“I can’t even imagine,” I admit.
She turns to Lee. Stares at him. Lee stares back, says nothing. Does nothing, wearing well the disguise of the caricature bureaucrat. Somewhere in Lee’s office sits a first place trophy for the Mannequin Challenge.
“Lee,” I say to Worth.
“Fuck. Me.” Worth taps the side of her head with two fingers. For as long as I’ve known him, Lee’s always presented himself as a dispassionate minimalist. One suit. One look. One emotion. The secret he’s hiding? Probably as exciting as a messy closet. The corners of his lips might have momentarily curled up for a millimeter of a smile, but as I look at them now, they’ve resumed their flat-lined inscrutability.
“My therapist says, get this, that not being able to remember…” Worth pauses, shakes her head. “Scratch that. That failing to absorb people’s names but retaining all the impersonal attendant details is a sign of a self-centered egotist of the highest order. A borderline egomaniac-narcissist. Moi.” She spiders her fingers just above her ample bosom. “Thoughts, gentlemen?”
“Pretty harsh, shiny boots, blue suit, straw blond hair in a bun,” I say.
“Very funny. What the hell are you doing on my campus? According to this guy,” Worth doesn’t even try to recall Lee’s name, employing her thumb instead, “everywhere you step things tend to get way worse before they get better. If they get better. And he’d used curse words to express these sentiments.”
Finally I’ve found something Lee and Zero could bond over. The Zesty Path: where angels tread in shit.
“I was just trying to make a few dollars,” I say. “Any chance of cashing out those chips I won?”
But the real question is, what is Lee doing on campus? Oleg Katanya aka Mikhail Sergachev was a burglary that resulted in an on-campus arrest. The Rambir Roshan murder was Boston Robbery Homicide, give or take a couple of inches. What happens when you’re arrested on the MIT campus? Probably one of two things. Either you get atomized in an experiment and are never heard from again or you’re handed over to Cambridge PD.
My chip query is greeted by twin blank stares even though for two agents of law enforcement, these two couldn’t be more different. Lee could trip into a seismograph needle and not make it move, all his machinations hidden behind dark eyes shaded by twin caterpillar eyebrows, though under his crisp suit is a horrific scar across his abdomen from the stabbing that had almost killed him and an aggrieved sense of justice incomplete. But on the surface he gives off the flat expression of the jack on a playing card, neither here nor there as a hand, but just enough to justify staying in the game.
Worth, I’m convinced, carries a military past, the rounded shoulders kept back possibly as much a habit from carrying a seventy-pound rucksack as from discipline. She has a pugnaciousness that makes her seem much larger than her height, candy apple cheekbones that have probably braced hard suns, intelligent satellite eyes that miss nothing. Worth rolls those eyes and shakes her head.
“Let’s stick to the facts. At 1:17 P.M. you tried to access Ashdown House but were stopped by security, who you gave some cockamamie visiting story to. You went around back and found the door locked and moved on.” Worth pauses to glance at the paper on her desk. “At 1:55 P.M. you crested your way into Huntington Hall for Professor Yuki Fuji’s poker analytics class, where you caused quite a stir. Judging by the Internet traffic, most notably Facebook, you must have—”
“Whoa, you monitor students’ social media?” I’m aghast. And by aghast, I mean I’m only acting.
“Who needs to monitor? These kids post everything. Just wait until their Goldman Sachs interview; there’s going to be some serious reckoning for those party pics. They ought to know nothing disappears forever.”
Worth is right about that. Devlin McKenna came back. Karl Klaussen came back. It’s only poor Camilla Islas and my mother who are gone forever, Solarte and I no closer to finding Camilla’s body than when we started looking.
“These students only post to their friends,” I point out. “You’re invading their right to privacy.”
“I friend every student in this school.” Worth grins wide. “They’re all my babies.” She points to a framed New Yorker cartoon behind her. Two dogs seated at a computer. One dog says, “Nobody on the Internet knows you’re a dog.”
“You maintain fake accounts?”
“And a million excuses why I can’t meet. I have people tapped in to the busy lives of our students, let’s leave it at that. Stop trying to deflect, this isn’t about me. By 3:11 P.M. you’ve made new friends and started playing poker. I want to know what you’re up to.”
“Zesty has a proven track record of insinuating himself into situations, making things more complicated than they ought to be,” Lee interjects.
“You should talk,” I say.
“He also,” Lee is undeterred by my aside, “has a history of misdirection, a shirking of responsibility, but that perhaps is an inherited trait.” Lee lifts his eyebrows. “Where there is poker involved, also, I’m not particularly surprised to find him; he’s got a nose for the game. Another genetic gift, perhaps, but more likely a learned and studied trait. I’m here on campus not because you’re here, Zesty, though that’s a happy coincidence. What I am about to show you has been edited for efficiency’s sake, but I’d like to have your interpretation of them.”
Rosalinda Worth turns her monitor so we can all see the screen and I watch Oleg Katanya at the front door of Roshan’s campus house; cut to Sam Budoff walking across campus with a silver poker case; cut to Yuki Fuji smoking cigarettes outside with Jakub Namestnikov; cut to Rambir Roshan with Namestnikov and Oleg Katanya together.
“Lot of Eastern Europeans,” I say. “I’m taking it you know who these people are?”
“Of course,” Worth says. “These pictures are not the sum total of how often they have been on campus.”
“So what?” I say. “I bet there are a lot of Russians on your campus.”
“That’s true. There’s something about the Eastern European mind and Internet technology.”
“Only Oleg Katyana had an entirely different skill set, didn’t he?” I say.
Lee nods and reaches into his inside breast pocket. “I’m going to warn you, Zesty, these pictures are not easy to look at.”
“Don’t bother. I’ve seen them.” Lee and Worth stare at each other and I look anyway. There’s a picture here that Wells didn’t have or decided not to show me. A heavily tattooed complete arm cut crudely just below the shoulder, the hand holding a severed penis.
“You ID Katanya based on the tattoos? I mean, if it’s based on what he’s holding, that’s your business.”
“Really, Zesty?” Lee displays genuine disappointment. “Even in moments like these?”
“It’s a coping mechanism, what can I tell you?”
“A little filter wouldn’t hurt, though,” Worth suggests.
“Noted.” I look more closely at the photo and Lee points out the individual tattoos like a roadmap through the Russian prison system. “The red star, Zamkova prison, Ukraine. Assault with intent. The devil and pitchfork, Lefortovo, Moscow. This time, successful. Murder. That Russian lettering on his penis, basically ‘fuck the system.’ Original, right? In the old days, the prison administration would have burned the ink with acid to smudge it.” There’s more. “The naked girls? Pimping. Naked girl in a burning martini glass, gasoline-drowned whore. A warning to the others. We don’t see this level of brutality often.”
“And yet here we are.” Worth’s face a dark cloud.
“I take it the cock in hand is some kind of message?”
“It’s a taunt. Like, a combination ‘fuck you’ and ‘here’s what you’re left with.’”
Nothing but dick.
“Clever.” I frown. “Who’s doing the taunting?”
Instead of answering, Lee takes out another photo and lays it on the desk for me to see.
“Antti Voracek,” I say, maybe showing off a little in front of Worth,
who has to consult her cheat sheet but doesn’t write anything down, meaning she’s already seen the photos and recorded the names. “Namestnikov’s boss.”
Lee, if he’s surprised I’ve identified the picture, squelches it.
“Let me guess. You’ve also got film of Antti Voracek.”
“I don’t believe this.” Worth squints at me angrily. “What did you say you do for a living?”
“I’m not even sure anymore.” How many jobs was I shouldering now? Messenger. Construction. PI in training. Failing stand-up comedian. I’d add poker pro, if they’d let me cash my chips.
“Katanya we have meeting with Rambir on numerous occasions. Namestnikov once with the two of them. Voracek we only have on campus at a university gala for a visiting dignitary. He runs in more diplomatic circles.”
“Was Professor Yuki Fuji there?”
“Yes.”
“Is that the only time you have them in the same place?”
“No. We have them in Las Vegas. Foxwoods in Connecticut.”
“Private poker coach?” I say, knowing full well that wasn’t the deal. More likely using the casinos to launder money. But money from what? From where? And ending up where? The real estate? The chips Zero now had stashed somewhere?
“When Katanya was arrested on campus, who was he turned over to?” I ask.
“Ah, very good, Zesty. I can see you’re focused now,” Lee says. “Katanya was turned over to Detectives Powers and McGowan. Cambridge Homicide.”
“Why them?”
“Because that’s who showed up.” Worth sounds disgusted. “We knew it stunk, but they’ve got their story that Katanya was under their watch. They wouldn’t specify why or how, but they had clearance to pick him up and I had orders to hand him over.”
And then he ends up in pieces.
“Katanya wasn’t successful in getting hold of Rambir Roshan’s computer, the one he broke in for, because we already had it.” Worth holds the cheat sheet of names as she speaks. Even if she didn’t have her memory issues, this whole mess was getting to be more confusing than Crime and Punishment. I glimpse my name on the pad underlined multiple times. “Rambir’s computer had been wiped clean, but we already knew what he’d been up to.”
“And you’re holding out on Boston Homicide. What kind of fucked-up shit is that?”
“It’s a convoluted situation,” Lee states the obvious.
“You mean more convoluted than running multiple accounts, depositing and transferring money just below the ten grand mark that would require the banks to flag it?”
Worth levels a cold eye at Lee. Lee says, “I believe we went over this already. And as for Zesty, it’s a family trait. The Meyerses are always looking for angles and when they find one, be prepared to take cover. Proceed. It’s impossible to know how much of what you are about to share that Zesty already knows.”
“Fine. But I still don’t understand why you insist on including him. No offense … Zesty, but you don’t really seem qualified for this.”
“Offense taken,” I say. But I see Worth’s point. Did I know some things that Lee didn’t? Possibly. Was I in any kind of danger personally? Not that I could tell. Anitra Tehran was the target and has the files, which she’s right now sharing with Wells, the two of them huddling at headquarters trying to de-encrypt what Tehran didn’t even trust her own people to decode.
It’s enough to bring on a headache, but my head fills with static instead, putting an end to the longest beat-break my internal DJ’s taken since he’s taken up residency. A sonic bolt of lightning is followed by the familiar electric strumming of “When Things Go Wrong” by Robin Lane & The Chartbusters:
When things go wrong
Don’t walk away
That will only make it harder
Why you want to run away
That won’t get you any farther
“Rambir was running at once a complicated but simple scheme,” Worth’s voice cuts through the music. “Where he would hack into people’s personal bank accounts and steal the log-in credentials. He’d then set up fraudulent automated clearinghouse links, or ACH links, between the victims’ accounts and prepaid debit card accounts he controlled.”
“You mean, like he’d go to a CVS store, buy ten fifty-dollar prepaid cards, and then transfer money from his hacking victims’ accounts to these cards?”
“Exactly. Only he wouldn’t buy the cards himself.”
“Let me guess. He’d pay his poker buddies to do that.”
“Yes.”
“Because he’d fleece them at the table and they wanted to keep playing, hone their game that Professor Fuji convinced them they could master.”
“And why not?” Lee chimes in. “It was all house money to them. Remember, the majority of these Ashdown House players are on scholarships and have no money of their own. And here comes Rambir with a cash spigot, running a big money poker game. He couldn’t have won all the time, correct?”
Correct. The margin of error was too fine, the cards sometimes running against you; most likely Rambir’s poker buddies took turns walking around the campus with fat dollars in their pockets.
“You notice all the trappings of retarded youth, the large-screen TV, the gaming tech? It was like they were living out their fantasies. And that’s where Oleg Katanya came in. Expensive whores, a little cocaine. He met Roshan when Roshan had gone looking for bigger stakes, ended up at his club. Katanya procured the girls and the drugs and he recognized that something was amiss. That these guys shouldn’t have had so much money. So like a good soldier, he reports to his boss, Namestnikov, and they figure out what’s going on.”
So it’s not the Kirilenko Labs connection that involves the Russians; they come in through an entirely different side door.
“So what happens once the money is transferred to the prepaid debit cards?”
“Rambir used his buddies again.” Worth uses her cheat sheet and rattles off a list of names much longer than just the guys I’d been playing with. Too many guys, obviously.
“Our fine students. Almost every single one from Southeast Asia, chosen specifically because they were vulnerable and all taking the same class taught by Yuki Fuji. They would fan themselves out around the city, purchase money orders from MoneyGram and the U.S. Postal Service, which they’d then give to Rambir, who would deposit them into multiple accounts—”
“In amounts just below the ten thousand mark.”
“Yes. And then he’d pull the cash from the accounts, pay his army of poker buddies, replenishing their poker war chests, and the game went on. The whores kept coming. The drugs. He basically corrupted two dozen nerds, not one, who we could tell, sent any significant money home overseas.”
“You were watching them. The Facebook and email accounts.” And probably other ways, other eyes in the skies, though none Worth is likely to admit to. “And you didn’t stop it.”
“I tried.” Worth pauses and a pained look begins to dawn on her face.
“But you were overruled,” I say. “By people above you.”
“If we dismantled the game and expelled the students, there’d be too much noise, bad publicity. After the whole blackjack thing years ago, this institution didn’t want the spotlight for another gambling scandal, much less one that involved drugs, prostitutes, stolen bank accounts, and Russian gangsters.”
“So your solution was what?”
“A joint university and FBI operation,” Lee says. “To contain the fallout.”
“You mean to cover up the truth.”
“I sense a judgmental tone, Zesty. Do I need to remind you that your family has benefitted from such an arrangement in the past?”
Benefitted and suffered, I could argue, but this wasn’t the time or place for it. “So you’re not interested in implicating the students,” I say to Lee. “You’re looking at the Russian angle, trying to keep them contained, because the last thing Boston needs is the Russian Mob getting a solid toehold and start flexing their muscles
around this shiny and rebuilt city.”
“Precisely.”
“And then Rambir gets killed, throwing everything in disarray.”
“Yes. Followed by Katanya fished out of Boston Harbor and then Namestnikov disappearing and his enterprises abandoned.”
“You think he’s dead?”
“I do.”
But who would want to rub out Namestnikov? And who had the juice to do it? He was the one who was practically printing money. And speaking of the money, if Rambir had been pulling in the range of eight or nine thousand dollars per account after paying off his buddies and there were 137 accounts on that drive Anitra Tehran and I had looked at, we were talking roughly in the range of the value of the poker chips Zero now held.
Also, who’s to say there weren’t other accounts out there, security breaches in places like Home Depot and Target and who knows where else, yielding reams of personal and financial information. With every passing day my mattress was looking like a greater and safer place to stash money if it weren’t for the cat.
“What was Rambir paying his buddies for their role in all this? I mean besides the coke and whores.”
“Ten percent of every deposit. Basically a thousand bucks a pop. Hit five post offices in a day and our little Sunils, Vishnays, Adars, and Zamirs were walking around with serious pocket money,” Worth says.
And there was nothing she was allowed to do about it, higher powers giving her some sour marching orders, which I could tell ate her up inside, maybe her name-recognition issues even coinciding with this cluster-fuck.
Until Rambir hit the pavement and the proverbial shit hit the fan. And then there was the added complication of Powers and McGowan trying to wrest control of the homicide scene, doing what they could to grab the case. Why so hot for the Rambir catch? I’d have to remember to ask Wells. Also, could there be more money around besides the poker chips, assuming they belonged to Rambir? I pose that query to Lee and Worth.
“That’s the literal million-dollar question,” Lee answers. “Or more. Not in a bank account, as far as we can tell.”
“And not under his mattress,” Worth adds. “We checked.”
A Town Called Malice Page 24