“And get caught in a crossfire?”
“What do you mean, crossfire?”
“It’s not important. Anyway, it would’ve been stupid to go inside. Gage is like a bloodhound. His nose snapped toward those beaners the second they walked in the place. He would’ve sniffed me out in a heartbeat.”
Chapter 12
Where do we stand?” Gage asked Alex Z the next morning.
Alex Z was hunched over his keyboard, his face inches from one of the monitors standing on his desk.
“I decrypted a spreadsheet using the name of Charlie’s boat, but everything in it is coded except the numbers.”
Alex Z pressed a couple of keys. A file opened. Gage saw subtotaled and totaled columns with dates at the top, and to the far left, a column of gibberish, a mixture of letters and numbers.
“What’s your guess?” Gage asked.
“There are no negative numbers, so it’s probably not money going in and then coming out again. So if it’s really money, it’s either all in or all out.”
“How much?”
Alex Z scrolled to the bottom of the spreadsheet. “About ten million on this one.”
“Maybe he was tracking financial transactions in a case. Have you tried decoding the label column?”
Alex Z scratched his head. “I was hoping you wouldn’t ask that, boss.”
“Stymied?”
“Yeah.”
Gage smiled. “You’ll figure it out. Anything else in there?”
“Lots and lots. I’m still trying to decode them.”
Gage glanced down at a stack of billing records. Alex Z’s eyes followed.
“I sorted those by case and by date,” Alex Z said. “But there’s not much there. About thirteen thousand outstanding, spread among three cases.”
“I guess he really was closing down. Viz said Charlie used to clear about three hundred thousand a year.”
Alex Z pointed at the printouts. “All he had going was the yacht tax fraud, an earth-moving accident that killed an oil executive’s kid, and a dispute between Paramount and Universal over film rights.”
“What about Brandon Meyer’s mugging? Did he put time in for that?”
“No. But he kept all the receipts. Cab fare. Posters. Restaurant receipts.”
“Restaurant receipts? From where?”
“Ground Up Coffee Shop on Geary. One from a week before he got shot and one just the day before.”
Gage recognized the name. He’d remembered driving past it on his way from downtown out to the Presidio. It was a few blocks away from where Charlie had been shot and from where Spike suspected a Checker cab had dropped him off.
“Look and see whether he saved any Ground Up receipts from other visits,” Gage said. “Maybe it was his regular place to meet people in that part of town.”
“Already did. It doesn’t show up at all in his accounting records, but neither do these two.”
“Maybe was waiting to enter them until the case was over,” Gage said.
“It would be the first time. I checked the tax fraud and the other cases. He entered the costs the same day he spent the money.”
“Could be that he was getting a little lax since he was near the end of the career, then got shot and trapped inside his body.”
Gage scanned the spreadsheet displayed on the monitor.
“Why would Charlie encrypt this and code it too?” Gage asked. “One or the other should’ve been enough.” He reached for the mouse, clicked twice, opening the hidden document properties, including the author and the company that created it.
“He didn’t put this spreadsheet together,” Alex Z said, taping the author field on the screen. “Who is CEB?”
“Or what is CEB? It’s also listed as the company.”
“I wonder whether CEB sent it over coded, then Charlie encrypted it for extra security.”
“Maybe,” Gage said. “How many encrypted files are left?”
“About thirty. Plus two encrypted folders. I have no idea how many files are in those. I haven’t been able to decrypt his password file yet.”
“Print out whatever you can and have Tansy put them in my safe.” Gage settled back in his chair and stared at the screen. “This is all very interesting, but-”
“But it may have nothing to do with why Charlie was shot.”
“Exactly. Charlie had a lot to hide. We could uncover a dozen different schemes, but still never find out which was the one that ended with the bullet that cut him in half.”
Chapter 13
'You Toby?” Gage asked the twenty-five-year-old steaming milk behind the granite counter at Ground Up Coffee Shop.
“That’s me,” Toby answered, looking up at Gage. “Is this about the car accident? I talked to the adjuster yesterday.”
Gage shook his head. “A customer.” He pointed toward the front window. “And about something that happened down the street.”
“Sure. I got a break in ten. You want something to drink?”
“Decaf.”
“Cappuccino? Espresso? Mocha Macchiato?”
“Just a decaf coffee.”
Toby grinned. “You must be from out of town.”
“Thirty years ago.”
Toby waved off Gage’s money and said he’d bring the coffee to his table.
Gage grabbed a New York Times strung on a three-foot wooden dowel from a wall mount, then took the rear table in the narrow cafe. A few minutes later, Toby delivered the coffee and sat down.
“So what’s up, Decaf?”
Gage pulled a photo of Charlie Palmer from his suit pocket.
“You remember a cop coming in here a few months ago asking about this guy?”
Toby took the photo. “Sure. Different picture, but I think it’s the same guy. Got shot or something, right?”
“Yeah.”
Toby set it down. “He doing okay?”
“He didn’t make it.”
“Sorry to hear that.” Toby paused and shook his head, then pointed at Gage’s coffee. “You want sugar or something?”
“No thanks.”
Gage took a confirmatory sip.
“What’s your part in this?” Toby asked.
“I’m a private investigator.”
