by Kyanna Skye
“Right, the trial,” she said with a nod. “Who was your attending attorney?” she asked dumbly, knowing already that he had waived his right to an attorney for his initial trial.
“I didn’t have one,” he replied.
She turned a faux look of shock to him. “Excuse me?”
“I waived my right to an attorney for the trial,” he said simply. “I didn’t see the need.”
She licked her lips, feigning interest. This was old news, of course, thanks to what details had been available in her brief, but he had never spoken of the fact directly. And seeing as how she was making no headway in her usual methods, she’d resorted to trying a more underhanded approach to figuring out what he had done with the money. “You embezzled millions from the firm you worked with and you didn’t think you needed an attorney?”
“Not in the least of ways. Eventually, I realized that what I was doing was wrong and when I turned myself in–”
“Hold it!” she said, stopping so suddenly on the track that he almost collided with her. She turned to put her hands out to stop him and she could feel his large muscular chest underneath his tight form-fitting gym clothes. This last bit of information had shocked her completely, never having seen that tidbit anywhere in the files. “You turned yourself in?”
He nodded, wiping sweat from his brow and looking thankful for the chance to catch his breath. “Yes, I did. As I was just saying, eventually I knew that what I was doing was wrong and when I turned myself in I pleaded no contest to the charges. It was settled within a matter of days and I was sent here.”
She paused, momentarily forgetting about what he was saying and suddenly realizing that she was closer to him now that she had been since first she had started coming to see him. The nearness of their mutual proximity, she found, was rather enticing. There was even something enchanting about it.
She floundered with her words for a moment. She had gotten the sense from Dominic that was a very clever man. She’d determined that he’d gone to all of the right schools, his mannerisms certainly held that he was from one of the old families and therefore from older money, and though she had only just skimmed the surface of his professional life she had determined that he should have been clever enough to have avoided prison altogether.
But that he turned himself in and for reasons of conscience and pleaded guilty, that was a shock to her. “I’m sorry; I don’t quite understand Mr. Rizzuto.”
He shrugged indifferently. “There’s nothing to understand, really, Jamie. I knew that my actions bore consequences. You recall how I said that I had done as I had for the thrill of it? Well, eventually the thrill wears thin and I also got a firsthand look at how what I was doing was hurting people. Thus, my hasty need to see justice done upon myself in as expedited a form as possible.”
She stood where she was, her mouth wide, her eyes almost gawking she was sure. “What did you see that turned you around so quick?”
His eyes fell, almost shamefully. “Men and women… people that I worked with… many of them were being laid off because the firm no longer had the means to pay them. They were people that I knew, Jamie.”
She shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
He sighed, his tone becoming almost mournful. “When I first started my little game, I had thought to myself, ‘This place takes in millions every day… who’s going to miss a little bit here and there? They’ll never even notice that the money is gone.’ That’s what I told myself, but it didn’t take long for me to see that the firm simply began to trim away what they considered to be dead weight in order to keep the profits of a few people up.”
“Dead weight?” she asked, curious as to his use of metaphor.
“Some of those people had been dedicated to that office for years, decades even. They had families to feed, insurance to pay, and like that. They were just normal people, trying to make ends meet. And I took that away from them for no reason other than because I had been bored at the time.” He shocked her again by putting his larger more muscular hands over hers and gently squeezing them and the simple gesture, she felt, carried tons of emotion.
“And the firm just brushed them aside, like crumbs off of a dinner table, not caring where they landed or maybe just hoping that someone else would sweep up the mess later. Who knows? And it was me that made that happen. People didn’t just miss out on buying groceries that week, Jamie, it was worse than that. I robbed some of those people of their pensions; the money that they were saving to send a child to college, the finances needed for a heart operation… who knows what else?”
He pushed her hands slowly aside and rather than resume running, he began walking and quickly she fell in step beside him, her ears determined not to miss a single word. “So you admitted to your guilt, and then what? Gave the money back?”
He squeezed his eyes shut so tightly she had thought for a brief moment that perhaps he had something stuck in his eye, but he shook his head. “No… it was too late for that. The money was no longer where it was supposed to be. I couldn’t just give it back, Jamie.”
“You could have changed that. Something tells me that you were smart enough to do that and set things right before anyone noticed.”
“Yes, I could have. But the program that I had written was complex and self-executing. Once it was in, there was no stopping it, not even by me. It would simply run its cycle and eventually it would self-terminate. But even I would never know where the money went once it was done. That was part of the thrill for me, you see.”
“Wait… what?” she asked, again feeling puzzled. “What do you mean you don’t know where the money went?”
“Just that,” he explained, “I don’t know. I never cared to have that money to myself; I’m not a greedy man. I just wanted to have the thrill of knowing that it could be done… and annoying my bosses at the time.”
To Jamie, this sounded like the notion of a lunatic mind. He stole the money, but didn’t care to keep it for himself? To her, that sounded like a Robin Hood complex, but even Mr. Rizzuto had said that he didn’t try to give the money back to those that were less fortunate. He couldn’t, by the sound of it, which invalidated her earlier theory. But still, that he would steal money and then just shoot it into space where he couldn’t track it was most perplexing. That’s like breaking into a jewelry store, loading all the gems into a truck, and then driving the truck all over town and shoveling the goods out the back.
They walked in silence for a few moments before she looked at her client, watching the way the sun glistened on his hard body, before speaking, “You’re a strange kind of man, Mr. Rizzuto.”
His look of self-loathing melted a small amount as he smiled at her. “That’s the finest kind there is.”
***
In the seclusion of her hotel room, she looked up the records of finance for Lester & Desoto that fit the time frame that Mr. Rizzuto had run his little scheme. She had to give him credit, even the bean counters within the firm, some of the most highly paid financial experts outside of the government, hadn’t seen Mr. Rizzuto’s scheme coming. And no one had known it had happened until it was too late.
It was very cloak-and-dagger. He could have gotten away clean if it hadn’t been for his conscience. And listening to him tell his story, she never would have imagined that he would have been the sort to bend under the weight of his conscience. And though he had been forthcoming about his guilt, he wasn’t as nearly as direct in his subtle – but far more brilliant – skills in the use of computer software.
There wasn’t a single track for her to follow.
Within the records, all she was really able to find was a large gap in that particular time frame’s daily banking statements. She had seen how businesses that dealt with multi-million dollar finances worked and every minute of every day was accounted for when someone somewhere was using the firm’s money. But in the case of Mr. Rizzuto’s scheme, there was a mere two-minute portion of the day in question where nobody touched a cent o
f the firm’s money.
Impossible, she thought. And her co-workers at the firm had agreed. Because it was that gap in the day’s finances that drew their attention and someone, later on, realized that millions had gone missing. And that was the proverbial stone that had stirred up the hornet’s nest.
As she looked at the records, she couldn’t help but be a little impressed at Mr. Rizzuto’s skill. There the money was, one minute before, looking as normal as a blue sky on a clear day, and then suddenly, ten million was missing one minute and thirty-seven seconds later.
She viewed the technical specs of it as well, utilizing records that she could access and thanks to an old boyfriend Jamie had had in college, she knew how to read them. The firm’s computers noted that the servers began running a little hot, usually brought on by a heavy workload that the computers themselves had to strain to keep up with. In this case, she knew that the workload would have required every single person in the company to log onto their servers at once and download what would be an equivalent the Library of Congress all at the same time. That, of course, didn’t happen as the records indicated that the servers were functioning with less than nine hundred people being logged on. But even so, there was a predictable slowdown in the server’s function when such a thing happened, and then poof! After that one minute-thirty-seven-seconds worth of a high load, the money went missing in the time it would have taken someone to press “Enter”. And then it was just gone.
“Amazing,” she said, leaning back on her bed and crossing her arms, looking at the records. It was hard to believe that Dominic Rizzuto wrote his own computer program to steal this kind of money because he was bored. He’d also said that he wanted to do so because he wanted to annoy his bosses at the time. Jamie hadn’t been able to determine who his boss had been at the time, but given Mr. Rizzuto’s rank in the firm at the time of his employment – which was extremely low – it could well have been anyone.
“I wonder what he could do if he put his mind to it,” she thought.
Looking intently at the records she felt a strange twinge in her belly. This was what she was here for, certainly, but there was something that told her that these records were the way to figure out what Dominic Rizzuto had done with that money.
Hell, it’s not like I’m getting anywhere talking to him face to face. In just these last two hours looking at the digital footprint of the day the money had gone missing, she had learned more about him than all of the time she’d spent questioning. And yet, these records had offered her the largest clue thus far.
She knew little of electronic finance transfers, apart from what she could accomplish on her phone. But million dollar transfers were another thing entirely. There were special protections put in place by banks and by recipients of such things. There were passcodes, voice authorizations, signatures, there had to be a plan in place with the bank beforehand in some cases, and sometimes they had to be done in person… whatever. And somehow, Mr. Rizzuto had managed to bypass them all.
While she knew that she was not gifted in matters of electronic finance she did know that even in the world of electronics that everything left a digital fingerprint. Visit a website, there was a marker in your browser history to show that you’d been there. Check your online bank accounts, there’s a record of the login. A driver pays ten bucks for gas with a company gas card; it gets logged both in a gas station’s computer as well as the company finance reports. That was just the way it was nowadays, there was no escaping it.
It had to be so with what Mr. Rizzuto had done. There had to be something… an IP address… a routing number… something that could help her dig into what it was that she needed to find this missing money.
This is the age of the internet, she reminded herself. The money was literally shot into space… it’s like trying to look through the internet for a single pixel in every picture that’s online.
Yes, it was going to be a longshot and she hadn’t yet unraveled enough of Mr. Rizzuto’s identity to determine where he had sent the money.
Yes, he’d said that even he didn’t know where that money had gone, but part of her was unwilling to believe it. It just wasn’t in the human condition to steal that kind of money and not pay attention to where it landed. Mr. Rizzuto didn’t strike her as the dishonest sort, but then again she had presented herself as an openly honest type and still she had resorted to a light kind of lying. That was proof enough that under the right circumstances, people could do things that were uncharacteristic for them. And that was a facsimile to which she now clung the same way a drowning man clung to a life preserver.
She stared at the screen of her laptop, feeling as if she were already so close to that money. Like looking at a fish in an aquarium she felt like she could just reach through the glass and touch it if she wanted. Close, but so far removed, that it was infuriating.
He knows where it is, she told herself with a sigh. She just needed to figure out more about him.
***
“Enough of me,” Dominic said, surprising her as they sat at a plastic table in the middle of the prison yard in the shade of an umbrella. The day was hot and the shade was welcome, and with no one in the yard but each other she felt as though she had joined him in the privacy of a fancy residence somewhere. It was odd that she felt like she was beginning think of this place as Mr. Rizzuto’s home. “Tell me something about yourself.”
She nearly choked on the chilled lemonade that they had been drinking, the question catching her off guard. “Excuse me?”
“Well, we’ve been talking about me all this time and I feel as though I’ve been remiss in my manners. And sitting here, I just realized that I don’t know a single thing about you.” He sipped his lemonade, “I find that I would very much like to know more about you.”
She adjusted herself uncomfortably in her chair. “Mr. Rizzuto, really, I don’t think that’s relevant to our work here…”
“You’re curious about the nature of my crime and how I grew up both very personal things, I’d say. And yet you won’t share a single detail with me about your life?” He shook his head a clicked his tongue, “Tsk, tsk, tsk. Let me give you an incentive then, Jamie. I’ll answer some of your questions if you’ll but answer some of the mines. You’re familiar with the whole stick-and-carrot routine, I assume? Which would you prefer?”
It wasn’t a threat he was making, she knew that. But he was offering her a choice, though it was a very subtle one at that. It was like a twisted version of the whole ‘horse before the cart’ proverb. She could get him to move, but only if he gave her a carrot for a change instead of vice versa.
It was a decision that she knew she had made without having to think overlong about it. He could make her work even more difficult by being stubborn and not giving her anything and she would feel the lash of it at every turn. He wasn’t asking much, just a few details about her. What could it hurt? It wasn’t as though he could know who she worked for and why she was here. Could it?
Maybe, she thought with a small worry. He’s smart and all of these questions about why they put him away…? No, she had been so careful not to give away why she was really here. She was sure of that. But still, it didn’t make her feel any better knowing that the only way to get information out of him was to give information about herself.
I’ll never see him again once he’s released… what could it hurt?
Under such an ultimatum, what else could she do but cooperate?
She felt a chill that had nothing to do with the ice-cold glass with the refreshing drink in her hand. “Uh, well, I can if you like… though I don’t know where to begin.”
Mr. Rizzuto leaned back in his chair, a triumphant smile on his face. “I find the beginning is always a good place. Where were you born?”
“New York,” she answered honestly.
“Oh? Still have family there?”
“My mom and dad,” she said, drawing lines on the building condensation on her glass with her free finger. “D
ad’s the reason I got into doing this kind of work,” she said with a reminiscent smile.
Mr. Rizzuto gave an approving nod. “Ah, you admire your father do you?”
She nodded. “I do.”
“He’s also into legal work?”
“Yes. It’s been that way ever since I was born.” She felt the warmth of old memories as they came washing over her. The recollection of it all made her feel like a child again. “There were just so many things that he did that always fascinated me. The way he could talk with lots of big words – even though I didn’t understand when I was a kid – it was very impressive. The way he looked in his suits, his briefcase, the way he carried himself with such… I don’t know…”
“Swagger?” Mr. Rizzuto offered.
She smiled and laughed. “Yeah, I guess you could call it that. My dad was always so haughty and so confident.” Her smile deepened. “I remember always wanting to be like that, exactly like that, when I was a kid.”
“You seem like you’re well on your way there. Where’d you go to law school?”
“NYU,” she said.
Mr. Rizzuto nodded approvingly, though she detected some apprehension in the gesture. “They’re not very famous for their legal schooling, though, if I recall.”
“No, not really,” she admitted, “they’re as good as any other. But that was where my dad went to school. I wanted to follow in his footsteps to the best of my ability.”
“And your mother?”
Jamie sipped her lemonade. “I love my mother, no mistake. But it was my father that always held my attention. My mother had plenty to teach me and I do resemble her more than a little, but my dad’s way always seemed like the way that I wanted to go. I wanted it all; the suits, the smiles, the briefcase and yes, I guess even the swagger, as you call it.”
Mr. Rizzuto saluted her with his drink. “Well, I daresay that you’re well on your way to the swagger.”
She chuckled, though inwardly she thought that if she failed in this assignment there would be no amount of swagger that could save her. “What about your family?” The question left her mouth so quickly that greased lightning wouldn’t have been able to keep up with it. She had asked without intending to and she regretted asking as soon as the words had left her lips.