Chapter 16
Sitting on my office balcony sipping coffee, derriere in a cushioned chair and feet up on the rail, I gazed over Hill Street and across the roofs of the opposite row. The new morning sun had burned off the fog and I reveled in the magnificent view. One thing the City by the Bay never boasted was smog, unlike its bloated cousin in the L.A. basin to the south.
Three days had passed and Friday stared me in the face. I’d had time to mull over that frenetic day and concluded I’d not done too badly. I still had a boatload of questions that I knew would bother me for a while, but that was nothing new. When the next case came along, this one would go into the files, the old-fashioned paper ones.
Mickey said he’d digitize everything for me, but that would mean they’d be hackable. No, better to stick to manila folders.
I hadn’t yet decided what to do about Luger’s dinner invitation. The man was a creep, but a fascinating one who might be fun to get to know. I always did like to flirt with danger, and dangerous men, I admitted to myself.
A buzz at the front door brought me to my feet. I leaned over the rail and saw Jay Allsop and Tanner Brody in their cop-issue suits. With smooth-shaven faces, both seemed fresher than normal. I wondered if they’d cleaned up just for me. After taking one last drag and forcefully exhaling the smoke, Jay ground out a cigarette on my gray-painted wooden steps while Tanner chewed on a toothpick.
“You couldn’t do that on the sidewalk?” I called from the balcony.
“Sorry,” he said without any evidence of contrition. “You wanna let us in?”
“If you bring in my paper,” I said, pointing at the rolled Chronicle at his feet.
Brody picked it up and waved.
I put my cup in the sink and took my time descending the stairs. You could never be too careful in these old, creaky Victorians. Ushering the men in, I waved them to seats on my office sofa before sitting down in my own chair, the desk between us as a psychological barrier.
Brody tossed the newspaper on my desk. I pushed it to the side for later.
“You here to harass me some more, Jay?” I said.
Smiling, Brody brought out his flip notebook as Allsop narrowed his eyes and spoke. “We’re still looking into this Bill Clawson death. You said you were working on a case with him. We have questions about it.”
“You know everything’s confidential.”
“I could get a subpoena. You’re not a lawyer or doctor, you know.”
I looked pointedly around the room as if searching for my identity. “Oh, yeah. I wondered why I had so few patients in this morning.”
Allsop’s face soured further. “Look, Cal, you know the drill. We need some information and if you want us off your back you’ll give it to us so we can move on. If not…” He looked around my office in deliberate imitation of my own gesture. “We might have to get a warrant. Turn this place upside down, you know? Could get messy. And the city tax authority might need to take a look at your paperwork. See if there’s anything that got missed.”
“That’s what I love about you, Jay. Your way with people. Straight from polite to threatening in one quick jump.”
“Whatever gets the job done.”
“Yeah, the job.” I sighed, feeling a bit of perverse sympathy for Allsop. He really wasn’t a bad cop. Not on the take as far as I knew, and he stayed reasonably near the straight and narrow. He was just such a gloomy and miserable son of a bitch. Brody’s bright optimism was probably driving him crazy.
That cheered me up.
Oddly, I’d probably been a better match as a partner.
I supposed I could play hardball, twisting Allsop up, but that would be exploiting my superior bargaining position merely for the fun of stepping on his neck. That didn’t seem smart. He was right, he could make my life miserable for a while. Better to build bridges than burn them, and though I’d probably never be a cop again I could get a lot out of a good working relationship with SFPD.
“Look, I’d like to help.” I said reasonably. “Why don’t you ask your questions? I’ll tell you as much as I can, but I’ll want to ask a few of my own. All off the record.” I gave Brody a significant look.
“Non-attribution. Right,” the rookie replied and grinned. Yeah, I think he’d drive me nuts too with all that cheerfulness.
Allsop nodded. “Okay. Did your case have anything to do with the drug heist at North Bay Distributors?”
I’d already decided to leave Mira and Talia out of it if I could. “Mm. Yes. Bill got wind of something going down. We staked the place out and saw a van enter and leave when they weren’t supposed to. Chased it, but lost them.”
“You’re supposed to be some hot-shit driver, Cal. How could you lose them?”
“Because I was trying not to be seen and let them get too far ahead, okay?”
“Why didn’t you report the heist?”
“That was Bill’s call. He suspected one of his guys, Lattimer, was helping, and wanted to conduct his own investigation.”
“You were obligated by law to report a crime,” Allsop snapped.
I rolled my eyes. “I worked with you for two years, Jay. Plenty of times you delayed a report when you had a good reason.”
“But once Clawson was dead you should have told us. Would have saved a lot of running around.”
I stared past him at the seascape watercolor on my wall, one my mother had done before she’d adopted abstract as her artistic preference. A sailboat leaned in a stiff breeze, gulls in the background. “Maybe so, but there were other considerations. Ones I’m not at liberty to talk about.”
Allsop made a frustrated sound in his throat. “Lattimer ran. Looks like he took a suitcase of stuff and abandoned the rest in his house. Bought a ticket for Colombia. Pretty much out of reach unless we charge him with a serious crime, and even then…”
“Extradition is a pain in the ass, I know,” I offered.
“You don’t seem all that broken up about Clawson.”
I shrugged, drumming my fingers idly on the arm of my chair. “I’m saddened, but we weren’t close.”
“Why’d he come to you, specifically? He was a good cop once, from what we heard.”
“I was probably the only P.I. he knew, or maybe he preferred to work with a woman. Wanted to handle things, just him and me. Catch them red-handed. A return to glory for the retired cop, you know.”
“But someone must have found out and offed him,” Brody said.
“Lattimer, no doubt,” I replied. "Or his partners. They weren't nice people."
Allsop grunted, skeptical. “Very neat. But the drugs have disappeared and they’re filtering onto the street up and down the coast from Seattle to San Diego.”
“I might be able to help you there. I heard a name. Houdini.” I dug in my desk drawer for the printout of the news reports. Once I found it I got up to make copies on my machine. I handed the pages to Allsop. “I’m sure Narcotics is all over it, but I got multiple sources that say he’s behind it. You might want to point out that it wasn’t just street candy that they took, but some high-end steroids too. I bet those will show up in the sports world pretty quick.” I was guessing, but it was a safe bet and would make them think I was helping them more than I really was.
I deliberately didn’t mention Luger. I had no evidence he had anything to do with the kidnapping and it was stupid to throw away a potential information source. He was scum, but no worse scum than whoever would take his place if I gave him up.
“Narcotics arrested a pharmacist that helped them get in and out without tripping any alarms.”
I tried not to freeze, tried to stay casual as I thought furiously about what to say. Of course they would connect Mira to the crime. After all, it was her fingerprint on the scanner and her face on the video.
Or at least, it would seem so.
I cleared my throat. “You have the security tapes from Bill’s call center?”
Brody shook his head. “Everything was wiped. Video, call l
ogs, computer files…Lattimer was a hacker, you know? Had convictions for computer crime.”
“Yeah,” Allsop said. “Why would Bill hire a guy like that?”
“He had a soft spot for felons.” I tried to think of what I could do for Mira that wouldn’t implicate me further. Irony of ironies if she got busted for the crime she didn’t actually commit because she was trying to save her daughter. Then again, she was almost certainly an accessory. Karma, maybe.
I decided to reveal one of my cards despite the risk. “You know about the triple homicide and fire in a Richmond warehouse Tuesday afternoon?”
“Yeah, I heard,” Allsop said warily.
“If there was enough saved from the fire, check out the female victim and compare her to your pharmacist – height, weight, build. Take a look at the wig she was wearing. Look for a piece of silicone with a fingerprint on it…and I bet the tires on the van in the warehouse match the tracks you found on the floor of North Bay Distributors. You might want to have Forensics match what they found with anything in Bill' Clawson's apartment.”
Brody scribbled fiercely in his notebook while Allsop’s eyes narrowed. “How do you know all this?”
“I can’t reveal my sources, but I do know that if your pharmacist was involved it wasn’t of her own free will.” Mira would probably crack anyway, but I’d done my best to divert PD’s inevitable belief she’d done it. Cops always went for the simplest explanation because most of the time it was the right one.
But not always.
“What –”
I held up my hand. “My turn.”
“Okay…” Allsop pulled out his smokes and looked a question at me.
I sighed and opened two windows, letting in a cross-breeze, and then shoved my almost-empty coffee cup over toward him as an improvised ashtray. It was all I had handy.
Once he’d lit up, I said, “I want the reports on the warehouse fire and victims. Forensics, evidence, autopsies, the works.”
“Why?”
I shook my head. “Just a hunch, right now. I promise that if I see anything important I’ll pass it to you guys so you can show up Richmond PD. Make you look good to the interdepartmental working group.”
Allsop looked away for a moment. “Even if I got it all, I can’t give you a copy. A long look at it in my office is probably the best I can do.”
“Deal.” I bet Mickey could rig me up a good miniaturized digital camera, spy style. If not, well, my memory was pretty good when I wanted it to be.
“What about the car in Old Sac?” Brody asked.
“Did you find one?”
“Yes. Pricey AMG Mercedes, stolen out of Seattle. Clean as a whistle, no damage. Like all the thief wanted was a ride.”
“I guess so.”
Allsop growled, “What do you know, Cal?”
Half-truths were my defense again. “I spotted an Audi during my case. We determined it was stolen in Old Sac, so I was trying to figure something out. That’s all.”
“What was your case again?” Allsop asked lightly, like he was going to slip it past me.
I shrugged. “Just a missing person. No biggie. Now gentlemen, if there’s nothing else?” By my tone I made it clear it had better be important. Give a cop leave to interrogate you and he’ll go on a fishing expedition.
Allsop glowered for a moment. “No, not right now.” They got up.
I held out my hand to Brody and he took it firmly. When I extended it to Allsop, he stared flatly at it for a moment, and then shook his head.
I lowered my arm. “Oh, and here I thought we were getting along so well.”
“I can’t forget what you did,” he said.
“Yeah. I remember you backing me up in court, partner.” That was pure sarcasm. Allsop had refused to testify during my lawsuit. Unlike a criminal trial, he couldn’t be compelled over departmental objections that cited conflict of interest.
“You won, didn’t you? You proved your case, got your payoff.” He stared hard at me.
“I did, yes. Maybe because it was true and Stanger was dirty. She might have killed me. She did get the bomb tech killed.”
Allsop turned away, admitting nothing, but I felt like I’d won the point. Maybe he’d eventually come around.
I opened the front door for them. “See you. Go catch some bad guys.”
“We’ll be in touch,” Brody said brightly, winking as he went by. I decided to like him because he wasn’t sucking up to Allsop, but I shut the door firmly, a statement of finality. Then I retrieved a broom and dustpan to go back and collect the butt off my front porch, muttering all the while about dirty smokers. Yeah, I lit up occasionally, but I never left my messes for someone else to clean up.
Climbing the stairs to my kitchen, I dumped the contents of the dustpan and the dreck from my cup into the covered trash can, and then washed them both. Afterward, I got a fresh mug, refilled it and moseyed back downstairs, hoping for a relaxing morning.
After sitting down again, I pulled the rubber band off the Chronicle and dropped it into the receptacle on my desk organizer before unrolling the newspaper. The scent of the fresh newsprint wafted to my nose in the breeze reminding me of the paper route I’d had as a kid. Dad would help me assemble the inserts and roll them, and then off I’d go with my sack.
Three Dead In Richmond Warehouse Fire had already been reported in Wednesday’s edition, earning a few column inches below the fold. Apparently the investigation had suppressed any hint of foul play as yet and I resolved to tip Cole Sage off in case he wanted to do a more in-depth piece.
My musings shattered as I noticed a front-page teaser leading to the business section, titled Local Drug Distributor Takes Huge Loss. Quickly I turned to the piece and skimmed along.
(SFC Staff) San Francisco – Following the disclosure of a warehouse pharmaceutical theft exceeding five hundred million dollars in retail value, North Bay Distributors, part of the Rankin Pharmaceuticals Group, has expressed confidence that law enforcement is pursuing all leads and will soon recover the majority of the stolen goods.
“Our inventory is fully insured by Lloyds, so stockholders need have no fear of revenue loss in the long term. We urge all investors to maintain their portfolios and not sell prematurely, locking in their losses. Rankin Pharmaceuticals expects a strong quarter and has more than enough cash reserves to absorb this temporary setback until these routine issues are worked out,” said Harold Milray of public relations firm Starns and Milray.
However, Chronicle sources claim Lloyds has sent an elite investigative team to make inquiries about potential improper security procedures that may have led to the loss. One authority with close ties to the insurance industry pointed out that, while Lloyds has never defaulted on a legitimate claim, they are “tough on those who substitute insurance coverage for due diligence.”
Legal experts speaking without attribution indicate that such large losses are usually settled for a fraction of the retail value after prolonged negotiations rather than through the courts.
Despite assurances of the relatively routine nature of the situation, the heist’s unusually high dollar value caused Rankin stock to lose more than forty percent of its asking price the day after the Chronicle broke the story. It has since regained more than ten percent and is expected to stabilize higher over the coming weeks for a moderate overall loss. Financial analysts at Stinwell and Pogue have issued statements that they expect a full recovery within three to six months, assuming next quarter’s figures fall in line with predictions.
There was more detail, but that was the gist.
I leaned back, sipping my fresh coffee and thinking about the money Mira had been sending her stockbroker ex, Dennis. Mickey said she’d been doing this since the divorce. After roughly two years, that meant easily two hundred thousand dollars had gone into a numbered offshore account.
Reaching for the phone, I dialed a day trader I knew, a guy I’d helped out of a jam once. “Jindal?” I said when he picked up the phone
at his Transamerica Building office. “This is Cal Corwin.”
“Hey, Cal! Long time no hear. You got some more money to invest?”
“Last time you turned my five grand into three, so no, not today.”
“You gotta leave it with me longer. Setbacks happen. You have to ride them out. Play the odds.”
“Sounds more like poker than day trading.”
Jindal laughed. “Is there a difference?”
“You tell me.”
He laughed again. “What can I help you with?”
“Just information, off the record. If I had two hundred grand, insider knowledge and wanted to make the most money I could off this week’s Rankin Pharm situation, what would I do?”
“That ship has sailed, Cal. And where would you get two hundred grand anyway?”
“Not me, you dolt. Hypothetically.”
“You know something?”
“Nothing that will make you money, Jindal, but feel free to infer anything you like.”
I could almost hear the wheels turning in his head along with the chatter of the cube farm around him. I’d visited it once, and unless you had one of the peripheral offices with their magnificent views, life sucked. Once again I was thankful for my own cozy place.
Eventually he spoke. “Okay, I pulled up the charts for the last week. It would be pretty easy to short the stock any time before the story broke because it was on a steady upward trend.”
“Why does that matter?”
“Under SEC rules, you can’t short a stock that’s falling, only one that’s rising overall.”
“Okay. So, how much money could someone make?”
“With two hundred kay? Maybe…almost two mil in the short term and another twenty or so within six months if the predictions are true. That’s a big if, though.”
I choked for a moment, spewing coffee onto my desk and the newspaper open upon it. “Twenty million from two hundred thousand? How is that possible?” I asked as I grabbed for tissues and tried to blot my blazer and blouse.
“Leverage. An established investor or trader can borrow on margin, buy puts and calls with the money that bet the stock will move the way he thinks it will.”
“What if he’s wrong?”
“Then he loses it all, has to make it up out of pocket somehow, just like any other loan. Why do you think this job is so stressful?”
I rubbed my hands together to dry off the residual coffee. “Sounds a lot like gambling on a marker to me. Borrowing the house’s money.”
“Like I said – it is.”
I mulled that over. “Okay, so he makes ten times his investment right away. Two million dollars when the stock plunges. Where’s the rest come from?”
“From the rise in stock value,” Jindal said. “Your hypothetical investor has two million in cash. When the price bottoms, he buys as much call action as he can, betting it goes up. Because he’s got inside info, he knows this drop is only a temporary setback, right? Rankin will settle with Lloyds, and their underlying profit structure is sound. In three to six months that will rise by seventy-some percent if the analysts are right and, voila, there’s your twenty mil.”
“God. What a score.”
Jindal chuckled. “That’s peanuts. With insider trading, the broker might be in on it too. If so, he could leverage all the money in his accounts and make those trades without telling any of the investors. He gives them a nice high return for the year, something believable – say, twenty to twenty-four percent – and they go home happy, never knowing their funds were at risk and used to make hundreds of millions, maybe, depending on how much the broker had under his control.”
“Wouldn’t that trigger an SEC investigation?”
“Cal, Cal, Cal. Even hundreds of millions are just a blip to the big trading houses like Lehman or Bear Stearns. They control hundreds of billions in assets, and one billion is a thousand million. Your guy is small potatoes. He can hide his trades in the noise. The SEC won’t even assign an investigator for less than a billion unless it’s a celebrity and they want to make an example out of her.”
Aghast, I stared at the receiver. “Thanks, Jindal. You’ve given me a lot to think about.”
Jindal’s voice turned hopeful. “You got any other tips, Cal? Something that might be happening tomorrow instead of last week?”
“I wish. Talk to you later.” I hung up, and then put my head back, staring at the ceiling.
Hundreds of millions of dollars, he’d said. Two hundred grand was Mira’s buy-in, I felt sure, the good faith money showing Dennis that her insider information wasn’t bullshit. That also meant this heist had been in the works for a long time, at least in concept. Could Mira have meticulously plotted and planned it, bringing Dennis in at the right time to handle the deal? They’d parted in hostility by all accounts, but there seemed no specific reason for the bitterness. My suspicious mind wondered if even the divorce was fake, a ploy to put distance between them for the scheme.
How much would they do, how long would they wait for money enough to be really rich?
Mickey had said Dennis controlled about two million in client money. If he used that much for leveraged puts and calls…two hundred million, assuming Jindal knew his stuff. Which he did. One way or another it would end up in the Caymans, I felt sure. Then, a few months to a year from now, Dennis, Mira and Talia, separately or together, would take permanent vacations to someplace without an extradition treaty and live happily ever after. If they didn’t rip off Dennis’s clients, perhaps no one would ever know.
I remembered the sign holder in front of Mira’s house, another confirmation she was planning on leaving. She didn’t need the money, but not disposing of the property might seem suspicious. After the heist, she might be watched, so she’d keep everything very normal, sell and rent a nice condo for a while, maybe quit her job and not take another. Dennis would buy high quality documents for the three of them and one day they’d simply…disappear.
My cop instinct was to drop a big old dime on them. One anonymous tip to the FBI’s financial crimes division and they’d be on the case. The interstate and international transfers of funds put the ball in the Feds’ court, and unlike the SEC, they’d think a mere nine figures was worth looking into.
I thought about Talia, how she’d clung to me as we dashed from the warehouse. For a brief moment I’d felt like a mother, a possibility that seemed to recede as time went on. What would happen to her with two parents in prison? What did I care about the money they’d scammed from investors? Some mutual funds would take hits, but anyone properly diversified with a buy-and-hold strategy would be fine, would recover soon enough. Only traders like Jindal or big investors with narrow portfolios would get hurt badly. Somehow I couldn’t find a lot of sympathy for some poor multimillionaire who might have to sell his private jet because he took a gamble and lost.
I knew about gambling, and I knew about losing. You’re only a loser if you don’t come back next time and win.
The one thing that rankled was Mira’s check, the one that would have bounced. Cheating the lowly P.I. that saved her daughter seemed like a sleazy move for someone with millions on the way…so sleazy that I found it hard to credit. Why would a woman who’d meticulously planned this whole thing over the course of years screw the one person who could blow the whistle on her?
Unless she didn’t plan on me being around at the end.
But what if I had tried to cash the check right away, dropping it off after our first meeting? I should have, but I’d been so busy. If I had, I might have learned it was worthless and everything might have blown up in her face.
What other explanation could there be?
And then I realized that I didn’t actually know the check would bounce. I’d taken Thomas’ word for it. What if the check were good? Why had the contractor taken it and left me ten grand in untraceable cash?
Untraceable. That was the key. For some reason Thomas was protecting me by severing the one connection that mi
ght permanently tie me to Mira. If the whole house of cards did come crashing down and the FBI or IRS went over her records with a fine-toothed comb, I’d be on the rack with no leg to stand on, to mix a metaphor. They wouldn’t care about my ethics or any unwritten code; they’d nail me to the wall for not reporting the kidnapping, the heist, and every other illegal activity I may have witnessed.
At my prosecution they’d argue that by doing my civic duty I could have prevented everything that followed – the heist, the insider trading, Bill’s death, losing Lattimer and maybe Dennis and Mira. They might even try to pin the dead thieves on me somehow. The Justice Department with the scent of guilt in its nostrils was a nightmare I wanted nothing to do with.
I fired up my desktop computer and typed up my private case notes, summarizing my thoughts and tying off the loose ends. Cole had referred Mira to Thomas, who passed the reference to me. Houdini’s heist crew had kidnapped Talia, blackmailed Mira into giving them the necessary info, fingerprint and codes. I’d found Bill Clawson as an ally and, briefly, a friend. I let myself cry for him then, ten minutes of waterworks that left me feeling wrung out.
I kept writing, how Bill Clawson and I had spotted the crew doing the job, but lost them. How they had killed Bill. How they kept Talia as insurance instead of sending her back on time, causing Houdini to send in his cleaner to salvage the situation. I never did figure out why they delayed, and I probably never would.
I summarized the situation with Thomas, and noted down every scrap of info I could recall about our conversation. How he looked. How he spoke. What he said. Whether I believed him. I decided I did, pretty much, mostly because it made sense. But every poker player knows the best bluffs work because they make sense.
Finally, I typed up my beliefs about the root of the whole thing, the money, and how it was Mira that probably went looking for some snake to sell her info to in hopes of a big score, and how the serpent turned in her hand and bit her. How lucky she and her daughter were to get away, thanks to Thomas and my mercy, and thanks to poor Bill.
Besides Talia, he may have been the only complete innocent in this rotten mess.
Finally, I hit save, closed the word processor and picked up the Chronicle to finish reading it all the way through. Just like every day, I wished Herb Caen were still around, but he’d died in ‘97 after writing his column for well nigh sixty years. I wondered if Cole Sage had known him. I bet he had.
Thinking of the journalist reminded me of one more loose end I’d like to tie up. Opening up my address book, I dialed Cole’s number. Yesterday I’d finally wormed an admission out of one of the typists in the office pool that he should be back today.
The line picked up. “Cole Sage.”
For a moment my throat seized up. There was no reason to fear speaking with him, but I’d been trying so hard to reach him for so long I froze.
“This is Cole Sage,” his gravelly voice repeated.
I cleared my throat. “Yes, Cole, this is Cal Corwin. How was your jaunt?” I was proud of using that word. So sophisticated.
“Not bad. I got some information I needed. What can I do for you?”
“Meet me,” I said impulsively. I hadn’t been meaning to, but suddenly I wanted to.
“Is this urgent?”
I squirmed, not willing to stretch the truth today only to have it snap in half tomorrow. “Not urgent, but…”
“Then not today, Cal. Probably not this weekend, either. I have a lot of catching up to do.”
Damn. I said, “I just got finished with a case that involves you, at least peripherally, but I really don’t want to discuss it over the phone.”
“Hmm. Maybe Sunday afternoon, then?”
Victory! “How about somewhere at the Embarcadero, about five?”
“You buying?”
I laughed. “I am, actually.”
“Then it’s a date.”
My stomach got all warm and fuzzy at his words, even though I was sure he didn’t mean that the way it sounded.
Pretty sure.
Damn hope-monkey. Get off me, you bastard.
“Cal?”
“Uh-huh. Yeah, it’s a date. Meet in the lobby and we can decide on the spot.”
“Okay.”
“And Cole?”
“Yeah?”
I played my trump card to seal the deal. “You may not want to write it, but there’s a story you’re going to want to hear.”
“There always is, Cal. There always is.” Cole paused. “Bye, Cal.”
“Bye.”
I put the phone down and smiled. Finally, things were looking up.
End of Loose Ends.
Read on for the California Corwin, PI short story, Off the Leash!