most often applies it to you.”
Peterson shrugged.
“He never liked you as a football player and is thrilled you never made it into the hall of fame. And he doesn’t like Matson, thinks he’s a scumbag. He wrote that he wishes this was a capital case and that he’d like to blow the brains out of anybody who was part of the scheme.”
“So he’s in the postal worker category.”
“Exactly. Number Thirteen maybe is just unlucky. He got caught talking about a case in the hallway. They all do it one time or another. The grand jury clerk told me she overheard the chief judge reading him the riot act. The guy was real upset. He begged to stay on. Maybe he became resentful enough to want to sabotage the whole thing.”
Peterson shook his head as if to say that this investigation would be going nowhere. “Another weak candidate.”
Zink nodded, then tapped Number Twenty-two. “But here’s a contender. What got my attention is that he wrote down Kovalenko’s patronymic not as ‘B-o-r-i-s-o-v-i-c-h,’ but as ‘B-o-r- y — s-o-v-i-c-h,’ old style. I figured he’s got a Russian background. And bingo. His family name was Toshenko. When his grandparents got to Ellis Island in the early 1920s, the immigration people anglicized it to Thomas.”
“That’s not unusual. It happened all the time.”
Zink raised his eyebrows. “Guess who his cousin is?”
“I couldn’t guess.” Peterson frowned, not in the mood for game playing.
“Scuzzy Thomas.”
Peterson sat up. “No fucking way!”
Peterson slammed his fist on Zink’s desk. Pens and notebooks jumped. The computer monitor shook. “Are you telling me that we’ve got a relative of a mobster who’s in the joint for jury tampering sitting on a federal grand jury? Rose is gonna go nuts…Did you look at his juror questionnaire?”
“No, they’re under seal. We’ll need a court order.”
Peterson stood up. “I’ll get an order for all of them. This is a fucking can of worms.” He looked at the chart, shaking his head. “I’m starting to wish I never opened it.”
He started toward the door, then hesitated and looked back at Zink. “Did it cross your mind that whoever wants all these other guys dead also wants to keep Matson alive?” He then turned away and marched down the hallway.
CHAPTER 46
W hy is somebody keeping Matson alive?” Gage wondered aloud when Alex Z walked into the office kitchen where he was making a pot of coffee.
“Keeping or leaving?”
“Leaving means he’s harmless, keeping means he’s got something somebody wants.”
Alex Z reached into the cabinet and pulled out two cups. “If I was him, I’d get a bodyguard.”
“He must have a krysha, a roof.” Gage held his hand above his head, palm down. “Somebody is protecting him.” Gage lowered his arm. “Slava thought that Gravilov would squeeze Matson for money and it was Alla Tarasova’s job to keep an eye on him.”
“Protecting him so they can squeeze him?”
“That’s what a protection racket is all about. They protect you from other crooks so you can keep paying.”
“Why not just put a gun to his head?” Alex Z formed his hand into the shape of a revolver. “You know, ‘Gimme all you got.’”
“What would you do if somebody did that to you?”
“I’d need to run out and sell my guitars and stuff.”
“So would Matson. We need to figure out where his money is.” Gage flicked his thumb toward Alex Z’s office. “Why don’t you go over Matson’s phone records and the ones I got out of Fitzhugh’s house? See if you can tell who they were calling. Maybe we can find a pattern.”
Alex Z brought a computer printout with him into Gage’s office a few hours later.
“It’s pretty clear Matson only used his office phone for SatTek business calls,” Alex Z reported. “In fact, all the overseas calls were to companies on the sales leads or customer lists or to suppliers of manufacturing equipment. Germany and France. I checked a bunch of the numbers. Almost all were listed. But his cell phone records show calls to a bunch of unlisted and disconnected numbers in places that haven’t even been on the horizon. Like Singapore. Why would he be calling Singapore? Or Taiwan? Switzerland I can understand. Liechtenstein, yeah. UK, sure. But Singapore?”
“Any pattern?”
“Pattern? Yes. Explanation? No-but whatever it was, Fitzhugh was in the middle of it. Calls to him kept crisscrossing all the others. Switzerland, Fitzhugh. Singapore, Fitzhugh. Taiwan, Fitzhugh. He’d get a call from Matson, then right away call a bank or a law office in Lugano, or Guernsey, or London. Bang, bang. Just like that.”
Gage turned his head and squinted toward the light coming into his office window, then back at Alex Z with the barest hint of a smile.
“There’s something we haven’t thought much about,” Gage said. “Matson’s exit strategy. How does he think this’ll end? He knows the government will make him forfeit all the money. Peterson isn’t a fool. A jury asked to convict Burch wouldn’t be too pleased if he let Matson keep any. But Matson’s not a fool, either. He’s got to have a stash. He doesn’t want to come out of this thing broke. And the best place to hide money is where nobody would think to look.”
“You think maybe Alla is part of his exit strategy? Dump the wife and disappear?”
“If Slava is reading this correctly, he’ll disappear, all right.”
“I don’t know, boss, her name is just too pretty for a crook. Alla Tarasova. It’s musical, even lyrical. It sort of floats in the air.”
Gage remembered someone else who’d talked about her in almost the same way, as a butterfly with a beautiful name.
“That’s what Mickey thought, too.”
CHAPTER 47
M ickey took it. He just lay there and took it. He didn’t scream. He didn’t yell for help. He knew if they’d intended to kill him, he’d already be dead.
The giant kicked him one last time in the ribs as he lay sprawled in the shadows of Azenby Road in Southeast London, then lumbered into a waiting Mercedes and sped away.
Mickey didn’t remember passing out. He just remembered the message and the pain when a constable passing by just after sunrise mistook him for a vagrant and shook him back into consciousness.
The Metropolitan Police officer who followed the ambulance down Peckham Road and up Denmark Hill to the King’s College Hospital recognized Mickey as soon as the blood was washed off his face. Superintendent Michael Ransford was a legend whose retirement picture hung in the station to which the officer was assigned.
The officer winced as he inspected the superintendent’s shattered face, for a moment imagining it was his own infirm grandfather lying there. But then he caught himself. Ransford was a pro. The best. He’d remember the details that civilian victims forget. He felt lucky to be the officer assigned to do the interview.
“Superintendent?”
Mickey opened his eyes.
“What did he look like, Superintendent?”
