by Joanne Pence
“You’re such a dumbass.” Richie scowled.
Connor lifted his rifle. “That’s no way to talk to a man who’s armed!”
“Maybe you’ll shoot me and put out of the misery of having to talk to a dickhead like you!”
“Please,” Rebecca said to Connor. “Tell me what happened.”
“Well, I’d once followed Richie from his club to his house.” Connor spoke to Rebecca as if Richie wasn’t even there. “So I went there. I saw the lights on, but I was worried about who might be there with him. I parked and decided to sneak around back to look in the window to see if Richie was alone. But for some reason, by the time I’d reached the yard, the lights had gone off. I almost left, but the more I thought about it, I decided to see what I could. I mean, maybe he shut them to watch TV? I crept up to the deck and to the kitchen window, only to find Richie staring back at me. You two know what happened next.” He looked at Richie. “You could probably use some motion detector lights in your yard.”
“You son of a—”
“Not a bad idea,” Rebecca said. “Given the kind of people who seem to come looking for you!”
Richie glared. “You’re taking his side?”
“In this,” she stated.
“Well, if you two are done arguing,” Connor went on, “that was when I left the city. I remembered this abandoned shack from when I was a teenager and would come out this way to party. How did you find me?”
“None of your goddamned business!” Richie bellowed.
“You really need to come in with me,” Rebecca said. “It’s too dangerous for you here.”
“It’s a lot more dangerous for me to go into the city as long as a murderer is looking for me. I can’t do it!”
“The best thing for you to do is to give us all the information you have. Work with us to catch the killer. It might help you with your other … situation.”
“I don’t know,” he said.
“She’s right,” Richie told him. “Now, don’t shoot. I’m just getting out my wallet.” Richie pulled out a couple of tens and held them out for Connor. “Get yourself a decent meal. I can’t stand to see anyone, even an asshole, starving. After that, you might be able to think more clearly. If anyone can protect you, it’s Inspector Mayfield.”
Connor looked stunned that Richie would help him. Actually, so was Rebecca. She figured the hungrier he got, the more likely he’d be to turn himself in.
Still holding the rifle on them, Connor grabbed the money and backed away until he got back into the trees. There, he turned and ran.
“God, but I hate guns pointed at me.” Richie faced Rebecca. They still sat on the ground. “If that SOB had decided to shoot first and talk later, I’m hoping you’re wearing that little ankle pistol you often carry.”
She hiked up her jeans leg just a little way, and the pistol was visible. The way she’d been sitting, it was in easy reach.
Richie grinned. “A badass, all right.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
When they returned to San Francisco, Richie called Shay who had been working on the data Rebecca had sent him about Kyoto Dreams and Easy Street.
Richie gave Shay a quick rundown of Connor Gray’s explanation.
“That confirms what I’m seeing,” Shay said.
“Which is?” Richie asked.
“Both businesses were in financial trouble a couple of years back, and then, while teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, they both began making more money than ever before. Want to meet?”
They agreed to meet at a coffee shop near Shay’s home in the Presidio Heights area.
Shay only had coffee, but Rebecca and Richie each ordered large, meaty sandwiches and fries, both feeling hungry after their foray into the north bay. Then Shay took over.
“It’s money laundering,” he said.
“So Courtney was right,” Richie said. “Pierre told me what she’d said about money laundering through the LA Fashion District.”
“I don’t get it,” Rebecca said. “I mean, can you really launder much money through a clothing shop?”
“Through a high-end one you can,” Shay said. “Bosque’s shop used a clothing manufacturer in China to send shipments of clothes they made at low cost to Easy Street. Their invoices, however, showed much pricier merchandise than it was. When the clothes sold, the books were rigged to show that they sold for more than they really did. All those extra funds were then deposited in cash into a bank account as a formal, legal transaction from the sale of the clothes.”
“So that means,” Rebecca said, “all the extra cash the store is depositing, must have come from the sale of drugs, right?”
“Exactly,” Shay told her. “In this way, the cash deposits skirt the warning flags provided by current financial transparency laws and regulations, and so the drug money is washed.”
“Any type of trade across international borders,” Richie said, “is an opportunity for illegal transactions to be buried among the billions of legal ones. I’m not saying there’s any connection between the growth of international trade deals and drugs entering the country, or with rich people and politicians becoming wealthier than ever, but it might be more than a coincidence.”
“Soon after this started,” Shay added, “Bosque opened three more stores. It looks like he probably laundered around three thousand a day in San Francisco alone, so who knows how much money, in total, was involved.”
“And the same sort of thing was done with Kyoto Dreams?” Rebecca asked. “But restaurants don’t do nearly the business of a clothing store, I would think.”
“Restaurants are commonly used for laundering,” Richie said. “Did you ever watch the TV show, Breaking Bad? A restaurant called Los Pollos Hermanos was a front for all kinds of things.”
“The strange thing about restaurants,” Shay said, “is the best ones for money laundering are those with the least customers. Let’s say a restaurant has no customers. On its books, it shows all fake information—maybe that it bought $1000 worth of food, paid $1000 for staff, rent, etc., and sold $3000 worth of food in a day. They deposit $3000 as profit from the restaurant, but in fact, it’s all cash from drug money. They keep showing this pattern, everyday, on their books—varying the amounts a bit, of course. But every day they withdraw some money from the bank, and make a deposit of cash from drug deals. In my example, in a week, if the restaurant is open every day, they can launder $21,000 in drug money and not serve one customer. The problem comes in when the restaurant starts to attract real customers. When that happens, it has to actually buy some food, hire cooks and waiters, and so on. The more customers, the less room for fraud since restaurants, depending on size and what they serve, do have a finite amount of money they can make without attracting government or bank regulator notice.”
“Did they make the deposits into the small Japanese bank that Connor Gray talk about?”
Shay shook his head. “I doubt it. The one used here is a mid-sized, legitimate bank.”
Rebecca thought about all she’d learned. “So what happened? With all this planning and so on, why were Tanaka and Bosque killed?”
“Who knows?” Shay said. “Maybe something scared them and they wanted to get out of the business. Ironically, Bosque’s businesses might actually have done well on their own. He had gotten a good reputation for style, even if not the quality of the clothes he sold. And, it might be he didn’t like hearing about the low quality. He started invoicing a lot of wholesale clothes from the US, UK, and Italy, and I suspect those were legitimate. Kyoto Dreams books, on the other hand, looked like Tanaka might have continued to struggle.”
“Shay is saying,” Richie interrupted, “that what was going on in these men’s lives that caused them to become targets isn’t showing up in the numbers he’s looking at. That’s up to us to figure out.”
“It makes sense,” Rebecca said. “But it also means there were more people involved than just Bosque and Tanaka. They needed others to work on the books fo
r them, make bank deposits and withdrawals, and so on.”
“And that kind of coordination can lead to problems. Or jealousy. Or who knows what,” Shay said.
“It seems, Rebecca,” Richie said, “someone needs to look into who’s tampering with the invoices and books at Easy Street and Kyoto Dreams. That’ll tell you who’s doing the money laundering, although it still doesn’t pinpoint your murderer.”
“True, but it gets us closer, I’m sure,” Rebecca said. “Shay, thank you!”
“Remember,” Richie said, “Shig Tanaka was a friend. He might have crossed a line because he felt desperate, but nobody deserved to be killed the way he was. I want to know who killed him, and see that justice is done.”
Rebecca shuddered at his words. “We’ll figure it out. I promise.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
As Rebecca stepped onto the elevator the next morning for the ride up to the homicide bureau, instead of the usual excitement she felt going to her job, she was feeling almost defeated. The murders she was dealing with were ugly and sad, and despite all the criminal activity going on, there was no clear motive for the deaths, and therefore no clear suspect.
She filled in Bill Sutter and Lt. Eastwood in on all she’d learned, claiming her source was a “confidential informant” who would remain confidential. Eastwood didn’t press it. He decided they needed to let the Marin County sheriff’s department know where Connor Gray was hiding and try to pick him up. Rebecca had a contact in the department there, Deputy Sheriff Mike Vargas. He was another good man that she might have been interested in dating were it not for Richie. Was she seeing a pattern here? In any case, she phoned Vargas and explained Connor Gray’s role in her case, and where he was hiding out. She warned him of the potential danger involved in trying to arrest a nervous, paranoid man with a long-range rifle. Vargas assured her they’d be careful, and could handle it.
Then she drove to Kyoto Dreams before it opened, and waited outside in her SUV. Despite Tanaka’s death, the restaurant continued to function. Only after Shay’s money-laundering explanation did she understand why. It wasn’t about the food.
Connor Gray had told her that the restaurant’s manager, Kazue Hanemoto, would walk to a small Japanese bank branch office each day shortly after the restaurant opened. She sat, waiting to see if Connor was right.
Sure enough, Hanemoto soon appeared. She got out of the SUV and followed him two blocks to a small storefront. She took a photo of the Japanese characters showing its name, and sent the photo to the interpreter she’d once used. The business appeared every bit as quiet and seemingly innocuous as Connor had described.
She soon received an answer. The name of the bank was “Asahi Ginkou” which translated to “Morning Sun Bank.” But, the interpreter pointed out, Asahi was also the name of a popular beer.
Back at her desk, she contacted the detective in Kyoto who had helped her when she first learned of Shig Tanaka’s death. When she told him a little of what was going on and gave him the name of the bank Hanemoto entered, he sounded nervous. “Please, do not look into it any further. It is not a real bank. The people involved kill first, and they are protected. It is not anything for local police to try to handle.”
With the Kyoto detective’s warning ringing in her ears, she put in a call to Brandon Seymour, an FBI agent she had worked with in the past.
Seymour said he wasn’t far from the Hall of Justice and not a half hour later, he reached her desk. He looked so much like a stereotype of an FBI agent—big, beefy, short blond hair, clear blue eyes, and wearing a dark suit, white shirt, and blue tie—it made her smile. Seeing his return smile, she realized she’d made a mistake. He had seemed a bit sweet on her from time to time. He tried not to show it, of course, but she suspected that if given the slightest encouragement, he would have.
“Good to see you again, Rebecca,” he said.
She told him all she had found out about the possible money-laundering schemes going on in the city.
Seymour pursed his lips. “So now, Amalfi has you involved with international gangs. He’s a real gem, isn’t he?”
“No, a murder got me involved. It’s my job.”
“As I see it,” Seymour sniffed, “the victim of that first fire has been all but forgotten.”
Rebecca bristled. “And as I see it, I’m dealing with three murders. I assure you, I never forgot the first victim. The poor guy was in the wrong place at the wrong time, but his killing has been solved—Connor Gray confessed. He had a name, by the way—Benjamin Larkin. His death and the arson that caused it were catalysts for a whole series of crimes. And while I’m quite close to solving the murders of Tanaka and Bosque, I find their murders overlap into your jurisdiction. But if you aren’t interested …”
“Calm down, Rebecca. I’m interested. Very much so. If the Yakuza is trying to move into this city, I want to know all about it.”
“What I’ve got,” she said, “is based on assumptions at this point, but good assumptions. If they’re correct, I know you’ll want to step in. We have quite enough problems with our home-grown gangs without leaving the door open for new ones.”
Seymour went quiet as he looked over the data she gave him. “It looks to me as if you’ve got some deep sources. Do you think the person who gave you this would be willing to make contact with these people and nail down exactly who is doing what?”
“I doubt it.”
“Right now,” Seymour said, “if I were a betting man, I’d say Hanemoto is working with the Yakuza, and they decided he had to get rid of Tanaka. But I’d hate to have us tip our hand before we know exactly what’s involved here.”
“But the Thirteens and El Grande …”
“They’re fighting with Yakuza, that’s clear enough.”
“It may be a little more complicated,” Rebecca murmured.
“Well, well, look who’s here,” Richie said as he strolled towards Rebecca’s desk. He then gazed at Rebecca and she couldn’t help but warmly smile—a smile that, she was sure, wasn’t lost on Seymour.
“Amalfi,” Seymour said with a frown. “I should have known.” He faced Rebecca. “This is where you’re getting your information, right?”
“A lot of it. We’re friends, so why shouldn’t he help me?”
Both Richie and Seymour looked at her with disbelief. Seymour sneered. “Friends?”
“That’s what I said. And Richie’s not involved. He was a victim.”
“Oh, yes, that’s right.” Seymour hooked his arm over the back of the guest chair and looked up at Richie. “Somebody’s supposed to be trying to kill you, right, Amalfi?”
Richie turned the full force of his glare on Seymour. “Whoever it is hasn’t succeeded, as you can see.”
“There’s always hope.”
“Funny man, Seymour. Maybe you want a job as a comedian at my club.”
“I wouldn’t stoop so low.”
“Not to worry. You’d never get the job anyway.”
“Will you boys stop it?” Rebecca said, giving them both a harsh glare until they calmed down. “I’d like to get back to business. Richie, I was just telling Brandon what we’ve found out about a potential Yakuza situation, and he was asking if we know anyone who could infiltrate the Kyoto Dreams group and find out exactly what’s going on.”
“Tell me a little more what you’re thinking,” Richie said to Seymour. “If you’re thinking, that is.”
“Richie!” Rebecca warned.
He held both hands up in a mock “I give up” type gesture.
Seymour gritted his teeth until the urge to snap back passed. “Okay, it’s simple enough.”
“It sure as hell couldn’t be complicated,” Richie muttered softly to Rebecca.
She rolled her eyes.
“As I was saying,” Seymour said gruffly. “Someone needs to go in there. Maybe someone who can say he’d like to take over where Tanaka left off and see who takes the bait. Then we’ll know who was working with Tanaka, and maybe
even learn who killed him and why.”
“From what little I’ve seen of the situation in Kyoto Dreams,” Rebecca said, “they wouldn’t trust anyone who just showed up and asked to become part of it. Shig Tanaka and his manager, Hanemoto, went to school together. I suspect most people involved have similar long-standing relationships, probably going back to when they were in Japan together. I don’t see anyone winning over their confidence.”
“She’s absolutely right,” Richie said.
Seymour grimaced.
“But there’s another way,” Richie said. “It’s easy.”
Both looked at him and waited.
“We don’t go in there asking to be let in like some little wuss seeking a favor. Not like, oh, I don’t know, Brandon Seymour might do. Instead, we go in and tell them what’s up.”
Seymour’s face turned livid at the insult. “What the hell are you talking about, Amalfi? Nobody tells the Yakuza ‘what’s up.’”
Richie folded his arms. “I suspect the Yakuza aren’t sitting around in Kyoto Dreams making fancy sushi dishes or bussing tables. The people I would talk to are Hanemoto and his staff.”
“You?” Rebecca gasped.
“That’s right. I’d go in there and tell them Shig was a friend of mine—which they know is true—and that I know all about what he was doing. Also true. Now that he’s gone, I’m moving in. Either they take it, or I make my own deals with the money men, and they’ll be cut out altogether.”
Seymour looked disgusted. “Why in hell would they take a deal like that?”
“Because they’re scared,” Richie said. “I think whatever happened—and I’ve got an idea, but I’m not positive as yet—the people in the restaurant involved in the scheme are scared to death of two things. The first is losing the connection that’s bringing in a lot of extra money for them, and the second is ending up like Shig. I don’t know if they’ve decided which is the lesser of the two evils.”