Final Target

CHAPTER 34

P eterson and Zink arrived ten minutes early for their meeting with Gage. He met them in his first floor conference room, bringing with him photos of Gravilov and the other gangsters who had met with Matson, the files he’d taken from Fitzhugh’s cottage, and records he’d collected at the Companies House in London-ready for a little show-and-tell.

“I don’t think you can get your friend Burch out of this one,” Peterson began. “He went too far.”

“Based on what?” Gage kept his voice flat. He wanted to provoke Peterson into laying out his case, not into an argument.

Peterson grinned, then settled back in his chair. “You show me yours and maybe I’ll show you mine.”

Gage crossed his forearms on the desk and fixed his eyes on Peterson. “All Burch did was act on a referral from a big name in venture capital. I looked at records in London. Granger and Fitzhugh dummied up an appraisal for a failing company in Dublin, then flipped it to SatTek for three million shares. That was Granger’s big payoff.”

Peterson glanced at Zink, who clenched his teeth. “I’m still working on it.”

Gage hit his punch line hard. “Fitzhugh was Granger’s guy, not Burch’s.”

Peterson sat forward “You got it wrong.” He nodded at Zink. “Show him.”

Zink lifted a briefcase from the floor. He pulled out a file and slid it toward Peterson.

“These are Burch’s phone records from two months before Matson went to see him for the first time,” Peterson said. “There are six calls from Burch to Fitzhugh. Every wheel has a hub and Burch was it. Fitzhugh was Burch’s guy.”

Peterson was on a roll. He couldn’t wait to show the rest of his.

“Burch put Fitzhugh in the middle of the fake product sales to Asia, then put him in the middle of the offshore stock sales-and there’s more on the domestic side.”

Gage threw up his hands. “You’re not claiming he brought in Kovalenko?”

Peterson slapped the desk. “Bingo.” He then flicked his head toward Zink, who slid over another file while smirking at Gage. Peterson withdrew the top page.

“These are the State of Nevada records for Kovalenko’s companies. Chuck Verona is the registered agent. Kovalenko even has his name on a couple.”

Peterson withdrew another sheet.

“These are all the companies Verona is the agent for. A bunch of them were set up by Burch. Like the one that owns Kovalenko’s car.” Peterson grinned. “For that one, Kovalenko is the president, secretary, and water boy. If that’s not enough, look at Burch’s phone records for September, last year. Right in the middle of the pump and dump. There’s a call from Burch’s inside line to Kovalenko’s inside line at Northstead Securities.”

Peterson reached in again.

“This is Burch’s brokerage account statement. He bought a hundred thousand shares of SatTek at two bucks, then dumped it like all the other insiders at five. He cleared a cool, crooked three hundred grand-on top of his enormous legal fee.”

“Then how do you explain the hits on Burch and Fitzhugh?”

“Burch wasn’t a hit. It was road rage. While you were wasting your time in London, another jogger was shot in the Mission District. Same MO. As for Fitzhugh and his wife? The London police say they did a little work for Russian organized crime. Zink looked through Fitzhugh’s files. There was nothing to connect SatTek to any of Fitzhugh’s Russian clients.”

Gage started to reach for his folder to show Peterson the photos he took of the Russians Matson met with in London, then hesitated. He hadn’t heard the punch line yet.

“And Matson can tie the whole thing together. Trust me. He’s given us everything he’s got and he’s been going out and gathering up more every day.”

Gage thought back on Matson’s route. London. Guernsey. Lugano. Maybe he was putting the financial pieces together for Peterson. Maybe he was still trying to snare Granger. In the end it didn’t make any difference. Matson was Peterson’s boy, and Peterson believed Matson’s every word.

“One thing you don’t have is motive-”

Peterson flashed a palm at Gage. “We don’t need motive. The facts speak for themselves.”

“You may not,” Gage said, “but juries want to hear it-and Burch didn’t need the money.”

“Needing and wanting are two different things.”

“He gives away three times your salary to charity every year. He handles the money for a dozen international relief organizations-never a hint that he skimmed a dime.”

“Big fucking deal. What he does for charity is a sentencing issue. Maybe it’ll buy him a downward departure. Get him down to twenty-eight years instead of thirty.” Peterson jabbed a forefinger at Gage. “We both know why these do-gooders want to use him. It’s because he knows how to move money so corrupt governments can’t get ahold of it. We call it money laundering for a good cause. That’s why we look the other way.” Peterson smirked. “You think we don’t suspect what you two did in Afghanistan? Is there a federal crime you guys didn’t commit setting that up?”

A nightmare came to life in Gage’s mind: Burch being arrested in the critical care unit and Spike’s uniformed cop being replaced by a U.S. Marshal. Peterson had everything he needed: a paper trail, a money trail, and Matson to tell the story-and Gage hadn’t seen it coming. He didn’t look over, but he felt Zink grinning like a teenage punk who didn’t have a clue what was friendship, or grief, or tragedy. He clenched his jaws and kept his face expressionless. He wasn’t going to give Peterson the satisfaction.

“When will you indict him?”

“As soon as we can roll him into court. From what I hear he’s making good progress.” Peterson paused. Gage saw in his eyes that, at least for a moment, he grasped what this meant to Gage. But the moment passed. “Sorry, man, you can’t win ’em all.”

Gage returned to his office after escorting Peterson and Zink to the lobby, each step accompanied by the anguish that Faith had been right: Burch’s rage against Courtney’s cancer had indeed expressed itself as greed.

But then two poem fragments spoke to him as he settled into his chair and gazed out toward the bay: I was much too far out all my life…not waving but drowning. And he wondered whether that had been Jack Burch from the beginning. Maybe that was why the memory of their first meeting came to him in the emergency room hallway the morning Burch was shot.

Maybe it wasn’t greed after all, but simply self-destructive recklessness.

Gage took in a breath, feeling the same unease that had troubled him along the Smith River twenty-five years earlier. He remembered watching a young fisherman walk past him into a cliffside cafe overlooking the river, his gait and earnest face announcing that his mind was too much on the water, his arms and back already feeling the tension of the fly line tight in the guides of a bowed rod.

“Watch out for the Oregon Hole,” Gage had warned him and pointed at three off-kilter crosses jammed into lava rocks atop the canyon wall. “Those rapids will beat you to death.”

Burch had glanced back over his shoulder, grinned, and answered without breaking stride, “Thanks, mate. I’ll take care.”

At midday, another moment of unease. Gage looking down from the cliff, catching sight of a slight shifting of Burch’s shoulders and hips as he dug his wading boots into the sandy river bottom. Then again, at sunset, with long shadows falling across the river. Gage slowing as he drove across the suspension bridge and glanced down into the gorge, wondering where was the fisherman whose mind had been too much on the river-and catching sight of flailing arms and a fly rod whipping the air.

Maybe that was it all along, Gage thought, turning away from the window and sitting up in his chair. Maybe that had always been Burch: not waving, but drowning.

Gage folded his hands on his desk, his duty-to Jack, to Courtney, and to himself-now framed both by memory and by the fear that instead of asking what and who and how, he should’ve been asking why.