“He’ll be okay,” Gage told them.
Alex Z hung his head.
“It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have left him there alone. He’s too new.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know. I stopped by on the way back from our gig at Slim’s to check on him. The back door was open. But not like somebody busted it. I found Shakir in his office. Tied to a chair. Unconscious. Soaked with water.” Faith reached up and covered her mouth as the same horrifying thought entered each of their minds: The burglars had knocked out Shakir, and then tried to revive him in order to interrogate him further; maybe they even succeeded.
Alex Z dropped his head into his hands and started to cry. He wiped his eyes on his sleeve and said, “Sorry, boss.” He swallowed hard. “And there’s something else. His and my computers are missing.”
S hakir gazed from his ICU bed at Gage and Alex Z. It had been seven hours since the surgeon had finished putting him back together. Faith had gone back across the bay to teach a morning class.
Gage could see only Shakir’s eyes, the bottom of his nose, and his mouth. The rest of his face with its dark, delicate features was wrapped in bandages. Two IVs fed into his arms. One for saline, the other for morphine.
Gage took his hand and sat down next to the bed.
“Tell me what happened,” Gage said.
“Car accident… pounding on back door… I thought injury
… men rushed in… wanted files.”
“Could you recognize them again?”
“Masked.”
Shakir tried to lick his lips. Gage wet the sponge end of an oral swab and moistened Shakir’s mouth.
“Voices?” Gage asked.
“One… New York… One… kind of Southern.”
“Why’d they beat you up?”
“Security code for… for the storage room.”
Gage looked at Alex Z, who shook his head. He hadn’t given Shakir the number. No matter how or how long they tortured him, they’d never get it.
“What files?”
“Charlie Palmer’s.”
“Did they get your computer password?”
Shakir nodded. “I’m sorry. My computer, too.”
Alex Z spoke up. “No problem. Everything is replaceable. We have backups on the server.” He looked down at Shakir. “Did they get your file encryption key?”
A flicker of a smile appeared on Shakir’s bruised lips.
“No.”
G age and Alex Z stood in the hallway outside Shakir’s room.
“Stay with him,” Gage whispered. “The nurse has notified the detectives he’s awake. Tell Shakir it’s okay to talk about the antitrust case, but play dumb about what else you two were working on. Otherwise this thing might spin out of control. I don’t want to see Brandon Meyer’s name on the front page of the Chronicle tomorrow.”
Gage turned as footsteps came to a stop behind him. He faced a man who appeared to be a twenty-five-year-older version of Shakir and three inches shorter. His eyes were red, his brown suit was rumpled, the oversized knot of his tie hung an inch below his collar, and his fists were locked at his sides.
“You…” The Middle Eastern-accented voice caught. Behind him a woman stood twisting a handkerchief in her hands. A black hijab framed her face. “You… you did this.”
“It was my fault,” Gage said. “I didn’t do a good enough job of teaching him our security procedures. I hope you and your wife will forgive me someday.”
Shakir’s father didn’t respond, just stood there looking up at Gage.
His mother stepped forward and asked, “How is he?”
“He has a long road ahead of him, but the doctor says he’ll be fine.”
“Can we…”
Gage nodded, and then Alex Z opened Shakir’s door and Gage followed them inside.
W hen Gage returned to the waiting room he spotted Alex Z sitting with a thirty-year-old uniformed Filipino cop. He first thought the officer was trying to pry information from Alex Z, but then noticed the officer’s eyes were vacant, his slim body was rigid in his seat, and his hands were folded in his lap.
Alex Z caught the motion of Gage walking toward them and rose. The officer followed.
“This is Rodrigo, he’s…” Alex Z glanced toward the ICU where Shakir’s parents remained. “He’s Shakir’s partner.”
Rodrigo shook Gage’s hand, then shrugged, his face pained.
“Shakir’s parents don’t know,” Rodrigo said. “His father couldn’t deal with it.” He took in a long breath, then exhaled. “And he’s a hard man. He’d never let Shakir see his mother again.”
“You work swing shift?” Gage asked.
“How’d you guess?”
“It explains why Shakir wanted to.” Gage read Rodrigo’s nameplate: R. Balatico. “Your name is familiar. You have a relative in the department back when I was there?”
Rodrigo shook his head.
“He was on the news a couple of months ago,” Alex Z said. “The armored truck robbery outside of Macy’s at Union Square.”
Gage smiled. “It didn’t cross your mind to duck behind a car when those crooks came running out of the store?”
Rodrigo blushed, then tilted his head back to emphasize the six-inch height gap between him and Gage. “I figured I was a small target.”
“Not for a shotgun.”
Rodrigo sighed. “So I realized in my nightmares for the next week.”
Gage reached out and gripped Rodrigo’s upper arm.
“Be careful,” Gage said. “There’s a guy down the hallway who needs you.”
Chapter 20
Boots Marnin stared at the two computers standing together in the corner of his Mariner Hotel room, thinking life was a whole lot simpler when you could get everything you wanted by sticking a gun in your target’s ear. Now most of the guys who made the big bucks at his end of the market never left their keyboards, they just hacked their way in, mined for information, then sold it on contract or to the highest bidder.
I’m a forty-year-old dinosaur.
He inspected his alligator-skin Tony Lamas, then smirked at the irony.
Maybe it’s survival of the fittest after all.
He reached for his cell phone and scrolled to a number. The man on the other end of the line didn’t answer so much as grunt.
“It’s me,” Marnin said. “I got it.”
“Palmer’s computer?”
“A couple of Gage’s. Everything from Palmer’s was copied over to it. A kid decided to cooperate and told us.”
“What about Palmer’s?”
“We’d need explosives to get to it.”
“Then let’s cross that bridge when we come to it. First we need to find out what kind of records Palmer was keeping. We can torch Gage’s place if we have to.”
“Where should I-”
“Evergreen Security in San Jose. We got an ex-NSA guy down there who can break into anybody’s hard drive. Somebody’ll meet you in the parking lot.”
“I don’t know why they’re going through all this. Why don’t they just wipe the slate clean and start over with a new team? Couple of bodies. Done in an afternoon-and their mistakes buried with them.”
“That would be sheer genius. You know the last time somebody got away with killing a federal judge?” He paused. “I’ll tell you. Never.”
Chapter 21
Gage sat alone at his breakfast table, drinking coffee, and reading Skeeter Hall’s fourteen-year-old file about the refinery explosion: the Richmond Fire Department reports recounting the recovery of the nearly incinerated bodies, the OSHA investigation showing that the root cause of the explosion was a failed pressure release device, the depositions of the TIMCO International Petroleum officers and refinery managers, and, finally, the deposition of John Porzolkiewski and his repeating over and over, “Money won’t bring my son back.” And Brandon Meyer, then the TIMCO lawyer, demanding, “What do you want?” And Porzolkiewski answering, “Nothing. I want nothing.”
Gage next examined the court file, the transcript of the Superior Court Judge’s Order of Dismissal, an apologetic:
My hands are tied. This is simply a workers’ comp case. The people of California made a trade a generation ago. In exchange for guaranteed compensation, they waived their right to sue their employers in the event of their own injury or the death of a loved one.