Noble Chase: A Novel

by Michael Rudolph

  “And he would have been right.”

  “You knew I was going to investigate the son,” she said, parrying his attack with unfelt confidence born of desperation. “We talked about it when I first discovered his existence. You can’t just nail me to the wall now when you see where it’s led. That’s sandbagging.”

  “Don’t give me that sandbagging crap. We never discussed your getting involved with the son of a man who, if he’s alive, I might add, is guilty of grand larceny, embezzlement, and nearly destroying your career. We only discussed a nice impersonal meeting in a nice impersonal public place. His son could be Jack the Ripper for all you know.”

  “He’s not Jack the Ripper, and I don’t believe he was involved in any way with the embezzlement….Besides, Mom likes him.”

  Max ignored her comment. “So what makes you think that Sloane and the seventy million are down there?” he asked, glancing over at Andi, now absorbed in flicking dust off her slacks.

  “Haven’t you been listening to me for the last hour? All the documents I got from Antigua. Here, look at them again.” She handed the envelope back over to Max.

  “It’s all pure conjecture,” he observed, peering through his bifocals at the deed and other papers. “How do you know Leung didn’t tell Sloane to buy that property?” Max asked as he continued to scan the papers.

  “Using phony names? Be reasonable,” Beth countered. “Sloane had a house there, a car there, a boat there. He bought all of it over the past few years with money he must have siphoned off from the Leungs. That’s where the two of them decided to go when the Jasco windfall came through. It was a ready-made escape haven for them. The money’s got to be there also.”

  “What if they withdrew it in negotiable bonds? How do you know it didn’t drown on the boat with them?”

  “Because there’s one other thing….”

  “Damn it, Beth,” he said, his voice rising to a crescendo again. “Stop making me drag it out of you.”

  “Well, then stop cross-examining me!” she shouted back. “I’m not on trial. We’re on the same side, remember?”

  “Then stop treating me as an adversary.”

  “That’s how you’re acting.”

  “I hate these people every bit as much as you do, and more so for putting you and your mother in danger last night….Now tell me what you have.” For the first time that night, he was speaking to her as one lawyer to another, ready to assimilate the information.

  “Dieter Rheinhartz sent me a card from Venezuela a few days ago. Take a look at it.” She handed it to him and watched intently as he looked first at the printed side and then turned it over.

  “Did you check it out?”

  “Of course I did. I called the bank the minute I saw the note and verified it was Eric Leonard’s.”

  “Why are you so sure he’s Sloane?” Max asked her.

  “There was a cash deposit of five hundred thousand in U.S. dollars made on September first. That’s a week or so before Satin Lady sank and it’s the same amount they withdrew in cash from the bank account Erica set up in Switzerland….And there’s more.”

  “What?” Max asked, now listening with rapt attention.

  “The money was withdrawn from the bank in Caracas on September 25, more than two weeks after Satin Lady sank.” The admiring gasp from her mother and the satisfied smile on Max’s face was enough of a reaction to restore all of Beth’s confidence in the conclusions she had reached.

  “They must have needed it for pocket money,” Max finally replied. “Could the bank in Caracas tell you where it was moved to?”

  “No. They said it was taken out in cash. Apparently that’s not too unusual down there.”

  “They’re used to laundering millions at a time in those Venezuelan banks. Is that where the money trail ends?”

  “So far. That’s why I want to follow the document trail down to Antigua. Jesus, Max, you went to San Juan to interview the Coast Guard on less concrete information.”

  “That was different.”

  “Sure it was. That involved your hunch. This involves mine.”

  “Do you know why Rheinhartz is being so good to you?”

  “There wasn’t any love lost between him and Leung when I met them for lunch. They’ve been at each other’s throats a number of times.”

  “I’ll ask Clifford.”

  “You can’t. He’ll want to know why you’re asking,” she said, and then, seizing the warming trend, continued, “Look, Tortola’s only a few days’ sail from Antigua. Can’t you and Mom sail Red Sky over there? You can pick me up a week from next Wednesday.”

  “If I meet you on Wednesday, it’s going to be to have you committed. We’re amateurs, Beth. This is a police matter.” He said this firmly, but without anger.

  “You know the police won’t do anything without a complaint from C.K.” She gestured futilely. “And then before they get finished trying to figure out which country has jurisdiction, we’ll all die of old age.”

  “That’s the point.” He grimaced. “At least we’ll die of old age.”

  “Max…what are all the speeches about truth and justice supposed to mean if nobody searches for them? I can’t just walk away from this. I want Sloane before C.K. gets him. He’s alive, Erica’s alive, and they’re both laughing up their sleeves about me, the jerk lawyer.”

  “What are we talking about here, Beth? Justice or revenge?”

  “A fair dose of each. Jail and reparations sound good to me. Will you deal in?”

  “Let me sleep on it tonight.”

  “Well, before you sleep on it, I’m going to call C.K. and I want you both to listen.”

  “At this hour?”

  “About what?”

  “Just listen.”

  Beth already had the phone to her ear and was dialing.

  “C.K., this is Beth Swahn.”

  “Beth, how are you?”

  “I got your messages, so let’s skip the civility. Your goons almost killed me and three of my friends last week, they mugged me a few days ago, and last night they frightened my mother.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Beth. Have you been drinking?”

  “If you don’t know what I’m talking about, then perhaps I should hang up.”

  “You called me, so do what you have to do, but I agree it might be better if we talked.”

  “I have the CD.”

  “What is on it?”

  “It has something to do with bank access codes.”

  “I need it immediately.”

  “I have two problems with that. Number one, I discovered it in connection with Bob Talcourt’s case involving Sloane’s life insurance policy, so it’s attorney-client privileged. And number two, I suspect the codes relate to Arab accounts that may be listed on federal restricted lists, so if I give you the CD, I could be accused of participating in a money-laundering conspiracy.”

  “What do you propose?”

  “I intend to file the CD in federal court and start an interpleader action. We’ll let the court decide who’s entitled to possession. I intend to do the same thing when I locate the seventy million.”

  “That is not acceptable. We need that CD immediately.”

  “Then get it from Sloane.”

  “You know that’s impossible.”

  “Come on, C.K., you don’t still believe he’s dead.”

  “I told you we had proof.”

  “Well, I don’t buy it. Good night, C.K. See you in court.” Click.

  “I believe you just had what they call a ‘come to Jesus’ meeting with C. K. Leung.”

  “I love you, Max.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” he said with false gruffness.

  “I do. I’m glad you’re mine.” Beth got up from her chair and crossed over to the couch, leaning down to give him a kiss on the cheek he offered her.

  “I know. I love you too.”

  Andi finished her wine and took a deep breath for the first time since Max
had entered the apartment.

  It was still the tail end of hurricane season, so the midweek flight to Antigua wasn’t crowded. With only a carry-on bag, Beth was quickly past immigration and into the intense island heat. She briefly familiarized herself with the left-hand stick and the right-hand wheel in the rental, rolled back its canvas top, and, driving British style on the left-hand side of the road, managed to avoid most of the curbs getting out of the airport.

  Red Sky had been ninety miles away from Antigua when she’d called them from JFK. With only four hours to go before Red Sky figured to anchor in St. John’s harbor, she whipped through the villages of Sutherlands and St. Johnson and entered the city of St. John’s from Old Parham Road. In the vacant lots between some of the houses, dense with fertile undergrowth, fierce-looking roosters strutted proudly among the officious hens.

  It was less quaint than Beth remembered, a little shabbier and more shopworn. She parked the car on High Street and walked back on the sidewalk to check out the major island banks. When she saw that the banks had closed for the day, she continued instead on her way over to the courthouse on the corner of Temple and High to examine the public land records.

  She entered the courthouse, scanned the directory, and found a long, narrow room without any air-conditioning, but with all the windows wide open and several fans operating in the corners.

  “Can I help you?” the young woman behind the counter asked Beth in a courteous tone of voice, tinged with a British accent.

  “I hope so,” Beth answered. “I have a copy of a deed on some real estate here on the island and I’m trying to learn if the purchasers still own it.”

  “Well, the place to start is over in the grantee-grantor indexes on that table,” the woman said, pointing over to her left. “We’re not computerized in Land Records yet, so the books are kept in longhand. It’s alphabetized, so if you look up the buyer’s name, it will also give you the name of the seller.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Over on the table by the near wall are the grantor-grantee indexes, with the seller’s name first,” the woman continued. “You can check there to see if your party has sold the property to someone else.”

  “Are mortgage records in this room too?”

  “I keep them under the counter here. They’re listed by the borrower’s name. We don’t have enough banks on Antigua to alphabetize the index books by lenders.”

  “I understand. Thanks for your help.”

  “If you have any problem, let me know and I will be happy to give you a hand.”

  “Can I get an address for the property from the index?”

  “You talk like you’re familiar with our land registration system. Are you a solicitor, by any chance?”

  “I’m an attorney from New York.”

  “I could tell. Are there many woman solicitors in the United States?”

  “More now than ever. My class in law school was nearly half female.”

  “Well, here on Antigua we hardly have any. The men do not allow it.”

  “They’re chauvinists all over.”

  “Yes, they certainly are that.” The clerk nodded in agreement. “Anyhow, our records do not have street addresses, and most of the houses out of town don’t bother with street numbers. So when you’re ready, let me see the deed and I’ll show you the property on the map over there.” The clerk pointed over to the big map of Antigua on the wall behind her.

  The cumbersome index books were on metal shelves, lying on plastic rollers to aid in their removal. Beth located the volume she wanted, a linen-bound journal with aged red leather binding and the letters P-Q-R embossed in gold. She opened it up, releasing a sigh of moldy air from its parchment pages, and found an entry made back on November 17, 2009, when Paramount bought the property from a Nehemiah Throckton.

  Next, she went over to the grantor-grantee books, got the volume for S-T-U, and found Throckton. The entry disclosed that he had bought the real estate from an outfit called Lenco Importing the day before deeding it over to Paramount. Beth remembered the seller’s name from somewhere. Intent on the chase, she opened the file she had brought with her. In one of her computer printouts, she found the connection: on its latest tax return, Paramount Equities had listed a Lenco Importing as sole shareholder!

  She continued to follow the paper trail, went back to the grantee-grantor books, and wrestled the massive J-K-L volume to the table. In her eagerness, she dropped it with a hollow thud, causing the clerk to glance up sternly from her work.

  Starting with the latest entries, she quickly found that Lenco acquired the real estate from an Elliot Andrew MacElliott a week before the sale to Throckton. Back again like a yo-yo to the other side of the room, she learned that MacElliott had owned the property since 1961, so she decided to search no further in that direction. She wrote down MacElliott’s last address in case she wanted to get in touch with him.

  She now had to determine whether Paramount still owned the property. She had a suspicion they didn’t. With all the transfers taking place in such a short period of time, somebody was trying to create a smoke screen. She pulled the grantor-grantee index for P-Q-R and saw that on November 26, 2009, Paramount sold the property to an Eric Leonard.

  If her theory was right, this Eric Leonard was still the record owner of the property, and the name was an alias for Sloane, who had intended to live happily ever after on Antigua. She crossed back to the J-K-L volume of the grantor-grantee index and found no subsequent entry for a sale by Eric Leonard. He was still the owner.

  With that in mind, she asked the clerk for the mortgage volumes covering P and L. She didn’t find any mortgage under the name of Eric Leonard, but that didn’t surprise her. If Eric Leonard was an alias, Sloane wouldn’t want any bank to run the inevitable credit check. In the P-Q-R book, however, under the name of Paramount Equities, she did find a mortgage held by the Antigua Commercial Bank. The mortgage had been recorded on the same day Paramount bought the property, so when Paramount transferred title to this Eric Leonard, the bank already had its lien recorded.

  She closed the mortgage index book and handed it back to the clerk, who replaced it in the rack underneath the counter. “Did you find what you were looking for?” she asked Beth.

  “I think so,” Beth answered. “Here’s a deed describing the real estate.” She handed the Paramount deed to the clerk. “Can you show me where the property is located?”

  “Certainly,” the clerk said. “Come over to the map and I’ll point it out.”

  Beth walked through the gate in the middle of the counter and followed the clerk over to the map of Antigua.

  “Here,” the clerk said, putting her finger on the map down by English Harbour. “The property is right here in the town of Bethesda. It’s on Willoughby Bay, see, just east of English Harbour.”

  “How do I get there?”

  “That is no problem,” the clerk answered. “I have a whole pad of maps here. We use them to give directions to the tax assessor after a sale.”

  “Can you mark one for me?” Beth saw it was exactly the same map she had gotten from Avis earlier in the day out at the airport.

  “Yes. Certainly.” The clerk circled a spot on the map and tore it off the pad, handing it to Beth. “Here,” she said, outlining the way with a yellow felt marker from her desk drawer. “All you have to do is follow the coast road north out of English Harbour and then make a left turn when you get here.” She made another circle on the map. “And a left turn when you get here. You won’t have any trouble.”

  “You’ve been very kind.”

  “Do you have a rental car? If you don’t, my sister’s husband, Ernest, has several for hire down the block. He can give you a very good price.”

  “Thanks, but I have a car already. I’ll probably take a ride down there tomorrow.”

  “Well, here is a card with his phone number anyway. If you’ve no use for it, perhaps you will give it to a friend.”

  Beth smiled and took the
card from the woman. She left the courthouse and walked past the Antigua Commercial Bank again on the way back to her car. She glanced at its hours on the door.

  She got into the car and drove down to the docks, settling in with a cold beer to wait for Red Sky at a nameless, signless open-air bar. In less than an hour, she spotted her tall mast and blue hull proceeding through St. John’s harbor and into the inner Deep Water Harbour. A solid yellow quarantine flag flew from the starboard spreader near the top of her mast to let the authorities know she was seeking permission to land.

  Beth waved but was too far away to get any response from Max standing at the wheel or from Andi, who had her hands full of chain on the foredeck, preparing to drop anchor. Beth was anxious to share what she had learned at the courthouse. First thing tomorrow morning, they would visit the banks.

  Beth spun through the revolving door leading out of the Antigua Commercial Bank and took the marble front steps two at a time, sunglasses swinging wildly on the chain around her neck. “I found Sloane’s checking account!” she announced to Max and Andi waiting on the sidewalk. “It was hidden under the name of Eric Leonard.”

  “Any money in it?” Andi asked.

  “Not much. Only enough to cover the monthly payment on their real estate mortgage.”

  “What about the boat mortgage?” Max asked.

  “Paramount owned the boat,” Beth answered. “Payments stopped when the boat was stolen.”

  “Who paid before it was stolen?”

  “The bank doesn’t know. The mortgage on Sindicator was assigned to them by a bank on Barbados. They didn’t keep any record of who paid. All they know is that the loan went into default.”

  “Did they foreclose?” Max asked.

  “They didn’t have to. An insurance company paid off the loan before it got that far.”

  “So how do we know it was Leonard Sloane using the name Eric Leonard?” Andi finally asked the question.

  “We won’t know until we see a face behind the name, but I’ll tell you something else: the address they have for Eric Leonard is English Harbour. He’s at Nelson’s Dockyard.”