Final Target

CHAPTER 46

W hy is somebody keeping Matson alive?” Gage wondered aloud when Alex Z walked into the office kitchen where he was making a pot of coffee.

“Keeping or leaving?”

“Leaving means he’s harmless, keeping means he’s got something somebody wants.”

Alex Z reached into the cabinet and pulled out two cups. “If I was him, I’d get a bodyguard.”

“He must have a krysha, a roof.” Gage held his hand above his head, palm down. “Somebody is protecting him.” Gage lowered his arm. “Slava thought that Gravilov would squeeze Matson for money and it was Alla Tarasova’s job to keep an eye on him.”

“Protecting him so they can squeeze him?”

“That’s what a protection racket is all about. They protect you from other crooks so you can keep paying.”

“Why not just put a gun to his head?” Alex Z formed his hand into the shape of a revolver. “You know, ‘Gimme all you got.’”

“What would you do if somebody did that to you?”

“I’d need to run out and sell my guitars and stuff.”

“So would Matson. We need to figure out where his money is.” Gage flicked his thumb toward Alex Z’s office. “Why don’t you go over Matson’s phone records and the ones I got out of Fitzhugh’s house? See if you can tell who they were calling. Maybe we can find a pattern.”

Alex Z brought a computer printout with him into Gage’s office a few hours later.

“It’s pretty clear Matson only used his office phone for SatTek business calls,” Alex Z reported. “In fact, all the overseas calls were to companies on the sales leads or customer lists or to suppliers of manufacturing equipment. Germany and France. I checked a bunch of the numbers. Almost all were listed. But his cell phone records show calls to a bunch of unlisted and disconnected numbers in places that haven’t even been on the horizon. Like Singapore. Why would he be calling Singapore? Or Taiwan? Switzerland I can understand. Liechtenstein, yeah. UK, sure. But Singapore?”

“Any pattern?”

“Pattern? Yes. Explanation? No-but whatever it was, Fitzhugh was in the middle of it. Calls to him kept crisscrossing all the others. Switzerland, Fitzhugh. Singapore, Fitzhugh. Taiwan, Fitzhugh. He’d get a call from Matson, then right away call a bank or a law office in Lugano, or Guernsey, or London. Bang, bang. Just like that.”

Gage turned his head and squinted toward the light coming into his office window, then back at Alex Z with the barest hint of a smile.

“There’s something we haven’t thought much about,” Gage said. “Matson’s exit strategy. How does he think this’ll end? He knows the government will make him forfeit all the money. Peterson isn’t a fool. A jury asked to convict Burch wouldn’t be too pleased if he let Matson keep any. But Matson’s not a fool, either. He’s got to have a stash. He doesn’t want to come out of this thing broke. And the best place to hide money is where nobody would think to look.”

“You think maybe Alla is part of his exit strategy? Dump the wife and disappear?”

“If Slava is reading this correctly, he’ll disappear, all right.”

“I don’t know, boss, her name is just too pretty for a crook. Alla Tarasova. It’s musical, even lyrical. It sort of floats in the air.”

Gage remembered someone else who’d talked about her in almost the same way, as a butterfly with a beautiful name.

“That’s what Mickey thought, too.”