Sunshine or Lead

by Adam Van Susteren

  Aaron didn’t trust his phone after more than a few conversations. He held the phone down and asked Aurora, “Can I get a call on your cell phone?”

  “Sure,” she responded and gave him the number that he relayed to Manny.

  “Got it.”

  Aaron sensed Manny was about to hang up, but there was something else he wanted to ask. “One sec. There was something else I wanted to ask you about…”

  “What’s up?”

  “Unrelated, did you ever come across a guy named Kimbo that was in the Adam Smith Society for a year, like twenty years ago?”

  A little chuckle. “No, I don’t think I ever came across a Kimbo. That’s a name that would stand out.”

  “Of course, that’s a nickname. His name is Kenji Bo.”

  “Hmm,” Manny said as he thought for a few seconds. “Yes, it must have been twenty years or so ago. He owned a little noodle shop where I ate at least once a month. Terrific lo mein. We talked from time to time, really bright guy.”

  “Are you close with him?”

  “No, I don’t believe I have his number but he should be easy enough to find. He owned a lot of property. Whenever we met, he was always looking to expand his holdings.”

  “Anything stick out in your memory about him?”

  “He was really bright and had a love of free markets. We weren’t close but would chat every once in a while at his restaurant. Mostly about food, but sometimes about politics and things.”

  “Do you remember if he was involved in the Adam Smith Society at all?”

  “Honestly, I can’t remember. I’d bet I told him about it and maybe gave him some literature. Remember, this is back in the days before the internet. It was more common for people to lose touch with issues, things, and people than it is today. But I certainly don’t remember spending time with him in Napa or D.C. if he ever went to any of the national events.”

  “Okay. Thanks.”

  “China trip and questions about a Chinese man. I wonder what you’ve gotten yourself into, Aaron.”

  “Hopefully not much. And thank you, Manny,” Aaron said as he was ready to hang up.

  “You’re welcome. Call you in a bit about the plane.”

  Aaron reported to the ladies, “I think we’ll have the plane locked up. Manny knows everyone and is a member-owner of a jet so an upgrade to a bigger one will probably be pretty easy.”

  The intercom buzzed. A voice told them that James and Xiaowan Lerma were in the lobby.

  Chapter 16

  Aurora returned to the conference room with James and Xiaowan. As Aaron and Nat greeted the Lermas, Aurora’s phone rang. She answered and handed the phone to Aaron saying, “Manny.”

  “Hey Manny.”

  “So here’s the deal. I got a G6 reserved for Friday and to return on Sunday. I’ll fly out of Burbank and pick your group up in San Diego; we’ll stop in Hawaii to refuel and then head to Macau.”

  “That’s great! How much is it going to cost?”

  “We’re going to have the plane grounded with crew in Macau so it’ll cost a bit extra. I’m getting it at just over cost and expenses. With that, we’re a little over your two-fifty budget. So if you guys make that amount, I’m happy to cover the rest.”

  “Do I send someone a check?”

  Manny laughed. “You’ll do a wire transfer. Pretty simple, just call your bank or broker for details and I’ll have the invoice emailed to you. What email account?”

  “My regular email.”

  “I’ll make reservations for dinner on Saturday night. How many?”

  “I’m not sure. Maybe eight? Or six?”

  “Okay. See you on Friday morning. Wait Aaron, you do know about the travel time and time difference, right?”

  “Yeah, we lose eight hours and it will take fifteen or sixteen to get there. So if we leave on Friday at noon, we will arrive Saturday at noon local time.”

  “So we’re going all that way for only one night?”

  “That’s the plan. But hopefully we can be a little flexible and maybe stay another night if we need to.”

  “Okay.”

  Aaron hung up and looked at Xiaowan. “Looks like we got a ride to get your parents.”

  Nat looked up from her laptop. “We also have a package to bring them to the resort. Aaron, you want to use a credit card or wire money over to the Victory Macau?”

  “Just use my credit card,” Aaron said as he pulled out his wallet and handed her his card. He thought to himself, ‘Easy come, easy go.’

  Nat used Aaron’s credit card to purchase a dozen Visa gift cards, which she used to transfer to the hotel. She knew it could be traced back eventually, but this extra step and the hotel’s high value on financial privacy should allow them to get back out of the country before anyone could link Aaron to Xiaowan in this way.

  “Thanks man.” James handed Aurora the package of money. “After they check this, whatever you need to get paid back, take it from here.”

  Aaron nodded back at him. “Let’s plan a bachelor party.” Aaron put the battery back in his cell phone and called his friend Josh Ruyle, a police officer, to tell him that Kor’s bachelor party was this weekend and he was needed from Friday until Sunday; Aaron also told him that he was going to need his passport. Josh bitched about the lack of notice but agreed that he was in.

  Aaron also thought that if they needed the cover of a bachelor party, there wasn’t anyone more up for a good time than his friend, Leonard Fredwards, a personal trainer. He called him up and got him on board for Kor’s bachelor party as well. Selling time with Kor was as easy as selling ice cold beer at Wrigley Field in August.

  With the guys’ ridiculously expensive plan in place, Xiaowan bought economy tickets for herself, Jessica, and Tina to fly to Barcelona from San Diego. Aurora would meet them on the connecting flight from New York to Barcelona and would arrange to have some backup in place.

  After the plans were solidified, James and Xiaowan left the Federal Building and went home. They were exhausted. As was Aaron, who was ready to leave when Aurora asked, “Do you want to go see if Nannette will talk since her lawyer should be there?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Aurora then turned to Nat. “Can you find people from your agency to meet us in Barcelona?”

  Nat nodded towards the door. “I got it. Go.”

  “Sounds good, back in two hours.” Aurora said as they left the conference room and headed towards the elevator.

  Aaron noticed she pushed P2, not ground. “Parking lot?”

  “Yeah, I have clothes in my car and need to change.”

  “Ah.”

  Aurora opened the door to her car. “Aaron, would you mind standing in front of me facing that way?” She pointed away from the car.

  “Sure.”

  She pulled off her t-shirt, leaving her standing in the FBI parking lot in a sports bra showing off her taut abs to the security cameras. She kept the sports bra on and put on a dark blouse that was hanging on a hook inside the rear passenger door. She pulled off her shoes and threw them on the back seat.

  She then pulled off her stretch athletic pants and, for all of seven seconds, was showing Aaron’s back her pink thong panties. She enjoyed being feminine but couldn’t display those traits while at work.

  In less than a minute flat, she changed from her workout clothes into a suit. She would have loved five minutes to do her hair and makeup. After slamming the trunk closed, she held up a briefcase. “I have my notes from my interview with Helen Cluntz…who didn’t say a word. But at least I have the findings from all the research my team did.”

  Not being familiar with the building and connecting tunnel between the Federal Building and the Federal Jail, Aurora and Aaron went up to the street level and walked outside. Aaron pointed to the sidewalk. “This is right near the place where I chased her down. She’s quite the runner.”

  “It seems like you get all the action and the only running I’m doing is chasing down paper trails
left in your wake.”

  “I’m all in for you doing the running and shooting while I stay home with my fiancée and practice law.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Aurora said as they awaited entry into the secured jail. A flash of her credentials and a desire to question the prisoner led her and Aaron to interrogation room three on the sixth floor of the building.

  A marshal came in. “Right now, Nannette Allenby is in room one with her attorney. I’ll bring them here in five minutes.”

  Aurora directed Aaron to another room saying, “That room is monitored to record everything that goes on in this room and you can hear everything in there as well, go ahead.”

  Aaron sat down in the other room and felt knots in his stomach tighten as he waited for Nannette to walk into interrogation room three. The feeling was exactly like when Aaron was waiting for a jury to walk into the room. Out of habit, Aaron stood up when Nannette entered the room, just as he would if he were greeting a jury.

  The marshal walked her in, handcuffed, accompanied by her attorney, a 6’8” and potbellied white man who swaggered with the extra weight and the confidence of practicing law for forty years.

  He extended his hand and with a very slight East Coast accent said, “Felton Oseff.”

  Aurora extended her hand. “Special Agent Aurora Wulfers, FBI.” She looked at Nannette. “Ms. Allenby, based on your attempted escape from custody at the courthouse, please understand that we’ll keep the cuffs on you unless you are in your cell.”

  Felton Oseff said, “Please understand that we’re trying to cooperate. Please understand that we are here to see if we can help the country through these troubling times.”

  Aaron noted his use of the word ‘understand’ twice in the first few seconds of conversation. Felton was conditioning his audience to listen with an open mind so that they can try to understand his client’s side of the story. Aaron would guess the next words out of Felton’s mouth would be, ‘You may not agree with what Ms. Allenby did, but under the trying circumstances, you can understand why she did it.’

  “Let me understand what we are dealing with here.” Aurora turned her attention from Felton to Nannette. “We have conspiracy to commit murder, grand theft, possible treason; and those were just the crimes prior to the recent spree.”

  Aurora glanced down at a notepad then back up at Nannette. “On your way to San Diego, you drove all the way across Canada with your new…hair color, cut, and look. You went to an all-night veterinarian’s office in Vancouver with a stolen cat, pulled a gun on the vet after you made it into the examination room, zip-tied his hands, and duct-taped his mouth. Then you got him to write down the access code to his safe and you stole several vials of etorphine.”

  Aurora noticed that Nannette sat silent and still; the same with her attorney. She was hoping that one would look nervous, if not outright rattled, by the orderly recitation of Nannette’s crime spree. Aurora continued without skipping a beat.

  “You used that etorphine to drug Arturo Vilchis and Carlos Jimenez. You then murdered Arturo and extorted Carlos into an attempted kidnapping of Tina Lee. You then attempted to kidnap Aaron Baker.” Aurora looked at the two-way mirror that separated Aaron from the interrogation. Then she looked back at Nannette for any sign of a reaction.

  She saw nothing. “I guess Aaron outsmarted you again like he did in the hot tub. I thought you Secret Service agents were supposed to notice things.”

  Nannette’s face became slightly flushed, her only tell that Aurora got to her. With this small sign, she opened her hands and lowered her voice slightly. “Why go after Aaron and Tina?”

  Felton held his hand up towards Nannette. “She will be invoking her Fifth Amendment right to this line of questioning. And I think that you full well know that any woman who spent an intimate moment with a man in a hot tub might want to visit that man again, if that even happened in the present case.”

  From behind the two way mirror, Aaron nearly shouted, ‘Fucking bullshit! No way would any jury believe that take on things.’ He stayed silent as Aurora didn’t respond to Felton Oseff’s objection.

  Aurora looked Nannette in the eye and asked, “Does it have to do with the NDS?”

  Nannette’s eyes opened noticeably wider, her body tensed up. She was not expecting that question and Aurora saw that it hit her hard. Even at ten feet away, Aaron could see the palpable change in Nannette’s demeanor.

  Aurora looked at Felton and didn’t think the letters held any significance to him. She presumed either he didn’t know what the NDS was or he was not a man that you wanted to play high stakes poker against.

  Felton looked at his client and saw that she had tensed up. Both he and Aaron well understood that you never want to ask a witness at a dispositive motion or trial what you don’t know the answer to, so you damn sure better ask questions before you get to that stage. Felton asked Aurora the exact same question Aaron was thinking. “What’s NDS?”

  Aaron stared intently at Aurora, as did Nannette and Felton. She nodded slightly and said in a tiny, softer tone pretending to be omnipotent, “Ask your client. I want to know what Ms. Allenby is willing to offer the United States so that she faces federal charges and can end up in a nice, clean federal prison for life. Depending on the cooperation, parole after twenty-five years might even be a possibility. Of course, the Attorney General can also defer federal sentencing to begin after life is served at the beautiful Donovan State Prison. I understand their women’s correctional facility is about as undesirable as any prison in the United States, especially for law enforcement. Cooperate and we would let you choose where you spend the rest of your life.”

  Not for the first time, Nannette wished she had just taken her emergency stash and left the country for good. She thought about spending the next fifty years in prison and dying a bitter old woman. She thought about what would happen if she turned on Helen. She closed her eyes and leaned back. It was her first displayed reaction of any kind. One thing Nannette knew was that if she had any chance of being a player in the game, it couldn’t come on Aurora’s terms.

  Nannette whispered into her attorney’s ear. It was so soft that Aurora couldn’t hear and doubted it would be caught on the audio recording.

  Felton Oseff said, “You have presented some interesting options for my client to consider. While I have little doubt that the State and feds cannot make a case against her, she may decide to take the fall for the sake of the country. In exchange for discretion in sentencing. We will discuss this tomorrow at our first appearance with the U.S. Attorney, after I’ve had some more time to consult with my client.”

  Aurora nodded, then pushed a button to call in the marshal.

  Felton continued, “Ms. Wulfers, there will be substantial law and motion work on this case, including venue and subordination of charges. Please understand that we may not be able to handle all of that this week.”

  Nannette didn’t notice but Aurora went stiff in her chair from the one week comment. She wondered if he knew that she was working on a new case and planned on leaving the country the coming weekend. If so, how?

  The marshal came and escorted Felton and Nannette, with her extra tight steel bracelets connected to steel leggings, to another interview room, this one without a two-way mirror or any recording devices.

  Aurora went into the viewing room where Aaron was. “Do you think he knew we would be gone next week?”

  “No. No way.”

  “The last thing he said to me, about not being able to handle everything this week, implied he knew I was going to be out of town next week.”

  Aaron turned his head slightly as he pondered it for a second. “I didn’t get that at all. I thought it was a threat for substantial motion work and that he thinks the U.S. Attorney would give him a better deal knowing the legal battles they would be in for.”

  “Really?”

  He nodded.

  “Okay, even still, I’ll double check our phone lines and secure email accounts. And y
ou’re right, our plans are barely even set yet, how could he know about them?”

  “Hey, what is this NDS thing? It seemed to get a real rise out of Nannette.”

  Aurora shook her head. “I don’t know, I found it written a few times in Helen Cluntz’s personal writings. I was actually hoping Nannette could give me some information on it that I could use when I talk with Helen again.”

  “Did you have time to research it?” Aaron asked.

  Aurora answered, “Our database had nothing; Google showed a sewage company, Nintendo DS, a surgical company, and a few other left field leads that I haven’t had a chance to run down yet. There was a lot to investigate, and then you called me in on the next thing so I’m kind of limited on time. But I’ll spend more time looking into NDS. I agree it seemed to rattle her.”

  “How’s the case against Helen Cluntz looking?”

  “Rock solid. We pulled her cell phone records as well as Nick’s and Spencer’s and confirmed they were in communication. Our tech team found she was looped into the security system at Singe’s cabin. We found millions of dollars in stolen gold bullion at her home. It’s been a busy month and we have a lot of pieces to the puzzle. It would be ideal if we could get Nannette to help us put them together. But we certainly don’t need her.”

  “What other numbers did she have in her cell phone?”

  “A few senators, congressman; a veritable who’s who in Washington D.C.,” Aurora responded with a sigh. “But it’s not like we can round them all up.”

  “Well if Nannette came after me by herself, I would bet dollars to donuts they don’t have a deep bench or they would have sent someone else and she wouldn’t have had to recruit Carlos to kidnap Tina.”

  “I agree with you. Also, we have seized over a billion dollars’ worth of cash, bank accounts, and gold. They don’t have unlimited resources anymore.”

  “Thanks,” Aaron said and put his hand on her shoulder.

  She looked up at him and tapped her hand on top of his. “Uh uh, thank you.”

  Aaron looked at his watch. “I’m going to go take Tina back home to Orange County and will come back down later this week. Speaking of which, I don’t know if I want her going to Barcelona.”