Head On_A Novel of the Near Future

by John Scalzi

  “Do you think it was a suicide?” I pressed Vann.

  “I can’t say,” she said. “I am curious how Chapman got to Boston. She left her car at home.”

  “Hired car to the train station or airport,” Tony said.

  “No purchase information on her credit accounts or purchases from Amtrak or the airlines. She definitely didn’t walk through airport security in Philly. I made those assholes from the Philly branch check.”

  “It’s six hours from Philly to Boston by car or train,” I said.

  Vann nodded again. “For the timing of this to work, Marla Chapman would have had to start going to Boston pretty much the minute the news about the affair broke. It’s that tight.”

  “So, no. We don’t think it was a suicide,” I concluded.

  “We don’t. You and I. Brookline’s police think so because they have Marla Chapman’s dead body in Silva’s side yard with a gun and a bullet hole in her head. But given the fact that the Brookline police’s major crime investigation experience involves trying to find who is stealing FedEx packages from apartment foyers, I’ve had the Bureau’s Boston branch step in and take over the investigation.”

  “And how do we feel about Boston’s FBI?” I asked.

  “They’re better than Philly’s, at least.” She turned to Tony. “Tell us what you have.”

  “Well, first,” Tony said, “the tank threep that destroyed our house and tried to kill an innocent cat has no official owner. The VIN pops up nothing in the vehicle database, but it does pop up a manufacturer, which is a certain boutique operation out of Baltimore.”

  “Van Diemen,” I said.

  “Bingo,” Tony said, pointing at me. “This is not the first time they’ve popped up in your investigation, so if I were you the next time I visited them I’d be going in there with warrants and firearms.”

  “Not very subtle.”

  “My house is wrecked and I’m sitting in an FBI conference room with a cat and three forensics accountants. I’m not into subtle at the moment.”

  “Fair.”

  “What else?” Vann asked.

  “Speaking of forensics accountants, ours here found some very interesting things. Chris, you said that Silva said her information showed the league was laundering money.”

  “That’s right,” I said.

  “Well, she’s not one hundred percent accurate with her police work. There’s nothing here that shows the league laundering money directly.”

  “‘Directly’?”

  “You caught the qualifier there. Good. So, what’s happening is that a lot of what looks to be dirty money is coming into a third-party company, and that third party is the one who is investing heavily into the international leagues.”

  “Let me guess,” I said. “It’s Labram.”

  “Another bingo,” Tony said. “And from what these accountants here are telling me, it looks like they’re doing it reasonably cleverly. Labram works with these shady companies on legitimate enterprises and charges them a premium on standard rates. Like a third or so. Enough to soak up some ill-gotten money, but not enough that it looks like anything other than your basic capitalistic taking advantage of a client thing. Labram gives the companies the option of paying in cryptocurrency, so they get paid in one that is relatively cheap to buy into, and then they manipulate the market to drive up the price.”

  “How easy is that to do?” Vann asked.

  “Super easy,” Tony said. “There are a lot of chumps out there who think they’re financial geniuses. You don’t even have to do anything illegal to do it, just trigger the greed of the underinformed. The secret is selling before it all crashes, which it will.”

  “So Labram overcharges and then speculates,” I said. “Where’s the laundering?”

  “The laundering comes with Labram’s investments in the foreign leagues. They’re not making an investment in the league directly. They’re creating these limited liability companies as investment vehicles, taking a controlling partnership in the LLCs, and then inviting the shady companies they do business with to become minority partners in them.”

  “So then the foreign Hilketa leagues start play and a year or two later the minority partners sells their shares back to Labram, who buys them for a ridiculously inflated price,” Vann said.

  “A ridiculously inflated price that corresponds to the premium they paid for Labram’s services plus some percentage of the run-up on the cryptocurrency,” Tony said. “The dirty money’s clean, everyone’s happy, and everyone’s richer, except for the dumbasses who came in too late on the cryptocurrency.”

  “Seems a little straightforward for world-class money laundering,” Vann said.

  “I’m giving you the condensed version,” Tony assured her. “The accounting geeks tell me the actual setup is really very clever in some deeply questionable ways. And it’s not even the first time Labram’s done it.”

  “When did they do it before?”

  “When Amelie Parker went and created that sports supplement company. A fair chunk of the angel investors just happened to be either the shadyish companies Labram does business with, or their owners taking a personal flier. They invest, Amelie Parker’s company putters around for a few years, doing just well enough not to fail, and then Labram comes in and buys it up at a premium.”

  “Everyone makes money, everyone’s happy,” Vann said. She turned to me. “And I’m guessing they’re going to do it again with that MobilOn thing. The one she wants you as a spokesperson for.”

  “The one she’s going to pay me in equity for,” I said.

  “I would definitely do that if I were you,” Tony said. “That’s as close to a guaranteed payout as you’re ever going to get.”

  “But she doesn’t need me,” I said. “If all of this is a money-laundering scam, a celebrity spokesperson is beside the point. Or outside investors like my parents.”

  “No, that’s the genius of it,” Tony said. “Get enough publicity and enough legitimate outside investment to camouflage the money-laundering parts.”

  “I feel so used,” I said, and I was only half-joking about it.

  “Now you know what your celebrity is good for,” Vann said.

  “So the North American Hilketa League is completely out of the loop on this,” I said to Tony, getting back to the conversation at hand.

  “Sure,” Tony said. “Let’s go with that.”

  “I sense skepticism.”

  “Your pinky pal tries to blackmail the league with this information and her lover turns up dead shortly thereafter. Then the league official responsible for the foreign deals. Then the dead player’s wife, who allegedly tries to murder her rival. Oh, and let’s not forget that our house got destroyed trying to kill a fucking cat. Yes, I am skeptical the league is not in on this somehow.”

  “You didn’t tell Silva we got into her data vault,” Vann said.

  I shook my head. “No. And for that matter she didn’t tell me about it. She wants me to think she still has the information.”

  “Your pinky promises sit on a throne of lies,” Tony said.

  “She feels like she’s bargaining for her life,” I reminded him.

  “We have people with her,” Vann said. “And the hospital has her on a private floor to keep the journalists and fans away. Unless ninjas come for her, she’ll be fine.”

  “Is there anything in the data vault implicating the league?” I asked Tony.

  “Your people are still looking through it. There’s a lot of stuff here.”

  “What about Labram itself?” I asked. “Chapman died with Labram supplements in his system. Parker’s Integrator was with Kaufmann just before he died. And she had the lawyers of some of Labram’s shadier partners in her home this morning.”

  “It’s all circumstantial at this point,” Vann said. “If we had the supplements we could test them but the fucking Philly branch screwed that up. Chapman’s autopsy didn’t find anything. Kaufmann’s autopsy is inconclusive. And there’
s no law against having shady lawyers in your home.”

  “It’s a lot of circumstance,” I pointed out.

  “And it’s still not enough. We’re not actually investigating money laundering or blackmail or morally compromised Integrators. We’re investigating the deaths of Duane Chapman and Alex Kaufmann. Right now, there’s still no evidence that they didn’t die of cardiac arrest for one and suicide for the other. The circumstances around it are damning as hell. But we still have to connect them.”

  “What do you want to do?” I asked. “We have Silva, but everyone else is either lawyered up or a lawyer.”

  “We start small,” Vann said.

  “No one in this is small. Or has small lawyers.”

  “No. We’ve got a few.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Scare the shit out of them, is my current plan.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  “I flew down from Boston today and my colleague here drove up from Washington, D.C., Mr. Ortiz,” Vann said, leaning forward on the Philadelphia police interrogation room table. “I tell you this so you can appreciate how magnificently fucked you are, that you have federal agents coming from across the Eastern Seaboard to talk to you.”

  Pedro Ortiz, cousin of Alton Ortiz, looked as deeply confused as only someone who had spent the night in the city jail on charges he didn’t comprehend could. Sitting next to him was his attorney, a young kid in a bad suit who was clearly out of his element.

  “And you,” Vann said, turning her attention to him. “Public defender or junior associate?”

  “I happen to—” the (I assumed) public defender began, but Vann cut him off, and then pointed to him.

  “This one is not good enough for the shit you’re in right now,” Vann said to Pedro.

  “I went to Penn,” the lawyer said, defensively.

  “Do you know what shit you’re in right now?” Vann asked Pedro, ignoring the lawyer.

  Pedro looked at Vann, and then me, and then his lawyer. “When I was arrested they said arson, but—”

  “Tell him what else he’s won, Agent Shane,” Vann said to me.

  “So, there’s the arson charge, which you already know about,” I said. “Also, destruction of property, multiple charges, attempted murder, multiple charges, voluntary and involuntary manslaughter, also multiple charges, conspiracy to commit arson, conspiracy to commit murder, and animal cruelty.”

  “Animal cruelty?” Pedro said.

  “There was a cat in that apartment when you set it on fire,” Vann said.

  “I didn’t know about any cat,” Pedro said. His lawyer groaned and slid down a little in his chair.

  “Basically a whole raft of local, state, and federal charges that you’ll be charged with, not to mention the civil suits that will be filed by the landlord and every single tenant you burned out of a home. Do you have insurance, Mr. Ortiz?”

  “Not that much,” he said.

  “I didn’t think so. So,” Vann said, and folded her hands together on the table. “You can talk to us, or take your chances with Clarence Darrow over here. But before you answer, let me be honest with you: We don’t want you. We don’t even want your cousin, who is why you’re here in the first place. So if you work with us and tell us useful things, we’ll work with you. But if you don’t—”

  “We don’t want you but we’ll be happy to take you,” I finished. “It’ll give closure to the people you burned out of their homes.”

  “Give me a second with my client,” the lawyer said, and then leaned over to whisper in Pedro’s ear. Pedro listened for a few seconds then screwed up his face and looked at his lawyer. “No shit, genius,” he said, and then turned to Vann. “This one here thinks I should make a deal with you.”

  “He’s very wise,” Vann said.

  “I want immunity for my client,” the lawyer said.

  “I’m sure you do.” Vann looked to Pedro. “Let’s hear what you got.”

  “A couple years back Alton tells me that he’s got a friend who is looking for an apartment,” Pedro said. “Nothing fancy or too expensive, just someplace he can use as an office. He knows I do a lot of electrical work for landlords and property managers so I might know someplace and maybe get him a good deal. So I find him that place on Natrona. It’s only an okay building, but the area is gentrifying. It’s fine. Alton slips me a hundred in appreciation, and that’s it. I see him sometimes at family things.

  “Then about two months ago he comes back to me and wants a favor. Turns out his friend is using the apartment to screw around and the wife wants to come in and take pictures and gather evidence for the divorce proceeding. And I say, okay, so what does that have to do with me? And he asks me to cut the power to the apartment so she can get in. So I ask what’s wrong with a goddamned key and he says the dude doesn’t know his wife knows about the apartment so it has to be a secret, and the dude has all sorts of security because he has expensive threeps in there. And then Alton offers me a bribe.”

  “How much?” Vann asked.

  “Two thousand dollars. So, okay, I have a kid in college. Fine. He tells me what day his girlfriend wants to get into the apartment, and then the next time I’m checking the system I program in a routine that turns off the power in the apartment for thirty minutes. It’s a kludge and I have to turn off some safeguards for the building to make it work, but it’s for thirty minutes so I don’t think it’s a big deal. I tell Alton the time, and set a note for myself to revert the system the next time I go to run maintenance to purge out the kludge. The next thing I know the place has burned down.”

  “What do you think happened?” Vann asked.

  “I don’t know,” Pedro said. “The electrical system was old and even with the software to manage it there were always problems and shorts. Someone probably just plugged one too many things into an old shitty power strip.”

  “You’ll affirm all of this in writing.”

  “Give me a pen. Whatever this is, I don’t want any part of it. I love my cousin, but this is out of ‘do for family’ territory.”

  “This was all through your cousin,” Vann asked. “No one else involved.”

  “Not with me,” Pedro said.

  “Did you know Duane Chapman at all?” I asked.

  “The guy who rented the apartment? No. But I didn’t know any of the renters that well. I’m not on site all the time. I contract out for a lot of buildings. Occasionally I go into the apartments if I have to do work. The manager lets me in if they’re not home. I was never in that guy’s apartment after the first week he rented it and he needed the high-capacity outlets for his threep pads.”

  “How about Marla Chapman?”

  “No, I never met her.”

  “You called her Alton’s girlfriend,” Vann said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Why did you do that?”

  “Because she was.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “That’s what he told me when I asked him why he gave a shit.”

  “And you’re sure they’re sexually engaged with each other.”

  “I don’t have pictures,” Pedro said. “But, yeah, I’m sure. Ma’am, I don’t want to be sexist, but the only reason a man sells out his friend is if he’s screwing his wife.”

  “Did you go to Penn Law?” Vann asked the next lawyer we saw, two hours later, this one in another part of town, in a hotel conference room the NAHL rented for the occasion.

  “No, I went to Georgetown,” said the lawyer, who had introduced herself as Keshia Sanborn. “Why do you ask?”

  “No particular reason,” Vann said. She turned to Alton Ortiz, who sat there in his suit. “And you’re sure that you want to be represented by the NAHL and Ms. Sanborn here?”

  “Yes,” Ortiz said, and then looked over to Sanborn, confused.

  “Is there some reason you’re choosing to start this entirely voluntary session by attacking me, Agent Vann?” Sanborn asked. “Because I have to say that it doesn’t in
cline me to allow my client to continue.”

  “I just want to make sure Mr. Ortiz is aware that at some point, his interests and the interests of the NAHL diverge. And while it’s all very well that you’ve taken his case pro bono out of the goodness of your heart, Ms. Sanborn, I think it’s fair for Mr. Ortiz to ask himself how much of the advice he gets from you is for his benefit, and how much is for your usual employer.”

  “What does that mean?” Ortiz asked.

  “It means we know about you and Marla Chapman,” I said.

  Ortiz looked shocked.

  “Your cousin told us all about it, Mr. Ortiz,” Vann said. “Told us how Marla Chapman decided that if her husband was seeing people on the side, it was only fair that she was extended the same privileges.”

  I pushed forward a manila folder to Sanborn. “Texts and messages between Mr. Ortiz and Marla Chapman,” I said. “We got a warrant for her phone as part of the investigation into her death.” I turned to Ortiz. “My condolences to you, Mr. Ortiz.”

  “Thank you,” Ortiz said, in a dazed tone of voice.

  “Here’s the thing, Mr. Ortiz,” Vann said, stepping on my condolences. “We know you and Marla Chapman were an item. We have a sworn affidavit from your cousin attesting that you approached him to fiddle with the wiring in Duane Chapman’s love nest, which led to the entire building burning down.” At this I slid another folder over to Sanborn, with Pedro Ortiz’s statement inside. “And you ran from us when we came to talk to you the other day, which we don’t usually consider the action of someone with a clear conscience.”

  “What are you accusing my client of, Agent Vann?” Sanborn asked.

  “It’s not what I’m accusing him of that’s important here, it’s what your interest is here, Ms. Sanborn.” Vann looked at Sanborn. “Yours and the NAHL’s. But since you’ve asked, we’re going to accuse your client of first-degree murder. He had the means, motive, and opportunity to kill Duane Chapman, and there’s evidence to suggest he’d been planning this for a while. For as long as he and Marla Chapman were an item, at the very least.” Vann turned her attention back to Ortiz. “You decided you’d had enough of Chapman and you didn’t want to have to keep sneaking around with Marla. You doped his supplement IV with something you thought could get past the usual sorts of tests, he had his seizure and died, and you and Marla Chapman live comfortably ever after on the insurance and league benefits. And you might have gotten away with it too if it weren’t for the apartment fire and your cousin giving you up.”