Free Trigger City by Sean Chercover

Thanks,” I said.
    â€œYeah. Sorry.”
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    Vince left to go serve some court papers for his other employer and I switched from beer to coffee. I called a flower shop and had a “bright and cheery mixed tulip bouquet” sent to Angela Green. The woman on the phone asked what I wanted on the card. I opened my notepad and read aloud what I’d written there earlier:
    Very sorry about Thursday night. I’ll do better next time. Please give Diane my apologies and tell her I had a migraine. She’s very nice. Congratulations again on Chester. I’m very happy for you guys.
    Ray
    Then I called Terry at work and got his voice mail, on which I left a full and unabridged apology complete with offers of self-immolation.
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    What do you want me to say? Amy Zhang had pleaded. I said everything right. And then, I don’t like being tested.
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    Given what I’d learned from Mike Angelo, it was easy enough to conceive that Amy Zhang might be under pressure to stick with some official version of events…to say everything right . She came to believe that I’d been sent to test her, to make sure she could still sell that official version. That now seemed obvious. And the way she said it suggested that it wasn’t the first time she’d been tested. And it scared the hell out of her.
    The pressure may have been applied by a bent cop or other government official involved in the cover-up of whatever the hell it was they were covering up. But Amy Zhang wasn’t frightened at the front door, when she thought I was a cop. More likely, she thought I’d been sent by Hawk River. I had no evidence that Hawk River was behind it, but the company was at the very least a cobeneficiary of the cover-up, along with some part of the government.
    If…If Joan Richmond knew anything damaging to Hawk River, and if she was willing to testify about her knowledge before the congressional Oversight and Government Reform committee. And if they knew she knew. And if they knew she was gonna spill to Congress.
    That’s a lot of ifs.
    After a half hour of research online, I picked up the phone, dialed Hawk River’s head office, and asked to speak with Joseph Grant. Grant was the CEO and I knew I wouldn’t get him on the line, but the CEO’s secretary is one of the true power positions in any company.
    I told Grant’s secretary who I was and who my client was and explained that I was on a fool’s errand to collect information about Joan Richmond so that her father could come to terms with her death. I asked if Mr. Grant could spare me a few minutes, just to tell me what he remembered of Joan.
    The secretary assured me that she would relay my request and asked me to please call back in an hour.
    I spent the hour surfing the Net, reading what I could about Hawk River and its place in the world of government contracting, and about the congressional hearings into military contractors and their alleged billing abuses. It looked like a rat’s nest but Washington had been a rat’s nest for a long time now. Maybe it was ever thus. And besides, you can’t always believe what you read in the papers.
    I called back and the secretary told me that Mr. Grant would be happy to give me fifteen minutes at three o’clock tomorrow, if that was a convenient time for me. I assured her that three o’clock was perfect for me and thanked her for her help and hung up with a sour taste in my mouth.
    Fifteen minutes . Joseph Grant ran a company with private soldiers servicing hundreds of government contracts in at least fifteen countries. Although most of the business was with Uncle Sam, some contracts were with other sovereign states. Plus dozens of contracts with several multinational corporations. All together Hawk River was billing three-quarters of a billion dollars, give or take a few bucks. Billion, with a b. And Joseph Grant can give me fifteen minutes of his time? He shouldn’t