Silver Justice

by Blake, Russell

  Richard cleared his throat. “Have we considered putting out some sort of partial information or incorrect statement to draw the killer out? He’s clearly following the press coverage. Maybe try to get him angry so he makes a mistake?” he ventured.

  “Like what?” Silver asked.

  “I don’t know. Like a profile that’s insulting – hypothesizes that there’s a sexual component to the killings, perhaps some sort of homo-erotic element that our pet shrinks believe is a driver? That we believe we are looking for someone with a deep-seated emotional disturbance, likely due to being molested as a child, and that we’re presuming that he’s acting out some sort of disturbed ritual where the victims are his father? I don’t know the exact bullshit, but something to get him seeing red so he’ll get sloppy?”

  Seth shook his head. “If we were dealing with a more impulsive killer, I’d say that might have some legs. But this one is a planner, and a meticulous one at that. That implies above average intelligence, which means that he would see through a ruse within minutes.”

  Silver nodded. “I tend to agree. But it’s a good idea. Just the wrong killer to try it on…”

  “That’s why I work in Financial Crimes,” Richard said with a grin, and a few of the agents laughed.

  Silver waited for the rumblings to subside. “Which brings us to the part of the meeting where I ask whether you’ve made any progress on the victims’ backgrounds.”

  All eyes turned to Richard, who opened his notebook and scribbled something with his pen.

  “First off, I want to establish for everyone that the financial industry is a big world, but once you’re at a certain level, not nearly as big as you might imagine. Having said that, I’ve discovered a few connections between the first and second victims that might be coincidental, but certainly raised my eyebrows. How many of you know anything about Benjamin Masenkoff?” Richard asked, and almost every hand in the room raised.

  “Ran the biggest Ponzi scheme in history, right?” Sam replied. “Whole thing fell apart during the financial crisis. Bilked investors out of billions.”

  “Yes, he stole billions and ruined quite a few people’s lives. What many don’t know is that he was long suspected by most of the large brokerage houses of being a crook, but nobody said anything. One of the industry’s largest had a policy of advising its clients not to invest with him, even as it processed his trades for him. The reason that he was treated with such deference is that he was one of the most influential men on Wall Street. In fact, he wrote key regulations for the SEC governing stock manipulation and abusive short selling, where he drafted loopholes that were used for years by stock manipulators. One section of code was even referred to as ‘The Masenkoff Exemption’ inside the SEC and on Wall Street.”

  “Does this go anywhere that’s germane to our killer?” Sam asked, looking around the room.

  “That depends on why he’s killing, I guess. Masenkoff was both a complete criminal and also instrumental in shaping the regulations that supposedly protect the markets. And here we have a serial killer who’s calling himself The Regulator, who is issuing statements to the press about Wall Street being a den of thieves. So yes, I would say that it’s germane in the sense that Masenkoff was a pillar of the financial system and yet operated a con game that harmed many – maybe including our man. You have to look at that and wonder, how did he get away with it for so long, and yet nobody caught on to him?” Richard paused. “The answer is nobody wanted to blow the whistle because he was too high-profile and important to the industry. Too connected.”

  Silver made a hurry-up gesture.

  “Masenkoff was a very bad man. And guess what? Both victim number one and victim number two can be put in the same room as him at some point in the last decade.” Richard paused for effect. “Think about that. You have two men, one burned to death in his home in Connecticut, the other stabbed to death in his car in Florida, both sanctioned by the SEC, and both more than passingly familiar with the biggest crook in financial history. It took some digging, but when I found that, I stopped and wondered what it meant.”

  Seth leaned forward, elbows on the table. “So what does it mean?”

  Richard tossed his pen down and sighed. “I don’t know. But here’s what I learned. Victim number one was a feeder to Masenkoff’s fund. He directed investors to Masenkoff, and what we now know is that Masenkoff paid hefty finders’ fees for doing so. And victim number two’s hedge fund cleared its trades through Masenkoff’s brokerage firm. So there’s that name, popping up in both men’s histories. Now, true, both had also been sanctioned by the SEC, but that was nothing compared to the Masenkoff thing. Remember, thousands were destroyed when his Ponzi scheme collapsed. Charities. Pension plans. High net worth investors. I’m wondering if the killer might have been materially damaged by him.”

  Nobody said a word. Then Sam spoke up.

  “You just said that was thousands of people. How does that narrow anything down for us?”

  “Sam. I’ve only been here a couple of days. I never claimed I could solve your case for you in under a week. But what I’ve done is discovered a link that nobody found until I started digging. Not you. Not anyone. That’s why I’m here. Now I’m wondering how deep this goes. We have a hedge fund that was doing business with Masenkoff’s brokerage, we have one of his feeders, and we have a software provider who just so happened to create the electronic exchanges that most of the manipulative trading the Masenkoff exemption enabled was done on. Oh, and whose partner was spitting distance from Hamas and the Islamic Jihad. Now maybe it’s just me, but that seems like it’s an awful lot of very unusual connections for three random victims,” Richard said evenly, although it was obvious that he was annoyed with Sam’s attitude.

  “I agree. Did the last victim have any obvious connection with Masenkoff,” Silver asked. “or is it more by association?”

  “I’m still rooting around to see what I can find. So far, nothing, but my nose is telling me that the victims are all somehow related – even the son who was caught in the house fire worked at the father’s hedge fund, so his connection is the same as his dad’s. As of now, three of four victims are linked to Masenkoff in some way. And the fourth is about as close as you can get to some pretty sketchy Middle Eastern black hats without being a card-carrying Jihadist.” Richard picked up his pen and tapped his folder with it. “Another little factoid I know from my work is that some of Masenkoff’s investors were criminal syndicates. The Russian mob features prominently. And when you hear Russian mob, that’s usually synonymous with the former KGB. So now what it starts looking like is that three of the four are connected to a conduit for Russian mob money laundering, and the fourth is connected to terrorist funding and money laundering, some of which could be intermingled with mob money. You see how this gets increasingly interesting as we peel the onion?” Richard asked.

  Sam nodded. “Now I get it. I totally get it. Apologies for busting your chops earlier. It actually supports the terrorist/criminal funding theory and gets us further from a single individual serial killer. Or am I misconstruing this?”

  Richard closed his file. “That’s right. Or it could all be completely unrelated to the killings, and could just be one of those weird coincidences that can pop up. Personally, that seems like a stretch. There has to be something to all this. I just don’t have enough information yet to know what I’m looking at. But now all of you know everything I do, so I’m hoping that your collective brain trust will be more powerful than just me sitting in a cubicle,” Richard concluded.

  After some back and forth discussion amongst the agents, Silver could feel the agenda slipping into tangential areas. She let them have some room for conjecture and then skillfully guided the room back on point, away from speculations and back to the hard facts of the case.

  The meeting went on for another hour, as the minutiae of the forensics report were digested by the group and every element of the evidence was re-examined. When Silver stood and thanked
everyone for coming, she was drained. It felt like they were standing still, waiting for the next ugly shoe to drop. For all the titillation of Richard’s bombshell and the promise held by having a potential evidentiary gold mine in the single strand of hair and its DNA, they were still light years from keeping the killer from striking again. As everyone filed out, she pulled Richard and Seth aside, and waited until the room cleared before tackling the next subject.

  “The partner. Do you think we have enough to justify putting him under surveillance – for his own protection?” she asked.

  “Boy, that’s where you earn the big bucks, chief,” Seth said.

  “It’s not clear cut. I’m asking if we have enough to make a credible argument that he may be in imminent danger from the killer. If so, I’ll ramrod this up the ladder and get it done. So what do you think?”

  “I think that the connections in their backgrounds are interesting and certainly inflammatory, but not a lock. In the end, it probably couldn’t hurt to put him under relaxed surveillance, but I wouldn’t count on it leading anywhere. My entire presentation was a loose interpretation of partial data, not a coherent case for the partner being a target. If it was me, I’d wait to see what else we discover, and keep my powder dry,” Richard advised.

  Seth nodded grudgingly, and Silver ran a hand through her hair, combing it back with her fingers.

  “You’re probably right. But I think I’ll put a team on him, just in case. Richard, it really feels like you’re on to something with all the connections in their backgrounds. How did we miss this?” she lamented.

  “All due respect, this is a pretty specialized area we’re talking about. Half of the agents in Financial Crimes might not have connected these dots. The only reason I did is because market fraud is sort of my hobby – I actually wrote a paper on it, many moons ago, comparing the financial raiders of the Roaring Twenties to those of modern times. And one of the last cases I worked was peripherally associated with terrorist money laundering by a group of related pawn shops and restaurants in the Midwest, so when I saw the names involved my antenna quivered. Otherwise it would have just flown completely over my head.” Richard hesitated. “I just hope I’m not tilting at windmills here. One of those cases of where you see zebras everywhere…”

  Silver nodded. “Understood. But sometimes there are actually zebras everywhere.”

  Chapter 9

  Silver walked out of the bank almost in tears. The loan officer had been understanding and supportive, but ultimately couldn’t help her. With the debt she was carrying on her credit cards, along with the tuition for Kennedy’s private school and the cost of daycare and all the rest, there simply hadn’t been sufficient income left over to make a decent-sized loan even with the flat as collateral. She’d suspected as much, but to have the door slammed in her face when she needed it the most still threw her.

  She stood on the sidewalk, taking deep breaths, trying to slow her heartbeat. What was she going to do now?

  Her thoughts turned to her mother. That was out of the question. Since her father had passed away three years ago her mom had been comfortably ensconced in a condo she’d purchased in Austin, Texas, where she was taking art classes and trying to make a life for herself in her late sixties. Although her mom would do whatever she could to help, she didn’t have much – she’d sold the house shortly after the funeral and used the profit from it to buy the condo and subsidize her social security and her pension. She needed every penny she had and was working a part-time job in a bookstore to make ends meet more comfortably.

  There was no way Silver could lean on her.

  After a few minutes of thought, she took her cell phone from her purse and called Ben. He took her call immediately and assured her he would set aside time for her in twenty minutes.

  It was midday, and the lunch rush was over, although there were still plenty of people clogging the sidewalks. New York was a chaotic tangle of crowds wherever you went – she’d gotten used to it after living in the city for over a decade. At times it was energizing, but today it was only annoying as her mind raced over possible solutions to her problem.

  She rounded a corner and checked the time as she made her way to Ben’s towering edifice – one of the more sumptuous in the area. Being a divorce attorney in the city clearly paid well. He was one of the top dogs in his game, highly recommended and well thought of, so he was never hurting for business. Which gave her hope. Perhaps there was an accommodation she could make with him to carry part of the case costs. She knew he wasn’t a bank and that it was asking a lot, but she wasn’t sure where else she could turn.

  Silver waited in the cool air conditioning of the law offices, flushed from making her way uptown in so little time. Surprisingly, Ben was immediately available, and Silver followed his severely-coiffed secretary to the rear conference room.

  Ben rose from his chair to greet her when she entered. “Silver. Good to see you. A nice surprise,” he said as he shook her hand. “What brings you to my neck of the woods on a work day? Am I a suspect for something?” he joked.

  “Thankfully, no. They haven’t caught on to you yet. But it’s coming,” Silver fired back.

  “Good. Then my evil plan is working. Nobody is any the wiser.”

  “Your secret’s safe with me. Always.”

  “Good to know, Silver. Now seriously. What’s up?”

  “I’m worried about the money, Ben. How are the expenses running on the case, and what are they looking like they’ll add up to by the time you’re done?”

  “I don’t honestly know. At this point it’s all on a spreadsheet. We’ll send you a monthly statement showing the drawdown and balance remaining. Why? Do I need to call someone to get you a total right now?”

  “If you could, I’d appreciate it. I’m especially interested in what you think it’s going to cost to get it to the finish line.”

  Ben paused, eyeing her thoughtfully. “What happened, Silver?”

  She was holding it together well, but then her resolve failed her, and she could feel her eyes brimming over. A single droplet fell, tickling the contour of her cheek before settling in the corner of her mouth.

  Without saying anything, Ben slid a Kleenex box across the table to her. She plucked out a tissue and blotted her lids, hating her own weakness, but unable to stop the tears.

  “It’s been one of those days, Ben. I’ve been trying everything to come up with a way to fund this fight, but I just came from the bank, and they declined my loan.” She went on to tell him everything, feeling better as the story came spilling out.

  Ben leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers, peering thoughtfully at the ceiling. “I can probably absorb some of the costs, but I’d be lying if I said I could do it all. My partners would never allow it. I’m sorry, Silver. As to your inquiry, I think even if I bit off, say, twenty-five grand and held it in-house, you would still burn at least another fifty to a hundred. The investigators, the paralegals, responding to the filings, making motions, hiring expert witnesses…victory usually goes to the best-funded army, I’m afraid. The fairy tale of the lawyer working out of his briefcase taking on the system and winning is just that. You don’t want to go into this without enough money to see it through, Silver. You’re fighting for your family here, and Eric is throwing the kitchen sink at this. I only know one way to fight that fire, and it’s with fire.”

  She nodded. That was what she had expected. “If I have to take you up on the matching twenty-five, how far will that take us?”

  “Not that far. I’ll need to look at the numbers, but the investigators are burning money like they’re the pentagon, and we’re going to have to get Kennedy in front of some doctors soon so they can certify that she’s doing well. Nobody works for free, as you know…my hunch is that we’ll be through your retainer within another three weeks, tops. I meant what I said – I can carry another twenty-five, so let’s say that buys you another six weeks. You’re going to be in real trouble within two months,
Silver. That’s your timeline.”

  That bought her a month more than she’d had when she walked through the doors today. It wasn’t a reprieve, but it was better than nothing.

  “Silver, I don’t want to meddle, but have you considered selling the flat? Or maybe you can do some sort of creative financing deal on it? An interest only loan for a year or two? To get you past this point?”

  “I can’t rack up a lot of debt I can’t pay back, Ben. And frankly, I don’t know who to approach to do something creative, as you call it. I’m buried with work, and I really thought that the bank would be able to do something. I mean, even in this market it has to be worth at least seven or eight hundred thousand. You would think they would jump at the chance to lend me a hundred or so against it.”

  “Banks aren’t lending money these days, as you’ve discovered. They’re hoarding cash. Tell you what, Silver. Let me make a few calls. I know people who specialize in these sorts of things. I have one in mind who might be able to put together a decent package you could afford for a year, and then you can cross the sale bridge when you come to it. If you prevail in this, I can go after Eric for restitution given that this is imposing a hardship on you, so you could pay it back then – and if you don’t prevail, well…”

  “…then Kennedy won’t have to worry about having a roof over her head, and I can sell the place and move somewhere more in keeping with my new lifestyle.” She took a deep breath. “I hate this, Ben. I hate Eric, I hate the system that allows this, and I hate the universe at the moment.”

  “You’re within your rights to hate everyone, Silver. It stinks.”

  “At least I don’t hate you.” She gave him a tentative smile.

  “I have that going for me.” Ben looked at the clock on the heavy wooden bookcase at the far end of the room. “I’ll put out the word and see what I can do, Silver. And I’ll have my bookkeeper send you an updated statement via e-mail, unless you can wait for it for a few minutes.”