Go-Between

Chapter Twenty-Six

The advantage to calling Gary last night was that she’d done her job, technically. Now she could control the timing of when she called him again. She couldn’t put him off for too long, she knew, but she could keep both her iPhones switched off until she was ready for the conversation. She needed to think about what to say, a way to word it that would be less damaging to Caitlin, if that was even possible.

Besides, she had things she needed to do first.

Lotus had a tiny business center, for those who needed to print or fax and for the very few people who traveled without laptops or tablets or smartphones. The center was in an alcove, not even a separate room, to the side and behind the Buddha fountain.

6 a.m. The lobby was fairly quiet. A few guests sipped coffee and read newspapers in the couches and chairs adjacent to the bar.

“Just enter your name and room number on the screen,” the desk clerk said, “and we’ll charge it to your room.”

“Actually, is there some way I can pay cash instead? My employer’s covering my room, and this is my own business.”

“Sure, not a problem. Type in ‘Guest’ and ‘Guestroom1234’ and tell me when you’re done.”

She’d given it a lot of thought. She couldn’t trust that sending a flash drive to her old LA attorney would be enough. Maybe they’d find out what she was doing here, but that might not be an entirely bad thing either-it might distract them from looking into an obscure figure from her past. Or, it might make them think that she could have stashed this information in so many places that they’d never find them all.

Or, the whole thing was an exercise in futility.

But she had to take the chance, as bad as the odds were. Just going along with Gary and Sam and hoping that things would somehow work out gave her no chance at all.

Evergreen did email newsletters for subscribers, advertising seasonal menus, special events and deals, using a free web-based service. There weren’t all that many subscribers, under two hundred last time she checked, but it was easy to add other addresses to the email list. She did that now, going to websites like the New York Times and the Washington Post, Mother Jones, The Nation, the San Francisco Chronicle and the LA Times, the Wall Street Journal, Reason, a few alternative online publications and local weeklies, finding a reporter’s or editor’s email address and adding it to the Evergreen mailing list.

Next, she opened a simple template and titled it: “A story you might be interested in.”

Her heart was thudding hard now, sweat prickling her skin. If there was spyware on this computer… if they were monitoring it…

She drew in a deep breath and inserted the extra flash drive to which she’d copied Danny’s logbook.

The PDF of the letter he’d written in the back opened immediately. This computer had Acrobat Pro installed. Good, she thought. You couldn’t insert PDFs into one of these newsletters; she’d tried it before, and you had to use JPEGs or PNG files (whatever those were). She saved the file as a JPEG and uploaded it to the file manager section of the email service, where it appeared as a thumbnail above other thumbnails of images she’d used in newsletters past: Her shot of the redwoods, an artfully arranged plate of seasonal root vegetables, a staff photo celebrating Christmas last year.

She went back to the newsletter she’d started. If she’d had more time, she would have written something better, more persuasive, more informative. But she didn’t have time.

She wrote:

My name is Michelle Mason. For the last two years I was known as Emily Carmichael, and I owned and operated the Evergreen Bistro in Arcata, CA. I lived with a man people knew as Jeff Gregerson. His real name is Daniel Finn.

This is a crazy-sounding story, and if you’d tried to tell it to me a few years ago I never would have believed it. I wouldn’t have even listened. But it’s true, and the materials linked to this email can prove it. I’ve sent other people this infomation as well.

She inserted the JPEG of Danny’s note below that.

The email service offered file-hosting, where you could upload documents and then insert links to them in your email blasts. Using Acrobat, she combined the two hundred PDFs from Danny’s logbook into nine files. She kept the links in her newsletter simple. “Captain Daniel Finn’s Logbook, Part 1.” “Part 2.” “Part 3.”

She’d send it to everyone on the email list. The more the better. Maybe there were a few conspiracy theorists among Evergreen’s clientele.

The last thing she did was schedule the email to go out in seven days.

When she cleared the browser and logged off, it was just after 8:30 a.m.

The Bank of America branch near Union Square opened at 9:00 a.m. Bank of America was where Emily had her checking account. With $10,000 of the cash she’d brought from Arcata, she purchased a cashier’s check made out to Derek Girard. She wasn’t sure how much of the original $10,000 retainer was left at this point, something she should have asked about but had been too distracted to even consider. He’d said the ten thousand would be more than enough to cover the costs if the case didn’t go to trial, when he’d thought they’d bail Danny out and get the case dismissed or make some kind of deal. Now? With visits to jails six hours away from Houston? Who knew what the tab would be?

Next, she headed to a different bank, Chase, where Michelle had a bank account. On her way, she used one of her new burner cells to call Alan Bach.

“Michelle, good to hear from you.”

She was a little surprised that he wasn’t busy, that he took her call. If he hadn’t been able to talk to her, she would’ve gone ahead to the bank and gotten another cashier’s check and sent it to him anyway. She had no idea how much was appropriate for this situation, but where could you look up the going rate for receiving tinfoil-hat material that might get you killed?

“Hi, Alan. Thanks so much for taking my call. How’s everything?”

“Great, fine.” A pause. “I got your package.”

“Oh, good. That’s why I was calling, actually.”

“Ah. Yeah. You know, I have to say, it’s not every day I get that kind of… James Bond scenario in the mail.”

She faked a chuckle. “I know, I know. That must have seemed… just completely melodramatic.”

“Well, a little out of the ordinary.”

“Yeah. It’s… a complicated story. But I just wanted to make sure you got it, and I also wanted to let you know that I’m sending a retainer for any expenses you might have.”

“For this?” He sounded in equal parts amused and puzzled. “Listen, why don’t you save the money until you actually need me to do something? I know how difficult things have been for you.”

“Well, I do have some money now. And… just in case… I’m going to send you something.”

He laughed. “In case you need me to open this in a week and a half and do… something?”

“Hah, yeah, I know, it sounds a little… crazy, but… yes. Just in case.”

“Okay, sure. If that’s what you need, happy to do it for you.” A pause. “And I meant what I said about it being good to hear your voice. The way you vanished a few years ago, as bad as things were… well, I’m glad that things seemed to have turned around for you.”

Michelle laughed. “Yes. Things have definitely changed.”

At the Chase Bank, she purchased a $5,000 cashier’s check for Alan Bach.

Next, she went to the FedEx office on Kearny and sent the checks off to her two lawyers.

There was a Starbucks just around the block on Montgomery. She stood outside it and stared through the tinted windows. Not too long a line.

10:35 a.m. Plenty of time to do what she needed to do next.

She just was scared to death of doing it.

You have to, she told herself. It’s either this, or go back to the hotel, pack your bag, take all the cash you have left out of the safe in the closet and run. Run, and don’t look back. Leave Danny where he is and hope the $10,000 is enough for Derek and Marisol to work his case. Leave them to explain to the court why “Emily” had vanished without a word. Leave Caitlin to whatever fate Gary had in mind for her.

Or roll the dice and make the phone call.

“Sam. Hi. It’s Michelle.”

She’d called him from the same burner she’d used to talk to him on Wednesday. She’d called Alan on one of her new phones. No way she wanted Alan associated with a number she’d used to call Sam.

“Do you have news?”

“I do,” she said. “Danny’s still at the Weaver Detention facility. It wasn’t a mistake. They’re putting pressure on him, and on me. I need you to do something about it.”

“In other words, nothing’s changed since our last conversation. I already told you how we should proceed.”

She took in a deep breath. Stay calm, she told herself.

“I have something of Danny’s,” she said. “I think you should see it.”

“All right. I’ll give you an address.”

He already sounded wary. Good.

“I can email it. I think you’ll want to see it right away.”

A long moment of silence. Michelle waited.

“You’ll need a pen,” he finally said. “I’m going to give you an IP address.”

She ordered a coffee of the day and bought a bottle of Eos water, which was supposed to be ethically sourced. Found a table in the corner and wiped off the crumbs and coffee ring and dribbles of milk with a napkin. Sat down and got out the iPad she’d bought at SFO. She’d never set up the internet on it; she’d wanted to keep it secure.

Now was the time.

After that was done, she went to Yahoo and created an email account. Hit the “Compose” link.

She wondered briefly what she should use for a subject line and settled on “Requested information.” Then she slipped the flash drive into the USB port and attached one of the files she’d made from multiple pages of Danny’s logbook, plus the note he’d written. She typed: “There’s a lot more, but this will give you an idea. Call me when you’ve had a chance to review.”

Her finger hovered above the send button on the touch screen.

You might as well do it, she told herself. You already hit the self-destruct button, and the clock’s ticking.

She pushed send and waited.

She’d drunk her cup of coffee and was halfway through a refill when her burner cell rang.

“I don’t know what the fuck you were thinking.”

Her heart started pounding, and she felt a sudden damp chill on her skin. You can’t panic, she told herself. Act like you’re in control.

“Me? I’m not the one who wrote it,” she said.

“What do you expect me to do with this?” He sounded angry.

Good. That meant she’d hit him where it hurt.

“I really don’t care what you do with it. Danny wanted people to see this. What I want is for you to get him out of jail and to get Gary off of me. I want a life, like you promised me we were going to have. And just so we’re clear about this, I’ve made sure that if you fuck with me, this information is going to get released, and I’m not bullshitting you about that, Sam. I mean it.”

Michelle noticed, belatedly, a girl in her late teens or early twenties briefly look up from her tablet and glance in her direction. I probably shouldn’t have said that in the Starbucks, Michelle thought, but the girl was wearing earbuds and nobody seemed to care.

Meanwhile, Sam was employing one of his strategic silences, but this time, Michelle wondered if it was because he really didn’t know how to respond.

“I can’t control Gary,” he finally said.

“Maybe you can’t control him, but you can negotiate with him, better than I can. You’ve got people behind you. You have influence.”

Another silence.

“I assume if I do this, you won’t release the information.”

“Correct. I won’t.” She wanted to laugh. “That’s how these things work, right?”

“What about Danny? You said he wanted people to see this.”

“Danny’s loyal. You know that. If we make this deal, he’ll keep his end of it.”

“All right. I’ll see what I can do. Don’t expect immediate results.”

“How soon?”

“A few days. And it may not work.”

“Then you can all live with the consequences,” she said, and hung up.

She had one last thing to do before meeting Caitlin for lunch. She had to call Gary.

“Bout time you called,” he said. “I hope you don’t think you can just put me off like that, Michelle. You should’ve called me back last night.”

“Sorry,” she said, not even trying to sound apologetic. “We didn’t get in till really late. And I told you the important part.”

“Oh, really? So, just when were you gonna tell me about Troy Stone?”