Steve Martini: The Enemy Inside

“Let’s pretend I never asked.”

As we head for the front door I have visions of Casablanca, Bogart and Rains on a fog-shrouded runway. “Round up the usual suspects, Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

If I had to guess, I would say that whatever was in the large metal box that the lady archer rolled out of Becket’s office that afternoon had something to do with the two fatal auto accidents. It was her use of the words “auto-electronics” to describe what was inside, and the fact that she said he had stolen it and used it twice. This and the research I had done leads me to conclude that whatever was in that box, it was used to kill Serna, Ben, and her boyfriend.

The panicked expression on the girl’s face, the woman I knew as Ben, and the frantic and futile efforts of her boyfriend to control their car on its way to a fiery hell are engraved in my mind.

The woman with the arrows disappeared like a wisp in the wind two minutes after we left the house. I waited a respectful period for her to get out of the area. This gave me time to clean up before I called the cops. In the bathroom I washed my face and got rid of the blood. I didn’t use any towels. I used toilet tissues and flushed so there would be no trace of blood in the drain.

I grabbed my suit coat from the floor in the study to cover my soiled shirt, buttoned it up, straightened my tie, ran a comb through my hair, and called the cops. I told them the same story I’d given to her. The one where I came to the house with documents to be signed and found the dead body.

The Eagle is dead, but so is Rubin Betz. Fifty-seven days after I walked out of the house in Del Mar, the one I thought was owned by a man named Rufus Becket, who appears not to have existed, Betz finally lost his battle with pancreatic cancer. When he died, I felt as if I had lost a friend. For all of the mystery surrounding the whistleblower in the end, his motives for much of what he had done were simple and to the point. He was protecting his daughter, and to this I can relate. Call it the fraternity of fatherhood.

In the meantime the world has exploded. Whoever had the documents, wherever they were, they began to surface after Betz died, just as he said they would. Within little more than a week the details of political corruption saturated the media of the world. Heads began to roll.

In less than forty-five days, indictments were announced. Maya Grimes was charged, along with eight other members of Congress. And these were just the openers. Other names began to surface. It is likely that indictments will continue for at least another year, perhaps longer.

Many have proclaimed their innocence and vowed to fight, insisting that in the end they will be vindicated. Much of this is disintegrating under their feet even as they and their lawyers dodge the microphones and cameras. New details of foreign money and what it bought seem to surface each day. For some of them, the drip of information is becoming death by a thousand cuts.

As for Grimes, she and her attorneys are already huddled with federal prosecutors hunting for a deal. Rumor is she has offered to pay more than a billion dollars in fines on her offshore holdings, along with a promise to resign from the Senate. This for some short-term sentence, a rap on the knuckles.

She would be wise to move quickly before the Senate Ethics Committee and the entire chamber expel her. The rats are not only leaving the ship but are eating their own on the way. The media is asking serious questions as to the source of some of the money and what was sold, talk of possible capital punishment for acts of treason in which lives may have been lost.

It seems that perhaps what was once called the press, a fourth estate of dogged pursuers, is not in fact dead. It was merely paralyzed by partisan fervor. The news outlets finally found their bearings, remembered first principles, and followed the money. Maybe there is hope after all.

As for Betz and his estate, there was never any question that the government owed him the money, the massive whistleblower award. That they ever tried to link it to his continued silence is now being denied at the highest levels within the Justice Department. It wouldn’t have mattered, for in the end they were forced to swallow a survivor’s clause that I slipped into the settlement agreement that freed Betz. Under no circumstances may the government reclaim the money that has now flowed to his daughter within terms of the agreement.

We had one final conversation just before he died. Rubin realized the only way any of us would have peace was to allow the information to go public. Once all the tainted members were exposed and whoever owned them was out of business, the danger would evaporate. What they say about sunlight is true. It is often the best disinfectant.

As for the gardener, the man I first thought was Rufus Becket, it turned out that he became my lodestone. Police detained him at the house and questioned him. With his employer dead on the floor, the gardener led them to a storehouse of documents, including transcripts of telephone conversations. Several of these documents established beyond any question why Olinda Serna was murdered and who did it. Alex Ives is free. The duce, an ancient term of California legal art dating from the time that drunk driving was charged under Vehicle Code Section 502, the case that Harry and I inherited as a favor to my daughter, Sarah, is over. But its legacy lives on.

Harry and I have disclaimed any of the mounting and additional fees now being netted from the politicians who have been caught, and who are now showering the Treasury with cash in bids to stay free. For us, this latter money is tainted. The fact that we counseled Betz in his ultimate decision to allow his hidden bank documents to be exposed, the act that caused the money to pile up, meant that we had a conflict. To take the additional funds would have lined our own pockets and might have muddied the water regarding his daughter’s ability to receive her share of the added portion. A guardian has been appointed and other lawyers are now on the scene to assure that this happens.

Harry and I face an uncertain future. The thirty-five million dollars, the original fees awarded us by Betz for my work at Supermax, is now in process of being paid. This is like the serendipity of winning a lottery. The fact that it flowed from a dog of a case that neither of us wanted to take speaks to the mystery and caprice of wealth-the imponderable puzzle of who gets it and why.

How this will affect our lives in the future is anyone’s guess.