“I remember it. Some other workers were killed, too.”
“Porzolkiewski came to the U.S. from Warsaw when he was eleven years old. Lived with an aunt in Chicago. I don’t think the American dream turned out to be what he’d hoped. He now runs a market-slash-sandwich shop on Turk Street. It’s on the bottom floor of one of those skid-row hotels. The Milton.”
Alex Z pointed at the binder. “It’s all in a probation department presentence report. It’s the second tab. He got busted for aggravated assault. He beat up some homeless guy who tried to steal an egg. One of those hard-boiled ones they sell over the counter. The public defender got him a no-time deal. Just restitution to SF Medical for them treating the victim, and they made him take anger management classes.”
“What kind of business owner gets a public defender?”
“The kind who’s not making any money, or at least not much. He was supposed to pay them a couple hundred dollars after the case was over, but he never did. I guess the PD doesn’t send out bill collectors.”
Gage flipped to the TIMCO tab. The first document was the wrongful death complaint filed by the families of the dead workers. He skimmed through it.
“This is pretty vague,” Gage said. “Like they filed the complaint before they knew exactly what happened, before the root cause investigations were even completed.”
Gage turned to the twenty-five-page, single-spaced court docket, then jumped to the end.
“It was dismissed,” Alex Z said. “No trial. No settlement. The judge ruled it was just a workers’ comp case because they were working within the scope of their regular duties and because it was just an accident.”
“So they had no standing to sue.”
Alex Z nodded.
Gage flipped to the next tab, a medical malpractice suit.
“What about this one?”
“He settled for fifty-five thousand. The doctors gave his wife one course of the wrong chemo for pancreatic cancer, but the experts agreed she would’ve died within a year anyway.”
“Which means after he paid his lawyer, the experts, and the deposition costs, he didn’t net anything.” Gage looked up at Alex Z. “How’d you find out about the settlement amount? The insurance companies usually insist on secrecy as a condition of agreeing to pay out.”
“The clerk forgot to pull out the judge’s notes before she gave us the file.”
“But those are sealed.”
“Somebody had already gotten to it. They slit open the envelope, probably with a razor. You could hardly tell.”
“Charlie? Maybe before he met with Porzolkiewski at Ground Up?”
“No way to tell. They don’t keep a record of who checks out files.”
“What about the TIMCO file? Any tampering?”
“Not that I could see, but we’ve only gone through the first and last volumes. There are fourteen altogether. I’ve got two people on it and expect them to be done tomorrow.”
Gage thumbed farther into the binder. “What are these code violations?”
“Just the usual ones low-end food service businesses get. A few health citations. And one electrical. I guess there was a fire in the kitchen. Too many appliances plugged into the same outlet. And one for blocking the back door with supplies.”
Gage closed the binder, then gazed through the brick-framed casement window at a tugboat guiding a Hanjin container ship through the San Francisco Bay toward the Port of Oakland. A week earlier, a similar monster had crashed into the supports of a two-hundred-foot-tall crane. Six workers injured. Four million dollars in damage. Even before the sun had set, competing news conferences displayed blame already shifting in tides of legal argument.
“Who represented TIMCO?” Gage asked, reaching again for the binder. He turned to the first page of the docket. His eyebrows rose as he read it aloud:
“Anston amp; Meyer.”
“Marc Anston was the attorney of record,” Alex Z said.
“Was Brandon in on any depositions?”
Alex Z nodded. “Lots and lots.”
“Porzolkiewski’s?”
“Big time.”
Chapter 17
From just inside the entrance, Gage scanned Stymie’s Gym in East Oakland at five forty-five the next morning until he caught sight of trial lawyer Skeeter Hall in a corner struggling under an Olympic bar. Gage tossed down his gym bag and slipped around the back of the weight bench to spot him.
“Breathe out, Skeeter,” Gage said, looking down at his grimacing face, “or you’re going to bust a gut.”
Air exploded through Skeeter’s clenched teeth.
Gage helped him guide the bar onto the crutches at the top of the roller tubes, then walked around and sat down on the next bench.
“Two twenty,” Gage said. “Not bad for a sixty-five-year-old.”
“Sixty-four,” Skeeter said, sitting up. He wiped his face with the bottom of his sleeveless sweatshirt, then swung his leg over the bench to face Gage. “What are you pushing up, youngster?”
“For reps? No more than one ninety. I don’t put these old joints at risk anymore.”
“What could you do if you did?”
Gage grinned. “Two twenty-one.”
“Smart-ass. You want me to spot you?”
“Just some information.”
Skeeter glanced up at the wall clock above the entrance. “Isn’t this a little early in the A.M. for gumshoeing?”
“I’m not a gumshoe. I’m a modern PI. This is called multitasking.”
Gage reached into his gym bag and handed Skeeter a water bottle.
“Thanks.” Skeeter flipped the top open and took a sip. “What task concerns me?”
“You remember the TIMCO case?”
“As if it was yesterday.” Skeeter’s mouth went tight. “Those assholes.”
“You mean corporate assholes in general, or this particular one?”
“This particular one. I’ve never seen a company try to torpedo its own employees that bad. You got four dead guys, three of them with kids. One with a great engineering career ahead of him…”
“Porzolkiewski.”
“Yeah… Porzolkiewski… Tom Fields helped me out on the case, may he rest in peace.”
“Fields is dead?”
“Heart attack at Pebble Beach. Eleventh hole. A family history of heart disease and he was seventy pounds overweight. Did it to himself. A waste.” Skeeter took another sip. “You know that kid Porzolkiewski was a paraplegic, right? A rookie cop chasing after a stolen car drop-kicked him out of a crosswalk. No lights. No siren. He was nineteen. A student at Berkeley.”
“Looks like nothing came easy in that family.”
“The kid used to haul himself up those huge fractionating towers hand over hand.”
Gage understood the technology, so didn’t ask for an explanation. Crude oil was heated at the base of the tower and the rising product was separated out by boiling point and then siphoned off.
“Forearms like piston rods. He was trapped a couple of hundred feet up when the thing blew.” Skeeter put the bottle down on the bench beside him. “It was a chain reaction. A pressure release valve failed on the line carrying kerosene. It sprayed onto a generator they were using to run scrubbers to clean a drain. Set the thing off. The fire ran up the tower, then exploded. The diesel line blew. The gasoline line blew. A firestorm. None of the guys could get down. They were like marshmallows on a stick. It still makes me heartsick to think about it.”
Skeeter lowered his head and rubbed his temples. His eyes were wet when he looked up.
“It was a tough case to lose…” Skeeter’s face hardened. “Except we didn’t lose it. It was stolen.”
“What do you mean?”
“We…” Skeeter paused, as if finding himself halfway down a trail he had no idea why he was taking, and it was heading toward a cliff. “Why are you interested?”
“I’m not sure about the why, but I can tell you the what. I’m trying to find out more about Brandon Meyer’s role in the case and I’m especially interested in Porzolkiewski’s father.”