by Stuart Woods
“Sounds like loan-sharking or drugs. Nothing else could bring that kind of return on an investment.”
“It was working out to about ten percent a month,” Vance said.
“Sounds like a lot. Vance, but if Barone was loan-sharking, he’d be bringing in ten percent a week.”
“I was stupid, I know. After a few months, I put in another million dollars.”
“They were digging you in deep, then.”
“Yes, very deep. So when I told Oney I wouldn’t be his television spokesman and that I was resigning from the Safe Harbor board and moving all my accounts, Barone came to see me.”
“I can guess what’s coming next, I think.”
“Probably. I told him I was pulling out of his investment scheme, too. He told me that I couldn’t—that if I tried, I’d be in deep trouble with the IRS, that the publicity would destroy me. I got pretty angry. I—I believe the expression is cleaned Mr. Barone’s clock—and I threw him out of my office into the street. I was about to call my lawyer when I got a call from David Sturmack. He asked me to wait twenty-four hours while he tried to sort things out to everyone’s advantage. I agreed. That was around one o’clock. Late that afternoon, Arrington was kidnapped. I got the first phone call around six.”
“Let me guess,” Stone said. “In all this, Ippolito and Sturmack can’t be directly implicated; they could deny everything, and it would be your word against theirs.”
“I realized that when I got that phone call; that’s when I decided to take matters into my own hands.”
56
Stone listened to this with a sinking heart, having the strong feeling that a bad situation was about to get worse. “What did you do?” he asked Vance Calder.
“First, I talked with Lou Regenstein, and told him I planned to fight these people. He didn’t disagree with that, because he and his studio were under attack, and he was not inclined to just fold. He suggested we confide in Billy O’Hara, who is the head of security for Centurion.”
“I’ve heard of him,” Stone said.
“Billy was very sympathetic, and I was surprised, since he is a former police officer, that he didn’t insist that I go immediately to the police and FBI.”
“So am I,” Stone said.
“It was the first thing you said to me,” Vance said. “I expected the same from Billy, but he didn’t even mention doing that.”
“What did he suggest?”
“He suggested that I turn the whole thing over to him, that I let him deal with both the kidnappers and the business of the stock.”
“Is O’Hara a stockholder?”
“In a small way; he’s one of the valued employees who own small parcels.”
“Go on.”
“So the next time the kidnappers called, I told them that Billy would be dealing for me, and then negotiations began. Billy met with them, and brought me back a series of proposals. They included paying a ransom of a million dollars, which he knew I could well afford, selling my stock, keeping my money in Barone’s hands and giving him more, and…”
“Becoming a television spokesman for Safe Harbor and remaining on the board,” Stone said. “Now we’ve got them. That implicates Ippolito, though not necessarily Sturmack.”
“Yes, I suppose it does, under certain conditions.”
“What conditions?”
“That I become Ippolito’s chief accuser and testify against him in court. I should tell you right now that I will never do that. The only real leverage they had against me was Arrington’s safety, and now that she is safe, that is gone.”
“But, Vance…”
“No buts about it; I am not going to become publicly involved in this; there is simply too much at stake for me.”
“You’re forgetting something, Vance; they still have a great deal of leverage against you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Your investment with Barone.”
“I will deny that. They have no contract, nothing with my signature on it. All I have to do is take the loss of the million and a half dollars I invested, and then wash my hands of them.”
“It’s not going to be as easy as that, Vance.”
“What are they going to do? Report me to the IRS? They can’t do that without implicating themselves. If the IRS began to investigate me, I would just deny everything. The only way they could tie me to Barone is on Barone’s testimony and, in the unlikely event that he gave it, it would be his word against mine.”
“Vance, let me tell you, nobody ever achieved happiness by lying to the IRS. If they believed Barone’s story—or more likely, an anonymous tip—they could make life very difficult for you.”
“How?”
“Have you ever heard of a tax audit?”
“I’ve been audited three times; on each occasion they had to accept my return as filed, and on one occasion they actually had to refund nearly fifty thousand dollars. Let them try again, if they like.”
“It’s not going to end there, Vance; first of all, the reasons for the audit would somehow find their way into the press, and then your coveted privacy would be gone. At least half the people who read about it are going to believe you’ve done something illegal, which, of course, you have.”
Vance furrowed his beautiful brow, but said nothing.
“Moreover, if Ippolito and Barone want to sink you, they’ll do more than just make an anonymous phone call; they’ll give the IRS chapter and verse on your foreign investments. They’ll fax them copies of the offshore bank statements; they’ll do whatever is necessary, and you may be sure that none of the documents will make any reference to Barone or Ippolito. It will be your word against theirs, all right, but the evidence will all point to you, not them.”
Vance was looking really worried now.
“You have to understand that the day you gave them that money, you kissed it goodbye.”
“But they did actually produce a return on my investment,” Vance protested.
“Which you gave back to them to reinvest, right?”
“Well, yes.”
“So, in fact, you gave them a million and a half dollars, and you’ve never actually collected a dime in earnings from it.”
“Well, not yet, I suppose.”
“Not ever, Vance. Somewhere along the line, Barone would have come to you, very apologetically, of course, and told you that the market in whatever your investment is had crashed, and you’d lost everything. He would sob that you’re not alone, he lost everything, too. He didn’t, of course, but that’s what he’d say. You couldn’t even take a tax loss, the way you could have if your investment had been legitimate.”
Vance looked slightly nauseous now. “I don’t believe this,” he said. “It was an investment, not a gift.”
“It was a scam, pure and simple, Vance.”
Now anger flicked across the gorgeous suntanned face. “The sons of bitches,” he said quietly.
“Makes you want to get back at them, doesn’t it? They’ve kidnapped your wife, robbed you, humiliated you, and tried to extort your investment in Centurion right out of your hands. And that would be only the beginning, if they’re allowed to get away with it. Eventually you would end up as their creature, a puppet controlled by Ippolito, with Sturmack on the sidelines stroking you and telling you everything was really all right. Centurion would be gone, all those talented people would be out of work, and some of them would never work again. Lou Regenstein would be ruined, your career would be fatally damaged. In the end you’d be lucky to get a TV movie of the week. And Ippolito would own you—lock, stock, and the barrel you’d end up wearing.”
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Vance said wonderingly.
“Exactly.” Vance, Stone thought, is beginning to get the big picture. “Now, what are you going to do about it?”
Vance shone the full force of his persona at Stone. “Whatever it takes!” he said slowly.
“Will you bare your soul to the IRS?”
�
�Yes!”
“Will you tell everything about Barone’s and Ippolito’s financial dealings to the FBI?”
“Yes!” Vance was into his scene, now.
“Will you help me pull Ippolito’s and Sturmack’s little empire down around their ears?”
“Goddammit, yes!”
“Will you testify against them in court?”
Vance’s handsome face dissolved into consternation. “Absolutely not!” he said, outraged.
Stone sighed deeply. “Vance,” he said.
“Yes, Stone?”
“There’s a chance—just a sliver of a chance—that I can get you out of this without it becoming public.”
Vance beamed, revealing startling dental work. “I knew you could do it, Stone.”
“I haven’t said I could do it. I’ve said there’s a tiny chance I could do it. And it means you’re going to have to tell the IRS and the FBI everything.”
“All right, as long as it doesn’t get into the papers.”
“And it means that you’re never going to see any of your million and a half dollars again.”
“Really?” Vance asked plaintively.
“Really. And there’s always the possibility that the feds will simply subpoena you, and you’d have to testify.”
“I’d take the Fifth!” Vance said indignantly.
“Vance, that would completely destroy your reputation.”
“Oh,” Vance said.
Stone had hoped to bring Vance to the full realization of what faced him, but he was not sure he had succeeded. After all, the man was a movie star.
57
While Vance took a nap in his suite, Stone tried to assess his position. He had a witness, an accuser, now, one who knew some of what was going on in Ippolito’s empire, but one who, in the end, would not testify in court. What was more, now that he had declared himself Vance’s attorney, he had lost some of his powers of persuasion, such as threatening to go to the tabloids with what he knew of the movie star’s dealings. He was going to have to sell part of Vance to the feds, and it was time to see what they would give Vance for what he knew. He called Hank Cable at the FBI.
“Hello, Hank, it’s Stone Barrington.”
“Hi, Stone.”
“Anything new?”
“I’ve got some codebusters working on what we’re hearing from the taps on Barone Financial, but our warrant is about to expire, and we’re not there yet, and I on’t know if we have enough to get an extension.”
“Maybe I can help.”
“I hope so. We’re pretty much at a dead end, unless the code boys come up with something startling.”
“Do you know the chief investigator for the IRS in L.A.?”
“Sure; we talk from time to time.”
“I’d like to meet with both of you, today, at the earliest possible moment.”
“If you’ll hang on a minute, Stone, I’ll see if I can get him on another line.”
“Sure.” Stone waited for a couple of minutes.
“You still there?”
“Yep.”
“How about lunch? You’re buying.”
Stone gave him his suite number at the Bel-Air. “In an hour?”
“See you then.”
Stone hung up and called Rick Grant. “Rick, I’m having lunch with Hank Cable and the IRS; will you join us in my suite?”
“Sure. What’s up?”
“I think there may be something good for you in all this, but I warn you, the feds are going to take the biggest helpings.”
“So what else is new?”
“Can you be here in an hour?”
“Sure, but can you fill me in a little before we meet the feds?”
“It wouldn’t do any good right now. What I hope you’ll do is just listen and back me up when I ask for it.”
“I’ll listen, and I’ll back you up if I can, but if we’re getting official here, I have my department’s interests to protect.”
“If it’s any consolation, your department is going to get more than the feds would ever give you if I weren’t in the middle of this. At least I have something they want; I just have to see how bad they want it.”
“Okay, I’ll trust you.”
“See you in an hour.” Stone hung up, walked down to the manager’s office, and borrowed a computer. They were happy to help.
“By the way, Mr. Barrington, there have been a couple of calls for you, but I denied all knowledge, as you requested,” the desk woman said.
“Any body leave a name?”
“No, sir.”
“I didn’t think so.” Stone sat down at the computer, quickly wrote a document and printed out several copies, then went back to his suite. Vance was up now.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“I’ve got some people coming here for lunch, and I’d like you to stay out of sight until I need you. Why don’t you order some lunch and have it in your suite?”
“Okay.”
“And don’t go out. Somebody has been calling hotel looking for me, and I think we can both guess who it might be.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll stay put.”
“Vance, if I call you into this meeting, that will mean that it’s time for you to tell everything to these people, do you understand?”
“Yes, I suppose so; I’ll depend on you to protect me.”
“I’ll explain the circumstances before I ask you to say anything.”
“All right, but remember, no testifying, and no public knowledge of my involvement.”
“I’ll aim for that,” Stone said.
Hank Cable showed up with his IRS friend on time; the man didn’t look at all the way he had imagined. He was tall, fiftyish, gray at the temples, and looked more like the stereotype of a judge.
“Stone, this is John Rubens,” Cable said. “He heads the investigations division of the IRS in Southern California.”
The two men shook hands, then Rick Grant arrived and was introduced. Shortly a waiter showed up with the lobster salad lunch Stone had ordered for them all, and with two bottles of a very good California chardonnay. Lunch was served on Stone’s private terrace. They ate, they drank the wine, then coffee was served.
“Well, gentlemen, it’s time to tell you why I’m buying you such a good lunch,” Stone said.
“Please do,” Rubens replied. “And thank you for the lunch.”
“I have as a client a person who may be a very important witness in a very big prosecution,” Stone said.
“For what crime?” Rubens asked.
“Tax evasion, for a start, to the tune of maybe hundreds of millions of dollars.”
“I like the sound of that,” the IRS man said.
Cable spoke up. “I can only assume we’re talking about the people we’ve been talking about all along.”
Rubens broke in. “You’ve been talking all along? How long?”
“Only a few days,” Cable replied.
“And tax evasion came into it only this morning.”
“All right, proceed,” Rubens said.
“My client can’t conclusively make your cases for you, but I believe he can be invaluable.”
“And what does your client want in all this?” Rubens asked.
“A number of things, of course, and all in the gift of you gentlemen.”
“Go on.”
“Immunity, for a start; complete and total.”
“Immunity for what?”
“My client has been naive; he has been sucked into an investment scheme by prominent businessmen which has turned out to be, shall we say, extra-legal?”
“And how much has your client lost?” Rubens asked.
“Nothing, as of the moment; in fact, he has made large profits, which he allowed these businessmen to reinvest for him.”
“Would this involve offshore bank accounts, tax evasion, and the like?” Rubens asked.
“On a monumental scale.”
“And is your client’s involvement monu
mental?”
“His total investment is one and a half million dollars.”
“Well, from my point of view, this doesn’t sound insurmountable,” Rubens said. “Hank, how about you?”
“We haven’t heard what else Stone’s client wants,” Cable said.
“Well, immunity, as I said, from all federal prosecution—and Rick, I’ll expect the same for local and state officials. But just as important, my client’s identity must never be revealed to anyone outside your offices.”
“I take that to mean your client doesn’t want to testify,” Cable said.
“His greatest value will be not in his testimony, but in his ability to steer your investigations in the right direction.”
“Does your client have a criminal record?” Cable asked.
“He does not. He is an upstanding citizen, a taxpayer on a grand scale, and of unimpeachable reputation.”
“Except for this little indiscretion you mentioned,” Rubens said.
“His only lapse, and believe me, he was snookered into it.” Stone knew that was a half-truth, but he had to win this negotiation now, if he was going to protect Vance.
“Well, let’s hear what he has to say, and I’ll discuss this with my superiors,” Cable said.
Stone shook his head. “He says nothing until we are in complete agreement, and I must tell you that this offer will be short-lived. My client is aware that if he says nothing, he will probably escape your attentions.”
“That’s blackmail,” Rubens said.
“Actually, it’s extortion,” Stone replied, “a technique not unknown to the IRS.”
Rubens, to his credit, laughed.
“Suppose we just pursue this on our own and arrest your client later? I’m sure he’d be willing to testify then,” Cable said.
“Hank,” Stone said, “you’ve already told me that you’re coming up dry so far, and without my help and that of my client, your whole investigation is likely to just grind to a halt.”
The two men looked at each other, and Stone knew what they were thinking.
“Gentlemen, I’m sure you’d feel more comfortable if you ran this by your superiors and the U.S. Attorney. There’s a phone in the living room and one in the bedroom, and I promise you privacy.” He handed them each a copy of the document he had prepared. “You might read this to them.”