by Dave Daren
“You’re spinning fairy tales, Mr. Creed,” Kurzak warned. “Any judge is going to see right through your theories. We’ll have this whole thing tossed out of court, and Anna will be lucky if the company doesn’t sue her for defamation.”
“Maybe,” I shrugged. “But I’m guessing Anna messed up your plans somehow, so whatever the original plan was, it had to be adapted. I have no doubt that you or Watts was working hard to get Leo’s shares, because between the two remaining Bernardis, you figured he was the weaker link. Only, for all Leo’s faults, he was still loyal to his sister. He didn’t sell those shares, Mr. Kurzak.”
“We have his signature on a contract,” Kurzak snapped.
“A contract you witnessed,” I pointed out. “How did that happen?”
“It’s simple,” Kurzak replied. He had himself under control again, and his voice had taken on the disapproving parental tone he’d used in the beginning of our little confab. “You’re right that we’d been after Leo to sell his shares, and yes, it was because he’d be more willing to sell. The simple fact is that Leo had no interest in the company.”
“But why are you so determined to get the shares?” I demanded. “Leo wasn’t going to show up and suddenly start bossing people around.”
“Maybe not,” Kurzak conceded. “But Leo could be changeable. And Anna was the one who could change him. If Anna kept suggesting that a Bernardi needed to be in charge, he could very well decide that person was him.”
“Rather than Anna,” I clarified.
“Yes,” he said. “Or, as you’re no doubt about to point out, he might have decided that person was Anna. The problem, Mr. Creed, is that neither Anna nor Leo is qualified to run this company.”
“Anna has a business degree and has been a manager,” I pointed out.
“For a small manufacturing company,” Kurzak replied. “Shipping is its own beast, and it takes years to acquire the knowledge to become a master. The people who are here now have that knowledge. They’ve managed to grow this company, despite Arturo’s demise.”
“People like Watts,” I said.
“Yes,” he nodded. “Tucker has done an exceptional job for this company.”
“So what is his background?” I asked. “I’m just curious because I’ve had a hard time finding anything about him.”
“He worked mostly in Singapore,” Kurzak replied.
“And the others?” I asked.
“Others?” Kurzak repeated.
“The other board members,” I explained. “Are you saying they all have years of experience in the shipping industry?”
“They all have transportation experience,” Kurzak hedged. “Mostly in Asia, which is why they were brought in. Asia has always been our largest source of income.”
“Yes, I noticed that,” I replied.
“Did you?” Kurzak asked as he squinted at me.
“I looked through some of the spreadsheets you sent Anna,” I said with a shrug.
“Of course,” Kurzak nodded. “Mr. Creed, may I offer you a bit of advice?”
“I’m always open to advice,” I replied. “I just don’t make any promises about following it.”
“Well,” Kurzak sighed. “Follow this one. Drop this suit. Tell Anna to sell her shares and go live a happy life somewhere else.”
“I don’t think--” I started.
“That’s the problem,” Kurzak snapped. “Nobody thinks. I’ve watched Anna grow from a skinny little girl into this beautiful, amazing woman. I’ve shared a great deal of pain and misery as well as moments of sheer joy with her. She’s like a daughter to me, and because of that, I have done everything I can to protect her. But there’s only so much I can do.”
“Mr. Kurzak, what you’re saying--” I tried again.
“Save her, Mr. Creed,” he said sadly. “She won’t listen to me anymore, but she’ll listen to you. Now get out.”
Kurzak picked up his pen and started writing again. I wanted to argue with him, but there was nothing left to say. I tossed a ‘good night’ over my shoulder and slipped into the hallway.
Most of the lights in the building had been turned off, and I found myself in a strange semi-darkness. I passed the kitchen area twice before I located the conference room. At least, it looked like the same conference room. Around another corner, and yes, there were the cubicles and the glass doors to the elevator lobby.
“Mr. Creed,” a quiet voice called as I walked past a plastic plant. A silvery figure had appeared, and in the half-light, it seemed to shimmer.
“Fatima?” I guessed.
She stepped forward, and I could see her more clearly now.
“Fatima Batista,” I said quietly.
“Yes,” she replied. “How is Anna?”
“Heartbroken,” I said simply. “She and Leo may not have talked much recently, but she cared for him, deeply.”
“Please, tell her I’m sorry,” she pleaded. “I will be there for the funeral.”
“She’d like that,” I replied. “She misses you.”
“Mr. Creed,” Fatima began. She bit her lip and glanced behind me. “Tell Anna to be careful. This company isn’t the same one her father ran. There are some dangerous people around here now.”
“She knows that,” I assured her. “That’s why she wants to take it back.”
“She’s so like her father,” Fatima sighed. “Always ready to fight.”
“She is at that,” I agreed.
“Poor Leo,” Fatima whispered. “He didn’t deserve that.”
“Deserve what?” I asked. The little bit of news coverage that Leo’s death had generated had called it a suicide.
“Here,” Fatima said as she thrust a manila envelope at me. “You’ll need this.”
“Fatima, if you know something about Leo,” I said as I took the envelope.
“No, no,” she insisted. “I don’t know anything.” She gave my elbow a quick squeeze, then disappeared into the gloom.
I tucked the envelope under my jacket and made my way to the elevator. Back on the first floor, a different security guard was on duty. I gave him a nod as I passed the desk, but he barely looked up from his sports magazine.
I pulled out of the parking lot and made my way back towards the interstate. The envelope Fatima handed me was on the passenger seat, and I kept glancing at it. Like a kid at Christmas, I couldn’t take the wait. I pulled into a 7-Eleven parking lot, found a spot under a bright streetlamp, and opened the envelope.
The pages inside were still warm from the copier. I flipped through the small stack and realized it was copies of reimbursement requests and printouts of American Express charges. I went back to the first page and read more slowly.
What Fatima had handed me was an indictment of Kurzak. At the time he was supposed to be in Boston meeting with Leo, he had a business lunch with ‘Jack’ and ‘Artie’. That evening, he had dinner with an unnamed guest at a romantic French restaurant. There was a hotel charge for that night as well, but it was for one of the pricier places in Malibu, not Boston. Whatever Kurzak was doing that night, Leo’s signature wasn’t involved.
Chapter 7
I took another handful of aspirin and crashed early that night. My dreams were filled with strange, wispy figures that flitted around in a circle. I tried pushing my way through them, but there was nothing solid to push against. Yet whenever I tried to move forward, I couldn’t get through them. Then I heard Anna’s voice calling me from somewhere in the middle of the circle. I gave up on trying to push these things out of my way and just ran straight ahead. The figures scattered as I cut through them.
I finally arrived at the center only to find it wasn’t Anna. There was a large snake, wrapped around a dying tree. The snake slowly unwound from the tree and turned its brilliant gold eyes on me. They were chilling and carried the promise of death.
I woke up in a cold sweat. I glanced at the clock and saw that I only had another twenty minutes until the alarm went off, so I crawled from the sheets
and stumbled into the bathroom. There was a short supply of hot water for some unknown reason that morning so I finished quickly, and after a breakfast of nuked sausage biscuits, headed for the office.
The office was already warm when I arrived, and I cranked up the air conditioner before I settled at my table. I spread out all the information I had so far, including the copies Fatima had given me the night before. Then I drew a timeline and started to fill it in.
Sofia arrived around nine, this time with a bag of chorizo breakfast burritos. She dropped two in front of me without comment, and I vacuumed them up before I even realized what I had done. Time passed in a blur and only Sofia’s tap on my door brought me back to reality two hours later.
“I have some information for you,” she said.
“Aah,” I sighed as I stretched. “Good, because I need a break.”
Sofia joined me at the table and sat down in the other chair. She stretched her shapely legs and massaged her calf. I was mesmerized by the view.
“I think I pulled something this morning on my run,” she replied with a grin to my unasked question.
“Hmm,” I sympathized, “Maybe you should take some aspirin.”
“Is that what you’ve been using?” she asked with one raised eyebrow.
“Breakfast of champions,” I assured her. “Well, sore champions. So what do you have?”
“Your trucking company is a subsidiary of a Nevada holding corporation,” Sofia began. “They own a lot of companies, everything from concrete to soy farms. Anyway, the listed owner of the Nevada company is an address in the Caymans.”
I groaned. Cayman Island accounts of any kind were almost impossible to get information about and a sure sign of tax avoidance, at the very least.
“But wait, there’s more,” Sofia continued. “I made a few phone calls to the Cayman Islands. I was able to convince a very nice man in the tax office to give me a phone number for a place in Singapore. That led me back to San Francisco.”
“San Francisco?” I asked, surprised.
“A place called Dickinson’s Feed,” she said with a nod.
“Dickinson’s Feed,” I repeated. “It doesn’t sound like a front for a major Japanese gang, but I guess that’s the point.”
“I called them,” Sofia added.
“Who, Dickinson’s?” I asked.
“Yep,” she said with a nod. “It’s a local general store, mostly hardware supplies, some outdoor gear as well. It’s called Dickinson’s Feed because that’s primarily what they sold when the store was founded about sixty years ago.”
“Okay,” I said as I wondered where this was leading.
“Be patient,” Sofia told me with a wink. “The current owners of Dickinson’s Feed are Jim and Beverly. And they were very confused to learn that they’re the proud owners of several large corporations.”
“Keep going,” I encouraged.
“Well, I asked them if anything had happened around the time the Nevada corporation was formed,” Sofia explained. “Turns out, they had applied for a loan with their local bank but were turned down because of their age. So Jim went online and found a place that makes small business loans without asking any pesky questions about health or age. He checked it out and said it looked totally legitimate, so he and Beverly filled out the paperwork. Two weeks later, they had a nice little loan to expand their business.”
“Now this is interesting,” I commented. “What’s the loan company?”
“Guru Loans,” Sofia replied. “It’s based in India. I found an in-depth article from a few years ago when it was just starting out. The brains behind it is a guy named Pradesh. Originally, it just made microloans in developing countries. But then it got a nice inflow of cash from an investor, and it started making small business loans almost everywhere.”
“And this mystery investor?” I asked.
“Money from Japan,” she replied. “And this is where things get murky again. The investor is just that, an investor. There’s nothing that shows he has any ownership in the company. There was a lot of speculation in India at the time, but that was it. A few of the braver newspapers said the yakuza were behind the money, but those stories were quickly buried.”
“Why do I think there’s more yet to come?” I teased.
“You know me too well,” Sofia sighed. “About a year after the cash infusion, a lawsuit was filed against Guru Loans. I won’t bore you with the details, but the original complaint listed Guru Loans, Pradesh, a couple of his employees, and basically, a John Doe. The John Doe, according to the complaint, was a yakuza boss known as Mizuchi.”
“Does that name mean anything to you?” I asked.
“It’s a type of Japanese dragon,” she replied. “Mizuchi is his alias. There are a lot of rumors about who Mizuchi is, but no one really knows for sure. I did learn a lot about his gang though. They mostly move arms, but they also sell drugs and sex slaves.”
“Charming,” I said drily. “I’ll guess that Mizuchi never made it into court.”
“No,” she agreed. “He was dropped in the amended complaint.”
“And the case itself?” I asked.
“Settled out of court for an undisclosed amount,” she replied.
“So what did the attorney say when you called?” I prodded.
“How do you know I called?” she asked slyly.
“So far in this story, you’ve called the Caymans and Singapore. I can’t imagine a call to…” I prodded.
“Mumbai,” she added.
“Right, Mumbai, would phase you,” I finished.
“He was reluctant to discuss the matter,” she sighed. “The settlement included a nondisclosure agreement. But he did say that his client had survived several mishaps before Mizuchi was dropped from the lawsuit. After that, things proceeded as expected.”
“Why not just kill him?” I wondered.
“The case got a lot of local press coverage, at least initially,” Sofia said. “It was probably easier and cheaper to just buy the guy out. The lawyer also mentioned that another identical lawsuit was filed a year later and that plaintiff didn’t fare so well.”
“What happened?” I asked, genuinely curious.
“The plaintiff ended up at the bottom of a well,” Sofia said sadly. “His family was killed two days later by a fire that destroyed their home. Arson was blamed, but the investigation never went anywhere.”
“What changed between lawsuit number one and lawsuit number two?”
“As I said,” Sofia replied, “the first lawsuit had a lot of press coverage because the plaintiff was something of a local celebrity. He was a runner up in India’s version of American Idol. Plus, I don’t think it was a primary front for Mizuchi at that point. I tried piecing some numbers together on how much money they loaned out, and it definitely took off after the first lawsuit settled.”
“Testing the waters,” I mused. “See how far the authorities are willing to push.”
“That would make sense,” Sofia agreed. “The plaintiff in the second lawsuit was just a small business owner. The case got zero coverage until he turned up dead, and his family was wiped out. There was talk about the yakuza for about a month, and then everything went quiet.”
“We have several threads leading in and around Mizuchi,” I said, “but we still need to tie him and his gang directly to ArDex. Take another look at those filings in Mumbai and see how they did it. It may give us some ideas on where to look next. I’ll try calling the old board members and see what they have to say about Watts.”
“I’ll also check for any overlap between the current board and any of the other companies,” Sofia added.
“Focus on any transportation related companies first,” I suggested. “These guys specialize, just like executives at regular companies. It also gives them tighter control over the supply chain.”
“What else should we look at?” Sofia asked.
“I’ll let you know after I’ve finished this draft,” I sighed.
Sofia nodded and then retreated to her own desk. I debated what to do next, and decided I needed a break from writing legalese, so I opted to make phone calls instead. I pulled up the contact list that Sofia had started and dialed away.
I spent almost two hours on the phone, but I had a better idea of how Watts operated by the end of that time. Each of the old board members had a similar story: when Watts first took over, he approached each member separately and asked if that person had considered retirement. The answer was always no. A few even reminded Watts that his appointment was temporary, and everyone expected Arturo’s imminent return. No one seemed to like Watts and all agreed that he was a smarmy S.O.B.
When I asked how he had won the chairmanship when he was so universally disliked, no one seemed to know. There had never been an official vote, just a letter from Arturo Bernardi to the board, suggesting that Watts serve as chairman during his illness. The board had simply gone along. That led to the interesting tidbit that Kurzak was the one to supply the board with the letter. I made a note to myself to ask Anna about that.
What happened next was straight from the gangster’s handbook. Bad things started happening to board members and their family members. A daughter in college in Seattle was mugged and left for dead. Another board member was attacked outside his gym and spent two months in the hospital. A third board member saw his house turned into a pile of ash.
One by one, the board members stepped down, as did several key executives. Watts then filled each position personally. He had staged a coup and not one person outside the company seemed to notice.
The board were still loyal to Anna and to ArDEx, and each one of the retired members agreed to send over everything they had on the various attacks. Emails arrived with police reports, arson reports, insurance forms, and stacks of eyewitness accounts, photos, and in the case of the attack at the gym, a piece of video shot by a bystander. On the surface, the attacks appeared random, and there was no reason for any of the various police departments involved to talk to each other. But as I sat there reading the details on each crime, I began to see the pattern. We were that close to tying it all together.
