Betrayal (38 page)

Glitsky snapped out a curt defense of his inspector. “I’m sure Darrel’s got some sense of the drill, Diz.”

“Sorry,” Hardy said to Bracco. “I tend to get excited. This may really be something.”

“Let’s get some evidence first,” Glitsky said. He sipped at the last of his tea, put his cup down gently. When he spoke, his voice was heavy with discontent. “I really don’t want to believe there’s a conspiracy here. And a cover-up. From somebody high enough up to have influence with the FBI. I keep believing our guys don’t do that kind of stuff.”

“With all respect, are you kidding, sir?” Hunt said. “These are the same swell folks who brought us Abu Ghraib and all the other disasters over there. Giving up Kuvan for the greater good, and that means pumping more money into a hardworking, God-fearing company like Allstrong—that’s a no-brainer. We’re the good guys, remember, so whatever we do is right.”

“Yeah,” Glitsky said, “so let’s hope we’re wrong on this one.”

Hardy, thinking about Evan Scholler doing life without parole in prison, didn’t hope they were wrong. He didn’t see another plausible alternative, and he’d long since lost faith in the essential goodness of man. Some were good, true, maybe most. But others, particularly those drawn to war zones and to chaos, would sometimes do anything—lie, cheat, and kill—for more money and more power, either or both. The basic rules of civilization did not apply.

That, Hardy was now all but convinced, was what had happened here. The moral rot that festered in Iraq and in the halls of power both here and abroad had poisoned the communal well over there. What distinguished Allstrong was that it had had the arrogance and irresponsibility to bring the rot and the chaos home.

And that, Hardy felt, could not be allowed to stand.

H
ARDY SAT IN HIS READING CHAIR,
his feet up on the ottoman, in the dark living room in the front of his house. He wore the same black gym shorts that he’d put on before he’d gotten into bed six hours before. When he had started awake about an hour ago—he’d dreamt that he’d been pushed from an airplane out over the Pacific Ocean—tossing off the covers, he had lain still in the night until his heart slowed down, listening to his wife’s breathing beside him, taking what comfort he could from the peaceful regularity of it.

Finally giving up on the idea of sleeping, he eased himself out of bed. Downstairs, he looked into the refrigerator out of habit, then closed it and went into the adjoining family room and watched his tropical fish swimming in their dim, gurgling home.

He’d spent most of the evening after dinner back next to his fish at his computer, finding out everything he could about Allstrong Security. Hunt’s analysis of their financial success early in the war was accurate as far as it went, but he’d failed to mention that to date, the company’s government contracts in Iraq totaled eight hundred and forty million dollars.

Allstrong was in charge of security at sixteen of the country’s airports, as well as guarding electrical grids in twenty-two administrative areas. They had been in charge of the currency changeover for the entire country as well as the rebuilding of the power lines in the extremely violent Anbar Province. The company’s Web site boasted of 8,800 employees in Iraq, 465 of whom were former American military men, most of them officers.

The company had also become active in several other countries, with more than 500 ex-commando operatives in Indonesia, Afghanistan, Kuwait, Nigeria, and El Salvador, where it specialized in corporate as well as government logistics and security. Over 200 more employees worked at a sprawling new headquarters complex near Candlestick Point in San Francisco, where the concentration was mostly on programs to guarantee the integrity of municipal water supplies and, incongruously, on raising catfish as a sustainable and inexpensive food source for developing countries.

Jack Allstrong, the founder, president, and CEO, had evidently relocated back to the home office in March of 2005. He lived alone in a mansion in Hillsborough and presided over the business out of San Francisco, although the home page stressed that Allstrong was ready and able to embark to trouble spots anywhere in the world at a moment’s notice in one of the corporation’s fleet of private aircraft, which included two Gulf-stream V jets.

When he went to bed, Hardy’s brain had been spinning with the possibilities that Allstrong presented for his Scholler appeal. As soon as Bracco could forge the link tying Allstrong to Nolan’s involvement in the assassination of the Khalils and to the deaths of the Bowens, Hardy would have an unassailable argument that the jury in the original trial never saw crucial evidence that reasonably could have affected the verdict. He’d get his appeal granted on the
Brady
violation, and then probably a new trial. And further, he doubted that a new jury, given the reversals in the case, would convict Evan again.

Now Hardy’s subconscious had rejected all of these optimistic conclusions. As he sat slumped down in his living room chair he found himself scavenging for any kind of salvageable something that could tie Allstrong—either the person or the company—to any crime at all.

If Jack Allstrong had personally ordered Nolan to eliminate the Khalils, and paid him in cash, which is exactly what Hardy conjectured had happened, he could count on there being no record of it whatsoever. Especially after all these years.

Or—Hardy corrected himself—Charlie Bowen had come up with the only evidence there might have been, and perhaps had inadvertently passed it on to his wife. But by now, whatever that had been must be gone. And similarly, the murders of Charlie and Hanna had been carried out with professional efficiency.

Even if Bracco discovered that Charlie and/or Hanna Bowen had called or gone down to visit Allstrong on the last day of their lives, what would that prove? Would it lead to a discovery of Charlie’s body, which had probably long since become fish food? Or would it place an Allstrong mercenary in Hanna’s garage pulling her body down to make sure to break her neck as she dropped from her stepladder?

Hardy knew it wouldn’t.

And so long as Allstrong didn’t confess to anything—and if there was no proof he’d ever done anything wrong, why would he?—then in the face of all the accusations in the world, he’d remain untouchable. In fact, Hardy realized, with the size of the operation Allstrong was running, by now he’d undoubtedly have surrounded himself with protection—administrative assistants, senior staff, his own lawyers—to keep him insulated from riffraff such as Hardy himself or even Sergeant Bracco who might come calling on him with impertinent questions. Hardy might never even get to talk to him.

At the sound of the newspaper hitting the porch, he opened his eyes again. The darkness outside had lessened by a degree.

It was going to be a long day.

T
HREE AND A HALF HOURS
into the work portion of that day, Hardy glared malevolently at the phone as it buzzed at his elbow. He was eight pages into his brief about the
Brady
violation. He made a good case that the FBI’s information should have been disclosed to Washburn. This would have allowed him to cross-examine the now-disappeared, allegedly ex–FBI agents on the entire question of Nolan’s involvement with the frag grenades. He’d turned off his cell phone and left strict instructions with Phyllis to hold all of his calls. He needed to concentrate.

But here was the phone, buzzing at him. Hence the glare.

He put his pen down and reached for the receiver. “This must be an emergency,” he said in a mild tone. “Is the building on fire?”

“No, sir. But Lieutenant Glitsky said I should disturb you. Apparently somebody tried to kill Evan Scholler at the prison this morning. Lieutenant Glitsky is holding now. Shall I put him through?”

“That would be a good thing, Phyllis. Please.” He heard the click of connection. “Is Evan all right?”

“He’s alive, though he’s cut pretty bad. He was lucky. The shiv hit a rib or he’d be room temperature by now.”

“So he’s going to live?”

“No promises, but good chance, evidently.”

“So what happened, Abe? He get in a fight?”

“Well, finding out what really happened is always a little iffy there, but by first reports, it’s starting to look like he was a target of some kind. The guy who went for him was a Salvadoran gangbanger out of L.A. named Rafael Calderon. Nobody had ever seen these two guys together before this morning.”

“So you’re saying somebody ordered this?”

“I’m not saying anything. I’m telling you what I’ve heard so far. And I’ve heard that your man Evan had been an ideal inmate. No word about any enemies, or what he might have done to make them.”

“So the order came from outside?”

“Don’t know. It could have been something personal we don’t know about. I’d hesitate to conjecture. But maybe you’ve got something you want to tell me?”

Hardy, recalling his research the previous night, couldn’t keep the thought from jumping to the front of his mind—Allstrong Security was developing a presence in El Salvador. Beyond his net surfing last night, he’d read several lengthy magazine articles and even pieces of a couple of books delineating the relationships between U.S. mercenaries and the Salvadoran gang networks in that country, and took it as gospel that the connections between them ran deep. He took a minute to get Glitsky up to speed, then asked, “Did they question Calderon?”

“Calderon wasn’t as lucky as Scholler.”

“Are you telling me he’s dead?”

“That’s right.”

“Did Scholler kill him?”

“No. Scholler was on the ground, bleeding. When the guards heard the screaming and yelling from the assault and got there, they got Calderon surrounded and he went more or less insane. He still had his shiv on him and he charged them. They reacted with what, after the hearing, I’m sure will be called appropriate force in self-defense.”

Hardy realized that he was gripping the phone so tightly that his knuckles were white. He knew that if Calderon had taken the job of assassinating Scholler in prison and either botched it or got caught afterward, both of which had happened in this case, he could expect to be killed by his handler or by another gang-connected inmate before he could be questioned and give anything away. And he knew that whoever had put out the contract would just as easily put out another one.

A
FTER THE PHONE CALL,
Hardy couldn’t get his mind back on the draft of his brief. He decided to walk down to the Hall of Justice to clear his mind. The fine weather continued, and if Glitsky had already gone to lunch, Hardy could walk down a couple of blocks and catch a meal at any one of a number of the good new joints in SoMa, South of Market. But Abe was in, at his desk drinking a bottled water and eating a rice cake. Glitsky opened his desk drawer, pulled out a handful of peanuts in the shell, and slid them across his desk.

Hardy cracked a shell. “This is Allstrong again, Abe.”

“Calderon? It might be at that.”

“It is, absolutely.”

Glitsky shook his head. “Don’t get me wrong. I want it to be with all my heart, but I don’t have enough, Diz. If makes you feel any better, I think it’s possible, and I didn’t think that a few days ago. I’m waiting for Darrel before I jump to any conclusions.”

“I made that jump when I heard about the stabbing. There is no other conclusion.”

“Not to be disagreeable, but don’t kid yourself. You were all over this at least yesterday, maybe before.”

Hardy chewed reflectively. “You want to hear how it works? Why it’s Allstrong?”

“Sure, but the short version, please.”

“Okay, six weeks ago Hanna gets killed. Allstrong’s now had to kill two people involved in the Scholler appeal. He thinks it’s probably all done as far as getting rid of evidence is concerned, but he knows that as long as Evan Scholler’s in prison, there’s going to be this appeal coming up again and its attendant risks, meaning people like Bowen or me coming around asking him provocative questions. Maybe there’s even more evidence someplace that he was actively involved in a domestic homicide.”

“Let’s hope,” Glitsky said.

Hardy nodded. “So Allstrong gets another idea.”

“Kill Scholler.”

“You’re reading my mind.” Another peanut. “Scholler dies, the appeal is over. Cuts it off at the source. But of course, the problem is that Scholler’s in prison. Not untouchable, but more complicated, through El Salvador and backup through one of the L.A. gangs.” Hardy held up his hands in a
voilà
gesture. “There’s your six weeks between Hanna and now.”

“Brilliant.” Glitsky ate another peanut. “You’ve got it all figured out.”

“I’ve got Bowen figured out too. They dumped him out in the ocean.”

This brought Glitsky forward in his chair. “How do you know that?”

“I dreamed it,” Hardy said, grinning. “But it’s what happened, Abe. You’re going to find his DNA in one of their airplanes, I promise.”

“Just as soon as I get to look in one of them.” Sitting back, Glitsky folded his hands on his lap. “I want to believe you, Diz, I really do. I’ll jump on all of this with both feet as soon as I can go to a judge to give me a warrant. Or I get any other reason to send Bracco to talk to the guy. But until I do…” He shrugged. “I’m waiting on Bracco. He finds something or he doesn’t. Usually, if something’s there, he does.”

“Yeah, but meanwhile, my client’s still a target.”

Glitsky glanced at the wall clock. “Diz. I think that’s a reach. I really do. Or, at worst, by your own math, the next attack is six weeks away.”

G
LITSKY WAS HALF JOKING,
but the next attack felt far closer than six weeks away to Hardy.

Back in his office, galvanized, he told Phyllis to hold his calls again and spent the next two hours working on his brief. One thing he could do, as a lawyer, was actually file his appeal and get things shaking. He, too, had been waiting for Bracco to come up with actual evidence that either of the Bowens had called Allstrong, but there was another, and much more direct, way to go about getting this information. He could pick up the phone and ask.

It wasn’t Glitsky’s way, and Hardy, in his enthusiasm to simply figure out what had happened, had gotten hung up with that process. But Glitsky was trying to solve two homicides in his jurisdiction and bring a killer to justice. Hardy, on the other hand, had only one job. He was working to free his client.

It was a crucial difference, and it now had gained added urgency with the prison assault on Evan this morning. Hardy had been hoping that once the police could somehow prove an Allstrong/Bowen connection, it would strengthen the argument in his appeal. But he really didn’t need that to file—the FBI and the Khalils might eventually lead to Allstrong and Nolan, but the issue was whether or not those initial interrogations should have been part of the prosecution’s discovery, and on this point there was little doubt.

Easy though it might be to make an actual phone call to Allstrong, there was another component to the equation that Hardy could ignore only at his peril. These guys had proven themselves seriously proactive about people who threatened their business interests. If Hardy’s theories were correct, and he was by now all but certain that they were, they had killed both the Bowens and made an attempt on the life of Evan. And all of this without leaving behind a shred of evidence that would tie them to these crimes.

Hardy realized that as soon as he made that one simple phone call, the threat level in his own life was going to go up in a hurry. He would be putting himself exactly where Charlie Bowen had gone before he disappeared forever.

But he needed the information. He had to know for sure; he couldn’t file his appeal until he knew.