Chapter 25: Wash it all away

I DIDN’T WANT TO GET OUT OF BED. It was a comfortable bed and I felt like I hadn’t slept well in a month. I woke up during the night, cried some more, and went back to sleep. Dag died believing he killed Simon but Simon was just hiding out. I’m trying to be rational about it and it just isn’t working. I don’t trust him.

Coffee

I don’t know what Dag saw in Simon. It has to be more than just being college friends. Look at all the crap Simon pulled on him. He slept with his wife and then married her after Dag divorced her. He can’t be clean. There’s too much money involved. Dag moved two billion dollars in assets to charities over Thanksgiving weekend. But Simon isn’t hurting for cash. He blew up his own plane and was able to get from Cuba to Croatia with new ID and no financial hardship. Angel owns this villa—read that ‘mansion’—and I’m sure she’s got a couple of million stashed away for retirement.

I finally hauled my ass out of bed about eight-thirty. I considered calling Cinnamon but either she is in bed or thinking about who she’s going to get there. I took a shower and stood wrapped in a towel looking out at the sea. I can see the ferry dock from here. A ferry came in while I was watching and I could see people getting off.

My mind kept playing tricks on me. I kept thinking I could see people I knew. I saw a guy with a cane and a limp and thought Jordan was there. I’d have sworn I saw Cinnamon, Geoff Gilliam, Brenda, Bradley, Oksamma, Ray, and one time even Dag. I suppose I’ll be seeing ghosts till the day I die and join them.

Coffee wasn’t bad at all. When I got downstairs and found the kitchen, Angel was the only one there. Simon was staying on the third floor and decided it was best to stay out of sight for a while. Apparently, my warning was being considered. What he could do about it, though, I really didn’t know. I had no intention of getting between him and whoever Brenda was sending after him. I figured it was no one I knew, so what good was I really. If I’d had Angel’s phone number, I could have saved myself a trip and a lot of sleepless hours.

How could I have been so stupid as to think because I managed to hide out in the Condo a few days, Brenda and her executive groupies would consider me any kind of threat? I assessed the sum of what I knew and what I figured they knew about me.

They knew Angel gave the thumb drive to Dag and I probably had it. They’d ransacked my office when I disappeared. They didn’t find it or me.

They knew James Whitcomb camped out at the Condo a few days. I’d dumped Davy in the hot tub when I left but I was pretty sure no one knew Deb Riley was James Whitcomb.

Someone knew James Whitcomb had done business with Angel and then disappeared a few days later.

Finally, they knew Angel had this property in Croatia.

Unless they had something else, it wasn’t much to go on. I’d given Jordan more information than that. As far as I could figure, none of the Committee knew anything about me or that I was with Angel now or that I was James Whitcomb.

I’d book a flight home and send the original thumb drive to Brenda’s address. My name would be wiped off their list of naughty and nice. They’d never know I’d sent all the data to Jordan.

After Angel greeted me, she had coffee ready in a flash. She had this great machine you punch a button on, it grinds the coffee, and brews a beautiful cup of rich black joe. I gotta get me one of those. She said in the US they cost about $1,500!

Maybe I’ll just hire Jackie, the barista at Tovoni’s to hand deliver a cup every day!

“So, what are you going to do, Angel?” I asked. She started to whimper and I saw a tear in her eye.

“We were up half the night. We should run but Simon thinks he did the wrong thing coming here. If they come here, we stand a chance. This place is pretty defensible. If we run ... well, it wouldn’t be hard to spot a five-nine man with a six-foot blonde. I don’t know. I’m scared but I don’t want to leave him.”

I could sympathize a little. Simon had eight powerful enemies and probably more knowledge about what was happening in their world than anyone else. I bet Jordan wished he had Simon on the witness stand instead of just having a disk full of names and accounts.

Barbarian at the gate

“Angel,” I said out of the blue as we were having toast, “I want to know more about your business. You had FinCEN and the FBI hanging around your shop before you left. They were watching everybody who came in or out. What is it you really do?”

“Financial Crimes Enforcement? They’re always hanging around. They’ve been trying to pin a money laundering scheme on me for months. I’m not worried about them unless they send in the VICE squad. Now that would be embarrassing.”

“But you are, aren’t you?” I asked.

“Laundering money? No. I don’t think so. There’s nothing illegal about hiding your money. You can hide it under your mattress if you want to. I convert it to instruments that can be hidden more easily. Any cash transaction of more than $5,000, I dutifully report on my little form. They know I can’t possibly handle the kind of cash they want to investigate.”

“What about these?” I asked, tossing one of my cash cards on the table in front of her.

“How did you get one of these?” she asked picking it up. “It’s just a cash card. You can buy them at the bank. If you don’t put more than $5,000 on it in a cash transaction, there’s nothing stopping you from buying it and using it anyplace in the world. Now, come on. Which shop did you get this one in? It’s from our network.”

“Yours.” I pulled out the other card from my wallet. “You charge a pretty hefty commission to fill one up.”

Angel looked at me strangely and closely. I stared her straight in the eye. She slowly began to grin.

“The little gay college professor? You?” I nodded. “I can’t believe it. You said you could disguise yourself so we’d never recognize you. That was incredible! Have you done Cinnamon and Teri yet?” I nodded.

“Let’s get back to the question,” I said. “You ran this as two different transactions and took a twenty percent commission on the deal. That totaled $12,000. But you didn’t report it. Isn’t that a little contrary to the law?”

“If you were picky enough, maybe. But it still isn’t money laundering.”

“It sure isn’t a service offered by most travel agents.”

“I handled about $1.5 million a year,” angel said. Simon got me the business and introduced me to people a long time ago. But there isn’t anything illegal about what I do.”

“It’s still too shady,” Simon said from the doorway. “I never should have gotten you into this. They all know you helped them hide money from their wives. They’ll all be afraid of you.” He looked pretty worn this morning and Angel jumped up to kiss him. She made coffee and had him at the table with us in seconds. So domestic. “What you have there, Miss Riley, is the contemporary equivalent of a bearer bond. You can’t get those in the US anymore. You can in some countries, but if you’re caught transporting them into the US, the government will confiscate it if you don’t declare it and tax it if you do. Detecting a few extra credit cards is much harder to do. There are a lot of men and a few women who have no difficulty withdrawing a few thousand dollars in miscellaneous funds from joint checking accounts. Their spouses don’t even notice it, probably because they are also withdrawing similar amounts. They’re insurance money, paid in advance. They convert little stashes of cash to gift cards. That’s also completely legal. You can even put more on the same card later. It’s instant cash, anyplace in the world. So, a business executive on a trip for two weeks in Asia with no wife and fear of a sexual harassment suit from his secretary, can’t even approach someone on the street because he could be recognized. But he can go online and pick his favorite escort, have him or her at his room for the night and gone before he meets his coworkers for breakfast. The escort is paid with untraceable funds that he pulled from the local ATM on the way back to his hotel. There’s no personal information contained on that card. If you have the card and the PIN, you have the money. He paid for his night with an A-class model with money he stuck in his pocket months ago. It’s the closest thing we have to fully anonymous banking.”