Steven Gore - Absolute Risk

“Because the trillions of dollars held in the Relative Growth Funds are in our hands, not in those of some ayatollah. And not only can’t they get to it, not only can’t they compete with it, but we make sure we never compete on Islam’s home turf. Why do you think we have no investments in oil outside of the United States and have never speculated in oil futures? “

Harris shrugged. “I wouldn’t know. I’ve never seen the books. Hell, I’m not sure anyone on the board has seen the books.” He slammed his glass down. Bourbon spilled onto the Morningstar Report. “Hell, I’m not even sure where the goddamn books are.”

“Tell me what you want to see and you can sit down with our accountants and they’ll show it to you.”

“Why should I trust them?”

“Who would you trust?”

“People with an incentive to catch each other cheating.” Harris stared down and drummed his fingers on the desk.

“I’ve got an idea.” He looked up at Minsky. “Do we have some kind of petty cash account?”

Minsky nodded. “I guess you could call it that. Usually about fifty million dollars.”

“Hire all of the Big Four accounting firms. Have them each audit the fund separately. Everything. Offer a reward of ten million for whoever proves the other three wrong about what’s really there.”

“Isn’t that a little excessive?”

“Look.” You self-important little punk. “History won’t remember you, but it sure as hell will remember me. And I need to control how. I’d sooner blow my brains out than have to stand up there like Richard Nixon trying to convince the world that I’m not a crook-nobody believed him then and nobody would believe me now.”

You shouldn’t have jumped bail, asshole.”

Gage yanked his arm away from the hand that locked on to it. The big man had stepped out of the shadow of the concrete support in the six-level Adirondack Plaza parking structure and grabbed Gage as he was leaving to pick up Elaine Hennessy.

A punch to his kidney from the opposite side stunned Gage. He threw an elbow at where he thought the fist came from, but missed, and the two men spun him down to the pavement. They then twisted his wrist behind his back and knelt on him.

“You… got… the wrong… guy,” Gage said. The frozen concrete burned his cheek, and the weight of the men squeezed the air from his lungs. “My name is Graham Gage… and I’m not on bail.” “So you say.”

While the second man held him, Strubb emptied Gage’s pockets, then stood up and laid everything on the trunk of his rental car.

Car doors opened and closed. An elderly couple approached. Strubb flashed a badge at them and said, “I’m a bail agent. This guy skipped out and missed his court date.”

They looked away and hurried on. Strubb flipped open Gage’s ID case. “Who’d you steal the California private eye license from? “

“It’s mine.” “Yeah, right.”

Strubb bent down and compared the picture on the license to Gage’s face. “Good likeness.”

He straightened up and opened the envelope that Elaine had given Gage.

“Coupons?” Strubb said. “You’re a fucking local boy. No out-of-towner would be carrying coupons.”

“Who do you think I am?” Gage asked.

Strubb pulled out a folded piece of paper from the inside pocket of his leather jacket.

“Says here you’re David Michaels and you skipped out on a child-molesting case.”

The second man punched Gage again, and pain daggered into his side. He leaned in close to Gage’s ear and said, “You pervert motherfucker.”

Gage held his breath for a few seconds and gritted his teeth, and then asked, “What’s Michaels look like? “

“Six-two. Two-ten. White guy. Blue. Brown.” Strubb laughed. “I’d say we’ve got a match.”

“Me and a thousand other guys in Albany.”

“Hold on to him,” Strubb told his partner. “Lemme go make a call.”

Strubb walked ten cars away and called Gilbert.

“He’s says his name is Graham Gage and that he’s a-“

“I know who Gage is. Got a big operation out in San Francisco. Lots of international stuff. This guy must’ve stolen his ID. What about the envelope? “

“All it had was coupons.”

“What?”

“Just what I said. Coupons. Grocery store coupons. Cut out of the Albany newspaper.”

“He probably switched out what was in there when he was in his room. Go up there and take a look.”

Strubb slipped the envelope into his back pocket, then returned to where Gage lay and said to his partner, “Hook him up. We’re going to his room.”

After they’d handcuffed Gage and lifted him to his feet, Strubb said, “Just stay cool. If everything checks out, we’ll be on our way in a couple of minutes and you can get on to wherever you were going.” Strubb grinned. “We’ll just call it no harm, no foul.”

Gage decided not to fight them. If they intended to kill him, they’d have stuffed him into a trunk and they’d be on their way to the highway by now. He had the feeling they were just puppets and didn’t have a clue about the purpose of what they were doing or the meaning of what they’d been directed to look for.

Strubb walked close behind Gage to conceal the handcuffs as they walked through the lobby to the elevator and then again down the tenth floor hallway to his room. Strubb opened the door, then pointed Gage toward one of two fabric-covered chairs near the window facing the backlit stained glass of the gothic Episcopal church and the floodlit state capitol beyond.

Gage sat down on the front edge so he wouldn’t be pressing back against his hands and watched them paw through the drawers of the desk and nightstand and then search the closet and his Rollaboard.

Strubb’s partner found a second cell phone in an inside compartment and held it up.

“Why do you need a second one? “

“Taxes. One’s personal and one’s business,” Gage said. The man hadn’t recognized that it was an encrypted model he used to communicate with his office. “I once got audited by the IRS.”

Strubb dropped Gage’s wallet and ID case, along with his keys and the other cell phone, on the desk, and picked up Gage’s portable printer. He turned it over in his hand and set it down again. He then opened and closed the lid of the laptop, not realizing that the printer was also a scanner and that whatever Gage had collected from Elaine, he might’ve hidden on his hard drive.

“No paper in this place at all,” Strubb spoke into his cell phone. “No other ID or nothing.” He fell silent, listening, then pointed back and forth between his partner and Gage.

The partner smirked and then walked between Gage and the window behind him and unlocked the handcuffs.

Gage rose from the chair.

Strubb disconnected the call and slipped the phone into his shirt pocket.

“Sorry man, nothing personal,” Strubb said.

“Why don’t you send your friend outside for a minute?” Gage said, glancing toward Strubb’s partner. “He knows even less than you what this is really about. And it’s better if he stays ignorant. I’d hate to see him go down on a kidnapping.”

Strubb smiled and shook his head. “We ain’t going down on nothing.”

The partner reddened and glared at Strubb. “Kidnapping? What you get me into, Strubb? You said-“

“This guy’s not gonna call the cops,” Strubb said.

“He’s right,” Gage said. “I won’t.”

Strubb jerked his thumb toward the door. “Wait in the hallway.”

His partner shrugged and then walked out.

Gage stepped over to his Rollaboard and searched through it making sure that nothing had been taken, then went to the desk where Strubb was standing. Gage leaned over as if to inventory his possessions, then spun and slammed his fist into Strubb’s side, just below his rib cage. He then faked a jab to the head, and when the man’s hands flew up to block it, dropped him to the carpet with an uppercut to his diaphragm.