by John Gubert
I waited for as long as possible and then turned to her. “What’s wrong darling? What can I do to help?”
“Let me tell you all, but then you need to explain things to me as well.” She explained how she had stolen the tape. She told me how she had sought to blackmail her father. She told the story of her aunt. And she solved the mystery of how she came into our house. “So my parents know everything except the fact that you were the person who stole the tape and the fact that you blackmailed, or tried to blackmail, your father.”
I then considered her problem. “Your father will find you. His thugs will have the details of my parents’ car. They were professionals and they would have noted that even in the rush to get away. The police also may know about you and the tape. The question is how many of them and what will they do? Your aunt will be in the morgue and her funeral is really a matter for her sons. You don’t even have to attend; you could be recovering from the shock. The police may want to ask questions about her death, all the more so if they link her to the tape. If they don’t, if the police who were told about it were all corrupt, in the pay of your father or whoever and therefore kept it quiet, nobody may make that link. At least not officially.”
“Surely then the first thing that I have to do is to find out what’s happening at the police station,” she said.
“We’ll wait till my parents get up and get them on side. Then we will tell you about us. We’ll also explain why we have changed our identity. From now on, though, you must call me Charles. You must never mention Ryder. Not even as a joke. It’s too dangerous. It’s a link to the past. Charles is OK. There are a lot of Charles around in France and England.
She laughed deliciously. “I want to stay with you. I am sure my father won’t want me back. His men would have grabbed me last night if that were the case. If we could get back the tape, I think he would agree just to disown me. He knows I would keep the vow of silence. That was why he would not respond to the blackmail. He always said that I was too much one of the family to betray them. He told me that the family was in my blood. The problem was that it was not in my heart.”
I was not convinced. “It will be hard to get back the tape, although he might be the one who gets it back rather than us.”
At that moment, we heard footsteps outside. My mother’s voice sounded anxious. “Charles, do you have a friend with you? Can we talk?”
“I’m coming,” I called. “We’ll see you in the breakfast room.”
“I need to talk to you on your own. It is important.”
I didn’t explain who the other part of the ‘we’ was. Obviously my mother had found Jacqui’s bed empty and was concerned. Jacqui pulled her negligee back on and looked around for something to fix the strap.
“You can’t go down stairs like that. Much too revealing. My father will get excited. That flusters mother. And I will want you again half way through the cornflakes.”
I went into the spare room and picked up Jacqui’s clothes. She was in the shower singing to herself when I came back. She knew how to survive. She would not be a problem. Mind you I only wish I could have said the same about her father and the police.
I followed her into the shower. She made room for me and we kissed each other. I felt myself being aroused again, but we both drew away. There was no sense in rushing things. We would have time to enjoy each other and we wanted each time to be special.
Once dressed, we went downstairs. I held her hand. We walked into the breakfast room. The look on my parents’ faces was wonderful. At one level, they were relieved. Perhaps that Jacqui had not left for they must have known that she had been in the study. At another, they could not believe that we would have ended up in bed with each other.
“You both look a bit astonished. Let me explain. Jacqui was suspicious. She did not know who you really were. She suspected you were not whom you said. I caught her in the study. We knew each other in New York. We went out together. Do you remember me talking of a girl called Jacqui Di Maglio? That’s Jacqui. She did not tell you all her story. Let me explain it to you for her. Then, I think, we need to give her an explanation.”
I ran through Jacqui’s story. I told them of my analysis. They agreed. I then turned to my father and asked him to run through our position. When she heard all, Jacqui thought for a moment. “Could you delay Rio for a month, at least for Charles?” she asked.
“With a couple of phone calls,” my father replied. “We don’t all have to go together. We could meet him there. After all Charles is only going to have his teeth done, his hairstyle revamped. He already has the contact lenses. He is not really being sought as he was disguised in the Caymans and used a false name. Moreover we planned in advance that we should be estranged from him and that he would move abroad. His trail went cold about a year or so ago.”
“Well Charles and I could launder your money. We could even pass a chunk of it through the banking system – especially if you are using the right banks in Switzerland as they will never query a large transfer, up to a point, if it is even vaguely associated with my family name. Also, nobody is going to be surprised to see me in a Casino with a pile of cash. Casinos have a role in our family business. Nobody will question me. They will assume I am there for my father. They can legalise worse than stolen money. But your plan is wrong. You may need more than one casino for money of that scale. But I know them all from illegal gaming clubs through to the top casinos. When I was a kid, I used to enjoy watching my father’s bankers at work in the casinos. I know all the tricks. I would love to run the show for you. But first of all we would need to sort out my aunt and my father.”
“I like the idea” said my father. “Don’t get angry Jacqui. Charles, can we really trust her with the laundering?”
“Yes,” I said without hesitation. “The real issue though is how we keep her father off the scene. He’ll know what she has laundered.”
My father thought for a moment. “She could be acting as our partner to get a fee, I suppose. I suspect, if her father thinks she has enough money, he will be happier. He may disown her but he does not want to drive her to becoming a kept woman or worse.”
“You’re right” said Jacqui. “One can steal, sell drugs, kill and worse. But the family have to be pure.”
“The danger,” I said “is that he may blackmail us. We need protection against him, Jacqui. We need that tape. Wait. You said your aunt may have told the police about the tape. She would not have given them it. Yet she took it from you. What did she do with it? Where would she have hidden it? She wouldn’t have had time to make a copy would she?
“We need to get to her house. I know what worried me. I could not work out why she had not given the tape to the police after she talked to them. I wonder if she may only have pretended to talk to them. Perhaps she just wanted to use the tape for blackmail. Perhaps she wanted to blackmail your father? That would explain why he killed her.
“I know the police here are not hot. But they are not totally dumb. If the tape is at her house, then we must get it and keep it as insurance. It’s our insurance against your father harming my parents or us. I would not use it for anything else. But we need to act quickly. The police may not all be corrupt. We can’t be sure that they are unaware of the tape. We can’t take the risk in any case that they find it by chance. They could come to your aunt’s house and look for it once they make the connection between her and the shooting. If they don’t, your father’s people will definitely come once the coast is clear.”
“What do we do?” said Jacqui.
“You and I should go to your aunt’s house. I suggest we go with the police. You said you would call on them in the morning. Let’s meet them at your aunt’s. You can say that you need to pick up your clothes and you can scan the place. Is there anywhere you think she would hide something like a tape? Somewhere your father would not look.”
My mother said, “Hold on. You’re running ahead of us. Do we want to launder the money immediately or not? I thoug
ht we wanted the trail to go cold first.”
“I did,” said my father. “But there are many advantages of prompt action. And, if Jacqui is used to money laundering, that reduces the risks. The way the markets are going I would like to put the currencies in play sooner rather than later. But we only do that if we are sure that the police are off the scent and we have insurance. Otherwise we revisit our plans.”
Jacqui picked up the phone and called the St Tropez police. I listened carefully on the extension. They were sympathetic and did not appear to have any concerns. The two sons were coming down to take charge of the body. It was unfortunate. It was a scandal. It was a random shooting.
It had evidently been a case of mistaken identity. Among the cars in the car park was one belonging to a Mr. Big in import and export of goods from Marseilles. The police were questioning him. Had he enemies? He had two convictions for the import of a certain white powder.
They did not think he was the culprit. He was though with his favourite mistress and his wife. Had someone tried to frighten him? Had they thought that Mademoiselle’s aunt was the mistress? Or even the wife. They would never know. It seemed so far fetched even allowing for the strange threesome they had described. The old lady was gone sixty, hardly mistress material! Still if it got them off the trail, who cared?
We had already established from Jacqui that the sons were not too straight. One was an accountant and the other was a lawyer. Their clients were not shopkeepers and people seeking to establish family trusts. Most of them would be friends or enemies of Jacqui’s father. They too would have no interest in getting involved with the police. They did not want their names in the papers. If they found out or guessed who might be behind the death of their mother, they would back off. They knew the price for curiosity was terminal.
Jacqui’s parents were in fact second-generation Mafia. Their parents had both come from Italy to America. That was at the time of the prohibition. They never made the big time but both sides of the family carved a niche out for themselves at the rough end of the business. They specialised in prostitution, protection rackets and blackmail.
After her parents married, Jacqui’s father and an uncle got to run both of the gangs. Then one day there was a big raid. Nobody ever knew how the police got to know where the family was meeting. Her father was there but he managed to escape. He got a bullet in the stomach but still crawled away and hid. He stayed put till the coast was clear. He turned up the next day.
But the police left the house where the meeting was taking place with several members of the family. They were led away in handcuffs. And there were body bags as well for three other members of the family. It seemed a devastating blow.
There had been enough incriminating evidence in the house to charge the survivors with a series of crimes. In the subsequent investigation and trial, two were sent to death row and the others got sentences ranging from ten years to life. Jacqui’s father got the best lawyers to argue for them but they got no leniency. And surprisingly he was not arrested. Some time later, I heard hints that he may have engineered the raid to get total control.
Left in total and undisputed charge of his gangs, her father moved into big time. He realised that the future lay in drugs and built up a series of connections in Latin America. He was especially friendly with the Colombian syndicates.
He used the cash flow from his petty crimes to finance the drugs. It was all too simple. He used a variety of ways to bring in the drugs. They usually came in by boat or plane. They were hardly ever detected. The planes landed in small airports and remote airstrips. The boats were not tankers or cargo boats but yachts used by the super rich. All you needed to do was to put a mule on the yacht. The role of the steward was the favourite. No shipment was ever too large.
But the cumulative value of the shipments was huge. From time to time people were used to carry the drugs. They were often girls who had run out of money while travelling around the world. Their choice was smuggling or prostitution. Australians and New Zealanders were the common targets. Sometimes they got through and picked up their five thousand dollars. Sometimes not. It was important that the police made regular hauls or they got upset and tackled the big stuff.
The profit from the drugs funded other activities. Big time gambling was a favourite. They also developed a series of legitimate businesses and her father had said that he wanted her to be straight. That was quite common apparently with the modern Mafia families. They made fortunes through illegal ways and then became pillars of society.
The bulk of his assets were legitimate. The bulk of his income was still illegal. So prostitution and protection rackets financed the drugs. And the drugs financed a chain of holdings in the financial, leisure and pharmaceutical industries.
They were actually even more closely interlinked. The money was laundered through the first two. The pharmaceutical side provided a good cover for some of the drug imports.
In the end her father was a billionaire. I thought that we could be too if our financial plans worked out. Perhaps there was not that much of difference between her family and mine after all!
Jacqui though had wanted out. She did not believe that they could split the two worlds. She knew her father had ensured that nobody could uncover the link between his Mafia activities and the legitimate business world behind which he masqueraded. He was based in Switzerland although he lived all over the world. He kept his US citizenship. Jacqui suspected that he may even have had immunity from prosecution, and that would have been for two reasons. He had definitely helped the CIA on many occasions. Indeed the Mafia is a good source of intelligence for them. He had also generously financed the election of many politicians, and had handled some slightly more delicate work for them at the same time.
Jacqui had been given a convent education. She had been shielded from most of the crime syndicate activities. But she had to know, for the family could not afford any errors. Ignorance was as dangerous as knowledge. Knowledge though incriminated. That was the advantage of ensuring she knew. She had also been involved and taught how to launder money in the casinos that her father owned. And also in many that he did not. That was going to be useful for us. She felt she could launder our funds in a month or so. People were used to seeing her as a big roller. We would have had to be more circumspect.
Jacqui appeared relaxed about helping us. But she did not want to launder drug money. She despised drugs. That had been the main reason for wanting to get away from her father. She therefore developed her plan and stole the video. But she had misjudged the reaction that would cause.
It would be much harder making him let go than she had realised. And indeed it was uncertain that he would let go. There was a rationale in his obstinacy. He had many enemies. He had betrayed many people in the past. He had tricked Colombian drug barons. He had shipped other gangland leaders. He had fought with other crime syndicates. He had ruthlessly destroyed any one who stood in his way. The family would want her in the fold to protect her as much as for any other reason.
But Jacqui was clear. She wanted out. And I knew that I wanted her out too. I wanted to be with her. And that was impossible inside the family.
So we needed to get out of St Tropez. And we needed to do that fast. So we asked the police to accompany us to the house. Jacqui needed her things. And she needed to see if she could find the tape. She doubted it but perhaps once in the house it would be easier for her to identify possible hiding places.
The police were agreeable. They would look around the house with us. They were pleased that we were leaving everything to them. That made it easier to manage. We agreed to meet them there. They understood only too well the fact that we were nervous and that Jacqui wanted to get away from the scene of such anguish as soon as possible. They found nothing strange about my story. I was the son of the De Roches and would accompany Jacqui as moral support.
They had my parent’s statement. Of course Mr. and Mrs. De Roche could proceed with their plans. They had giv
en their statement. They were just bystanders. When the culprits were caught they may be needed as witnesses but till then they should go on with their planned trip. I could not see the police being successful in this case; and felt that we were unlikely to be bothered by them again.
We quickly agreed that my parents would head off to Madrid and then on to Rio. I knew where they would stay and would call them once we had laundered the money. Or earlier, if there were problems. We said our good-byes and they went inside to pack and prepare their luggage and new identities.
Jacqui and I drove to the house. Just outside the town, Jacqui said, “My Aunt had a wall safe behind a picture in the hall. She took her jewellery from there. I can guess the code; she used it on everything. She was an amateur. She always used the year of her 21st birthday. It was a big joke in the family. The only people who did not know it were her two sons. And it was better that they didn’t for they would have robbed her. As it was they tried to bleed her dry. But she was a bit smarter than they were. Although that’s not saying much. The number is 211965, 1965 was the year of her 21st.”
As we came to the house, the police were already there. Jacqui had taken a pair of mother’s sunglasses to hide her eyes. She had put sun block on her face and it gave her a ghostly pallor. She looked the part.
“I am glad I had that shower, “she said, “Or they might have realised that I had been in bed with you.”
“Stop, this isn’t the time for talk about sex. I’ll get excited. That’s not going to do you any good at a time like this. We’ve got to be serious.”
We walked into the house and Jacqui said, “I must get my ring. I left it in the wall safe.” She calmly walked over to the picture, as I asked the police if they would like to check the locks with me. “After all the house will be left unattended until Madame’s sons arrive. It would be horrific if there was a burglary as well.”