Steven Gore - Power Blind

He felt like kicking himself. Hawkins had been no more than ten miles away from where Boots’s flight from the U.S. had landed at the Chennai Airport, and not twenty hours down clogged and dust-swirling roads first to Gannapalli, then to Hyderabad, and back.

Twelve hours later, after speaking to the Deccan Infirmary clerk, he knew he’d been had: nobody at the Parvatiben Gujarati Hospital had ever heard of Wilbert Hawkins. And five hundred dollars in bribes had gotten him records proving they were telling the truth.

Boots felt like slitting a buffalo’s throat.

A nother guy trying to find him.

When Hawkins had peeked out of his upstairs window toward the dirt track running in front of the house, he had a nauseous feeling he wasn’t so sure anymore who the good guys were. He knew who they used to be. Back then it was easy to tell. They gave him a million dollars and a first-class plane ticket to Karachi, then to Hyderabad.

But everything turned upside down when Gage appeared in his living room, and he still hadn’t found his feet.

First he thought he’d call the good guys to find out who his more recent visitor really was and what he might be up to. But he didn’t know any of them anymore. He didn’t even know who still worked at TIMCO. He’d never met any of the lawyers. He’d heard of Marc Anston, but never saw his face. And Charlie Palmer was dead.

Hawkins walked downstairs to the kitchen and grabbed a Kingfisher beer from the refrigerator. The five regular girls were sitting at the dining table giggling, painting their palms with henna and drinking mango juice through plastic straws. They knew he was worried so they went silent when he entered and didn’t even look over to see if he wanted sex. Usually, he’d catch the eye of one or two, then jerk his head toward the door. It took them a while to learn what that meant since Indian men avoided using the insulting gesture, but now it was second nature to the girls. This time he walked past them through the kitchen and out to the back sleeping porch.

Hawkins stared at the monkeys sitting on the brown stucco wall. When he’d first arrived in India he thought they were cute; now they just seemed like big red rats. He couldn’t even sit outside and eat anymore because of them begging or grabbing food off the table. Damn annoying.

Annoying. A face appeared in his mind, along with an answer. The only way the visitor could have figured out where he lived was from Jeannette. He hadn’t talked to anyone at TIMCO for eight years, maybe more; at least since he moved from Hyderabad to the countryside. And he believed Gage when he said he’d keep his location a secret because he knew Gage still needed him-maybe.

But all Jeannette had was a telephone number. Without his cop friend from Hyderabad, Gage never would have found him. And if it was police coming to arrest him on the criminal complaint in Richmond, they’d have been Indian, not American, and the first thing they’d do was stick out their hands for a bribe to go away.

Then the truth rose up before him: If the good guys were still the good guys, they would’ve called and just asked him if Gage had come by. Hawkins wouldn’t have told them, but he figured they’d ask. Try to take his temperature. See if they needed to send somebody out to snip off a loose end.

Hawkins set his beer down and returned to the kitchen and picked up the telephone. He woke up the person at the other end of the line and told him the story.

“What did he look like?” Gage asked.

“I guess you could say he looked like a younger George Strait. Same build, but a little taller.”

“Does the name Pegasus mean anything to you?”

“Peg-a-sus… Peg-a-sus… That’s it. That’s who sent me the money… Shit. You didn’t tell Jeannette about the money, did you?”

“No reason to. And don’t call her yourself until I tell you it’s okay. I don’t want anyone else figuring out where you are.”

Gage also didn’t want Hawkins to figure out that the criminal complaint was bogus.

“If I were you,” Gage said, “I’d hightail it. The George Strait-looking guy is named Boots Marnin. There’s no doubt he’s on his way back to Gannapalli, and I don’t think it’s to drink a beer with you on the veranda. Now that you’ve ducked him, he knows for certain you’ve got something to hide.”

Old law partners. Thursdays, 11:45 A.M. at Tadich Grill in the San Francisco financial district. None of the waiters and none of the other regulars gave it a second thought after all these years.

Countless attorneys had been cut off mid-closing argument, even in mid-sentence, FBI agents had been left waiting outside chambers with search warrants to be signed, and juries left sitting with verdicts held over, all so Brandon Meyer could make it to lunch on time.

Marc Anston leaned a little closer toward Meyer sitting across the cloth-covered table. His Putin-like head gleamed in the light from a pendant fixture above, while his wireless glasses reflected the one suspended beyond the next table.

Looking back at him, Meyer felt, as much as saw, the familiar. A thin, old-money face, twelve years older than his, containing eyes that never stared or peered or gawked or leered or squinted. They only gazed, taking in, never projecting out. They were eyes formed by years of cold war intelligence work beginning in Moscow after Yale Law School and ending in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

“Gage knows about TIMCO,” Anston said. “All we can figure is that he found Wilbert Hawkins and applied some pressure.”

“What about the money trail?”

“We have to assume Hawkins told him about the million, but Gage didn’t say anything about payoffs when he confronted Karopian.”

Brandon took in a long breath through his nose, then breathed out, eyes fixed on Anston’s. He interlaced his fingers and rubbed his thumbs together.

“What about Palmer’s hard drive?” Brandon asked. “Anything?”

“Nothing. Our people searched every which way. There’s no mention of Pegasus anywhere.”

Brandon shook his head. His voice rose. “There has to be. He threatened to e-mail the spreadsheets to CNN.”

Anston raised a palm toward Brandon. “Take it easy.”

“It just pisses me off. That little punk takes a look at the grim reaper, then goes to jelly.” Brandon pounded his middle finger on the white tablecloth. “None of us got into this for money.”

“Except Palmer.”

“And that’s what’s biting us in the ass,” Brandon said. “He never believed in the cause in the first place. And once he realized money was no good in heaven or in hell-wherever he thought he was going-he caved. It’s a damn good thing he had the seizure before he spilled it all to Gage.”

“You know Gage,” Anston said. “Is there any way to get him to back off?”

Brandon shook his head. “But we don’t need to. Hawkins can’t take Gage beyond Palmer, and Palmer’s dead. Karopian knew how you fit in, but he’s dead, too. Another lucky break.”

Anston half smiled. “And Gage is in way too good a shape to have a seizure or a heart attack.”

“What do you mean?”

Anston’s smile faded. “Nothing.”

“But what if he finds out about the Pegasus companies and all the accounts?”

“It won’t make a difference. He’d have to go one step farther to connect them to us, and the Cayman Exchange Bank is never going to give up those records.”

Both Anston and Brandon leaned back as the waiter set down their seafood sautes and remained silent while he topped off their water glasses.

“New subject,” Anston said as the waiter walked away. “How did we do with OptiCom?”

“Should be around ten million.”