Six O'Clock Silence

by Joanne Pence

  “That’s good news,” Rebecca said. “Whatever we can use that might get him to talk is fine with me. I’ll do what I can to catch the next plane out. Thanks for letting me know.”

  She found a nonstop, two-hour flight from San Francisco International to Phoenix leaving in about ninety minutes, with a late night return. She dashed out of Homicide saying only she’d be away most of the day, but back that night. Thanks to BART trains and TSA pre-check, she made the flight.

  At the Phoenix airport, she rented a car and drove to the Arizona State Prison. Deputy Swann was there when she arrived and led her to an interview room where Egerton waited with a legal aid attorney at his side.

  The prisoner sat slumped in the chair, handcuffs on his wrists, and a smirk on his face. He was skinny, with spiked brown hair, and looked surprisingly young.

  “Well, well, well, look who's here again,” Egerton said as his gaze slowly slid over Rebecca’s body. “You just can’t keep away from me, can you?” He chuckled. “But, it doesn’t change anything. Like I told you last time, I don't have anything to say about any bank in San Francisco or any dead skank who worked there.”

  “And here I thought you were one of the good guys, Cory,” Rebecca said as she sat down facing him. Detective Swann took the seat at her side, but sat back a bit to make it clear that this was Rebecca's show. “I thought you actually liked Isabella. After all, she did make you her assistant. I guess there was something good about you at least one time in your life.”

  “Or maybe it was simply that I was in the job before she got promoted ahead of me.”

  “Look,” Rebecca said, “I don't know why you're protecting people you obviously don't care about, but all I can say is if you tell me something about what happened four years ago in that bank with Isabella and API Holdings, I'm sure the prison officials here will be willing to give you back at least a couple of your privileges. I've been told you were a bad boy for a while and they had to punish you. But bad boys can become good if they help law enforcement. And anything you can tell me, would be a definite help.”

  “Are you jiving me?”

  “No, not at all.”

  Egerton tried to fold his arms, but the handcuffs made that impossible. He glared down at them with disgust. “I'd like to get my computer privileges back,” he said. “If you can make that happen, I could see myself cooperating. At least a little bit. I might not know a whole lot about it, but I might know something.”

  “I can do that,” Rebecca said.

  “Prove it.”

  Rebecca glanced at Deputy Swann. “Yes,” Swann said.

  Egerton looked at the legal aide at his side, and the woman nodded.

  “Okay, I was never a part of it,” Egerton said. “I want to be clear about that. But I know a money laundering scheme when I see one, and in time, so did Isabella. The way it worked was the holding company would buy a new piece of property and next thing we knew, some joker we never heard of before would come into the bank requesting a loan for that same piece of property and he'd have papers, statements, and references up the wazoo that made it so there was no way we could turn down the loan.”

  “So, you're saying it wasn't a loan to buy the property, it was a loan against the property? Like, say, an equity loan?” Rebecca asked.

  “Exactly. I went to Isabel and told her I didn’t like what I was seeing. She was glad to hear it because she had thought the same thing for a long time. Based on what I had to say, she decided to look into this holding company and the loans it was making. She found that in the past ten or twelve years that the thing had existed, no one ever repaid a single cent on those loans. Money laundering, pure and simple. She decided she was going to tell the feds about it. I'm not sure which feds. The FBI? The FDIC? I have no idea. All I knew was that if she did go that route, probably the branch where I worked, if not the whole damn bank, would be shut down. So I went to my boss. I told Skarzer what she found and what she was planning to do.”

  “Why didn't Isabella go to Skarzer herself?” Rebecca asked.

  “Simple. She suspected he was a part of it. In fact, she suspected they all were. After all, Audrey Poole treated them all real good.” Then, to Rebecca’s surprise, he grinned. “In fact, if they’d offered me a cut of the action, things might have turned out differently.”

  “But I take it, they didn’t.”

  “No. They were damn fools.”

  She let it pass. “So what happened?”

  “Skarzer told me he’d get back to me soon, and after an hour or so, he called and said I needed to convince Isabella he wasn’t in on the scheme, but believed her—and me—that it was happening under his nose. I was to tell her to meet him at six a.m. the next morning at a coffee shop in Sausalito. We were supposed to have a big bank meeting later that day, and he said he wanted to meet and talk to her before the meeting ever happened. So I told her about it, and she agreed. And I never saw her alive again.”

  “I see,” Rebecca murmured. “Did you believe Skarzer’s story that he wasn’t involved in the scheme?”

  “Hell, no!”

  Rebecca drew in her breath. “Do you have any idea what might have happened to Isabella as she drove to the Golden Gate Bridge on the way to Sausalito that morning?”

  “That, I don’t know,” he said. “I don't know if she was in an accident, or if Skarzer, or someone else, paid someone to make Isabella run into that wall. I mean, I wouldn’t have told her to go to the meeting if I thought it’d be dangerous. I really didn’t. And everyone at the bank, including the managers, acted real upset by her death. Everyone liked her, and I think everyone was sorry that she had died.”

  “You said you contacted Skarzer to save your job. Why, then, did you quit working at the bank?”

  Egerton lifted his eyebrows. “Wouldn’t you, given what I knew?”

  Rebecca felt sick to her stomach at hearing the story. It was what she suspected, but it would be difficult to prove. And there was always the possibility that it wasn’t a bank manager who had caused Isabella's death, but Audrey Poole or one of her people. Rebecca could well imagine Skarzer being petrified by the news Egerton gave him, calling Poole, and then Poole or others she worked with took charge.

  Rebecca simply didn't know, and now Poole was dead, and the holding company off the books.

  She thanked Egerton and Deputy Swann for their assistance. As Egerton was escorted back to prison, Rebecca and Swann went back to Swann's office where a copy of the tape was given to Rebecca to bring back to San Francisco.

  “I hope the interview helps with that cold case you've been working on,” Deputy Swann said.

  “It does,” Rebecca replied. “It certainly does.”

  o0o

  Rebecca didn’t arrive back in San Francisco until ten that night, but instead of going home, she went to Richie’s club.

  She was tired and frazzled, and knew she looked it, but there was no good time to deliver the news. She was halfway into the club, heading toward Richie's office, when he caught up with her. He looked as suave and debonair as always in his black suit, white shirt and black bowtie, but his expression was worried.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked. “I’m always glad to see you, but you should be taking it easy. Instead, you look exhausted.”

  She drew in her breath. She knew this wasn’t going to be easy, and she had no idea how badly he might respond. “Let's go somewhere we can talk,” she said softly.

  He took her arm and led her to his office, only stopping long enough to tell the bartender to send in a mai tai—her favorite drink—and a glass of ice water.

  As soon as they reached his office, she faced him and handed him the cassette with the recording made in the Arizona prison. “I hope you have a tape recorder somewhere in this building,” she said.

  He looked at the tape, his brow furrowed. “I'll get one.” He made a phone call to the nightclub's manager and asked him to bring in a cassette tape recorder ASAP. At the same time, a cocktail w
aitress arrived at the office with Rebecca's drinks.

  “Thanks,” she said to the waitress as she left the office, then turned to Richie. “I've just gotten back from Phoenix and I have news. I found Cory Egerton.”

  “You’re kidding me,” Richie said. “Not even Shay could do that.”

  She drank down the water quickly, and then explained how she found Egerton and how, during her second visit to Phoenix, he finally told her what he knew had happened four years earlier. As she finished with her explanation, Tommy Ginnetti, Big Caesar’s manager, showed up with an old cassette tape recorder. He found an outlet to plug it in, took one look at the expressions on Richie and Rebecca’s faces, and left the office with barely a word.

  Richie put the tape into the machine and pressed Play.

  She finished her mai tai as he listened.

  When the tape ended, he sat not moving for a long moment, his lips tight, his expression bleak. “God damn,” he muttered as he hit the Stop button. He took a deep breath, then faced her. “It sure as hell sounds like the boys at the bank were involved. Or,”—he stopped talking and his eyes narrowed— “or more likely someone connected with Audrey Poole did it for them. I can’t see any of those bank guys having the guts to order a hit on a person, but I sure as hell can see them running to Audrey with their fears about Isabella going to the Feds. What happened to her is the kind of thing that happens to people who get in the way of big-time money launderers.”

  “I was wondering the same thing about Poole,” Rebecca said. “I doubt those bankers have a hit man on their speed dial.”

  “After meeting those three,” Richie said, “I don't think they had it in them. Plus, Edgerton's on tape saying Skarzer took an hour before calling him back to set up the six a.m. meeting with Isabella. I suspect he made some desperate phone calls and was told what to do. But, even if the bankers didn't actually order the hit, they’re ultimately responsible. And they're going to pay.”

  Now, it was Rebecca’s turn to pale. This was exactly what she feared. “I have friends in the FBI,” she said quickly. “Please, Richie, you don't have to do anything, and I don't want you to do anything. Let me go to the FBI and let's have them handle it.”

  Richie’s eyes smoldered. “Sure, Rebecca, I wouldn't dream of stepping on the FBI's toes.”

  Like hell. “I should get home,” she said. “It’s been a long day.”

  He took her in his arms. “I know this wasn’t easy for you, and I can’t begin to tell you how much I appreciate all you’ve done. You’re the best.”

  The ‘best,’ yeah, just like Shay and Vito…

  She stepped back from his embrace, but couldn’t stop herself from reaching up and straightening the lock of hair on his forehead that had gotten mussed as he held her. “I worry about you, Richie.”

  “I know you do—just as I do, you,” he murmured. “But I’ll be fine. I promise.”

  As she left the office, she saw that he was already on his phone. Just before she shut the office door behind her, she heard Richie's voice saying, “Shay, I’ve got news.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Richie and Shay stood outside Ethan Nolan’s Filbert Street apartment building early the next morning. It was cold; both men were miserable from not having had enough sleep, but also ready to do what needed to be done.

  As soon as Nolan stepped out the door, they each took an arm and whisked the bank’s data operations manager into Richie’s big BMW, a car he rarely drove except to take Carmela places from time to time. Shay got in the backseat with Nolan while Richie drove to an older building in a poor, not yet gentrified area off Third Street. Nolan tried to question them, wanting to know what was going on, but neither Richie or Shay gave him any answers.

  They pulled him from the car and led him through the empty building to a small room with nothing but a computer, printer and desk.

  They half-shoved Nolan into the desk chair, then loomed over him.

  “We know what happened to Isabella,” Richie said. “We tracked down Cory Egerton, and he told us everything about Skarzer, Yamada, and you. The three of you conspired with those involved in API Holdings to launder money. When Isabella found out, it led to her death. You know what that means, Nolan. You’ve got to know what you’re looking at now that the police are involved.”

  “I don’t know anything,” Nolan insisted. He was beyond scared, and on the verge of tears. His eyes darted back and forth between Richie and Shay, clearly remembering how easily they had been able to shove him around as if he weighed no more than a child.

  “Let me show you some of the information we picked up off of Isabella’s laptop.” Shay tossed the paperwork he had printed out onto the desk in front of Nolan.

  Nolan’s eyes blinked several times and then he slowly, carefully, thumbed through the paperwork. “I’ve never seen any of this stuff before. I have no idea what it means. I’m just a data operations guy.”

  “You know exactly what it means.” Richie pounded the desktop to punctuate his words. He leaned closer to Nolan. “And everyone knows that not a thing happens in a bank without data operations processing it. To the cops, that makes you as complicit as everyone else.”

  “And,” Shay said, “you moved API Holdings account information off the bank’s system. You scrubbed it clean. What’s that, if not proof that you’re involved?”

  “Really, guys.” Nolan’s voice squeaked and he raised his hands high. “I had nothing to do with this. I only did that because the branch manager insisted. He gave me a bullshit reason, but the guy is my boss.”

  “How could you not know it was illegal?” Richie asked.

  “I didn’t know—or want to know—any of the details!” Nolan cried. “But I’ve got a thumb drive with the account information on it. I’ll give it to the police or whoever.”

  “I’ll need to see it first,” Shay said, “to make sure it’s what you say it is.”

  “Sure. I’ll do whatever I can to help you to prove I’m innocent. Really, I paid no attention to what they processed. For one thing, why would I care? I mean, this API Holdings that you talk about, it didn’t mean a thing to me. Really.”

  Richie looked at Shay. “I suppose, if Nolan here gives us a bit more information to back up what the police and the Feds have against Skarzer and Yamada, they might be willing to see him as someone who is assisting them rather than an accessory to a crime.”

  “You could be right,” Shay said to Richie.

  Nolan looked hopeful for the first time. “He is right. I can help you. Really. This computer—I can log into the bank’s system. Whatever you need, I can find it.”

  Shay eyed Nolan. “I know exactly what we need to give the Feds, as well as the police, as proof that money laundering was going on here, and that the bank’s officers did nothing about it. I’ll tell you what we need, you get it for us, and only after that will we make sure that you’re off the hook—at least in this API Holding situation.”

  Nolan swallowed hard, then nodded. He put his hands over the keyboard. “I’ll login from here and you tell me what you want.”

  o0o

  Mrs. Brannigan had already retired for the night when Shay’s doorbell rang. He froze. Someone coming to see him after midnight couldn’t possibly be good news. He didn’t think it would be Richie. After their little “meeting” with Ethan Nolan, they had worked out a plan. Unless more news broke, Richie didn’t need to see him in person. And he didn’t think Rebecca had enough evidence to arrest him for aiding Salma. Not yet, anyway.

  The doorbell rang again. He was afraid it might be Salma, even though she should be safely in Canada. He had heard from the pilot he’d hired to fly her there that everything had gone smoothly. The Lebanese passport he’d commissioned was waiting for her when she arrived in Toronto, along with a good sum of money, and several burner phones, if needed. Hopefully, she would find it easy to blend in with the ever-growing new immigrant population of the city. But he knew she would miss her children terribly. Wh
at if she had changed her mind and came back? He hurried down the stairs and flung open the door.

  Salma’s father stood on the stoop, his granddaughter at his side. “Zair,” Shay whispered, looking from him to the girl.

  “Gebran gave her to me. He said he didn’t want to raise someone else’s child, that his mother had been right about Salma all along, and he felt like a fool having believed her for all these years. Salma told me if that ever happened—she knows Gebran well—that I should bring the girl to you.”

  “What?” Shay was stunned, both at Zair’s words and that Salma would think he could care for a child. “I don't know the first thing about—”

  “She’s a good girl. She’ll be no trouble,” Zair said. “I think we should come inside and talk. We are both very tired. Your apartment is up the stairs, right?”

  “But…”

  Without waiting for Shay’s response, Zair led the girl up to the living room. Shay shut the door and followed them.

  The girl and Zair waited in the middle of the room, a little pink suitcase on the floor at her side. As Shay walked toward them, he felt as if he were marching through nitroglycerin. What the hell had Salma been thinking?

  “Don’t worry, Shay,” the child said as he neared. He froze at her words. Her face was serious, but she didn’t appear frightened, which surprised him because he was. The thought of Zair bringing her to him…

  “Mama talked to me on the phone,” the girl continued. “She said she had to go away—she didn’t want to, and it made her cry. But she told me you’re my real father. She said you might seem a little scary to me at first, but you’re really a nice man, and you’ll be good to me.” She stopped and seemed to be waiting for his response.