Don't Know Jack (26 page)

“Let’s meet back here in twenty?” Gaspar suggested. “I’ll make coffee. Whoever gets back first finds some food. OK?”

“Perfect.”  By the time Kim pulled out her toilet kit, fresh clothes, and entered the guest bath off the kitchen, brewed coffee’s heavenly aroma floated everywhere. A shower, and the promise of coffee, food and sleep. She almost swooned in ecstasy. Ten minutes later she was dressed in black jeans, red sweater and ballet slippers, wet hair loose around her shoulders, holding a cup of black coffee and working at her laptop on the kitchen table. She barely registered Gaspar’s return.

“You’re fast for a girl,” he said. He opened his own laptop.

“So I’ve been told.”  She didn’t look up from her work.

“My suit’s a goner,” he said. “We’ll have to stop for a new one somewhere in our travels.”

“How about Teale’s?  They have a closeout, don’t they?”  He’d dressed in casual clothes similar to hers, but lighter weights acquired for his Miami life.

“Find anything to eat?”

“Didn’t look. Got distracted.”

“By what?”  He poured his coffee, opened the sub-zero fridge for cream and searched amid the neatly organized pantry until he found a bag of sugar and a measuring cup.

“Sylvia and Harry’s tax returns. We also have the Roscoe/Finlay Kliner Foundation testimony. And images of whole Kliner bills.” 

“Where’d that stuff come from?”  He continued searching cabinets for dinner, moving Roscoe’s staples around.

“I’m guessing the boss made it happen. I found them waiting when I opened up my secure connection.”

“So he’s got a guilty conscience?”  Apparently Gaspar found nothing to his liking among the foodstuffs because he’d now returned his attention to the refrigerator.

“Or something,” she said, sourly.

“You know we can’t finish this job without his help. You don’t have to like it, but prepare yourself to make that happen.”

“That’s what I have you for, number two.”  She returned to the screen, absorbed again.

After a while, enticing aromas. Her nose began to twitch. Stomach flip-flopped in happy anticipation. But she didn’t look away from her work until he put two plates on the table, refilled her coffee, and sat down beside her.

“I hate eggs,” she said.

“No problem.”  He picked up her plate and scraped the eggs off onto his own, barely stopping the shovel to his mouth. “How’s that?”

She grinned. Snatched up his toast in one hand and hers in the other. Put the ham between the buttered bread. “Excellent. You’re a good cook.”

“I have many talents you’ve yet to discover,” he said between bites. He polished off the entire batch of eggs and returned to the fridge for more ham. “Tell me while I cook.”

“For starters, Sylvia’s prior name was Kent. Not the one she was born with, maybe. I’m running that down. And Mr. & Mrs. Harry Black’s joint tax returns are beyond silly. They even filed the short form because they didn’t have enough deductible expenses to itemize. Claimed only themselves as dependents.”

“Which means?”  He remained at the stove, pan frying ham and eggs and working the toaster.

“Harry and Sylvia are practically begging to be prosecuted. Handing the IRS such an obvious fraud case doesn’t make sense.”

“Not everything makes sense, Sunshine. I’ve told you that before. Even when the crooks are cops, they’re not as rational as we give them credit for.”  He winced slightly.

“You’re not listening. Harry and Sylvia, like all smart crooks, filed tax returns because they knew not filing is the quickest way to jail.”

“I’m aware. So what’s the problem?”

“Second quickest one-way ticket to Uncle Sam’s hotel-for-life is filing fraudulent returns. Might pass undiscovered for years. Harder to prove when suspected.”

“As I said, I’m aware.”  He narrowed his eyes, watching something outside the bay window, but Kim barely noticed.

“Smart tax evaders make a plausible attempt to avoid obvious fraud so they can pay the fines and stay out of prison longer and maybe forever, even if they get caught.”

“I’m not sure how smart Harry was. He’s dead, right?  Most of us smart people try to avoid that condition.”

She said, “He and Sylvia were clever enough to collect sixty-seven million in counterfeits and move them out of that house right under everybody’s nose.”

He moved to the window and lowered the translucent shades; stood to one side, lifted the shade from the frame slightly to see out. “So they laundered the Kliners somehow. We figured that.”

“Not as easy as it sounds. Especially for that much cash. Our financial world is too complicated. Computers make tracking and reporting too easy. Ever heard of Superdollars? The best counterfeits ever? Even better than the real thing?"

"I work in the Miami Field Office, Sunshine. We get briefed there, too."

"Well, thousands of Superdollars have been snagged through mundane paperwork.”

“You bean counters are gonna kill us all.”

“Basic money laundering usually requires three pretty complicated steps because you’ve got to get the bad money out there, pass it through several legitimate places to clean it up, and then get it back and do something with it that makes the proceeds look legitimate so you’ll have ready access.”

“Right.”  Preoccupied.

“But I’m thinking Harry just found a good placement exchange plan and stopped there. In other words, he places the Kliners into the financial system somewhere and takes back genuine money which he stashes someplace else. Not in his closet hidey hole.”

“That’s the simplest plan.”

“But impossible for Harry to execute.”  She noticed he hadn’t moved from the window. “What are you looking at?”

“Maybe nothing. Keep going. Why couldn’t Harry execute the simple plan?”

“He couldn’t place the old bills here in Margrave or anywhere close. Everybody around here would at least suspect they were Kliners, like your waitress. All the usual options for moving small amounts of money would take the rest of his lifetime to complete, given the volume. He’s got a job, so he’s not free to be traveling around the state or the country to buy a little of this and a little of that and get real money in change. No bank is going to take them. Any business that takes in a lot of cash, like a horse track or a theme park or casino, is going to have good anti-counterfeiting procedures in place.”

“So what’s left?  Offshore banking?”

“Not so easy these days. Even the Swiss are turning in tax cheats now. He’d have to smuggle the fakes out of the country for starters. And how would he access the real money when Sylvia wants a new outfit?”

Gaspar seemed to think about it. “The dead Chevy guy and Reacher were in this all along. They helped Harry and Sylvia with the laundering.”

She heard inattention in his tone. “That’s how I figure it, too.”

“Why kill Harry now?”  He still hadn’t moved from the window.

“That’s the sixty-seven million dollar question, isn’t it?”  She looked up to receive his answer, annoyed. “And what the hell are you watching out there?”

“Headlights. Coming this way.”

Her heart skipped uncomfortably. “Roscoe?”

“Smaller car. Pulling into the driveway.”

Reflex. Hand slipped under the table to pat her gun lying on the seat next to her in its holster.

She heard the car stop out front. Car door opened. Slammed shut.

Gaspar said, “Tall male. Front door.”

Too late to turn off the kitchen lights without signaling where they were inside the house. Kim grabbed her holster and slipped into it. Stood back to the wall beside the open hallway arch.

Stillness. A key in the lock. The front door opened.

A deep voice. “I’m in!  Thanks for the ride!”

Front door slammed. Footsteps approached along the carpet.

The same voice, louder. “Hey! I’m home!”

Kim glanced her question to Gaspar. He nodded. Gestured that the car had departed. She remained vigilant.

“In here,” Gaspar called out, while there was still time to appear normal.

A dark-haired boy dressed in sweats and unlaced running shoes came through the archway, tossed his backpack onto the sofa, flashed his multi-colored braces, and bee-lined to the refrigerator. The kid said, “I’m Davey Trent. You’re Mom’s friends, right?  She texted me.”

Kim relaxed slightly, but her voice was stuck somewhere. Davey Trent. Roscoe’s thirteen year old. He looked like a foot-taller version of his mother. Same amazing brown eyes.

Gaspar said, friendly, “That’s right. Carlos Gaspar and Kim Otto.”

Davey collected a large bottle of blue beverage from the fridge and ducked his head by way of acknowledgement,  “Mom said not to bother you. She’ll be home later. Yell if you need anything. I’ve got homework.”  The kid grabbed his backpack and headed up the stairs.

Kim and Gaspar exchanged nods. For now, all strategic conversation was over. She returned to her seat, but didn’t remove her holster. Gaspar collected his cold toast. He opened up his laptop and sat opposite her at the kitchen table.

“Transfer that testimony over here,” he said. “I’ll go through it and whatever else the boss sent me while you follow up on your stuff.”

“Study the images of the fakes, too. They’re very good,” she said.

For several hours, they worked like that until finally, Gaspar stood, and stretched, and glanced at the wall clock. “I need a beer.”

Kim said, “I need a nap.”

“That, too.”

“When do you think we’ll be able to leave Margrave?”

Gaspar twisted off the top of the beer bottle he liberated from Roscoe’s fridge, took a long swallow. “Without some assistance from the boss, never.”

“I didn’t peg you for a quitter.”

“What’s your plan?”

“Right now, I’m sleeping,” Kim said. “Roscoe comes in, you can charm the answers out of her. Maybe this stuff will make more sense later. It can’t get a lot worse.”

She picked up her laptop, gathered her scattered possessions and moved to the guest room. Ten minutes later, she’d sunk into blissful oblivion.

CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

Margrave, Georgia

November 3

12:45 a.m.

She was submerged in deep slow-wave sleep, like a dolphin, maintaining only enough consciousness to remain wary of predators. She bobbed gently, down and up, each soft bounce tugging her higher until at one apex her eyelids fluttered. An orange glow inches from her nose showed 12:45 a.m. She’d been asleep three hours.

But now she was awake.

Because: there was hushed shouting in the house. Echolocation placed two women safely distant. One older, one younger, both angry. She recognized Roscoe’s voice.

Roscoe’s guest room was cozy. The temperature was perfect. Quilted goose down enveloped in fine cotton created a warm cocoon. She snuggled deeper, drifted lightly on sleep’s surface, still aware. She sighed.