Found money

by James Grippando

  Ryan’s father was dead. Amy’s mother was dead. The only living person who could possibly hold the answer was the man his father had blackmailed. Ryan couldn’t be a hundred percent sure that it was Joseph Kozelka, but Norm’s investigator had not identified a single other person in the Boulder High yearbook who had acquired the financial wherewithal to pay that much money. True, he and Norm had agreed they would talk to the FBI before moving on Kozelka. Waiting, however, would deprive Ryan of his leverage. The threat of going to the FBI and dropping Kozelka’s name seemed like the only way to get Kozelka to tell him if he in fact had paid the money to Frank Duffy — and more important, why.

  He knew what Norm would say. It was risky, maybe even dangerous. Somehow, however, his father had managed to keep the scheme going and keep himself alive for some twenty years. Ryan would take those odds. Still, he couldn’t tell Norm in advance and give him the chance to talk him out of it. This time, Ryan was on his own.

  “Dr. Duffy?”

  It was a baritone voice from behind. Ryan rose from the couch and turned. The sheer size of the man suggested he was from corporate security.

  “Yes,” said Ryan.

  “Come with me.”

  They walked side by side down the hall in silence. Ryan stood over six feet, but he felt small next to this guy. He was easily six-five and solidly built. Not like those upper-body freaks at the gym with Herculean chests and legs like Bambi. This man’s build was proportional, more athletic. Ryan suspected a military background.

  “Where are we headed?” asked Ryan.

  He stopped and opened the solid oak door to a conference room at the end of the hall. “Inside, please.”

  It was an interior conference room, no windows. Eight leather chairs surrounded a rectangular walnut table. The lighting was soft and indirect.

  He directed Ryan to the other side of the table. “Sit there.”

  Ryan noted how evenly his voice had carried. The sound in the room was like Norm’s media room — acoustically perfect. The room had that sleek look of those counterespionage corporate conference rooms he’d seen in magazines, with cameras hidden in wall clocks and anti-bugging devices throughout. Ryan was glad he hadn’t come wired. It surely would have been detected.

  The guard sat across from him. “Why did you come here?”

  All doubts as to whether he had come to the right place were quickly evaporating. “I thought it was time we started a dialogue.”

  “Why?”

  “Simply to put some issues to rest.”

  “There are no unresolved issues.”

  “There are for me. And I think Mr. Kozelka could clear them up for me.”

  “That’s not going to happen.”

  “Why not?”

  He leaned forward, shooting a steely glare.

  “Because Mr. Kozelka has no time for you.”

  Ryan was unfazed but suddenly noticed something. Just over the man’s shoulder, behind him on the wall, was a very strategically placed painting. It was a hunch, but he felt certain that Mr. Kozelka was not only listening but watching — and probably recording.

  With everything on tape, he had to be careful. The last thing he needed was to come off as an extortionist — like his father.

  “I want you to give Mr. Kozelka a message. Tell him the woman in Panama who stole my bag made a big mistake. Tell him I have her fingerprints on a bar glass.”

  “Mr. Kozelka has no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Yes, he does. But that’s not why I’m here. I came to thank him personally for all the advice he gave to my father over the years. No self-respecting small-town electrician should be without the services of an experienced consultant on matters of international bank secrecy.”

  The man’s face reddened, but he said nothing.

  Ryan said, “I’m almost embarrassed to say it, but I could use Mr. Kozelka’s good advice, too. Ever since that mishap in Panama, the FBI wants to know all about my father’s bank account in Panama. They are determined to find out where all that money came from.”

  Ryan checked for any reaction. It was subtle, but the mention of the FBI seemed to have hit a nerve.

  “Now, I’ll ask you again. Can I count on you to deliver a message to Mr. Kozelka?”

  “I don’t make promises.”

  “Fine.” Ryan rose and faced the portrait on the wall — the hidden camera. He spoke directly to it.

  “Tell Mr. Kozelka I don’t care about the money. I didn’t ask for it, and I’m not here to ask for more. I’m not a criminal, and I’ll do the right thing with or without the help of the FBI. All I want is a straight answer to a very simple question. Why. That’s all I want to know. Tell him I want to know why.”

  He headed for the door and opened it, then stopped and glanced back. “And tell him one more thing. Tell him my appointment with the FBI is Monday. Ten o’clock.

  “I can find my own way to the elevator,” he said, closing the door behind him.

  Amy took an early lunch off the beaten track of Boulder’s Pearl Street Mall. With her mind still buzzing from Marilyn, she didn’t necessarily want to be alone, just someplace where she was certain not to run into anyone from the law office.

  She went to the Sink, one of her old college hangouts. In fact, it had been everybody’s college hangout since the thirties, achieving a genuine claim to fame when a young Robert Redford quit as janitor, bagged UC-Boulder, and decided to try his hand at movies. The decor was organized graffiti. Youthful exuberance was the only way to describe the atmosphere. The food was of the munchies variety, with self-described “Ugly Crust Pizzas” a heavy favorite. Amy took one with pineapple topping and grabbed a small table by the window.

  She glanced at the table beside hers. Two guys barely old enough to drink were making small talk with the girls, planning the weekend. Amy thought back to the days when weekends started after the last class for the week, sometimes on Thursdays if you could fix a schedule with no Friday classes. She hadn’t had a real three-day weekend since — well, since college.

  The television in the corner caught her attention. Noise from the lunch crowd made it inaudible, but she didn’t need audio to know what was going on. Marilyn was standing beside the President outside the White House. A semicircle of smiling onlookers were applauding. It was official. Marilyn Gaslow had her nomination as chairwoman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve. Now all she had to do was withstand the congressional approval process.

  “Mind if I join you?”

  Amy looked up. The face triggered no recognition. The only thing for sure was that he was the only person in the restaurant older than Amy. Way older. From the corduroy jacket and Bugle Boy pants, she would have guessed he was a professor.

  “Do I know you?”

  He put down his soda and joined her at the table. He extended his hand, introducing himself. “Jack Forsyth. FBI.”

  All she could say was “Oh.”

  “I hate to interrupt your lunch, but I would like to talk to you.”

  Amy froze. The warning outside the baseball stadium was all too fresh in her mind — how her daughter would pay if she talked to the police. But it was too late to get up and run. “Talk to me?” she asked innocently. “What about?”

  “I think you know.”

  “I think you’d better tell me.”

  “We’ve been watching Ryan Duffy for several days now. And we’ve been monitoring his phone calls. We heard the message you left at his clinic. And we saw you meet with him last night in Denver.”

  Amy tried not to flinch. Her message had been intentionally vague, she recalled, just in case someone other than Ryan had listened to it. “So?”

  “So, we’ve checked you out as well. We understand you were robbed recently. We spoke to the detective from the Boulder police. Says you were acting strange during his interview, as if you were holding back something.”

  “That’s his opinion.”

  “Yes. It is a matter of opinion. B
ut you know what? Just sitting here and watching your face for the last two minutes, I’ve formed the same opinion.”

  Amy looked away. It was a curse, that expressive face of hers. It wasn’t just Gram who could read it.

  The agent leaned closer. “Tell me. What are you doing with a guy like Ryan Duffy?”

  She could sense his stare, but she didn’t look, couldn’t meet his eyes. She had too many reasons not to talk to him — the threat outside the stadium, and now Marilyn. She had promised Marilyn never to talk to anyone about the rape, and she knew that was where this would lead if she let the FBI in the door.

  She gathered up her tray and rose, spilling her soft drink. “I have nothing to say to you,” she said, flustered.

  “You will. Take my card,” he said, handing it to her. “Call me when you’re ready.”

  Amy gave him a long look. She took the card without a word and walked away, never looking back.

  45

  Ryan went directly from K &G headquarters to Norm’s office. Norm was working alone in the conference room, preparing for tomorrow’s courtroom showdown. That Brent’s deposition had blossomed into a full-blown evidentiary hearing came as a surprise to Ryan. Norm wanted to talk strategy with his client. Ryan, however, unloaded a surprise of his own — the meeting with Kozelka, or at least with his right-hand man.

  Norm listened without interruption, but Ryan could tell he was steaming.

  “Big mistake,” said Norm. “I don’t see an upside to a stunt like that.”

  “You got a better way to find out how my father committed rape and then turned it into blackmail?”

  “You’ll never find that out. Not from Kozelka.”

  “Had I already gone to the FBI, I would agree with you. But I made it very clear that I haven’t said anything to the FBI yet. Kozelka can keep the FBI out of this just by giving me the information I want.”

  “Ryan, he’s not an idiot. If you don’t already know what information your father used to blackmail him, he’s not going to tell you. He’d be giving you carte blanche to pick up where your father left off and keep on blackmailing him. He’s probably back in his office doing cartwheels, delighted that your old man took the secret to the grave.”

  Ryan fell silent. “I hadn’t really thought of it that way.”

  “Of course you haven’t. You’re a brilliant guy, but you haven’t had a good night’s sleep since sometime before your father died. You’ve hardly slept at all in the last four days. Your wife’s divorcing you. Your blockheaded brother-in-law appears to have beaten the crap out of her lawyer. Your sister’s a pregnant squirrel. Your mother has her head in the sand. Your father’s a convicted rapist. You’ve been chased by the Panamanian police. The FBI and the IRS are breathing down your neck. Need I go on? You have too much to think about. That’s why you should listen to me, damn it. Or do you want to add ‘FBI Most Wanted’ to your list of woes?”

  “So maybe I could have thought this through a little better. But Kozelka does appear to hold the key. I was afraid that once I went to the FBI, he might never talk. I’d never find the truth.”

  “The truth is, you made a terrible mistake. And you made it for one reason: you’re still protecting your father.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Your obsession right now is to find out why Kozelka paid your father all that money. One option is to cooperate with the FBI and let them interrogate Kozelka, but then you’d have to tell them your father was a rapist and extortionist. The other option is to barge into K &G headquarters like an idiot and demand to speak directly to Joe Kozelka yourself.”

  Ryan was suddenly angry, pacing the room. “Is it really that crazy to wonder why a man like Kozelka would pay a rapist five million dollars?”

  “You’re way too consumed by this rape question. Step back. You might even realize the blackmail has no connection at all to the rape.”

  “Then why would the rape conviction record have been in the same safe deposit box as the Panamanian bank records?”

  “Maybe the rape simply explains why your dad gave a two-hundred-thousand-dollar chunk of the money to Amy Parkens. You said it yourself before — it could have been his way of making amends for what he did to Amy’s mother. But the rape might have nothing to do with the reasons Kozelka or anyone else paid your father five million dollars.”

  Ryan considered the theory quietly, saddened by its plausibility. He could think only of the horrified look on Amy’s face yesterday. “That would mean my father really did rape Amy’s mother.”

  “Stop protecting your father, Ryan. It’s time to start worrying about your own neck.”

  Ryan wanted to deny it, but the more the silence lingered, the more he realized: Norm was right. He answered in a calm, much quieter tone. “What’s done is done, I guess. The good news is, I’ve at least confirmed that Kozelka is the source of the funds.”

  “And the really bad news,” said Norm, “is that you still have no idea what your dad used to blackmail Kozelka. Yet you marched right into his building and left him with the distinct impression that the Duffy family is still blackmailing him.”

  “No way. I made it very clear that I wasn’t after money.”

  “Blackmail doesn’t have to involve money. In a general sense, any time you use threats to cause someone to act against their own free will, it’s a form of extortion.”

  “I didn’t threaten him.”

  “It was a veiled threat, Ryan. In essence, you told him to come up with the information you want by Monday at ten A.M., or you give Kozelka’s name to the FBI.”

  “That’s extortion?”

  “Legally, it’s a gray area. But if I were Kozelka, I’d take it that way.”

  “What should we do?”

  “Wait. And brace ourselves. We’re about to find out how Kozelka takes to threats.”

  Joseph Kozelka sat behind his desk, still fuming. The entire exchange in the conference room had been caught on camera, broadcast on closed circuit to the television monitor in his office. To say Dr. Duffy had angered him would be a gross understatement. Kozelka, however, wasn’t the type to rant and rave. He stewed. Never alone. Always in the presence of those he held responsible. It was a power tactic that left subordinates melting with apprehension.

  This afternoon, Nathan Rusch was one of those subordinates. He sat nervously on the couch, awaiting his boss’s reaction.

  Job security was a rare luxury at K &G, especially for someone like Rusch, whose job was totally result-oriented. Rusch wasn’t part of K &G’s regular corporate security. He was a special security operations consultant, a term that covered just about anything. If Kozelka needed protection on a trip to a Third World country, Rusch could assemble a team that rivaled the Secret Service. If a disgruntled former employee threatened to expose K &G trade secrets, Rusch was faster, cheaper and far more effective than any team of rabid lawyers. And if Kozelka was faced with blackmail, Rusch would tell him when to pay — and when to fight back.

  Kozelka spoke in a controlled but biting tone. “How could she be so stupid as to leave a glass with her fingerprints behind in the bar?”

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  “You’re the one who hired her.”

  “It was on the quick. She came highly recommended.”

  “I don’t see why you used her in the first place. You should have just snatched Duffy’s bag yourself.”

  “We were hoping for more than just the bag. She’s a very talented woman. We thought he’d be tempted. Maybe go back to her room, where she could get him talking. It didn’t work out that way. Duffy didn’t take the bait.”

  “Whatever. What’s the worst-case scenario?”

  Rusch hated to deliver bad news, but he was always honest with Kozelka. “Duffy gives the glass to the FBI at their meeting on Monday morning. The FBI gets a match on the prints and apprehends her. After that, it’s in her hands.”

  “What do you mean, her hands?”

  “She ei
ther tells the FBI nothing. Or she talks.”

  “What can she tell them?” He raised an eyebrow, threatening. “You didn’t tell her anything. Did you?”

  He gulped. “She couldn’t operate totally in the dark. I told her a few things.”

  Kozelka leaned back in his chair. He didn’t scream; it wasn’t his style. But this time he was stewing so hard his eyes were bulging. “What did you tell her?”

  “Just the essentials. Like I said, we were hoping Duffy would pick her up in the bar, have a few drinks, get to talking. We had to give her some idea of what to pry out of him.”

  “Have you been in contact with her since Panama?”

  “Yeah. I used her on surveillance here in Denver. For obvious reasons, I preferred to involve as few players as possible in this operation. Since she was already in the loop, I figured I’d use her again. She is good. Or so I’m told.”

  “Does she know too much? Is she dangerous?”

  “I wouldn’t go overboard with worry. This should take the FBI nowhere. All the glass proves is that she had a drink with Ryan Duffy in the bar. That’s it.”

  Kozelka folded his hands atop the desk. “Unless she panics. Unless there’s a warrant out for her arrest on six other unrelated scams we don’t know about. Unless the FBI offers to wipe her slate clean if she’ll tell them who hired her and what’s going on in this case.”

  “That’s possible. But it’s premature.”

  “I have just one thing to say to you, Rusch.” He leaned forward, staring him in the eye. “Don’t let it happen.”

  46

  The courthouse on Saturday was like church on Monday. Row after row of empty seats. Utter quiet in the halls. Lights and air conditioning were on in limited areas only. It had a way of making the proceedings seem both more and less important. It brought everyone in on their day off, but it was the last place anyone wanted to be.

  With the exception of Phil Jackson. He seemed energized, if not happy.

  Ryan tried not to look his way. He sat quietly beside his lawyer at the old mahogany table farthest from the jury box. Liz sat at the other table next to Jackson. While waiting for the judge, Ryan had glanced her way several times. He couldn’t help it. She had yet to make eye contact.