by Don Travis
Wick glanced up from reading the document. “Have at it. I’m an open book. Some of the business files require confidentiality, but I’m sure you’ll accord them proper treatment. But the subpoena specifies I hand over any and all documents relating to an address on Georgia Street. That demand I can’t accommodate. I have no connection with such an address and don’t recall one in the past. I suspect you’ll soon be able to tell me if my memory’s faulty or not.”
With that he told his receptionist to cooperate completely and returned to his own office to get on the phone. To his lawyer? Maybe. But the snatches of conversation I heard coming out of there sounded more like the Rio Puerco Land Development Project, the investment I’d been invited to participate in.
When Gene’s team became too intrusive, Wick moved into the conference room, where he continued to make calls. If any of them were to his lawyer, the man should be fired because he never showed up.
While Gene and his people were mostly concerned with the past—as in the Voxlightner blowup—I was interested in the present. If I was right, Wick and his cohorts—namely Thelma Rider and Damon Herrera—had plans to legitimize their ill-gotten gains, and a big-time development on the Westside of Albuquerque might present such an opportunity.
I settled in Wick’s executive chair and proceeded to study the voluminous file on the development project. Gene stopped by to grouse.
“We’re here to collect the files and haul them back with us, not to pour over them now.”
I lifted the folder to show him the name on it. “Wick might be able to defend against taking this one. It’s a new housing development scheme.”
“Why are you interested? Gonna invest a million or two?”
“This seems like a perfect opportunity to legitimize stolen money to me.”
That got his attention. “How? There’d have to be a legitimate source for every dollar invested.”
“True. But he’s had seven years to set up those sources.”
Half an hour later, after photocopying a few pages from the file, I sat with Gene as he spoke to Wick at the conference table.
“Here’s a detailed list of the files we took, Wick. Look them over at your leisure and have your attorney contact us if you see anything amiss.”
Wick glanced through the list. “I might need a few things you’re taking in order to proceed to closing. Any problem in photocopying them for me?”
Gene agreed, and while he was out finding someone to accommodate the request, I spoke with Wick.
“You seem to be pretty copacetic with the subpoenas.”
“Why not. It isn’t my first dance, you know. Back when the feds were looking into the Voxlightner mess, they all but shut me down. At least Gene lets me retain enough documents to close on a couple of deals.” He stirred in his seat. “What’s this Georgia Street thing all about?”
I considered my answer. To clue him might serve to put some pressure on, always a good thing when you’re trying to pin something on a target. But it tips your hand as well. Perhaps a partial answer would serve the former without completely accomplishing the latter.
“The police have located some old electrical meter readings on a house at 2551 Georgia Street.”
“What’s unusual about that? I have meter readings on my house. So do you?” He seemed only mildly interested in the subject.
“Triple and quadruple the kilowatt hours normally metered to the residence. This lasted for three months.”
“When was this?”
No reason not to answer. He already knew the months involved. “Billing for May, June, and July 2003.”
He frowned in thought. “Before all the Voxlightner mess started.”
“Yeah. About the time somebody would be phonying up fire assays.”
“Hell, that’s easy enough. Go find the man who owned the house at the time.”
“A real estate investment trust. Leased for six months, including the relevant period.”
“A REIT? Which one?”
“LMZ”
“Who’d they lease it to?”
“A man named William Stark.”
He looked as though the name didn’t register. “Never heard of him. Go find this Stark fellow and haul him in. Maybe he still has some of our money left.”
I kept my voice steady. “I suspect that’s exactly what we’ll do before this is all over.”
Then I saw it. The exact moment Wick remembered buying the money order at Smith’s Food and Drug. His eyes flickered once. Exactly once. Nothing more. “Good. Go get him, BJ.”
GENE AND I sat in his office at APD while clerks carefully checked individual files delivered against the list taken from Wick’s office. Once that was reconciled, the financial experts would have a go at some and detectives at others.
“Gene, I saw the instant he recalled Brown selling him the money order and the to-do over the name of the purchaser.”
“Chances are he doesn’t even remember who the clerk was. Besides we already alerted the Las Vegas PD.”
“Reinforce it. Let them know the suspect remembers the incident now.”
Once that was done, I hit Gene with something else. “Can we get a wiretap on Wick’s phones?”
“I dunno. Why?”
“If he’s going to go for Brown in Las Vegas, he can’t do it himself. He knows we’ll be keeping an eye on him. He’ll have to reach out.”
“Hell, BJ, if he reaches out, he’ll reach out the same way he did with Rider and Herrera. That team-finder thing.”
“TeamViewer.”
“Yeah. That.”
“Only if there’s someone else involved in the Voxlightner mess we don’t know about.”
BROOKINGS INGLES’S office was a block from APD on Fifth and Roma NW, so I made an unscheduled call. Rumor held that Brookie, as he was known to his intimates, was the longtime lawyer for Albuquerque’s organized crime bosses. Undoubtedly Albuquerque had crime, but I’m yet to be convinced it was organized. Nonetheless Brookie had defended some very shady characters in his years as a defense attorney.
His secretary wasn’t put off by the fact I had no appointment, leaving me to believe this happened regularly. I waited while he completed a phone call, but in mere minutes Brookie arrived to shake my hand. He was about an inch shorter than my six feet and weighed in at around 190. Every time I saw the man, I had the same thought. Suave. Gene described him as oily, but I thought of him as suave.
“BJ, what can I do for you?”
“I want to pick your brains for a minute or two.”
I didn’t perceive of Brookie as gay, and I had pretty good gaydar. But he was soft around the edges in a way some people thought of homosexuals. Wasn’t always true, of course, but perception is everything, as they say. He waved me to a seat and reached for a cigar humidor. I declined the offer of a stogie, so he settled into his chair and went about the ritual of clipping and firing up one.
“Is this the billing kind of picking or the nonbilling kind?” he asked through a cloud of blue smoke.
“The nonbilling kind. Simple question. If one of your better-connected clients needed a task of a somewhat dubious nature accomplished in Salt Lake City or Denver or Las Vegas, would he contact an individual in his own locality or reach out to a native of those cities?”
Brookie scratched an ear. “Leave my clients out of it. If someone in Albuquerque wanted help, say of a wet nature, for instance, he’d likely go to a reliable local source and contract his work. That way there’s a guy standing between the fellow in Albuquerque and the fellow in whatever city it is who’ll get paid for his work.” He waved the cigar, causing its tip to redden momentarily. “Course if he had somebody he really trusted, he could send him to, say, Salt Lake, but he’d be a fish out of water. Wouldn’t know the local culture, so to speak.”
I rose and shook his hand. “Thanks. Bill me if you want.”
“Naw. I didn’t tell you anything you didn’t already know.”
“But you confirmed
my thinking.”
“The grapevine says you’re working on the old Voxlightner thing.”
“You know anything about it?”
“Didn’t invest, didn’t follow it, and didn’t defend or sue anyone over it.”
ONCE BACK in the office I took out the sheets I’d photocopied from Wick’s Rio Puerco Land Development Project and spread them on the small table in the corner. The proposed budget reflected a requirement of $45,000,000 for the first phase of the project. This acquired the land for all three phases but only built out 200 homes, two shopping centers, and three parks. Although I am no expert, the design, layout, and planning for the project seemed thorough and professional. My guess was Wick needed around $10,000,000 in order to get the deal off the ground. Three banks apparently pledged construction loans and support in providing mortgages for purchasers. Wick had evidently been working on this for some time as permits for sewage, water, and electricity were either in place or pending. He’d invested some of his own money in the project, I judged.
After digesting this information, I turned to what really interested me: Wick’s list of subscriptions. A total of around fifty names with dollar amounts opposite each made up the list. After it was typed, it had been worked over liberally in Wick’s handwriting. The big dollar subscribers led off the list:
Hardwick Pillsner Investments (Albuquerque) $2,500,000
Siedel Trust (Dallas, TX) 1,000,000
Forge Family Trust (Phoenix, AZ) 1,000,000
Voxlightner Family Trust (Albuquerque) 500,000
Sarah Thackerson 100,000
Spencer Spears 100,000
The top six names accounted for about half of what Wick needed. The next forty-five or so added not more than a million dollars at a quick glance. To further complicate things, Wick had lined out the second name, Seidel Trust, and its million bucks. I chuckled to see a handwritten note that B. J. Vinson is interested. He should be worth $1,000,000. Dream on, Wick.
Given the way my thoughts were turning, it didn’t take much imagination to conjecture the Seidel Trust out of Dallas represented Thelma Rider’s reinvestment of part of the Voxlightner booty. The million in her mattress was only a part of what she’d stolen, and she likely held the slender end of the stick.
The Forge Family Trust in Phoenix was probably Herrera. I knew enough Spanish to know herrero meant blacksmith in English.
The Voxlightner Family Trust pledge surprised me due to the way the VPMR thing went south. Of course when Dorothy gave the pledge, she wasn’t aware of my suspicions of Wick. In that light, the investment made sense. Wick’s strong point was putting together real estate developments. However given what I’d shared with her the other day, Wick could likely strike Dorothy off the list too.
Thackerson’s and Spears’s names gave me pause. A hundred grand was forty percent of their inheritance. Had they known Wick? An interesting question. Damn! Exactly when was this list made? Look as I would, I found no date on the sheet.
I sat back in my chair, wished for a bottle of cool water I was too lazy to fetch, and thought about things. There were two names missing from the list: Barron Voxlightner and Dr. Walther Stabler or any pseudonym representing them. Was the omission of Barron almost as good as a death certificate? Did that apply to Stabler as well? More than likely the good doctor planned his escape route long before things went sour. He simply vanished, taking his share of the spoils and breaking all ties with his fellow conspirators.
The Herrera connection was relatively easy, but why did I think the Seidel Trust was Rider? Because it was Texas-based, and Wick scrubbed it. Didn’t make sense to invest for someone you’d already killed. Undoubtedly there was a Seidel in Thelma’s background.
The three of them—Wick, Herrera, and Rider—had over seven years to create fictional people or trusts or corporations and slowly build up bank balances. I shook my head at the patience of the group. I’d heard of gangs doing something similar, though usually someone got greedy and moved too quickly. But maybe Thelma Rider ran out of patience and started pushing Wick to launder her money, and that’s why she died last December on a road outside of Chillicothe, Texas. Wasn’t the million-dollar mattress enough for her?
I looked at the papers spread on my conference table and nodded. A good day’s work well done.
Chapter 15
THE NEXT morning I settled down with Paul at the kitchen table to go over the newspaper clippings he’d spent yesterday gathering and photocopying at the Journal. He’d run up quite a tab on his Visa card. Not surprising. I’d asked for everything he could find featuring Wick Pillsner, and he’d brought everything.
I was more interested in discussing our relationship, but things had returned to normal—sort of—so I kept to the case.
While Paul concentrated on articles having to do with the Voxlightner scandal, I scanned the others looking for something inadvertently disclosed, something to point me in another direction… in other words, something atypical in Wick’s life.
The only thing I learned I didn’t already know was Wick was a mountain man. He eschewed lakes and rivers and the sea for peaks and cold rushing mountain streams. A couple of photos before an imposing mountain cabin in the Jemez Mountains north and west of Albuquerque showed he was a hunter, albeit with a camera, not a rifle. He’d snared several record trophies with his lens.
Finding nothing else of interest, I turned to the articles covering the old precious metals scam. Wick’s fingerprints were all over the Voxlightner fiasco, but I knew that already. He helped conceive the idea, promoted it, and stood before the world when it turned to ashes, facing the consequences and sharing in the loss. Had I not known of the damning Georgia Street connection, he would have grown in my estimation.
“Nothing here,” Paul said as he threw aside a clipping after about three hours of searching.
“Maybe not. But it needed to be done. And these articles give us a clearer picture of the whole Voxlightner affair. Reaffirm some things.”
“But there’s nothing here to incriminate Wick Pillsner.”
“I don’t know about you, but I have a fuller understanding of the man now.”
“I guess so. But it’s so damned frustrating. I’m sure he was in on the scheme, but there’s nothing to….”
“Nothing to nail him? Don’t you think the feds would have found anything if it was obvious?”
Paul rubbed his forehead. “Nuts. Like you said, the search had to be done. What now?”
I showed him copies of the Rio Puerco Land Development Project and pointed out my suppositions about who the heavy investors really were before turning to what puzzled me.
“There’s no date on this list. But something about it bothers me.”
“Besides being lined out and the hen scratching in the margins, what?”
“If I’m right about the two trusts being the erstwhile office manager, Thelma Rider, and the School of Mines’ Dr. Herrera, respectively, then why didn’t he scratch the Forge trust? Herrera’s dead too.”
“Maybe he hadn’t gotten around to it yet. That list was created on a computer. Wick was probably always updating it. You can delete and insert things anytime you want. And he put the investors down according to the size of the investment.”
“Then why didn’t he delete both of the trusts?” I persisted. “He’s known for a while they were no longer available.”
“Maybe he thought he could take over Thelma’s trust and found out he couldn’t.”
“So he scratched it from the list. But the Forge Family Trust isn’t marked off,” I pointed out.
“Maybe Wick was still working on taking that one over and hadn’t scratched it out yet.”
“Possible. But why are Sarah Thackerson and Spencer Spears on the list of potential investors. Thelma was killed last December—”
“And he scratched her out.”
“But Pierce Belhaven didn’t die until July 20. How would Thackerson and Spears know they had $250,000 coming from his will i
n time to make the investment?”
“Maybe Pierce was fronting them the money.”
“Then why isn’t he on the list?”
“Not his type of investment?”
“If that’s true he wouldn’t lend them 40 percent of their inheritance for something he didn’t believe in himself. Besides, he was investigating the old scandal and wouldn’t go out on a limb for them with Wick’s project. Belhaven was bound to have suspected Wick by then.”
I surveyed the papers strewn out before us. “Paul, here’s what I’d like you to do.”
I gave him five specific names from Wick’s list of investors and asked him to interview each to find out what he could about how and when they were solicited. Sarah and Spencer were at the top of his list. Paul was scheduled to meet with Roy Guerra this afternoon, but he promised to start checking first thing in the morning.
GENE CALLED me at home that evening.
“Somebody took a run at Brown in Las Vegas,” he said.
“Took a run at?”
“Two hoods cornered him in an alley near where he works.”
“A mugging?”
“Don’t think so. He got stabbed, but the policeman that LVPD put on him arrived in the alley in time to prevent anything worse from happening.”
“How bad was it?” I asked.
“Shoulder wound. He’ll live… thanks to the officer’s intervention.”
“Did the cop catch the attackers?”
“No. They headed in different directions when he arrived, but he ID’d one of them. Known bad guy. Not a street bum.”
“Connected?” I asked.
“I’d say so. Belongs to one of the families in Vegas.”
“Maybe Wick Pillsner just made a bad mistake.”
“Hell, BJ, both of those thugs are in Maryland or Miami or Mexico by now. And nobody’s gonna admit to anything.”
I sighed. “You’re probably right. I wonder if it’s time to make the Georgia Street connection public information. If the world understands Brown’s statement is known to the police, maybe it’ll provide him some protection.”