Baby Brother Blues (Sammy Dick, PI Series: Book 1)

by Trudi Baldwin

  “Good, Tina. Good. In fact, I found something that may be of interest to you, but I want to speak privately about it to you first.”

  My ears perked up. “Do you have time to come directly to my office then?”

  “Sure,” Tomas replied as we entered the elevator. We were both quiet as the elevator doors kept opening and shutting, letting suited professionals off at various floors. Since Swann alone occupies the top floor, Tomas and I were by ourselves when the elevator made its final upward stop. I exited first and headed toward my office, fumbled only momentarily in my bag until I found the key to the door in my special little zip pocket of the inner lining.

  We got inside and shut the door. “So what’s up, Tomas?”

  After sounding so chipper by the elevators in the lobby, he was now looking hesitant. “I’ve learned something, but revealing it makes me feel disloyal.”

  Ah, this might take some arm twisting. “So, Tomas, you are willing to put all of Swann at risk out of a sense of loyalty?”

  “I didn’t say that, Tina.”

  “I’m not questioning your loyalty, Tomas. I know from experience that family businesses can get very convoluted. I also know from personal experience in investigating family-owned businesses that people can find themselves in lose-lose situations, where if they are loyal to one faction of the family, it forces them to be disloyal to another faction.”

  “Exactly, Tina! That’s it exactly.”

  “Then let’s try to be creative and figure out how we can make a lose-lose situation into a win-win for you and keep your loyalties intact as much as possible, while still doing what is best for Swann,” I coaxed.

  Finally, I saw a shift in his eyes, signaling a move toward trust rather than reticence.

  “Remember Yellowknife? I think I stumbled upon some… discrepancies.”

  Tomas didn’t speak again; rather, he slid into my desk chair and fired up my computer. When he got to the password, he switched places with me and I dutifully typed in DoMe1DoMe2DoMe3 as the little XXXXXXXXs appeared across the page. It was hard not to giggle, but I kept a straight face not wanting to interrupt Tomas’s urge to spill his guts and help me make some headway in this case. I felt all alone without Geo, my trusty, ingenious partner, or ex-partner as he got all moony-eyed over Kathy and her troubles.

  What Tomas unveiled to me next sent shivers down my spine. Hell, I might be able to solve this case all by my little self!

  Tomas indicated that he wanted to switch places with me after I got into the accounting records. As he scrolled through them I said, “Tomas, I’ve gone through these carefully and they seem fine.”

  “I thought the same thing, too, Tina, but all of your prodding caused me to go back through more carefully.”

  “And what did you find?”

  “It’s not what I found; it’s what I didn’t find, Tina. That’s what made it so hard to spot,” Tomas said, scrolling through the spreadsheet. “As you probably found out as well, all of the financials associated with Yellowknife always add up and remain constant.”

  “That’s what I found out, too,” I remarked. “So what wasn’t there, Tomas?”

  Tomas was zipping through the spreadsheets, shifting along tabs until he found the bill of lading, the detailed record of products transported. “See here, Tina. Here is the weights measurement taken in Yellowknife. Then here, when it arrives and someone in shipping and receiving receives it, the dollar value remains the same, and the weight value corresponds as well.”

  “So no crime. Big deal.”

  “Remember, though, Tina, about how I mentioned all the bling that began showing up about once a month a while after Liang and Zaiid made their trips to Yellowknife?”

  Oh, yes, the bling thing. How could I forget?

  He continued, since I was looking skeptical. “All the added bling caused me to look through the books, and I found nothing, but then, when you were also suspicious, I decided to dig further.”

  “And?” Get to the point, dude, I wanted to say, but sat on my hands instead, smiling at him with encouragement.

  “And the books are clean, but the Research Room isn’t.”

  I always knew there was something dirty going on in the Research Room! “So what’s not clean in the Research Room?”

  “The weights. When I measure the trays of industrial diamonds that come in for the larger industrials, the actual weights of the diamonds do not match up with the bill of lading weights. The actual diamonds in the Research Room weighed about three pounds less than the bill of lading records.”

  “Someone’s skimming the industrials? Why? I thought industrials made money but not nearly enough to merit stealing some.”

  “I haven’t figured that part out yet. Why would Liang or Zaiid, or whoever is doing this, go through all of the trouble to set up side customer accounts and siphon the business off in that direction, when the amount of money made isn’t nearly worth the trouble and potential exposure?”

  “Maybe it’s Liang, and his gambling habit is so out of control that he doesn’t care?” I suggested.

  Tomas’s shoulders deflated inward, “That’s what I thought too, Tina.”

  Tomas sat dejectedly for a moment. “You know what you said, Tina, about finding a creative win-win solution to all this?”

  “Yes, have you got any ideas?”

  “No, I was hoping you did.” Then he sweetened the pot. “Well, if you can come up with a win-win solution, then I’ll tell you even more that I know.”

  “There’s more that you’re not telling me?”

  Sigh. “Yes.”

  “I might be willing to help, but let me clarify something before I attempt to come up with some kind of solution. Tomas, if this were to become a win-win situation, we would be able to do what’s best for Mai, Sylvester, Michael and Liang. All of them, right? What about Karl?”

  “Fuck Karl!” Tomas hissed sharply. “Pardon my language, Tina, but Liang and Swann have been inwardly imploding ever since Karl arrived. The industrial diamonds business idea may have been a logical direction to pursue, but Karl Zaiid is the wrong man to lead that pursuit.”

  “And here I thought you were attracted to him too.”

  Tomas looked down again. “Unfortunately, just because I may be attracted to someone doesn’t mean I respect them.”

  “Been there done that, too. Dangerous road to go down, though, Tomas.”

  “I haven’t been going down that road as you so quaintly put it, Tina. I just looked down that road and decided it would be one of my roads not taken in this life.”

  “Probably not true for Liang and Zaiid, though, wouldn’t you guess, Tomas?” I looked at him, knowing the truth already from my perilous adventure at Zaiid’s house.

  Tomas sighed even more deeply this time with resignation. “Probably a road taken for Liang, many times. Liang is prone to taking almost every road offered to him and sometimes several at the same time.”

  “That sounds like the voice of experience. So is Liang a road you personally have taken?” I was trying to catch him off guard, but starting to feel like some kind of off-beat MapQuest poet. We were using so many euphemisms for not saying what we really meant with our road metaphors, but I wanted to keep Tomas talking while we were on a roll, or on a road, as it were, and find out as much as possible.

  Speaking in his delicious Puerto Rican accent, Tomas’s eyes unexpectedly teared up. “It is a road I traveled that was so bumpy and had so many detours that I had to withdraw myself forever from traveling upon it again.”

  There you have it! The road no longer traveled. The long and winding, bumpy road full of detours. We’ve all traveled them, and some of us will never get off of them. “I am sorry, Tomas, for your pain and your loss.”

  We were both quiet for a moment, absorbing these difficult truths. I was hoping to move away from MapQuest metaphors and into some kind of resolution. “Tomas, do you know the term enabling?”

  “Yes, probably a distinctly America
n term, but, yes, I too have thought I am enabling Liang. And so is Mai, but what are our alternatives?”

  “Well, how about cutting him off from Yellowknife for starters, severing Zaiid from the company payroll, and insisting Liang get his butt into rehab, or no more family money goes his way? How about that for a creative solution?”

  “Oh, Tina, you make it all sound so simple. Just a snap of the fingers. Perhaps, if it were my decision alone, that might be possible, but that is not the case.”

  “You mean Mai would never agree?”

  “Never. She’s so enmeshed with Liang that gaining that kind of objectivity is unthinkable.”

  “And you love her as much as you love Liang,” I guessed out loud.

  “You understand,” he admitted miserably. He was seated beside me as he had been on my very first day at Swann. Now he leaned forward and placed his forehead on his clasped hands that rested on my magnificent cherrywood desk. “You don’t know what a relief it is just to be understood. So freeing.”

  “But still sad.” I didn’t have an undergraduate degree in psychology for nothing.

  “Still sad,” he acknowledged. Then he raised his head up and looked off toward the Estrella Mountains. I followed his gaze. The mountains were hard to see in the early morning pollution, but some of the tips and crags showed through. Tomas wiped his hand across his eyes. “The story goes that Mai has loved Liang since the day he was born, as some big sisters do. She used to carry him around so much that it delayed his learning to walk and she used to speak for him so often that it delayed his learning to talk. Both of their lives were very uncertain in some ways, even though they were raised in the lap of luxury. Hu, their father, is a cold, cold man with some rumors that he is with the Chinese Mafia, or some high-ranking member in a Triad, or both. At any rate, he was never present, even if he was present, if you know what I mean, and he traveled away from home constantly.”

  “Yes, Michael told me Hu had a mistress. Correction, still has a mistress, so that would contribute to being gone a lot, too.”

  “Michael told you that?” Tomas asked, confused.

  “Yes, and Michael didn’t seem overly fond of the old man either.”

  “The only ones fond of the old man, as far as I can tell, are Mai and Liang.”

  “Maybe fond is not the right word. Afraid is more like it. Afraid of losing his love.”

  “Well, from what I can tell, they never really had it in the first place, nor will they. Ever,” Tomas said harshly.

  “Hard to accept for them. That’s what Michael said, too.”

  “Really? I’m surprised you got so much out of Michael.”

  “That’s my job, Tomas. I’m good at it.”

  “That you are,” Tomas nodded and smiled in what looked more like a grimace. “That you are.”

  “That being said, Tomas, we’ve beat around the bush long enough. I promise to come up with a win-win solution, but first you’ve got to tell me everything you know, so I have the right facts to proceed.” I didn’t have a clue if I could come up with a win-win solution, but I really wanted to get paid on Friday, and to be able to put some “actual” facts, as Michael called them, in the report I had to deliver by Friday to Michael and Sylvester.

  “I have told you everything I know, for right now anyway,” Tomas said cryptically.

  I decided that quizzing him more at this point would just be a dead end, so I said, “I’m at the stage where I need to think about what to do next. How to proceed.”

  Actually, I was hankering for a jolt of caffeine and sugar, Starbucks style. “Is there a Starbucks at Arizona Center, Tomas? I feel a latte callin’ my name while I sort out all of this and conjure up my creative, win-win solution.”

  “I’m not a coffee person myself, but, sure, I think there is one there. Good luck sorting all this out, Tina. Creating what you call a win-win out of this convoluted mess may be a lot more complex and challenging than you think!” With that sobering remark, Tomas stood up and exited my office, shutting the door softly behind him.

  Chapter 30

  I shut down my computer. It was close to 9 A.M. I figured that was enough office work for one day. No one seemed to be minding my hours. Sylvester and Michael must have made it clear I could come and go as I choose. Fine by me. I grabbed a yellow legal pad and one of my favorite gel tipped pens and exited my office shortly after Tomas.

  When I emerged out onto Central Avenue my spirits were lifted much higher than when I’d entered the office building this morning. Maybe I wasn’t so dependent on Geo after all? Maybe I was a good investigator all by myself, using that intuition that Sylvester seemed to prize? I nearly skipped along the sidewalk. The bank clock read 9:01. Geo was just starting his morning class, so I wouldn’t be able to call him. No matter, I had my yellow legal pad and gel pen and would soon have a latte in my hand. All was right with the world and my case was looking up. Too bad I had to have a meaningful report consisting of actual evidence by Friday when I met Michael and Sylvester at the revolving bar. Somewhere between now and Friday I’d have to type up something. I vowed to sit in Starbucks and force myself to create an outline of what we’d learned so far. Then when I met up with Geo, he could expand on it and I’d type it up before Friday. At least that was the plan.

  Arizona Center turned out to be six blocks away, not far for a jogger like me, except that I had on high-heeled sandals and had left my tennies at home. My feet had just about had it when I finally reached the beautiful courtyard. Water, so rare and sacred in Arizona, flowed through plants and mature trees. Tall buildings cast shadows over the running water. Huge bronze frog sculptures on lily pads seemed to wink at me from the shadows. An enchanting place.

  I found the Arizona Center’s Fourbucks er Starbucks, and wandered inside. Got in line.

  Four bucks poorer, I finally seated myself with my legal pad and latte at the corner table where I could see everyone going in and out. I pulled out my pen to gather my thoughts and forced myself to write the outline of my report for Michael and Sylvester.

  I sipped and concentrated, sipped and concentrated, and lo and behold, a thought finally came to me! Unfortunately, my first thought really wasn’t about the case. My first thought was about sex. Well, that was actually my second thought. My first thought was “Damn, this latte tastes good!” as I sucked the quenching fix through that teeny weeny straw they give you, then realized I could get a much larger straw. I did so and resettled in my chair to gather my thoughts again, which were still about sex. What is wrong with me?

  They say males think about sex something like two bazillion times per day, and I began to think I was breaking the record at 2.1 bazillion times per day, because as I tried to write something on my blank yellow pad, all I could think about was sex. All the main players in this case were sexy in their own way, at least to me. Why was that?

  Well, for one, they all exuded the money thing. I’d now had a cursory look at their books. Michael may have thought the company’s financial picture wasn’t what it should be, but it was millions, and I do mean millions, of light years ahead of my financial picture. I was still a cave woman scratching around in the dirt for a magic bean while they appeared to have grown up on room service, silver candelabras and caviar. Even Tomas, who was technically an Executive Assistant by job title, pulled in a hundred grand a year “assisting administratively.” At that salary, I might have to give up investigating and do a little assisting myself. Was Tomas really a close family friend and major contributor to the running of the business, or was that high salary given to guarantee his silence about certain company secrets? And, if so, whose?

  What about Sylvester? Why was he attractive to me? He radiated power, physical beauty, intelligence, alpha-male self-esteem, worldliness, and money. Oh yes, money. And lots of it. Many individuals in this world possess one or two of these qualities, but only a scant percent of the population carries all of these traits gracefully rolled up into a single physical form. The daunting presence
of Mr. Sylvester Swane was a toned down, sophisticated version of Donald Trump. Only Sylvester sported more aquiline features, a slim V-shaped body, swept-back graying hair and no comb-over. Yikes, no wonder I found him fascinating! He exuded power, money, intelligence, and represented a living metaphor of what almost every American dreams of, however shallow.

  I switched my thoughts from the striking Swane to the far less alluring, at least for me anyway, Karl Zaiid. Except for his appaloosa business and his riding ability, the only top-ranking principal in the company I was definitely not attracted to was Karl Zaiid. True, he, too, was physically impressive in his own way, as were all the rest, but with him my intuition went into reverse overdrive. My intuition marked him right away as cold and one-dimensional. Though all these leaders of the company were calculating in their own ways, their calculating behavior was suffused with passion, fluidity and complexity, while Karl’s, as far as I had been able to see was a single-minded, unswerving, self-serving drive to grasp at power and goods solely for his own benefit. Other human beings were mere stepping stones on his march to achieve the personal identity he longed for and was currently, at least in his own mind, without.

  Then my perusal switched over to Liang. I supposed in some ways Liang might be similar to Karl. He appeared to be single-mindedly driven by his addictions. But Liang came across as hyper-dimensional, which made him more interesting to me than Zaiid. Karl and Liang, the two outliers on either side probably bore the most watching in this investigation. What we had uncovered so far in data and other factual discovery, including our Snoops recordings and the cowgirl escapade, pointed strongly to these two individuals as the ones to watch.

  After these thoughts, I’d written absolutely nothing on my yellow pad, my latte was almost done, and all I could think about was sex and money. As I sucked up the final dregs, my straw created this really irritating sound that upset the lovers at the next table. I tried to make myself stop, but there were only a few drops more. Just then my cell rang loudly, playing the theme song from Mission Impossible. The couple next to me nearly jumped out of their chairs.