Final Target

CHAPTER 18

H ow’s Matson doing?” Peterson asked, walking into the SatTek room where Zink was typing up his notes during a break in the debriefing.

“Not bad.” Zink looked up from his keyboard. “Interesting thing, though. At the beginning of this scam he was kind of a doofus; Granger needing to hold his hand all the time. But by the middle of it he was a helluva operator all on his own. It was like…What do you call those graphs with the bump in the middle they use in statistics?”

“Bell curve.”

“That’s it. Strong in the middle and weak at the ends.” Zink shook his head. “And cheating on his wife seemed to make a real man out of him, for a while.”

Peterson paused for a moment, for the first time wondering what a jury would think of Matson’s adultery. “Have you talked to his wife?”

“I’ve been putting it off. Madge doesn’t have a clue how bad this will be. She still thinks the whole thing is about disgruntled shareholders.” Zink frowned. “And Matson’s too much of a coward to tell her the truth. He wants me to take the brunt of it and then try to make her think he’s some kind of victim in this thing.”

“You ever meet a snitch who didn’t think he was really the victim?”

“You got that right. The weird thing is I don’t think he minds bringing her down with him. Like he blames her for his own greed.”

“I think I better sit down with both of them,” Peterson said. “Like it or not, she’s gonna have to stand by her man, at least through trial. It’ll make him look less like a snake if the jury thinks she’s forgiven him for the affair.”

Peterson nodded toward Matson’s empty chair. “Where’s our little hero now?”

“He went for a walk. Said he wanted to clear his head. I may have been a little tough on him about Ms. Love-at-First-Sight.”

“Push him as much as you can. I need to know everything about her so we don’t get surprised when the defense cross-examines him at trial. We’ve got to know what they know before they know it.” Peterson thought for a moment, trying to work a bad fact into a good trial strategy. “I’ve got it. We’ll make him admit cheating on his wife during direct, right from the get-go, try to defuse the thing. Just make sure you don’t let him hold anything else back that’ll bite us in the ass.”

“Speaking of biting us in the ass, agents in the San Jose office are picking up drumbeats that Graham Gage’s people have been sniffing around. Just asking a few offhand questions to witnesses in a couple of fraud cases they’re investigating. You want to scare him off?”

“We’d have better luck trying to scare off a hyena.”

“Hyena? I thought you and him got along.”

“Only when he’s on our side.” Peterson pointed at Zink. “The FBI tried to recruit Gage out of SFPD. Put a lot of time into it but he wouldn’t sign on-you ever meet the guy?”

“No.”

“He has a kind of presence even though he never acts like he’s more important than whatever he’s working on.”

Peterson thought of all the lawyers and cops and PIs around the country conniving to get themselves on television. Yet he’d never seen Gage interviewed, never saw him quoted anywhere, except in bits of testimony reporters snagged during trials.

“Helluva investigator,” Peterson finally said. “There’s nobody out there like him.”

Zink reddened as if Peterson was making a comparison, not merely a statement. Peterson ignored it.

“Doesn’t this guy have any weaknesses?” Zink asked.

“You mean besides being loyal to a crooked lawyer?”

“Yeah, besides that.”

Peterson hesitated. There’d always been something that bothered him about Gage, but he’d never before had the need to articulate it. He struggled until he found the words. “He doesn’t go to Giants games.”

Zink squinted up at Peterson. “I don’t get it.”

“Gage misses out on some of the best things in life. It’s like they’re invisible to him.”

The blank look on Zink’s face told Peterson that he didn’t understand.

“Put it this way. Gage’s got two close friends: Burch and a homicide cop over at SFPD he grew up with in Arizona. Neither one would invite him to a ball game. Not that they’re not close, they are; like brothers. Not that they wouldn’t want him to come, they would. But they know Gage couldn’t do high fives when there’s a home run or do the wave with everybody else. I guess you could say he’s kind of trapped inside himself.”

“Some of the best times I’ve had were at games with my buddies, hooting it up.”

“Me too. Toward the end of my career with the Raiders I sometimes wished I was up in the stands instead of down on the field. Playing hurt is lonely. You can’t immerse yourself in the game and give in to the blind instinct that great plays are made from. In fact, I can’t imagine Gage playing football or baseball or basketball. I’m kind of surprised he was ever a cop-it’s the ultimate team sport.”

Peterson folded his arms across his chest and stared down at the linoleum floor, trying to puzzle out why.

“And I think I know the reason,” he finally said, pointing toward the courtroom floors above and looking back at Zink. “It’s something Judge Conrad said. She worked for Gage while she was in law school after she quit the FBI. She told me that he’s always aware of what he’s thinking. It’s like he never lets his mind wander unobserved the way people do when they’re cheering or fishing or just watching a sunset.”

“Is that a strength or a weakness?”

Peterson took in a slow breath and exhaled, almost as a sigh. “I don’t know, but it must be a burden sometimes.”

“What do you want me to do about him?”

Peterson didn’t respond, momentarily confused by a feeling of envy. He shook it off and answered, “Nothing. He won’t find out anything. Burch can’t talk, and Matson and Granger are the only ones who know everything that happened. And only one of them is talking-and just to us.” Peterson glanced at the SatTek sign on the door, then back at Zink. “Don’t have Matson come to the Federal Building anymore. Gage may put a tail on him. I don’t want him to figure out that Matson is cooperating.”

Zink grinned. “Until he reads the indictment?”

“Yeah. Until he reads the indictment.”