Solid Oak

by William F Lovejoy

  Malone studied the website. Winston Smith Brokerage. It didn’t say where it was located, so maybe online was enough.

  “Doesn’t ask for a name, just an account number.”

  She went back to the password window and copied the account number, took it back to the website and pasted it in. Then she went back and got the password and pasted it into the appropriate field.

  The screen changed to a listing of stocks and bonds with purchase dates, number of shares, current share price, totals in the right column, and grand total at the bottom. Showed a current value of 622,400.

  “That’s British Pound Sterling,” Galway said.

  “Equates to about 950,000 U.S.”

  “What’s interesting,” she said, “the equity holdings are all foreign stocks. I’d bet anything that this brokerage is off-shore somewhere. The investment has never been declared in the U.S. And the holding mix looks a hell of a lot like what I saw in Jim Mears Phoenix accounts.”

  That was very, very interesting.

  “Can we find out who owns the account?”

  She clicked on the Account Manager tab. When the page appeared, they found that the owner of the account was named Archibald Campbell.

  “Archie’s an alias,” Bobbi said.

  “You think? But he also equates to TR.”

  “That’s right.”

  She backed out of the WSB account and tried another TR account. That one turned out to be a bank savings account in Switzerland with 2.7 million on deposit for Michael S. Rutledge.

  “Mike is still TR,” Oak said. “Probably has a different alias on each account. Try RC.”

  There were five RC accounts and all five held zero balances though they could go back in time and view transactions.

  “Well, well,” Malone said.

  It took them most of the day, but they went through each of the accounts, found various aliases, but ended up with a page of totals for each of the codenames. In many cases they had to call up a currency converter to get the U.S. dollar equivalent of pound sterling, euro, kroner, yuan, peso, dinar, and other currencies. Each of the codenames had two or more brokerage accounts, and the stock listings were all similar. The brokerages were diverse and in only one instance had they found two of the codenames using the same brokerage. Judging by the profile of the portfolios, they were all getting their buy recommendations from Jim Mears Malone was certain. Each of the codenames had multiple deposit accounts.

  The Institute’s accounts, INS, appeared obvious from the transactions showing up on bank statements, and all of the banks and brokerages were located within the country. The other accounts seemed to be located off-shore, and some of them were identified as such. Mainly they were institutions located on islands with reputations as tax havens. And off-shore was a bit of a misnomer because it only meant outside the country. Switzerland and Hong Kong were both off-shore, and both of them showed up in a few instances.

  ‘CH is the big winner,” Bobbi said. “A little over 25 million US.”

  “And that’s after some major withdrawals of over a million. I suppose that’s the boss. The mastermind. You think it’s Alicia?”

  “Possible. She’s running all of the accounts apparently, doing the grunt work. In that one MD account, we saw deposits coming from INS accounts, and then being redistributed to other cash and brokerage accounts. That would be the skim from the Institute and Alicia’s work I think.”

  “Suppose Jeffrey Paxton is one of the codenames?”

  “Possible, Oak. He’s supposedly in charge of the whole damned mess.”

  “What about the new ones we found? SEP, OCT, DEC, MON, WED, NOV, FRI, TUE, a couple others.”

  “What those had in common,” Galway said, “was that they accepted deposits from an MD or CH account, but all withdrawals were in cash. I lean toward payments to outsiders. Not one of the payments was over a quarter million. A lot in the 10,000 to 20,000 range.”

  “Months and days of the week as codes. You notice that NOV got a 150K deposit on June 22nd?”

  “No. That means something?”

  “It’s the day after Lani was killed.”

  “Shit.”

  They had moved to the couch long before, and Galway leaned back and rubbed her eyes. She said, “You were right.”

  “About?”

  “Follow the money.”

  “Unfortunately, that’s where a lot of my investigations go.”

  “Some of these accounts are six years old, Oak. It’s been going on for a long time.”

  “That could make me angry if I thought about it for long enough.”

  “And now what?” she asked.

  “We’re still short of evidence connecting people. All of the aliases were male names, so no guessing about Alicia’s or Lani’s accounts. I’d bet good money that RC was Dinmore, and he had around 7 million until June 1st, then drained the accounts.”

  “That was before he was to meet with you.”

  “Maybe he was going to run. That would turn the others against him. From your survey of those other files in Hot Stuff, we can maybe assume Lani contributed confidential information. We think we see Jim Mears’ hand in the investment strategies. We think CH may be running the operation.”

  “It’s not Patrick,” Bobbi said.

  Well, not quite yet. It seemed to Malone that Corridan had the longest association with the Institute. As well as being a very bright guy. He didn’t want to argue with Galway until he was forced to do so.

  “It looks to me, Bobbi, like the original idea was to skim some of those dollars off of the Institute, some of them being my taxpayer dollars. Then someone came up with the plan to manipulate crisis situations and profit from changes in stock values. That latter plan also resulted in the deaths of some innocent people, as in Qatar.”

  “Back to my question. What are we going to do?”

  “Could we freeze the accounts? Go in and change the passwords so that Alicia and the others couldn’t get to the cash and stocks?”

  “We could do that,” she said. “But it wouldn’t last long. Alicia’s got the software to get around those new passwords.”

  “What about changing the accounts so they wouldn’t accept any password?”

  “I’d need to get into the source code of each of the institutions. Get me about a dozen programmers to help out.”

  “I’ve got a couple off-shore accounts. We could transfer all of it to my accounts.”

  “We could do that. If you could keep transferring it to other accounts or pick up about seventy million in cash in one withdrawal. Alicia could keep tracking where it went until it reached a final destination and was withdrawn.”

  Malone sighed. “I’m probably not going to do that.”

  “Might be tough, big guy. Back to my question.”

  “And it was a good one. I think we want to find the chief honcho.”

  “CH.”

  “Yeah.”

  “How do we do that?”

  “I thought Lani would be the weak link, and apparently the chief honcho did also, so he got rid of her. So we go to the next weakest link. That’s the one who runs it all, whose ego make her proud of herself, but who can’t remember to hide the passwords better. Big Sister.”

  By her expression, Bobbi didn’t think much of the plan, but he figured she was worried about the Senator. Didn’t want to turn him up as CH.

  He couldn’t help that.

  Mainly, he and Bobbi were safe for the moment, and he would dream up some action to prod Alicia Hampstead.

  No one except his friendly forger knew where they were.

  And then his cell phone buzzed.

  Bobbi rolled her eyes as he retrieved it from the coffee table.

  “Mr. Malone?”

  “Hello, Detective Ford. What can I do for you?”

  “You aren’t at Ms. Galway’s condo.”

  “How would you know that?”

  “Alexandria PD told me so. Where are you?”

  Oh,
man, where? About three miles from Ford’s office.

  “I’m involved in some complicated negotiations about future work. It’s going to tie me up for awhile.”

  Bobbi sat up, watching him closely.

  Ford hesitated, and then plunged ahead. “The medical examination determined that Lani Dixon was dead before her body hit the patio.”

  “Damn, I’m sorry to hear that. But I told you I didn’t think she was suicidal.”

  “I know what you told me. We need to talk some more.”

  “I’m happy to do that. But it may be a couple of days before. . . .”

  “We don’t have a couple days, Mr. Malone. It needs to be now.”

  “Ah, look, they’re calling me back into the conference. I’ll get back to you.”

  He clicked off the call, and then shut off the phone.

  “Damn. I’m going to have to get a new phone. This one quit working.”

  Chapter Fifteen – Monday, June 24

  Hampstead arrived at her office early on Monday morning. None of the other employees were there yet.

  She punched her code into the keypad and entered from the hallway. Used her key to unlock her office door and turned on the overhead lights. Then she placed her purse in a desk drawer and replaced yesterday’s wilted roses with the fresh yellow roses she had brought with her. Dropping into her desk chair, she turned on the computer terminal and pried the lid off a Starbucks cappuccino while the machine came up.

  First, she pulled up a minimized version of her password file and parked it in the bottom right corner of the screen so she could find passwords rapidly. Then she went to the Riyadh brokerage and placed a buy order for CBQK equal to the number of shares she had sold on the short sale. When the transaction was complete, she would pay for it out of the operations fund. That’s where she had stashed the funds raised by the sale.

  For her own account, Alicia had decided to go to another brokerage and buy a quarter million dollars worth of CBQK at the new low price. It would take awhile, but the bank would come back. She was sure of it, and she would make some money on the recovery.

  She had barely completed that task when she heard the door in the anteroom open so she hit the F12 key which she had programmed to immediately place a screen saver on the screen to hide what she was working on. Dancing yellow dollar signs romped on a field of blue.

  Swiveling in her chair, she saw Jeffrey come through her doorway. He just leaned against the doorjamb.

  He looked terrible. His eyes were bloodshot with dark rings below them. He hadn’t trimmed his beard as neatly as he always did. His suitcoat was wrinkled at the arms and across his stomach. His had been a sleepless weekend.

  “You’re worrying too much, Jeffrey.”

  “I don’t think so, Alicia. I’m going to lose my job.”

  “Nonsense. I worked at home all weekend preparing a rebuttal against any accusations that might come up.”

  And she had done that. Hampstead had stacks of documents detailing where the bribery money had been spent.

  Of course, she had also packed a suitcase. Just in case.

  While she packed, she considered what her life had become and finally figured out that it was mainly work. Her social life was constrained to electronics and databases. She didn’t have close friends, just nearby neighbors. She didn’t have a love life, just fantasies about what had been and what could be.

  Leaving it all behind wouldn’t necessarily be all bad.

  “God, I hope you’re right,” Paxton said.

  “Trust me, Jeffrey. If anything at all hits the news or any investigative agency, we’re prepared to respond. We’ll lose some membership renewals, maybe less on the fundraising, but we’ll survive.”

  “I love this organization, Alicia. I feel like I’ve done some good in the world, that it’s a safer place.”

  Maybe, maybe not.

  “We’ll carry on,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  But he didn’t look very hopeful when he turned and left. And still hadn’t really looked at her.

  Hampstead went back to her computer and started signing into the Vice Chair’s brokerage accounts to place sell orders. Once that was done, she’d move on to the bank accounts and split them up three ways.

  *

  The Chairman didn’t think he needed to talk to May right away. She knew what she had to do this morning.

  He called November instead. The man sounded sleepy when he answered.

  “Are you awake?”

  “Sure I am.”

  “What progress have you made?”

  “None. I’ve been in this car all night outside Galway’s place, but there’s been no sign of either of them. I don’t think they’re in there. You got any idea where they’ve gone?”

  “No. Check with May. Have you looked at the news this morning?”

  “The news?”

  “The Medical Examiner ruled Dixon’s death a homicide.”

  “Shit! How could that be?”

  “For one thing, she wasn’t breathing when she hit the concrete. Mainly, it means they’re going to take a deeper look. Are you sure you weren’t spotted?”

  “Don’t think so, Chair. I went out the back door and through some backyards. Didn’t see anyone watching me.”

  “I hope so. Call May.”

  He clicked off.

  The Chairman knew that when the cops had trouble locating a suspect, they took a closer look at the victim. If Lani had screwed up somehow and left a trail leading to David Dixon’s treasure trove of information, things could start to unravel. He didn’t know how she had managed to capture so much of her husband’s confidential papers, but she may have left clues behind.

  And when Mears and Hampstead learned that Lani was murdered, they too might become anxious, might think the Chairman was cleaning house. And that was a worthwhile consideration.

  He had screwed up, though. The Chair didn’t have the same access to all of the accounts that Hampstead had so he couldn’t shift funds from their accounts to his. He would hate to leave the enterprise with forty million readily available dollars. Well, not so readily available. Some of it was in the form of stock in other names that would have to be sold or transferred.

  He needed Alicia for a little while longer.

  He didn’t need Jim.

  With the two of them gone, any threat to the comfortable life he had devised for himself would no longer exist.

  Except maybe for that fucking Malone.

  *

  “You’re going to be famous,” Galway said.

  She was sitting on the couch, her feet up on the coffee table, dressed in jeans and a blue-and-white striped polo shirt, with her laptop on her lap. Malone was next to her, also in jeans, with his own laptop.

  “What if I don’t want to be famous?”

  “No choice, I’m afraid. The Metro cops have issued a BOLO for you.”

  He dropped his feet to the floor and sat up straight. “You’re serious?”

  “Right here. I thought I’d check police reports. You’re described but no picture. But, hey, you’re only a person of interest.”

  “That damned Ford couldn’t wait a couple days.”

  “You did kind of hang up on him,” she said.

  “Now I’m going to have to figure out some kind of disguise.”

  “Just put a pillow under your shirt. No one would recognize a chubby Malone.”

  He leaned back against the cushion and raised his left arm to rest on the back of the couch. His fingers crept up on her neck and massaged. It felt good. Made her want to purr.

  They had been working some solid hours together yesterday afternoon and this morning. Because she was faster, Galway sifted through files in the Bitter Stuff folder and identified incidents that had taken place around the world, primarily in the Middle East. She called them out and Malone made notes on his own laptop. The notes included the dates of the incidents. Searching through brokerage accounts, she found orders for short sal
es that occurred previous to the incident, and Malone added those to his notes. In MD and CH accounts, she found transfers of cash to TUE and THU and SAT and an account called OPEN that was located in Riyadh. The dates generally fell before, sometimes after, the incidents. Best guess: these were payoffs to the players.

  While she was culling accounts for information, Malone checked online sources about the incidents for additional detail not found in the files.

  Malone also noted the number of fatalities and casualties corresponding to the incidents. By the time they had recorded thirty of the incidents, they had also recorded 77 deaths and 229 injured. Bystanders. Women and children. Collateral damage.

  And now magic fingers.

  ‘If you keep that up,” Bobbi said, “I will fall asleep.”

  “Okay. I’m good with that.”

  “We still have 176 incidents to identify.”

  “Ten to one, they come up just like the first thirty. You’re the analyst and we’re doing the analysis. Don’t you think the sample of thirty paints the picture?”

  “It probably does. All right, we’ll take a break from that.”

  His fingers gripped just a little tighter, moving in tiny, delicious circles. “And do what?”

  “I want to look at cash account activity,” she said.

  “Spoilsport. That’s boring as hell.”

  “You concentrate on the next step with Big Sister.”

  Oak didn’t seem to worry much about the fact that the Metro police wanted to talk to him very badly. He had gone out first thing this morning and bought new disposable cell phones for both of them.

  Bobbi worried that Detective Ford would now think of Malone as a true suspect since he was dodging an interview.

  She gently removed Oak’s fingers from the nape of her neck, and after six tries, she found a CH account that seemed to have a lot of activity, though nothing that could be particularly identified. There were monthly withdrawals of cash, generally around $10,000. When she scrolled backward, and jumped to earlier years, she found that those periodic withdrawals had been taking place for almost four years. Forty months before, there had been a withdrawal by cashier’s check of 2.1 million US dollars. Twenty-seven months earlier, 1.3 million. Major purchases of something or other.