by Ian Hamilton
“But you didn’t.”
“Of course not. But Eddie told me Hong Kong debt collectors sometimes do more than punch.”
“I hope you aren’t being serious,” Ava said as she stood up and gathered the files.
“I apologize if that was an inappropriate remark,” Howell said quickly. “It is just that this guy has done a lot of damage to a great many nice people. Phil Gregory may be the only suicide, but I can tell you more than a few of the others have contemplated it.”
“I’ll go through the files. I may even drop in on Malcolm Muir. Either way, my focus will be on the bank in Amsterdam, not figuring out how best to assault him,” she said.
“Hey, I did apologize for that crack.”
Ava looked across the desk at Howell. “Well, truthfully, Eddie is not entirely wrong. Sometimes it does become necessary to get a little physical — but only as a last resort.”
(7)
It was lunchtime when Ava got back to Yorkville. She dropped off Howell’s files at her condo and then went back down to Yorkville Avenue to walk a couple of blocks east to the Dynasty Restaurant. The Dynasty was one of Yorkville’s few Chinese restaurants, and fortunately it was a good one. Ava ordered hot and sour soup, fried octopus, and the rainbow fold — fried minced duck with diced vegetables to be wrapped in lettuce and coated with hoisin sauce.
As she waited for the food, Ava reviewed the meeting with Howell. Despite her outwardly less-than-enthusiastic reaction, he had captured her interest when he mentioned how much had been sent overseas to the Dutch bank. Howell’s failure to recover any of the money didn’t cause her concern. It was enough that he had confirmed Muir hadn’t lost it, because as long as the money existed, there was always a chance it could be retrieved. She thought about Jacob Smits, her connection in Amsterdam, then checked her watch to calculate the time difference. She wanted to read the files before calling him but didn’t want to leave it too late. Before she could set herself a deadline, the food began to arrive, and she turned her attention to it.
Half an hour later Ava left the Dynasty and walked down to Bloor Street. She went into the bank where she kept her old Moleskine notebooks and provided identification to give her access to her safety deposit box. A few minutes later she was leafing through a notebook with the heading Borneo: Two Sisters. She found Jacob’s contact information, copied it into the notebook she’d started for Phil Gregory, and then headed back to the condo.
She changed into Adidas training pants and a T-shirt as soon as she arrived, then sat with the files and her Moleskine notebook at the kitchen table. The files were labelled “Malcolm Muir,” “Harvest Investment Fund,” “Investors and Pastor Sammy Rogers,” and “Banking.” She reached for the Muir file and then stopped and instead picked up her cell. Derek and Mimi would be anxious to know how the meeting with Howell had gone.
“Hey, I was wondering when I’d hear from you. How was the meeting?” Derek answered.
“It went well enough. Howell is obviously frustrated by his inability to nail Malcolm Muir,” she said. “He explained what he tried but also made it clear he’s through trying. He’s at a dead end both financially and legally.”
“Where does that leave us? Did he ask you to help?”
“He asked me to take over the case,” Ava said. “I told him my only interest is in helping Mimi and her mother. He said I won’t be able to do that unless I go after Muir.”
“There is some logic in that.”
“Yes, but it’s logic that would be much more compelling if I was still in the debt-recovery business. I don’t want to go down that hole again, but at the same time I do want to help Mimi. It’s a bit of a conundrum,” she said. “At the end of our meeting, Howell gave me some files he’d compiled. I promised to read them but I didn’t make any commitments beyond that.”
“How long do you think it will take?”
Shit, Ava thought as Derek gently applied the pressure. Well, if I’m going to have this conversation with him, I might as well have it now.
“Derek, do you remember how I operated when I was on a job with Uncle?”
“Yes. You were a bit of a loner.”
“Well, the fact that I’m no longer with Uncle doesn’t mean I’ve changed my approach,” she said. “Here’s the way I’m going to handle this. First I’m going to read the files. If there’s information in them that I think is worth pursuing, I’ll pursue it. If there isn’t, I’m going to return the files to Howell and you’ll have to tell Mrs. Gregory there’s nothing else that can be done. If there is something of value, then I will chase it down to the very best of my ability. But Derek, I have to be left alone to do that. I won’t be issuing daily reports.”
“I understand.”
“Then let’s leave it at that,” Ava said, feeling slightly guilty about being so abrupt with Derek. “Listen, I’ll read the files today and I’ll call you when I’m finished, to let you know — one way or another — what I’m going to do.”
“That would be great. And, Ava, I promise that if you decide to keep going after Muir, we’ll stay out of your hair.”
“We’ll talk later,” Ava said, and ended the call.
She looked at the files and then reached for the one on top, labelled “Malcolm Muir.” When she opened it, the first thing she saw was an 8 × 10-inch glossy colour photo of a man’s head with “Muir” written under it. In the photo he was staring straight at the camera. His mouth was tightly drawn and his hooded brown eyes conveyed . . . nothing. There was no surprise, no curiosity, no anger, no pleasure, just a dark blankness. Equally bland were his features; his nose, lips, and ears were neither large nor small, with no distinctive bumps or irregularities. He had a bald spot, and the hair around it was clipped close. He did not look like a man who would inspire trust. Maybe in person he presented a different image, Ava thought, or maybe her opinion of him had been coloured by Howell’s.
She returned to the file and leafed through it. There were several documents she had already seen when going through Phil Gregory’s papers. She flipped past them until she came to a promotional brochure that appeared to be part of the launch program for the fund. Ava scanned through it, admiring its emphasis on the good works the fund would finance while underplaying the financial returns the investors could expect. Muir had obviously known what would appeal to his target market.
At the back of the file was a thick sheaf of papers held together by large paper clip. The front sheet was headed “Malcolm Muir bio.” Behind it were Todd Howell’s records of his meetings with Muir, Pastor Rogers, and Patrick Cunningham, the Harvest Table CFO. The bio ran to a loosely organized two pages and looked like it had been written by Howell or someone on his staff. Ava read it, absorbing the bare bones of Muir’s life.
Muir was fifty-six. He’d been born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, attended high school there, and went to the University of Manitoba to study law. He didn’t graduate, leaving the university when he was twenty. He took a job with a finance company in Winnipeg that specialized in high-interest loans to people whom the banks wouldn’t lend to. There was mention of various night-school courses towards a degree in accounting, but no evidence that a degree had been obtained. He became a district manager for the finance company about ten years later and was transferred to the city of Timmins in northern Ontario. Three years after that he was transferred to Toronto, and at the age of thirty-nine he became a vice-president. In the margin next to this information, someone (probably Howell, Ava thought) had written, He was in charge of collecting overdue loans. He was evidently very good at it and was known to have hired goons to intimidate customers
When Muir turned forty-five, his employment with the finance company ended. Did he resign voluntarily, was he forced to resign, or was he terminated? someone had written in the margin. The same person had later added, with a different pen, He was terminated. Evidently he was pocketing a portion of any cash hi
s goons collected. According to the bio, for the next five years Muir worked with various other finance companies in jobs that all seemed to relate to collections. He didn’t last long anywhere, and six years later the only jobs he appeared to have were as chairman of the finance committee and CEO of the Harvest Investment Fund, both supposedly non-paying positions.
Ava started to write some questions in her notebook and then stopped. Perhaps Howell’s notes of his meeting with Rogers and Cunningham might provide the answers, so she turned to them. Within a few seconds she was smiling. Howell had asked the same questions that were on her mind: when did Muir join the congregation, and how did he come to be named chairman of the finance committee?
Cunningham seemed to have done most of the talking in the meeting. His story was that he had been approached by Muir, a new and eager chapel member, who wanted to know if there was something he could do to help raise funds. At that time fundraising was a tightly controlled activity spearheaded by the pastor and a few trusted members of the executive. Muir offered to head up an ex-officio committee and volunteered to contribute twenty thousand dollars to kickstart it. There hadn’t been a finance-related committee at the chapel until then. Cunningham had spoken to Pastor Rogers about Muir’s approach, and the pastor said he’d go along with it as long as its mandate was restricted to fundraising. Cunningham went to Muir with the proposal; he accepted the terms and agreed to be the finance committee’s first chairman.
The creation of the finance committee and its objectives were announced at a Sunday service, and members of the congregation were invited to join. Ten parishioners immediately applied. Howell wrote in the margin: Because the committees had no real power, but inclusion in them provided chapel members with a sense of being in the inner circle and tied them more tightly to the organization, there was no limit on committee memberships. Before the implosion of the fund the finance committee had grown to twenty-two members, nearly all of whom had invested in it.
Ava sat back in her chair. How many people attended the chapel? She had been using Howell’s files as a shortcut to information, but she was starting to feel that she was lacking details. She put the files to one side, turned to her computer, and typed “Harvest Table Bible Chapel” into the search engine. There were several pages of results. She scanned them and then opened a link to a photo catalogue.
Ava looked at the first photo and blinked. When Derek had referred to it as a “monster structure,” Ava had assumed he was exaggerating. He wasn’t. The photo was an aerial view of the chapel and its property. The building sat in the middle of an enormous swath of land, completely surrounded by parking lots that were in turn surrounded by vast rolling lawns. It looked nothing like any church Ava had ever seen. In fact, if she hadn’t known what it was, she would have assumed at first glance that it was the corporate headquarters of a major high-tech or finance company.
The next picture showed the front of the building at ground level. It seemed to be about four storeys high, although she couldn’t be certain because the floors weren’t differentiated. Its red-brick walls ran in straight unbroken panels several metres wide from the ground to the brown tiled roof, the panels separated by sheets of tinted glass. White crosses had been etched into the glass in random fashion. The chapel’s front entrance was two immense metal doors that had various biblical scenes etched on them. On either side of the doors, white marble crosses soared towards the sky.
The following shots were of inside the chapel. The cavernous lobby had white tiled floors flecked with gold, walls covered in murals depicting more biblical scenes, and a ceiling that was a huge glass dome. In the lobby were three sets of double wooden doors with Worship Centre stencilled in gold above them, and to their left and right were spiral staircases leading to balconies.
The last photos Ava looked at were of what could have been the interior of a large upscale theatre, with upholstered seating, chandeliers, and a deep, wide stage. This was the worship centre. A massive cross towered behind a large granite pulpit at centre stage, flanked by two immense video screens.
Ava opened another website. There were more pictures of the chapel, a short history, and some statistics. She read the numbers: the chapel and its grounds occupied two hundred acres and had more than four thousand parking spots and its own fleet of buses; the worship centre could accommodate seven thousand people.
Pastor Rogers has built an empire, she thought as she entered his name in the search field. Again there were pages of results. One, titled “Canada’s Religious Superstar,” caught her attention. It was an article published the year before by a U.S. magazine called the Evangelical, and while it was primarily fawning, Ava assumed that the facts about Rogers’s life would be accurate.
Sammy Rogers had been born in Smiths Falls, near Ottawa, and was the son of a Baptist minister. He graduated from the University of Ottawa with a BA and then attended a Bible college in Alberta. After graduation he went south to Oklahoma for another year of education at a religious university, where he befriended Randy Simmons, the son of Blackstone Simmons, an internationally known evangelist. After leaving university, Rogers joined the Simmons organization. He worked on several crusades, initially as a front man drumming up attendance, but his oratory skills and charisma soon became apparent and he was put on stage as a warm-up for Simmons.
Rogers left Simmons three years later to become pastor of the Warehouse Church in the east end of Toronto. The article said he had been motivated by a wish to return to Canada and the realization that there was no possibility of further advancement with the Simmons organization. The Warehouse Church — which actually operated out of a warehouse — was already well-known in evangelical circles. Its services featured faith healing and speaking in tongues, both of which were familiar to Rogers from his time with Simmons. As successful as the church was before he got there, Rogers doubled and then tripled its attendance. The warehouse could accommodate close to a thousand people, and Rogers drew at least that number twice every Sunday. But with no room to expand, he urged the church executive to find a larger venue. Harvest Table Bible Chapel was the result.
Ava thought briefly about looking at a clip of Rogers in preacher mode but decided she’d gone far enough off track. Instead she reached for the file with the banking information.
Despite the messy appearance of his office, the files Todd Howell had given her were well organized. The top two sheets of paper in the banking file listed every account Muir had opened, along with the dates, deposit amounts, and bank branch information. In the right margin were the dates when he’d either closed the accounts or bankrupted the company aligned with the account. The third sheet was devoted to the bank in the Netherlands, with its contact information, Muir’s account number, and a long list of the transfers sent to it, organized by date. The total was just over thirty million. Time to call Jacob, she thought, looking in the notebook for his phone number. I hope he hasn’t changed his number.
A woman’s voice answered loudly. “Hallo.”
“May I speak to Jacob Smits, please,” Ava said.
“Spreek je Nederlands?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t speak Dutch,” Ava said, guessing at the woman’s question.
The woman paused and then seemed to cover the mouthpiece, because her voice became muffled. Then she said loudly, “Slechts een minuut.”
A few seconds later Jacob Smits said, “Hello, can I help you?”
“This is Ava Lee calling from Toronto. I hope I’m not disturbing your dinner.”
“We’ve already eaten,” he said, laughing. “I’m happy you called. Can I assume this is about business?”
“It is, though I’m equally pleased to hear your voice. We did good work together, and now I need your help again.”
“Yes, we did do good work,” Smits said. “What kind of help do you need?”
Ava smiled. Smits was short and stocky, wore suits that were perpetually rumpl
ed, and as a point of national pride usually sported an orange tie. At first glance he looked completely undistinguished, but Ava had learned quickly that he had a razor-sharp mind and a myriad of contacts from his days working with the National Police Corps fraud division and the Dutch Tax and Customs Administration. He worked as a private detective but was also an accountant, and like Ava he got directly to the point. She never had to guess what he was thinking.
“I’m trying to help a friend whose father was caught up in a large fraud scheme based in Canada, but the money found its way to a Dutch bank. Where it went from there, I have no idea.”
“How much money are you talking about?”
“The father lost close to three million Canadian dollars, but the entire fraud was more than thirty-two million — about twenty-one million euros,” Ava said. “All I really care about is the three million. It’s all the money the family had.”
“The father must be distraught.”
“The father is dead. He committed suicide. The rest of the family is beyond distraught.”
“I’m sorry for my assumption,” Smits said. “What’s the name of the bank?”
“BNSA. I have an address on De Boelelaan street.”
“That’s in the Zuidas, Amsterdam’s financial district. BNSA has its main branch and corporate headquarters there.”
“Do you have any contacts at the bank?”
“That depends on what you need to know.”
“Over the past five years our Canadian fraudster was transferring money on a regular basis to an account in that bank. I have the account number but not the name or any contact information attached to it. I’d like to know whose name the account is in and how to contact them,” Ava said. “I’d also like to know how much money is still in the account and, if money was moved, where it went. A Canadian lawyer hired by the victims traced the money to the bank but that’s as far as he got.”
