The Vulture Fund

by Stephen W. Frey

  Immediately Becker placed the cigar carefully down into the glass ashtray, picked up the folder, opened it, and removed the contents—financial statements of Andrews Industries. He leafed through them for a few seconds, then gazed up at Slade. Slowly his left eyebrow rose. It wasn’t what he had expected.

  24

  “We have the equity money, the bank loan, and a substantial list of investors. People and institutions with significant real estate exposures in Manhattan, all of whom you have met. What more can Mace do for us?” Webster asked impatiently. “When the project reaches zero hour, you will call the investors quietly. They won’t even question why it isn’t Mace calling them. They won’t care. They’ll just want to get out at that point.”

  There was nothing else Leeny could say that might buy Mace a few more days. Save yourself, she thought. “You’re right, Lewis. There is nothing more he can do for us.” The death warrant had been signed. “Everything is in place. We don’t need him now.”

  A smile formed on Webster’s drawn face. “Mace McLain always has been a cocky son of a bitch,” the old man whispered. “I wonder if he’ll feel as cocky when he’s staring down the barrel of a gun.”

  She felt a chill race up her spine as Webster tilted his head forward and most of the dark eyes disappeared below the eyebrows. He was disgusting.

  Webster smiled again. “The shame of it all is that he’ll probably never really have the chance to look down the barrel of that gun. They are very efficient. He’ll probably never even know what hit him. It will be merciful.” Webster said the last few words as if he were disappointed, as if he wished Mace’s last few moments did not have to be so merciful.

  “Yes, I suppose it will be.” Leeny did not know what else to say. It was terrible that Webster could dispose of someone this coldly. Mace had worked hard at Walker Pryce and made Webster a wealthier man. His only regret seemed to be that he wouldn’t be a witness to Mace’s execution.

  “I suppose Mace’s little friend Rachel Sommers will be disappointed when she finds out what has happened.” Webster stroked his beard.

  “What’s that?” Leeny’s eyes shot to Webster’s.

  He looked perplexed. “You didn’t know?” he whispered.

  “Know what?” She was trying desperately to keep her voice in control.

  “About Mace and this Sommers woman.”

  “What about them?”

  “They’ve been screwing like rabbits for weeks.”

  Leeny’s hands began to shake. So Mace really had been using her. He was just like every other man she had ever known. He had said that he cared in the cab. But it was Rachel he really cared about. He had lied to her just as they all had. Leeny clenched her fists tightly to her body so Webster could not see her hands tremble. She could feel herself losing control.

  “Are you all right, Ms. Hunt?”

  “I’m fine,” she said hoarsely.

  Webster’s eyes narrowed. “I think perhaps you had better give me a copy of that investor list. The one that shows who you and Mace have visited in the last few weeks.” He paused. “Just so there are two copies. It is a very important list.”

  Leeny brought a hand to her mouth. Were they going to kill her too? Was that why Webster wanted the list? She felt her stomach beginning to churn. She needed to get out of this office immediately. “I’ll go get it right now.”

  “Good.”

  Leeny opened the door of Webster’s office and then closed it behind her quickly. For several moments she leaned back against the dark wood, breathing hard. It was as if the walls were closing in on her, as if the room were breathing too. She wanted to scream, but somehow she maintained control. She closed her eyes tightly, opened them again after a few moments, then brought both hands to her eyes to brush the tears away, smearing mascara over her cheeks as she did so because her hands were shaking so badly. Finally she pushed off the door and began to walk unsteadily toward the elevators.

  Through the crack of his office door Walter Marston saw Leeny go, watching her closely until she stepped into an elevator and the doors closed behind her. He wanted to help her, to find out why she was so distraught. But he did not want to spend the rest of his life in jail. The Internal Revenue Service was sensitive about people who had evaded taxes on almost twenty million dollars of income. He had no problem saving himself rather than help another in this kind of situation. Besides, there probably wasn’t any hope for her at this point. One could only pray that she would see that for herself and get out.

  Webster smiled to himself as he gazed out the window onto Wall Street. He had no idea whether or not Mace was sleeping with Rachel. But he knew how severely the image of Mace and Rachel making love would affect Leeny. He laughed out loud to himself for the first time in years.

  * * *

  —

  “Mace McLain.”

  “Mace, It’s John Schuler.”

  “Good morning, John.” Mace glanced at his watch. It was eleven-thirty. “I thought I was supposed to call you at noon.”

  “That was what we agreed on, but as it turns out, I’ve got a lunch to go to.” Schuler paused. “And I’ve already got some information for you, so I figured I’d give it to you right away. So you didn’t have to wait.”

  Schuler’s voice sounded strangely subservient. But at the same time he sounded as if he would rather be doing anything else in the world but having this conversation. “What do you have?” Mace asked.

  “It’s a little odd, I guess,” Schuler said. “Nothing that causes me undue stress. I don’t think it does anyway.” He was trying to make it sound as if whatever he had found in the Broadway Ventures account was not puzzling him, but his tone was unconvincing.

  There was something wrong. Mace could hear it in his voice. “What is it, John?”

  “I had my people follow back to their source the wire transfers that have come into the Broadway Ventures account over the last three weeks, the transfers that basically represent the partners’ investments. It’s usually a pretty quick process these days what with all the system checks the government people have put into place to follow drug money. Of course I have some fairly high-level friends at other banks who helped us when we couldn’t trace things through conventional means. I used up a lot of favors on this.”

  “I appreciate that.” Mace sensed he was about to hear something important. This wasn’t going to be put to bed as quickly as he had initially anticipated.

  “Well, maybe it’s just coincidence, but the odds seem pretty long for just coincidence.”

  “What is it?” Mace was becoming impatient.

  “Two things really. First, there are a total of fifteen wires going into the Broadway Ventures account over the last three weeks. Nine of them trace back to Capital Bank, the large commercial bank headquartered in Washington, D.C. There are some intermediate steps along the way, but the backtracking always leads to Capital Bank. Each of those nine wires was for one hundred million dollars. The others were much smaller. Five were for ten million, and one was for fifty million. The fifty-million-dollar wire was from Walker Pryce. The five ten-million-dollar wires all were sent by real estate investors I’ve heard of before.”

  Mace didn’t hear the last of what Schuler had just said. Capital Bank. Mace was familiar with the institution. Suddenly he felt his skin crawl. There was something very wrong with the fact that nine hundred million of the billion dollars sent to the Broadway Ventures account at Chase had come from Capital Bank accounts. Why would all the money flow through that one bank in Washington? Schuler was right. It was too much of a coincidence. Mace remembered Webster’s recent visit to Washington to see the vice president. Impossible. “You said there were two things regarding the wires. The first is that all this money comes through Capital Bank. What’s the other?” Mace began to scribble furiously on a notepad.

  “The other issue is that we can’t go m
uch farther back than Capital Bank, and we should be able to. The accounts behind the wires at Capital appear to be dummy corporations. No substance at all to them, just shells. But I can’t find out how the money got into those corporate accounts at Capital. I’ve hit a dead end.”

  “Do you have the names of the corporations?” Mace asked.

  “I have one. Pergament Associates. But I’ll be damned if anyone here at Chase can find a real company in any corporate directory anywhere in the world by that name. We’ve checked our databases for both public and private companies. There is nothing by that name.”

  It was crazy. Five wires had come from all over the country, just as they should have according to the list of investors Leeny had rattled off to him. And one had come from Walker Pryce. But 90 percent of the money had come from accounts at one bank, a bank in Washington. That made no sense.

  “There’s one other thing, Mace.”

  “Yes, John?” Mace refocused on Schuler’s voice. “What is it?”

  “There is one wire transfer going out of the account already.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. It’s for a million dollars. The money was sent to an account in a branch of a West Virginia bank. The bank is headquartered in Charleston.”

  “Which bank?”

  “Charleston National Bank and Trust.”

  “Which branch of the bank did the money go to?” Mace was writing again. “The main one in Charleston?”

  “No. The one in Sugar Grove.” Schuler laughed. “I said one because I imagine Sugar Grove isn’t a multibranch town for Charleston National.”

  “Where in the hell is Sugar Grove, West Virginia?” Mace asked as he continued to scribble on the notepad.

  Schuler snickered. “I was kind of curious myself, so I looked at a map. Sugar Grove is a small town on the Appalachian Trail near the Virginia border. Apparently the town is in the middle of a big forest. The next town over is Nowhereville, and it’s forty miles away.”

  Mace did not laugh at Schuler’s attempt at humor. He was too busy writing and thinking.

  “What do you think all this means, Mace?” Schuler sounded nervous. “I mean, I’m making a billion dollars available to you people right now. That figure represents a good bit of Chase’s capital. I should have most of this facility sold to other banks pretty quickly, so I’m not really worried about my exposure level being a problem. But as an agent bank I have to be able to represent to the other banks we’re trying to sell this paper to that what we’ve got here is on the level.” Schuler was obviously concerned. “If there is a problem, my syndications people won’t be able to sell the paper, and I’ll be stuck with everything.” He swallowed the last few words.

  Mace could hear Schuler having a quiet coronary on the other end of the phone. Suddenly the banker had sensed that his world might be coming apart, and he was trying to keep himself together. “Everything is fine, John,” Mace said smoothly. “I just need to check one thing. I’ll get back to you tomorrow morning. In the meantime don’t worry about your money. I’m sure we won’t spend it all by then.” Mace laughed loudly and confidently into the mouthpiece, attempting to restore Schuler’s faith in the transaction. But it was difficult to be convincing.

  “Please do call me tomorrow. I want to know what’s going on.” Schuler’s voice was unsteady.

  “I will.”

  “How is Leeny, by the way?” Schuler asked tentatively.

  Mace tilted his head back. He had to keep Schuler’s balls wedged firmly in the nutcracker so that he wouldn’t call her. “All right, I suppose. She did ask me exactly when I had found out that the loan for Broadway Ventures had been approved by Chase.”

  “She did, did she?” Schuler coughed nervously.

  “Yes.” By now the banker was probably wishing he had never met Leeny. “She was acting kind of strangely.”

  Schuler hesitated. “She was?”

  Mace smiled. “Yes.” There was no way Schuler was going to call Leeny now. It would take a catastrophe for the man to summon up the courage to call her now if he couldn’t find Mace. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow, John.” Mace hung up the phone without awaiting Schuler’s response. As he did, he glanced at the notepad again. If only he could have been a fly on the wall for that meeting between Lewis Webster and the vice president of the United States.

  * * *

  —

  The limousine moved slowly down Pennsylvania Avenue, away from the White House. Robin Carruthers glanced across the seat toward Andrews, who was staring out the tinted window at the late-winter afternoon. The sun had almost dipped below the horizon, and the back of the huge car was quickly becoming dark. As dark as his mood must be, she thought. The meeting with the president had not produced the results for which Andrews had hoped.

  For a moment Robin considered reaching across the seat and taking his hand in hers to console him. They were alone in the back of the limousine. No one would see her do it. But somehow she could not bring herself to make the gesture because a shred of doubt had finally invaded her thoughts after all these years of blind devotion. She had bought Preston’s story about Becker’s ordering Carter Guilford to make contact with the Ortega cartel, about Guilford’s funneling money to the CIA to cover financial abuses at the agency, to cover Becker’s fraudulent use of CIA money to finance his campaign. She had bought it all because she was completely dedicated to Preston Andrews.

  Now the whole thing was starting to sound preposterous. After all, Becker was a war hero. He was a man who had cleaned up the agency when he first took it over, a man whose honor could hardly be questioned. “Above reproach” was how most people, even his enemies, described him. But she had bought the story hook, line, and sinker.

  Now, because of that blind devotion, she had exposed herself to terrible problems. The anonymous letters to Slade Conner, written on Preston’s orders, could be damning if it was ever uncovered that she was the author. Andrews had wanted to smoke out the director by seeing if one of his own people would turn on him. So he had made her write the letters to see if Conner would investigate the allegations on his own. Conner could go where they could not. It had been a desperate gamble, she now realized, one that had gotten them nowhere. Conner had taken the financials from the accountant’s office, all right. But he had taken the real financial statements too.

  Andrews was still confident that something would come of it, but she had lost all hope, and now she was paranoid that instead of investigating his commander, Conner was doing all he could to find out who had penned the letters. And he would find out, sooner or later. Conner was in the CIA, for God’s sake. It was his job to find out who sent letters like these.

  Suddenly the image of her sitting in a crowded committee room, being viciously questioned by senators or representatives as Malcolm Becker looked on, flashed through her mind. Her body shook. She wanted no part of Malcolm Becker. But he would get to her if Slade found out that she had written the letters. All because of Preston Andrews.

  She breathed deeply and looked out the window. All this she had done for him, and what had it gotten her? Nothing but the beginnings of an ulcer and about five new pounds on her hips thanks to the chocolate she had been stuffing in her mouth because of the terrible stress.

  Smoothly the vice president turned from the window of the limousine. “Are you all right, Robin?”

  She turned to meet his eyes. “Yes.” Her voice was icy.

  Andrews shook his head. “I really thought we were going to be able to push the president more quickly on getting the information out of the CIA.”

  Robin nodded slowly. “It certainly doesn’t look as if he’s going to be much help. He seems to be concentrating on the bigger picture.” Her voice was a monotone, devoid of expression.

  “He doesn’t want to be caught in the middle of something where he might have to show some backbone, where he might hav
e to make an enemy. We’re just going to have to expose what’s going on over at CIA ourselves. I think it’s time for you to make contact with Slade Conner in person.”

  “What?”

  “That’s all there is left to do,” Andrews said firmly.

  Robin could not believe what she had heard. “Preston, I’ve done everything you’ve asked me to do. Up until now. I won’t expose myself to any further personal liability that way. I just won’t do it.”

  “I thought you were dedicated to me,” Andrews said evenly.

  She felt her blood pressure suddenly skyrocket. “Don’t ever question my devotion to you.” Her voice shook. She had never spoken to him this way. But after all the years of dedication she did not expect him to ask her to throw herself to the wolves. “I can’t believe what you are asking of me.”

  “I can’t believe you won’t do whatever is necessary for us to win this campaign.”

  “I’ll do whatever I think is in my best interest. For a change. Whatever is in the best interest of the country.” She paused briefly, considering the words she wanted to say next. She should not say them. She should hold her tongue. But her temper boiled over. “One of us has to.”

  Andrews did not respond immediately. “What is that supposed to mean?” His voice was still calm, but there was clearly a storm brewing.

  “It means, how the hell did you know about Carter Guilford working with the Ortega cartel to direct money to the CIA? Where did your information come from? Up to this point I’ve taken your word at face value. I’m not willing to do that anymore. I need confirmation. I need to know the full story.”

  Panicked by the questions coming at rapid fire from the one person he thought would never question him, the vice president quickly churned possible responses through his brain. “Carter Guilford came to me several months ago to tell me what was going on,” Andrews said quietly. “Carter made contact with me through people at the DEA, although he did not tell them why he wanted to speak to me. He thought of me because of my work with the DEA. He was the one who told me about Slade Conner, that Conner was the honest one over there at CIA, not to trust anyone else at the CIA but Conner.”