The magistrate considered his Financial Times and turned toward Digby. “You have the freezing order?”
“Yes.”
“And our communications with Washington, D.C., are in order?”
“Yes.”
“You have a pen?”
“Yes.”
Digby handed over the paperwork. The magistrate scanned the forms, squinting through half-frame glasses perched on the tip of his nose.
The young officer checked his watch every few seconds. Finally, he said, “The incoming wire was just initiated. We could lose the money any second if we don’t hurry.”
“Oh, please.” The magistrate was exasperated. “It’s lunch. Our bankers are half in the bag. You won’t get any wires out this afternoon.”
Digby checked his watch again. “Something tells me the Bahamas Banking Company will be extremely efficient on behalf of this client.”
“This account belongs to a foundation,” the chief magistrate began. “You’re sure about this?”
“Yes.”
“You know what happens if we’re wrong?”
“We’re right.”
“The press will excoriate us.” The chief magistrate thought his observation wise, young Digby a little too earnest.
“Sir, it’s easy enough to release funds—assuming we freeze an account that ultimately proves to be legitimate. But once two hundred million leaves our control, we can’t get the money back.”
“No, I suppose you’re right.” The chief magistrate signed the freezing order.
“Thank you, sir.” Digby scooped up his folder and bolted from the room, leaving other guests to whisper and speculate about the commotion.
The magistrate was still holding Digby’s pen. He looked at his watch and smiled. It was 1:30 P.M. Now he could enjoy his cheesecake in peace, the pressure of a two o’clock meeting gone.
That’s when the chef returned, the other diners buzzing. “Is everything okay?”
“You never told me about your specials,” tsk-tsked the chief magistrate.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
PROVIDENCIALES, TURKS AND CAICOS
“Now what?” asked Jake.
“Pay for lunch, dumb-ass.”
We were camped out at a local diner, just down the street from the bank. The foundation’s $200 million had not arrived. Which, combined with bottomless cups of black coffee, made the two goons antsy.
I barely touched my fries. And I picked at my oil-slick sandwich, which the grease-stained menu billed as red snapper. Even though I had not eaten since the previous night, lunch was the furthest thing from my mind.
Every so often Jake poked me in the ribs with his knife, a pointed reminder to shut up. My blood was trickling. Slowly, steadily, a maroon stain spread through the blue oxford-cloth shirt Ricardo had given me.
The wound stung. I felt like a piece of cut meat and wanted to smash my plate across the pilot’s ruddy, 80-grit-sandpaper face. I was wired, alert, looking for the slightest opening.
When our waitress tended the adjacent table, Jake grinned and jabbed me with his knife again. “Don’t try anything.”
“Next time I break your nose.”
Several other diners, locals from the look of them, glanced in our direction. I relaxed my fist, the knife menacing my side. And seeing nothing of consequence, the other patrons continued with their lunches.
Ricardo growled at Jake in a low voice, “Cut it out.”
“Liver or kidney?” asked the pilot, his face demonic and red, his tie-dyed shirt a shooting flame. “What body part are you thinking?”
Ricardo glared until the pilot backed off. He never said a word, his intensity warning enough. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
“Where are you going?” asked Jake.
“To take a leak. Anything else you need to know?”
Ricardo slid out of the booth. Good. The goons had gone from zone defense to man-to-man, which felt like an opportunity.
The pilot read my mind, though. He wedged against me in the booth, his hip touching mine, his moist onion-and-batter breath fogging me out. “Just give me an excuse.”
Sometimes you’re good. And sometimes you’re lucky.
I was lucky. The phone rang. Jake relaxed his knife and checked his mobile. The caller ID read UNKNOWN.
“Yeah,” Jake grunted into the phone, his tone annoyed at first. But as he listened, his demeanor changed. He turned subservient, and I detected a note of fear. “I’m on it.”
Who’s calling?
“We’re close,” insisted Jake. “Really close.”
To what—the money?
“He won’t leave my sight.”
Are they talking about me?
At first I thought Ricardo had phoned from the can. I quickly changed my mind because the conversation was too tense, Jake too compliant. And after clicking off, he muttered, “Fucking Moreno.”
Suddenly I understood. They’d been discussing Ricardo. The pilot might be watching me. But he was also keeping tabs on Bong.
Why?
“What are you staring at?” Jake’s blade dug deeper, the holes in my shirt and side getting bigger, my blood gushing.
I can take him.
“Just the two of us,” the pilot taunted, almost begging me to try.
That’s when Ricardo returned. And I must confess, I was relieved to see him.
He looked over the counter booth and down at my shirt, the stain stretching wider and more pronounced. “What the fuck are you doing?”
“You told me to watch him, Bong.”
“Why’d you cut him?”
“Couldn’t help myself.”
“Dammit, Jake. What if we take him inside the bank?”
“Why?” the pilot demanded. “We don’t need him anymore.”
I watched the knife, checked for the waitress. Anything for an opening.
“We need him until the money arrives.” Ricardo hissed his words between clenched teeth.
Some plans take shape through grueling marathons of what-if exercises. Not this time. In those few seconds, I decided to escalate the old divide-and-conquer game. To hit them with everything I had.
“Too bad you’ll never see the money, Ricardo.”
He gazed at me impassively.
Jake twitched, however, as though he had overdosed on caffeine. “What do you mean?”
“Right about now, the FBI is freezing your sweep account.”
The threat seemed plausible. Torres had described her plan in the car yesterday. Plausible—maybe. But I had no idea whether the agent had initiated a freeze. Or whether it would work inside the Turks and Caicos.
“And your point is?” Ricardo’s eyes never flickered with concern. He was unfazed, suddenly cool, no longer the anxious goon on the verge of a big score.
“You think he’s bluffing, Bong?” Though still wary, the pilot eased the blade from my stomach.
“I doubt it,” deadpanned Ricardo, indifferent to the FBI.
He was too cocky, too sure of himself. He knew something I didn’t. I wondered why he had grown so confident.
“I wish you’d tell me what’s going on,” huffed Jake.
“Relax, would you?”
“You can’t afford to relax,” I chided Ricardo. “Once the money gets frozen, I bet your boy over here calls Moreno first thing. Some guys will say anything to save themselves, and one thing’s for sure.”
“What’s that?”
“Jake’s not taking one for you.”
“What do you know about Moreno?”
“Only what the FBI tells me.” I rolled my eyes toward Jake. “And what I hear on the phone.”
“You’re fucking dead,” the pilot blubbered, exasperated and nervous, his right eye twitching a Morse code of nerves. I could feel the knifepoint vibrating against my flesh.
“And what does the FBI tell you?” Ricardo leaned back, hands clasped behind his head, the picture of cool, daring me to continue.
“That you’re
a two-bit hood out of your league. That Moreno’s coming for the two hundred million.” Torres never said any of this. She was sketchy on the facts, uncertain about Ricardo’s role. But I was going all in, Texas Hold’em–style. “That about right, Jake?”
The pilot’s eyes sparked with anger, but he said nothing.
“Too bad the boss won’t get a cent.” I was baiting them, trying to make something happen, preferably something other than a knife up my gut.
“You ever seen a freeze order?” Ricardo’s voice was calm. He glanced at the half-moons of his fingernails.
“A few,” I lied.
“Then you know they come with a date.”
“That would be today’s date.”
“Right you are, grasshopper.”
Ricardo’s arrogance scared me. He was smug, too pompous and cocksure for my comfort. But I pressed forward anyway. “I bet the FBI already has its freeze in place.”
“They push paper with the best.”
“Yeah, too bad for you.” I was trying to match his breezy attitude, wondering why all the swagger.
“Hey, O’Rourke. It’s Wednesday, right?”
“All day long.”
“The bank received Claire’s wire Monday.” Ricardo’s face glowed like red-hot coals.
“Impossible. I called today.”
“Funny,” he replied. “The bank’s computers say Monday.”
“Where are you going with this?”
“My bank honors all instructions that predate a freeze.”
“Bullshit.”
“You know what whoosh money is?”
I said nothing.
“Whoosh it were still here.”
“Right,” I said, unamused.
“The money will sweep,” continued Ricardo, “and a week from today, I’ll be grading bikinis at my seaside retreat.”
My heart sank. Simple lies are effective lies. Palmer Kincaid’s fortune, his life’s work, would disappear because some clerk took a bribe from this shithead. “Who backdated our money?”
“You ever work in bank operations?” Ricardo was growing stronger and more confident with every word, his plan coming into full view.
“No.”
“Too bad. It’s amazing what you learn in the trenches.” He paused for his words to register. “Take a guy struggling to make ends meet. Wife and three kids at home. One of them big-time sick. Now, there’s somebody feeling the pinch. Know what I’m saying?”
I knew exactly what he was saying.
Ricardo’s face glowed like hot embers. His teeth glistened pearly white. “After a while, the job screws with your head. Some rich client bitches about not closing on a new yacht. His wire is late. Meanwhile, my guy in operations can’t make his mortgage payments on some dump. I’m like fucking Robin Hood to him.”
“You keep missing the big picture.”
I had no choice but to bluff. Ricardo had outpointed everybody, FBI included, on the money transfer. Once the $200 million arrived, I was a loose end.
“You’ve got a knife up your ass, and I’m the one missing the big picture?”
I braced for a jab. “Too bad about the suspicious activity reports.”
Jake blinked. His smile vanished. His lips turned tightrope thin.
Ricardo stayed cool. “You ever work in a bank’s anti-money-laundering group?”
Uh-oh.
“Couldn’t keep your job in operations?” I was going down. I knew it. He knew it. My sarcastic response made me feel better but didn’t help. Not one bit.
“The bank loved me,” he boasted. “Put me through law school in the Philippines. Said I had a big future in compliance. Too bad they never paid me.”
“Then you know,” I said, leading the Charge of the Light Brigade. “Right about now, there’s a guy looking at the SARs.”
“Probably so.”
“A lot like the guy you know in operations. Wife, kids, mortgage. Except he’d prefer to play soccer on the weekends than chum through the prison showers. He sees two hundred million dollars going out the door today, on an account where there’s a freeze order. And he thinks, Something’s rotten in the Turks and Caicos. And that’s when your inside man gets nailed. Do not pass Go. Do not collect two hundred million dollars.”
“That guy you mentioned,” replied Ricardo.
“What about him?”
“Her name is Olivia. She runs the AML for the Bahamas Banking Company.”
“You bought her?”
Ricardo cocked his head to the left and smiled. His elbows bent, he raised his right and left palms to the heavens. But he wasn’t praying. He was congratulating himself.
Who isn’t on Ricardo’s payroll?
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
PROVIDENCIALES, TURKS AND CAICOS
I have no history of violence.
Nothing more than a few kickboxing lessons from a coach who says, “Learn to walk away. There’s always somebody bigger, stronger, better trained who can kick tomorrow’s crap out of you.”
I had stayed up all night. Been beaten, bullied, and gagged while two goons probed my tonsils with a can of Great Stuff. My ears were ringing, my head throbbing. But for all the bruises on my face—nose shaped like a pickle and skin tones borrowed from The Scream—no permanent damage had been done. Ricardo and I had each been knocked unconscious too soon.
Everything changed in a few seconds.
I erupted, my fury blinding and feral. I was capable of anything. My savagery surprised me then. It haunts me still. And I wonder what vile thing inside pushed me over the line of decency. I had no history of violence.
Now I do.
* * *
“Let’s go, ladies.” Ricardo collected the change and cleared the room with his eyes. No cops. Nobody glancing in our direction. He was drawing closer to his payday and could almost smell the sweet bouquet of dollar bills, pounds sterling, or whatever currency he selected.
“Where?” I made no effort to move.
“One asshole is plenty,” he answered. “Get moving before Jake cores you a new one.”
Ricardo’s face had tensed over the past few minutes. His momentary cool had vanished. The careful planning, all the preparation and bribes, were yesterday’s news. Results were all that counted.
His brow creased again. His black eyes filled with an eerie, foreboding glow. Ricardo reminded me of traders with big money on the line, the way they get stiff and jittery and grow old waiting for their bets to pay off.
Or not.
The crowd troubled Ricardo. There had been only a handful of diners before, but now every seat in the house was taken. The patrons were workers, heavyset, with calloused hands, long on perspiration from hours underneath the stinking hot sun. Short on deodorant.
The small concrete-block room was an orgy of eating and drinking. Neon pinks and blues were splashed against the walls, while fourteen-foot ceilings shielded everybody from the midday sun. The room was stained by time and the greasy exhaust from cooking creatures of the sea. It reeked from happy hours that began with Bloody Mary breakfasts and ended when the last sot pitched face-first onto a Formica countertop somewhere.
Waitresses buzzed the tables. Some hoisted huge platters of crab cakes and fish. Others delivered amber glasses of ice-cold beer, their frothy heads jiggling from the motion.
Jake slid out of the booth.
I stayed put.
“Move it,” growled the pilot.
“I’m not going.”
Ricardo nodded toward me. “Take care of our problem child, Jake.”
The pilot slid back in and poked me with his knife. This time he cut a new spot. A fresh stream of blood spurted from the puncture.
I’ve suffered through my share of pain. That’s the thing about distance cycling. You learn to deal with the discomfort and move on, literally, because racing is all about stretching to the physical limit of your legs, your lungs, your head telling you, “This sucks.” Cycling is a sport where you make peace with agony, b
ecause every turn of the crank brings the finish line that much closer.
But sweet mother of Jesus, Jake’s knife hurt.
“You ever had your nose broken?” I asked.
“Shut up.” He snarled his words but averted his eyes under my withering stare.
Nobody paid attention to us. The patrons focused on their food and drink. Waitresses scoured for tips. And the hostess took names from the burgeoning crowd.
“Twenty-minute wait,” she announced every so often.
A maroon polka dot was saturating my shirt, the radius of blood six inches at least. Four guys, their skin the color of smoke, were standing near the cash register. They should have seen me and sounded the alarm. But they pointed to our empty booth, focused on who would bus the table and how soon.
The diner aisles were narrow, which was good for Jake and Ricardo. The goons could prod me forward, and Jake could keep his knife hidden. The tight quarters, however, were bad for the harried waitresses. Loaded with trays, they shimmied and limboed their way past us. Which, I suddenly realized, was the break I needed.
A slim waitress, her thick black hair a tangle of dreadlocks, hoisted a tray full of beers and shots of Jack. She edged down our lane toward a table of gardeners who looked like commercial fishermen. It was the middle of the day, though, and I decided that anglers would be at sea working their nets.
When the woman squeezed past Jake, he lost his concentration. “You need a management team for your hair, toots.”
I grabbed one of the beers.
“Put it back!” she bellowed, wedging into Ricardo. Her loud, angry voice filled every corner, every crevice of the room.
Two quick moves. I rammed the mug into Jake’s nose. Beer sprayed everywhere, his flesh and cartilage cracking from my 100 mph thrust, blood spurting across several nearby plates.
Jake’s hands shot up. Too little. Too late. I caught him with an elbow to the Adam’s apple. The pilot clutched his neck. The waitress’s platter blasted from her grasp, amber waves of imported beer splashing the gardeners behind.
Ricardo slapped my right hand. The mug landed three tables over, seated diners bailing from their booth. Everyone in the restaurant craned to see what was happening, too surprised to move, as pain shot up my fingers through my arm.
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