“That’s when you met him in Capitol Park?” I said.
“Yes, I met him there and learned his name for the first time. He was quite proud of himself. Spent the first five minutes bragging about the perfect Ponzi Schemes he had devised and all that rot. He thought I had come there with the $5 million in cash, which I had no intention of doing. I asked him to show me the proof he said he had, but he didn’t have anything. He just said the fact that Andrew Norris started paying him the blackmail money proved my firm was guilty. He said that and the Fein tape would be enough to start an SEC investigation and that he’d drop a dime on me if I didn’t pay him.”
“But you didn’t pay him did you?”
“Of course not! I took the measure of the man when we met and concluded he wouldn’t be able to pull of what he was attempting. He lacked the intelligence. Besides, I’m not running a Ponzi Scheme. It’s ludicrous.”
“I don’t get something,” I said. “If all this stuff was going on, why did you hire me to start nosing around. Didn’t you think I might eventually run into something about Ziebell and Norris?”
“When you came to me that morning I thought I was done with Ziebell. After I brushed him off a couple of weeks before and he made no effort to contact me again. I was, however, worried about Andrew. I wasn’t sure if he was continuing to contact his accounts and trying to scare them off. I thought maybe you could find that out without digging up the whole mess. But you became a real pain in the ass.”
“Thank you.”
“Ziebell got what he had coming, no matter who did it. Andrew I feel bad about, even though he should have known better than to fall for Ziebell’s bluff.”
“Before Andrew left the firm he wanted to tell his clients that he thought they should be concerned about their investments,” I said. “Apparently, he saw something in the books that scared him.”
“As I said, Andrew took a couple of graduate school courses in accounting. He was hardly an expert at reading a sophisticated set of books.”
“So you’re not running a Ponzi scheme.”
Stroud issued a wry laugh. “I’ve been in business over thirty years. You think I’ve done that with smoke and mirrors?”
“Maybe not forever, but the last recession hit everyone in California pretty hard. How come your clients are earning twenty something percent on their investments when everyone else is losing money?”
“I can’t begin to explain to someone like you how my business works,” he said. “Nor do I want to.”
“Maybe Norris saw that you were crediting investors with returns that weren’t actually occurring in the market, that you were showing the money from new investors as profits for your older clients. He saw something, and don’t give me that bullshit about him only taking two accounting classes. He had an MBA, he knew the financial markets.”
“It’s not that simple.” Stroud rubbed his temples with his right forefinger and thumb. “In layman’s terms, you move money around. Yes, some new money goes into the older accounts. These are old money clients used to high yields. If they saw small or no profits quarter after a quarter, they’d make a run from the firm. Then, everyone would lose. Other investors would flee and—”
“The newest clients wouldn’t have a cent because all their money went to older clients. They’d be flat broke. It’s a Ponzi Scheme.”
“No. As I said, you move the money around to where it’s needed at a given time.”
“That’s why you hired a two-bit CPA like Barry Fein who is too lazy to follow where or how you ‘move the money around,’” I said.
Stroud actually laughed at that.
I decided not to argue the point further. Whether Stroud ran a high-stakes Ponzi scheme or not would be determined by the SEC and I assumed he knew they were already sniffing around. What concerned me more at the moment was whether I believed Stroud innocent of the killings. I did. Partly because he came more or less clean on Ziebell, partly because, arrogant prick that he was, he projected the air of someone who would not sully himself with a crime borne of human emotion. I still believe he saw himself as above the law, but I also believe he saw himself as too sophisticated to stoop to the behavior of a street thug. Moving money around was one thing, blasting two guys until they bled to death was not quite a country club sport.
“If not you, then who killed them?” I said.
Stroud turned his head towards the drawn blinds, staring at them as if pondering the ocean that lay unseen beyond. “That’s the key question isn’t it? I have no idea who and I have no idea why. And that’s what scares me.”
forty
I arrived back at my house about three in the afternoon, exhausted. The two messages on my answering machine came from Rubia. “Call me,” was all she said both times. I had three missed calls on my cell from her number, which I had left behind in Sacramento so it couldn’t be used to trace me to Southern California.
I napped until after five, made a half pot of coffee and called Jill on her cell phone to tell her about my meeting with her dad. As I told her the story I walked about the house. I lingered over the photo of Pam, Sara and me taken on Main Street in Disneyland, Sara sitting on Mickey Mouse’s knee, Pam and I on either side of them. Sara, maybe ten, beamed at the camera, fully aware Mickey was just a guy in a mouse suit, but savoring the moment nonetheless. On that same trip we’d boogie boarded at Newport Beach, dined on lobster in Laguna, and rented bikes to ride along the boardwalk in Huntington Beach. We had other vacations after that one, but I remembered this one most vividly. I looked so young in that photo taken 14 years ago. A lot had happened in those 14 years. I’d lost Pam. Sara had grown up. I’d found Jill, lost her, found her again. I hoped I had found myself as well.
“I knew my dad couldn’t have killed anyone,” she said after I had finished.
“He’s mixed up in some nasty business,” I said. “I do think he’s defrauding his investors. Someone isn’t happy about it and your father is in real danger.”
“I hate to say this, but I’m not as surprised about my dad playing fast and loose with the rules,” she said. “I remember once when I was twelve playing softball. It was one of the few times my dad ever watched me play. I stole second base, sliding head first. The umpire called me safe, but the second baseman really had tagged me and I should have been called out. I even told the second baseman that and I felt guilty that I didn’t tell the umpire. After the game I told my dad what I said to the second baseman and feeling guilty and he got really mad. He told me ‘Softball, business, or whatever you do it’s about competition. You beat the other guy anyway you can—if the umpire or whoever sees things or doesn’t see things and it’s in your favor you never say a word.’ It was his philosophy.”
“Whatever it takes to win,” I said.
“Pretty much.” Jill exhaled into the phone. “So how did you leave it with my dad?”
“I told him I wouldn’t tell anyone—not even the police—where he was until we figure out who the killer is.”
“Who is we?”
“Me. And Rubia. Trujillo thinks that I’m the killer so he’s probably spending all his time looking for more evidence against me. He’s not looking for anybody else. Your dad’s not happy about that. I don’t think the cops have a clue yet about Fein, the SEC and the Ponzi scheme.”
“Are you going to tell him?”
“I don’t think he’ll believe me unless he follows up with the SEC. It’s really your dad’s move to tell him about Ziebell’s little scheme, but he doesn’t want to do that, which is another reason I think his investment business is shady. If I did go to Trujillo and by some chance he believed me, he’d come to the same conclusion that I did, that your dad was the killer or at the very least initiate an investigation into his business practices. I think it’s best if I sort this out a little bit more before I go to Trujillo with what I know.”
“Which is what exactly?
“Some things are coming clear,” I said. “Norris was an innocent tr
ying to do the right thing. Ziebell was a scumbag. No surprise there I guess. Barry Fein—just a goofball who may have gotten himself into a world of hurt if your father’s books are as messed up as Norris thought they were.”
“But you still don’t know who did it?” she said.
“No.” I moved down the hall and looked at a photo of me receiving my PhD 25 years before. Just a kid. If I lived another 25 years would I look back on myself at 52 and think ‘just a kid’? Probably. It made me realize I should savor what youth I had left.
“It could be someone who knew what Ziebell was up to and who wanted in on the action,” I said, turning away from the photo and returning to the kitchen. “Maybe I look into his old Ponzi scheme from ten years ago and see if he had any accomplices. None were mentioned in the newspaper but that might not mean anything.”
“What about one of the clients?” Jill asked.
“I thought about that, but why would they kill either Norris or Ziebell? Norris was trying to help them by saying there was something fishy going on with their money. Unless they blamed him why would they kill him? And they wouldn’t have had any knowledge about Ziebell unless he approached them and he wouldn’t have had any incentive to do that. Ziebell was selling his silence to your dad.”
“But my dad blew him off.”
“True. And I do think it was Ziebell who told the SEC once your father refused to pay him off. It was either Ziebell or Norris. I’m pretty sure about that. Everything else is a work in progress.”
“You’ve done so much on this, Ray. But I think you’ve put yourself in enough danger. No need to risk more. You should back off now, don’t you think?”
As she spoke, I pulled a cup out of the cabinet and poured myself some coffee. I added a splash of milk to give it a little color.
“I’d forgotten how long that ride is to So Cal,” I said, wanting to change the subject. “Lots of time to think.”
“You’re getting reflective in your old age?”
“Reflection, like caffeine and alcohol, is healthy in moderation.”
“Now you’re getting philosophical,” she said with a tight laugh. “I guess I’ve been reflective myself lately. Getting back with an old flame can do that to a person.”
“An old flame. I guess that’s a favorable description.”
“It is.” Jill paused and I let her gather her thoughts. “You know how we talked about taking things slow?”
“Yes.” I didn’t like the direction she seemed to be moving. After the last few days, the last thing I wanted was a letdown from Jill. I sat, my heart rate picking up from both the caffeine and the anticipation.
“I mean I agree with that, in theory,” she said. “It’s just that I don’t think we need to go step by step at a time, you know, like last time. It’s seems like we can skip ahead some.”
My heart whipsawed from the brink of dejection to verge of elation. “What do you mean skip ahead?”
“I mean I don’t think we should move in together or anything like that yet. I’m having a hard time articulating this. I mean we’re not kids. We’ve both been around the block a couple of times. I think… I hope we can be upfront with each other. I don’t want to see anyone else, Ray. I’d like us to be a couple if that’s okay with you.”
As she had when she broke up with me, Jill caught me by surprise. This time the surprise felt a whole heck of a lot better.
forty-one
I hung up the phone with Jill and topped off my coffee mug, my spirits lifting me over the fatigue from the long drive. Just as I picked up my phone to call Rubia, someone banged on my front door. The bangs were followed by repeated rings of the doorbell. The insistence of my visitor set me on edge so I picked up the baseball bat that still sat propped in a corner of the kitchen from the night of Sara’s visit. The peephole, clouded by decades of accumulated dust and gunk offered an imperfect view of the porch but it was enough. I exhaled, unlocked the door and let Rubia in.
“What gives?” I said upon opening the front door, more than a little annoyed.
“You haven’t picked up your phone or returned my calls. I was freaking out.”
“Calm down. You seem a little amped up.”
She pushed past me into the foyer. “Close the door.”
“What is it?” I said. Her paranoia was infectious. Here stood a woman who had stared down pretty much every gangbanger in Sacramento without flinching now acting like a six-year old afraid of the dark.
She ignored my question as she looked out the peephole once I closed the door. She fastened the deadbolt, then went to each window in the house and closed the shutters and blinds. I followed her about the house, repeatedly asking what was wrong, but she was too focused on the windows to bother answering me.
“You don’t have a window covering for these?” she asked, referring to the corner windows over my kitchen sink.
“I like looking at my backyard when I’m doing the dishes,” I said. “What is going on? What’s with the paranoia?”
“You got a gun?”
“You know I don’t carry a gun.”
“Maybe you should start,” she said. “I thought you might at least have one stashed somewhere in the house.”
“Sorry.” If she was trying to scare me, she was doing a great job of it.
“Is that your ultimate line of defense,” she said, indicating the baseball bat I still held.
“Pretty much. And considering that the elder Bush was president the last time I swung it, I’d bet against me hitting anything squarely.”
She returned to the front of the house and eased open the top shutters to peek out of the window at the street. Apparently satisfied that disaster was not imminent, she drew a breath and turned to face me.
“We need to talk,” she said.
“You think?”
“Don’t be a smartass. You have no idea what is going on.”
“And the fact that I’ve been asking you that very question for the last five minutes makes this ignorance my fault?”
“I need a drink to calm my nerves.”
“How about a beer?”
“Got anything stronger?”
I went to the cabinet where I kept the bottles of hard liquor that hadn’t been touched since I quit drinking it eight months ago. I chose a half-empty bottle of Patron tequila.
“Pour me three fingers’ worth and then let’s sit down. You should get yourself one while you’re at it.”
“I’ll pass.” I grabbed a short juice glass and nearly filled it with the silvery liquid.
After we sat down at the kitchen table, hoping that Rubia was sufficiently calmed, I asked again what was going on. She downed half the tequila in a single swallow.
“You remember Carlos, the kid from the other day over at IML?” she said.
“Yeah, of course. The one scared about being forced to join that gang.”
She nodded. “I took care of it that day. Had a meeting with the leaders of the Willow Creek Mob. I used to run with a couple of them back in the day. Back then we had a code of conduct, you know. We did things differently than now.”
“Honor among thieves.”
“Sort of, but I was talking about how we didn’t make anybody join our gang if they didn’t want to. There was none of this heavy-handed shit like they were trying to force on Carlos. So I told them that and they said they didn’t have any idea that Carlos’ school buddy Antonio Rodriguez was trying to force him to gang up.”
“Did you believe them?”
“Yes, but that isn’t really the point. They told me that they would talk to Antonio and tell him to back off, that that wasn’t the way the Willow Creek boys rolled. I made them promise that Antonio wouldn’t know Carlos came to me and that Carlos wouldn’t be hurt.”
Rubia downed the rest of the tequila. She nodded when I held up the bottle of Patron to offer more.
“I don’t mean to sound impatient,” I said as I poured the tequila. “But what does all of this have to do wi
th me? Is the Willow Creek Mob, or whatever they are called, now pissed off at you and, by association, me?”
“Hang on for just a minute. I’ll get there, but you need to know the context of what I’m going to say.”
“Which is?”
Rubia picked up the story where she left off. “After they agreed everything was cool with Carlos and all, I started to leave. Then, like an afterthought, Guillermo—he’s the head guy—says to me that things have changed since my gangbanging days. He’s said things are more of a business now, but at the same time it’s gotten even more ruthless. He said the Mexican cartels have moved in and are forcing the old gangs to join them or they’ll get popped.”
“Sounds a lot like how things work in Corporate America,” I said. “Capitalism at work. The big guys get bigger by buying up the little guys.”
“Don’t be so preachy. It doesn’t look good on you.”
“It was just an observation.”
“Guillermo said that they were forced to work for one cartel called Los Rojos. They took over Willow Creek’s meth and marijuana production and sales operations and put Guillermo and the other gangsters on what amounts to a commission. Nothing they could do about it. Now they work for one of the biggest cartels in all of Mexico.”
“I don’t like the cartels being here, but I can’t say I feel sorry for your boy Guillermo,” I said.
“Me neither, but he said it was getting worse. Los Rojos was putting pressure on him to sell more, expand their territory. He said they were feeling pressure to grow their membership. They need more people out on the street selling dope.”
As she told her story, Rubia, face glowing from the tequila, became more and more animated.
“A few weeks ago, Guillermo got tired of all the pressure from Los Rojos and asked to meet with the top guy. You know, to see if he would be more reasonable, maybe come to some mutual understanding. Well, the top guy is in Guadalajara, but after Guillermo grandstands for a couple of days, Los Rojos finally grants him a meeting with the guy that runs Northern California, the son of the big boss in Mexico.”
Courage Matters: A Ray Courage Mystery (Ray Courage Private Investigator Series Book 2) Page 18
