by Wally Duff
“It’s the can,” the unseen voice on my right said.
“And over there,” the agent said, pointing to the other door.
“The kitchen.”
“If he has a camera hidden behind that mirror, it’s probably in one of those two rooms.”
The agent walked toward me. My heart began racing at a lethal level as I tried to think of something I could say that would keep us from getting arrested.
32
“Don’t even think about it,” the unseen voice said. “Your warrant is good for this office and this office only. It does not mention any other rooms. If you want to go in there, get another warrant.”
I exhaled the breath I was holding in. I couldn’t see the man but he was my new best friend.
The agent turned around to the computer worker. “You done, Steve?”
The man pulled the hard drive up and placed it on the desk. “Ready to roll.”
“We’ll be back,” the second agent said. “Don’t touch anything in those two rooms. I’m going to seal his office. No one is to enter until we come back, got it?”
“Oh, I got it, pal. Why don’t you guys get the hell out of here?”
The door slammed. I heard a click as room lights were shut off and a snap as the office door was locked from the outside. I peeked out. The room was dark and empty. I heard strange noises from the toilet room. I went in. Cas sat on the toilet watching the TV.
“I found them,” she said.
I studied the screen. Two people were engaged in a sex act. I quickly turned my eyes away. “I guess you did,” I said.
“There’s a whole bunch of DVDs here. Should we take all of them with us?”
“Definitely, but why don’t we let Molly be in charge of this part of the investigation? She’s had a lot of experience in this area.”
33
We left via the secret elevator. Cas waited in the mommy van while I made a stop that might save me from a future FBI visit. I walked in the main entrance of the building where Zhukov’s office was located. A male security guard sat at the front desk.
“I’m sorry to bother you, but is your boss still around?” I asked.
He eyed me for a few seconds. “How do you know he’s even here?”
A reasonable question for which I had no reasonable answer. In the old days, I never would have made a blunder like this.
“I mean that if he’s on site, I need to speak to him. I think he’ll recognize my face.”
“It’s your butt I remember,” a man’s voice behind me said. “I’ve never seen anyone spin around like that on a marble floor.”
A medium-height, physically fit man in his mid-forties stood in a hallway to my left. He was dressed like the security guard at the desk with a blue blazer, gray slacks, blue shirt, and dark blue tie.
He walked up to me. “Pat Adley,” he said, extending his hand.
We shook, but I didn’t give him my name.
“I wondered when you would drop by,” he said. “I assume you already know that Detective Corritore was here to watch the recordings from that night.”
“That’s exactly why I’m here,” I said. “I don’t want,” I nodded at the other security guard, “other people to see them.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Let’s go into my office.”
I followed him down the hall into a brightly lit room with a bank of TV monitors.
His face was grim. “What ‘other people’ are you talking about?”
“The FBI,” I said.
“How do you know the FBI is involved in this?”
Another good question. He wasn’t going to like the answer.
“I was in Zhukov’s office tonight when they came to visit,” I said.
He sat down and stared at me. “Should I ask how you got in there?” He paused. “And why the hell you were in there?”
“You have the right to do that since you are head of security, and I would like to answer, but that might get us both in trouble if the FBI begins asking you questions about me.”
“I hate the FBI. I don’t have a problem with screwing with them, but I don’t want you to jerk me around. My job could be at risk. What the hell is going on?”
I told him.
34
“Obviously, Corritore didn’t tell me those details,” Adley said, when I finished. “She said you were here and found Zhukov’s body and then lost it.”
“I didn’t lose it,” I said. “The killer removed it.”
He smiled. “I know. He pulled the body onto the elevator.”
“Luminol?”
He nodded. “I used it after Corritore left. I wanted to know what happened up there. I found the blood spatter on the carpet in front of the elevator. That was good enough for me.”
“She must be strong to pull a dead weight like that,” I said.
“She?”
“I guess I forgot to mention that. The killer is a woman.”
“How do you know that?”
“I saw her the last time I was here.”
He glared at me. “You were here one other time?”
“I was. Last night, I came here to see if I could figure out what happened to the body. I used luminol on the carpet in the elevator. While I was here, a woman arrived on the secret elevator. I hid in the kitchen.”
“How do you know she’s the killer?”
“She downloaded the contents from his hard drive and then used luminol to find any blood traces, which she cleaned up.”
“That doesn’t make her the killer.”
“She also wore the shoes I left behind Monday night.”
He rubbed his lips with his index finger. “The only footprints she left were from your shoes. Seems like she wants to frame you for Zhukov’s murder,” he paused, “if anyone finds out he was killed.”
“You’re right.” My stomach began to feel funny. “Right now your recordings show I was the only person here that night.” I hesitated before I spoke. “I don’t suppose you would consider destroying them, would you?”
“Not a chance of that, lady, but I’ll make you a deal,” he said. “You tell me everything that’s going on, and I mean everything, and I’ll keep these recordings out of the FBI’s hands.”
“What if the feds find out what you’re doing?”
“They won’t think about it. Nothing much in the way of criminal activity ever happens here.”
“Except Zhukov’s murder.”
“Might want to call it an ‘alleged murder’ since we don’t have a body.”
“Any ideas about that?”
“A good bet it’s either in a landfill or at the bottom of Lake Michigan.”
35
Mid-morning on Thursday, Linda Misle and I were in the lower level of our home. We sat next to each other in front of my computer screen.
Earlier that morning, I’d texted her about the events of yesterday involving Tony, Cas, and Pat Adley, the head of security at Zhukov’s building. She’d texted back that we needed to meet.
Linda and her husband, Howard, have a daughter, Sandra, who is almost four, and a son, Jason, who is close to toddler age. Kerry and Sandra were at preschool together. Jason was home with his nanny. I’d breast-fed Macy, and she was asleep in my arms.
Linda is my height of five eight. We used to be in the same one hundred thirty pound weight range, but not any longer. I’m closer to being back to that weight. She still has a way to go to join me.
She took out a ballpoint pen and yellow legal pad. Writing on it is her preferred way to take notes. She had questions already listed on the first page. I felt like I was in a deposition.
“Let me be clear about the timeline,” she began.
“Great.”
“On Saturday, you texted me that you were going to write an article for Carter about Alexis Zhukov, a Russian investor who had a lot of unhappy clients, and you asked me to begin a background check on him.”
“I did.”
She checked the first q
uestion.
“I told you I’d seen him at my parent’s country club where he gave a solicitation talk to invest in his fund.”
“You did.”
A check mark on question number two.
“On Tuesday morning, you texted the Irregulars that he was dead when you arrived in his office.”
“I did, and he was.”
Number three checked off.
“After you allegedly found his body, you ran away to get help.”
“Not allegedly. I did find his body. He had a bullet hole between his eyes.”
She ignored my response. “And when you returned to his office, he was gone.”
“His body was gone, yes.”
She hesitated and then checked off the question.
“About that. In your text to me this morning, you indicated that, yesterday, Tony told you United Airlines computer records show Alexis Zhukov boarded a plane and flew to Brunei through Shanghai the morning after you thought you saw him dead in his office.”
“I say again, I found him dead in his office.”
“What about his passport? Did the records indicate Zhukov used it along with his ticket?”
“That’s what Tony told me.”
Another check. “What about the security camera recordings at the airports?”
“Tony said Frankie’s guy is working on that.”
She put her pen down. “Now what?”
“That’s why you’re here. You’re a lawyer. You used to prosecute white-collar crime before you went into private practice. You’re the perfect one to figure this out.”
“That’s the problem I’m having here. Figure out what?”
“All the background material you sent me on Zhukov showed that he was in deep doo-doo with his investors. He’d lost millions of their dollars. I think he embezzled the rest of their money and he had an escape plan.”
“And?”
“The killer put a bullet in Zhukov’s brain to stop that from happening. She then removed his body and activated his escape plan before she left his office.”
She wrote that down and then looked up.
“This makes no sense. How could she know about his plan?”
I began to rock Macy back and forth in my arms. “I saw Zhukov’s body for a few seconds, but the one thing I remember is that he appeared so calm, like he sat in his chair and let someone blow his brains out.”
“Why would he do that?”
“I think the killer came to his office and made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. Give her the password to his computer and tell her the truth about what he was planning to do and she would let his family live.”
She wrote that down. “What does his family have to do with this?”
“Historically, if you screw the Russian Mafia, they torture and kill your entire family, including the grandchildren. This time, the killer gave him an out. Give them what they wanted, and they would let his family live.”
“And then he sat there while she shot him.”
“It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
“But you arrived and changed the killer’s plans.”
“She had to assume I would bring the police back, which I did. All she had time to do was send an email from his computer to his secretary’s, and then she left with the body.”
“And came back the next night, after the secretary had gone home, to steal what she came for in the first place — the contents of his computer’s hard drive.”
“The perfect plan. Zhukov appears to leave for Brunei, taking any remaining money with him.”
“But the Russian mob searches through his files before the FBI does and finds out where he hid the money. They take it all back before the feds can find the money.”
“And I’m left without a story unless you can help me.” I handed the flash drive to her. “Now you have the same contents from his files the Russians do. If you can help me figure this out, we’ll have a compelling tale to write.”
“I’ll check the files, but aren’t you forgetting something?”
“Ignoring would be a better word. I know the killer saw me the first night.”
She re-read her notes and then tapped the pad with her pen. “You’re potentially the only flaw in their plan. If they think you have figured this out, they won’t hesitate to kill you. Maybe you should work on another story.”
“I might have one. David and Rick recently purchased a home a couple of blocks from here. They’re redoing it and said it’s taking forever for the builder to complete the project. It’s also gone way over their budget.”
“Let me guess, they hate their builder.”
“That’s exactly what they said to me.”
“The same thing happened to Howard and me with our home.” She put down her pen. “That would be a great article.”
“And it would be a whole lot safer.”
36
I went upstairs, put Macy down for her nap, and turned on the Nanit. When I returned to the computer room, Linda had already inserted the flash drive I had used to copy Zhukov’s computer files and had the material on the screen. I watched as she scrolled through page after page of financial data.
“This is giving me a headache,” I said, after fifteen minutes of watching.
“Exactly how his investors must have felt,” Linda said. “This was an extremely sophisticated Ponzi scheme.”
“Like Bernie Madoff.”
“Yes, but Zhukov was better. Initially, he paid high returns to the first clients from the money given to him by the next group of investors. But all of them were wiped out when the scheme fell apart.”
“Wow.”
“And from the last names, most of the investors appear to be Jews.”
“Russian?”
“That would be my guess.”
I pointed at the screen. “What about the Sturgeon Corporation? It looks like it took a massive hit.”
“That might be the key to all of this. I think the Sturgeon Corporation is a Russian Mafia front to launder their illegal monies.”
“Why would you say that?”
“When I prosecuted white-collar crime, money laundering was a common occurrence. It’s easy for criminals to make money illegally, but it’s very difficult to get it back into circulation to spend it without sending up red flags to each governmental agency in the world.”
“And you think that’s what happened?”
“The Sturgeon Corporation is a privately owned company in Russia, but,” she pointed at the screen, “check its holdings here in the U.S. They own fur, jewelry, and art shops in places like Aspen and Vail, along with dry cleaners, laundromats, and car washes in big cities.”
“So what?”
“These are well-known fronts for laundering illegal money.”
“How do they do it?”
“It’s actually pretty simple. The funds these businesses generate from legal sales are mixed with larger amounts of the Russian Mafia’s illegal money. The books are then cooked to show the businesses produce only legal profits, which then go back to the Sturgeon Corporation, which appears on paper to be a legitimate business.”
“Which the Russian Mafia owns.”
“That would be my guess. All the businesses owned by the Sturgeon Corporation pay rent, employee salaries, FICA, and — most importantly — their local, state, and federal taxes.”
“The IRS has to love that.”
“Which is one major reason they ignore this business practice. Our economy needs the revenue.”
“Even though most of the money is illegally generated.”
“Yes, but there are also legal profits produced, and it’s better to be able to collect the larger combined taxes than those that would come from the much smaller legal profits.”
“I must be dense, but why go through all this? It seems like a lot of taxes are being paid. Why would the Russian Mafia essentially lose that money?”
“They are willing to give away a small amount of tax mon
ey to get more illegal money back into circulation without the government finding out.”
