Marc Anston leaned a little closer toward Meyer sitting across the cloth-covered table. His Putin-like head gleamed in the light from a pendant fixture above, while his wireless glasses reflected the one suspended beyond the next table.
Looking back at him, Meyer felt, as much as saw, the familiar. A thin, old-money face, twelve years older than his, containing eyes that never stared or peered or gawked or leered or squinted. They only gazed, taking in, never projecting out. They were eyes formed by years of cold war intelligence work beginning in Moscow after Yale Law School and ending in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
“Gage knows about TIMCO,” Anston said. “All we can figure is that he found Wilbert Hawkins and applied some pressure.”
“What about the money trail?”
“We have to assume Hawkins told him about the million, but Gage didn’t say anything about payoffs when he confronted Karopian.”
Brandon took in a long breath through his nose, then breathed out, eyes fixed on Anston’s. He interlaced his fingers and rubbed his thumbs together.
“What about Palmer’s hard drive?” Brandon asked. “Anything?”
“Nothing. Our people searched every which way. There’s no mention of Pegasus anywhere.”
Brandon shook his head. His voice rose. “There has to be. He threatened to e-mail the spreadsheets to CNN.”
Anston raised a palm toward Brandon. “Take it easy.”
“It just pisses me off. That little punk takes a look at the grim reaper, then goes to jelly.” Brandon pounded his middle finger on the white tablecloth. “None of us got into this for money.”
“Except Palmer.”
“And that’s what’s biting us in the ass,” Brandon said. “He never believed in the cause in the first place. And once he realized money was no good in heaven or in hell-wherever he thought he was going-he caved. It’s a damn good thing he had the seizure before he spilled it all to Gage.”
“You know Gage,” Anston said. “Is there any way to get him to back off?”
Brandon shook his head. “But we don’t need to. Hawkins can’t take Gage beyond Palmer, and Palmer’s dead. Karopian knew how you fit in, but he’s dead, too. Another lucky break.”
Anston half smiled. “And Gage is in way too good a shape to have a seizure or a heart attack.”
“What do you mean?”
Anston’s smile faded. “Nothing.”
“But what if he finds out about the Pegasus companies and all the accounts?”
“It won’t make a difference. He’d have to go one step farther to connect them to us, and the Cayman Exchange Bank is never going to give up those records.”
Both Anston and Brandon leaned back as the waiter set down their seafood sautes and remained silent while he topped off their water glasses.
“New subject,” Anston said as the waiter walked away. “How did we do with OptiCom?”
“Should be around ten million.”
“Ten?”
Brandon nodded. Big smile. “It’s a multibillion-dollar company. Ten is nothing. Hardly a blip, and no one will be able to trace it to us. I’ll find some way to suppress the evidence as soon as the defense files a motion to do it. I’ll make a record so strong the U.S. Attorney won’t even bother appealing. In the end, it’s a no-harm, no-foul case. OptiCom pays a little money for FiberLink’s switch as part of a civil settlement and everything is back to just the way it was before.”
“How much more does your brother need?”
“For his campaign or the Supreme Court nominees?”
“One thing at a time. The nominees.”
“I don’t know for sure. We got pledges of about five in Silicon Valley during his last visit. It really depends on how big Landon’s promises have to be to get his colleagues’ confirmation votes once he gets the nominations out of the Judiciary Committee.”
Anston fixed his eyes on Brandon’s. His voice was low and hard.
“He’s going to have to do whatever it takes. If Reagan had the guts to put up a fight in 1987, we’d have gotten Robert Bork instead of that wimp Anthony Kennedy. That lunatic cited European law more often than the U.S. Constitution. And I don’t want to wait another twenty-five years for those idiots in Washington to get it right.”
Anston stiffened as a two-term member of the city council passed by their table, a transsexual with the body of a linebacker, encased in a short-cut pant suit.
Anston shook his head as he stared after her.
“I hate this fucking town.”
Chapter 45
'This really is like a ball of snakes,” Alex Z said to Gage in his loft overlooking the tourist shops and seafood restaurants on the Oakland waterfront. “There’s no way we’d have seen it if we hadn’t been looking for it.”
They stood facing a six-foot-by-eight-foot sheet of posterboard displaying a flowchart and chronology of the TIMCO and Moki Amaro cases.
“Walk me through how they did it,” Gage said.
Alex Z picked up a yellow fluorescent marker from the worktable behind him and started at the left side of the chart.
“A million dollars showed up in the Pegasus Limited account after Meyer’s firm got hired by TIMCO. It was later wired out to Hawkins. Then after the superior court ruled it was just a workers’ comp case, TIMCO transferred another two million into Pegasus-”
“The fee for Anston and Meyer making the case go away.”
“But I don’t see anything that could have been a payoff to the judge who dismissed it,” Alex Z said.
“I don’t think there was one,” Gage said. “If he’d been paid off, his decision would have been a lot more definitive than it was. He had to dismiss the case on legal grounds because the plaintiffs couldn’t shake Hawkins or Karopian.”
Gage scanned the complex chart. “Is that it for TIMCO?”
“It pops up again after Meyer was appointed to the bench. A TIMCO subsidiary got cited for toxic dumping into San Pablo Bay. The general manager was charged in federal court.”
“Meyer’s court?”
“Bingo. According to Skeeter Hall’s research, Meyer forced the U.S. Attorney to knock it down to failure to report a spill, rather than an intentional release. No jail time. Just a fine.”
“And the payoff?”
“A TIMCO subsidiary wired two hundred thousand into Pegasus a week before sentencing, and another two hundred a week after.” Alex Z shook his head. “No one seemed to have noticed that TIMCO was a client of Meyer’s old firm.”
“Wouldn’t make a difference,” Gage said. “Meyer wasn’t the attorney of record in the explosion case. That’s all that counts in conflict of interest rules for judges.”
“Makes you wonder whether Meyer is paying off clerks to direct the cases he wants into his court,” Alex Z said.
“Possible,” Gage said, “but untraceable. The payoffs would have been small and paid in cash, not hundreds of thousands of dollars wire transferred into offshore bank accounts.” He pointed at the chart. “What about Moki?”
“That’s even easier.” Alex Z highlighted a series of lines. “Charlie’s spreadsheets show four separate two- hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar payments into Pegasus.”
“One transfer from the parents of each of the kids?”
