CHAPTER FOUR

Detective Sam Morel glanced back at the old Victorian house. The paint was new, the wedding-cake trim impeccable and the small garden well tended. By all appearances, a beautiful home where the cares of the world refused to rest. Appearances could be so deceiving.

Sam Morel was no fool. He knew exactly what a two-year lock-up was, and he was well versed in the Blue Sky laws, which had been instituted after the turn of the century and brought into the limelight during the Depression. By asking the question in front of the FBI agents, he had relegated himself to a nonentity in their eyes. That was just fine. It was so much easier to operate under the radar. He was now positioned to work hand-in-hand with the FBI, getting access to all the current information in their files while their expectations of what he could produce would be minimal.

He was also well versed with a man named Robin Malory and his company, Morgan Fay. Robin Malory was a Fortune 100 castoff. He spent twenty-eight years of his life scratching his way to the top, only to receive the kiss-off when he was finally in line to be the next CEO. He left the firm and started Morgan Fay, a company that specialized in revitalizing old brand names and bringing them back to market. Morgan Fay had received SEC approval and had gone public. The stock price had shot upward, and for the first seventeen months had performed admirably. But the truth behind the company’s success was far different.

The truth was a four hundred million–dollar scam. Morgan Fay was being manipulated by a management company called Avalon Partners, and creative bookkeeping was the order of the day. Not to the scale of Enron or WorldCom, but four hundred million was hardly small potatoes. Sam Morel could see a lot of differences between the Morgan Fay case and NewPro, but he suspected the brainchild of Edward Brand’s company was none other than Morgan Fay. And that gave him an inside track to how Edward Brand and his accomplices thought. Knowing how a criminal thinks was important.

Morgan Fay was a company that existed on testosterone and guile. When Robin Malory said something was possible, or plausible, people assumed it was. It wasn’t until the forensic auditors had marched through the front doors of Avalon Partners that the scope of what had happened became apparent. If Sam Morel was correct in his thinking, Edward Brand was another Robin Malory. Christ, the man had taken on an alias that mocked the very scam he was perpetrating. Edward Brand, revitalizing brand name products. The guy had balls.

Morel pulled into the parking lot off Vallejo Street and hoofed it into the Central District station. He took the elevator to the fourth floor and picked up his mail on the way by the reception desk. His office had a window, but the view was nothing spectacular, another building and a bit of the street. It provided enough light to keep his plants alive. That was something he cared about. His personal life was a mess, his ex-wife in rehab for her drinking, his daughter three months into a trial separation with her abusive husband and his son sitting on a beach somewhere in India wasting his life smoking pot every day. At least he had his plants.

He checked the soil, and his finger came away slightly damp. They’d be good over the weekend, but Monday would be watering day. Morel dropped into his chair and smoothed his hands over his scalp, feeling his thick gray hair on his fingertips. He was a dinosaur, one who believed in holding doors open for women and paying for dinner and a movie. But he was a staunch supporter of equal pay scales for the sexes. He was a technological dichotomy as well, and he knew it. He understood computers and was well versed in the newest forensic methods of hunting a criminal by following even the faintest electronic trail. But he was the first cop to call for a CSU team to physically search the crime scene for tangible clues. His contact list on his e-mail server was full, but he carried an address book with the same numbers written in by hand. It was as if he couldn’t quite make the break from paper to bytes. Whatever it was that drove him, he got results.

Corporate fraud in San Francisco was handled mostly by the District Attorney’s office, but there was always a need for an investigative presence outside cyberspace. When Assistant DAs, like Julie Swimaker, showed up at a crime scene, they always looked for Sam Morel. He was their contact to SFPD, the one who secured the area and ordered the crime scene unit. He was the cop; they were the law. Julie Swimaker and the other Assistant DAs knew Sam Morel, and they knew he was no idiot. Morel could only imagine what Julie was thinking when he asked the question about the Blue Sky laws. That didn’t matter. What did matter was that the FBI agents working the case thought he was incompetent. That meant that they would share information freely, under the assumption that he wouldn’t have a clue what to do with it. That worked just fine for him.

Morel checked his Day-timer for a number, then picked up the phone and dialed. A man’s voice answered. “Billy, it’s Sam, how are things?”

“Fine. What can I do for you?” The voice was guarded, the kind of voice from a man who knows he’s talking to a cop, doesn’t want to, but has no option.

“There was an operation that shut down three days ago. My guess would be fifty to sixty computers, servers, printers, copy machines, desks and all the stuff that goes with a complete office. I want you to watch for it, call me if you see it come through the back door somewhere.”

“That’s easy,” Billy said, relieved that Morel’s request was generic and not specific to the hot merchandise he traded daily. “I’ll keep my eyes open.”

“Thanks. You get something that might be it, call me right away.”

“Done.”

Morel hung up and searched out another number. The FBI was smart about some things, but they didn’t always see the whole picture. That picture included getting rid of the equipment that had been used to keep the office up and running for the past seven or eight months. Putting it into storage was dangerous. It kept all the equipment together, and with that many computers and servers, a forensic audit was bound to turn up something. Dumping it in a landfill was akin to lighting a neon sign asking to be investigated and arrested. That left letting it filter out to the second-hand market. Not all at once, but a bit at a time. He didn’t have to explain that to Billy; the fence knew how these things worked. They would release them in a few batches; a handful of computers here, a couple of servers and printers there. Nothing that would raise too many eyebrows. The market for resale computers and office supplies was an interesting one. But it was who they would release them to that was the key. The papers were full of used computer equipment, but no self-respecting thief would ever leave a phone number where the police could simply call him, set up a meeting, then bust him with the gear. They relied on fences to middle the merchandise, and Sam Morel knew those fences. Billy was one in the know, and Sam relied on Billy a lot. In return, Sam made sure no one ever touched his source. Tit for tat. Lots of rubbing each other’s back going on. That was how things worked on the street. And that was the part of the equation the FBI often missed. They stuck out like a fat man in a marathon. They didn’t like to work the sordid little details in case they got their suits dirty. It wasn’t that Morel didn’t like the feds—he was indifferent.

Morel found the number he was looking for and dialed. A man answered, but the voice sounded young. That’s because the person talking was only twenty-two. Two years over twenty and already a master at recovering information from hard drives that had been wiped clean by their owners. So good at it, in fact, that he had spent six months in juvie for hacking into the Department of Defense’s mainframe and changing all the employees’ pay scales. Nobody complained when their pay was deposited, but the accounting department went ballistic. The judge found the stunt mildly amusing, but still serious enough for a short stint in one of the minimum-security juvenile detention centers. He ordered the young man to perform two hundred hours of community service. Sam Morel wormed his way to the front of the line and got the two hundred hours for his department.

“Jamie,” Sam said. “How ya doing?”

“Hey, Sam,” the kid said, his voice upbeat. He liked working with Sam. It sure beat spending time with other kids who thought mainlining heroin was fun. “What’s up? You got something for me?”

“Might have. I’ve got one of my guys watching for some computers that were used in a corporate fraud. If we get our hands on them, I’ll need you right away.”

“Not a problem. I’m in college Monday through Thursday, but I’ve got evenings and Fridays, and the weekends of course.”

“Good. Just make sure you don’t check out for any length of time. No more than twelve hours between checking your voice mail and your e-mail, okay?”

“Sure, Sam. This one sounds cool.”

“It looks big, Jamie. Real big.”

“Man, I hope you find one of those babies.”

“Me too. Talk to you later.” Sam hung up and leaned back in his chair.

Edward Brand. Who was he? The FBI would be running him through their computers, just as he was running records checks on every police computer he could access. Brand was, without a doubt, not the man’s real name, but sometimes aliases emitted clues. Sometimes. But one thing was for certain: Edward Brand had pulled off one hell of a scam. If the initial figures were correct, the man had scooped up more than one hundred and eighty million dollars from unsuspecting investors. And he had done it wisely. At no time had he completed the Securities and Exchange Commission requirements and taken the company public. If he had, the microscope NewPro would have been operating under would have made pulling the scam off almost impossible. No, Edward Brand was no dummy. By all appearances he had succeeded in doing exactly what he had set out to do: relieving a lot of rich people of their money.

Sam Morel knew one thing. Once criminals had the cash, they didn’t like to give it back. If Brand was organized enough to pull this off, then he had enough insight to look ahead and plan what to do once he had the money. Morel closed his eyes and replayed the looks on the victims’ faces. Alan Bestwick, ashen white with heavy bags under his eyes. Taylor Simons, a strong woman driven close to her breaking point, desperately trying to keep her emotions in check. For a moment he wondered what would happen to them if no one could find Brand and they lost all their money. It wasn’t pretty. What made it so reprehensible was that the odds were overwhelmingly in Brand’s favor at this point. Sam had one more thought before he got up and went in search of some stale coffee. If he were a betting man—and he was—his money would be on the bad guy.