Steven Gore - Power Blind

“You…” The Middle Eastern-accented voice caught. Behind him a woman stood twisting a handkerchief in her hands. A black hijab framed her face. “You… you did this.”

“It was my fault,” Gage said. “I didn’t do a good enough job of teaching him our security procedures. I hope you and your wife will forgive me someday.”

Shakir’s father didn’t respond, just stood there looking up at Gage.

His mother stepped forward and asked, “How is he?”

“He has a long road ahead of him, but the doctor says he’ll be fine.”

“Can we…”

Gage nodded, and then Alex Z opened Shakir’s door and Gage followed them inside.

W hen Gage returned to the waiting room he spotted Alex Z sitting with a thirty-year-old uniformed Filipino cop. He first thought the officer was trying to pry information from Alex Z, but then noticed the officer’s eyes were vacant, his slim body was rigid in his seat, and his hands were folded in his lap.

Alex Z caught the motion of Gage walking toward them and rose. The officer followed.

“This is Rodrigo, he’s…” Alex Z glanced toward the ICU where Shakir’s parents remained. “He’s Shakir’s partner.”

Rodrigo shook Gage’s hand, then shrugged, his face pained.

“Shakir’s parents don’t know,” Rodrigo said. “His father couldn’t deal with it.” He took in a long breath, then exhaled. “And he’s a hard man. He’d never let Shakir see his mother again.”

“You work swing shift?” Gage asked.

“How’d you guess?”

“It explains why Shakir wanted to.” Gage read Rodrigo’s nameplate: R. Balatico. “Your name is familiar. You have a relative in the department back when I was there?”

Rodrigo shook his head.

“He was on the news a couple of months ago,” Alex Z said. “The armored truck robbery outside of Macy’s at Union Square.”

Gage smiled. “It didn’t cross your mind to duck behind a car when those crooks came running out of the store?”

Rodrigo blushed, then tilted his head back to emphasize the six-inch height gap between him and Gage. “I figured I was a small target.”

“Not for a shotgun.”

Rodrigo sighed. “So I realized in my nightmares for the next week.”

Gage reached out and gripped Rodrigo’s upper arm.

“Be careful,” Gage said. “There’s a guy down the hallway who needs you.”

Boots Marnin stared at the two computers standing together in the corner of his Mariner Hotel room, thinking life was a whole lot simpler when you could get everything you wanted by sticking a gun in your target’s ear. Now most of the guys who made the big bucks at his end of the market never left their keyboards, they just hacked their way in, mined for information, then sold it on contract or to the highest bidder.

I’m a forty-year-old dinosaur.

He inspected his alligator-skin Tony Lamas, then smirked at the irony.

Maybe it’s survival of the fittest after all.

He reached for his cell phone and scrolled to a number. The man on the other end of the line didn’t answer so much as grunt.

“It’s me,” Marnin said. “I got it.”

“Palmer’s computer?”

“A couple of Gage’s. Everything from Palmer’s was copied over to it. A kid decided to cooperate and told us.”

“What about Palmer’s?”

“We’d need explosives to get to it.”

“Then let’s cross that bridge when we come to it. First we need to find out what kind of records Palmer was keeping. We can torch Gage’s place if we have to.”

“Where should I-”

“Evergreen Security in San Jose. We got an ex-NSA guy down there who can break into anybody’s hard drive. Somebody’ll meet you in the parking lot.”

“I don’t know why they’re going through all this. Why don’t they just wipe the slate clean and start over with a new team? Couple of bodies. Done in an afternoon-and their mistakes buried with them.”

“That would be sheer genius. You know the last time somebody got away with killing a federal judge?” He paused. “I’ll tell you. Never.”

Gage sat alone at his breakfast table, drinking coffee, and reading Skeeter Hall’s fourteen-year-old file about the refinery explosion: the Richmond Fire Department reports recounting the recovery of the nearly incinerated bodies, the OSHA investigation showing that the root cause of the explosion was a failed pressure release device, the depositions of the TIMCO International Petroleum officers and refinery managers, and, finally, the deposition of John Porzolkiewski and his repeating over and over, “Money won’t bring my son back.” And Brandon Meyer, then the TIMCO lawyer, demanding, “What do you want?” And Porzolkiewski answering, “Nothing. I want nothing.”

Gage next examined the court file, the transcript of the Superior Court Judge’s Order of Dismissal, an apologetic:

My hands are tied. This is simply a workers’ comp case. The people of California made a trade a generation ago. In exchange for guaranteed compensation, they waived their right to sue their employers in the event of their own injury or the death of a loved one.

The Plaintiffs have failed to prove the exceptional circumstances required by law. Even the minimal threshold, showing prima facie that management had created unsafe working conditions, has not been met by the Plaintiffs.

Notwithstanding how horrendous the consequences may have been, the Occupational Safety and Health investigation is dispositive: This is simply a matter of “accidents happen.” Maybe even an accident waiting to happen. Nonetheless, this incident appears to be precisely what was envisioned by the Workers’ Compensation Law.

Case dismissed.

Clearly, Gage thought, John Porzolkiewski didn’t believe OSHA’s claim that this was an accident that just happened. What he surely believed was that the root cause of his suffering wasn’t a faulty valve and a spark, but Brandon Meyer-and that he wasn’t acting alone.

F ive minutes after Gage left the Sacramento Delta home of Ray Karopian later that afternoon, the retired OSHA inspector drove to a pay phone two miles away. But like a shoplifter in Home Depot, he noticed a thousand eyes but not the ones actually watching him.

“A private investigator was just here about TIMCO,” Karopian told the man at the other end of the line.

“What did you tell him?”

“You think I’m an idiot? You think I suddenly made up a new story after all these years?”

“Okay, okay. Take it easy. What’s his name?”

“Graham Gage from-”

“I know where he’s from.”

“How do you-”

“I don’t have time to talk about it. Call me if he comes back. And don’t use your real name.”

V iz and Alex Z were sitting at Gage’s conference table when he arrived at the office from the Sacramento Delta.

“What’s going on with Shakir?” Gage asked Alex Z, after he sat down.

“Dr. Kishore came by to see him this morning when I was there,” Alex Z said. “She seems satisfied with his progress. She grinned at me just before she left and asked when your return flight to Mumbai was.” He made a show of scratching his head. “I didn’t have a clue what she meant.”

Gage shrugged, then smiled. “I’m sort of like her brother-in-law.”

“I still don’t get it.”

Viz reached over and squeezed Alex Z’s shoulder, “Don’t worry kid, I think this is one of those times where we’re just gonna have to go with the flow.” He then pointed at Gage’s TIMCO file. “What did the OSHA man say?”

“That the pressure release device on the valve failed and the whole thing blew apart. Kerosene splashed down onto the scrubber motor and a spark set off the fire. They never even found all the pieces.”