M-9

by Marvin J. Wolf

  A tall, rangy man sporting sunburned limbs and walking shorts and a polo shirt rose from the kitchen table. He hugged Cheryl and pumped Chelmin’s hand.

  “Cheryl Miller, this is Scotty, my first boss in the CID. He keeps a lid on crime here at Hunter-Liggett.”

  “Not much crime to speak of,” Scotty said. “This is my wife, Sula.”

  “Welcome to our home,” Sula said, flashing the toothy smile again.

  “What’s your agenda?” Scotty asked.

  Chelmin said, “Quick as Cheryl has a place to stay, I’d like to grab three or four hours of shut-eye, then get back to the battle.”

  Sula said, “We would be honored if you stay with us. Stay as long as you wish—a day, a week, a year.”

  Cheryl laughed. “It is me who is honored,” she said. “Thank you.”

  Chelmin said, “She’s gonna need some things. Clothing, undies, makeup.”

  Cheryl said, “And shoes.”

  Sula said, “The post exchange will have anything you need. It opens in about an hour.”

  Chelmin said, “I don’t want her using credit cards.”

  Scotty said, “We’ll handle it. You can settle up later.”

  Chelmin said, “Thanks.”

  Scotty said, “Rudy, why don’t I show you how I’ve fixed up my den?”

  Five hours later, while Sula and Cheryl visited the post exchange, Chelmin headed south towards US 101 behind the wheel of Scotty’s ten-year-old Subaru.

  Seventy-five

  Will got up early, stopped at the McDonald's for breakfast and was at his desk by seven. He called the State Department number that Blair had given him and told the woman who answered what he needed.

  “You’ll have to call the embassy in San Jose for that kind of information,” she said.

  “Can you give me a name to ask for?” Will said.

  “Sorry, no. Embassy personnel rosters are official use.”

  “Then what department should I ask for?”

  “Does this concern a U.S. citizen?”

  “Yes. She was murdered.”

  “Murdered in Costa Rica?”

  “No, ma’am. Shortly after she returned from Costa Rica.”

  “Does this concern criminal activity?”

  “I’m pretty sure that murder is a criminal activity, even in the USA.”

  “I don’t like your tone of voice,” the woman said.

  “Sorry. My mother says that I can be insensitive.”

  “Your mother?”

  “Yes. After my girlfriend bailed, she’s the most important woman in my life.”

  “Your mother is a very wise woman."

  “Thank you. Can you suggest a department at the embassy that I could call?”

  “You might try the FBI. If it concerns money laundering, the Secret Service has a presence in most of our embassies.”

  Will thanked the woman and hung up. Then he dialed the number she had given him and reached a switchboard operator, who transferred his call to the Special Agent in Charge of the San Jose office.

  The call went to voicemail. Will left a brief message: He was investigating the murder of a U.S. citizen who had recently returned from Costa Rica, and he needed some assistance.

  After hanging up, he realized that there must be a time difference between San Jose and Barstow. Maybe it was too early there?

  He googled the question and learned that it was one hour later in San Jose.

  That made it 8:30. He’d call back in an hour.

  Will refilled his coffee cup and went back to his desk. His brief conversation with the women in the State Department and his flip response to her had triggered a memory, the moment when he realized that Nancy Prendergast was not going to be his wife, that they were not going to have children together, grow old together, be together. Nancy had been the consensus pick for the most beautiful girl in Barstow. Ancient history, but they had not dated at all until he returned from college. He remembered being flooded with joy when she came back to Barstow after a few years in Los Angeles, and he learned that she wasn’t married.

  Will had been certain that he had come to terms with their parting. Now, unheralded, he was filled with feelings of longing, filled with sorrow for what might have been, and dead certain that their parting had been entirely the fault of his own insensitivity to her needs.

  Seventy-six

  Chelmin gassed up in Atascadero. He turned off US 101 about ten miles south at tiny Santa Margarita, where he took California 58 east toward Bakersfield and, beyond that, Barstow. Chelmin planned to spend the night in Barstow, where he could change clothes, and bring Will up to speed. In the morning, he would head over to Twentynine Palms. If Eddie “Beetle” Bailey had anything interesting to say about Malone, Cardenas, or Alvarez, then Chelmin might pay Agent Blair in San Bernardino another visit.

  In the meantime, there was the winding road through the mountains and then across California’s enormous and mostly rural Central Valley.

  Chelmin put everything else out of his mind and concentrated on driving the winding road at the speed limit, glancing around from time to time to ensure that he wasn’t being followed.

  Seventy-seven

  Will waited until 9:30 before calling the San Jose FBI office again. This time, a woman’s voice answered.

  “Hola. Esta es la oficina de la Oficina Federal de Investigaciones,” she said.

  “This is Special Agent Will Spaulding in Barstow, California,” Will said. “May I speak to the Special Agent in Charge, please?”

  “Special Agent Morales is in the field,” she said in perfect English. “This is Special Agent Lopez. How may I help you?”

  “Special Agent Lopez, I’m investigating the murder of a young woman who was killed here in Barstow on the Marine Logistics Base.”

  “Go on, Agent Spaulding.”

  “A witness put the victim, who was in Costa Rica as a tourist, in a particular building in downtown San Jose for about fifteen minutes. Shortly after that, she abandoned her boyfriend and returned to the U.S. Then she flew to Belize for a few days. Shortly after returning to the U.S., she was murdered.

  “I’d like to find out what she might have been doing in that building. Specifically, I’d like a list of all the businesses and offices in that building.”

  “That sounds doable,” Lopez said. “Just to be clear, you are an FBI agent?”

  “No,” Will said. “Army CID. Before you ask, the vic was killed on the Marine base here, and her body was stuffed into a boxcar. Two days later, we found her in that boxcar a few hundred miles away at Fort Fremont.”

  “This is a joint Army-Marines investigation?”

  “Army, Marines, and FBI. Agent Tom Blair in San Bernardino is the Bureau’s lead on this.”

  “Not to sound mean, then why are you calling me? Why didn’t he call me?”

  “There’s a lot to this. When my partner and I arrived in Barstow, we were attacked by a sniper. Then somebody blew up my car with an RPG. So Blair is handling that part of the puzzle, the attempted murders of federal agents, and my partner and I are on the original murder. The Marines are cooperating, but it’s our investigation.”

  “I understand now. I’m going to send someone to that address if you’ll give it to me?”

  “That’s 241 Avenida San Martín.”

  “That’s an eight-story office building. I can see it from my window.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you want to know the name and business of every company that has an office or a shop in there?”

  “That’s right.”

  “It’s going to take some time. How soon do you need that?”

  “Well, at your earliest convenience. And I appreciate this, very much.”

  “Do you have an email address?”

  Will gave her his Barstow PD address.

  “That’s not federal email.”

  “No, it’s Barstow PD. I used to be a detective here. My father is the chief of police, and he’s letting
me work out of his shop.”

  “I’m going to have to check you out with Agent Blair,” she said. “This is very strange, and if you’re really Army CID, then you’ll know just how strange.”

  “I’ll give you that. It’s more than a little weird. You can reach Blair in the San Bernardino, California, FBI office. Do you want the number?”

  “I’ll look it up.”

  “OK. And thanks for your patience, Agent Lopez.”

  “I’ll call him, and if you check out, I’ll send you a confirming email.”

  Seventy-eight

  Will hung up, realizing too late that he should have given her Chelmin’s email. Can’t be helped now, he told himself.

  Less than ten minutes went by before his phone rang.

  “Spaulding,” he said. “Is this Lopez?”

  “No,” said a male voice. “This is Evan Benjamin, San Berdoo Sheriffs office.”

  Benjamin was a sketch artist who moonlighted as a sort of latter-day, distinctively American Hieronymus Bosch—he made large, wildly imaginative paintings of all sorts of people in all sorts of torment.

  “Sorry,” Will said. “I was expecting someone else. Do you have a sketch of our suspect, Ev?”

  “Hell no, I don’t. Parked down the street from Cafè Jalisco, got out of my unit, and two young Latinos took off like I was the devil incarnate, come to take their souls. Those were your witnesses.”

  “Ev, did you say that you got out of a unit? A black-and-white?”

  “You expect me to drive my own car all the way from San Berdoo into this godforsaken desert?”

  “My witnesses are undocumented. You scared them.”

  “Oy. Sorry, but nobody told me.”

  “I’ll try to find them, set something else up.”

  Benjamin sighed. “Give my boss a call. Peace, brother.”

  The line went dead.

  Will hung up. Seconds later, the phone rang again.

  “Evan?”

  “This is Agent Lopez,” a now-familiar voice said in his ear. “Who is Evan?”

  “Our sketch artist. We’re trying to get a picture of one of our suspects.”

  “Do you need to call me back?”

  “No, no. Thanks for returning my call so soon.”

  “Well, Spaulding,” Lopez said, “turns out you’re not only the real deal, but you’re also some kind of righteous cockroach.”

  “I can’t believe that anyone would call me a cockroach.”

  “A righteous cockroach. A good guy, and really hard to kill, according to Tom Blair.”

  “OK, then. No offense taken. What do have for me?”

  “I sent one of my local people over to check out that address. If he can persuade the leasing office to cooperate with a list of tenants, it shouldn’t take long. Otherwise, he’ll have to go floor-to-floor and door-by-door and badge his way into places.”

  “I see.”

  “Meanwhile, I have a couple of questions for you.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Is there any chance that your vic might have been involved in money laundering?”

  This was such a new idea to Will that his mind froze. He was speechless for several seconds.

  “Spaulding? Are you still there?”

  “Uh, yes. I hadn’t even considered that my vic, Kendra Farrell, might have been involved in anything like money laundering. Why did you ask that?”

  “Couple of reasons. First, that building, to my certain knowledge, has offices for at least two dozen attorneys. Most of them are on the up-and-up. But in the two years that I’ve been down here, we’ve come across at least three that seem to do nothing but set up dummy corporations. And many of those have been implicated in money laundering. Most of their foreign clients are OC. Organized crime. Street gangs in Phoenix or Buffalo, for example, Armenian mafia in L.A., Russian Mob guys out of Brighton Beach, and the venerable Italian Mafia out of Kansas City.”

  “What can you tell me, in general, about those cases?”

  “Not a lot. The Secret Service usually takes the lead on straight money laundering. DEA runs cases involving narcotics trafficking. We have somewhat more resources in the region than other federal agencies, so we sometimes provide assets or tech support.”

  “Just so we’re on the same page, does it usually happen that the money is moved out of the U.S. to a Costa Rican corporation, which means, a Costa Rican bank?”

  “Pretty much, but not always just that way. More often, the money is moved by wire transfer from one bank to another, to accounts controlled by shell corporations both here and in the U.S. Sometimes, it’s moved to six or eight different banks in a half a minute elapsed time. After the transfer is complete, some or all of those intermediate bank accounts will be closed and the shell corporations that own them will be folded up. Makes it much harder to trace where the money went.”

  “What about Belize? Are they in this racket, as well?”

  “That was the other reason we wondered about your vic. You told us that she arrived in Costa Rica with a boyfriend, poked around that building for a time, then suddenly decided to leave him here while she went to Belize. Belize banking laws are even more favorable to money laundering and tax-evading than are Costa Rica’s. It sounded to me like your vic came as a tourist with a boyfriend, a way that would draw no attention, and then after spending some time in our mystery office building dumped him and went to Belize. In ten minutes, she could have hired a lawyer to do something shady. Maybe less, if he was expecting her.”

  Will said, “I don’t think that’s the way it went down. She entered the lobby with her boyfriend, then had a long conversation at the security desk. The conversation was in Spanish, which is Greek to the boyfriend. But she didn’t sign any papers or pass anything to someone at the security desk.”

  “Maybe she went back?”

  “Yeah, that’s possible.”

  “Listen, Spaulding, I’ve got to get back to work. I’ll get that list to you ASAP. Anything that turns up regarding hanky-panky that comes under U.S. laws, keep Blair informed.”

  “Thanks for your help..”

  Seventy-nine

  Chelmin pulled into the motel lot and parked. It was a little before 9:00, and he was hungry, tired, and needed a toilet, but he wanted to speak with Will before satisfying his bodily needs. He dialed Will’s cell, and the call went straight to voicemail. Sighing, he got out of the car and climbed the stairs to the second floor, then pounded on Will’s door.

  No response. He pounded again, harder, and was rewarded with a muffled voice from within. After a long moment, the door opened, and Will appeared, wearing only his whitey tighties.

  “Sorry,” Chelmin said. “I didn’t think anyone went to bed this early.”

  “I was tired, Boss.”

  “I need to eat. Can you throw some clothes on and meet me in the coffee shop?”

  Will ducked his head. “Five minutes.”

  “Make it ten,” he said. “I’ve been on the road all day, and I need a toilet.”

  “Too much information!” Will said in mock horror, holding his hands palm out, as if to ward off the unpleasant image of Chelmin using a toilet.

  Fifteen minutes later, Chelmin took a seat opposite Will and beckoned to a waitress. He ordered a chef’s salad and a hamburger patty, well done. Will ordered a slice of peach pie and a glass of milk.

  They ate in silence until Chelmin swallowed the last of the hamburger, then washed it down with a long slug of water.

  “OK, tell me what you’ve been up to since the last time we met,” he said.

  Will began with his discovery that Kendra spoke Spanish, moved on to the trashing of her car and the hacking of her Facebook account, then described his interviews with Eugene Alter. He went through what he had so far gleaned about Kendra’s days in Costa Rica, including her brief visit to a certain office building, followed by her hurried flight to Belize, by way of Houston.

  Chelmin nodded. “You’ve been busy—good work. I’
ve worked with CID agents with ten years of experience who couldn’t have done so much so quickly.”

  Will’s face turned bright red. “Thanks, Boss.”

  Chelmin said, “What do you expect to find when you get that list of tenants in the San Jose building?”

  “I spoke with a Special Agent Lopez, FBI, in Costa Rica, and she raised the issue of money laundering. Before she brought that up, I wanted to do an Internet search for companies in Belize with the same name as those in Costa Rica. See if I could find a link between them.”

  Chelmin resumed his methodical assault on the salad. After a few minutes, he paused again. “Suppose that she’s washing money. Tell me how that might work for her. How would she set it up?”

  “If she somehow had money. Stolen money, or money from some illicit source. She flies down to Costa Rica with her boyfriend for a vacation. Does she have a couple of million in a suitcase? Or maybe only a few hundred thousand? She has a lawyer there create a shell company and open a bank account in its name. She deposits the money there. Then she goes to Belize and does the same thing, then transfers the money."

  Chelmin shook his head. “She’s smarter than that. She’d create a shell company in California or Nevada, deposit money in its bank account in small sums over a month or two, then transfer the money to a Houston subsidiary, then down to Belize.”

  “Yes, I guess so,” Will said.

  “You ran her financials. What did you find?”

  “She had a CD for $8,500 in a San Antonio bank. It’s been there for three years, according to the bank. She had a checking account with about $300 and a savings account with $2,500 or so.”

  Chelmin said, “Consumer debt?”

  “She owed almost $14,000 on her car and another $13,000 split among five credit cards.”

  Chelmin pushed the remnants of his salad away and took another drink of water. “Sounds like she was just keeping her head above water. Where would she get money to launder in Central America?”