Green-Eyed Monster

by Gill McKnight

  “You mean offshore laundering accounts.” Mickey had her voice back under control. “Somewhere FinCEN can’t find it, right?” Victoria winced at the mention of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, as if she had heard the most disgusting expletive ever. Another upset immediately surfaced. Something Mickey had mentioned earlier came back into Victoria’s mind with a vengeance. “Hey. What do you mean, you didn’t drug me?”

  “I mean I didn’t drug you. You were drunk on the kitchen floor. That’s why I thought you were Ginette.” Victoria frowned. It was true Ginette could be a real boozer when the mood took.

  “For your information, I was most definitely drugged. Are you trying to tell me you just happened along, presumed I was my lush of an ex, picked me up, and brought me here? Charming. I suppose that’s the only way you can get women into this hovel.”

  “What do you mean?” Mickey asked hotly.

  “I mean I’ve been looking around while you were snoring. This shack is in the middle of hillbilly country. There’s probably not a sane person between here and the nearest fishing hole, gator farm, or trailer park.”

  “It’s picturesque,” Mickey said.

  “It’s Redneck Central is what it is. You sit here all day long, dreaming of big money, playing with your computer… and your vibrator.” Mickey’s face flamed. Victoria switched straight into business mode now that she had suitably unsettled her adversary.

  “Why did you want to kidnap Ginette in the first place? What has any of it to do with intellectual copyright?”

  “You stole my idea.”

  “Your idea? You’re a software engineer, so I stole your code, right? Did I do this as your employer, or did I climb in through your window one night?”

  “Yes. No. I was working for you.”

  “As your employer, all your ideas concerning my business operation are mine. You, as the developer, get credited and handsomely recompensed through our bonus scheme, but the code belongs to the company. It’s perfectly legal.”

  “Well, if I say you stole it then you stole it. I got no compensation or credit. I got fired. You burned me, Victoria Gresham, and I wanted to get my own back.”

  “A million bucks’ worth of compensation? That’s what your ransom note asked for. Must have been a really awesome idea for you to deserve that much. What was it?”

  “Code FX90.”

  Victoria stilled. That little bit of programming had proved invaluable and given her company a real edge over their competitors. It ran a calibration that gave out predictive statistics, plus damn good trend factoring and forecasting. All in all, a little honey of a tool, awesome indeed. Still, it never merited a million bucks, not in anybody’s money.

  “I was never made aware that FX90 was the work of one employee. Who did you submit it to?”

  “My supervisor, and then I was told it went straight to your office. They said you loved it and I was gonna get a big fat bonus, then bam! I was out. Turned up one morning and couldn’t even get in the door. You conspired against me.”

  “Look, I have no idea who you are. I’d never even heard of a Michaela Rapowski until you swooped into my kitchen and snatched me. FX90 was good, but it’s just a little in-house tool, likes dozens of others we developed over the years.” Victoria spelled it out. “I think someone stole your idea, and with it your bonus money, too, and got you kicked out before you knew what was happening. But be assured it wasn’t me. I would have kept talent like yours onboard. Did any of your former colleagues know what you were working on?”

  “No. Didn’t mix much. We were a quiet bunch.” Victoria rolled her eyes. Geeks . “So you have no witnesses. And I bet your machine has been rebuilt. Any other evidence the code’s yours?” She picked up her old discarded blindfold and tied it around Mickey’s eyes.

  “Only on my own home machine. Hey, what’s with the blindfold? I already know what you look like.”

  “You’ll see soon enough. Come on. Let’s go get lunch.” She led her toward the door. Three feet out into the hallway she let go, and Mickey walked straight into a wall.

  “Ow. Hey, what did you do that for?”

  Victoria sighed. “I could walk the entire floor plan of this place in a blindfold and bump into nothing. You can’t even find your own kitchen. Remember that if you ever decide to wander off.”

  “I’ve never had to walk around the damn house blindfolded before, now have I?”

  “And whose fault is it you’re doing it now, hmm? Let’s ask ourselves why you are in this predicament, Mickey.”

  “Is this why you did it? So I’d knock myself stupid if I tried to run?”

  “There’s no way you’ll ever knock yourself smart.” She grabbed her arm and redirected her toward the kitchen. “Not even with a ten-pound hammer.”

  ❖

  Victoria watched Mickey slowly chew her sandwich. Her face was a mask of concentration and then she suddenly turned to Victoria, a plan obviously fixed in her mind.

  “I think I know how to retrieve your money. You’re the one who knows where to start. Free me and I’ll find your lost funds.” She announced her cunning deal. “Bet you one ransom and a head start I can.”

  Victoria smiled; she had been prepared for this offer. “No ransom. You get your original owed bonus and your freedom. Take it or leave it.”

  “What? Two hundred and fifty thou? But you’re losing millions even as we speak. And here you are trying to bargain me down.” Mickey looked insulted.

  “This is your chance to break even. You get the money you claim you were always owed, and you get to make things right with me. I think it’s pretty damned generous of the universe to give you a second chance. I mean, out of the two of us you’re the Little Buddha, Mickey. What do you think? What’s it to be, cops or robbers?”

  The dry swallow working along Mickey’s throat told her she’d hit a nerve. But she also knew Mickey would be calculating the odds of squeezing more out of her.

  “I’m not a Buddhist. Meditating to pan pipes doesn’t make you a Buddhist.” Mickey tried to deflect. Victoria’s eyes hardened to flint at the delaying strategy. There was no time to spare.

  “In or out? If you can’t cope, get off the boat, Mickey.” The little dig broke the impasse. It earned Victoria a hot glare and a sullen pout that made the dimple pop. Victoria felt a strange corresponding pop in her heart. She’s doing it again. She’s doing that crack candy thing again. She is such a manipulator and she isn’t even aware of it.

  “In.” Mickey had no other option. It was a fair but totally ruthless offer, considering her alternative was to lie tied to a bed waiting for cowbells to eventually change to police sirens.

  ❖

  A few hours later Mickey had finally pinpointed Ginette’s e-signature. It traced across several dubious offshore companies Victoria had highlighted as her own creations, to a bank in Monaco. This particular financial house dealt primarily in currency exchange in a country with extremely high financial caps and soft tax legislation. It was an ideal resting place after the complex network of layering accounts Ginette had been moving the stolen money through.

  “My God,” Victoria said as she leaned over Mickey’s shoulder and glared at the myriad of pages she was pulling up to mark the transfers. “I’d never have believed she had it in her. I knew she was cooking the books, but I never suspected she could manage finance at this level. Boy, was I ever wrong.”

  “She can’t be that dumb. She works for you.” Mickey’s comment was heavily loaded. She removed her glasses and rubbed her eyes. Victoria shot her a sharp glance.

  “How did you know that?”

  “I worked for you, too, remember? It was open gossip your lesbian lover was an employee.”

  “She had a good job in a trusted position, but as we were breaking up she started lining her nest.” Victoria grudgingly revealed a personal problem. “Just a few grand here and there out of our private accounts. Nothing corporate.” She shrugged awkwardly. “I suppose she was anxious at
not managing without me, and by ‘me’ I mean my money. Ginette always did love the good life. But I never expected this. God, such opportunism. You gotta admire it.”

  “Well, admire away. There’s your money either sitting in or well on its way to Monte Carlo.” Mickey casually waved a hand at the screen. “Her entry point was easy since you’d already set up bogus shell companies in several tax havens. You had so many laundering networks it was simple for her to move large amounts of new money through. When it reached the outer edge, it simply dropped off into her own newly created accounts. It’s like a game, sort of like Shove Penny at the fairground. Lucky for you, her accounts are all with the same bank. She’s basically slowly smurfing all your dollars through your own illegal company accounts, scooping up more and more of your assets on the way.”

  “Smurfing?”

  “Transferring it in small parcels, say several hundred thou at a time, so as not to tip off her host country’s financial authorities that something stinks. She’s opened several false accounts I can identify, but all the funds aren’t there yet. There are still large amounts to be siphoned off from most of your major offshore facilities, but basically, she’s sliding through your own laundering services like an oily snake.”

  Victoria scanned the details Mickey pulled up on the screen.

  “Yes, you’re right. I recognize these. They’re my…bonus accounts sitting in my…mmm, hobby companies.” Mickey snorted. “Hobbies.”

  “Hey. Luxury yachts, fine art, and diamonds happen to be my hobbies, okay? We’ve all got our interests. You have your computer games. I don’t pooh-pooh those.” Another snort. “I don’t need to hide my computer games in Belize, or Uzbekistan, or—”

  “Oh, quit preaching and help. So how do I stop her from emptying what’s left in my accounts? And more importantly, how do I get the money out of her Monegasque accounts and back into mine?”

  “You can’t. All I can do is show you where it went. It’s all under her control now. I mean, you can’t really go complaining that your tax evasion funds have been stolen. She’s also managed to cover her ass with several of your bogus companies, so if you go sniffing around, you’ll blow your own cover. Seems you taught her well, even if it was by osmosis.”

  Victoria sighed. This seemed as far as she could go for the meantime. The next step required a little more thought and a possible confrontation with her ex-girlfriend somewhere, somehow. Some hope! They sat in contemplative silence until a deep belly growl drew her into the present. Mickey glanced down at Victoria’s stomach. She had the grace to blush at its gurgling protests. Mickey looked up. “Time for dinner, it seems. Please let me cook this time.”

  “Maybe. But you’re having a shower first. You stink.” Victoria placed a cuff on Mickey’s wrist.

  “Hey, I thought we had a deal?” Mickey rattled the cuff.

  “Yes, and we’re halfway through it, and things don’t look too good. Last thing I need is you bailing on me, Mickey. You’re my Plan B. If things go really wrong, I can always hand you over to the police as my kidnapper and watch my whore of an ex explain where the million for the ransom went. It might be all I recover, but it’s better than nothing.” Her logic was cold and bitter. Mickey looked at her in dismay as Victoria gently guided her away from the desk. “Did you really think I had no Plan B?

  Tell me, Mickey, what’s yours?”

  ❖

  Victoria sat on the toilet seat filing her nails as Mickey clumsily tried to wash the shampoo out of her hair.

  “This is impossible with just one hand.” Victoria scanned Mickey’s lean body, water cascading pornographically down its length. Now I understand why those men’s magazines make millions. She’s so goddamn goofy and gorgeous, and she has absolutely no idea. Note to self: start porn empire.

  “If I don’t rinse out all the shampoo, my hair goes frizzy.” Mickey’s left wrist had been cuffed to the shower rail above, severely inhibiting her movements.

  “So what? Maybe your mother won’t recognize your mug shots on the front pages. I mean that’s a good thing, right?”

  “You know I was kind to you. I could have made your past few days miserable, but I didn’t, I—”

  “Yes, it was peachy,” Victoria bit back. “Drugged, kidnapped, and raped. It’s all going into my biography, you know. Along with your frizzy mug shot.”

  “I did not drug you. It was not rape. We were together. We made lo—had sex. It was consensual. Victoria, please don’t call it something else.” Mickey was anxious and upset now. The cuffs rattled hard against the rail.

  “Yes, let’s talk about it. Because let me assure you I was most definitely drugged.”

  Mickey stood silent and stiff as the water continued to stream down her body. Victoria slowly rose and approached, producing a key from her pocket. She looked Mickey square on as she released her hand from the rail.

  “You drugged me. And you abducted me. It was premeditated and it was cruel. And yes, we had sex, but I was blindfolded, scared, and alone. You fucked me over on so many levels, Mickey, and for what? Your money? Your dues? Your million bucks? If you’d done your homework, you’d have found two hundred and fifty thousand is the set bonus for the patent of an employee’s work, not one million. Two hundred and fifty thousand, that’s the amount someone else stole from you, along with your precious code. Believe me, I will find out who it was, but you’ll be incarcerated long before then for this joke of a kidnap. No wonder you’re such a loser. You’re greedy and you’re lazy.” She snapped both arms behind Mickey, turned off the water, wrapped Mickey in a huge towel, and then led her back to the bedroom.

  “Why the hell didn’t you turn to me with a complaint instead of rohypnol?”

  ❖

  Now in a big terry robe, Mickey sat tied to the bedroom chair. Victoria hummed tunelessly, as usual, fussing around her as she braided and played with the long, damp hair.

  “But I don’t want braids! Ow, that hurts. Stop tugging,” she said, trying to twist her head away.

  “Can it, Heidi. It’s braids for you and your rat’s nest.” Victoria continued working with the hairbrush. “As a little girl I always wanted a Barbie, and you know what Santa brought me? A toy supermarket. So much for lesbian feminist parenting.” She wagged her hairbrush in Mickey’s face. “But let me tell you, that was the best run play supermarket on my street. All the neighborhood kids dropped in to fill their little toy wheelie carts with the mixed candy I bought for a dollar and sold at thirty percent mark-up!”

  Mickey rolled her eyes. It was easy to see where the Business Woman of the Year—several times over—had learned her trade.

  “So you’re saying if Santa had gotten you a Barbie doll you might be Hairdresser of the Year now? How good would that be? Ow. Be careful.”

  “Have you got a sensitive scalp or something? I’m barely touching you,” she said. “This is great fun. I’ve always wanted to do this, just never had the right sort of girlfriends.” Mickey almost felt a twinge of pity for her, until her braids were clipped in a pretzel shape to the top of her head. Victoria grinned mischievously. “Oh Princess Leia, you look so cute.”

  “Enough with the stupid edelweiss hair! You really are one evil little bitch.”

  Victoria dangled the cuff keys suggestively. “Okay, new Plan B, Mickey. Whether we recover the money or not, you’ll go free. But if you help claw most of it back, then that bonus you’re owed? Let’s call it double or nothing.”

  “Then you need to give me the security details for all the shell accounts you hold.” Mickey got down to the real business.

  “Especially the ones Ginette hasn’t gotten to yet. Best bet is to empty whatever’s left into a new account we’ll set up. At least that money will be safe and she’ll have no idea where it is or how to find it.”

  As she stood to unbraid her hair, Mickey’s short terry robe rode up, revealing the curve of her bottom where it met the gentle swell of her hamstrings. Victoria stilled as she drank in the rounded sweep o
f tanned flesh. Her throat closed, causing her to swallow hard. She was a little surprised at how caught out she felt at such a simple thing as the flash of this woman’s thigh. It made her completely lose focus on her plans for life, never mind the next five minutes.

  “As for Ginette’s new accounts,” Mickey said, gathering enthusiasm for her subject, “I can try to hack them, but I’ll need as much information as possible. Dates, names, places, phone numbers, lucky numbers. Anything she might use to set up account security for herself.” Mickey stopped talking as she realized Victoria was ogling her rather than paying attention. Her eyes darkened and an unsettled look flitted over her face.

  Victoria felt her own face flush in an abashed mixture of blatant longing and stinging embarrassment at being caught staring.

  “Don’t worry. I’m not into sexual molestation,” she snapped, surprised at the aggression that crept into her voice.

  “I didn’t think you were.” Mickey came back just as sharp.

  She was tired of the never-ending implications that last night had not been mutual. That she had forced herself on Victoria, that her kisses and caresses had not been welcomed. It was not her cross to bear that Victoria Gresham had problems processing her own sexual needs and behavior.

  “There’s still not a lot of money in her new accounts yet,” Victoria said, shifting things back to the task at hand. She brought out a bottle of cognac and poured them each a glass. “We need to somehow figure out how to get into them and get my money back out.” Victoria was anxious to understand everything about Ginette’s actions. “Why is she moving so slowly?”

  “I told you. She’s smurfing. It’s a slow but sure way to sneak money around. Next time you look, you could be cleaned out.” Mickey shrugged. “So think about those numbers. I need to break her security. And remember, even though she set up several accounts, the cognitive processes should be recognizable. Once I crack one, the rest will be easier to break.”