Chapter 61
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Judge Lionel Thomas Jefferson listened to Jack’s ridiculous story without interrupting. Then, Lionel asked him if he had been drinking. When Jack told him he wasn’t, hadn’t and wouldn’t, the Judge said to hold on. Jack held for ten minutes. He wondered if the Judge was calling the nut house on the other line or calling the bad guys.
The Judge came back on and said, “The boy’s still alive and they are moving him to a holding cell pending my written order to remand him to the jail here in Sacramento for protective custody.”
He coughed again, worse than even three weeks ago. Jack waited him out, hoping to God he wouldn’t die any time soon. They’d quit making men like him some time ago.
“Jack, Captain Yan is a good man. He will ferret out the truth. Put your trust in him completely.”
A CAR pulled up to the gate at 9:00 AM. The van with Bob’s men in it, the ones who had swept the house for bugs and left even more monitoring equipment, waited for the other car to make the turn. Jack could tell it was Yan’s car, even from a distance, because the shocks on the driver’s side couldn’t completely compensate for the sergeant’s weight. Margaret headed home alone. He couldn’t ask anyone to risk going with her to make sure she was all right. And, he had to trust that she wouldn’t rat them out to save her son.
Sergeant Washington bounded out of the car and seemed to float across the driveway as he moved around to open the door for the Captain. Yan followed his Sergeant up the steps. Jerome and Zelda were down below working out. Angelo Mangusta was back on duty. Jack and Dvora welcomed the Captain and the Sergeant into the same sitting room that, hours earlier, had entertained the two Feds. He hadn’t told the Captain the tall tale over the phone, simply asked him, as a favor, to come as quickly as he could.
The Captain sat on the edge of the couch, the Sergeant choosing to sit in the kitchen on one of the hard wooden chairs, saying that, with his bulk, getting up and down from couches was too much work. He didn’t buy Washington’s reason. Jack’s theory was the Captain wanted deniability. If Yan had a witness and Jack told him the story, he might feel compelled to make his listening official.
Jack launched in. He showed the Captain the pictures, their trading records and research, the copies of the news stories about the stocks, and everything else he knew. An hour later his throat was parched. The Captain stood, stretched his back, walked to the window, and looked out to the Bay. The day had dawned clear and cold, the strong wind from the previous day seemingly long gone. Yan looked out the window for minutes, turned back and sat down with a gentle smile on his face. Yan interrogated Jack for the next hour.
When Yan was done, Jack agreed to meet the Captain in his office at six that evening. Yan was chief witness for the prosecution in a capital crime and had to be in court all afternoon.