Conspiracy (26 page)

She glared at him.

"And you want to know what else I think?" Cady said.

Furious at him, she responded, "I really don't give a damn what you think."

"I think somebody in Mississippi made a mistake in bringing those charges against you. There was some type of clerical or computer error. I think you should go down there and straighten it out. After that, you should head off to the Caribbean for a good long vacation."

His last comment was too much for Taylor. Her face turned bright red with anger as she shot to her feet. "You're the third fucking man," she screamed, "who's told me in a condescending way that I'm being irrational. Well, I may be a woman, but I'm not some emotional cripple. If you're too goddamned stupid to see a picture that's absolutely clear, then that's your fault and not mine."

"Listen, I didn't say that because you are a woman—"

"And right now I don't give a damn what you meant. I don't intend to bother you any more or stay in this house one more minute."

She stormed toward the front door.

"Hey, it's late. You can stay here tonight."

"I don't want a thing from you. I saw the Mendocino Inn in the middle of the town. I'd rather stay there."

"Listen, I'm sorry. Really. It's just that I don't think—"

"That's your trouble. You don't think. Period." Before he could respond, she was through the front door, slamming it so hard that the entire wall vibrated.

 

 

 

Chapter 21

 

At seven o'clock in the morning, Cady climbed out of bed, ending a miserable night of tossing and turning. He liked Taylor. He had even thought about asking her out last spring when they had finished the Warden case, which was why he had suggested that they go rafting in West Virginia. Then he got busy with the Russian mobster case and never followed up. That was the way it went for hardworking, single professionals.

All of that made him feel terrible for handling the discussion with her so poorly last evening, letting it degenerate into a shouting match. But damn, she had frustrated him. She was leaping to conclusions without having the facts to back them up.

Walking down the dirt path to the mailbox for the morning newspaper, he couldn't get her out of his mind. If she hadn't rushed out of the house last night, they could have talked things through. He could understand that she was upset about Senator Boyd's death. But that didn't justify her leap into an irrational void with her crazy theory about conspiracy and murder. She was hopeless, he thought, shaking his head. Still, he had to admire her spunk, coming all the way out here to enlist his help.

Back in the house he spread out the
San Francisco Chronicle
on the kitchen table and fixed a bowl of Cheerios with berries and skim milk. On the front page there was nothing new about Senator Boyd's death. Just a rehash of the old stories.

Another front-page story related that Governor Crane was trying to jump-start his campaign with interviews on all three television networks in the next twenty-four hours. The Crane campaign was making a massive effort to hit the ground running and get into the race. Eighteen-hour days were being crammed together as the candidate planned to crisscross the country, stopping in each of the forty-eight contiguous states at least once. In the meantime his campaign headquarters in Harrisburg was cranking out a daily flow of position papers and blasts against the ineptitude of the Webster administration. According to the analyst, it was a high-risk, go-for-broke campaign that Crane was running, a far cry from Boyd's carefully planned, cautious effort that had put Boyd gradually in the lead. But conditions were different now. Crane didn't have the time that Boyd did. He had no choice, if he wanted a chance to win.

The apolitical Cady admired what Crane was doing. He always liked the gutsy underdog who refused to give up. He doubted that there was enough time for Crane to pull ahead, but swings in American public opinion were often hard to predict.

Eating cereal, Cady flipped the pages of the newspaper, rapidly scanning headlines. The Forty-niners were playing at home on Sunday against the Rams. On the first page of the business section was a long article about fluctuations in the value of the Japanese yen. According to a Stanford economist, Japanese exports would be more expensive and their position would erode further in world markets. The economist was predicting even harder times ahead for Japan, with the Japanese standard of living certain to fall some more. Cady thought about Glass's letter. It seemed preposterous that Sato or any foreign leaders could manipulate the American presidential election.

Cady kept turning pages. The
Chronicle
that Cady received in Mendocino had a supplement with a news roundup for areas north of the city. On the second page of that supplement a picture caught his eye.
Whoa, wait a minute.
He did a double-take.
My God, that's Harvey Gladstone's picture.
Next to it, the caption read,
Realtor Killed in Automobile Crash.

With a lump in his throat, Cady began reading:

 

Late on Thursday evening, Harvey Gladstone, a retired realtor, died when his car crashed off the road in the mountains west of Napa Valley and burst into flames. It is unclear what caused Gladstone to veer off the road. Conditions were wet and hazardous. The police are still investigating.

Gladstone is survived by his wife of forty-one years, Louise, a son, Jonathan, and a grandson, Carl, in Los Angeles. For many years he operated Gladstone Realty, one of the major realty firms in Napa Valley, from its founding in 1960 until his retirement in 1988. Gladstone was also a past president of the Kiwanis and the Elks.

 

"Oh, shit, it can't be!" Cady blurted out. He thought about what Taylor had told him last night. Maybe she was right. Maybe somebody had used him. They had made the investigation easy enough, guiding him to all the right places.

You dummy! Gladstone's dead because of you.

He tried to review in his mind the points Taylor had made last evening, which he hadn't taken seriously. If what she was saying was true, then her own life was now on the line. Whoever had killed Boyd and Gladstone was after her next.

Oh, God, I let her leave here on her own last night.
Cady cursed himself. She could've been followed. He tore the article about Gladstone from the newspaper and shoved it into his pocket. Then he ran outside the house and climbed into his dark blue Jeep Cherokee. Dirt and pebbles sputtered as he tore down the driveway.

* * *

Chuck Harley, the owner of the Mendocino Inn, was a tennis partner of Cady's.

"Hey, I'm looking for—"

Harley interrupted him. "She's in the dining room having breakfast."

"How'd you know who I wanted?"

"Well, last night when I checked her in, I asked, 'What brings you to Mendocino?" She said, "That asshole C. J. Cady.' That gave me a clue."

"Is she okay?"

"Unless she ate a double portion of the cook's corned-beef hash." Harley laughed at his joke.

In the dining room Taylor was the only guest. Confused and uncertain about what to do next, she had decided to take a long walk after breakfast on the beach. That was always good for thinking. She'd find a way out of this mess. In the meantime she sipped coffee and picked at a blueberry muffin while glancing at the
San Francisco Chronicle.
She had the cup in her hand when she saw Gladstone's picture and article. "Oh, no," she cried, and the cup fell out of her hand onto the table, then rolled to the wooden floor, spilling the coffee along the way. "It can't be."

From the entrance to the dining room, Cady watched the cup fall, saw the expression of terror on her face, and knew that she'd seen the Gladstone article. He rapidly approached.

"Oh, Taylor. I'm so sorry," he said grimly. "I was used. I should have been smart enough to know what was going on."

Cady glanced around. Harley had left them alone in the dining room, but they couldn't stay here. He needed to get her out of sight. "Let's go back to my place."

* * *

"C'mon, we'll go over your story again," Cady told her as they walked through the front door of his house.

Feeling buoyed by his support and concern, Taylor swallowed hard, took a deep breath, and went through all the different steps.

When she was finished, Cady said, "I have to try to get to Dorfman at the FBI."

She shook her head solemnly. "You can't do that."

"Why not?"

"We don't know who we can trust. If we accept what Alex said in the letter, then Sato has an influential American working for him. Perhaps more than one. Dorfman could be part of it. As the FBI director, he has to be spending time with McDermott and Webster. They might both be involved."

"You really think—"

"I don't know what to think. Two people have died. I don't want us to become numbers three and four. If you know Dorfman well enough to tell me it's a reasonable chance to take, I'll trust your instinct. But I don't think you do."

"Yeah, you've got a point," he said thoughtfully. "If you follow that reasoning, then we'll have to operate on our own for now."

She thought back over what she had told him. "When the senator came out of the grand jury room, he said that you had a phony document from a Napa, California, tax office that made his Mill Valley sale seem like a fifty-million-dollar transaction instead of ten."

Cady was aware of the weakness in the computer printout he had gotten from Karen without the backup being available. "Yeah," he said sheepishly.

"What exactly did you have?"

As Cady told her about his meeting with Karen and what she had given him, Taylor looked at him incredulously. "C'mon, C.J., that woman was conning you. They wouldn't have destroyed the backup on a ten-year-old transaction."

"What makes you so sure?"

"I worked for the California government. That's how I met Boyd. Unlike industry, they didn't have efficient document-disposal policies. At least when I was there."

Cady was defensive. "That was a long time ago, and you never worked in that office."

"Agreed. Who can we call to find out?"

Cady paced around the room, thinking. "When I spent a year with my old law firm in San Francisco, I was friends with a corporate partner, Al White. A good guy. He'd give me the info without asking any questions."

Taylor watched Cady's face as he made the call and asked White about document disposal. The chagrined expression on his face told her the answer before he hung up.

"I screwed up," he said simply.

She put a hand on his shoulder. "I wouldn't put it that way. I'd say you were tricked by some people who will stop at nothing to get what they want. It's time for us to pay a visit to Karen. She's in this up to her eyeballs."

"Exactly what I was thinking. We have to make a couple of stops first."

"What do you have in mind?"

"Now that I've bought into your story, I don't want us to be victims three and four."

Cady opened the top drawer of a bureau in the living room. He reached under a navy blue cardigan and took out a .38 revolver and a box of bullets.

"Do you know how to use that thing?" Taylor asked.

"Chuck Harley taught me to shoot a couple of years ago to scare off animals. I've never killed anything in my life."

* * *

Cady parked the Jeep in front of a large office building on California Street, deep in the heart of the gloomy canyons of San Francisco's financial district.

"Now do you want to tell me what we're doing here?" Taylor asked impatiently as he cut the engine.

"Remaking you."

"Remaking me?" Unconsciously she raised her hand to pat her hair.

"Yeah, I don't want any of Sato's henchmen nailing you before we get our case together, and I don't want you rotting away in a Mississippi jail. So right now you can say goodbye to Taylor Ferrari for a while."

"I don't understand."

He liked that he'd taken her by surprise. "Didn't you like to play dress-up when you were a little girl?"

"I never had a chance. All I had were brothers. They needed me for football or baseball. Now, would you mind telling me what you're planning to do with me?"

"There's an office in that building," he said, pointing, "with the name Epsilon Industries on the door. That's where the Justice Department operates its West Coast witness-protection program. They provide new identities to people who testify in Mafia cases and the like. Before we left Mendocino I called Tom Miller, a friend of mine who's the head of the FBI office in Sacramento. He promised to make all the arrangements. They should be waiting for you."

She flashed him a flirtatious smile. "Will I get a choice about what to be? I always wanted to be one of those tall, slim, blond, leggy models, the type you see in
Vogue
magazine."

"Personally, I prefer your current Sophia Loren natural look."

She stroked his arm as she prepared to open her door. "Cady, you're really not such an uptight SOB."

* * *

Taylor got part of her wish. Five minutes after they entered the offices of Epsilon Industries, Ken Linderman, head of the DOJ's West Coast witness-protection program, fitted her with a blond wig. Linderman and Cady were both standing behind her, staring at her in the mirror, when Cady said, "Well, you always wanted to be a blonde. You should be happy."