selecting from his repertoire of disagreeable faces the one he’d assume when Casey finally arrived. This judge wouldn’t have been Casey’s choice, but these kinds of cases were always assigned to that judge since he had the expertise to evaluate them.
He removed the search warrant and his affidavit, then turned toward the copy machine and dropped them into the feeder, stapling the collated copies as they came out.
As he walked toward the elevator, Casey glanced into the conference room and nodded to the two agents guarding Mogasci, sitting at the table, his head facedown on his folded arms like an eight-year-old child in school detention. The long linoleum hallway reminded Casey of the one he’d walked two weeks earlier after badging his way past the TSA booth at the San Francisco Airport to meet Gage when he arrived back from Zurich. He’d spotted Gage directing Mogasci toward the glassed-in booths like an owner shepherding a puppy who’d soiled the carpet in the living room. And Mogasci’s expression told the world he knew he’d done wrong.
Gage had returned Mogasci’s passport as they approached the Customs and Border Patrol window. Casey intercepted Mogasci on the other side and waited for Gage to pass through. Casey then badged them past the baggage screeners and out into the arrivals hall, where another agent was waiting to escort them to a Ford Expedition parked at the curb and guarded by airport security.
Only small talk between Casey and Gage accompanied the ride up Highway 101 toward Gage’s Embarcadero office, and there wasn’t much of that. They mostly stared at the smog suffocating the bay and eclipsing the afternoon sun, the gray sky seeming to capture the enormity of what was about to happen.
Gage had climbed out of the SUV in his parking lot, leaving behind a briefcase filled with the trade secrets Mogasci had stolen from FiberLink and the Swiss bank account records Mogasci had surrendered to Gage in his Zurich hotel room three days earlier. Also inside was a flash drive containing an incriminating call between Mogasci and the president of OptiCom that Mogasci hoped to trade with Casey for his freedom.
C asey shook off the memory, then glanced at his watch as he stepped into the elevator. Six P.M. He got off on the eighteenth floor, then knocked on the office door of the judge’s clerk, who let him in. Her purse and coat were piled on her desk, a not so subtle reminder it was an hour past quitting time. She escorted Casey into chambers, where he found the judge sitting on a couch next to a window framing a view of the Marin Headlands and Golden Gate Bridge, the evening traffic bunched up on the deck.
The judge nodded, accepted the search warrant and supporting affidavit, then directed Casey to a side chair. Casey checked his pants pocket for his car keys. In fifteen minutes he’d be out of there and on his way south to San Jose. In twenty-five years, first as a police detective, then as an agent with the FBI, he’d never actually seen a judge read a search warrant affidavit all the way through.
A half hour later, Judge Brandon Meyer was still reading the fifty-five pages.
Another half hour after that, Meyer looked up and said, “I’d like to think about this overnight.”
Fury mushroomed inside Casey. It was a righteous case. Probable cause up the wazoo. But all he said was, “Yes, Your Honor,” and then rose and left chambers.
Casey’s stomach twisted as he walked toward the elevator, wondering if he’d forgotten some element of the crime, some proof of federal jurisdiction, some link in the causal chain-and there was also the embarrassment of calling the staging warehouse to send the agents home because he couldn’t get the goddamn judge to sign the goddamn search warrant.
Casey thought of Gage.
What was Gage going to think when he learned the judge he called the pipsqueak had tossed his clients into a judicial never-never land?
A fter notifying the U.S. Attorney and the search team of the delay, Casey drove the ramp from the garage underneath the Federal Building. He spotted Judge Meyer walking uphill toward the Tenderloin, head down in thought, oblivious to his surroundings, as if it was a regular evening stroll.
Going for a walk to think through a complex case made sense, Casey thought, but wading through drug dealers and hookers while doing it was damn stupid.
Casey was tempted to pull up alongside Meyer to warn him to head another direction, but then changed his mind.
Fuck him.
Chapter 29
Morning sunlight flowing into Gage’s office illuminated the copies Porzolkiewski had made of the contents of Brandon Meyer’s wallet. Gage had laid them out on his conference table and organized them by type: credit cards, medical cards, business cards, identification, phone cards, scraps of paper with telephone numbers, notes, lists of names, cash, receipts, and a slim address book.
Porzolkiewski had even photocopied the condom.
Gage knew Spike Pacheco would be thrilled. The only thing missing from Spike’s mental re-creation of Meyer’s adventure in the Tenderloin was the Viagra.
Gage reached for the telephone. Alex Z arrived forty minutes later, accompanied by a bodyguard who waited in the hallway.
“How do you like your new office?” Gage asked.
Gage had set up Alex Z in a loft on the Oakland waterfront. He wasn’t going to take a chance that whoever pummeled Shakir would get him, too.
Alex Z smiled. “It’s a block from the best Thai food in the Bay Area. It feels like a vacation home. I may not move back.”
“Just be careful when you go out.”
Alex Z glanced toward the door. “Him and his buddies cover me. I feel like a rock star.”
“You are a rock star, at least in San Francisco.”
Alex Z shook his head. “More nerd than star.”
He leaned over the table and surveyed the photocopies. He grinned when he spotted the copy of the condom, then locked onto the page next to it. When he straightened up, Gage was already nodding.
“Why does a federal judge need phone cards?” Alex Z asked.
“Spike would say that he doesn’t want calls to a hooker showing up on his cell phone bills.”
Gage passed Alex Z copies of two pages from Meyer’s address book displaying a mix of corporate and political telephone numbers.
“On the other hand, maybe it’s just political paranoia,” Gage said. “Fear the Democrats might snoop in on his cell phone calls and catch Senator Meyer’s little brother engaging a little too deeply in electoral politics.”
Alex Z skimmed down the list. “I take it you believe Meyer is secretly managing Landon’s presidential campaign.”
“Judge by day, Machiavelli by night.”
“Why not? They’re brothers.”
“The appearance of a conflict of interest. The real money around here is in Silicon Valley and Brandon mostly handles complex civil cases like securities fraud, intellectual property, unfair competition. Executives in any company appearing in Brandon’s court would wonder whether contributions to Landon’s campaign might improve their chances. What they call a velvet cash register. One thing they know for certain is that they could improve them further by hiring Brandon’s ex-partner for cases appearing in his court. And they do it case after case after case. They know it’s hard for Brandon to look down from the bench at Marc Anston and rule against him.”
Alex Z drew back. “And everybody knows this is going on?”
“Sure.”
“Why don’t the attorneys on the other side of Anston’s cases recuse Brandon and ask for another judge?”
“You can’t recuse federal court judges. Judges have to recuse themselves. You’re stuck with whoever the clerk assigns the case to.”
Alex Z looked again at the corporate telephone numbers.
“Does Landon know he could be getting money coming from a kind of extortion?” Alex Z asked.
