Deadly Assets

by W. E. B Griffin

  Payne looked her in the eyes, made a thin smile, then turned to Tony.

  “Detective Harris, feel free to speak with the lady. Or not . . .”

  Payne then smoothly ducked under the yellow police line tape and began marching purposefully toward the red door of the ministry, where some of his small crowd of undercover officers stood. He saw, on the smoldering stage, the lectern with his burned poster.

  “Sergeant Payne!” Raychell Meadow called.

  Payne, without turning or breaking stride, held his right hand up to shoulder height, fingers spread wide.

  Harris thought: Is he about to fold everything but his middle finger . . . on camera?

  Payne waved once, then put his arm back down to his side.

  Raychell Meadow looked at Harris.

  “Detective?” she said. “What do you—”

  “No comment.”

  And then he ducked under the yellow tape and moved with purpose to catch up with Payne.

  IX

  [ ONE ]

  Queens Club Resort

  George Town, Grand Cayman Islands

  Saturday, December 15, 6:35 P.M.

  “I’m going to kill him!” H. Rapp Badde Jr. shouted right after snapping closed his Go To Hell flip phone and then almost throwing it out into the shimmering Caribbean Sea.

  The sun hung low in the western sky, an enormous sphere slowly sinking toward the horizon. Its rays, bathing everything in golden hues, cast long shadows across the five-star resort.

  Guests of Queens Club, most carrying drinks, were gathering up and down the sugar-white sand beach to await what promised to be yet another glorious tropical sunset.

  Kicking at the beach sand in frustration, Badde shouted, “Goddammit!”

  His voice caused heads to turn—just in time to witness him make a fist with his free hand and punch the thick trunk of a tall palm tree.

  “Damn it, that hurt!” Badde blurted, frantically waving the hand.

  A young mother, holding the hands of children as they walked nearby, said, “Come on, kids, hurry this way!”

  She tugged them toward the beach as the children stared wide-eyed over their shoulders at the madman who had hit a tree after yelling into his phone.

  Badde, a half hour earlier, watching large yachts moving off in the distance, had already been imagining himself counting his soon-to-be new wealth on his own luxury vessel.

  Now I can forget that—I’m on a sinking Titanic.

  It’s about to all go to hell . . .

  —

  They had all gathered near the resort’s seaside tiki bar in one of the twenty private cabanas. Each cabana had a frame fashioned of rough-hewn palm tree trunk, a roof of fronds, and walls of heavy white cotton duck fabric that undulated with the breeze.

  Above the doorway, which had its two panels of white cotton duck tied back, was a hand-carved sign with brightly painted letters that read JOLLY MON CABANA. Inside, the cabana held six chaise lounges topped with thick royal blue cushions, a low bamboo table, and four armchairs arranged around a table topped with a soaring birds-of-paradise floral centerpiece. Broad fan blades made of woven palms hung from the raised ceiling and undulated, adding to the cool ocean breeze.

  Janelle Harper sat at the table across from Rapp Badde. Each had a tall, icy glass filled with locally crafted Governor’s Reserve dark rum, tonic water, and a lime wedge.

  Sitting between them was Miguel Santos, a beefy Hispanic in his late twenties who had his big hand wrapped around a dripping wet bottle of Red Stripe beer that he had just pulled from a cooler of ice.

  “Mike” Santos, the chief executive officer of OneWorld Private Equity Partners, had a chubby face with dark eyes and thick wavy black hair, combed back and reaching his collar. He wore a tight-fitting black T-shirt with faded blue jeans and, despite it being a tropical island, black pointed-toe Western boots, which now had a dusting of white sand.

  “I’m glad you two could get away on such short notice,” Santos said. “In addition to executing the contracts here, this gives me a chance to share with you both a detailed tour of what we hope to do with the casinos.”

  “We’re quite happy we could make it,” Jan said politely. “And thank you for sending the jet.”

  “The view here is a helluva lot better than back home,” Badde said, flashing his toothy politician’s smile. “Do you have any idea how miserable the snow and cold have been in Philly?”

  Santos chuckled.

  “Yeah, Rapp, it’s already damn cold in Dallas, too,” he said, and turned to Harper. “Which is partly why my partner is unhappy he couldn’t make the trip. And Bobby was looking forward to meeting you, Jan. He speaks highly of your skill in reviewing the contracts.”

  Janelle Harper had graduated from Temple University’s Beasley School of Law two years earlier.

  “That’s very kind,” Jan said. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome,” Santos said, and smiled warmly at her.

  Badde’s eyes darted between the two as he tried to discern if there was something he was missing in their exchange.

  Badde had met Santos, along with his partner, a lawyer by the name of Robert Garza, a month earlier in their offices in Uptown Dallas. OneWorld Private Equity Partners occupied the penthouse, on the twenty-fourth floor of its building. The partners had explained that they had arranged the financing for the entire complex, which was owned by the same clients who owned luxury resorts worldwide, including Queens Club, for which they had also arranged the financing.

  Badde remembered them saying that China Global Investments owned Yellowrose, one of the foreign conglomerate’s four significant companies in the hospitality market.

  “We packaged Yellowrose, then sold it to them, and continue to help them expand it,” Garza had told him.

  Robert “Bobby” Garza, thirty years old, was a tall, light-brown-skinned man with a neatly trimmed goatee and a smoothly shaven scalp. In contrast to Santos’s jeans and boots, he wore crisp slacks and a white dress shirt. He was a Tejano—a Texan of criollo Spanish descent—his family having lived near San Antonio when the area was still Mexican territory and called Tejas.

  Santos’s family, meanwhile, was from Colombia, and had cattle ranches there, as well as in Argentina and Brazil. His father had sent him to boarding school in San Antonio at age thirteen—where he and Garza first met—then he went on to graduate from the Ranch Management program—“with an MBA in Cow Shit,” he said—at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth.

  “Rapp said you started out as a cattle rancher,” Jan Harper said to Santos. “How did you wind up . . . well, here?”

  “Jan, where one finds cattle, one also finds cow pies—”

  He paused when she shook her head at the unfamiliar term.

  “That’s cow shit, honey,” Badde put in, then in an attempt to illustrate, held his hands up about a foot apart. “When they go, it’s pretty wet, and it makes a big brown—”

  “I get the picture, Rapp,” she interrupted.

  “My apology, Jan,” Santos went on. “I shouldn’t have started with that. It’s just that I felt comfortable enough in your company to use my usual explanation.”

  She smiled. “No apology necessary, Mr. Santos.”

  “Please. As I said, it’s ‘Mike.’”

  He smiled warmly again.

  “Mike,” she said, and also smiled warmly.

  Badde looked somewhat suspiciously between them again.

  He thought: I made a point to call her “honey”—for his benefit as much as hers—and she about chewed off my head with that reply.

  Santos went on: “What I meant to say was that I grew up working on the ranch, and didn’t want to spend the rest of my lifetime around the odor that seems to permeate everything.”

  She nodded and smiled.

 
“But,” he continued, “a bigger reason was that after graduating TCU, I still was a Colombian national with a just-about-expired student visa. If I wanted to stay in the States—legally stay in the States, since many simply overstay their visas after they expire and risk deportation—I needed a Plan B. I had my MBA, and crews running the ranch, and decided venture capital looked appealing. When Bobby was in law school, he was learning the ins and outs of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service’s visas.”

  “The HB ones we talked about, right?” Badde said.

  Santos, being careful not to directly correct him, said, “Right. The specialty occupation H-1Bs are for architects, doctors, engineers, fashion models. They’re good for three years, with a three-year renewal. H-2Bs are the seasonal jobs, like for migrant farm workers. And he was introduced to the EB-5 green card program that fast-tracks you to permanent resident status. He told me about it, and we decided to start OneWorld Private Equity Partners. One of the first things OneWorld did, as a test case you might say, was to get me my citizenship through the EB-5.”

  “You mind me asking what you did to qualify for the program?” Badde said.

  “Not at all. I thought we’d touched on that in Dallas,” Santos said. “I created the ranch on the Texas border. I had the two already, then bought three smaller ranches and combined them all to create Rio Grande Organic Farms. We grow citrus—grapefruit, oranges, lemons, limes—and run an average of two thousand head of cattle.”

  “How did that qualify for the EB-5?” Badde said, then chuckled. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but you can’t count the cows, right?”

  Santos smiled.

  “You’re right. But any foreign national investing at least a million dollars in a U.S. business that creates and maintains at least ten jobs for existing Americans, plus ones for himself and his family members, gets a green card for himself, his wife, and his kids under twenty-one. Which is what we did.”

  “You’re married, Mike? And have children?” Jan said.

  Santos looked at her and shook his head.

  “Still looking for the special someone,” he said.

  “Mike, have you ever heard that marriage is like a deck of playing cards?” Badde said.

  “Rappe . . . ?” Jan said, her tone warning.

  “No, can’t say that I have heard that,” Santos said.

  Badde grinned.

  “Yeah,” he said, “in the beginning of a marriage you just need two hearts and a diamond . . .”

  “Ha,” Santos said.

  “. . . But in the end you want a club and a spade.”

  Jan shook her head.

  Santos chuckled.

  “Duly noted,” he said.

  He turned to Jan, then added, “With Rio Grande Organic Farms, I added more than fifty full-time positions. Not counting the seasonal jobs, which require the 2B visas for those who aren’t citizens.”

  He paused and looked at Badde.

  “Did you know demand for 1B visas runs in the six figures, but only sixty-five thousand are issued? Meanwhile, the U.S. never issues all ten thousand EB-5s that are available each year. Which we are going to change.”

  Santos then gestured, holding his arms wide.

  “Anyway, so here I am,” he said. “And here we are.”

  “Interesting,” Jan Harper said, sipped her rum, then added, “And there are some five hundred banks here, is that right?”

  Santos nodded.

  “Correct. Which is why OneWorld does all its business here. As you probably know, the Caymans are called the Switzerland of the Caribbean. For a couple main reasons. One, it has those five hundred–plus banks you mentioned. And, two, it has the confidential Relationships Preservation Law—in which Section Five imposes criminal penalties—fines and imprisonment—if someone attempts to share confidential information. That of course includes where funds come from and where they go, but everything else, too, including the names of the officers of a company.”

  “Remarkable,” Jan said. “And it’s certainly kept everyone who’s investing with Diamond Development happy.”

  Santos nodded again.

  “That is why all our investment vehicles for Diamond Development are FINS—Focused Investment Niche Strategies. They’re highly diversified, include many EB-5s, and, being Cayman-based, the lid on them is kept tight.”

  “Rapp,” Jan said, turning to Badde, who was draining his glass of rum with his straw, “that’s what I was talking about with Yuri. Reassuring him of the confidentiality and stability of the investment . . .”

  The Philadelphia Economic Gentrification Initiative’s first project had been to replace an abandoned factory on the banks of the Delaware with the new Lucky Stars Casino & Entertainment facility. Diamond Development—forty-nine percent was owned by Yuri Tikhonov through shell companies; minority-owned companies, including Urban Ventures LLC, which Badde had a small piece of, held the rest—was constructing a new indoor sports and live music coliseum that could fit sixty thousand fans under a retractable roof.

  Jan went on: “. . . especially since PEGI cuts through the red tape to get the EB-5 applicants approved. That’s critical. A typical investor could expect a seven to ten percent return on investment. A foreign national wanting U.S. citizenship will settle for around two percent—if they’re assured the project has Fed approval.”

  “Exactly,” Santos said. “It’s equally critical for those borrowing the money, because they’re paying less interest.” He grinned. “Which of course allows for higher profits.”

  Badde nodded.

  “And that’s damn cheap ROI,” Santos added.

  “ROI?” Badde said.

  “Return on investment. Rapp, your hotel project is going to get a mighty sweet ROI.”

  Badde grinned, then flashed his full toothy smile.

  Then he felt his Go To Hell flip phone vibrate. He looked at the caller ID. It read gibberish: #01-0K0-30X-V34-X%K.

  He ignored it.

  [ TWO ]

  Strawberry Mansion, Philadelphia

  Saturday, December 15, 6:55 P.M.

  “How long do we gotta stay down here?” Tyrone Hooks said, trying hard not to shiver as yet more cold water dripped on him from the roof of the tunnel.

  Hooks could just barely make out in the dark tunnel the form of Reverend Josiah Cross sitting on an empty plastic milk crate. Both Hooks and Cross were wrapped in thick woolen blankets.

  “Shhhh,” Cross said, glancing up at Hooks, who was standing. “Keep your voice down until we get to where it’s all clear.”

  “I don’t know how much more of this cold I can take,” Hooks said.

  “Cold I can deal with,” Cross said, then chuckled. “But that stinking smell of yours got old a long time ago.”

  “Said I was sorry. Never been shot at before.”

  —

  Tyrone Hooks was no stranger to the sound of gunfire—for as long as he could remember, he had heard shots in his neighborhood on a regular basis, sometimes every night on weekends—and at the rally there had been no doubt in his mind that he was hearing shots fired in the crowd.

  The real trouble was that he saw the black guy—he stood by a group of white people—aim and fire at him. Which had been why he automatically dropped to the stage.

  He’d seen that Reverend Cross had done the same, and as Hooks tried to think quickly about what to do next—how to get the hell away from what he expected to be more bullets aimed at him—he suddenly felt a big hand roughly grabbing the back of his hoodie and dragging him from the stage.

  Once on the sidewalk, his heart feeling as if it could beat through his chest at any second, he struggled to get to his feet. When Hooks looked up, he saw DiAndre Pringle pulling Reverend Cross from the stage and then dodging those rushing past as he tugged Cross toward the red doors of the ministry.

>   Pringle looked back over his shoulder.

  “This way, Ty! C’mon! Move your ass!” he called to Hooks.

  Hooks felt a hand on the small of his back pushing him toward the doorway.

  —

  Once they were all inside, and the red door was slammed shut, Hooks followed Cross and Pringle across the big room and to the staircase at the back of the row house.

  Outside, the police sirens, more and more of them, were getting louder.

  “Keep up, Ty,” Pringle said, and led them quickly down the wooden steps into the basement.

  At the bottom, behind the back staircase, was a heavy wooden panel with shelving, made to look like the rest of the wood paneling of the basement. It was about the size of a narrow door—and, Hooks saw, for a reason.

  Pringle gave a hard push on the left end of the panel, and it slid to the right, revealing a passageway with a raw earthen floor, walls reinforced by wooden beams, and a ceiling of chipped stone.

  “Here, Rev,” Pringle said, handing Cross a small flashlight.

  “What the hell is this?” Hooks said as he looked at where the dim beam lit the darkened hole.

  “It began as an escape route, Ty,” Pringle said, “and it stored homemade moonshine and beer during Prohibition.”

  “Escape from what?”

  “From the cops, man!” Pringle said. “Just like now. Now stop fucking talking and get going!”

  He shoved Hooks through the opening and slid shut the panel door.

  Hooks looked down into the tunnel.

  Cross, the dim flashlight beam bouncing off the rough-cut rock and the wooden beams, was leaving him behind.

  Damn it!

  Tyrone Hooks then noticed a familiar sickly sweet smell, and about the time he realized what it was, he sensed a very warm, moist spot in the back of his briefs.

  Oh, man! I don’t remember doing that!

  But . . . I almost died!

  Pulling out his cell phone, he lit up the screen, cursed that he had no service, then held the phone out before him, its light casting a green glow down into the tunnel.

  He tried opening the panel door behind him. It did not budge.