Black Mark, page 26
“Gerald Whitehead’s office. How can I help you?”
“I need to speak to Mr. Whitehead. Please tell him it’s urgent, regarding his client Charles Sinclair.”
“I’ll see if he’s available. Who should I say is calling?”
“It’s Mick Ward. I was at Mr. Sinclair’s recent deposition.”
“Thank you. One moment, please.”
I was treated to some truly awful hold music, then Whitehead came on the line.
“What is it, Mr. Ward?”
“I need to speak to your client.”
Whitehead sighed. “Mr. Ward, you’ve already deposed my client in this matter, which was a complete waste of everybody’s time. He is a very busy man and he has no obligation to speak to you again. In fact, if you want him to do so, you’ll need a court order.”
“I’ll do better than that. Tell your client I know everything about his business arrangements with Malik Betts. I mean everything. And if I don’t hear back from him in the next hour, the whole sordid mess will be on the front page of tomorrow’s The Oregonian.”
I hung up.
“I don’t get it,” Tony said. “What are you trying to achieve?”
I explained my plan, such as it was.
“Mick, this is a bad idea.”
“You’re probably right, but I don’t have a better one.”
“You could get killed! Come on, sleep on it. Show this stuff to Casey. She’ll come up with something.”
“No. It’s got to be this way. I’m done standing on the sidelines.”
My phone buzzed with a text from a number I didn’t recognize.
Tomorrow night. 8 pm. Come alone.
My phone buzzed again and a second message gave an address. I showed it to Tony.
“I’m telling you, this is a bad idea,” he said.
“Maybe.” I shrugged and made a call. “Hey, Sonny. I need another favor. And this time it’s a big one.”
FORTY-SEVEN
PINCH HIT
Not surprisingly, the address Sinclair had given for our meeting was a construction site. It was only a ten-minute walk from my apartment, so I set off Thursday afternoon to get the lay of the land and make sure I was ready for the meeting with Sinclair. It was another cold, gray day in Portland, a thick wet drizzle hanging in the air. That gave me an excuse to wear a bulky jacket with the hood up and a ball cap pulled down low, to reduce the risk of being recognized.
The development was yet another condo complex, this one on Southeast Ankeny, close to 20th Avenue. Just east of downtown, Burnside’s bars and restaurants were a block away. These places were going to cost a fortune, and Nike drones and tech bros would snap them all up in a heartbeat. The development was called Heart of Portland, which was ironic given that it was another nail in the coffin of whatever heart Portland had left.
The site buzzed with activity, despite the dreadful weather. Two tower cranes unloaded bundles of steel framing studs from a semi-trailer, stacking them at the front of the site. A crew with a smaller mobile crane picked up individual studs and held them up while workers bolted them into place. Another crew worked on pouring the cement base for the second floor. An electrical crew flitted between the activity, running mains wiring from spools of cable. There were two construction office trailers at the back of the site, with a steady stream of men going in and out. The overall impression was of a finely choreographed dance.
I walked a few blocks past the site and turned around for another look, then went home to get warm and dry for a while. I was taking a big chance, agreeing to meet Sinclair there alone at night. But I’d spent the last twenty-four hours running through alternatives in my head and I hadn’t come up with a better idea.
I set out again at 7:40pm, wearing the same bulky jacket and hat. A heavy darkness had fallen, made thicker by the wet winter air. Streetlights cast sickly yellow pyramids of light in the drizzle. The occasional car hissed by, but the smart people stayed tucked up at home.
There was a bus stop two blocks east of the future Heart of Portland, so I used it to position myself where I could see the site without being seen myself. It was quiet and dark now, all the machinery shut down and the workers gone home. A sharp wind cut the air and I huddled in the corner of the shelter.
At five to eight, a black Lincoln Town Car eased to a halt outside the construction site. The driver got out and opened the back door, and a tall, thin man in a long trench coat emerged. The driver held an umbrella over the man’s head as he unlocked a padlock on the site gate, and the two of them hurried to one of the office trailers. They stepped inside and a light went on in the window.
I waited a few minutes, then took a deep breath and walked to the site. This was it—my last throw of the dice. If my plan worked, Elliott would soon be a free man. If it went badly, I’d be joining Betts and Kavanagh in the great beyond.
I pushed the gate open, deliberately making a lot of noise, and walked toward the trailers at the back of the site, my boots squelching on the muddy ground. Sinclair let me get most of the way before he emerged. The other guy came out behind him and I recognized Officer Wright, Sam Kavanagh’s old partner.
“Hey, Dwayne,” I said, and waved. “Sorry about your buddy Kavanagh.”
Wright bristled, but Sinclair held up a hand.
“That’s far enough, Mr. Ward.” He lowered his hand. “Search him.”
Wright marched over and patted me down from head to toe, deliberately ramming his clenched fist into my balls as he checked my legs. I winced, but forced myself to stand tall. No way was he going to get the satisfaction of seeing me hurt.
He took my phone and handed it to Sinclair. “He’s clean.”
Sinclair nodded. “So, tell me what’s so important that we have to go through this charade.”
“I’m here to offer you a deal. You help me get Elliott Russell out of jail, and your secret stays buried forever.”
“And what secret would that be?”
“Money laundering. You and Betts. I know how the whole scheme worked, beginning to end. And I know why you had him killed.”
“My, that’s quite a story.” Sinclair tried to sound causal, but I could hear the tension in his voice. “Ridiculous, but quite a story all the same.”
“It’s a story all right. Let me see if I got it right. Each time you built a new development, Betts would order a bunch of condos. Let’s say a dozen. He’d pay you for all twelve, but you’d only transfer title to nine of them, leaving you holding about a million dollars of his money. Then, you’d order construction supplies from his company, Starlight Supply. But you’d order and pay for ten times more than you needed. Betts only delivered what you needed, so he and his Mexican cartel partners got their cash back, minus a fat cut for you. And the cash, which of course came from drug sales, is now nice and clean, with a chain of business records to back it up. Money laundering 101.
“You and Betts had a good thing going. But he got flashy, didn’t he? The Bentley was just the start. Showing up loaded at your fundraiser, raising hell at Blazer games. You knew it was only a matter of time before he did something stupid and got caught, so you had Kavanagh kill him and dump the body in Elliott’s yard. Nice bit of improvisation, by the way. Frame the guy whose activism cost you ten million dollars.”
Sinclair’s face grew darker as I continued. He jammed his hands into the pockets of his trench coat. “All right. No more games. What’s this deal you mentioned?”
“Simple. We work together to pin Betts’s murder on Sam Kavanagh. He did it anyway, and he’s already dead, so no great loss there. I reveal what I found out about Kavanagh and Betts fighting at your fundraiser. You tell the cops Kavanagh threatened to kill Betts, and you saw him with a gun, or something like that. We can stitch it together easily. In return, no one ever finds out about the money laundering or any other connection to you.”
“And if I say no?”
I shrugged. “Like I told you yesterday. The whole thing’s on the front page of The Oregonian. Chapter and verse.”
“Interesting, Mr. Ward,” Sinclair said. “I must admit I’m tempted. But there’s one small problem with your clever little plan. What’s to stop you from leaking all the details anyway, once your friend is out of jail? No, I don’t think I’ll take that chance. Get him, Wright.”
Wright pulled a gun from his pocket and stomped toward me.
“You sure you want to do that?” I said to him. I jabbed a thumb at Sinclair. “This guy leaked the video of your old partner shooting Elliott Russell. You could be next. It was a lot easier to have Kavanagh whacked once he was inside, wasn’t it, Sinclair?”
Wright ignored me. He stopped a yard away from me and pointed the gun at my chest. “Turn around. Hands behind your back.”
I did what I was told. Wright snapped handcuffs on my wrists, then cracked me across the back of the head with the butt of his pistol. I collapsed face-first in the mud, a screaming pain racking my skull.
“That was for Sam,” Wright muttered, and spat on the back of my head.
“Enough of that!” Sinclair snapped. “Get him up.”
Wright grabbed the collar of my jacket and hauled me up, then rammed the barrel of his pistol into the base of my skull and shoved me forward. I spat mud and tried not to stumble.
Sinclair followed us. “We’re going to go for a drive Mr. Ward, while you tell me everything you’ve figured out. And then we’ll find a quiet place in the forest to put a stop to all this nonsense. Play nice and it will be quick and painless. One bullet, just like poor Malik. If not, well…”
I couldn’t see him, but I could hear the shrug in his voice. Wright’s gun ground into my neck, cold and hard. I flashed back to an earlier memory, my chilling vision of Betts’s last moments as he stared up past the barrel of Sam Kavanagh’s gun. Was it my turn next? It took all my strength to keep my knees from buckling.
“You can’t keep covering up murders!” I yelled.
“Oh, I don’t know. I’m doing quite well so far.”
My breath fogged in the night air. Somehow, I managed to put one foot in front of the other.
A blur of shadow moved in from my right, then I heard a meaty smack. I spun around to see Wright groan and collapse in the mud. The giant frame of Junior Gradzinski loomed over him, holding an aluminum baseball bat.
Sinclair reached for the inside pocket of his trench coat.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Sonny Gradzinski said. He stepped out of the darkness, a Smith and Wesson revolver the size of a small cannon pointed at Sinclair’s head. Sinclair raised his hands. Sonny reached into his coat pocket, pulled out Sinclair’s gun and tossed it aside.
“You okay, Mick?”
“I will be when I get these cuffs off.”
Junior planted his knee in Wright’s back, driving him deeper into the mud. Sonny tossed Junior a roll of duct tape, which he used to bind Wright’s arms and legs, then fished a set of keys from the cop’s pocket and uncuffed me.
I rubbed my wrists, then ran a hand over my head where Wright had clocked me, wincing as I felt warm blood oozing from the bump forming there.
“Did you get it all?”
Sonny patted his pocket. “Audio and video.”
Junior taped Sinclair’s wrists, then kicked his legs out from under him. Sinclair landed on his side in the mud and Junior bound his legs.
“Easy, Junior,” Sonny said. “You’ll ruin the nice man’s coat.”
I knelt down and rummaged around in Sinclair’s pockets until I found my phone, then made a call.
“Detective Buchanan, it’s Mick Ward. Remember when you said you wouldn’t look at Sinclair again? You might want to reconsider that.”
FORTY-EIGHT
ALL GOOD THINGS
The DA withdrew all charges against Elliott first thing the next morning, and Judge Obrecht ordered that he be released immediately. I had rented a wheelchair-accessible van in anticipation of the ruling, and I drove out to Inverness as soon as we heard from the judge.
Elliott had already been processed by the time I got there. He was waiting outside the public entrance, dressed in jeans and a sweater, when I pulled up.
“Taxi for Mr. Russell?” I said.
He smiled and wheeled himself over to me. I leaned down and hugged him, tears in my eyes.
“Oof, take it easy, man,” he said.
“Sorry.” I let him go and stood up. “Damn, it’s good to see you, buddy.”
“You too.” Elliott looked up at the cloudy sky. “I still can’t believe this is real. What the hell did you do?”
“Let’s get away from this shithole and I’ll tell you about it.”
I pushed Elliott up the ramp into the van. I locked him in place, then we drove away. I glanced up at the rearview mirror, happy to see those barbed wire fences disappearing for the last time, then moved the mirror so I could see Elliott’s face.
“Okay,” Elliott said, “they told me Sinclair has been arrested, but that’s about all I know. What’s the deal?”
“Yeah, turns out he was behind it all along. He’d been helping Betts launder Mexican drug money. Betts got out of control, so Sinclair paid Kavanagh to execute him before he blew the whole scheme. Dumping the body at your place was an attempt to kill two birds with one stone.” I didn’t say anything about the stunt I pulled last night. He’d hear about that soon enough.
“How did you figure that out?”
“Well, we’d known for a while that there was something weird about the business dealings between Betts and Sinclair. Tony and I took another look at the data. What tipped us off was that Betts was paying cash for the condos. Normally those kinds of deals are mortgaged out the wazoo. So we looked at the purchases some more. We found several transactions where Betts would order and pay for a dozen condos, using an offshore bank account. But Sinclair would only transfer title to eight or nine. Each time, it left Sinclair holding about a million bucks in cash for condos he never delivered. Right after that deal, Sinclair would deliberately over-order construction supplies from Betts’s company. For example, if he needed two tons of concrete, he’d order and pay for two hundred. Betts delivered two tons and the rest of the cash went back to a different offshore account. Hey presto, a million bucks in drug money looks like legitimate business proceeds. Betts and Sinclair both took a cut, of course, but there was plenty to go around.”
“Shit. How did you figure it out?”
“Like I said, paying cash for the condos was the first clue. As for the over ordering, I did some contract legal work on a civil construction defect case a while back. I still had copies of supply orders in the discovery documents. I compared them to Sinclair’s orders from Betts. The difference was obvious and I worked backward from there.”
“That’s pretty damn smart.”
“Thanks. Now that you’re out, what are you going to do?”
“First thing I’m gonna do is see about getting into a physical therapy program, get my ass out of this damn chair.” He nodded. “Then I’m gonna get my City Council election campaign back on track. The election is six weeks from now. I’m gonna milk this Sinclair bullshit for every damn vote I can get.”
“If you want any help, I’m all in,” I said.
“Thanks, Mick.” Elliott gazed out the window and took a deep breath. “Right now, though, I wish Casey hadn’t scheduled this press conference. I’m tired. I just want to go home.”
“Hang in there. You’ll be home soon enough.”
We drove the rest of the way downtown in silence. I parked on the street, a block up from the Justice Center, and helped Elliott out of the van. He looked around. The sandwich store we’d parked outside was boarded up and the wood was scorched where someone had tried to set it alight. All of the other storefronts on the block bore similar damage.
Elliott shook his head. “Man, we got work to do.”
A crowd of about a hundred people was gathered outside the Justice Center. They turned our way as we approached. A line of uniformed police held them back from the entrance. There were reporters from each of the major networks amongst the crowd, waving microphones at us and backed up by cameramen, along with several print reporters holding recorders outstretched.
“Mister Russell! Mister Russell!”
“Come on, guys, make room,” I shouted. I moved ahead of Elliott and cleared a path through the crowd to where Casey and Tony stood at the bottom of the steps by the main entrance. The crowd let us through, then closed behind us and shouted questions at Elliott again.
Casey held up her hands and waited for the noise to subside.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” she began, “thank you for being here. I know you have a lot of questions, but before we start, I’d like to make a short statement. Back in June, I stood in this same place and told you that my client Elliott Russell was innocent. Today, all charges against him have been dismissed. As a result, a terrible miscarriage of justice has been avoided. Unfortunately, that won’t heal Mr. Russell, but perhaps it will be a small step toward healing the divisions that have done so much harm to our city and our society.”
Casey paused and the shouted questions started up again immediately. She waved her arms for silence, but the noise kept coming.
“I’d like to say something.”
Elliott had spoken. The crowd instantly fell silent.
“I’d like to say something,” he repeated, his head held high. “I know a lot of people are angry about what happened to me. Hell, I’m angry. But violence is not the answer. It breaks my heart to see our city torn up in my name. Please, no more riots. No more violence. Take your anger, turn it into energy, and put it to good use. We need to rebuild our community, physically and spiritually. Come together, help each other, work for positive change.”
Elliott stopped and the crowd stayed silent for a while. People nodded their heads and spoke to each other softly.
A reporter from Fox News held out his microphone and shouted, “Mister Russell, will you be suing the City of Portland?”
