by John Grisham
The call came in on Todd’s third phone, the first of his prepaid variety, the one he’d purchased in D.C. the day Zola left for Senegal. Now that he had a fourth phone, he and his two partners were wondering how they might consolidate devices and live with only one. That did not appear likely.
The third phone number was the one he’d given to Mr. Rudolph Richard, and the call was devastating. Mr. Richard said he was using the phone because he did not want to leave an e-mail trail. The FBI had just contacted him with questions about the wire transfer sent from the Lucero & Frazier account with Citibank in Brooklyn. He, of course, answered none of their questions and did not confirm the existence of the York & Orange account with his bank. He gave them nothing, as usual, and under the laws of Barbados the FBI could not obtain information about the account. However, he, Mr. Richard, felt duty bound to inform his client that the FBI was on the way.
Todd thanked him, then ruined Mark’s day. Mark’s first thought was to contact Jenny Valdez and fish for information, but that was quickly dismissed as a rather stupid idea. If the FBI was using a full-court press, then any phone call to Cohen-Cutler would be recorded and traced.
It took Zola an hour to get to the hotel. They sat under an umbrella on a terrace and admired the ocean, though pleasant thoughts were impossible. Their worst nightmare was unfolding, and though they had often considered what might happen if things went off track, they were stunned by the reality. The FBI was on their trail. Which meant, of course, that their class action scam had been discovered, and that would lead to indictments, arrest warrants, travel alerts. Given the importance of fighting terrorism and narco-traffickers, it was impossible to know how seriously the FBI would pursue a little class action mischief, but they were assuming the worst.
Zola was particularly terrified, and with good reason. She had used her valid American passport to travel to Senegal, thus leaving a trail that any blind investigator could follow. The FBI could easily track her movements. And, to make bad matters worse, she had registered with the U.S. embassy in Dakar upon her arrival two weeks earlier.
Decisions were necessary. Since they had no idea what the FBI was up to, or how deep they were digging, or how close they might actually be in pursuit, the three decided to make plans. Todd would contact Mr. Richard in Barbados and transfer the remaining balance to the bank in Senegal. Zola would confide in Bo and tell him everything, but not her parents; maybe later, but not now. She would see Idina Sanga first thing the next morning and push along the process of becoming naturalized. If she were a proper Senegalese, extradition to the U.S. would be almost impossible. And she would gently explore the possibility of obtaining new documentation for a couple of friends.
Throughout Tuesday and Wednesday, the three were glued to their laptops as they searched the Internet for anything relevant to the Swift settlement. Nothing. Their chunk of the attorneys’ fees did not arrive at Citibank in Brooklyn, a rather clear indication that something was wrong. Finally, on Thursday morning, a financial site reported a slight snag in the Swift matter. A federal judge in Miami had halted further disbursements pending an investigation into allegations of fraud. A federal judge in Houston did the same. Nationwide, Swift had already paid almost $3 billion of the $4.2 billion settlement, but problems were popping up.
Although the fraud was not described, the three partners knew precisely what the investigators were finding.
—
MARK’S IDEA WAS to leave the country, and to do so without bothering with customs and passport control at the airport. They had the money to do anything, so his plan was to hire a car and a driver and hit the road. They could meander south through West Africa, take their time and enjoy the trip, and eventually make it to South Africa. He’d read that Cape Town was the most beautiful city in the world, plus they spoke English there. Todd was lukewarm to the idea. He wasn’t keen on spending a month bouncing along the outback and holding his breath every time some border guard with an assault rifle and an itchy finger studied his passport. He didn’t say no, because such an escape might one day become necessary, but he didn’t approve of it either.
Zola, however, said no. She was not leaving her family after what they had been through.
The investigation continued, though there was virtually no news about it. And so they waited. Zola felt far safer in Dakar, but once again she was living with the fear that someone might knock on the door.
—
THE RESORT CITY of Saint-Louis sits on the Atlantic, two hundred miles north of Dakar. With 175,000 residents, it is much smaller and quieter, but still large enough to get lost in. It had once been the capital of the country, and the French had built fine homes that had been well preserved. The city was known for its colonial architecture, laid-back lifestyle, pretty beaches, and the most important jazz festival in Africa.
Zola organized the trip. She paid a driver with an air-conditioned SUV, and she and Bo and her two partners left for a few days in Saint-Louis. Her parents were not invited. She and Bo were feeling suffocated by Abdou and needed a break. What they really needed was another place to live, with some distance between themselves and their parents. She had a hunch Saint-Louis might be just the spot.
Leaving Dakar, they realized their driver spoke little English, and as the time passed they talked more openly about the past six months. Bo had questions, some rather pointed at times. He couldn’t believe they had actually done the things they’d done, and Mark and Todd struggled to justify them. Bo was irritated that they had dragged his little sister into their schemes and scams. Mark and Todd were quick to take responsibility, but Zola stood her ground. She had a mind of her own and was capable of making her own decisions. Sure, they had made mistakes, but she was a part of every one of them. She blamed no one but herself.
Bo knew there was money in the bank, but had no idea how much. He was struggling to accept a future away from the U.S., the only home he’d ever known. He left a girlfriend behind and was heartbroken. He left a lot of friends there, kids from school, guys from the neighborhoods. He left a good job.
As the hours passed he lost his edge. He knew he would still be in jail if not for the money Mark and Todd had entrusted to Zola. He could not ignore the adoration those two had for his sister.
After six hours on the road, they crossed the Senegal River on the Faidherbe Bridge, designed by Gustave Eiffel, he of the tower fame. The old town was on N’Dar Island, a narrow strip of land with the ocean on both sides. They passed through blocks of beautiful old buildings and finally stopped at the Hôtel Mermoz near the beach. After a long dinner on the terrace, with the ocean below them, they went to bed early.
Real estate listings for the area were not as detailed as any place in the States, or in Dakar for that matter, but with a little effort Zola found what she was looking for. The house was built in 1890 by a French merchant and had changed hands many times. It was a three-story villa that looked nicer from the street than from behind its doors and windows, but it was charming and spacious. The wooden floors sagged here and there. The furniture was ancient, covered with dust, and mismatched. The shelves were filled with pots and urns and old books in French. Some of the plumbing worked; some did not. The round refrigerator was from the 1950s. The courtyard and balcony were shaded by thick bougainvillea and designed for the tropics. There was a small television in the living room. The listing promised Internet service, but the agent said it was slow.
They separated and drifted through the house, which would take hours to fully inspect. On a second-floor balcony, just off a bedroom suite that Todd was already claiming, he bumped into Mark. “They’ll never find us here,” Todd said.
“Maybe, but can you believe we’re actually here?”
“No. This is surreal.”
Regardless of their feelings, Zola loved the house and signed a six-month lease that equaled about $1,000 U.S. per month. Two days later, they moved in, with Todd and Mark taking the top floor—three bedrooms, two baths, and not a si
ngle working shower—while Zola took the master suite on the ground floor. Bo was stuck somewhere in between with more square footage than anyone. They stayed two more days and nights, buying supplies, changing lightbulbs and fuses, and trying to learn as much as possible about the house. It came with a gardener, Pierre something, who didn’t speak a word of English but was proficient at pointing and grunting.
The island was like Venice, a self-contained city surrounded by water, except it had beautiful beaches. The sand brought the tourists, and there were dozens of quaint, pretty hotels near the water. When they were not in the house doing chores for Zola, Mark and Todd were at the beach, drinking rum cocktails and looking for girls.
When Zola and Bo left in the SUV, Mark and Todd hugged them good-bye and said hurry back. They planned to be gone about a week, enough time to pack a few things and get disentangled from their parents.
That night, in the semi-lit living room of an old mansion built by Europeans in another century, another time, the two worked on a bottle of scotch and tried to put their lives in perspective. It was an impossible chore.
—
ON SUNDAY, JUNE 22, the Washington Post ran a front-page story under the headline “For-Profit Law School Scam Linked to New York Fund Manager.” Beneath the fold there was a large photo of Hinds Rackley. The story was basically a better-written version of what Gordy had plastered to his den wall, with dozens of companies and fronts and shells and law schools. Swift Bank, though, received little attention. It was obvious, at least to Mark and Todd, that the journalist had been unable to penetrate Rackley’s offshore companies that allegedly owned stock.
But the story was vindication, at some level. Gordy’s work had been validated. The Great Satan would now endure a PR nightmare, and though the story did not imply it, there was a good chance Rackley was now on the FBI’s radar.
They reveled in the story for a couple of days, then abruptly forgot about it.
Two days later, on June 24, Mark Frazier, Todd Lucero, and Zola Maal were indicted on federal racketeering charges by a grand jury in Miami. The charges were part of an ongoing investigation into numerous allegations of class action fraud in the Swift Bank settlement. More indictments were likely, according to the first report on Bloomberg. As Mark and Todd watched, the story spread throughout the web, but never achieved headline status. In the world of major business news, it wasn’t much of an event.
Perhaps not to the nation, but to the three defendants it was a rather big deal. Though they had been expecting it, the news was still frightening. However, they were prepared. They had a suitable hiding place and the FBI didn’t have a clue.
Zola was another matter. Mark and Todd doubted the FBI would go to the trouble of tracking her all the way to Dakar, and expect the police there to cooperate with an arrest, and then expect the Senegalese courts to extradite her, all for a crime that had nothing to do with terrorism, murder, or drug trafficking. They believed this, but they kept it to themselves. They were fully aware that by now Zola had little confidence in anything they said or believed, and with good reason.
Zola was making her own plans. She summoned them back to Dakar for an important meeting, one she had been putting together for some time. With the help of an intermediary referred by Idina Sanga, Zola had slowly worked her contacts until she found the right person. The deal was as simple as it was complicated. For $200,000 each, the government would issue new identities, new ID cards, new passports, and new proofs of citizenship to the three former UPL partners. The facilitator was a career state department official with clout. Zola met with him three times before they fully trusted one another. It was never clear how much the facilitator would earn, but Zola expected the loot would be diminished as it moved upward.
The deal was simple because it was cash for citizenship, a transaction hardly unique to Senegal. It was complicated because it required the rejection of who they were and where they were from. It was possible to maintain dual citizenship, but not in their real names. If they wished to become Senegalese and thus protected by the government and ostensibly hidden from the U.S. authorities, they could no longer be Mark, Todd, and Zola. Dual citizenship meant dual identities, something no government sanctioned.
They took the deal with no hesitation, except for some minor bitching over its cost. Their stash was now down to about $2.5 million, a nice cushion but the future was so uncertain.
They returned to Saint-Louis, and to their decaying villa, with new ID cards, new credit cards, and rather handsome new passports with their smiling faces. Mr. Frazier was now Christophe Vidal, or simply Chris. His sidekick was Tomas Didier, or Tommy around the house. Just two young men of French descent, though neither spoke a lick of their native tongue. The Caucasian population of Senegal was less than 1 percent, and the addition of two more gringos hardly moved the needle.
Zola was now Alima Pene, a proper African name. They began calling her Alice.
Bo, who wasn’t facing a string of felonies in the U.S., remained who he was. His paperwork would be far less expensive but take longer.
—
THE LAZY LIFE of sleeping, reading, watching the Internet, strolling the beaches, drinking, and having ocean-side dinners at midnight soon gave way to boredom. After a month or so of being full-blooded Senegalese, Chris and Tommy were looking for work, preferably something legitimate this time.
Their favorite bar was a thatched-roof hut nestled between two small resorts on the main beach, a five-minute walk from their villa. They spent hours there, playing dominoes, throwing darts, chatting with tourists, soaking up the sun, having lunch, and drinking Gazelles, a lager that seemed to be the Senegalese national beer. The bar was owned by a cranky old German woman whose husband had recently died. She waddled in occasionally to drink a few and snarl at the staff, all of whom rolled their eyes behind her back. Tomas began flirting with her and before long introduced his friend Christophe. They charmed her over a long lunch. The next day she was back for more, and during the fourth lunch Tomas asked if she had ever thought about selling the place. They were looking for something to do, and so on. She admitted to being old and tired.
They bought the bar and closed it for renovations. With Alice on board, they pumped in $80,000 for a fancier kitchen, bar equipment, and big televisions, and they doubled the seating capacity. Their business plan was to make it more of an American-style sports bar while keeping the local music, food, drinks, and decor. When it reopened, Alice was in charge of the dining room. Chris and Tomas worked the bar. Bo supervised a small staff in the kitchen. The place was packed from the opening bell, and life was good.
For the sake of memory, and a tip of the hat to another lifetime, they called it The Rooster Bar.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
As usual, I played fast and loose with reality, especially the legal stuff. Laws, courthouses, procedures, statutes, firms, judges and their courtrooms, lawyers and their habits, all have been fictionalized at will to suit the story.
Mark Twain said he moved entire states and cities to fit his narrative. Such is the license given to novelists, or simply assumed by them.
Alan Swanson guided me through the streets of D.C. Bobby Moak, a tort specialist with an encyclopedic knowledge of the law, once again reviewed the manuscript. Jennifer Hulvey at the University of Virgina School of Law walked me through the complex world of student lending. Thanks to all. They are not to be blamed for my mistakes.
The question all writers hate is: “Where do you get your ideas?” With this story the answer is simple. I read an article in the September 2014 edition of The Atlantic titled “The Law School Scam.” It’s a fine investigative piece by Paul Campos. By the end of it, I was inspired and knew I had my next novel.
Thank you, Mr. Campos.
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