Chapter 5: Sad Sack

The investigation into that monster, Beryl Thatcher, was starting to pay dividends. Jill Morton, on the advice of her team of high-powered attorneys, was cooperating fully. Morton, with her husband still at large, was now scrambling to peel years off of her impending sentence.

Forensic accountants from Sandra Fleming’s Kansas City team, turned up what they believe is the only hidden bank account that Thatcher had. Her face crumbled when they showed her the Asset Forfeiture paperwork.

At this stage, it seemed that Thatcher was simply one greedy woman. She wasn’t part of some international child exploitation ring. The current belief — part hope, part evidentiary — was that the Mortons were the only ones, at least in the States, who purchased children for sex from Thatcher.

Several European families had adopted young children — mostly under ten years old. So far as the authorities could determine, these were legitimate transactions. Kind, childless couples taking in some of the world’s neediest kids.

But Thatcher had been testing less innocent paths for years. She had been uniquely positioned. In the field she worked with the poorest, most vulnerable, most desperate, children. Back in the States and in certain European countries, she had access to a select few wealthy families. Selfish, greedy families who simply wanted free labor. Workers who would be afraid to go to the authorities.

Beryl started taking small monetary ‘gifts’ to facilitate the transfer of healthy teenagers to rich couples.

About three years ago, she had begun perfecting her pitch. She was vague enough, in the early conversational stages, to merely suggest that she could expedite the adoption process. Thatcher honed her spiel, learned when to make the ask. And, to her credit, when not to suggest an exchange of cash for teenagers.

Ironically, it was during one of those semi-spiels that she misunderstood what one Parisian couple was saying. Thatcher thought the husband was looking for young pussy. That got straightened out, but the seed had been planted.

Jill and James Morton were her first American sex buyers. And, the FBI now believed, the only ones.

For Beryl Thatcher, who had so much going for her, it was greed. Pure and simple. Greed.

In a totally unexpected move, Beryl Thatcher’s attorney called me. “We want to see you.”

I’d kept up on the progress of the teenagers-for-sale case. Jill Morton had pleaded guilty as part of a complicated negotiation to reduce her time in durance vile. She named Beryl Thatcher as her supplier. Her only supplier.

Crosby Nelson and his three pals were still fighting in the court system. Money. Money to try to salvage their reputations — to cast doubt that they’d been paying for sex. Rough sex.

Thatcher’s attorney, a star from Los Angeles, Gloria Allen, was fighting too. Given Allen’s hourly rate, Thatcher must have squirreled away a considerable sum from her sideline venture. Hidden somewhere that Asset Forfeitures hadn’t yet uncovered.

I had no sympathy for Thatcher. None. Zero. But I did have a professional curiosity about why Allen wanted to see me. Okay, nosiness.

I met with Beryl Thatcher and Gloria Allen downtown. In an FBI interview room in the jail complex. Thatcher, despite a lack of makeup and that prison diet, looked fresh and composed. Good bones.

Her attorney looked smart and tough. Slender, focused, intense. In her early 70s.

Thatcher didn’t utter a single word during the short meeting.

Allen looked directly at me, “You have an FBI contact in DC.” Yes, I do. Ash Collins.

I nodded. Where the fuck was this going?

“Collins is more plugged into the ... power structure than you realize.”

“Okay.”

“Beryl Thatcher has information that will ... be of considerable interest to Collins.”

“So, take it to him.”

Allen was staring at me, sizing me up. Taking my temperature. Is a bribe offer coming my way?

She said, “Beryl’s information is rock solid. But there’s a missing piece. Probably more than one.”

I thought, but didn’t say, “And you want me to help a child trafficker?”

“Oh?”

Allen nodded, “What Beryl is accused of ... compared to ... in the larger scheme of things...”

“Do you know what happened to those poor orphans!” Lost it.

“I know she is legally innocent until ... at this time. Put aside those allegations for a moment. You’re uniquely qualified to help alleviate, or at least address, a major crisis. Will that process help Beryl if she enters negotiations? Perhaps. No guarantee though.”

My damned curiosity. “What kind of crisis?”

I listened carefully. Gloria Allen slowly reeled me in. But Dixie Wexler thoughts were always out there, always waiting for me.

Walker was back in the bedroom, yet another gaming session in his Overwatch league. Pilar and I were watching Vanessa stride back and forth, talking animatedly on her cell with Bear.

Pilar said, “What makes her so ... graceful?”

I knew she wasn’t asking about Vanessa’s panther-like movements. Something else.

I said, “Look at how she dresses.”

“Huh?”

“She doesn’t care about logos and brands. She looks at fit, style, movement.”

“Movement?”

“See the way her jacket falls from her shoulder line. How her suede boots take on an almost liquid form. Look at her sweater — subtle and sexy. Like lines of dialogue written in the shadows. People look at Vanessa and feel a kind of ... moody yearning.”

I should know.

Pilar listened raptly. Observing, evaluating, absorbing.

I deplaned at Newark Airport. Took a cab into Manhattan. Directly to Phillip and Rebecca Montgomery’s Sutton Hill co-op. I’d be staying with them for the duration of my New York sojourn. Which — so many unknowns — might be a day or two. Or a week or two. Or longer.

From the warm, open way the Montgomerys welcomed me ... well, I would be comfortable with imposing. No matter how frequently the calendar pages turned.

Beryl Thatcher was going away for a long, long time. While she had bartered some adoptions for money, she had actually sold only three children for sexual purposes. All three to James and Jill Morton. And I didn’t say ‘only three’ to minimize the horror that those poor kids had gone through. Thatcher had knowingly crossed a line with the Mortons. It had been an explicit money for sex slaves transaction.

The FBI concluded that it was simply that old-fashioned temptation, Biblical temptation — greed — that motivated Thatcher. Her parents, mother a commercial real estate agent, father a tenured college professor, solidly middle class, were still in the denial stage.

Beryl was born and raised in Middlebury, Vermont. No outward signs of anything remotely resembling the human trafficking she drifted into. Underage beer drinking, some pot, the usual.

She was now methodically trying to trim years off of her impending sentence by giving up a much bigger fish. Through her LA attorney, Gloria Allen. And, possibly, with my own assistance. We’d see.

Fuck.

I may actually be going to work for an actual child trafficker. But I may overlook that thanks to insider info supplied by Beryl Thatcher’s LA attorney, Gloria Allen.

Now did I want to work for Beryl Thatcher, a fucking woman who sold kids to other underbelly denizens? No, I didn’t. But this case, if what I’d been told panned out ... well, it was a genuine chance for me to make a difference. A critical difference with people who need help. Desperately.

Gloria Allen showed me documentation that purportedly proved that the $10,000 retainer I might accept would come from Thatcher’s legitimate assets. Not a penny from child trafficking.

Another reason I was thinking about taking on this case was Gloria Allen herself. She was famous, in legal circles. Was frequently interviewed on cable television. Allen usually represented the underdog in high-profile cases. A mid-level female executive who was being abused by the president of one of the country’s largest banks. An ingenue at a Hollywood studio. Like that.

As for the new case ... Allen and I would be taking on a billionaire family celebrated for their charitable donations. She and I would be trying to help a needy group of mostly poor citizens.

We’d see about that.

Walker and Pilar had another spat. A small one, but enough for Pilar to move in with Lina and Matt and their new baby, Poppy.

The kids don’t scream at each other, slam doors. There was just a ... quietude. A formal politeness. Vanessa and I had learned not to try to patch things over; just give them some time and the storm cloud would pass.

Except this one didn’t.

A weekend turned into a week. Pilar had become so intimately integrated into our family ... well, she was missed. Walker, of course, didn’t talk about it. He’s a boy, he’s 15, he’s ... girl-stupid.

Vanessa invited Pilar to lunch at our loft on the second Saturday of her self-imposed exile to Brookside. Pilar accepted, but turned down a ride, “I’ll just take the Max.” Main Street Max, about 20-minutes to the Crossroads.

Pilar was her usual sprightly self — chatty, friendly — over lunch. I’d made a run to Bryant’s at 18th and Brooklyn in the Forgotten Northeast for bar-b-que. A slab for each of us, plenty of those fried-in-lard fries. Which Walker refreshed in our largest cast-iron frying pan.

Ice-cold St. Pauli girl all around.

Walker was ... not subdued, not exactly. More cautious than anything. Didn’t want to blurt out something wrong, didn’t want to admit he might be on the erroneous side of the argument. Whatever argument there was.

Vanessa smiled at me, that glorious, heart-melting smile, “Whatever happened to Eddie Westlake?”

“Ah. The saddest man I’ve ever known.”

That got the kids’ attention. As intended.

Vanessa, “Yep, that guy.”

“He’s still around. Same job, same ... situation.”

Pilar, “What’s his problem? Why is he so sad?”

Welcome to my parlor, said the spider...

“Eddie has a good job — sells pharmaceuticals to doctors, hospitals, clinics.”

Vanessa, “Still married to Velma?”

“Yep, twenty-some years.”

Walker, “Why is he so sad?”

Vanessa poured more beer for us.

I said, “Eddie loves Velma, has since high school. Unconditionally. But something changed, the dynamics between them, something. I’m not sure what.”

I had the table’s attention.

“Eddie travels a lot on business. About 40% of the time. He loves that part of his job, likes going different places, meeting customers, making friends.”

Pilar, “What’s his problem then?”

“Eddie still loves Velma, but he doesn’t like her anymore.”

Walker started to say something; didn’t.

“He used to love leaving on a trip. Usually Sunday night or Monday morning. And he used to love coming home for the weekend. But now he just likes the going away part.”

Pilar, “Not coming home.?”

“Nope. And it eats away at him. Gives him a bad case of the guilts.”

Pilar, “It should.”

Vanessa said, “Should it, honey?”

“Shouldn’t it?”

I said, “Here’s the deal. Eddie didn’t go out and have an affair. Velma didn’t either. But, over time, Eddie grew to the point where he simply no longer liked his wife. Still loved her, but didn’t like hanging out with her any more.”

Vanessa and I cleaned up. Cleared the table, did the dishes. Walker and Pilar went back to their room. Vanessa winked at me.

Rebecca handed me a set of keys, “Come and go whenever you want.”

Phillip said, “Anything we can do?”

I’d once helped the Montgomerys by extricating their daughter, Mindy, from what turned out to be a half-assed cult. Later, I’d eased Phillip out of a sex tape jam. In return ... well, I wasn’t really keeping track of the Favor Bank. He’d sent me work. We’d helped each other.

I looked at Phillip, “I need to learn about diamonds.”

“You came to the right town. I’ll make some calls in the morning.”

Tall, elegant, classy. He was well-connected. At State down in DC. Probably other government relationships I didn’t know about. Here in New York, he was a banker and ran a hedge fund. Handy guy to know.

Over dinner, the three of us chatted easily — mostly about our kids. Mindy and Walker. Who, for a short while, were an item. Their little affair couldn’t survive Mindy’s Stanford matriculation. Too many miles, too many years, separated them.

After dinner, over balloons of Cognac, a pleasant blaze in their living room fireplace, Phillip asked, “Why diamonds?”

The Montgomerys knew about Dixie Wexler, about his taking me captive. The rescue, his escape from the FBI. And Phillip and Rebecca certainly understood why I was trying to track him down.

I said, “It’s mostly just rumor at this point. But it’s pretty well sourced. Wexler has been sort of a ... roving ambassador for RightWorld.”

Phillip said, “Charles and David Meriwether.”

“Yeah, they founded that PAC. Now it’s their kids — Strom, Sam, Sarah.”

“And Wexler?”


“We’re still piecing together the ... trying to understand just what the relationship is. If there still is one. We do know that in the past Wexler funneled Meriwether money — cash — to various Neo-Nazi hate groups. Seven compounds for sure, maybe more.”

Rebecca frowned, “Charlottesville.”

“Yeah, anti-government ... movements. Not much concern for the legal niceties. And that’s eventually what landed Charles and David in jail. Their secret financial contributions to those haters.”

“And they’re appealing the convictions vigorously.”

“I know. And I wouldn’t bet against them. Against all that money.”

Phillip said, “Diamonds.”

“Okay. We believe, are starting to be convinced, that the Meriwethers are shifting from cash contributions to diamonds. Still portable. And easy to convert to cash.”

Phillip nodded, “Even with transaction costs, it’s a fairly reliable currency. Global currency. Especially among amateurs like Neo-Nazis.” Phillip thought for a moment, “And if the Meriwether people are paying cash for the diamonds, the stones become more or less untraceable.”

“Yeah. They want to avoid any kind of paper and electronic trails between them and the white supremacists. They’ll never forget what tripped up Charles and David.”

He smiled, “And you want to find that trail.”

“If I can. It’s just one lead that we are following.”

“‘We’ being you and Senator Wainwright’s team.”

Phillip Montgomery didn’t miss much.