“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
What 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 amp; 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.”
