“The chief judge authorized an investigation. I told Rose you’ve done great work on the case and you’re in the best position to connect the dots. He agrees.”
Zink settled into a chair across from Peterson. “Thanks for the vote of confidence, but this could spin out of control. You think any of the grand jurors will go to the press if they get wind of what we’re doing?”
“Only one I can think of.”
“Number Six?”
“Yeah, Number Six,” Peterson said. “And just wait until we have one grand jury investigating another. They’ll be giving me funny looks, wondering if we’re going after them, too.”
“Where do you want to start?”
“The attendance records and notebooks. They’re required to store their notes at the clerk’s office when they’re not in session. Let’s see who was present at each hearing and what they wrote. But let’s be careful we don’t focus too much on Number Six. Being a runaway doesn’t mean he’s the one. It’s a huge jump from being a little hyperactive to fingering people for hits.”
Zink glanced up in the direction of the grand jury room. “How will I get the notebooks?”
“The chief judge is sending an order to the clerk. He authorized you to make copies each evening after they’ve been collected. But you have to give the copies back to the clerk when your investigation is done. Same with the attendance records.”
Peterson paused, leaned back, and looked up toward the ceiling.
“I wonder if it’s just SatTek or if this guy, if it is a guy, is also doing this in other cases.” He glanced at Zink. “How about you get me the other indictments? I’ll find out if anything hinky happened in those cases. Maybe not murders, but witnesses knowing they’re about to be subpoenaed or targets getting advance warning of their indictments and making a last-second run. Maybe this guy shops his wares around to everybody.”
“Will Rose back you if this blows up?”
“Not if he wants to get elected governor. He’d never get past the primary.”
By the time Peterson arrived at Zink’s office the following morning, Zink had profiled each of the twenty-three grand jurors and posted leads from the jurors’ notebooks on a cork board tacked to the wall.
“I’ve got it reduced down to the three most likely,” Zink began after Peterson sat down next to his desk. “Number Six, Number Thirteen, and Number Twenty-two.”
Zink stepped to his chart, using a Bic pen as a pointer. “Number Six. Not only does he summarize everything, but he makes margin notes of his opinions. His favorite word is ‘asshole’…” Zink paused for a moment. “And he most often applies it to you.”
Peterson shrugged.
“He never liked you as a football player and is thrilled you never made it into the hall of fame. And he doesn’t like Matson, thinks he’s a scumbag. He wrote that he wishes this was a capital case and that he’d like to blow the brains out of anybody who was part of the scheme.”
“So he’s in the postal worker category.”
“Exactly. Number Thirteen maybe is just unlucky. He got caught talking about a case in the hallway. They all do it one time or another. The grand jury clerk told me she overheard the chief judge reading him the riot act. The guy was real upset. He begged to stay on. Maybe he became resentful enough to want to sabotage the whole thing.”
Peterson shook his head as if to say that this investigation would be going nowhere. “Another weak candidate.”
Zink nodded, then tapped Number Twenty-two. “But here’s a contender. What got my attention is that he wrote down Kovalenko’s patronymic not as ‘B-o-r-i-s-o-v-i-c-h,’ but as ‘B-o-r- y — s-o-v-i-c-h,’ old style. I figured he’s got a Russian background. And bingo. His family name was Toshenko. When his grandparents got to Ellis Island in the early 1920s, the immigration people anglicized it to Thomas.”
“That’s not unusual. It happened all the time.”
Zink raised his eyebrows. “Guess who his cousin is?”
“I couldn’t guess.” Peterson frowned, not in the mood for game playing.
“Scuzzy Thomas.”
Peterson sat up. “No fucking way!”
Peterson slammed his fist on Zink’s desk. Pens and notebooks jumped. The computer monitor shook. “Are you telling me that we’ve got a relative of a mobster who’s in the joint for jury tampering sitting on a federal grand jury? Rose is gonna go nuts…Did you look at his juror questionnaire?”
“No, they’re under seal. We’ll need a court order.”
Peterson stood up. “I’ll get an order for all of them. This is a fucking can of worms.” He looked at the chart, shaking his head. “I’m starting to wish I never opened it.”
He started toward the door, then hesitated and looked back at Zink. “Did it cross your mind that whoever wants all these other guys dead also wants to keep Matson alive?” He then turned away and marched down the hallway.
CHAPTER 46
W hy is somebody keeping Matson alive?” Gage wondered aloud when Alex Z walked into the office kitchen where he was making a pot of coffee.
“Keeping or leaving?”
“Leaving means he’s harmless, keeping means he’s got something somebody wants.”
Alex Z reached into the cabinet and pulled out two cups. “If I was him, I’d get a bodyguard.”
“He must have a krysha, a roof.” Gage held his hand above his head, palm down. “Somebody is protecting him.” Gage lowered his arm. “Slava thought that Gravilov would squeeze Matson for money and it was Alla Tarasova’s job to keep an eye on him.”
“Protecting him so they can squeeze him?”
“That’s what a protection racket is all about. They protect you from other crooks so you can keep paying.”
“Why not just put a gun to his head?” Alex Z formed his hand into the shape of a revolver. “You know, ‘Gimme all you got.’”
“What would you do if somebody did that to you?”
“I’d need to run out and sell my guitars and stuff.”
“So would Matson. We need to figure out where his money is.” Gage flicked his thumb toward Alex Z’s office. “Why don’t you go over Matson’s phone records and the ones I got out of Fitzhugh’s house? See if you can tell who they were calling. Maybe we can find a pattern.”
Alex Z brought a computer printout with him into Gage’s office a few hours later.
“It’s pretty clear Matson only used his office phone for SatTek business calls,” Alex Z reported. “In fact, all the overseas calls were to companies on the sales leads or customer lists or to suppliers of manufacturing equipment. Germany and France. I checked a bunch of the numbers. Almost all were listed. But his cell phone records show calls to a bunch of unlisted and disconnected numbers in places that haven’t even been on the horizon. Like Singapore. Why would he be calling Singapore? Or Taiwan? Switzerland I can understand. Liechtenstein, yeah. UK, sure. But Singapore?”
“Any pattern?”
“Pattern? Yes. Explanation? No-but whatever it was, Fitzhugh was in the middle of it. Calls to him kept crisscrossing all the others. Switzerland, Fitzhugh. Singapore, Fitzhugh. Taiwan, Fitzhugh. He’d get a call from Matson, then right away call a bank or a law office in Lugano, or Guernsey, or London. Bang, bang. Just like that.”
Gage turned his head and squinted toward the light coming into his office window, then back at Alex Z with the barest hint of a smile.
“There’s something we haven’t thought much about,” Gage said. “Matson’s exit strategy. How does he think this’ll end? He knows the government will make him forfeit all the money. Peterson isn’t a fool. A jury asked to convict Burch wouldn’t be too pleased if he let Matson keep any. But Matson’s not a fool, either. He’s got to have a stash. He doesn’t want to come out of this thing broke. And the best place to hide money is where nobody would think to look.”
“You think maybe Alla is part of his exit strategy? Dump the wife and disappear?”
“If Slava is reading this correctly, he’ll disappear, all right.”
“I don’t know, boss, her name is just too pretty for a crook. Alla Tarasova. It’s musical, even lyrical. It sort of floats in the air.”