you can get compensation — though not for any costs you incurred related to the forfeiture.”
“But I can kiss my house good-bye. I might get money back but not my house. And I can’t get back all the
“There’s legislation in Congress to reform these laws.”
“Reform? Not toss them out completely?”
“No. The government likes the laws too much. Even the proposed reforms don’t go far enough and don’t have wide support yet.”
“Evicted my family,” Harris said, still gripped by disbelief.
“Harris, I feel rotten. I’ll do everything I can, I’ll be a tiger on their ass, I swear, but I ought to be able to do more.”
Harris’s hands were fisted again on the table. “None of this is your fault, little brother. You didn’t write the laws. We’ll…just cope. Somehow, we’ll cope. The important thing now is to post bail, so I can get out of here.”
Darius put the heels of his coal-black hands to his eyes and pressed gently, as if trying to banish his weariness. Like Harris, he hadn’t slept the previous night. “That’s going to take until Monday. I’ll go to my bank first thing Monday morning—”
“No, no. You don’t have to put up your money for bail. We’ve got it. Didn’t Jessica tell you? And our bank’s open Saturdays.”
“She told me. But—”
“Not open now, but it was earlier. God, I wanted out today.”
Lowering his hands from his face, Darius met his brother’s eyes with reluctance. “Harris, they’ve impounded your bank accounts too.”
“They can’t do that,” he said angrily, but no longer with any conviction. “Can they?”
“Savings, checking, all of it, whether it was a joint account with Jessie, in your name, or just in her name. They’re calling it all illegal drug profits, even the Christmas-club account.”
Harris felt as if he’d been hit in the face. A strange numbness began to spread through him. “Darius, I can’t…I can’t let you put up all the bail. Not fifty thousand. We have some stocks—”
“Your brokerage account’s impounded too, pending forfeiture.”
Harris stared at the clock. The second hand twitched around the face. The time-bomb sound seemed louder, louder.
Reaching across the conference-room table, putting his hands over Harris’s fists, Darius said, “Big brother, I swear, we’ll get through this together.”
“With everything impounded…we have nothing but the cash in my wallet and Jessica’s purse. Jesus. Maybe just her purse. My wallet is in the nightstand drawer at home, if she didn’t think to bring it when…when they made her and the girls leave.”
“So Bonnie and I are putting up bail, and we don’t want any argument about it,” Darius said.
Harris’s entire face was numb. The back of his neck was numb, pebbled with gooseflesh. Numb and cold.
Darius squeezed his brother’s hands reassuringly once more, and then finally let go.
Harris said, “How are Jessica and I going to rent a place if we can’t put together first month, last month, and security deposit?”
“You’ll move in with Bonnie and me for the duration. That’s already been settled.”
“Your house isn’t that big. You don’t have room for four more.”
“Jessie and the girls are already with us. You’re just one more. Sure, it’ll be tight, but we’ll be fine. Nobody’ll mind if it’s a bit of a squeeze. We’re family. We’re in this together.”
“But this might take months to get resolved. My God, it could take
Later, as Darius was about to leave, he said, “I want you to think hard about enemies, Harris. This isn’t all just a big mistake. This took planning, cunning, and contacts. Somewhere, you’ve got a smart and powerful enemy, whether you realize it or not. Think about it. If you come up with any names, that might help me.”
Saturday night, Harris shared a windowless four-bed cell with two alleged murderers and with a rapist who bragged about assaulting women in ten states. He slept only fitfully.
Sunday night, he slept much better, only because he was by then utterly exhausted. Dreams tormented him. All were nightmares, and in each, sooner or later, there was a clock ticking, ticking.
Monday, he was up at dawn, eager to be free. He was loath to let Darius and Bonnie tie up so much money to make his bail. Of course, he had no intention of fleeing jurisdiction, so they wouldn’t lose their funds. And he had developed a prison claustrophobia that, if it continued to worsen, would soon be intolerable.
Though his situation was dreadful, unthinkable, he nevertheless took some solace from the certainty that the worst was behind him. Everything had been taken away — or soon would be taken. He was at the bottom, and in spite of the long fight ahead, he had nowhere to go but up.
That was Monday morning. Early.
At Caliente, Nevada, the federal highway angled north, but at Panaca they left it for a state route that turned east toward the Utah border. The rural highway carried them into higher land that had a stark, cauldron-of-creation quality, almost pre-Mesozoic, even though it was forested with pine and spruce.
As crazy as it sounded, Spencer was nevertheless completely convinced by Valerie’s fear of satellite surveillance. All was blue above, with no monstrous mechanical presences hovering like something out of
Regardless of the eye in the sky and the professional killers who might be en route to Utah to intercept them, Spencer was ravenous. Two small cans of Vienna sausages had not satisfied his hunger. He ate cheese crackers and washed them down with a Coke.
Behind the front seats, sitting erect in his narrow quarters, Rocky was so enthusiastic about Valerie’s way with a Rover that he expressed no interest in the cheese crackers. He grinned broadly. His head bobbed up and down, up and down.
“What’s with the dog?” she asked.
“He likes the way you drive. He has a need for speed.”
“Really? He’s such a frightened little guy most of the time.”
“I just found out about this speed thing myself,” Spencer said.
“Why’s he so afraid of everything?”
“He was abused before he wound up in the pound, before I brought him home. I don’t know what’s in his past.”
“Well, it’s nice to see him enjoying himself so much.”
Rocky’s head bobbed enthusiastically.
As tree shadows flickered across the roadway, Spencer said, “I don’t know what’s in your past, either.” Instead of responding, she eased down on the accelerator, but Spencer persisted: “Who are you running from? Now they’re my enemies too. I have a right to know.”
She stared intently at the road. “They don’t have a name.”
“What — a secret society of fanatical assassins, like in an old Fu Manchu novel?”
“More or less.” She was serious. “It’s a nameless government agency, financed by misdirected appropriations intended for lots of other programs. Also by hundreds of millions of dollars a year from cases involving the asset-forfeiture laws. Originally it was intended to be used to conceal the illegal actions and botched operations of government bureaus and agencies ranging from the post office to the FBI. A political pressure-release valve.”
“An independent cover-up squad.”
“Then if a reporter or anybody discovered evidence of a cover-up in a case that, say, the FBI had investigated, that cover-up couldn’t be traced to anyone in the FBI itself. This independent group covers the Bureau’s ass, so the Bureau never has to destroy evidence, bribe judges, intimidate witnesses, all that nasty stuff. The perpetrators are mysterious, nameless. No proof they’re government employees.”
