’s face reddened in frustration, almost in anger. “And nobody’s gonna see the rage you feel until the end of this thing, and maybe not even then. Sometimes you scare the hell out of me.”
Spike pulled out his car keys and gripped them in his hand.
“Ever since we were kids you thought differently than me; saw the world differently. Different from anybody I ever met. For a while I fooled myself into thinking we were following the same path when SFPD recruited us, but we weren’t.
“I’ll help you however I can, Graham. But for the first time in our lives I think you’re holding things back from me.” Spike’s lips went tight for a moment, then he took in a long breath and exhaled. “It makes me afraid that the road less traveled is going to take you off a cliff.”
CHAPTER 3
S tuart Matson, president of SatTek Incorporated, faced Assistant U.S. Attorney William Peterson across a conference table on the eleventh floor of the San Francisco Federal Building. Peterson was flanked by an FBI agent on one side and an IRS agent on the other.
On Matson’s right sat his attorney, Daniel Hackett. His other flank was exposed.
Thunder reverberated through the steel-framed building and into the book-lined room as Peterson pushed aside his unfinished morning coffee. He aligned two government-issued Paper Mates along the top edge of his legal pad, and said, “Mr. Matson-”
“Just call me Scoob,” Matson said, attempting the ingratiating smile that had begun to fail him a week earlier when he found himself in the crosshairs of a securities fraud investigation.
“Mr. Matson, this is what we call a Queen for a Day. It’s your one and only chance to convince me to allow you to cooperate with the government.”
Matson curled his hands inward toward his chest and adopted the practiced indignation of a professional salesman. “I thought you were asking for me to cooperate. ”
Peterson shifted his eyes to Hackett. “Your client doesn’t seem to grasp that we’d just as soon take this case to trial.” He turned to the FBI agent at his side. “What’s the loss?”
“Almost three hundred million dollars.” The agent’s voice was flat. He fixed his gaze on Matson, his face as expressionless as a spreadsheet. “And counting.”
“So we’re talking what? Twenty years? Thirty?” Peterson looked back at Hackett. “What do you think, Counselor? I’m sure you’ve done the math.”
Matson thought back to the day the SEC suspended trading in SatTek stock. Sitting in Hackett’s office. The lawyer’s black-haired, hawkish little head bent over the thousand-page Federal Sentencing Manual, working his mental calculator, then summing the total in a nightmarish bottom line: Unless Matson won at trial or delivered others to Peterson’s chopping block, he’d spend the next three decades sleeping in a concrete box, eighteen inches from a lidless steel toilet.
Peterson glared at Matson. “I don’t have time to waste on this.” He then pushed himself to his feet and reached down to gather his files.
As the six-one and two-hundred-thirty-pound former NFL linebacker loomed over him, Matson saw himself as he knew Peterson did: the twenty extra pounds bunched around his small frame, his soft hands with their manicured fingernails, and his face that fell just short of handsome; a chin just a shade too small, eyes just a shade too narrow, and a nose just a shade too large.
Matson blinked away the image and embraced another, one he’d earned through four decades of struggle, of standing outside his body, of molding it and training it: the steady gaze, the ingratiating smile, the trustworthy handshake, even the perfect golf swing.
“Wait.” Hackett shot his palm up toward Peterson. “Wait. Scoob wants to continue.” He swung fully toward Matson. “Right, Scoob? You do want to continue?”
Matson clenched his jaw, face reddening, furious that his freedom might hinge simply on whether the prosecutor turned toward the door. He answered, staring at Hackett, not at Peterson. “Sure. I wanna continue.”
Peterson jabbed his forefinger down at Matson. “And that means no more game playing about why we’re here.”
Matson knew that was exactly what he’d done, made a couple of preemptive moves, trying to avoid becoming Peterson’s pawn, but he looked up and said, “I’m not playing a game. I just want to know where I stand.”
