Courage Stolen Read online

  Danny and I exchanged small talk for a while before he came to the reason why I’d been invited to lunch. “I need to engage your professional services.”

  “Which services would those be?”

  “Your investigation services, smart ass.”

  The waiter arrived, and Danny ordered a glass of Merlot and I ordered a Hendrick’s martini, up with two olives. It had been a while since I’d eaten at the Firehouse, which was built as an actual firehouse in 1850. After decades of neglect, the wrecking ball was about to finish the place off when an entrepreneur bought it in 1960 and transformed it into one of Sacramento’s most elegant restaurants. It was very old school. The main dining area in which we sat featured brick walls painted off-white, with gilt-framed mirrors and paintings on every wall. Red-and-gold patterned upholstered booths and chairs were right out of the late nineteenth century, while three large flower arrangements provided accents of color and more contemporary charm. The dining room was about half-filled, skewing more towards the wealthy business crowd than the young hipsters who frequented most of the other restaurants in Old Town.

  “All right. Tell me what you’ve got.”

  “I need you to do a background check on someone.”

  “A background check? Danny, you know as well as I do there are companies who do nothing but background checks on employees. You must use them all the time for your dealerships.”

  He shook his head and started to explain when the waiter showed up with our drinks. After he set them down we ordered lunch. Danny went for the rib eye while I opted for the fish tacos with a mango, avocado, and cucumber slaw.

  “It isn’t an employee I need you to check into.” He took a sip of his wine. “You know, I’ve had bit of bad luck when it’s come to choosing spousal units.”

  “Spousal units? Maybe that’s part of your problem right there. Spousal units.”

  “Just a term. I’ve been married three times, divorced three times. Hell, you were best man at the first two of them, and you would have been for the third but we got married spur of the moment in Thailand.” He shook his head, recalling something from that experience.

  “Yeah, yeah, I know all this. I told you numbers one and two were a mistake from the get-go, but you never listened to me.” I sampled the martini, the Hendrick’s rich and smooth. I took a bigger sip. “Number three, Debbie, now she I liked. Good sense of humor, smart.”

  “Yeah, smart. Smart enough to take me to the cleaners in the divorce. And that’s why I need you. I’m thinking about getting married again. Call me a fool, but I like being married.”

  “No, you like getting married. I’m not so sure about being married.”

  “Ha ha.”

  “You want me to do a background check on a potential wife? Wife number four?”

  “Yes.”

  “I can’t do that. It sounds too, well, sleazy.”

  “She won’t have to know. I can’t risk another messy divorce and losing half my ass in the process. I want this one to work out.”

  “Do a pre-nup.”

  “Pre-nups are a kiss of death. It’s like saying ‘I do’ with your fingers crossed. No pre-nups. Come on, Ray, do this for me.”

  I drank more of the gin. Here I was getting my arm twisted by a car salesman. There was little doubt in my mind who’d win our verbal tug of war. “Who is she?”

  “Atta boy! And lunch is on me. I met her at my country club, Sacramento Oaks. Her name’s Jolene Gillingwater. She’s the general manager of the place. A real looker, smart, funny, and with common sense. We’ve been dating a couple of months, and I think I’m ready to pop the question, but first I want to make sure. You know what I mean?”

  I told him I’d give him a discounted rate, but he wouldn’t have it. “I’ve got someone who helps me out in my work from time to time. I might need her for some for this.” I was thinking of Rubia. She could use a few extra bucks and might find the work more stimulating than I would. “I’ve got something going now that might take up some of my time.”

  We finished lunch, and after I told him I’d report back in a week, we parted company. I called Rubia from my car and briefed her on the assignment. I’d get the background check started on Jolene Gillingwater and then turn it over to Rubia for any needed follow up.

  “Are you cool, Ray?” Rubia asked after I’d finished running through the plan for the background check.

  “Yeah, fine. Why?”

  “You just seem different…since November. Like you’re lost in your own head sometimes.”

  “You’re imagining things. Don’t worry about me.” I didn’t feel good about shutting Rubia out like that. She was there at the shootout. It had affected me. She had to know that. She just couldn’t know how. We’d been friends a long time now, ever since she first set foot in my class at Sacramento State. I’d been her first college professor after she left prison and decided to stop the gangbanging lifestyle that had sent her there. She went from a gangbanger to a college graduate who ran a respectable bar and operated a worthy non-profit. I liked and respected Rubia. But I didn’t want to share with her what had been going through my mind. At least not until I’d sorted it out myself.

  “You’re bullshitting me. I don’t like that.”

  My phone beeped. Caller ID indicated Regal Systems. “I have to take this call.” I clicked Rubia off and answered.

  nine

  I didn’t recognize most of the company names listed on the “Current Clients” page on Chan International’s website. Two company names did stand out. The first, Regal Systems, was a Sacramento manufacturer of plastic pipe, fittings, and valves. They were one of the area’s largest employers and had been in the news because they were angling for tax breaks from the city of Sacramento by threatening to move to Reno. The second company was SMUD, an acronym for the Sacramento Municipal Utility District. SMUD wasn’t a company per se, but rather a municipality owned by the people of Sacramento. They generated, transmitted, and distributed electricity to every home and business in the county, racking up gross sales of more than a billion dollars a year.

  Harry Terrick, the manager of supply chain services at Regal, returned my call and said he could spare a few minutes to chat. A ruddy-faced man whose jowls suggested he’d earned the color from heavy drinking, not heavy exercise, Terrick sat at a modest desk inside his office. From his forced smile to rigid posture, he looked uncomfortable. Dark gray plastic valves and fittings were scattered on his desk between photos of his wife and grown daughters.

  “On the phone you said you were an investigator and wanted to learn more about my dealings with Chan International. Are you with the police or some kind of agency?”

  “No.”

  That seemed to relieve him for some reason, his shoulders dropping ever so slightly, and he settled back in his chair. He waited for me to add more to my answer. I did not accommodate him.

  “Then why are you here?” he asked, breaking the uncomfortable silence in the office.

  “I’m working on a matter for Granderson University, and Chan’s name came up. You’re listed on Chan’s website, so I thought maybe you could tell me something about him.”

  “What do you want to know? I’ll be upfront in telling you I can’t divulge much, for proprietary reasons.”

  “I understand. Let’s start with the basics. You’re a client of Thomas Chan’s company?”

  “Yes, though we signed the contract only three or four weeks ago with the manufacturing firm Chan set us up with, so no work has actually started yet.”

  “If you don’t mind my asking, what are you and Chan International working on together?”

  “Chan is a go-between for US companies and Chinese companies, who can do certain jobs cheaper than we can here in the States, especially here in California. In our case, we have a new industrial valve line coming out at the end of the year. We wouldn’t make a nickel on a single valve if we were to produce it here, so we’re having the manufacturing done in China. It cuts our c
ost in half.”

  “Does Chan get a finder’s fee for setting up the deal, or do they get a cut of all future manufacturing?” I had read an article a while ago on how manufacturer’s reps work with offshore accounts and remember there were different payment models.

  “In our case, a little of both, though I can’t divulge the details. You know, I forgot about a meeting I have with my boss.”

  “I understand.” Meeting with the boss. Forgot. Sure. Terrick’s initial curiosity about an investigator contacting him had evaporated like a mud puddle in the desert.

  “How long have you been working with Chan’s firm?”

  “Oh, gosh, about four or five months. It’s been kind of an on-again, off-again process with them.”

  “How so?”

  He glanced at his watch. “We thought we had a deal with the manufacturer three months ago. But there were some added fees we didn’t understand.”

  “What kind of added fees?”

  “I don’t know. I really shouldn’t talk about our business.”

  “It’s just between you and me.” I had wondered how Chan’s firm had supposedly been so successful so quickly. Something in Terrick’s manner gave me an inkling.

  He sighed. “There was something called an inspection fee. About a hundred grand. A hundred grand’s not a lot in the big picture, but we had questions about it. Next thing we know, the fee went away, and we went forward with the deal. I think Thomas did something to convince the company to drop it.”

  “What do you think that something was?”

  Terrick shrugged and looked distractedly at something on the wall to his right.

  “Do you think Thomas paid the fee?”

  “How would I know? All I know is Regal no longer had to pay the fee.” Terrick turned his head towards me, though he didn’t meet my eyes.

  “What about you?”

  “What about me?”

  “Was there anything in it for you?”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Did Chan give you any incentive to make the deal?”

  His face reddened, either from embarrassment, anger, or both. He pressed his lips together so tightly they turned white.

  “I’m not suggesting a bribe. I’m just wondering if—”

  Before I could finish the sentence, Terrick moved around his desk and stood next to me. “I really do have to go. Please see yourself out.” A moment later, he walked out of his own office, leaving me with my question hanging in the air.

  An hour later, I arrived at SMUD. One of my students at Sacramento State during my days as a professor now ran the corporate communications department at SMUD. Roger Talbert and I drank coffee from the machine in the company cafeteria. Roger had been one of my favorite students. Bright and inquisitive, he wrote well, spoke like a pro, and possessed remarkable common sense for a college student. I knew he would be successful, and this was evidenced with his position at SMUD, where he ran a thirty-two person department responsible for all forms of public communication, from newsletters and videos to the website, brochures, speeches, and social media outreach. Not bad for someone a year or two north of thirty.

  “I’m getting married later this year,” he said after we’d settled down at a table. A handful of other employees sat at other tables, chatting on cell phones, reading, or just daydreaming during their coffee break.

  “Congratulations! Do I know this woman?”

  “Probably not. She works here.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Oh.”

  “It’s not what you think. She works in a different part of the company. We didn’t even meet at work. We have mutual friends.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Now you’re just messing with me.”

  “It’s what I do best.”

  A cafeteria worker straightened chairs at some of the unoccupied tables. He then proceeded to vacuum the carpet at the far end of the room. It was nearing four o’clock, the end of the workday.

  “So, professor, it’s an honor to see you again and have coffee. But, somehow, I don’t think you called to catch up socially.”

  “Am I that transparent?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “I’m not sure if you know this, but I retired from Sac State and now have my own investigation business.”

  “I did hear that. Bunch of bullshit, excuse my French, about the sexual harassment thing. I’m sorry about that. Wasn’t fair to you.”

  I raised my right palm to thank him and indicate further empathy wasn’t needed. “It’s done. And in the end, it turned out to be a good thing.”

  “Still, it wasn’t right.”

  “No, but I’m over it.” I took a sip of coffee, remarkably tasty for vending machine brew. “I did want to ask you a couple of questions, if you don’t mind, about your working relationship with a company called Chan International.”

  “What about them?”

  “Their website says you were a client, and they had brokered some printing services over in China for you.”

  “They did as a matter of fact. They won the contract for printing our marketing collateral—brochures, annual reports, bill inserts, that kind of stuff. It was a three-year contract worth about a million dollars. They came in about twenty percent lower than the next lowest bidder.”

  “Was the only selection criteria low price?”

  “No, but it was about two-thirds of the equation. They seemed too low, so I was part of a review team to vet their proposal. They were partnering with a firm over in China to do all the printing. Chan was a go-between.”

  “When your team finished its evaluation, did the contract hold up?”

  “Kind of, though we ran into one stumbling block. There was a fifty thousand dollar line item in the contract for a government inspection fee. Our legal department wanted to know what that was. Chan was evasive at first, then pretty much admitted it was a gift of goodwill, that’s what he called it, to the printing company’s family.”

  “Did you pay it?” The additional fee sounded a lot like what Terrick had encountered. I wondered if this was the standard operating procedure in China or just the firms Chan International dealt with.

  “No, of course not. We’re a public agency. Everything needs to be transparent. We told Chan the fee had to be dropped or we couldn’t do the deal.”

  “And the fee went away.”

  “Yep.”

  “I’m going to ask you a question with all due respect, and only because it could be relevant in something else I’m working on. Did Chan offer you any incentives to take the deal?”

  Roger turned his attention to the top of the table, where he spent several seconds turning his paper cup of coffee around and around. “I’ll tell you this because I know I can trust you,” he said, his eyes still cast down at the table. “He did suggest a kickback. I mean, not on the order of fifty thousand dollars, but he said he would give me season tickets to the Kings and a membership to the Sutter Club. I didn’t take it, of course.”

  “But you didn’t throw him out the door?”

  “No,” Roger said, looking me in the eyes. “To be honest, I didn’t know how to do so without generating some bad publicity. Like I said, we’re a public agency, so everything we do is open for Public Records Act requests. I figured declining the offer meant no harm, no foul. I guess I wussed out. I’m not proud of it.”

  ten

  I arrived at Granderson University in plenty of time to meet Professor Kenneth Wiggin in his third-story office in Sieboldt Science Center. His door was opened a crack, so I knocked on the doorframe, stuck my head inside, and waited for him to look up from his desk. He was concentrating on his laptop, jabbing at his mouse pad with impressive zeal. I’d set up the meeting with the biology department’s secretary and hoped Wiggin had checked his calendar after arriving late the night before from Germany.

  “Professor Wiggin,” I said when he did not turn around after a few seconds. He continued to busy himself with the laptop. “Pr
ofessor Wiggin,” I said louder.

  “Come in, come in,” he said, not looking at me. “No need to yell.”

  I entered and sat down. His office was unremarkable, except for the framed print on the wall behind him featuring a collage of marijuana leaves in varying shades of purple, red, yellow, orange, and green. The professor continued his fixation with the laptop. From his vitae, I put his age at about seventy-five. He looked twenty years younger than that, his hair a tangle of brown and gray curls, a droopy gray mustache his signature feature. “Damn!” he said, banging his palm down on his desk. “Thirty-four. Just missed it.”

  “Research project?” I asked, pointing at the laptop.

  “Minesweeper. I missed the world record for expert level by one second. Damn!”

  “There’s always tomorrow.”

  “You’re the private investigator my secretary told me about?” He raised his eyes from the computer screen to look at me.

  “Ray Courage.” I stood from the seat and reached across his desk to shake hands. “University security has asked me to look into the theft of your Monarch Project.”

  “I don’t mean to be rude, but we’re going to have to keep our meeting to fifteen minutes.”

  “Another game of Minesweeper on the calendar?”

  “Nope. Just got booked for a meeting. Now what can I do for you?”