The Disciple of Las Vegas (3 page)

“No,” Ordonez snapped.

“Mr. Chang, have you?”

Chang shifted in his seat. “Louis Marx was the last person in the business to talk to him. You can ask him about what Philip had to say.”

Uncle's eyes were still on Ordonez as he said to Chang, “Where is this man Cousins?”

“We have no idea. His office in Kelowna turned out to be a vacant apartment; he moved out about two weeks ago. None of his phone numbers work. His bank says he cleaned out his accounts. We hired a private detective agency to track him through family and friends, credit cards — anything and everything. They came up empty. Cousins has vanished.”

“Did Marx meet him?” Ava asked.

“Twice, both times at our Vancouver office when he was dropping off papers.”

“So he can describe him for me?”

“I imagine,” Chang said.

She heard Uncle shift in his chair. She knew she was trying the men's patience and that he was sensitive to it.

“I think that maybe Ms. Lee's time would be best spent with Marx,” Ordonez said, his breathing rapid and heavy. “There is nothing more we can tell her.”

“I agree,” Uncle said, reaching over to touch her hand.

“I'll have my girl take her down,” Ordonez said to Uncle, turning slightly away from Ava.

“We'll spend some time getting caught up, and we still need to finalize your fee,” Chang said. “Then I'll have you taken to the Peninsula. Ms. Lee can join you there later.”

Louis Marx looked up from his chair. He was in the boardroom one floor below Ordonez's office, surrounded by boxes and files strewn across the table.

“Hello,” Ava said from the doorway.

Marx looked confused. “And what do you want?”

Ava took a few steps forward and stood across the table from Marx. “I've been brought in to help find the money. I thought they'd told you about me. My name is Ava Lee.”

“They said they were bringing in an accountant. They didn't give me a name. They also didn't tell me you were a woman — a young woman.”

“What did you expect?”

“Someone more like Dog the Bounty Hunter.”

She smiled and extended her hand. “Well, I'm Ava Lee.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Marx said. He stood and reached across the table to shake her hand. His palms were sweaty. He was a large, flabby man, the kind who spent his life indoors behind a desk and had no appetite for exercise. His wrinkled grey slacks were half covered by the tail of his white dress shirt, and his stained blue tie hung loosely around his neck.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“Not really,” Marx said, his eyes darting manically around the room.

“Anything I can do?”

“Yeah, let's get this over with so I can get on a plane and get back to Vancouver.”

“What's been going on?”

He waved a hand over the boardroom table. “They've been using me as a punching bag,” he said. “I think they're trying to pin this entire fiasco on me. That's what's been going on.”

“How so?”

“For the past three days I've been stashed away in this room getting grilled by Mr. Chang and one or another of the other senior financial people here. They come in together, ask questions, and then talk to each other in Chinese or Filipino or whatever language they're speaking, as if I'm not even in the room. Then they start up again. I've answered the same questions ten times.”

“That must be unpleasant,” Ava said.

“Really? Let me tell you how it started when I got here. They stuck the most incredibly detailed and one-sided non-disclosure agreement in my face and told me to sign it. I said I was an employee and that I'd already signed one in Vancouver. They told me I needed to sign that one too, and if I didn't they'd fire me and then sue me for the missing money. So I signed, of course, but things didn't get any easier.”

“Well, it isn't my style to make threats, so why don't we sit and chat. Unless I'm completely misinformed, this is now my project, so you only have to concern yourself about dealing with me.”

He seemed to relax as he looked down at the files. “There's a lot of information here, but truthfully, I'm not sure how relevant it is.”

She sat at the table, removed a new Moleskine notebook from her Chanel purse, and wrote
Ordonez
across the top of the first page. Ava always used a new notebook for each case, and when the job was completed — successful or not — it was stored away in a safety deposit box at the Toronto-Dominion Bank a few blocks from her condo. “Let's forget about the files for now,” she said. “Upstairs they told me a little about this land transaction. Why don't you tell me about this deal from your side. How did it start?”

His right hand ran through his thin sandy hair. “I'm the comptroller for the Canadian operation and the only non-Chinese member of the management board. We meet every Monday morning to review ongoing investments and discuss any proposals that come our way. It's a very static enterprise. We're not in sales or manufacturing, so the business is stable and more or less predictable.

“Well, about six months ago Philip — Mr. Chew, Tommy Ordonez's brother — brought a proposal to the table that was a bit unusual. In the ten years I've been with the company, he's never brought any business to the table. Most of the new initiatives originate from below or come as a directive from Manila. So it was a surprise when Philip informed us he had entered into an agreement to develop a residential community with a golf course in the Kelowna area. You know Kelowna?”

“I do. It's a prime vacation destination,” Ava said.

“Lots of money, summer cottages, retirement homes, celebrities. It's tough to think how you could go wrong putting money into a development there. Anyway, Philip described it as a sweetheart deal. We were going to partner with a company called Kelowna Valley Developments, run by a man named Jim Cousins.”

“Why ‘sweetheart'?”

“KVD was fronting the first two million to secure the deal. We didn't have to put in a dollar until KVD had spent that money, and any money we put in would be to buy the land. The way Philip described it, Cousins would acquire various tracts and handle all that financing until the property was registered. We didn't have to put our money in until we had title. In terms of security, it doesn't get much better.”

“How much land was involved?”

“About 1,600 acres that we acquired in dribs and drabs. There were fifteen separate land transactions. Normally we would have expected to get that large a tract in two or three buys, but Philip was happy with the way it was structured. He said it lessened our exposure to any fallout.”

“Did the management committee approve the project?”

“It was strictly a formality. Philip was just being polite in keeping us informed. He made all the decisions for the company in Canada — at least, all the decisions up to an individual expenditure of five million dollars. Anything above that amount had to be approved at the head office in Manila.”

“So Manila approved it?”

“No. They had never heard of KVD until Deloitte got involved.”

“How is that possible? There was close to fifty million dollars invested. I thought you said Philip Chew had signing authority only up to five million.”

“Philip told me to treat each land purchase as a stand-alone deal until we had purchased all 1,600 acres. At that point he was going to go to Manila to get approval to roll them up into one package.”

“What if they had said no?”

“Not a problem, really. No one's ever gone wrong buying land in and around Kelowna. We could have sold it in a heartbeat.”

“Assuming you actually owned the land.”

“Yeah, assuming.”

“And you never suspected that something strange was going on?”

Marx shook his head, and Ava could see how tired he was. She could imagine what Chang and the others had put him through.

“There wasn't really the opportunity. Philip told us about the deal on a Monday and a week later I was getting the paperwork to support the first purchases. It just kept rolling in. It wasn't until Deloitte started asking questions that I realized it was a bit off-centre.”

“Who signed the cheques?”

“Philip and me.”

“All under five million?”

“Yeah. Like I said, that was the threshold.”

“Mr. Chang told me you met Cousins.”

“Twice, both times in Vancouver. I offered to go to Kelowna but he put me off.”

“He came to your office?”

“I met him in Philip's office, and they acted like the best of friends. Looking back, that was also kind of strange, because Philip isn't the most sociable character.”

“Describe Cousins.”

“Big, bluff guy in jeans and an L.L. Bean chamois shirt. I know about the shirt because I asked. He looked as if he had spent his life in construction or lumber. He had that outdoors look.”

“Tall?”

“Over six feet.”

“Any physical characteristics that would make him stand out in a crowd?”

Marx shuffled the files in front of him, then opened one and leafed through it. “Here, these are photos from the security cameras at the office. They'll give you some idea.”

The photographs were grainy and the angles disjointed, but they were good enough for her to see that Cousins was rangy, rugged, and dressed like a cowboy. His face was blurred but she got a general sense that he was a handsome man with a thick black moustache and a full head of hair, combed straight back. “You never ran a credit check on him?”

“Philip gave him the green light.”

“How did you discover you had a problem?”

Marx sighed and rolled his eyes skywards. “Deloitte was doing their audit and they came across the land transactions. They started off questioning whether or not we had violated the threshold limits. Philip argued with them, saying that we had been technically within our rights to do what we did. I know the lead auditor wasn't convinced, but he wasn't about to take on Philip head-on. So they did what auditors do: they burrowed deeper to make sure their asses would be covered in case this became an issue. Sending someone to the registry office in Kelowna was a bit extreme, even for them, but I think they had legitimate concerns about the way the deal was structured.”

“Then what happened?”

“Deloitte called me first, then I called Philip. He freaked out and told me to hold off advising Manila until we were completely sure of the facts. I couldn't do that. I knew that Deloitte would report directly to Manila, and I didn't want it to look as if I was withholding information. So I called my counterpart here.”

“Mr. Chang?”

“No way — he's the right hand of God. I called the CFO.”

“So what happened?”

“I was told to go to Kelowna and meet the people from Deloitte there. We went to the registry office together and confirmed that the land we thought we had bought was owned by people we had never heard of. We went to Cousins' office, which turned out to be a vacant apartment. Then we went to the bank that had supposedly handled the transactions. They wouldn't tell us anything other than that KVD had an account there.”

“Who set up the bank account?”

“Cousins.”

“Who had signing authority?”

“Cousins.”

“You didn't think to have at least two signatures on it?”

“Ava, we had the titles already. We were transferring money for property we had already purchased.”

“Okay, so now Manila is involved.”

“The CFO flies over to Vancouver, hires a private detective agency to chase down Cousins and the money, and spends two days going through the files with me.”

“Where is Philip?”

“At home — devastated, depressed, and not much good for anything.”

“You saw him?”

“I did.”

“Was he really that distraught?”

“I thought so, and truthfully I didn't fault him. You know that bad cop/good cop cliché? Well, Chang and Ordonez are more like very bad cop and worse cop. Chang has almost reduced me to tears several times on his own. I'm not sure what I would do if I had both of them hammering at me. I'm sure Philip knew what was in store for him.”

“And the detectives — they came up empty?”

“Can't find Cousins, can't find the money. All they can tell us is that the KVD bank account is empty and Cousins cleaned out his personal account too.”

“How much was in his account?”

“We're told about two million.”

“That's a lot of money.”

“He fronted the two million to start the project, so he had to have some money,” Marx said, and then caught himself. “Of course, he really didn't front anything, did he?”

“No,” Ava said softly.

The room went quiet. She had been making notes as Marx spoke. She circled the words
two million
and
personal bank account
.

“Now what?” Marx asked.

“I'd like to spend some time alone with the files. I'm sure I'm not going to find anything other than what you've told me, but you never know — I could get lucky.”

“Be my guest. I'll be glad to get out of this room.”

“Do we need to call anyone?”

“To get permission for me to leave, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“They told me to do whatever you asked.”

“Good. Then why don't you go back to your hotel, have a drink, get a massage, get whatever. Just relax. Louis, we're colleagues now. I'm not the inquisitor. I'm here to figure out what happened and to try to fix it.” She shook her head. “I think you should get back to Vancouver as soon as you can. You're like a red flag to these guys. Every time they look at you they're reminded of what went wrong, and they need to lash out. Go home. I'll tell them I need you in Vancouver.”

She watched him leave the boardroom, his suit jacket slung over his shoulder, his shirttail hanging out the back of his trousers. She didn't give him another month with the company. If he didn't quit they'd fire him. Someone was going to have to take the blame for this fiasco. And Louis Marx wasn't Chinese and his brother didn't own the company.