This was a serious operational meeting: neither Dickweed nor the local DA had been invited. Dar was surprised to see that Lawrence and Trudy had been.
“What?” said Lawrence when he saw Dar’s quizzical expression. “You expect us not to be in on this?”
“Besides,” Trudy had said, bringing Lawrence a Styrofoam cup of coffee from the big urn near the door, “the NICB is paying us.”
Jeanette Poulsen, the attorney representing the National Insurance Crime Bureau, looked up and nodded at this.
While Syd was connecting her laptop computer to a projector, Dar looked at the other people taking their places at the table. Besides Larry, Trudy, and Poulsen from the NICB, there was also Tom Santana—sitting at Syd’s right—and Santana’s boss at the State Division of Insurance Fraud, Bob Gauss. Next to Gauss was Special Agent Jim Warren, and across the table from the FBI man sat Captain Tom Sutton from the CHP. The only other law enforcement officers present were Frank Hernandez from the San Diego detectives’ bureau and a man whom Dar hadn’t met before—a quiet, middle-aged, accountant-looking type whom Syd introduced as Lieutenant Byron Barr from the LAPD’s Internal Affairs Division. Both Captains Hernandez and Sutton gave Barr the kind of suspicious, malignant squint that police reserve for all Internal Affairs officers. Syd kept it sharp and succinct, saying flatly that Lieutenant Barr was there because there was overwhelming evidence that some plainclothes detectives in the LAPD were involved in this conspiracy.
Dar saw Hernandez and Sutton exchange quick glances and nods. He interpreted this as Oh, well, the LAPD, yeah, sure. Fuck ’em.
“All right,” said Syd, turning off all lights save for her computer and projector. She had a remote in her right hand. “Let’s get started.”
Suddenly the white screen at the far end of the table was illuminated with a color photograph of the pile of Mercedeses on the flattened Firebird.
“Most of you are aware that this accident occurred yesterday morning on the I-15 just beyond the city limits,” Syd said softly.
More photos. The cars being lifted off. The driver being extricated. The bodies. Dar realized that these were Lawrence’s photos, taken with his regular Nikon as they viewed the wreck, then scanned and sent to Syd via e-mail. The focus and detail were very clear.
“The only survivor of the crash was the driver, Ruben Angel Gomez, a thirty-one-year-old Mexican national with a temporary U.S. driver’s license. His wife, Rubidia, and their children—Milagro and Marita—all died in the collision with a jackknifed car carrier under lease to the San Diego dealership of Kyle Baker Mercedes.”
The close-up photos of the dead children clicked by. Syd stepped into the light of the projector. “There was a baby—seven-month-old Maria Gomez. We found her late last night in the care of a neighbor in the apartment complex where the Gomezes were living. Social services has taken charge.”
Syd stepped back. The photos showed the trunk of the Firebird. She did not have to explain to this audience what the sandbags and extra wheels meant.
“Mr. Gomez is in critical but stable condition,” said Syd. “He underwent two operations yesterday and still hasn’t regained consciousness long enough to talk to investigators. At least this was the last I heard this morning…”
“He’s still out of it,” said Captain Frank Hernandez. “I called over there ten minutes ago. Keeps calling for his kids. They had to sedate him again. We have a Spanish-speaking uniformed officer there waiting for him to come out of it, but so far nothing.”
“Is he in protective custody?” asked CHP Captain Sutton.
Hernandez shrugged. “To all intents and purposes,” he said.
Syd went on with her briefing. The projected computer image now displayed a flow chart, in pyramidal form. The bottom dozen boxes were filled with the photos of the four Gomezes involved in the crash, Richard Kodiak, Mr. Phong—the man who had been impaled on the rebar—Mr. Hernandez—an earlier swoop-and-squat victim—and other faces and names, most of them Hispanic. The second tier of boxes in the pyramid included photos of Jorgé Murphy Esposito, Abraham Willis—an attorney also known to be a capper, who had died in a suspicious auto accident recently—and well-known Southern California injury-mill cappers: Bobby James Tucker from L.A., Roget Velliers from San Diego, Nicholas van Dervan from Orange County.
Above the cappers were several empty boxes over the word Helpers. Above that another long row labeled Doctors. Above the doctors’ row, there were several empty frames labeled Enforcers. At the top of the pyramid were three boxes—two empty and one with a photo of Dallas Trace.
Dar saw the San Diego police captain and the CHP officer react with visible amazement. The others in the room, including Inspector Tom Santana, Special Agent Warren, Bob Gauss from the Insurance Fraud Division, and Counselor Poulsen from the NICB seemed to be in on the news. If Lawrence and Trudy were surprised, they did not show it.
“Jesus Christ,” said the CHP’s Captain Sutton, “you can’t be serious, Investigator. He’s one of the most famous lawyers in the goddamned country. And one of the richest.”
“That’s where some of the seed money has come from for this expanded fraud operation,” said Syd. Her computer remote included a laser pointer and now she put a red dot right on Counselor Trace’s forehead. She clicked a button. A lean, expressionless man’s face appeared in the Enforcers row of frames. It was a fuzzy photograph.
“This is Pavel Zuker,” said Syd. “Ex–Red Army sniper. Ex-KGB. Ex–Russian mafia…although that title is probably still active. We found his fingerprint on the Tikka 595 Sporter that was used as a sniper weapon in the attack on Dr. Minor.”
Captain Hernandez’s dark complexion darkened further. “My forensics people went all over that weapon… They didn’t find a thing.”
Special Agent Warren folded his hands on the tabletop. “The Bureau lab at Quantico found a single print on the inside of the recoil lug mortise when they disassembled the weapon,” he said softly. “It was very faint, but computer augmentation brought it out. We have a positive match on Zuker through the CIA data banks.”
Syd clicked a button and a drawing appeared in the empty panel next to Pavel Zuker. It was a police artist’s sketch of a man in a beard, labeled Gregor Yaponchik.
“The FBI has reason to believe that Yaponchik entered the country early this spring,” said Syd. “At the same time Zuker did.”
“Where did we get such information?” Captain Sutton asked. “Customs and Immigration?”
Syd hesitated.
“It came through channels from various Russian assets,” said Special Agent Warren.
Sutton nodded, but the massive CHP officer also sat back and folded his arms across his chest as if expressing doubt.
“Yaponchik and Zuker were a sniper team in Afghanistan,” said Syd. “They probably were working for the KGB even then, but they came to our various agencies’ attention in the late eighties…right before the fall of the Soviet Union. After the dust settled, both were working for Chechnyan elements of the Russian mafia.”
“Hit men?” said Lawrence.
“General enforcers,” said Syd. “But in the end…yes, hit men. Both the Bureau and the CIA think that Yaponchik and Zuker were directly involved in the Miles Graham affair.”
Everyone in the room had heard about the millionaire entrepreneur Miles Graham. He had been the most famous of the capitalist wheelers and dealers shot to death in Moscow in recent years for not paying enough in bribes to the proper people.
Dar cleared his throat. He was reluctant to speak now, but also felt compelled to. “You say that Yaponchik and Zuker were in Afghanistan,” he said softly, “as a sniper team? Americans and British use two-man sniper teams, but I seem to remember that the Soviets in Afghanistan were slow to deploy snipers, and when they finally did, it was a three-man section for every rifle squad.”
Syd looked to Special Agent Warren. The FBI man nodded. He was holding a PDA with a dimly lit screen. From any angle other than his,
the screen would be unreadable. He tapped at its buttons. “You’re right,” said Warren. “Three-man sniper squads were the rule, but this information says that Yaponchik and Zuker worked as a two-man team, more in the American style.”
“Who was the shooter and who was the spotter?” asked Dar.
Special Agent Warren tapped at the handheld PDA and looked at the screen for a second. “According to the CIA field reports, both men were trained as snipers, but Yaponchik was an officer—a lieutenant in the army and then promoted in the KGB. Zuker was a sergeant.”
“Then Yaponchik was the primary shooter,” said Dar, who was thinking, But Zuker, the number two man, was sent out to deal with me. “Do you happen to have an assessment of the weapons the team used in Afghanistan?”
“The notes I received mention, quote, ‘assumed to have utilized Dragunov SVD sniper rifles in Afghanistan and in training Serbian snipers near Sarajevo.’”
Dar nodded. “Old but reliable. Snayperskaya Vintovka Dragunova.”
Syd’s head turned quickly. “I didn’t know that you spoke Russian, Dar.”
“I don’t,” said Dar. “Sorry for the interruption. Go ahead.”
Syd said, “No, go on. You know something relevant here.”
Dar shook his head. “When the American businessman in Moscow was killed… Graham… I remember reading that it was a double tap to the head from a distance of six hundred meters. A newspaper report said that the bullets recovered were 7.62-by-fifty-four-millimeter-rimmed. An SVD shoots that type of load and is accurate at that range. Barely.”
Syd stared at him. “I thought that you didn’t like guns.”
“I don’t,” said Dar. “I don’t like sharks, either. But I can tell the difference between a great white and a hammerhead.”
Syd resumed her briefing in a concise but clear and unhurried voice. “Gentlemen, Jeanette, Trudy, we’re officially authorized to extend and intensify this investigation. We have reasonable cause to believe that Counselor Dallas Trace is involved with the recent dramatic increase in staged highway and accident fatalities in Southern California and that a new network of fraudulent liability claims has been established by Mr. Trace and other prominent lawyers, as yet unidentified.”
She clicked on another picture, this one of an elderly priest, smiling above his Roman collar. “This is Father Roberto Martin. Father Martin is retired now, but for years he was pastor of St. Agnes Church in Chavez Ravine—the Latino neighborhood near Dodger Stadium. Father Martin is a compassionate man and looked out for his mostly Hispanic parishioners. As long ago as the 1970s, Father Martin dreamt of founding a charity organization which would help the poor Mexican and Latin American immigrants. He helped raise money through the diocese and various L.A. businesses willing to donate to such a hypothetical charity—Father Martin had come up with the name long ago, Helpers of the Helpless—but to get the foundation organized, he turned to this man…”
A photo appeared of a plump, vaguely Hispanic-looking man with perfect hair, a smile as broad as Father Martin’s, and an obviously expensive suit and tie. “This is the attorney Father Martin turned his dream over to,” said Syd. “Counselor William Rogers… You probably know his name, an important attorney with several offices in East L.A. and impeccable political connections. Rogers is a well-known fund-raiser and was the number two man in the election efforts of L.A.’s current mayor. Father Martin hoped that Attorney Rogers would head up the Helpers of the Helpless and keep the charity going after he—Father Martin—retired.”
“Did Mr. Rogers agree?” asked Lawrence.
“Not quite,” said Syd. “Rogers set up a codirectorship, with his wife, Maria, sharing the leadership with a community activist and one of Rogers’s own investigators, Juan Barriga.”
Barriga’s photo joined that of Rogers on the Helpers row of the pyramid. The men and women around the table nodded. They all knew that investigators working for attorneys who specialized in liability cases all too often found insurance fraud irresistible, these men and women spent their lives and careers interviewing slip-and-fall artists, swoop-and-squat experts, cappers, Medicaid cheats, flop artists, accident gangs, unethical doctors, professional whiplash victims, and fraudulent claimants of every sort. More important, the investigators invariably saw how quickly most insurance companies settled with these claimants to avoid more costly litigation.
“Juan Barriga has spent the past three years setting up a network of attorneys and doctors to work with those referred from Helpers of the Helpless. Both Bill and Maria Rogers select the Helpers volunteers personally. In addition, the Helpers of the Helpless receive referrals from the Mexican, Colombian, El Salvadoran, Costa Rican, Panamanian, and other consulates, as well as from Catholic parishes and various Protestant churches from all over the state.”
Photos of some of these attorneys and doctors appeared in the pyramidal flowchart. Some of the attorneys were familiar, Esposito and the late Abraham Willis among them, but some of the others—Robert Armann, a former deputy district attorney now known as the most effective and popular member of the Beverly Hills City Council; Hanop Semerdjian, a respected civil rights attorney and spokesman for Southern California’s Armenian community; and Harry El-more, a former U.S.C. football hero who went on to medical school and then to open free clinics in the worst sections of San Diego and L.A.—were faces that everyone stared at in shocked silence.
“Is your task force blowing smoke here, Investigator Olson?” CHP Captain Tom Sutton asked bluntly. “This looks more like a grab for media attention than a serious investigation.”
Syd turned away from the screen and met the big CHP captain’s gaze without showing any rancor. “It does seem that way, doesn’t it, Tom? But it’s real. We’ve had a grand jury sitting for three months and we’re going to get indictments…all the way up to Mr. Dallas Trace.”
“Why are you telling us this now?” asked Frank Hernandez.
Syd turned off the projector and flipped on the overhead lights. She remained standing. “Because our investigation is moving into high gear and it will be on your turf, gentlemen. This is confidential information—”
“There are several ongoing investigations, and not just within the LAPD,” said Lieutenant Barr from Internal Affairs. “Any leaking of this information would be…most unfortunate.”
While the law enforcement officers glared at Lieutenant Barr, Syd said, “This… Alliance…backed up by Yaponchik, Zuker, and other muscle imported from the Russian Organizatsiya…is doing to the fraud business what the Colombians brought to drug sales more than twenty years ago in this country—serious organization, huge profits, and an almost unbelievable level of violence.”
“So what do you want from us?” asked Hernandez. “You’ve got the state resources behind you…as well as the NICB and FBI. What can we peons offer?”
“Liaison,” said Syd. “Communications when necessary. Access to forensic labs and personnel when speed and location demand a local response. Cooperation, so that we don’t end up working against one another…or shooting at one another.”
Hernandez pulled a cigarette from a pack in his sport-coat pocket, glowered at the ubiquitous No Smoking sign near the door, and let the unlit cigarette dangle from his lip. “OK. What’s your plan?”
“I’m going to be going undercover again,” said Tom Santana. “I’ll create a cover story of being an illegal, get into the system via one of the medical centers, and check out the Helpers of the Helpless from the inside.”
Despite himself, Dar said, “Is that wise, Tom? After the publicity on your busts of the Asian gangs a few years ago…”
Santana smiled. His boss, Bob Gauss, said, “That’s what I told him, Dr. Minor. But Tom thinks that hoodlums have a short memory. And because he’s technically task force commander of FIST, I can’t order him not to do it.”
Dar started to speak again but shut up instead. He looked at Sydney. She was looking at Santana and seemed to be worried, but she went on with the en
d of her briefing. “Tom will infiltrate the Helpers. We’re trying to follow the Russian trail through the attempts on Dar Minor’s life. Meanwhile, Dr. Minor and Mr. and Mrs. Stewart are going to loan us their expertise to prove that several of these fatal accidents were either staged or actual acts of murder. Their information, analysis, surveillance data, and accident reconstruction will flow through us to the NICB and then to the grand jury.”
A media cart in the corner held a TV monitor and VCR. Now Syd picked up a second remote control and turned on the monitor and rolled a video. She kept the sound muted. It was a tape of a recent airing of Dallas Trace’s weekly CNN show, Objection Sustained.
“Sometimes Trace tapes in New York,” said Sydney Olson, “but usually it’s more convenient for him to broadcast from his office in L.A. Before this year is out, I want our people to walk in front of those cameras…while they’re live…and arrest that supercilious son of a bitch. I want his TV series to end with him being led away in handcuffs.” She flicked the other remote and the computer projector showed the faces of the dead Gomez children on the screen while Dallas Trace’s silent image laughed.
After the meeting, Dar wanted to talk to Syd, but she had a scheduled meeting with Poulsen and Warren, so he walked into the old courthouse part of the Justice Center with Lawrence and Trudy. Lawrence was still testifying at a liability claims trial that was starting in a few minutes, and Trudy needed to get back to the office in Escondido.
Before they parted ways, Dar said, “Are you guys sure you want to be part of this task force?”