The Capitol Game

by Brian Haig

  “She handed him the keys to the kingdom.”

  “That’s right, Morgan. There was no lawyer, no executor, no skeptical husband or greedy children worried about their inheritances watching over his shoulder.” Charles paused for a long moment. “Only Jack.”

  “How much did he take?” Morgan asked.

  “Wrong question,” Charles replied, chuckling.

  “Then what’s the right one?” He was taking notes as fast as his hand could scribble. The dates and names were written down in his pinched style. He was relying on his memory for the larger narrative.

  “You have to understand, Morgan, a firm like Primo has airtight controls and unrelenting oversight. The firm was known for large partner paychecks, but the associates made dirt. The temptations were unbelievable and the firm knew it. Take Jack. By then he was making two hundred grand a year, a pittance in Manhattan. And he’s managing several large fortunes that each number in the hundreds of millions. He drives out to their gaudy mansions in the Hamptons and Greenwich, plays golf with their brazenly spoiled kids, ogles their toys, then drives back into the city, back to his rotten little one-bedroom apartment.”

  Charles paused for a moment, then remarked, “Imagine how that feels, Morgan. Can you picture it?”

  “Must be tough.”

  “And of course, he knows firsthand that they are too stupid and incompetent to manage their own fortunes.”

  “I got it. It was irresistible. Now tell me how much he stole.”

  Charles ignored his query and said, “Now here’s the sweet part. All her life, Edith dreamed of a worldwide cruise. Through all those miserable decades, married to a penny-pinching prick, she dreamed of getting away, of climbing onto a boat and seeing the world. Life had passed her by. Now she was eighty-three and degrading fast. There wouldn’t be another chance.”

  “So Jack tells her to go for it.”

  “Of course he does. He puts her house and cars and the yacht up for sale. He finds this lavish cruise ship, a floating barge overflowing with luxuries and extravagances. It’s a great bargain, Jack tells her, but you have to buy a stateroom. For five million, it’s all yours. Yours to live in, yours to enjoy, yours to sell after you’re bored with the seven seas. A stately topside birth, all the gourmet meals you can eat, three years bouncing through exotic ports from Asia to South America. Know the best part? It was a Greek shipping line. It never touches a U.S. port. Can you see it now, Morgan?”

  “Sure, but keep going.” No, he didn’t see it.

  “Only one problem.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Edith’s Parkinson’s. At the rate she was deteriorating, odds are she’d be a total loon long before the end of the cruise. And by law, of course they have to disclose any serious health concerns to the shipping line. The ship has a doctor but he’s not inclined to spend all his time administering to some drooling old broad with the shakes who can’t remember to take her meds.” Charles paused to allow Morgan to think about the ravages of such a cruel disease, then said, “Still, the shipping line wants Edith’s millions, Edith wants to hit the high seas, and eventually a solution is found.”

  “Money cures all ills.”

  “Not a cure, it offers a manageable solution, though. A private nurse is found. For another million bucks, Edith can rent a small, less expensive room for her far belowdecks.”

  “Go on.”

  “So on April 2, 1995, Edith begins her new life. She flies to Copenhagen and checks into the Hotel d’ Angleterre. Presumably she spends the next five days roaming the city, tiptoeing into her adventures as a wanderer. On April 7 she checks out, signs onto the ship, and a few hours later she embarks on the dream of her life. This much was confirmed later,” Charles explained.

  “Mind if I get up and stretch? My ass is falling asleep.”

  “If I’m boring you, we can stop now.”

  “My ass, not my ears. I want the full fifty thousand treatment, pal.”

  Charles chuckled, then continued. “Jack and Edith decided beforehand to forgo the complications of credit cards. The ship has a bank so every month Jack wires half a million into her account. It’s so much easier. And every few days, like clockwork, money is withdrawn. Sometimes small amounts, sometimes large. With port calls every three or four days, this raises no suspicions. Presumably Edith is going ashore, indulging her every wish and passion. Perhaps the spending was lavish, even wildly excessive, but it was hers to waste, right?”

  The door opened again. The conversation stopped until they heard the sound of it closing again. “What then?” Morgan asked, clearly engrossed in the story.

  “Then, Morgan, is three long years later.”

  “End of the cruise, right?”

  “And the beginning of the mystery. Here’s what’s known. On April 18, 1998, the ship docked in Piraeus. After three years at sea, it needed a dose of maintenance and refitting. Also, if Edith wished to continue playing Sinbad, she needed to ante up another two million, the nautical equivalent of a condo fee. On the evening of the eighteenth, she disembarked from the ship—just hobbled down the plank into town and jumped into a cab. That’s the last they saw of her. When, two days later, she failed to return, the shipping line contacted Jack.”

  “And what did Jack do?” Morgan asked, collapsing back onto the toilet.

  “Booted it upstairs.”

  “She just disappeared?” It was getting chilly in the bathroom, and he began rubbing his arms. He desperately wanted to ask Charles for his clothes, but he already knew the answer.

  Charles continued. “And by now, her fortune had grown to 450 million. The stock market was roaring. You could throw darts at it and double your money, and Jack had managed her investments brilliantly.”

  “And it was all there, in her account?”

  “All but the money Edith had gotten from the ship’s bank. No suspicion of foul play at this point. An old lady afflicted by Parkinson’s walked off a ship and vanished. She was eighty-six, probably half brainless, and who knows what other health issues she had. The possibilities were endless. A heart attack or stroke couldn’t be ruled out. A mugging or kidnapping were both possibilities. Or maybe she was out there, in a Parkinson’s haze, wandering around Greece, unable to remember how she got there, or even her own name.”

  “So what did they do?”

  “At Jack’s insistence, the CEO and CFO at Primo convened a confidential meeting to consider the situation. It presented an unusual quandary, to say the least. People with that kind of money don’t just disappear without a trace. The in-house legal counsel told them Edith’s fate wasn’t their responsibility; she was a client, that’s all. The firm wasn’t her family. On the other hand, nearly half a billion of her money was in their hands.”

  “So?”

  “It presented what you might call a heartbreaking dilemma for the firm.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “You see, Morgan, Edith left no will. No known survivors, nobody who cared about her. She was a legal orphan. But her fees to Primo by this time exceeded ten million a year.” As if Morgan missed the significance, Charles pointed out, “Ten million pays a lot of partner bonuses.”

  “And where does Wiley come into this?”

  “Well, no decision was made. Not then. The CEO and CFO said they wanted to wait a reasonable period to see if Edith showed up. As week after week passed, Jack was running around the firm loudly telling everybody how concerned he was about poor old Edith. He wanted her disappearance reported to the State Department, wanted the firm to hire a team of PIs to launch a hunt for her. The bigger the nuisance he made of himself, the more his CEO tried to ignore him.”

  “Why?”

  “Because, legally, Morgan, a person has to be missing three years before you get a presumption of death. Then, absent a will or any known heirs, the disposition of Edith’s fortune conveys to the government.”

  “So Jack and the partners had a little difference of opinion.”

 
“Hardly ‘little,’ Morgan. Three years of billings meant thirty million, at a minimum. Throw in a little creative bookkeeping—after all, the client wasn’t paying attention—and it was a license to take a lot more. Why shouldn’t Primo squeeze a hundred million, or even two, out of the arrangement? Skim a bit off the top and call it a performance bonus. Who would ever know? Nobody would miss it. It was all going to disappear into the black hole of government coffers, after all.”

  “Doesn’t sound like Jack did anything wrong.”

  “You’re right, he looked like a perfect angel.”

  It took a moment for it to settle in before Morgan said, “He was supposed to, wasn’t he?”

  It wasn’t really a question.

  Charles continued. “After a month, the CEO and CFO brought Jack back into the boardroom for another confidential chat. Just shut up, they told him—come in to work every day, send Edith her monthly allowance, invest the rest of the money, pretend everything’s normal. It would be well worth his while, they promised. An early partnership was a sure bet. They offered him an incredible bump in salary, as well as a piece of what they were already calling the Edith bonus.” Charles paused, then added, “In their minds, they were already spending Edith’s millions.”

  “And he said yes, right? After all, Jack’s a smart boy.” By now, Morgan was hanging on every word. This was better than he had ever expected, so much more than he had ever imagined. Nothing like a tale of wickedness, graft, and avarice among the rich and powerful to brighten the day. It was worth sitting half naked in a cold men’s room listening to Charles drone on.

  “He turned them down cold,” Charles said. “They were infuriated. In the moments after he left, they talked about reassigning him, or simply firing him. Picture it, Morgan. All that stood between them and Edith’s fortune was Jack.”

  Morgan asked, “Then why didn’t they fire him?”

  “Did I fail to mention the inconvenient stipulation in Edith’s contract?”

  “I think you did.”

  “Jack was her adviser and investment manager.” He emphasized, “Not the firm, just Jack. To move a dime of Edith’s money, his personal signature was required.”

  “Sounds like Wiley had them by the short hairs.”

  “You think so?”

  “Sure. He could’ve held them up for millions.”

  “You know what? The CEO and CFO thought so, too, and wondered why Jack didn’t do just that. It was a sure thing. Better yet, on the face of it, it broke no laws. It may have blurred every ethical boundary, but in theory at least, it would appear legal.”

  “So why didn’t he?” Morgan asked.

  After a moment, Charles asked, “What do you think?”

  “He didn’t need it.”

  “Okay, why not?”

  “A good chunk of her money was already in his pocket.”

  “You’re getting warmer.”

  Morgan thought about it a moment longer. “No, that still doesn’t make sense.”

  “Great. Why not?”

  “Because they were offering him more money. More is always better.”

  “Think harder, Morgan. Why not score a few more million? Better yet, why not join a scam that also incriminated his bosses?”

  “Yeah, I see that. Even if they found out Jack was already stealing cookies from the jar, they couldn’t rat him out, because he would rat back on them, right?”

  “It would be beautiful.”

  “Then I don’t know.” After a moment he growled, “And I’m tired of playing this game.”

  “You’re still not thinking like a thief. Put yourself in Jack’s shoes.”

  “Because Jack had persuaded the old lady, Edith, to leave everything to him,” Morgan guessed.

  Charles chuckled. “Jack wasn’t that charming.”

  A long pause as Morgan considered more possibilities. The option that Jack was simply too moral and upright to engage in such unethical behavior had already been discarded. Why would he walk away from more millions? Then it hit him and Morgan almost squealed, “Wow.”

  “That’s right, Morgan. Jack had a much more serious crime to worry about.”

  “Murder.”

  “Yes, murder. A much more dreadful secret to conceal. In fact, Edith never set foot on the boat. The real Edith disappeared three years earlier.”

  Morgan began smiling to himself. “The nurse, right?”

  “Definitely her,” Charles said very softly. “Before the cruise, you see, nobody on the ship had ever seen Edith in person. The business transactions had all been handled by Jack. They knew only what he told them. Edith was old, ill, wealthy, a widow. The nurse also happened to be quite old, white-haired, moderately educated. Any skilled forger could easily prepare the necessary documents, a passport, driver’s license, social security card. Lord knows, it was a simple impersonation to pull off. So, for three years the nurse doddered around the boat, pretended to be mildly senile, withdrew money by the armful, and lived the life.”

  “Then one day she walked off the boat and skipped with almost twenty million in cash.”

  “So it appeared.”

  “Quite the scheme.”

  “Yes, it was brilliant,” Charles said, sounding awed by the cleverness of it all. “A foolproof way to get around the firm’s very thorough safeguards.”

  “So what did the firm do?”

  “They had no choice. Jack was calling the shots.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “They notified the American embassy about Edith’s disappearance and hired a Greek private detective agency to look into the situation.”

  Charles paused for a moment to allow Morgan to catch up. It was a lot to absorb and he could almost hear Morgan’s circuits whirring.

  “Know what I don’t get?” Morgan eventually said. “Why would Wiley want it looked into?”

  “Think about it. It had to be done that way. She had to disappear and it had to look real. Then, by insisting on the investigation, Jack looked pure.”

  “Yeah, that’s smart.”

  “Too smart, in fact. He overlooked one thing. His partners got greedy.”

  “They didn’t believe him, did they?”

  “Nope, because they thought like crooks,” Charles said in an amused tone. “They found it impossible to believe anyone could be so saintly. How’s that for irony?”

  “So what did they do?”

  “Behind Jack’s back, they told the Greek PIs it smelled like an inside job. Based on that tip, the PIs worked backward. The plan only worked as long as everybody assumed it was Edith on that boat, Edith withdrawing the cash, Edith disappearing.”

  “And somebody had to create that assumption.”

  “And the author had to be Jack.”

  “What happened to Edith?”

  “Who knows. She was never found. Her corpse was never found, either. The PIs scoured Piraeus and Copenhagen. They checked morgue records, talked with the police, turned over every rock, and got nothing. Their guess was that she was cremated, then her ashes were dumped at sea.”

  “Yeah, that’s how I’d do it.”

  “Only one problem. Nobody could prove how the nurse got hired. Jack claimed he didn’t know—maybe the shipping line arranged it, maybe Edith found her on her own. The shipping line said it had no record or memory of it, but it’s not the kind of thing they typically do. They considered it doubtful.”

  “And Edith, of course, wasn’t around to speak.”

  “As they say, sometimes the best witness is a dead one.”

  “What about the nurse? Surely they had a photo of her.”

  “After a lot of work, they found an old couple a few suites away with a picture of her seated at their table for dinner. It was a waste of time. She looked identical to a billion other old grandmothers on the planet.”

  “Fingerprints?”

  “A few were collected from the suite.”

  “And?”

  “Could’ve been hers, or any of
the countless maids who cleaned the suite over the years. The crews on those boats turn over as regularly as fast-food joints. The prints weren’t on record, anyway. Another dead end.”

  “Probably one of the qualifications for the job,” Morgan gamely concluded.

  “Probably so. Here’s how the PIs figured it. Jack and the nurse, they opened up one or two Swiss accounts before the cruise. Over the years, she withdrew from Edith’s account, went ashore, and dumped it into theirs.”

  “How much did Jack get?”

  “If it was fifty-fifty, Jack cleared about ten million.”

  “Yeah, but odds are, Jack being the mastermind and all, he bagged more.”

  “I’d say that’s a good guess. Probably at least fifteen million, tax-free, salted away in a Swiss vault,” Charles said.

  Morgan now was into the second-guessing game, and he suggested the obvious. “But nobody could prove it, could they?”

  “Nothing could be proved. Nobody could prove Edith was dead. Nobody could prove the nurse was hired by Jack. Nobody knew where the money went. I told you, it was brilliant.”

  “What did they do?”

  “Understand that the last thing Primo wanted was for this to go public. The firm’s reputation would be ruined. Rich people don’t entrust their millions to crooks, or to investment firms too incompetent to protect against internal corruption.”

  “But they fired him, right?”

  Charles laughed. “Not a chance.”

  “Why not?”

  “They had a suspicion, Morgan, nothing more.”

  “Yeah, but it was pretty damned—”

  “And Jack could always sue them. Plus the CEO and CFO had that filthy little discussion with Jack they now wished to keep under the rug—the one about ripping off more of Edith’s fortune. Jack, you see, had them by the balls.”