Annie and the Senator: A Story of Vigilante Justice (Annie Chan Thrillers Book 1)

by Robert W. McGee

  ANNIE AND THE SENATOR:

  A Story of Vigilante Justice

  (An Annie Chan Thriller)

  Robert W. McGee

  ANNIE AND THE SENATOR: A Story of Vigilante Justice

  Robert W. McGee

  Copyright © 2015 Robert W. McGee

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1 Annie Chan

  Chapter 2 Tom Garrett

  Chapter 3 At the Airport

  Chapter 4 Preparing for the Trip

  Chapter 5 A Shopping Expedition

  Chapter 6 Thursday

  Chapter 7 A Visit to the Senator

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  1

  Annie Chan

  Annie Chan. Half Chinese, half Thai. She grew up on the streets of Bangkok. Her mother was a pole dancer at a strip bar in Patpong, one of the three red light districts in Bangkok. Her father was practically non-existent when she was a small child. He disappeared when she was eight.

  Girls with her background didn’t have much of a future. But she refused to accept her fate. She learned English from the Johns she met in the bars, and turned tricks for a while with one of the upscale escort services. She was the most beautiful escort in the place. She generated a lot of business.

  The owner was so impressed with her skills of seduction that he sent her to work at his Hong Kong location.

  That’s where she met Jack Flynn, an American, a vice president at one of the Hong Kong banks. Jack fell in love with her almost immediately. He couldn’t stand the thought of her being with other men when she wasn’t with him, so they worked out an exclusivity arrangement. It was expensive, but he thought she was worth it.

  At some point his wife found out about her. Jack had to make a decision. Be with Annie and pay millions in a divorce settlement, or stop seeing Annie and keep his money.

  She was young enough to be his daughter, so they changed roles. He became her surrogate father and mentor. At his urging, she got an American GED, which would make her eligible to apply to universities in the United States. She applied to the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and got accepted. The fact that Wharton was Jack’s alma mater didn’t hurt.

  She graduated three years later with a double major in accounting and finance. She completed her CPA and CFA while in the Harvard MBA program. Jack pulled a few strings and got her a job in the New York branch of his bank. After a few years of climbing rapidly up the corporate ladder, a bank in Miami approached her with an offer she couldn’t refuse – bank president.

  2

  Tom Garrett

  “When you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing—when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors—when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you—when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice—you may know that your society is doomed.”

  Ayn Rand

  Tom Garrett had represented Florida in the U.S. Senate for more than 20 years, long enough to acquire sufficient seniority to chair several important committees. With seniority comes power, but even senators without much seniority had a certain amount of power. Sometimes they abused it. Senator Garrett started abusing it during his first term.

  Annie Chan, who by now had become the president of one of the ten largest banks in America, sat in Senator Garrett’s Washington office, listening to him blather on about his importance. Annie’s bank wanted to open dozens of branches in Florida and Georgia. Getting permission would be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Garrett was using his influence as chairman of the Senate Banking Committee to block the approval process. Annie needed to persuade him to change his mind. It was not her first visit.

  “Annie, I really think you need to get with the program. If you want me to help you, you’re going to have to help me. I don’t think a million dollars in a suitcase is beyond what you’re capable of. After all, you run a goddamn bank. Besides, I did a little checking into your background. I know about Jack Flynn and your Hong Kong days. What do you think your bank’s board of directors would say if they also knew that story?”

  His words hit her like a hammer between the eyes. How could he possibly know about Jack? She tried her best to compose herself. She had never wanted to kill anyone before, not even her Bangkok pimp, who had exploited her ruthlessly. But now, every fiber in her body wanted to kill Senator Garrett.

  “I’m sorry Senator. I just can’t do that. It would be too risky. I couldn’t just go into the vault and take it. I’d have to get other people involved. I don’t know who I can trust. One of them might blow the whistle. Besides, the auditors might catch it. We have pretty good internal controls.”

  “Well, I’m sorry you can’t do it, Annie.” He picked up his pen and scribbled something on a piece of paper.

  “Maybe one of your competitors will be interested in expanding into Florida. It’s a great state, you know. Think about it. And think about what your board of directors might do if they knew about your background. Maybe you’ll change your mind.” Garrett took a puff on his cigar, then placed it in his ashtray. It smelled like an expensive brand. Smoking in the office was prohibited everywhere else in America, but not in his office. Senators didn’t have to obey the laws like the rest of us.

  He had a really sleazy look on his face as he handed the piece of paper to her. “Here’s the address of my place in Washington. In case you want to come for a visit sometime. My wife doesn’t like Washington, so she stays in Florida.”

  She knew what he wanted. It wasn’t just a suitcase full of money. She took it and put it in her purse. He got out of his chair and walked her to the front door.

  As he passed by the reception desk on the way back to his office, he said, “Betty, please tell Ken I want to see him.” Ken Tolleson was Senator Garrett’s special assistant. His main task was to make things happen. He was very good at it.

  Ken walked in a few minutes later. “Ken, close the door and have a seat.”

  “Annie Chan isn’t being cooperative. We need to convince her to change her mind.”

  “I suppose you have an incentive plan you would like me to present to her?”

  “Yes, I do, actually, but not directly to her. She has to go out of the country two or three times a month on bank business. She’s negotiating a big merger in Western Europe. She has to fly back and forth. I want you to see that her passport gets revoked.”

  “Uh, how can I do that without raising a lot of eyebrows at the State Department?”

  “It’s simple. You don’t have to go through the State Department. We snuck in a provision as part of a highway bill that allows the IRS to revoke a passport if someone is involved in a tax dispute. Call our contact at the IRS and have them start a tax dispute with her. Make sure they revoke her passport as part of the deal. Do it today. I want to get this ball rolling … and tell them not to notify her about any of it. Not the tax dispute. Not the passport revocation. Let’s let her find out about it the next time she goes to the airport. It will be a nice little surprise.”

  Ken smiled. “I’m sure it will.”

  “After it ha
ppens, give her a call to make sure she knows who pulled the plug and what she has to do to get it unpulled. You might also point out that we are being kind to her. We could have waited until she was out of the country before revoking her passport. If it’s revoked when she’s out of the country, she wouldn’t be able to get back in. If she takes it to court, it will take years to resolve. The bank will fire her long before that because she won’t be able to do her job. Point that out to her.”

  The Senator sat back in his cushy, black leather chair, took a puff on his cigar and smiled. Ken smiled back. “I’m on it.” As he got out of his chair he gave the Senator a thumbs-up, turned around and left. The fact that the passport law deprived citizens of the right to travel without due process didn’t seem to faze either of them. Nor did the abuse of power. They merely saw the law as a tool to be used to get what they wanted.

  3

  At the Airport

  “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

  Martin Luther King

  “Teach your kids about taxes. Eat 30% of their ice cream.”

  Unknown

  It was the supervisor at the American Airlines desk at the Miami International Airport who gave Annie the bad news. When Annie attempted to check in for her flight to Brussels, the computer kicked up a message that her passport had been revoked by the Internal Revenue Service and that it was to be confiscated.

  “I’m sorry Ms. Chan. Your passport has been revoked. I have been instructed not to return it to you.”

  Annie’s jaw dropped when she heard the news.

  “That can’t be. There must be some kind of mistake. Does the computer say why it was revoked or who revoked it?”

  “All it says is that the Internal Revenue Service revoked it because of a tax dispute. The notice doesn’t say anything about taking you into custody. You are free to go. You should check with the IRS to resolve the problem. I’m sorry, but you will not be able to get on the plane to Brussels today.”

  Annie was both furious and worried, furious because the IRS was abusing its power and worried about the consequences of not getting on the plane. Not being able to attend the meeting in Brussels could prove to be disastrous for the planned merger. She could send one of her senior vice presidents but it wouldn’t be the same. The bank needed to send its top guy, or gal in this case. Sending someone lower on the corporate echelon would send the wrong message and would greatly weaken the bank’s bargaining position.

  If the word got out that the bank president’s passport had been revoked, it would send a chill through Wall Street. The Securities and Exchange Commission and the federal bank auditors would be fighting it out over which of them would be in charge of the bank audit, which there surely would be. The bank’s stock price would drop. Merger talks could be cancelled. She would be under pressure to resign. She couldn’t let that happen, but she didn’t know what to do.

  She started to sweat, even though the airport air conditioning made the place uncomfortably chilly. She wiped the perspiration from her forehead and wiped her hand on her expensive suit jacket. The main lobby was busy and noisy, but she didn’t hear any of it. She was too busy thinking about what had just happened, and what she could do about it.

  As a stopgap measure, she took the cell phone out of her purse and called Nick Botten, the senior vice president most familiar with the merger negotiations.

  “Nick, this is Annie. Do you have your passport with you?”

  “No, I don’t carry it with me. I keep it at home. Why do you ask?”

  “I’ve run into a problem at the airport. They won’t let me get on the plane. Some kind of administrative glitch. You have to go to the Brussels meeting in my place. Book the next flight out. Go home, get your passport and get your ass to the airport. Call me as soon as you get your passport and I’ll brief you on the strategy I planned on using at the meeting.”

  “What should I tell the people in Brussels? They’ll be asking why the president couldn’t make it.”

  “I don’t know what we’ll tell them. We’ll think of something. We can talk about it later.”

  “OK. I’ll book the flight and get my passport.”

  “Have your secretary book your goddamn flight. We don’t have a lot of time to waste. If you don’t get your passport and get on a plane in the next few hours, you’ll have to wait until tomorrow, and that’ll be too late.”

  “I’ll call as soon as I have my passport.”

  Annie was worried. She didn’t want to think about the problems her lack of a passport would cause. She didn’t know how to fix the problem. She didn’t even know the IRS was investigating her or that she had a tax problem. Someone in the bank’s tax department always filed her tax return for her as a courtesy. If someone screwed up, there would be hell to pay, but that was the least of her worries at the moment.

  She didn’t know what her next move should be. She knew that contacting the IRS should be high on the list, but calling their direct number would probably put her into an endless loop. She didn’t know who to talk to and whoever would be on the other end of the line probably wouldn’t know, either. She hadn’t had to deal with this low level administrative crap in years. One of the nice things about being the president is that you can delegate such details to underlings. That’s what she decided to do.

  She took out her cell phone and was about to call the vice president in charge of tax matters, but before she could push any buttons, her phone rang. She looked at the screen. It was Ken Tolleson.

  “Hello, Ms. Chan? This is Ken Tolleson, Senator Garrett’s administrative assistant.”

  “I know who you are. What do you want?” Annie’s voice was more than a little hostile. She wanted to strangle someone but didn’t know who. Maybe Tolleson would be a good first choice, followed by the esteemed senator. Unfortunately, they were both out of her grasp at the moment.

  “The Senator has heard that you are having a tax problem. He would like to help.”

  Son of a bitch, Annie thought. The cat was out of the bag. Now she knew who was causing the problem.

  “Oh, he did, did he? That’s very interesting because I didn’t know I had a tax problem until a few minutes ago.”

  “Well, as you know Ms. Chan, you are one of the senator’s favorite people and he wants to see that you are taken good care of.”

  “Tell the senator that I appreciate his concern.”

  “I’ll be sure to convey that message to the senator. By the way, the senator has a message for you.”

  “Oh? What’s that?”

  “The senator suggests that you visit Washington sometime next week, whenever it’s convenient for you. He won’t be able to meet with you because he’s too busy, but he suggested that I meet with you to welcome you to the city.”

  “That’s very thoughtful of him. Will you be picking me up at the airport?”

  “No, that won’t be necessary because you won’t be arriving by plane. The senator thinks that carrying a suitcase full of paper with photos of Ben Franklin on them might be difficult to explain to the TSA in the event they should decide to search your luggage.” He was referring to hundred dollar bills. “Perhaps Amtrak would be a good alternative. You can catch it from Penn Station in New York. It’s a pleasant ride.”

  “Yes, I’m sure it is.”

  “Good. Then we’re agreed?”

  Annie hesitated. “Yes.” She didn’t have much of an alternative. If she didn’t comply, her career would be ruined. It was also in the best interest of the bank to go along. She didn’t know how she would get a million dollars in cash but she would find a way. She had to. “I’ll call you after I book my ticket.”

  “That would be great. Talk to you soon.”

  4

  Preparing for the Trip

  Annie decided not to go back to the office, so she went home. As soon as she closed the door she poured herself a stiff drink. She didn’t usually drink. She wanted to always stay in control. But today was different. The
streets of Bangkok and the parlors of Hong Kong had taught her many lessons, but she had never run into a situation like this one.

  She didn’t have many options. The safe option would be to walk away from the multi-million dollar deal, but every bone in her body told her that would not be acceptable. Then there was the Hong Kong thing with Jack. Walking away from Senator Garrett’s proposal wouldn’t do anything to solve that problem. The senator could derail the career she had worked so hard to build with just one or two phone calls.

  She could get Senator Garrett to approve the deal if she could somehow sneak a million dollars out of the bank. The bank’s internal controls were good, but they weren’t perfect. The last audit had found some weaknesses. She went through the list of weaknesses in her head and thought she might be able to use one of them to extract the cash without getting caught.

  The third option was to just kill the bastard and deal with his successor. That’s the option she favored emotionally, but her head told her to go with option two. Just pay him and be done with it. But would paying him be the end of it? Blackmail seldom worked that way. There was nothing to prevent the senator from coming back again and again with his threat to expose her Hong Kong days.

  She thought briefly about going to the police. She could report it to them, and perhaps set up a sting operation to catch the senator with his hands on the cash. But it wouldn’t be the senator’s hands on the cash; it would be Ken Tollison’s. The senator would have plausible deniability. He would probably get off the hook, and there would be nothing to prevent him from carrying out his threat to expose her former life. The legal system had failed. She would have to handle this matter herself.

  She looked at her watch. She decided to think about her options, but not to make any rash decisions. The only thing she had to do was book her ticket. Before she could take Amtrak from New York to Washington she had to get to New York. Carrying a million dollars in cash to the Miami airport was too risky. So she booked two Amtrak tickets – Miami to New York and New York to Washington.