by Dave Daren
I knew enough about tax evasion and organized crime to know that gangsters typically had to come up with pretty aggressive money laundering schemes to avoid the IRS’s watchful eye. Mob types would typically invest a lot of their money into unregistered assets whose sale goes unnoticed by the government like antique furniture, collectibles, and art.
Gerard’s background check was, thankfully, a lot shorter. Besides some protests he got arrested at in the 70s, and some traffic tickets, he was clean. AJ thoughtfully included a list of all of Gerard’s titled assets from the Secretary of State’s website, and it said that he owned a car and a small ranch house in a cozy neighborhood in town, but no art gallery.
That made me wonder who actually owned the gallery, so I checked the Coconino property tax appraiser’s website and saw it was owned by a non-profit LLC in Nevada called the Peterson Group. Normally that would be a dead end since Nevada corporations didn’t have to show who their shareholders were to the public. Only these guys had made a big mistake. Federal tax returns for non-profits are public record, and one website loading later, I got my answer. The Peterson Group, LLC was owned 99% by Gerard Chamberlin and 1% by Danila Udinova.
It all started to click in my head. Udinova was using the gallery to launder money, and he must have some arrangement with Gerard to let him live a comfy Sedona lifestyle in exchange for being Udinova’s money washer. Justin was deep in gambling debt, and it wouldn’t take much squeezing by the mob to get him to go along with anything. What I wasn’t sure about was why they chose to frame Harmony for a murder and kill the critic, but if I had to wager, I’d bet Gerard needed a lot more sales to have the ability to keep laundering Udinova’s money, and he got desperate.
“Good morning, sunshine,” Vicki said from behind me, and her voice startled me. “Scared you!”
“You’re so mean to me,” I said as she walked through the opened sliding glass door, came up to me, and gave me a tender kiss.
“I give you exactly what you deserve, and you know it,” she said with a mischievous grin. “So what are you working on, good news?”
“Yep. I think I just cracked the case. Grab a shower, and then I’ll go over it with you.”
“Got it,” she said, and she winked at me before disappearing down the hallway that led to the bathrooms.
After Vicki showered and got dressed, I explained everything I’d put together while we ate breakfast on the back patio and enjoyed the crisp morning air. The sun was rising, and the orange cliffs of Sedona were painted in an even brighter yellow glow.
“That’s a totally great theory and perfectly reasonable given the facts, but can we prove it in court?” Vicki asked between spoonfuls of grapefruit.
“Easily,” I began to explain. “We are going to depose Justin once we get the forensics evidence showing the ‘blood’ on the shirt was really paint and explain that we know everything about his connections. He will crack and talk.”
“Why would he do that?” she wondered. “At this point wouldn’t his best bet be to just deny everything and claim it was a mixup or faulty equipment? We both know the police union will have his back, and at very worst, he gets fired. But taking that fall would please the mob and probably benefit him.”
I put down my coffee and considered what she said. “He doesn’t know what we can prove. If we show him that we know the whole story with Gerard and Udinova, he’ll know the jig is up,” I thought out loud. “If we can offer him FBI protection, he’ll sing.”
“And how are we going to offer him that?” Vicki asked me with a cocked eyebrow before she took a long sip of green smoothie. “Remind me to compliment your mom on her kale smoothie, way better than what I get in LA.”
“I knew you’d find something to bond with her about,” I said with a laugh. “But, to answer your question, you’re going to make me an appointment with the special agent in charge at the FBI field office in Flagstaff.”
“I’m damn good, and you know I’m damn good,” she began with a smirk, “but you’re going to have to tell me how I’m going to make that happen.”
“Easy,” I told her. “Tell them you have evidence that will incriminate Danila Udinova for conspiracy to commit murder and money laundering.”
Chapter 14
After Vicki and I finished eating breakfast, there was a knock on the door, and I glanced out the window to see the familiar white, orange, and purple FedEx truck.
“Thank you very much,” I said to the driver after I signed for our priority overnight envelope containing our two licenses to practice law in Arizona. The driver nodded to me, walked back to his truck, and I closed the door.
“Is that what I think it is?” Vicki was practically jumping out of her skin with excitement, and I couldn’t blame her since I was the exact same way when I got my California bar exam results back after law school.
“It is,” I replied, “but let's go back to the tree house before we wake up Phoenix over there.” Phoenix was sound asleep on the couch, but I was definitely worried that Vicki’s exuberance could rouse even him out of the deepest slumber.
“Okay, okay, let’s go, what are you moving so slowly for?” Vicki said and practically skipped with glee all the way to the treehouse and then she bound up the ladder.
I walked slowly behind her and thought about all the work we had to get done today, along with that awful play I had to act in tonight. This was going to be an incredibly long day.
I let out a barely audible grunt as I pulled myself up the rope ladder and into the treehouse. Vicki was kneeling on one of the mattresses and was bouncing with excitement at the anticipation of becoming a fully-fledged lawyer. Since this trip began I’d noticed a subtle shift in the way Vicki dressed. When she first showed up she was wearing pencil skirts and expensive heels that fit right in with our LA office but now she wore form fitting blue jeans, Brooks running shoes, and a polo shirt with Sanchez’ logo above the breast. It definitely seemed like the laid back atmosphere here was making her a lot more casual.
“That cannot have winded you,” she began, “you’re moving so slowly there is no way you’re out of breath.”
“Teasing me about my cardio isn’t the path to my heart,” I said with a laugh.
She frowned at me and crossed her arms. “I think you’re taking too much pleasure in delaying this.”
“Am not,” I protested innocently. “Alright, close your eyes and put out your hands.”
“Henry please…”
“Just do it.”
“Okay,” she growled playfully, closed her eyes, and cupped her hands together in front of her. Then I opened the envelopes, took out her Arizona Bar Association license, and then tapped her on each shoulder with it.
“By the make-believe power vested in me, I dub thee Vicki Park, Esquire,” I declared in my most authoritative voice, and then placed the laminated card into her hands. “You may open your eyes now.”
“Oh my god, it really happened,” she said while staring wide-eyed at the card. “If you had told me three months ago I’d be sitting in a treehouse holding an Arizona Bar Association license…”
“You would have probably socked me in the face,” I giggled.
“You’re not wrong,” she responded with a huge smile on her face. “Instead, I’m going to kiss that stupid face of yours.”
“Counsellor, do you think that upholds the standard of decorum and professional responsibility of a sworn officer of the court in the great state of Arizona?” I asked coyly.
“Let’s find out,” she answered with a mischievous grin, and then our lips found each other’s. After a few minutes of joyful kissing, her hands moved to unbutton my jeans, and then we spent another hour celebrating on top of the mattresses.
Afterward, we caught our breaths while resting in each other’s arms. Then my phone rang and disturbed our afterglow. I sat up, fished it out of my pants, looked at the caller ID and saw it was AJ.
“Hey AJ.”
“Uhhh hey,” she replied.
“Soooooo, are we not meeting at the gallery this morning?”
“Oh, shit,” I answered, and Vicki looked at me with a puzzled expression. “Yeah, we were a bit late in getting going this morning but we’ll be there soon.”
“Don’t worry about it,” the young woman replied, “I’m just pulling up to your parents place now, I’ll hop the fence and climb up to the treehouse, see ya!”
She disconnected the call, and I quickly turned to Vicki. “AJ is here and coming up to the tree house as we speak.”
“Oh shit!” Vicki exclaimed as she became aware of our distinct lack of clothing. “Hurry up and get dressed.” She tossed my shirt to me, I pulled it over my head, and quickly pulled up my pants while she made herself presentable.
It hadn’t been ten seconds since we got our last articles of clothing in place before we heard AJ walking through the yard toward the treehouse. Before she could climb up, we descended the ladder and walked over to her.
“May I have a tour of the treehouse, pretty please?” AJ asked.
“Another time, we’ve got a lot to do today,” I replied as we walked through the gate in the fence toward the cars.
“Says the two people who are an hour late to work,” she said with an exaggerated eye-roll. “What super-secret undercover espionage mission are you going to send me on today?”
“Today,” I began with all the fake enthusiasm I could muster, “you get to immerse yourself in the hair-raising world of filing paperwork with the court.”
“That doesn’t sound exciting at all,” she replied with narrowed eyes.
“It isn’t,” Vicki chimed in with a laugh. “But paralegal work is invaluable to the team.”
AJ turned to Vicki. “Aren’t you the firm’s paralegal?”
Vicki stood up straight, reached into her purse, and pulled out her Bar Association card. “BAM!” She exclaimed as she put the card right up to AJ’s face. “I’m a lawyer now, so from now on I’m going to kick back and play Words With Friends while you bring me coffee and do all the work.”
“I don’t think that’s how it works,” I laughed.
“Oh, that’s definitely how it feels like it works at Sanchez,” Vicki said and stuck her tongue out.
“Alright, Vicki,” I laughed. “I need you to book a conference room at the public library for the depositions on Thursday and hire a stenographer to be present.”
“That’s easy enough,” she replied. “What’s the midget mascot going to do?”
“I’m not a midget, I’m just... not tall!” AJ protested. “Also, I’m not your mascot.”
“It’s a cute and endearing term,” Vicki said as she patted AJ on the head. “Cute… and… endearing… also, fuzzy.”
“You’re going to take these,” I said as I handed AJ Harmony’s change of representation paperwork and our subpoena requests for Detective Leonard, Gerard, and Justin. “The clerk will formally enter them and put a stamp on them and give you a stamped copy back. Then you’re going to find a process server in the area, bring the stamped subpoenas to them, and hire them to deliver the good news to the three of them.”
“Sounds easy enough,” AJ said once she finished eye rolling at Vicki. “What do you want me to do after that?”
“Oh you sweet summer child,” Vicki said and burst out laughing.
“What?” AJ asked confusedly.
“Nothing to do with the court is fast,” I replied. “It will take all day to get all this done. I don’t know about Sedona, but in every courthouse I’ve ever been at there is a little old lady working at the clerk’s office and she moves at a speed I can only describe as ‘glacial.’”
“You’re going to be doing this all day,” Vicki said to AJ as she handed her the keys to the red rental car. “Take this, it will aid you on your journey.”
We said our goodbyes and Vicki and I went back to the patio to get to work for the day. While Vicki was on the phone with the library to book the conference room and the stenographer, I reviewed the email containing the GPS we’d subpoenaed from Harmony and Gerard’s phones.
The GPS data unfortunately wasn’t precise enough to show whether Harmony remained inside the gallery at the time of the murder, or if she was in the alley where it happened. But the records did show that there was no contact between Harmony and the critic at any time.
Gerard’s phone records were a different story. At the time of the murder, his phone was in the street a block away, obviously in his car. They also showed that he and the critic had carried on a text message conversation over the two weeks after his review was published and that, on the night of the murder, they exchanged several messages. Unfortunately, it wasn’t possible to know what the messages said, only that Gerard sent some and received some, but that was enough. We could place him near the scene of the murder and show contact with the victim beforehand.
“Anything good in those phone records?” Vicki asked after finishing her calls.
“Oh, not much,” I said coyly, “just that Gerard and the victim are text message buddies and were in touch the night of the murders. Oh, yeah, and Gerard was in the neighborhood when the murder happened.”
“We got that sonofabitch!” she exclaimed and gave me a high-five. No sooner were the words out of her mouth than my phone began to ring. I reached into my pocket, pulled it out, and checked the caller ID.
Toby. I was really excited for this call.
“Hey, Toby,” I said as I accepted the call. “I assume you got a call this morning with the good news?”
He sighed audibly into the phone. “Yes, I did, Henry,” he began. “You know I disagree with your strategy, but the fact that you were able to study, pass the bar, and then by some black magic get your results in under a week makes me think you might actually be the greatest lawyer in the world.”
“I can assure you that I didn’t use any witchcraft to make this happen,” I said with a laugh, “but I’ll take that as a compliment. I know your position on our case strategy, and I totally understand why you think the way you do, Toby.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah,” I answered. “I don’t think you’re a bad guy, and I think you do want what’s best for Harmony. I think our difference of opinion has to do with differing beliefs of what’s possible when a good lawyer works on something with one-hundred percent effort.”
“If you can get her one day less jail time than what the prosecutor’s plea deal was for, I might actually believe you’re right about that,” he agreed.
“Toby, I’m going to get the case dismissed,” I told him with my voice full of confidence.
“I really hope so, Henry, for Harmony’s sake.”
“Bet on it,” I told him. “Have a good day, Toby.”
“See you around town, Henry,” he said with little emotion, and I disconnected the call. I turned to say something to Vicki who had been soaking up my side of the conversation with glee when my phone rang again in my hand. I looked at the screen, saw an unfamiliar number with a Phoenix area code, and answered it.
“Hello, this is Henry Irving.”
“Henry, hi. This is Jeff Gaimon at ASU,” the man on the phone explained. “I got the forensic evidence the prosecutor’s office sent over and I finished my analysis last night.”
“Oh hey, thank you for doing this for us, Dr. Gaimon, Benny highly recommended you,” I told him. “I know my paralegal thanked you already for agreeing to take this up, but I definitely wanted to do it myself, too.”
“No, Henry, thank you,” the scientist stated. “Most of these expert witness forensics cases are pretty boring. I usually have to argue that the evidence was contaminated, or if I’m lucky, I get to prove DNA isn’t a match.”
“But this time…?”
“Henry, it’s not every day I get to fucking eviscerate a police forensic analyst on the stand, pardon my French,” he exclaimed with glee. “In nineteen years of doing this, I’ve never seen an analyst mistake the zinc oxide and cadmium from red oil paint mixed with
some mineral spirits for blood. Where in God’s green Earth did they find this clown?”
“Sedona, Arizona,” I said with a laugh.
“Henry, I’m going to email your paralegal my report by the end of the day,” he stated. “I know you’re paying me a lot of money for this, but if you don’t mind me saying, the joy I’m going to get from humiliating this… Pell character when I testify on the stand would be enough for me to do it for free.”
I laughed. “Feel free to tear up the check then, Jeff.”
“A figure of speech, Henry, but I’ll still enjoy it just the same,” he joked.
“Thanks again, Dr. Gaimon. Have a great day, bye.”
“Same to you, bye.”
After the call ended, I put my phone into my pocket and turned to Vicki. The excited look on her face let me know that she understood the context of the call from my half of the conversation. “Call up the prosecutor, Vicki, and see if he’ll meet us for lunch.”
“Meet for lunch? What for?” she asked.
“I’m gonna get him to drop the charges today,” I declared with a smile. “And bad news always goes down better with tacos.”
Vicki made the call and scheduled a lunch meeting for the three of us at a Mexican restaurant in the middle of the town called The Fiery Burrito. After a short drive from the gallery, Vicki and I arrived at the small restaurant, got a booth near the front, and sat down next to each other. I could barely pick up the scent of her perfume through all the delectable smells and spices wafting through the air, but I breathed it in deeply.
I might be falling for her.
Vicki ordered some tableside guacamole and a margarita while we waited for the prosecutor, Chet Levinson, to arrive.
“A little early for tequila, no?” I asked a bit bemused.
“If you forgot, Henry, I achieved one of my three major life goals this morning when we opened that FedEx envelope,” she explained. “At least a small celebration is in order.”
“One of three?” I asked.