"This really is like a ball of snakes,” Alex Z said to Gage in his loft overlooking the tourist shops and seafood restaurants on the Oakland waterfront. “There’s no way we’d have seen it if we hadn’t been looking for it.”
They stood facing a six-foot-by-eight-foot sheet of posterboard displaying a flowchart and chronology of the TIMCO and Moki Amaro cases.
“Walk me through how they did it,” Gage said.
Alex Z picked up a yellow fluorescent marker from the worktable behind him and started at the left side of the chart.
“A million dollars showed up in the Pegasus Limited account after Meyer’s firm got hired by TIMCO. It was later wired out to Hawkins. Then after the superior court ruled it was just a workers’ comp case, TIMCO transferred another two million into Pegasus-”
“The fee for Anston and Meyer making the case go away.”
“But I don’t see anything that could have been a payoff to the judge who dismissed it,” Alex Z said.
“I don’t think there was one,” Gage said. “If he’d been paid off, his decision would have been a lot more definitive than it was. He had to dismiss the case on legal grounds because the plaintiffs couldn’t shake Hawkins or Karopian.”
Gage scanned the complex chart. “Is that it for TIMCO?”
“It pops up again after Meyer was appointed to the bench. A TIMCO subsidiary got cited for toxic dumping into San Pablo Bay. The general manager was charged in federal court.”
“Meyer’s court?”
“Bingo. According to Skeeter Hall’s research, Meyer forced the U.S. Attorney to knock it down to failure to report a spill, rather than an intentional release. No jail time. Just a fine.”
“And the payoff?”
“A TIMCO subsidiary wired two hundred thousand into Pegasus a week before sentencing, and another two hundred a week after.” Alex Z shook his head. “No one seemed to have noticed that TIMCO was a client of Meyer’s old firm.”
“Wouldn’t make a difference,” Gage said. “Meyer wasn’t the attorney of record in the explosion case. That’s all that counts in conflict of interest rules for judges.”
“Makes you wonder whether Meyer is paying off clerks to direct the cases he wants into his court,” Alex Z said.
“Possible,” Gage said, “but untraceable. The payoffs would have been small and paid in cash, not hundreds of thousands of dollars wire transferred into offshore bank accounts.” He pointed at the chart. “What about Moki?”
“That’s even easier.” Alex Z highlighted a series of lines. “Charlie’s spreadsheets show four separate two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar payments into Pegasus.”
“One transfer from the parents of each of the kids?”
“That’s what it looks like. And a day later, four hundred thousand gets wired to the witness in Cabo San Lucas.”
“So Charlie got rid of witnesses in the cases Meyer handled when he was a lawyer,” Gage said, “and Judge Meyer got rid of cases that landed in his court.”
Gage sat down and picked up the Pegasus spreadsheet.
“The problem,” Gage said as he examined it, “is we have no way to connect Meyer directly to Pegasus.”
Gage skimmed down to the bottom.
Alex Z pointed at the last line. “There was about nine million dollars in the account before Charlie closed it a week before he died. But I can’t figure out where it was transferred.”
Gage leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest. “I know where. Socorro showed me a Pegasus insurance policy. Two million dollars for each of their children. And another seven million went into an annuity for Socorro.”
“You mean he stole it?”
“Either that or it was his cut for a career of criminality.”
“Is that why they broke into his house? Trying to find where the money went?”
“At this point there’s no way of knowing.” Then a question came to Gage in an image of a writhing Charlie Palmer during his final moments. “It makes me wonder whether Charlie’s death really was from natural causes.”