Chapter 10

FBI Agent Blake Rogers, Monday, September 4, 2006

We had a three day weekend for Labor Day. Most kids probably liked this, but for me it meant that I had to spend the whole day at home with my parents. When I came downstairs dad was pacing the kitchen nervously. I watched as he lit a cigarette and then immediately put it out. He'd been getting more and more tense lately, which of course made Joey's and my lives miserable. Sensing that I needed to get out of the way, I tip-toed back upstairs, skipping breakfast. A few minutes later, the sound of something hard thwacking across Joey's back told me that I was right.

Sighing, I booted up my computer and went to work. Dad had Joey and I do all of his work; to be honest I suspect that he didn't know how to keep books. I'd always hated this, but now it gave me access to the banks files, which I was looking over as part of the investigation. Even if we never found an ounce of coke or those missiles everybody was so worried about, we'd have enough to put Dad and his buddies in jail for decades. In addition to standard money-laundering, the bank had a massive amount of non-performing loans, many of which it falsely reported as on-time and then sold to other banks at a significant profit. Some of the loans, however, stayed on the books. Andres, who had a lot of experience dealing with drug lords, suspected that these loans were cleverly disguised bribes to cops or public officials. My plan for the day was to google the names and addresses of the people taking them out to see if they were actually cops.

The first loan on the list was $100,000 to a Catherine Lyons of Melvine, VA. This didn't make any sense, until further investigation revealed that Mrs. Lyons' husband was a state trooper, and Melvine was just off I-95, the primary corridor for drugs going from Florida to the northeast. That fit in with the $50,000 to a probation officer in Fish Springs, MD, who I found out had pulled several strings on behalf of a Caitlin Griffin who got busted with 10 kilos in her trunk, but somehow got off with six months probation. I copied the information onto an encrypted file and moved on to the next loan, $175,000 to Hoaglin, OK police chief Troy Hoover. Some of the names on the list, such as a shipping clerk in North Carolina, indicated that the cartel had found other means of moving product.

I scrolled to the bottom of the page and clicked the next button. I was immediately prompted for a password. This was strange, but not a major obstacle, as my Dad's password worked on it. The next page was just like the first, except for the amounts of money and the names. When I started going through them, I realized why they were encrypted. These people were big deals: Brandy Hanson, a Democratic state representative who was the key swing vote on the House Judiciary Committee, the District Attorney of South Swansea, the police chief of Jabez, Nevada, a juvenile court judge in Silverton, an IRS auditor, several Congressmen and Julie Grimes, the state treasurer of Tennessee. All of the loans were over a million dollars, but the biggest one was to Nate Johnson. He was a member of Congress, running for Governor in a tight race with the mayor of Apertus, and he had gotten over $10,000,000 since he spearheaded a drastic budget cut to the Coast Guard 10 years ago.

I immediately realized that I was getting in over my head. I emailed the file to the Oquendos, Javier, Andres, and FBI headquarters. I sat back and waited for a response. I could hear dad pacing downstairs, and then a car pulled up. I overheard voices coming from downstairs, and recognized them as the Saudis. I snuck into Joey's room and told him to stand at the top of the stairs. Hopefully, the microphone embedded in his earring would pick up the conversation.

When I got back to my room, Andres had IM'd me.

"Got the file, Nita said the FBI headquarters is looking at it."

"Are you listening to Joey's mic?"

"Yeah, when those guys leave, can you follow them?"

"Sure thing."

I sat back and realized I hadn't gotten dressed yet. Since I had no idea where I'd be going, I didn't want to go out naked. I hurriedly put on a t-shirt, a pair of sweatpants, and the watch the FBI had given me.