“I told you I don’t have it.” Porzolkiewski paused, and then pointed a forefinger at Gage. “I’ll give you something for free. And it’s really true. Two guys came by after Palmer did. They gave me ten grand and I gave it to them.”
A piece fell out of the puzzle Gage had put together in his mind. Meyer already had his wallet back when he called Gage in. Gage shoved the piece back in a different direction. Maybe Meyer just didn’t want to explain how he got it.
“How about copies?” Gage asked.
Porzolkiewski smiled. “Let’s see your part first.”
“If it accounts for what happened at TIMCO, will you give them to me?”
“If I believe it.”
Gage didn’t like making decisions when he was jet-lagged, but he had years of reading faces and he knew that underneath Porzolkiewski’s anger was a very sad man.
He pointed at the recorder. “Wilbert Hawkins.”
Porzolkiewski’s eyes hardened as he repeated the name. “My lawyer hired a private investigator to look for him after the judge dismissed the case. He wanted to file a motion for reconsideration. But the guy disappeared… gone. Where’d you find him?”
“Can’t say. That’s one of the parts you don’t get.”
Porzolkiewski opened his mouth to object, and then closed it. He stared at length at the recorder. Finally, he said, “Okay.”
“Portions are beeped out, like where he is. And this is not all of it, just what you need to know at this point.”
Porzolkiewski nodded.
Gage turned it on:
“My name is Graham Gage. I’m a private investigator from San Francisco, California.” I’m in BEEEEEEP talking to Wilbert Hawkins. I need you to identify yourself for the tape.”
“My name is, uh, Wilbert Hawkins. I was a welder at TIMCO fourteen years ago.”
“That’s the asshole,” Porzolkiewski said. “I still recognize his fake Okie accent.”
“How long had you been working at TIMCO before the explosion?”
“Nineteen years.”
“My understanding is that there was a turnaround a month before the valve failed on the kerosene line on Fractionating Tower 2.”
“Yeah, there was.”
“Explain what a turnaround is.”
“It’s, uh, when we shut down the tower for maintenance. You know, take apart the critical components and then make whatever repairs are needed. Takes a couple of weeks.”
“Tell me what happened when you examined the pressure device on the valve.”
…
“Answer the question.”
“I need a lawyer. Even a lawyer from BEEEEP.”
“You’re not getting a lawyer.”
Porzolkiewski smiled.
“Answer the question.”
“I… I took the valve apart and, uh, found the pressure release was corroded.”
“You tell anybody?”
“My… uh… supervisor. Then me and him went to the, uh, plant manager. The tower was old. Nobody made that valve anymore. It was gonna cost maybe fifty grand to make another one from scratch-and we’d have to replace dozens of them, all over the refinery. We knew from experience that this one going bad meant that all of them had gone bad. He needed the plant manager to make the decision ’cause it meant shutting down all the fractionators for a couple of months.”
“And…”
“And TIMCO would’ve lost millions of dollars. We had kerosene, diesel, jet fuel, and gasoline coming off those towers. Huge amounts. Big contracts from buyers already signed.”
“What did the plant manager tell you to do?”
“He talked to the big bosses in Dallas, then called me in… He
… he… uh… told me to pull out the release device and
… uh… weld over the hole and try to keep the pressure in the pipe down once the tower was back in service.”
“What happened?”
“We didn’t keep it low enough. And with no pressure release… the… uh… the… uh…”
“The what?”
“The whole valve blew.”
Gage switched off the recorder and watched Porzolkiewski finish the story in his mind. Kerosene spraying down onto the scrubber, flames exploding back up the tower. His son and three other men incinerated because a hundred-billion-dollar company didn’t want to lose a few bucks.
Porzolkiewski closed his eyes, then lowered his head. Jaws clenched. Face flushed. Fighting back tears. Hands gripped together on the table. His whole body shuddered, then he buried his face in his palms. Muffled crying, almost hysterical.
Years of outrage had dissolved into immeasurable grief.
Gage reached over and gripped Porzolkiewski’s shoulder. “I’m sorry you turned out to be right,” Gage said. “I wish it had been just an accident.”
A few minutes later, Porzolkiewski looked up, then wiped his eyes with the back of his sleeve. “I never…” He cleared his throat, then took in a breath and exhaled. “I never cried for him like that before… I guess I was always too angry.”
Porzolkiewski pushed himself to his feet and walked into the kitchen. Gage heard him open the refrigerator, then the inside freezer door, expecting him to return with ice water. He came back carrying a Ziploc bag and handed it to Gage.
“This is what you want.”
Gage removed a dozen eight-and-a-half-by-eleven folded pages. Gage laid them out. They warmed in the dining room air.
Displayed before them were photocopies of Brandon Meyer’s life, in paper and plastic.
A s Gage lay in bed that night next to Faith, too jet-lagged for sleep, he didn’t regret traveling halfway around the world to obtain something that all along had lain hidden in a freezer just miles from his office.
Then an image came to him: Porzolkiewski weeping at his dining room table.
And Gage’s last thoughts before finally drifting off to sleep were of a father’s grief finally anchored-forever anchored-to the truth about the corporate murder of his son.
Chapter 28
Senior Special Agent Joe Casey stood by the printer in the Federal Building office of the FBI, watching the last of the search warrant print out. He felt a moment of regret, wishing he could give Gage a heads-up that the sledgehammer he raised when he retrieved the jilted Oscar Mogasci from Switzerland was about to fall. He shielded the machine with his body, for other than himself, only one other special agent, the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California, and the head of Criminal Division of the Justice Department in Washington knew its contents. Even the team of FBI and IRS agents and forensic computer experts standing by in the warehouse staging area in San Jose didn’t know where they would execute the warrant. Casey would only tell them OptiCom was the target after the judge signed it.
Casey checked the wall clock. Five forty-five P.M. He imagined the judge was also watching the time, and
