An Eye for Gold Page 32
“But—”
“Look at OPEC if you don’t believe me, Em, or NAFTA. Their days of power wax and wane like any other kingdom, but their influence over the way we govern, over our daily lives, is extreme, and their effects are felt instantaneously. We are passing out of the days when land and army based superpowers ruled the globe. With the invention of the microchip, and global communications, we have catapulted ourselves into an age when we must once again fight like dogs for what we think right. If you don’t believe me, then you haven’t been paying attention to what the World Trade Organization has done to our environmental legislation.” He turned his face back to the computer screen. He was no longer smiling. “These organizations do not exist for the betterment of human rights or for environmental conservation, nor do they necessarily give a shit about our bill of rights, our constitution, or our system of governance. America is the last great superpower, and, while certain corporate wise guys have been busy taking advantage of the openness of our society, the best among us have been leading the world out of oppressive systems of government. So let’s not let the multinational corporations drag us into a new form of feudalism.”
“What do you think is going to happen from here?” I asked, trying to take in everything he’d just said.
“I don’t know,” he said. “And that, my dear, is what has caught my attention.”
Well, that was all a bit beyond my grasp, so I turned my attention to Lefty, hoping to understand her better than I could decipher Tom. “You seem oddly jolly about having this account busted,” I said.
Without turning his head, Tom shifted his eyes to Lefty, awaiting her reply.
“You may draw your own conclusions,” she said, not denying my observation.
I moved over and stood behind Tom as he shifted through the records. To Ian, Tom called, “Let me know when you find something interesting.” Not if, when.
I asked, “What do you expect to find?”
“Payoffs.”
Lefty pulled herself up and reached toward the keyboard, leaning against Tom’s other shoulder. She began moving the cursor through the records. ‘Try over here,” she said, bringing up a ledger and resorting the list of checks by payee. “Perhaps you’re looking for little ornaments like this.” She moved back to the couch, sat down, and put her feet up on the coffee table.
I looked over Tom’s shoulder again. She had highlighted a miscellaneous series of checks that were by name only, no company. One of them was drawn to a certain civil servant.
“Ian,” Tom called. “Search on Stephen Giles.”
From the other room, Ian answered, “Got it.”
To me, Tom said acidly, “Not even six figures. Don’t you hate it when public servants sell themselves so cheaply? Now, the question is, what exactly did he have to sell?” He tapped the screen. “I want to know who was signing those checks. Do you get the originals?” he asked Lefty.
“No. But the bank would at least microfilm them before destroying them. Or if the customer asks for them, they send the originals. But I don’t get them. I just get the statement, and that only electronically.”
To Ian, Tom called, “Phone Reno. Get onto this account. Seize all checks at the bank.” To himself, Tom murmured, “What I wouldn’t give to see one of those checks in its original envelope.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because I want this gang on mail fraud, just in case I can’t make anything else stick.”
“Ian!” I called.
“What?”
“That bit with Stephen Giles slamming his car door on some guy’s arm. Didn’t you tell me he dropped an envelope on the pavement?” The fever of the chase was upon me. My mind was humming. The experience of working this close to Tom was exhilarating.
Ian stepped into the doorway, already dialing his cell phone. “Yes. But it was addressed to someone else.”
I said, “Well, maybe he keeps a box under his name. Was he anywhere near a post office when he dropped it?”
Ian paused to think, then answered, “Yes. The downtown Reno office is a few blocks away.”
“Get a warrant,” Tom said. “We now have cause. And get after that storage locker of his, too. Get on the phone. Now.”
“You got it”
Tom leaned back in the swivel chair and closed his eyes in meditation. I moved around beside him and watched him a moment, trying to reconcile lan’s revelation that he was a man of some standing within the Bureau with my previous assumption that he was a political has-been who had been ditched at a remote office. Tom the Zen master would not chase clear across the Great Basin to investigate a wildlife biologist accused of faking species population numbers, and neither would he show such great interest in a bottom-ranked BLM agent who was taking bribes, or even in a junior mining company that was paying them. There had to be something bigger that had caught his interest. Something much bigger, and more centrally repugnant to him. I said, “You’re still holding out on me. Damn it, Tom. Why?”
His eyes flicked open. They were hard as flint. ‘It’s my job,” he said. “You want in?”
I leaned very close, lowering my lips towards his ear. Almost at a whisper, I said, “I like my freedom.”
Tom stared into the computer screen. He did not reply.
I was just opening my mouth to say something spiteful, when Ian stepped back in from the bar. “Reno is going after those warrants,” he announced. “But it may do us no good. Giles has split”
Tom swiveled quickly around to face him. “Gone? Where?”
“No report yet I just had someone call him, and he didn’t show up to work this morning, and didn’t call in to say why. No answer at his house. I’m talking right now to someone who’s on his way to that storage locker where he was keeping that suitcase.” He stopped talking for a moment, shielding his other ear to listen more closely. Then he looked up. “Locker’s empty.”
Tom said, “Get someone to that post office. Ask if he’s been seen there. Then cover the airports.”
“I’m on it.” Ian disappeared back into the bar.
To Lefty, I said, “Are there any really big drains on this account?”
She moved in again and went at it with the keys, moving down the debits list to a string of extremely large drafts, no name, only a number. “That’ll be an account in the Caymans,” she said.
“Chittenden’s siphoning off funds,” Tom said, and very drily, added, “The stockholders won’t like that”
I said, “Not stockholders, limited partners.”
“Right” said Lefty. “The stockholders would demand oversight. But if you want a big infusion of cash that’s harder to trace, you set up a limited partnership for a specific phase of development and the cash can go straight into a separate war chest”
Tom nodded to her. “If your other talents are anything like your accounting skills, then I hope they don’t go wasted.”
Lefty gave his shoulder a squeeze.
Tom said, “But still there’s something wrong with this picture. Granville has to drill eventually, and it costs big money to drill. If he keeps draining the war chest at this rate, there will be no money to pay for it. And then Chittenden’s little hustle will be plain as day.” He rubbed his eyes. “This one goes to the Securities and Exchange Commission anyway,” he muttered. He looked annoyed. “Except that a limited partnership is too cute. Granville can make up some story about where the funds went. Investors bite on this kind of cookie every day of the week.”
I said, “But this isn’t even what you were looking for.”
He looked at me, his eyes steady. I realized that he was waiting for me to say something else.
“It wasn’t Chittenden you were after,” I said.
His eyes gleamed even more brightly.
“So this is where Morgan Shumway fits in.”
Tom’s eyelids lowered and lifted again, a slow blink. “Yes, Morgan Shumway,” he said, satisfied with my progress.
I wanted to scream.
“His firm works exclusively in support of environmental interests.”
My brain jammed in place. It did not fit that Rodriguez should phone an environmental lawyer and then turn up murdered. Unless . . .
“Think it through,” Tom said.
I blinked. Moments ticked past. “An endangered species case. What exactly does Morgan Shumway do with environmental interests?”
Tom nodded slowly, rewarding his student. “He has made a specialty out of suing the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.”
So this was what had drawn Tom Latimer across the Great Basin. He had not been interested in Pat Gilmore, or Stephen Giles, or even Granville Resources, except as doors in toward Morgan Shumway. “But the Fish and Wildlife Service is the agency that lists species as endangered,” I said.
“Precisely,” Tom replied. “But the Fish and Wildlife Service has suffered budgetary cutbacks, just like everybody else, which has resulted in such an enormous case backlog that they seldom even start the process toward listing a given species until someone sues them to do so.”
“And you’re about to tell me that Shumway’s suing to list the newly identified subspecies of jumping mouse,” I said. All the little parts of the puzzle were beginning to click together.
“Yes.”
“But if it is in fact endangered, then the Fish and Wildlife Service will list it. I don’t see how that would benefit—”
Tom’s face had grown tight with anger. “Oh, it absolutely benefits the Morgan Shumways of the world. Because if they list it then he has won his suit. And if he wins, he recovers court costs and legal fees.”
“And those fees add up to a fat income, right out of the taxpayers’ pockets,” I said. “What a parasite! And then the Rodriguezes of the world move in and charge you five thousand dollars a pop to tell you whether you can put in a temporary road. He didn’t care whether it was really a distinct sub-species or not, or even if it was truly endangered. He was just a blood-sucker who had found a red corpuscle to dine on!”
Tom nodded. ‘Ticks. I spend my life chasing ticks and leeches.”
Lefty had lowered a hand to the keyboard and was scrolling through the data, to another payee entry. “Looks like threatening to sue can pay handsomely.” She pointed to the screen. There was a nice, fat check drawn to Morgan Shumway.
Tom jerked forward in his chair.
I whistled. “I’ll bet you won’t see that declared on his Form Ten-forty.”
Tom said, “In my dreams I hope it to be true. Then I have him on income tax evasion. And he’s disbarred. So we want to leave this little bomb just ticking away in place, and see if he fails to declare it.”
“But why would Chittenden bribe Shumway?” I asked.
‘To drop the case, of course.”
“But has he?”
Tom hesitated. “Not yet.”
“Then I repeat my question.”
Tom leaned back in his chair with his eyes shut and said nothing.
While Tom cogitated, I watched Faye through the picture window. The heat had gotten to her. She was strolling back and forth on the tarmac, looking longingly at the building in which we sat in air-conditioned comfort She tugged at her shirt front, working it like a bellows. Finally, she headed toward us, striding along on her long legs. I heard the front door open beyond the bar where Ian was sitting, then heard her voice: “Ian! God damn! I been sitting out there all morning in that hot station wagon with those kids and that dog! Now, are you coming home with me, or what?”
Like a stuck rabbit, Ian squealed, “That’s not funny!”
Tom rolled his head back and roared with laughter.
Faye whooped with embarrassment. “Sorry, Tom! I thought Ian was alone out here.”
Faye’s jest loosened my brain. Scenes from the previous day raced through my mind. Suddenly, Kyle Christie’s tale about Gilbey’s Camp floated through my head, of corporate officers Setting up beautiful surface operations to thrill the investors while pocketing the cash. I said, ‘Tom, what if Chittenden was paying Giles to delay the permits. And paying Shumway to sue.”
Tom opened his eyes and stared at me. “But Giles was holding up the permits because of the mouse,” he said.
“Exactly,” I said. “You and I are so used to seeing environmental protection laws slow jobs down that we didn’t think much of it when Giles held up the permits. But when I talked to Shirley Cook this morning, she asserted that the BLM’s first priority is not to protect the environmental resources under their care, but to promote mining. So Giles maybe would have to be paid to delay them, not hurry them.”
Tom said, “Why would Chittenden want to delay permitting?”
“The price of gold is down,” I answered. “Granville might be hanging right at the edge of profitability.”
“But if that’s their problem, they’d want to hurry a new project. Or they could just batten down the hatches and wait for the price to rise. Nobody’s forcing them to drill.”
I said, “But look at everything that’s happened. So far, Granville has only applied for permits on the first phase of drilling, right smack in the area where Pat Gilmore was doing the mouse study. According to Giles, that area is being held up pending the outcome of that survey. So where’s Phase Two? Kyle Christie said that Virgil Davis had a big argument with MacCallum, agitating for another area to drill. He gets on MacCallum, and MacCallum disappears. Try connecting those dots.”
Tom looked at me like he thought I was nuts. “You think Virgil Davis killed Pat Gilmore, mistakenly thinking she was holding up the project then killed MacCallum, because he wouldn’t cough up a map for Phase Two?”
“No,” I said. “But he pissed MacCallum off. From other descriptions I’ve had of MacCallum, that seems out of character. He sounded easygoing and philosophical. He laughed a lot So where is he, after this argument? Maybe Chittenden said, ‘Don, you’re looking kind of tense. Let me just fly you down to the Caymans. I’m in no hurry for that new phase of drilling. I have a wildlife biologist to kill, quick before she busts my permitting holdup, and I have to be back in Reno in the morning to look bright eyed and bushy-tailed when the FBI show up, but I have a jet right here, no sweat’ ”
“Or maybe MacCallum is dead.”
“Maybe. But one way or another, they don’t have his information from which to apply for a second area. Yesterday, Virgil tells Chittenden that Laurel Dietz has a new analysis of MacCallum’s data, covering a second area. So what’s Chittenden do? He skyhooks her right out of Nevada.”
Tom closed his eyes, meditating on my ideas. “Go on.”
“Well, that could mean either of two things. First the obvious guess, he does not want those data made public. And that would mean that she had found nothing, which news he might wish to keep from investors.”
“And your less obvious guess?”
“Perhaps even just having a plan presents Chittenden with a problem.”
“Explain.”
Almost breathless, I said, “Think on it, Tom! Pat Gilmore is on her way to go public, showing that on the surface, there’s no reason to hold the first permit up. Wham, she’s dead. MacCallum could make it possible to file for a second permit, but he has conveniently disappeared. Kyle Christie is sitting on his rump in plain sight, just as if he knows there’s nothing he needs to be doing. Rodriguez—” There I stopped. I had no idea why anyone would kill Umberto Rodriguez. He represented die other side, which would want the permitting at a dead stop. So why kill him? “Okay, maybe Rodriguez got carried away and decided to blackmail Shumway.”
Tom asked, “What are you saying?”
“What if Chittenden sees the price of gold dropping,
sees the mine about to shut in, and knows damned well that he’s got a snowball’s chance in hell of getting a new project that’s going to make money. Why not pretend he’s got a project, but it’s just being delayed? Environmentalists use laws and regulations to delay projects until they’re unprofitable. It’s a standard operating procedure: Tie things up in court. Outlast die developer. Bleed him of all his investment capital. So why couldn’t Chittenden buy it done on himself, so he can pocket the money and say, ‘So sorry, old chappies, but it’s bum luck this time, eh, what?’ He tells the investors not to worry, this is just a delay, but in fact he’s bought a delay from Giles—not a hurry-up—because otherwise the BLM might have rubber-stamped the permitting process. Giles had his bag all packed, ready to go. He got his payment and he’s history.”
Faye stood in die doorway with her cell phone in her hand. “I just spoke to ‘Auntie’ again. She confirmed that no group in Nevada she knows about is protesting Granville’s project. But Shumway is. She looked at her desk diary. He phoned her trying to get her group involved with it.” She gave the date.
Tom peered into the computer screen. “That’s the day after this check from Chittenden was drawn. He must have gotten it FedEx.” I’m beginning to like this. I’m beginning to like it a lot “If you’re correct, the payment to Shumway is so he will sue to list the mouse. Chittenden says, ‘Get that mouse listed, maybe rile up a bunch of environmentalists for me.’ Yes, I like this. This way, Shumway is almost certain to hide the funds from the IRS, because he’ll be hiding them from everybody else. We wouldn’t want the world to know that Shumway the great environmentalist is actually in bed with a mining concern.”
I said, “Yes, and it would explain something else. What if Rodriguez connected the dots and took himself a trip to Salt Lake City to shake down Morgan Shumway? If you’re the great environmental lawyer, you wouldn’t like that, would you? No, you’d whack the guy on the shores of Great Salt Lake, drive him over to Nevada in his own vehicle, sit him up in the driver’s seat, and steer it into a mine shaft. You tell yourself he won’t be found for months, if ever, and if he is found, the sheriff will think the fellow just screwed up and found himself a hole to drive into. Meanwhile, your buddy Chittenden knows just where to dump him. He sends the guy out to pick you up and drive you back to Reno, and flies you home to Salt Lake City in his private jet. You’re gone less than twelve hours.”