For Blood or Money
3. I’ve Got a Secret
SIX O’CLOCK GETS EARLIER every morning. If it weren’t for the wet nose stuck in my face and the demands of having a pet that needs to be walked, I’d have rolled over and stayed warm and comfy in my bed. But Maizie was insistent.
I hauled myself out of the sack and headed for the john. Aging sucks. A back injury from when I was in the Navy keeps acting up on me, especially when the weather changes from dry to wet like it did this morning. I count it a good day if I can stand up straight by the time I get from bed to bath. This morning I was all the way to the kitchen before the last spasm subsided.
The clouds hung heavy around Queen Anne giving the Space Needle that strange other-worldly appearance that makes you think aliens have landed and are taking over downtown. With Maizie on her leash and an umbrella over our heads we set off through the cold mist for the office. Lower Queen Anne is a great place to live. I can walk to the Waterfront with only a couple of stops to rest. Thankfully, Riley drives me home at night. I’d never make it back up the hill with my breath as short as it’s been lately.
My first stop was at a coffee shop on Broad. It’s one of the few independents that were left in the city that spawned coffee-love throughout the world. But big name brands are the lowest common denominator for anything that wants to be called espresso. The little independents were where you got a cup that opened your eyes and put a smile on your face. Tavoni’s was just that kind of shop.
Maizie and I stepped through the front door at 7:00 and both shook the water off. At that hour, when they open, there is never a question of standing in line, or even ordering. Jackie came out from around the counter and brought me my espresso and Maizie’s biscuit.
Yeah. Espresso with my heart. There are a few pleasures in life that are worth dying for.
Jackie brings me an Americano—two shots of espresso pulled on top of two shots of hot water. I’d drink the espresso straight, but it cools off too quickly.
Espresso is an art, both in creation and consumption. I held the cup in both hands and absorbed the warmth through my fingers as the aroma tickled at the edges of my nose. I never drink fast. If I dove in and took a drink I’d just burn my tongue. I just hold it there and breathe. Then slowly bring it closer—about four inches from my face—and inhale deeply. A properly-made espresso will pick me up from that distance and jumpstart my heart. I could feel it working before the cup actually touched my lips. The first sip was mostly crème. That’s the oily foam that rests on top of a freshly-pulled shot of espresso. Just beneath the silky foam comes the first taste of heaven. The coffee was strong enough to dry my mouth out. The flavor washed across the sides of my tongue first then swept up to meet in the middle. As soon as the black liquid hit my throat, I inhaled again, sucking air down with the coffee until my lungs felt like they would explode. Lowering the cup so not to cool it, I expelled the air out through my mouth in a long sigh.
The cup at Tavoni’s was the only cup in the day that I got anymore, and I savored every last drop without thinking of anything else. I didn’t read. I didn’t talk. I didn’t listen. I coffeed.
After my coffee was finished, I checked the headlines of the newspaper and looked through the business section. When Maizie had finished her biscuit, we took our refreshed selves on to the office.
Riley was doing research at the library and then at the courthouse to look up all relevant records on BKL. I figured I had about six hours before she got back to the office. She tried to get me up and dancing after dinner last night, but I just couldn’t do that. Of course, there wasn’t a man in the club who didn’t want to wrap his arms around her dressed the way she was. She didn’t really like people to be that close to her, though. What a real contradiction in terms.
I unlocked the vault and checked the status of my drive set-up.
The vault was a special room I had built in this office when I first moved here years ago. I don’t show it to anyone who doesn’t need to know. The vault was located behind a wall next to the bathroom. A remote control sat on my desk for the wide-screen television on the wall opposite. If you knew the codes it would also unlock the vault. The wall slid open and a small room was revealed. The room was temperature controlled to keep the heat from my servers at bay. I had my own network and web servers so I didn’t have to use an ISP for connection to the Internet. The room was small, if only because one wall was lined with servers. It took a lot of power, but kept me independent from third parties.
Before I left last night, I wired Simon’s laptop into the system behind a firewall and a write-blocker. Then I spun the disk up and did a full spectrum analysis of the hard drive, including making two copies of the disk on new drives. I disconnected the laptop from the system and locked it and one backup in the safe in the vault. I wouldn’t touch the subject hardware unless I discovered there was a hardware key needed for security override. There was no more than one computer in a hundred thousand that required a hardware key. I wired the other backup drive into my network, protected by a firewall. Once that was done, I closed and locked the vault.
I didn’t work on computers in the vault, I kept them safe there. I worked on an ultra-portable laptop. It weighed less than three pounds and could connect to the Internet from just about anywhere in the world. I connected through a cellular connection so there wasn’t a wireless network in the office that anyone else could detect. I used a virtual private network to connect to the real power that was safely locked up in the vault.
I was paranoid about security, which is why I was so good at getting around other people’s.
If Simon wanted me to find him, he wouldn’t have made it too hard to do, but that assumption could trip me up. Simon would set things up in such a way that he thought only I could get the clues. That meant he probably tried to be cleverer than he actually was which could backfire and get a person into trouble. And I couldn’t rule out the possibility that the laptop itself might only be a hook to get me involved in the case.
If Simon was hiding more than himself, I thought, there might even be information on the computer that he didn’t want me to find. He would use obvious clues to get me looking in one direction and obfuscate what he didn’t want me to know. I fully expected his calendar would show only appointments he wanted me to know about.
I wanted to know why. Why after over thirty years did Simon send Brenda to me? Why did he want to play “Simon Says?”
For the rest of the day, I examined the results of my various searches of the hard drive. I stopped only twice. The first time was when Maizie insisted that it was time to go out again, which was a good reminder to take my pills and eat some lunch. The second time was when Riley came bursting through the door about 3:00 and proceeded to give her report.
Riley was in quite the mood. She paced up and down in front of the window of my office creating a striking silhouette against the light of the window. The setting sun lit her blonde hair and visually set it on fire. She was thin for five feet and nine inches tall. She moved like a cat and once told me she’s a “brown belt,” but I don’t know in what discipline. Truth was I wouldn’t test her. Riley was as sharp as Lars had promised and understood computers as well as she did the finer points of criminal justice. She didn’t know it yet, but I planned to bring her into full partnership someday soon. Her apprenticeship days were about over.
“BKL is a kind of holding company. That’s why there are so few people who work there. All the actual work is done in the companies that they hold. It’s hard to tell exactly how many of those there are, as they only have to file if they own more than 20% of a publically-held company. But if they own 100%, it’s not publically traded and they don’t have to file SEC papers at all. The original business was a consulting firm, mostly accounting and high finance. They were significant in restructuring Allied Materials about nine years ago. That was just before Allied went private. Turns out BKL bought it out for pennies on the dollar. Allied had it rough for a while but made a killing in the aftermath of Katrina. They pulled down mega-contracts for supplying building materials and rumor has it that BKL is ready to take them public again.”
She barely paused for breath before she was off on the next of BKL’s acquisitions. They were into import/export, financial consulting, travel planning, and even owned a small brokerage. Two local car dealerships listed wholly-owned subsidiaries of BKL as owners. Simon had spread a wide net and was raking in cash hand over proverbial fist.
“And then there’s our over-endowed client,” Riley continued, making sure I understood she was punning. “Seattle Arts Council, Board of Directors of the Art Institute, Mayor’s Council for the Homeless, Governor’s Task Force on Public Transportation, Board of Directors of Cornerstone Bank, Board of Directors of Livermore Mortgage, Symphony Patrons Club, Seattle Athletic Club, President of the Homeowners Association of Madison Park, the list goes on and on. Her picture has shown up in the newspaper with governors back to Booth Gardner and nearly everyone who is anyone in the Financial 500. But there is nothing about anything she’s actually done. She’s just there.”
“I suspected as much,” I said, causing Riley to pause. “Tell me Watson, what does it all spell out? What do all these interests of Simon and Brenda Barnett say?”
“They are all over the map,” she answered. “There doesn’t seem to be any sense to any of it. One minute she’s glad-handing a Republican, the next she’s donated $5,000 to a Democrat. There’s no common thread among the businesses that BKL invests in. You’d think they were all different businesses entirely. I don’t see anything.”
“Money,” I answered myself. “Money and influence. And if you have money and influence, you have power.”
“And if you have power,” Riley continued, “you have enemies.”
“You think?” I said. “Don’t you think Simon and Brenda Barnett are beloved by everyone with whom they do business?” She looked at me blankly, as though I’d just spoken to her in Swedish. “I’m being sarcastic, Riley,” I said. “Don’t make me explain.”
She laughed and plopped down on my sofa in a very unladylike pose.
“Do all Swedes have such a dry sense of humor?” she asked. “After eight months, I still can’t tell when you are joking. I thought you were defending them.”
“Not likely, Miss,” I snapped. “But it never hurts to look past the obvious. Are they beloved benefactors or feared powers? Or does it make any difference at all? Get your shoes off the furniture.” She kicked her shoes off onto the floor and continued to lie draped over the sofa like a knitted afghan. Maizie came over and licked Riley’s fingers, then finding no resistance, jumped up on the sofa with her. She absently scratched the dog’s ears and I could all but hear the wheels turning in her head.
“Dag, how do you get your fingers into so many pies? It’s one thing to be in the right place at the right time to make a good investment, but so many? How do they get their leads? How do they know what to buy?”
“That is the question,” I repeated. “Where do they make the contacts that keep Brenda so publicly involved and Simon so positioned to make big purchases? Do they entertain a lot? Do they go to the same club? Do they co-own a timeshare? And then you have to ask if Brenda’s participation on so many committees is the lead generator and Simon is the closer?”
When I leased this office thirteen years ago, the owners were in the middle of a pier renovation project to try to bring new life to the Waterfront. They thought they would encourage businesses to take space and thus drive more traffic to the Waterfront. But Chameleon Imports had taken up one entire end of the facility three floors high and had it filled with the kind of faux artifacts you’d find in a cheap hotel. Nearly all their business was shipping and receiving, with very little retail or foot traffic. The rest of us who rented space on Pier 61 had few walk-in clients as well. So much for generating a lot of consumer traffic. It was a long way from my little two-person office to the mega-conglomerate that Simon ruled over at BKL
It was full dark when I turned around and saw that Maizie had fallen asleep next to Riley and that Riley was struggling to keep her eyes open. I grinned at the two of them.
“Think you can get me home before you start snoring?” I asked.
“I don’t snore, Dag,” she said indignantly getting up and putting her shoes back on. “As if you’d know.”
We headed for the door and I turned out the last light and locked up my office. When she dropped Maizie and me off at our house, she asked me a curious question. “Dag, where does the money go? Do they just spend it? They’ve owned the same house for thirty years. What do they do with it all?” She had a point.
Maybe there was more missing than Simon.
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