“Your father seems to have made fewer changes in his work habits than in his appearance,” Luke commented. “Judging by these files, he’s spent the past six months working exactly the same sort of financial deals that he put together so successfully before he disappeared.”
“In a way, that’s only to be expected, don’t you think? Whatever else we’ve learned about my father, none of it has changed the fact that he has a near-genius for spotting small-and medium-size businesses that are poised on the verge of success and just need an infusion of cash in order to grow. It seems only logical for him to continue doing what he does best.”
Luke frowned in thought. “Logical up to a certain point, I agree. Except that if I’d gone to as much trouble as Ron in order to disappear, I’d want to make more of a change in my life than moving someplace new and then working exactly the same sort of deals.”
“Maybe having a new lover and no kids was all the change he needed.” Kate sounded more resentful than she’d intended and she quickly amended her answer. “Actually, I’m not doing him justice. We shouldn’t forget that as far as his initial disappearance from the Miami hotel is concerned, my father deserves the benefit of the doubt about his motives.”
“How so?” Luke didn’t look in the least forgiving.
“Well, according to everything Adam learned in Belize, my father didn’t disappear because he woke up one morning and decided it would be nice to get rid of his wives and children. He disappeared because he was warned people had been hired to murder him. His life was at risk.”
“You’re right.” Luke made the concession reluctantly, obviously unhappy about cutting Ron any slack. “I guess whatever we conclude about Julio Castellano’s honesty, it does seem clear by now that people really were trying to kill your father.”
Kate traced a finger over the mustache sported by “Ramsey Roanoke.” “That could be another reason he’s using all these disguises and why he’s so desperate to avoid contact with us and the rest of his family. Maybe he still feels his life is in danger, so he wants to remain officially dead. His enemies aren’t going to waste time and energy targeting a dead person.”
Luke nodded in grudging agreement. “The smugglers at the platinum mine have been arrested by the Belizean police according to Adam, but nobody’s captured Julio Castellano as far as we know, right?”
“The cops haven’t heard a word about him or from him,” Kate said.
“That suggests there’s a hell of a lot we still don’t understand about your father’s dealings with Castellano. I guess it’s even possible that Ron warned you off last night because he was afraid you were putting yourself in the path of danger aimed at him.”
It was a possibility Kate hadn’t considered before. She was still mulling the idea over, wondering if she was too anxious to latch on to any excuse for her father’s miserable behavior, when Seth scooted his chair across the tile floor and handed her another slim stack of papers.
“That’s the printout for the second file,” he said. “RR22.”
This file had only a dozen pages and the significance of the content was much harder to understand. A word or two, all in capital letters, was centered on each page. Charts, containing four columns with a sprinkling of numbers in each column, made up the rest of the content. On all twelve pages, the first three columns were without headers. The final column was topped by a dollar sign, suggesting that the figures in that column represented sums of money. However, there was no way to tell if the sums were debts, bills, receivables or money paid into a bank account somewhere.
“Is it an accounts ledger?” Kate asked.
“Could be.” Luke finished leafing through the sheets. “If so, it’s a very simple one, though.”
“The first column might be a date.” Anna had joined them and leaned over Luke’s shoulder to scrutinize the mysterious pages. “Look, there’s always a slash between the first and second number—4/22, 5/31, 6/17 and so on.”
“There’s nothing higher than 10/2.” Kate skimmed quickly through the pages. “Or I guess I should say there’s no entry later than the second of October, if these really are dates.”
Anna gave a satisfied nod. “That October 2 date would tie in with the fact that Luke spotted Ron at our cousin’s restaurant on October 3. Presumably Ron made some entries on Tuesday the second, after which the record—whatever it is—stops.”
“Because Ron was on the run after the third,” Luke said. “That sounds plausible.” He spread the pages over the table for easier side-by-side comparison. “You’re both right, there’s nothing noted after 10/2 on any of these sheets. That could mean we’re seeing a date in column one and a payment or charge in column four, separated by two columns that represent…we have no clue.”
“Mathematically speaking, the numbers are random.” Anna stared at the columns as if willing them to make sense. “I can’t detect any pattern at all.”
“They’re small numbers,” Luke pointed out. “There’s nothing higher than three hundred, not even in the money column.”
“But we have no way of knowing if Ron mentally added a bunch of zeroes to some of these entries,” Anna said. “Is he really talking about three hundred bucks here, and a hundred and fifty there? Or should we add a couple of zeroes and call it thirty thousand and fifteen thousand?”
“Or add four zeroes and call it three million.” Kate grimaced in frustration and then pointed to the headers at the top of each page. “And what about these? Are they words, or are they initials?”
“I think they’re words,” Anna said. “A few of them even seem vaguely familiar, but I can’t for the life of me remember the context where I heard them.” She read a couple of the headers out loud. “Chaac. Yumil Kaxob.” She frowned. “Not star systems. Not galaxies. Where the hell have I come across those words before?”
“It doesn’t even look like a real language to me,” Kate said. “I’m not convinced they’re words. Seth, is it possible the headers are still encoded?”
He swiveled his chair around and squinted at the headers. “It’s possible, but they weren’t encoded as part of the computer program. I can tell you this much for sure, the headers were originally numbers, and they converted to those groups of letters when I applied my decryption protocol. They could have been doubly encoded, of course.”
“I’ve got it!” Luke interjected with visible triumph. “I know what they are! They’re Mayan gods and goddesses. “Chaac is the Mayan god of rain and thunder. Kinich Ahau is the sun god. Yumil Kaxob…I don’t remember who he is. Maybe he’s the god of farming, or maize and crops or something. I don’t have a clue about the others, but it seems likely they’re Mayan deities, too. Oh, wait, I just remembered who Kukulcan is. He’s the big boss, the feathered serpent who likes to have virgins cut up on his stone altars.”
“Okay, I’m impressed,” Anna said. “How in the world did you know that, little brother?”
He grinned. “Remember Liz Griffiths?”
“Oh my God, the dreaded Liz Griffiths!” Anna laughed and expanded for Kate and Seth’s benefit. “Liz was a girlfriend of Luke’s—”
“Briefly a girlfriend,” Luke interrupted.
“Okay, briefly a girlfriend,” Anna conceded. “She was a good person, really nice in fact, but she was a graduate student in archaeology and she couldn’t stop talking about the glories of the Mayan civilization. I mean, she literally couldn’t stop.”
“When I started dating Liz, she had just spent the summer in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, excavating an ancient temple,” Luke explained. “She came to our Savarini family dinner one Sunday and spent two hours giving us a nonstop lecture on the religious and cultural history of the Mayan civilization. I thought she would be talked out after that marathon, but on the next Sunday, she said she’d like to drive to my parents’ house by herself because she’d be coming in from Lake Forest. It was only when she arrived at the front door that we discovered she’d brought slides, all taken at the excavation site.
”
“She insisted on making a presentation while we were eating dessert,” Anna said, laughing. “There were a hundred slides, and she had something to say about every damn one. Lots of the slides were taken in tunnels of dirt, showing pieces of rock with squiggles on them, which didn’t seem to fascinate any of us nearly as much as it fascinated Liz. It’s the only time I remember my family being stunned into absolute silence.”
Luke laughed. “Trust me, Annie, if you thought dinner and the slide show were bad, I promise you it got worse. Liz could work those damned Mayan gods into every imaginable and unimaginable situation. Especially the unimaginable ones, come to think of it. I’m surprised I didn’t recognize the names sooner. I’d have sworn those gods were etched into my memory for all eternity.”
Kate decided that Luke and his sister were too busy reminiscing about Liz Griffiths to have noticed that identifying the page headers as Mayan gods and goddesses hardly solved the mystery of what the columns of figures actually meant.
“I’m thrilled to know what—who?—Chaac and Yumil Kaxob are, but why would my father have chosen to name these pages in honor of Mayan gods?” she asked.
“Maybe he just needed headers and pulled something out of Wikipedia,” Anna suggested.
“That doesn’t make much sense.” Luke frowned. “If Ron wanted identifiers, what’s wrong with heading the pages A, B, C, and so on? Why mess with something as out of the ordinary as Mayan gods? Surely they have to carry some real meaning?”
“It can’t be a coincidence that Consuela Mackenzie comes from a family that has Mayan ancestry,” Kate said.
“So he named the pages as a tip of the hat to his new girlfriend, you mean?” Luke nodded. “It’s possible.”
“I think it’s something more complex than that.” Kate rubbed her forehead, trying to tease out a buried memory. “I’m remembering what Adam told us about his time with Julio Castellano—”
“Who’s he?” Seth had apparently found their conversation interesting enough to stop working and had joined them at the table where they were poring over the printouts.
“Castellano is the man who was accused of murdering my father,” Kate said. “A warrant for his arrest was issued back in June. But the cops here in the States have Castellano’s bio and life history all wrong. His arrest record describes Castellano as an illegal Mexican immigrant. In fact, he was born and raised in Belize, and his ancestry is mixed Hispanic and Mayan.”
“I guess my response to that is something along the lines of, so what?” Luke said. “I agree that Consuela and Julio both have ties to the Mayan community. They’re related, so obviously their ethnic roots will be similar. But how does the fact that Julio Castellano has Mayan ancestors provide a reason for Ron to use the names of Mayan gods to head up his charts?”
“You have to think of the bigger picture,” Kate persisted. “Step back and work from the premise that Castellano has links to my father beyond the fact that Consuela is his niece. I’d say the weight of evidence suggests Castellano is an ally of my father’s, not his enemy.”
“Agreed,” Luke said. “And that implies—”
“Wait, I’m sorry to interrupt, but if Castellano and Ron Raven are allies, how do you explain what happened in Miami the night Ron disappeared?” Anna perched on the edge of the table, putting her hand on Seth’s shoulder, the gesture revealing in its casual intimacy. “I’m genuinely curious,” she added. “I’m not just poking holes in your theory.”
Kate realized how far her views of that night had changed in the past couple of weeks. The scenario she’d finally arrived at bore no resemblance to the police theory of the crime. “I believe my father and Consuela decided to fake their own deaths and Julio Castellano agreed to help them. Castellano was crucial to the success of their deception. He made the whole blood-spattered, empty-hotel-room scenario more credible simply by providing a few drops of his own blood to spread around the scene of the supposed crime.”
“It’s amazing how finding Castellano’s blood changed everything,” Luke said. “Law enforcement in Miami withheld judgment as to whether Ron Raven was alive or dead until the police labs announced they had a DNA match on Castellano’s blood. Then everyone’s attitude within the department changed instantly. Castellano was a convicted murderer, so—according to the cops—it was obvious that he’d killed Ron Raven. Kate’s father went from being missing to being presumed dead in the blink of an eye.”
“And don’t forget the most important part,” Kate added, “at least from my father’s point of view. The moment a warrant was issued for Castellano’s arrest, the cops basically stopped all other investigation of the case. Nobody was looking for my father anymore because everybody’s attention was focused on finding Castellano, the wicked triple murderer. Except the cops were searching for him in South Florida’s Mexican community, so it’s not surprising they didn’t have much luck finding him.”
“All that misdirection from a couple of blood splatters,” Seth murmured. “Pretty impressive planning on your father’s part. He took the current obsession with forensic evidence and manipulated it to provide a completely false picture of what had happened.”
“I agree,” Anna said. “It’s brilliant planning on Ron Raven’s part if we accept that his goal was to disappear. Do we accept that?”
“I do,” Kate said. “I think he wanted to be dead so that his enemies in Belize would stop trying to kill him. Julio Castellano was hired by my dad’s enemies to do the job, but my father thwarted their plans by recruiting Julio to his side. That way he achieved two goals in one fell swoop—he was able to fool both the smugglers back in Belize and the cops in Miami. Everyone accepted he was dead—”
“Leaving him free to do whatever the hell he wanted.” Seth sounded admiring. “Man, this is a guy who knows how to pull off a scam.”
“But why is he still hiding?” Luke picked up the printout of the file labeled RR21. “These are all legitimate business ventures, which means your father could pursue them openly if he’d step forward and acknowledge he’s alive. We just agreed the smuggling ring in Belize has been shut down and your dad isn’t at risk from them anymore. Why is he still running? Why is he putting on wigs and false beards and assuming fake identities to do something entirely legal?”
The answer seemed glaringly obvious to Kate. Some of her father’s activities might be legitimate. Others, it seemed likely, were not. She hesitated to express her suspicions in front of Anna and Seth, but she realized they were both sympathetic and smart, a combination likely to generate a lot of good advice, so she overcame her reluctance.
“My father’s choice of Mayan gods at the head of each page must have real meaning. I don’t know much about the world of international art, but I do remember reading a magazine article about Mayan cities, lost for centuries in the jungle, and the fabulous treasure trove of art and historical objects waiting to be found in the temples there. Don’t you think it’s at least possible that Julio and Consuela are helping my father to smuggle ancient Mayan artifacts out of Belize and into the United States?”
“Bingo!” Anna sat bolt upright in her chair. “Finally an explanation that makes sense.”
“I don’t know that it does.” Luke gestured to the thick printout of companies Ron Raven had contacted as potential investment opportunities. “Kate and I were agreeing just a little while ago that among the many amazing things about her father, one of the most amazing is his talent for spotting entrepreneurs and businesses that are going to succeed. Over the last twenty years, Ron earned millions of dollars legitimately. There’s every reason to suppose he could earn millions more dollars over the next ten or twenty years. Why would he devote hundreds of hours to generating honest new business opportunities if he’s decided to launch a new career as a criminal smuggling Mayan art out of Central America?”
“Why don’t you ask him?” Seth suggested softly.
Kate wondered if Seth had been too caught up in his techie stuff to grasp the
most important point. “We don’t know where my father is,” she said patiently. “We don’t know how to find him.”
“Sure you do.” Seth smiled slightly. “Fortunately, you have all the information you need to find Ron Raven right here.”
“Of course!” Anna exclaimed. “Look, Ron has an address and phone number listed for each of his identities and the addresses are all the same. It’s an office plaza in Leesburg, which is in Loudon County, right on the border between Virginia and Maryland. He must maintain some sort of a presence there, otherwise he wouldn’t be able to conduct any business.”
Seth shook his head. “Unfortunately, that’s not true. He can have all his calls routed to wherever he happens to be, which could be hundreds of miles away from Leesburg. The technology’s simple.”
“Okay, but somebody must collect mail on a regular basis. This isn’t a post office box, it’s a street address.”
Seth shrugged. “A so-called ‘street address’ can be arranged at almost any store that rents mailboxes these days. Besides, nobody does important business by mail anymore, so most of what’s getting delivered to that address will be junk. On the off chance there’s something that needs to be picked up, Ron could either make a quick trip once a week to his Leesburg office or, more likely, send in a temp with instructions on how to handle any first-class mail.”
“Then how do you suggest we find Ron Raven? You were the person who said we had all the information we need to track him.” Luke glanced at his watch. “Kate and I are supposed to be flying back to Chicago in less than four hours, so if you have any brilliant ideas, now would be a good time to share them.”
“It’s simple,” Seth said. “Your father will be suspicious of anyone trying to contact him through his Leesburg address and phone number. But he won’t be in the least suspicious if somebody calls him from one of the companies he’s negotiating with. You need to pick the company you think your father sounds most enthusiastic about, and then decide how you’re going to persuade somebody from that company to set up a meeting with him. You don’t have to go out and find Ron Raven. You can get him to come to you.”
Payback Page 21