Three Complete Novels: A Is for Alibi / B Is for Burglar / C Is for Corpse

by Sue Grafton

  “Where is she now?”

  “She’s moved back to L.A.”

  “That was quick.”

  “Like ripping off a Band-Aid. Better to get it over with.”

  “Did you learn anything?”

  “I doubt it. I was tired of feeling dead. Work we do, we take chances in the real world but not so much in here,” he said, tapping on his chest. “What’s love about if not risk?”

  I studied my plate, which was littered with potato chip crumbs. I licked my index finger and captured a cluster that I laid on my tongue. “You’re beyond my area of competence. These days, I seem to be surrounded by people who’ve got it wrong, Reba Lafferty being one.”

  He leaned forward, elbows on the table, holding his glass by the rim. “So let’s talk about her.”

  “What’s to talk about? She’s fragile. It doesn’t seem right to put the squeeze on her.”

  A flicker of irritation crossed his face. “Fragile, my ass. She’s the one who elected to get involved with him. Turns out, he’s a sleazebag in more ways than one. She should know what’s going on.”

  “You’re not doing this for her sake. You’re doing it for yours.”

  “What difference does that make? She needs to be told. Or do you disagree?”

  “What if the revelation pushes her over the edge?”

  “If she goes off the deep end, we’ll handle it.” His gaze shifted to a point just over my shoulder. I turned my head and caught a glimpse of a man I assumed was Vince Turner approaching to my left. Cheney slid out of the booth and the two of them shook hands.

  Vince Turner was a hefty man in his forties, round-faced, balding, wearing a tan raincoat. The wire stems on his frameless glasses had been bent at an angle that left them slightly askew. He toted a brown leather school bag that in sixth grade would have labeled him as hopelessly out of it. Now the scuffed handle and the buckles on the two exterior pockets marked him as self-assured.

  Cheney introduced us. Turner peeled off his raincoat and tossed it across the back of the banquette before he sat down. His suit was mud brown, the jacket wrinkled across the back. His trousers had accordion pleats radiating from the crotch because he’d sat in them too long. He loosened his tie and tucked the ends in the pocket of his dress shirt, perhaps to keep them from flapping in his food.

  “Have you eaten?” Cheney asked.

  “I had a burger in the car coming up, but I could use a drink.”

  Cheney signaled the waiter, who appeared moments later with a menu in hand.

  Turner waved it away. “Maker’s on the rocks. A double.”

  “Would you like anything else?”

  “That’s fine. What about you, Cheney?”

  “I’m good.”

  “By me,” I said.

  As soon as the waiter disappeared, Turner picked up his baton of napkin-wrapped flatware, unrolled the utensils, and set a place for himself. On his right hand he wore a heavy gold-and-garnet class ring, but there was no way to read the legend that encircled the stone. His face was shiny with perspiration, but his pale eyes were cold. He lined up the handles of his knife, his spoon, and two forks, then checked his watch. “I’m not sure how much Lieutenant Phillips has told you about me. It’s one-fifteen now. At two-fifty, I’ll be on a flight from here to LAX and then on to Washington, D.C., where I meet with a group of IRS investigators and the DEA. That gives us approximately one hour to conduct our business, so I’ll get straight to the point. You have questions or comments, feel free to raise your hand. Otherwise, I’ll talk until I get to the end. Is that agreeable?” He made another minute adjustment to the silverware.

  “Fine with me,” I said. I found it easier to watch his hands than to look him in the eye.

  “I’m forty-six years old. Since 1972 I’ve worked in the Criminal Investigation Division of the Bureau of Internal Revenue. My first assignment was as assistant to the man who pursued the case against Braniff Airlines in the laundering of illegal corporate campaign contributions. Braniff, like American Airlines, needed the occasional government assist in those days and began to funnel money to the Nixon re-election committee by way of Maurice Stans. You remember him?”

  He looked up at me long enough to see me nod.

  “Having cut my teeth on Watergate, I developed an appetite for financial chicanery. I’ve never been blessed with a wife or children. My job is my life.” He glanced down at his jacket and removed a tiny speck of lint. “A year ago, in May of 1986, Congress, in a rare moment of common sense, passed Public Law 99-570, the Money Laundering Control Act, which has provided us the hammer with which to pound the shit out of violators of the Bank Secrecy Act. The banking community is already feeling the effects. For a long time, banks in this country treated reporting requirements as a trivial matter, but that’s changed. Many violations once considered misdemeanors have now been elevated to felony offenses with maximum prison sentences, fines, and civil penalties. Crocker National Bank has been fined $2,250,000; Bank of America was fined $4,750,000; and Texas Commerce Bancshares was fined $1,900,000. You can’t imagine the satisfaction I’ve felt forcing these guys into line. And we ain’t done yet.”

  He paused, looking up with a smile that warmed his face from within. His ice blue eyes suddenly contained a merriment impossible to resist. I think in that moment, my position shifted. I’d do what I could for Reba, but if she came up against this guy, she was in deeper shit than she knew.

  The waiter arrived with his Maker’s Mark, which was the color of strong iced tea. Vince Turner sucked down half without hesitation and then placed the glass carefully in front of him. He folded his hands and lifted his eyes to mine. “Which brings us to Mr. Beckwith. I’ve spent the past year assembling a comprehensive dossier on him. As I’m sure you know, his lifestyle looks clean and his social credentials are solid, largely because of his late father’s standing in the community. He’s considered by most to be an honest, law-abiding citizen, who’d never dream of trafficking in drugs, pornography, or prostitutes.

  “He’s what we call a market-based offender. He takes the profits from these same illegal activities, disguises their origin, and introduces them back into the system as legitimate earnings. For the past five years, he’s been ‘rehabilitating’ funds for a man named Salustio Castillo, a Los Angeles jewelry wholesaler who also deals in scrap silver and gold. The business is just a cover for what he really does, which is to import cocaine from South America. Castillo bought a large property in Montebello through Mr. Beckwith’s real estate firm. Mr. Beckwith brokered the deal, which is how they became acquainted. Mr. Castillo needed someone of Mr. Beckwith’s professional reputation. His company is diverse and his financial dealings of sufficient magnitude to camouflage the funds Castillo was so eager to place. Mr. Beckwith saw the possibilities and agreed to help.

  “At first, he employed the standard laundering techniques—structuring transactions, consolidating the deposits, and using wire transfers to move the money out of the country. By the time the money was routed through his company books and back to Castillo, the sources appeared to be legitimate. After six months, Mr. Beckwith got tired of paying his smurfs or maybe he got tired of keeping track of the myriad accounts he’d opened across Santa Teresa County. He began to make big deposits—two and three hundred thousand dollars at a clip, claiming these were the proceeds of commercial real estate ventures. This time he was the model of compliance, making sure all the appropriate CTRs were filed. In truth, he was counting on the fact that the IRS has to process so many millions of CTRs that his were in little or no danger of being flagged for scrutiny. Soon he was running a million a week through the system, taking one percent off the top as his service fee.

  “Finally, deposits reached a level where the risks outweighed the benefits of doing business so close to home. Mr. Beckwith got nervous and decided to bypass the local banks and eliminate the paper trail. He acquired a Panamanian bank and an unrestricted banking license in Antigua, putting up the requisite on
e million in U.S. dollars as paid-in capital. He invested an additional five hundred thousand dollars for a second international banking license in the Netherlands Antilles, which doesn’t have a tax treaty with the U.S. at this point.”

  I raised my hand. “A million and a half? Is it really worth that to him?”

  “Absolutely. With his offshore banks, he can make deposits. He can write his own references, issue letters of credit to himself, all of this protected by complete privacy and with very little interference from the host countries. He doesn’t even have to be there to handle management. Keep in mind, too, when people hear you own a bank, they tend to be impressed.”

  I said, “I’ll bet.” Cheney caught my eye fleetingly, probably thinking, as I was, about the banks his father owned.

  Vince Turner paused and looked from Cheney to me.

  I said, “Sorry. Go on.”

  He shrugged and continued as though his commentary had been recorded in advance. “By law, an American citizen is required to declare all foreign bank accounts on their yearly tax returns, but these guys aren’t any more scrupulous about that than any other aspect of their business. Mr. Beckwith, under the auspices of the banks he’d bought, established an international business corporation, an IBC, in Panama, with shares being held in a Panama Private Interest Foundation, allowing him to avoid both U.S. and Panamanian taxation. With the shell company in place, he began to move currency physically from the States to his offshore havens. You move cash, Customs requires a CMIR—a Currency and Monetary Instrument Report—but Mr. Beckwith doesn’t much care for filling out these pesky little government forms. No forms means no more violations, at least to his skewed way of thinking. Once deposited in one of his offshore banks, monies are returned to Mr. Castillo in the form of business loans with a twenty-year balloon.

  “Of course, the transport of currency generates difficulties of a different sort. Bills are not only bulky, but weigh more than you’d think. The foreign markets prefer the smaller denominations—twenties and fifties. A million dollars in twenty-dollar bills tops out at over one hundred twenty-five pounds. Try toting that through an airport. Not a problem for our boy. The ever resourceful Mr. Beckwith leased a Learjet and now he flies suitcases full of cash to Panama every couple of months. Panama’s currency is the U.S. dollar, so he doesn’t even have to worry about the exchange rate. Between plane trips, he’s been taking his wife on a series of luxury cruises, moving the cash in a steamer trunk that he keeps in his stateroom.”

  Turner polished off his bourbon, signaling the waiter for another round. “Anybody ever tell you how much money gets laundered every year worldwide?”

  I shook my head.

  “One-point-five trillion dollars—that’s a one, a five, and eleven zeros—just so you get the picture. In the U.S., the figure’s somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty billion, but we’re talking about revenue that’s never taxed, so you see how serious it gets.”

  Cheney spoke up. “How much can you tell her about the investigation to date?”

  “Broad strokes? Four years ago the IRS, the DEA, the FBI, Customs, and the Justice and Treasury departments put together a task force to investigate gold and precious metals dealers in Los Angeles, Detroit, and Miami, all of whom we suspect are laundering money for a Colombian drug cartel. So far they’ve managed to place, layer, and integrate sixteen million dollars, running the cash through four businesses, using multiple accounts, at ten different banks, one of which has a branch here in town. Alan Beckwith is responsible for processing a substantial portion of that sum.

  “Ours is painstaking work. We’re still sorting out the particulars, developing as much hard evidence as we can before we make our move. The trick is not to alert him until we have all our ducks in a row. A U.S. District Court judge in Los Angeles and another in Miami have recently approved electronic surveillance. That’s allowed us to monitor Mr. Beckwith’s phone conversations. We’ve also obtained authorization to seize and remove trash from his home and business premises. Right now we have our merry band of agents picking through his garbage. They’ve found invoices listing fictitious addresses for nonexistent businesses, assorted handwritten notes, canceled checks, discarded typewriter cartridges and adding-machine tape. Mr. Beckwith has legitimate dealings with financial institutions on a number of fronts, and he’s skilled at mingling the profits from illegal activities with the mundane business he does from day to day. What he’s apparently unaware of is that financial institutions are required to save signature cards, account statements, copies of checks written for any amount over a hundred dollars. The banks also retain a transaction log of wire transfers, so they can properly account for funds passing through the system. The information is all coded, but it’s possible to use the sequence numbers to identify the source bank, the target bank, and the dates and times the money was sent on its way. We don’t yet have access to these documents, but we’re putting together the necessary paperwork to subpoena bank records.”

  The waiter appeared, setting down Turner’s second drink. A silence fell until he’d moved away from the table and out of earshot. Turner picked up his glass of bourbon. His drinking had slowed to a sipping pace, and I could see him savoring the taste.

  “What do you want from Reba? Surely you’re not asking her to waltz in and lift all the pertinent files.”

  “Not at all. In point of fact, we can’t instruct her to do anything that violates the law because we’re not at liberty to do so ourselves. Even if she stole the files without our prior knowledge or approval, we couldn’t even peek at them without jeopardizing our case. What we can ask for is an in-depth description of his records—the nature of the files he has and where they’re located—which will allow us to prepare financial and document search warrants. I understand you feel protective of Ms. Lafferty, but we need her cooperation.”

  “Isn’t there anybody else? What about his company comptroller?”

  “The company comptroller’s a fellow named Marty Blumberg. We’ve thought of him. The problem is he’s so deeply implicated he might panic and run, or worse, panic and warn Mr. Beckwith. Now that she’s not working for him, Reba’s been removed from the line of fire and she might be more inclined to help. Lieutenant Phillips showed you the photographs?”

  “Well, yeah, but I’m not sure what those are going to do for you. She finds out he’s in trouble, she’ll fall all over herself telling him whatever you tell her.”

  “I gathered as much. Do you have a suggestion about how to contain her reaction?”

  “No. To me, it’s like detonating a nuclear device. You risk as much destruction as you’re hoping to unleash.”

  Turner adjusted a minute irregularity in the flatware he’d aligned. “Point taken. Unfortunately, we don’t have much time. Mr. Beckwith has uncanny survival instincts. We’ve been discreet, but from the intelligence we’ve gathered, he may well suspect there’s something afoot. He’s consolidating his funds, picking up the pace, which we find worrisome.”

  “Reba mentioned that, but she’s convinced he’s doing it for her. He says once his assets are secure, he’ll dump his wife and the two of them can hit the highway. Or that’s what she hears. Who knows the truth of it?”

  “There’s no doubt he’s preparing to make a run for it. Another week and he might succeed in placing the cash and himself beyond our reach.”

  “Does the money belong to him or Salustio Castillo?”

  “His, in the main. If he’s smart, he’ll keep his hands off Salustio’s cash. Last guy who crossed Castillo got turned into a concrete popsicle in a twenty-gallon garbage can.”

  Once it was clear Vince was finished, Cheney said, “So. Who talks to Reba? You, me, or her.”

  There was a silence while all three of us stared at the tabletop. Finally, I raised my hand. “I’ve got a better shot at it than either one of you.”

  “Good. Give us a couple of days. As soon as I get back from Washington, I’ll set up a meeting with our FBI contact an
d the DOJ. Customs will want to sit in as well. As soon as we decide how we want to proceed, we’ll bring you in for a briefing, probably the beginning of next week. After that, we’ll hope to talk to her.”

  “You better make it good. I don’t look forward to delivering the news.”

  “Don’t worry about that. We’ll advise you in advance.”

  Cheney dropped me off at my office at 2:00 P.M. The afternoon temperature was climbing, a complete contradiction of the morning weather report that promised a moderate 74 degrees. Vince Turner had called a taxi to ferry him to the airport so he could catch his flight. I was hoping Cheney would have the good grace to deliver me without reference to Reba Lafferty or Beck, but as I got out of the car, he held up a manila envelope. “I had copies made for you.”

  “What am I supposed to do with ’em?”

  “Whatever you like. I thought you should have a set.”

  “Thanks so much.” I took the envelope.

  “Call me if you need me.”

  “Trust me. I will.”

  I waited until he’d turned the corner and the sound of his little red Mercedes had faded in the turgid afternoon air. I let myself into the office, where the air felt stuffy and dead. I passed through the reception area to my desk. I tossed my shoulder bag on the client chair and sat down with the manila envelope. I used it to fan myself and then undid the clasp and removed the prints. The photographs were just as I remembered them—Beck and Onni emerging from various motels, he with his arm around her, the two holding hands, Onni with her head on his shoulder and her arm around his waist, the two hip-to-hip walking in lockstep. Poor Reba. She was in for a rude awakening. I opened my desk drawer and tossed the envelope inside. I didn’t even want to think about the sorry task of breaking the news. In hopes of distracting myself, I did something I hadn’t done for ages. I walked the four blocks from my office into downtown Santa Teresa and caught two movies, back-to-back, watching one of them twice. I thus succeeded in dodging the heat and dodging reality at the same time.