For Better or Worse

by Al Lamanda

  “A great deal,” Tavers said. “This signature required a lot of skill, and that means you’re dealing with someone highly intelligent. It’s no accident that the forged signature is detectable to a very few, and even then, it would fool some of the best.”

  “Like the FBI and local police?” I said.

  “I’ll take the Pepsi challenge against the FBI any day of the week,” Tavers said.

  “In court, you just might,” I said.

  Tavers nodded. “Looking forward to it,” he said.

  “So, Bill, would you care to join us for lunch? Kagan asked.

  * * *

  We ate at a large Mexican restaurant a few blocks from Tavers’s office. Once we settled in and ordered, Tavers said, “So, Jack, that job you did in Puerto Rico was first rate. Congratulations.”

  “Thanks, but I had a lot of help,” I said.

  “I’m tired of losing business in your neck of the woods, Jack,” Tavers said. “I could use someone with your skill. You’d still be independent, but partnered with my firm, you’d have a lot more resources.”

  “Give me some time to wrap this up and I’ll get back to you,” I said. “We can talk about it in a few months, if that’s okay with you.”

  “Sounds good,” Tavers said. “Frank, my report will be in the mail tomorrow.”

  * * *

  “We can discredit the signature card and photo lineup, but is that enough at this point?” Kagan said.

  I was drinking coffee and watching clouds below us as we flew home.

  “My opinion is we need to somehow discredit the safe deposit box,” Carly said.

  “Harry?” Kagan said.

  “I agree,” Harry said. “I’ve been putting myself in Napier’s shoes, and my plan of attack would be the money and this Smith character. I don’t see how we can overcome those two things.”

  “Bekker?” Kagan said.

  “The goal is a dismissal to buy some time, so focus on that,” I said. “Work the jury, milk their emotions. Gain the sympathy of one or two of them. We’ll get a mistrial based on emotion. Napier has to know we’ll go that route, but what’s he going to counter it with?”

  “Facts,” Harry said.

  “True, but what exactly are the facts?” I said. “They can’t physically prove Walt was in Grand Cayman. The cameras in the bank are set up to record and hold for thirty days, so video evidence is gone. The same is true for the airport. The fifty thousand found in the garage is out. We can discredit the handwriting on the bank signature card and discredit the photo lineup. Their star witness is this Smith guy, and he’s shaky at best, not to mention his street informants that we still don’t know about. There is no record of Walt’s passport being updated or a flight that he was scheduled on. The only real fact left is the six hundred thousand found in the safe deposit box.”

  “Which, we can’t refute,” Carly said.

  “We don’t have to in order to get a few of the grand jury members to see it our way,” I said. “You and Frank milk it, butter it, wrap it in sweet cream if you have to, but gain some sympathy for Walt and we have our dismissal.”

  Carly, Frank and Harry looked at me.

  “I can see why you were the only one to ever get close to Eddie Crist,” Kagan said.

  * * *

  I went for a jog along the beach and returned to the trailer in time to watch the sunset.

  Tomorrow morning, we would meet with Judge Brooks to discuss Smith’s street informants at eleven.

  I could have gone home for the night, but I preferred my own company when think-time was required.

  I made a fire in the trashcan and drank coffee.

  How do you account for six hundred thousand dollars?

  Walt certainly didn’t save it from his salary. He didn’t borrow it from a bank or a loan shark. He didn’t inherit it from a long-lost relative or win the lottery.

  Other than Smith’s word that the money came from Jimmy DeMarko, there was no evidence that it actually did.

  I grabbed my cell phone and called Kagan.

  “Frank, it’s Bekker,” I said when he answered.

  “Is something wrong?” Kagan said.

  “Just thinking about something,” I said. “Who took DeMarko’s place after he died?”

  “Tony Rizzo. Why?”

  “Can you get me in to see him?”

  After a short pause, Kagan said, “Because?”

  “Some things are best heard directly from the horse’s mouth,” I said.

  “I’ll make a call,” Kagan said.

  “Thanks.”

  “See you in the morning,” Kagan said.

  “Good night, Frank,” I said.

  I set the phone aside and watched the bonfire in the trashcan start to burn down.

  “Tony Rizzo,” I said aloud.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  “I find the list of street informants for Smith to be sketchy at best,” Judge Brooks said. “It reads like a book of ‘he said, she said.’ However, I will allow them to be called to the stand and crossed by the defense if they want the opportunity.”

  “Copies of reports to study for cross,” Carly said.

  “Noted,” Brooks said. “Pick them up on the way out.”

  * * *

  On the courthouse steps, Kagan said, “Bekker and I have a brief appointment.”

  “I was wondering why you took your own car,” Carly said.

  “See you back at the ranch,” I said.

  Kagan drove a two-year-old Cadillac that rode like a boat on smooth water.

  The drive took about forty-five-minutes. Rizzo lived in a nice, if modest, home in the suburbs. It was surrounded by a stone wall with access through a gate.

  “Frank Kagan and John Bekker to see Mr. Rizzo,” Kagan told the bodyguard manning the fence.

  * * *

  “Something to drink?” Rizzo said when Kagan and I took chairs in the study.

  “Coffee,” I said.

  Rizzo looked past us to the bodyguard against the wall. “Three espressos,” he said, and the bodyguard left us to fetch them.

  “So, Frank, you said you had some questions about Jimmy,” Rizzo said.

  Rizzo was around sixty, slender, with graying hair and brown eyes. He was ordinary looking except for his eyes. Any high-ranking mobster anywhere has that look in his eyes. A look that says danger.

  If you put a diamondback rattler next to a harmless garden snake and just saw the eyes of both, you’d know which one to avoid.

  It was that way with mobsters.

  “My associate John Bekker actually is the one who wanted to speak with you, Tony,” Kagan said.

  Rizzo shifted his eyes over to me. “I haven’t had the pleasure, but I know who you are by reputation,” he said.

  The door opened and the bodyguard returned with a tray that held three small cups of espresso. He set the cups in front of us, turned, and took his place against the wall.

  “So, John Bekker, what do you want to speak to me about?” Rizzo said.

  “Jimmy DeMarko,” I said.

  Rizzo sipped some of his coffee. “Sadly, Jimmy passed away,” he said.

  “I’m aware of that,” I said. I sampled the espresso. “This might be the best coffee I’ve ever tasted.”

  “I have a coffee machine in the kitchen made of brass,” Rizzo said. “It makes regular, espresso, cappuccino. Cost nine thousand. So, what do you want to know about Jimmy?”

  “Are you aware of the situation involving Police Captain Walt Grimes?” I said.

  Rizzo sipped more coffee. So did I.

  “Do you think I live in a bubble?” Rizzo said.

  “Is it true?” I said.

  Rizzo measured his words carefully. “This isn’t the forties or even the seventies,
Mr. Bekker, where we needed police captains and judges on our payroll to do business,” he said. We’re not shooting each other in the streets of Manhattan in power wars anymore. We have investment bankers who run things for us. We own businesses countrywide and overseas, and do business with foreign governments and even our own. The notion that Jimmy would feel the need to bribe a police captain to let him operate locally is laughable to me.”

  “So, you don’t believe Jimmy DeMarko paid Captain Grimes to look the other way and allow him to do business?” I said.

  “I just said that,” Rizzo said.

  “How do you explain the confidential informant?” I said.

  “Mr. Bekker, if by some miracle some police snitch stumbled upon any information regarding anything to do with our business, that snitch would have disappeared long before he got the chance to use it,” Rizzo said. “We place a premium on our privacy, and the last thing we tolerate is publicity. No, your police captain is the victim of a set-up, and Jimmy was chosen because it was known he wouldn’t be around to defend himself or indict.”

  “About how I see things, too,” I said.

  “Captain Grimes is a straight shooter, an honest cop who believes in what he’s doing,” Rizzo said. “I respect that a great deal. I also don’t like Jimmy’s name being smeared and his family being embarrassed in public. If there is anything I can do to help you, have Frank give me a call.”

  “I will,” I said. “And thanks for the coffee.”

  * * *

  “I would advise not to call upon Tony Rizzo for any reason, Jack,” Kagan said as he drove us to the beach. “Any favor asked has to be repaid in kind, and you don’t want to owe anything, not to Rizzo.”

  “I realize that,” I said. “I just wanted to look into his eyes when I asked him about DeMarko.”

  “And what did you see?” Kagan said.

  “If there was any doubt about Walt’s innocence, it’s been removed,” I said.

  “And you can tell that from looking into his eyes?” Kagan said.

  “Windows to the soul,” I said.

  “I thought mobsters didn’t have souls,” Kagan said.

  “Nobody is born a mobster, or born bad, for that matter,” I said. “Rizzo has a soul just like the rest of us. It’s buried deep behind the eyes.”

  “And you can see it?” Kagan said.

  “If you know what to look for,” I said.

  * * *

  “These reports on Smith’s street contacts are the funniest thing I’ve read in decades,” Carly said when Kagan and I joined them at the table.

  “Is there any truth to them?” Kagan said.

  “Smith’s initial contact with the FBI was a phone call where he reported he heard on the street that a disgruntled ex-employee of Jimmy DeMarko wanted to get even for being fired and had information concerning meetings between DeMarko and Walt. He reported to Smith that in his capacity as DeMarko’s driver, he drove DeMarko to several meetings between DeMarko and Walt.”

  “No dates, no times, no locations,” Harry said.

  “It’s bullshit, all of it,” Carly said. “And Judge Brooks knows it. That’s why he’s allowing us to cross these morons in court.”

  “Who wants some lunch?” I said.

  * * *

  We talked witness strategy as we shoveled in Chinese food. It wouldn’t be too difficult to discredit Smith and company on the stand and put doubt in the minds of the grand jury.

  Napier would be banking on the six hundred grand.

  In his place, so would we.

  And it was a good strategy to follow.

  We had no way to counter the six hundred thousand found in the safe deposit box.

  As he ate some spicy chicken, Kagan said, “Whoever concocted this scheme is nothing short of a genius.”

  I agreed.

  The questions remained.

  Who?

  And why?

  * * *

  “You went to see Tony Rizzo? Are you fucking nuts?” Walt said. “Have you gone completely crazy?”

  We were in my backyard at the patio table.

  “Too bad we can’t get him on the stand,” I said. “He’s a big fan of yours.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake.”

  “I know we’ve been down this road before, but who did you piss off enough to do this?” I said.

  “Besides you and all of Elizabeth’s relatives?” Walt said.

  “Help me, Walt,” I said. “I need a lead to follow.”

  “What happened with those reports Jane printed for you?” Walt said.

  I stared at Walt for a few moments.

  “I gotta go,” I said.

  “Wait.”

  “I’ll call you later,” I said.

  “About what?” Walt called after me as I rushed inside the house.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  I built a large bonfire in the trashcan, made a pot of coffee, and brought out the battery-powered camping lantern.

  Thanks to Walt, I remembered the last thirty reports Jane gave me that I had neglected to read.

  I scoured them as if they were the Dead Sea Scrolls.

  When I reached the nineteenth report in the folder, my ears started to ring.

  Yann Michael Reed. Age listed as forty-seven. IQ of 177 and that was in high school. Graduated MIT, top of his class. Went to work for a computer firm in Seattle, designing software for the banking and finance industry.

  By the time he was thirty, Reed’s skills were in such high demand that he quit his job, moved home, and went into business for himself. A few years after hanging the shingle over his door, Reed was one of the most sought-after web and software designers in the banking, financial, and stock market circles.

  He married his high school sweetheart, bought a nice big house, and had a couple of kids. And thanks to his skills, Reed traveled to far and exotic places.

  He designed hack-proof software for the banking, financial, and corporate world in a dozen countries. Often he was hired by major companies, including governments, to try and hack their systems. If he could—which was the case most of the time—hack a system, they would pay him handsomely to redesign it and make the system hack-proof.

  Hack-proof to all but himself, that is. Early on, he realized that companies would never miss fractions of a penny in the profits. A quarter penny here, three quarters of a penny there, when spread out across billions and billions of dollars added up to many millions siphoned off to an account created by Reed that was hack-proof to anybody but himself.

  After a few years of skimming, Reed had a fortune in ill-gotten gain.

  The joke he must have found funny was the gain came from the very companies that hired him to protect them from hackers.

  Like himself.

  Reed’s downfall came in the form of, what else, a woman.

  On a trip to New York, Reed met a Russian woman who would become his mistress. He set her up in an apartment on Central Park West and paid her twenty thousand a month to be at his beck and call.

  His wife first grew suspicious of Reed’s affair when his trips to New York became more frequent, and he was never at the hotel he claimed to be staying at. She hired a private detective to follow Reed, and he reported back to her of the affair.

  Enraged and not without knowledge of her husband’s business practices, Reed’s wife went to the police and asked to see a detective.

  She hit the jackpot in then–Lieutenant Walt Grimes. She told Walt that her husband was a crook, stealing money from his clients using some kind of computer program.

  After an initial investigation, Walt knew he was onto something big, but he also knew he needed help.

  Walt recruited the FBI and after a six-month-long investigation, they gathered enough evidence against Reed for an indictment.


  Walt and the FBI made a joint arrest. Walt testified in court, and Reed went away for seven years to Coleman prison in Florida.

  Reed’s wife filed for divorce and got most of his legitimate holdings and finances. She remarried and moved away about five years ago.

  I grabbed Smith’s file. Lo and behold, they both were in Coleman at the same time.

  “They know each other,” I said aloud.

  Since his release from Coleman, Reed had returned home. He served every day of his seven-year sentence, so he wasn’t obligated to meet with a parole officer.

  As part of his sentence, Reed was forbidden to own a computer or work in the industry.

  I set the file aside and called Jane’s cell phone.

  “Where are you?” I said.

  “About to leave the office.”

  “Don’t,” I said. “I’ll be right over.”

  * * *

  “Yann Michael Reed?” Jane said. “Who names their kid Yann?”

  “Greeks,” I said. “Irish father, Greek mother.”

  “So, why am I interested in this loser?” Jane asked.

  “He’s no loser,” I said. “Read his file. He has an IQ of 177.”

  “So, he’s a smart loser,” Jane said.

  “He just happened to be in Coleman at the same time as Smith,” I said.

  “Along with thirteen hundred others,” Jane said.

  “Who just happened to move back here after their release,” I said.

  Jane looked at me. “I admit, it’s a coincidence,” she said.

  “Come on, Jane. Police work 101, there is no such thing as coincidence.”

  “Maybe not, but…”

  “Read his file,” I said. “And I’ll buy you a late dinner.”

  Jane read the file.

  “Okay, so he was really smart and did a lot of bad things with those smarts,” she said. “Besides being in the same prison at the same time as Smith, how are these two connected?”

  “People do a lot of talking in prison,” I said.

  “People do a lot of things in prison, Jack.”

  “Just listen a minute,” I said.

  “Sure. Over dinner.”

  * * *

  As she carved into a steak, Jane said, “I’m all ears, Jack.”