“So…shall we ask Tommy some questions?”
Angelo considered his shoes for a moment. “Suppose we have to.”
“How hard you want us to go?”
“Whatever it takes. We need to know if he’s the rat,” Angelo growled. “Where’s he at, anyway?”
“At the warehouse,” Carlo said. “Doing the weekly office line sweep.”
“Better sooner than later. We’re running out of time.”
Carlo finished his coffee and stood. “I’ll let you know what he says.”
Angelo gave him a dark look. “We need to be sure.”
“You got it, boss.”
Carlo departed, and a stern man with the face of a losing boxer took his cup and raised an eyebrow to Angelo. Angelo nodded and the man left, only to return two minutes later with a fresh cup of espresso. Angelo took an appreciative taste and patted his belly. The doctor had cautioned him about caffeine, too, but there was only so much Angelo was willing to do. Cigars and coffee? Not a chance.
Angelo eyed the fountain and thought about the congressman’s problem. It had to be someone within Angelo’s organization, obviously. The thought that Maggie might be involved was worrisome, but if Tommy didn’t sing, then he would go down that road. He hated even considering it, but he needed to solve the problem one way or another.
The stern-faced man approached with a telephone. Angelo looked at him and he handed it over. “It’s Marco,” he announced, and then departed.
“Yeah? How goes it?” Angelo boomed into the phone.
“You know. Up and down, like always.”
“How did your errand go?”
“Not so well. They didn’t get him,” Marco said.
“Damn. What happened?”
A hesitation. “It isn’t good news. Tony was in the car when it blew.”
Angelo almost choked on his coffee. “Say again?”
“Your nephew, Tony. He was in the car. He didn’t make it. I’m…I’m sorry, Angelo.”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah. I know.”
“What the hell was he doing there?”
“I have no idea. Nobody could have predicted it. Just…it was one of those things. A freak accident.”
“God. My sister is going to have a nervous breakdown.” Angelo shook his head. “Poor Tony. He had his problems, but he deserved better.”
Marco didn’t respond. Eventually Angelo spoke again. “What about the cops?”
“They’re still at the scene. They’ll figure it out eventually,” Marco warned.
“Not your problem if you kept your hands clean. My boys are already on a plane. The trail ends there. Keep a low profile and you’ll be fine.” Angelo hesitated. “We still have to deal with your buddy.”
“I hear you. But that’s not what I do – you know that. I’ll leave it to you.”
“I may need some help putting him in the right place at the right time.”
Marco hesitated for several seconds. “I’d rather be kept out of it. I’m already too close.”
“If we can. I’m just saying. Might need you to pitch in. Totally deniable, of course.”
“Of course.” Another pause. “Just let me know.”
“Will do.”
Angelo stabbed the off button and set the phone beside his coffee. He would have to call his sister and let her know about her son, but not immediately. He wanted time to figure out how to frame it.
For now, it was the venture capitalist who was his big problem. Angelo had gotten a tip from one of his moles that the FBI was investigating him. They expected to bring him in sooner than later and believed he would cooperate. That was too close for comfort. Angelo was accustomed to having his companies and associates scrutinized, but Richard was an unknown. If it came out that he’d been running money for the mob, even though sanitized through Marco’s fund, that would be disastrous for their investments. But if Richard disappeared in a faultily wired car or a boating accident, the investigation wouldn’t go anywhere. Angelo knew the main target of the probe was Marco and that the feds were picking off his associates rather than going after him directly – a classic maneuver in which they applied pressure to the weaker hands in the hopes one of them rolled.
If anyone would roll, it would be Richard.
With the work that Angelo had done to ensure that Ravstar went huge, he couldn’t risk the company’s primary funder to be revealed to have been mobbed up. Marco maintained a squeaky-clean business façade, but Richard had been involved in more than one questionable deal. That was how Marco had become friends with him. Marco had funded a company that had been a bust out for Angelo’s group, and Richard had found it a home – a bust out being where the mob encumbered everything in a company, leveraged it to the hilt, falsified anything that could be, and left it to the creditors to pick clean.
Angelo had made the decision that Richard had to go when Marco had mentioned a potential problem with Ravstar. With an ongoing FBI probe where he was expected to cooperate, and then the company’s chief technologist meeting with him…Angelo wasn’t sure what was going on, but he knew when it was time to cut his losses.
He sighed and stood, patting his cigar for good luck. Now he’d have to figure out how to tell his sister that her baby had died. He’d leave out that he was responsible for the kid’s death. Angelo had never liked Tony, finding him arrogant and weak of character, but his sister had been blind to his many faults. And he had been family, like it or not. She’d be inconsolable, he knew, and he steeled himself for the ordeal to come.
Angelo walked from the courtyard, his steps heavy. His driver and bodyguards were waiting in the depths of the restaurant for him, and his next stop would be the warehouse where Tommy was being interrogated. He hoped that they wouldn’t have to kill him, but if there was any doubt, Angelo would give the order in a second.
For now, being chained upside down with a blowtorch as a threat should have shaken the truth out of him. If Angelo thought he was holding out, they’d put the torch to use, and Tommy would wind up somewhere in the Meadowlands, never to be seen again.
Chapter 21
South San Francisco, California
Leah pulled into the city hall parking lot and killed the engine. She’d called first thing in the morning, and the district attorney, a woman named Melissa Kensington, had agreed to see her in the early afternoon. She’d sounded pleasant on the phone, if a little puzzled as to why anyone would be interested in a white-collar crime from so many years ago, and Leah had high hopes of being able to establish enough rapport in person that she would be candid.
Leah had worn one of her professional outfits, eschewing her usual jeans and sweatshirt for fitted pants and a vanilla short-sleeved blouse, a pair of sensible flats rounding out what she thought of as her reporter disguise. Even after years of being a journalist, it still felt a little surreal to her, and part of her enjoyed the mental image of Leah Mason, spy – which was how she thought of herself. Her job as an investigative journalist was to ferret out the truth hidden away by those who’d done wrong, and her approach was typically one of stealth, of subterfuge and misdirection, exactly as she imagined clandestine operatives worked.
At least that was what she told herself when she grew bored of the endless hours at the monitor, doing research. She was sure her vocation sounded romantic to an outsider, but anyone who’d worked in a newsroom knew the truth – it was a job, most of it tedious, with only occasional spikes of excitement when something broke wide open, as it had on her last big story.
She approached the building, which had all of the architectural charm of an artillery bunker, and walked through the oversized doors to a reception area, where several women in security uniforms sat chatting with two cops on nearby stools. She asked for the DA’s office, and one of the women gestured to her right and gave her terse directions. Leah made her way along the halls as instructed until she found a door announcing the district attorney’s office.
Leah entered and gave th
e receptionist her name. The woman pointed her to a sagging couch behind a coffee table containing a pile of well-worn magazines, and murmured into her headset before returning to her project.
Five minutes stretched into ten. Leah’s phone rang. It was Heather.
“I picked up the laptop from your receptionist and should have it back by the time Richard makes it home. Thanks for leaving it with her. If this works, he’ll never know it went missing.”
“Until the caretaker tells him.”
Heather didn’t react. “Did you learn anything?”
“I haven’t had a chance to look at the data they pulled off it yet, Heather. I’m out in the field right now. I’ll call you as soon as I know something, okay?”
“Please. I’m on pins and needles.”
Leah hung up, annoyed at being asked for progress reports every day from her friend. She checked the time and saw she’d been waiting for fifteen minutes now, and was about to ask how much longer it would be when a handsome woman with spectacles perched on the tip of her nose emerged from a doorway behind the reception counter.
“Leah Mason? I’m Melissa. Sorry for the delay. Conference call.”
Leah rose. “No problem. Thanks for taking the time.”
“Come on back to my office. You’re out of Oakland?” Melissa asked.
“Emeryville,” Leah corrected, following her into the depths of the building.
When they were seated in Melissa’s office, Leah set her voice recorder on the desk and smiled. “Mind if I tape this?”
“No problem. It’s all ancient history now, anyway.”
Leah switched the device on, recited the date and Melissa’s name, and sat back. “As we discussed on the telephone, you handled the investigation into the candy stores?”
“That’s right. Pound Perfect was the name. Candy by weight. Not a bad concept, I suppose, although I never touch the stuff.”
“And Richard Davenport was involved?”
“Correct. He was responsible for getting them their final round of funding, and was instrumental in the sale of the company.”
“And the problems started once the new company was operating them?”
“Right. The whole thing turned out to be a giant scam.”
“Can you elaborate?” Leah asked.
“Sure. They cooked their books. Misstated revenues. Lied about everything you could lie about. It was all extremely calculated. They knew what they were doing. We suspected racketeering, frankly. The founders had contacts with known organized crime figures. We believe the enterprise was started as a money-laundering scheme and grew too successful for its own good – or at least big enough to pawn off on a greater fool.”
“How did the acquiring company miss all that?”
“As I said, it was clever – nothing obvious. It was only after several quarters when the stores did hardly any business that the management smelled a rat. They’d bought a hundred and ninety prime mall and airport locations that they believed should have been doing X, but instead did a tenth of X. When they started conducting serious forensic accounting, it turned out that none of what they thought they’d bought existed. I mean, there was a brand name and the leases, but the business was a total money loser from the day they acquired it.”
“And you assembled the case yourself?” Leah asked.
“Sure. It’s not like I had a staff of ten to help, either. But I built the case until it was rock solid.”
“But you never prosecuted,” Leah said.
“That’s right.”
“Why not?”
“We were preparing to level formal charges, and then witnesses disappeared. Their accountant had an unfortunately timed car accident. Others just dropped off the map. Eventually the acquiring company refused to cooperate, too. The official reason was because they’d absorbed the loss and done a deal to sell the outlets.”
“But you don’t think that was the real story?” Leah asked.
“I think that someone put the full-court press on keeping the case from going to court. Whether Richard or someone else, I have no idea. This is a busy office, and when a case falls apart like this one did, there are ten in the queue to replace it.”
“You think that Richard knew?”
“He claimed innocence the whole time, but these guys always do. They all operate the same way – they didn’t know anything. Multimillionaires who are paid like royalty for being smart suddenly turn dumb as bricks. It’s a tough defense to poke holes through, although we give it our best shot.” She gave Leah a grim smile. “Of course, for liability reasons, we have to assume he was innocent until proven guilty. Let’s just say it looked like a solid case.”
“Were you going to go after him personally as well?”
“I can’t recall,” Melissa said while nodding yes. Leah understood. She didn’t need a slander lawsuit from Richard.
“Do you remember if the company intended to pursue him in civil court?” Leah probed.
“I think that if there had been a successful criminal prosecution, that’s a given. But there wasn’t, so nothing ever came of it.”
“Do you encounter this sort of thing a lot?” Leah asked.
“No. That’s what made this so interesting for me. I was to the point where I was going to call in the feds and propose working together. That’s how big it was at the time. But then everyone who could speak knowledgeably about the company’s books…disappeared, never to be heard from again. The CFO, their accountant at the accounting firm, a few insiders who agreed to cooperate. First they lost their memories, and then they either had accidents or vanished. Hard to pursue a white-collar case with no witnesses.”
“You sound like you suspect foul play.”
“I’m a prosecutor. I always suspect foul play.” She looked at the tape recorder. “Does that do it for you?”
Leah nodded and turned the recorder off. “Yes.” She slipped the recorder into her purse and stood. “You think Richard knew?”
“He had to,” she said, her mouth a thin line. “But he got away with it. I see it all the time, unfortunately. Bad guys win more often than we like to admit. That’s why there are so many of them.” She hesitated. “I’m curious. Why this, why now? It can’t be of any interest to anyone but me at this point.”
“I’m actually just putting together background on Richard.”
“Ms. Mason? Be careful. If I’m right, he’s nothing to take lightly. And I’d be seriously worried about blowback from his…friends. If he knew, which I believe he did, that means he was in bed with the black hats. Those types don’t just wave after a deal is done and wish you well. Once you’re in their circle, you’re in for good. You’d do well to remember that.”
Leah swallowed again, a coil of anxiety twisting in her stomach. “Thanks again.”
“You’re welcome. Good luck, and remember…be careful.”
“I will.”
The walk back to the car seemed longer than on the way in as Leah mulled over what the DA had told her. Richard wasn’t simply dishonest – he was a criminal who’d gotten away with financial murder. That he would behave ruthlessly toward Heather couldn’t be a surprise, then. But it did pose one question she couldn’t answer without her opinion of Heather suffering profoundly: did she know what she’d married and didn’t care because of the image and the lifestyle?
If he’d kept his true nature hidden, she was a victim.
But if she’d known how he was, what did that make her? At best, someone who’d gotten in over her head. And at worst? Someone who was only concerned because their gravy train was drying up, and hadn’t cared how the money was being made.
Unfortunately, knowing Heather as well as Leah did, she suspected the latter, especially in light of her reluctance to involve anyone else.
Chapter 22
San Francisco, California
Jean Reynolds looked up as Michael Sands entered her office and took a seat in front of her desk. She finished signing the documents on her blott
er and sat back in her chair, a frown on her face. Sands glanced up at the FBI emblem mounted on the wall behind Reynolds’s desk and waited for her to speak.
“Thanks for coming so quickly,” she said.
“No problem.”
“I just got a report from the Menlo Park police department. It got flagged because one of our cases is impacted.”
“Menlo Park? That would be…Davenport?” Sands asked.
“Yes. Davenport’s car exploded this afternoon in the parking lot of his offices on Sand Hill Road.”
“You’re kidding,” Sands blurted, and then composed himself. “I mean, that’s…incredible.”
“It is, isn’t it?” Reynolds agreed.
“Was he…is he alive?”
“Oh, of course. The devil takes care of his own. But one of his associates wasn’t so lucky.” Reynolds paused. “Our mole. Tony Altos.”
Sands shook his head. “You think he was targeted?”
“We’re certainly considering it. But it’s more likely someone wanted to take Richard out. Assuming it was a bomb.”
“Do they know what caused it?”
“They should within a few days. You know how slow the locals work. They called us in to help, and we’ve dispatched a team, but there isn’t a lot left of the car. By the time the fire department arrived, it had burned down to the chassis.”
“What kind of car?”
“Porsche 911 Turbo.”
“Ouch.” Sands frowned. “So what’s our next step, with Tony out of the picture?”
“I think it’s time to go in hard. Bring Davenport in for questioning, search his office and his home, the whole nine yards. When cars start exploding, subterfuge isn’t necessary. Hell, it’s likely he’ll cooperate if he thinks someone’s trying to off him.”
Sands regarded Reynolds. “Not that likely. Bet you a dollar he lawyers up and doesn’t say a word.”
“Maybe. Do you have any better ideas?”
Sands sighed. “I wish I did.”
“Then pull the warrants. Use Judge Mayburn. He’ll sign off on them.”
A Girl Betrayed (A Leah Mason suspense thriller Book 2) Page 12