“Yeah, sure,” Sink said. “If the Shields kid had something solid tying Ballantrae to the Ukrainian mob it would do more than queer an investment deal. It could be all over for him. Even the Feds couldn’t ignore that.”
Barry stopped at the door and turned around.
“Who’s the Shields kid?”
“Reporter who worked for the South Florida Times,” Sink said. “Used the name Hidless, was looking into Ballantrae.”
“You mean Josh? His real name was Shields?”
Both Scarne and Sink stared at the kid.
“What? What’d I say?”
Finally, Scarne said, “You knew him?”
“Sure. Had some drinks at Michael Collins, a pub on Lincoln Road. Hangout for underpaid media types.” He looked at Sink. “Like me.”
“Did he ever mention Ballantrae?”
“All the time. We’d compare notes. Talk on the phone a couple of times a week. He even came by here once or twice. Haven’t heard from him in a while. Want me to give him a call?”
“Don’t bother,” Scarne said.
***
Sink walked Scarne out.
“You realize that none of this proves anything,” he said. “Two kids exchanging conspiracy theories.”
“Josh wasn’t a kid. He had serious investigative creds. He might have run down those rumors and sources Barry fed him. Maybe they’re not rumors.”
“You think he had proof? So they killed him?”
“I don’t know. Maybe all it took was him being right.”
Well, if it’s true I hope you nail the bastard. I’d love that story.”
Huber and Pourior had said virtually the same thing.
“I’m thinking of starting a news service,” Scarne said. “In the meantime, tell those kids not to be too curious about Ballantrae. Just to be safe.”
“Shit. I didn’t think about that. You’re right. But what about you?”
“I’m not even sure Ballantrae did anything. I may be thinking zebras when I’m hearing horses. But if he did, making a run at me would be a red flag for too many people. Including Randolph Shields. I’m pretty sure he’s probably spoken to Ballantrae about me by now.”
“I’d still be careful. Are you going to see Victor Ballantrae?”
“That’s the plan.”
“He’s a hard man to get a hold of. Do you have an appointment?”
“No.”
“Well, you’re in luck. He’s in town, giving a luncheon speech tomorrow at the Biltmore. Some organization called the Caribbean Basin Free Trade Alliance. Probably launders money for some of its members.”
CHAPTER 18 – DEATH BY MISNOMER
In Scarne’s experience, medical examiners looked nothing like the quirky, handsome or beautiful actors who portrayed them on television or in the movies. Most looked just like everyone else in any other profession.
Eric Fonthill was the exception. He was an M.E. from B-movie central casting in the era before Hollywood made the profession so sexy. He’d given Scarne a general description and told him where he’d be sitting at the outside bar at Monty’s, a seafood restaurant at a marina just short of Coconut Grove proper. And that’s where he was, hunched over a menu, sipping a beer and looking like Ichabod Crane’s twin. He was even dressed all in black. Although there was a decent lunchtime crowd, the stools on either side of him were empty, as if people instinctively sensed something foreboding in a man leafing through entrees with hands that had probably just been in somebody’s entrails.
Despite his grim reaper demeanor Fonthill had a pleasant smile and a warm, firm handshake that Scarne, not wanting to give away his thoughts, returned vigorously. And he didn’t smell of formaldehyde. Still, Scare was happy to be eating outside. They grabbed a table by the water, sitting on benches opposite each other.
“Sorry, I’m late,” Scarne said. “Took me almost an hour from Weston.”
“Yeah, traffic is getting out of hand down here.”
Small boats in their berths made bumping sounds against the dock and water lapped over the walkway. They ordered a pitcher of beer, a basket of boiled shrimp to munch and two grilled grouper sandwiches. Fonthill had also been primed by a call from the N.Y.P.D. and even knew some M.E.’s in Manhattan so they talked shop for a few minutes. The shrimp came and Scarne was relieved to have his own dipping sauce. They were halfway through their grouper when Scarne got around to Josh Shields.
“What killed him?”
Fonthill reached into his jacket pocket and brought out a thick envelope, which he handed to Scarne.
“Copy of the report. You didn’t get it from me. My boss would throw a clot. The death looked pretty straightforward. Body hadn’t been in the ocean all that long, and apparently the water was a bit chillier than normal. But it’s still Southern Florida and there are all sorts of creatures out there on the chow line. Poor guy was nibbled over some. Tox screen was pretty normal. No blunt trauma injuries, bullet holes, knife wounds, striations, reticular hemorrhages or anything else to indicate the proverbial foul play.”
“You didn’t list it as a drowning,” Scarne said, sifting through the sheets.
“There wasn’t much water in his lungs. He died quick, if miserably. Cause of death was cardiac arrest, an arrhythmia, either natural or caused by a shock. My own guess, and it’s only a guess, he got stung by jellyfish in the dark, got disoriented, fell into the water, got stung some more and it overwhelmed him.”
“Newspapers said it was a drowning.”
“You know how that goes. It was an ‘apparent drowning’ in the first stories and that’s how it stayed. Nobody followed up but the family, and I guess they’re still unhappy, which is why you’re here. But it’s not like the Miami Beach cops or the local rags would broadcast the possibility that a swarm of jellyfish blobbed him to death. The Chamber of Commerce would go nuts.”
“Was it possible?”
“Well, he had a lot of Men-of-War stings on his face and neck. Even had some damage to his eyes and the inside of his mouth. Found a jellyfish in his throat.” He looked at Scarne, who had stopped eating his sandwich. “Could have been postmortem. Bottom line, I think Josh Shields died of the world’s worst case of bad luck. Couldn’t put that down. So arrhythmia it was.”
Scarne, thinking of the jellyfish, had trouble swallowing his beer.
“This is going to sound crazy to you, but is there any way a jellyfish could have been forced into his mouth?”
Surprisingly, Fonthill took the question seriously.
“Let me think. I suppose if someone held your mouth open and someone else dropped one in, it’s possible. But that’s an awful lot of trouble. More likely it just kind of drifted in when he was floating around with his mouth open. You wouldn’t believe some of the things that I find in people after they’ve been in the ocean. One guy, I thought it was his tongue hanging out, all purple and everything, except it had eyes. That was weird.”
Scarne put the remains of his fish sandwich permanently aside.
“Of course, he could have just kind of inhaled it reflexively, in kind of a spasm, when the other Men-of-War fired off.”
“Fired off?”
“Yeah. The term ‘jellyfish’ is a misnomer. A Portuguese Man-of-War is a hydrozoa, made up of four different animals. Each has its own job. The blue sail is one animal, the tentacles another, and so on. Like a commune, except without sex, at least not the kind we’d appreciate. The poison is in the nematocysts in the tentacles, which can stretch out several feet from the main body, which might only be six-inches long.” Fonthill picked up a large pickle from his plate and placed it on the table. Then he arranged some coleslaw so it looked it was a bunch of tentacles. Their waitress swooped by, took one look, and swooped away. “This is not to scale, of course, and the colors are all wrong. Anyway, when the nematocysts hit something or become irritated they explode and release the toxin.”
For this part of the demonstration, which had now attracted the attention of nearby
diners, Fonthill used a leftover boiled shrimp, which he dropped into the coleslaw tentacles.
“Bam! Brutal stuff, about 75% as powerful as cobra venom and made up of all sorts of enzymes that are hard to spell. Smaller doses than a snake bite, of course, and not injected as deeply. Paralyzes small fish and shrimp that are then drawn into the part of the colony that digests.” He picked up the shrimp and popped it in his mouth. “So Shields probably got hit with a bunch of tentacles from a dozen Men-of-War and spazzed out. One sting has been compared to getting hit by lightning, so a lot of simultaneous stings would be unbearable. He might have been particularly sensitive because he apparently had a run-in with a Man-of-War a couple of weeks earlier. The cops found a discharge slip from an emergency room. You gonna finish the other half of your sandwich?”
Scarne pushed it across to him.
“I don’t think the toxin killed him,” Fonthill said, biting into the grouper. “No sign of anaphylactic shock. But from the look of the welts, there would have been incredible pain in his face, eyes, neck and chest. And that probably caused the arrhythmia. Like I said, I think the poor guy was just unlucky.”
“I take it the family wasn’t told about the extent of the jellyfish stings.”
Fonthill looked thoughtful.
“I doubt it. I mentioned the stings in my report, but it might have gotten lost in all the other medical and marine verbiage. Don’t forget, we couldn’t be sure it was the jellyfish. Maybe he was drowning, and just died before he could do a good job of it.”
“Chamber of Commerce has that much clout down here?”
“I’m just glad he wasn’t eaten by a shark. I hate it when I have to put down that the victim cut himself shaving.”
“I didn’t mean…”
“Hey, no sweat. I’m kidding. We write them up as we see them. But this was too ambiguous to go off half cocked. There hadn’t been any other serious jellyfish incidents. I would have been irresponsible saying jellyfish were the cause of death when I wasn’t sure. You asked me what I thought. I told you. What I know is that his heart stopped in a way that suggested an arrhythmia. Maybe they wanted to spare the family.”
Scarne thought of something else.
“Even if he was seriously stung, would death be so instantaneous he couldn’t make it to shore? Instinctively try to get help.”
Fonthill took some time thinking about that.
“Maybe he waded far out. It’s real shallow there. Course, it was supposed to be pretty dark and the surf was up that night. Wasn’t there some talk of suicide? You know, like Norman Maine in A Star Is Born?”
Fonthill looked like the kind of person who watched old movies.
“I’m not ruling anything out. The kid’s father thinks he was murdered.”
“Whoa! That’s a stretch.” Fonthill looked thoughtful again. “But it’s one of those things you can’t disprove. Lots of things could have stopped his heart and left no trace. We’re pretty good, but finding a needle puncture or something like that in a shriveled corpse that’s been chewed on by crustaceans is almost impossible, unless you’re on TV. And like I said, the only thing on the tox screen was jellyfish venom. Lots of it. I will admit that the gap between when he died and when the body was found is troubling. He must have been in pretty deep.”
“Could someone have dragged him out and drowned him?”
“No water in the lungs, remember?” Fonthill paused. “And no obvious trauma to the body, which we’d pick up even given the condition of the body. He was a young guy. Probably would have fought back. Of course, if he was already dead….” Fonthill finished his beer and wiped foam off his upper lip. “Let’s see. Someone kills our boy with something we can’t trace. Then swims his body out to deeper water.” He was talking to himself. “A lot of trouble just to kill someone. The nearest public beach access is blocks away. He’d be chancing getting spotted going back through one of the apartment gates. Make more sense if he had a boat. Even more if he someone to help him.”
Fonthill popped a final shrimp in his mouth.
“But my money is still on the jellyfish. Listen, thanks for the lunch. I don’t get out all that much.”
Scarne could believe that.
“I appreciate your help. Want some more beer?”
“Nah. I have to get back. Got to keep my hands steady. Don’t carry malpractice insurance.” He cackled. It was apparently an old morgue joke.
CHAPTER 19 – A FREUDIAN SHIP
Scarne drove back to Josh’s apartment and changed into shorts and a T-shirt. He spent a punishing but much-needed hour in the building’s exercise room, starting on its Nautilus circuit and finishing with free weights. After a steam and a shower he was about to start reading the Sink newsletters when his cell phone beeped. It was Evelyn.
“I just got a call from the state licensing board. A very nice man said that they were looking into some ‘irregularities,’ and wondered if you could come in for a chat.”
“What kind of ‘irregularities?”
“He wouldn’t say, but he said it was merely pro forma.”
“That’s Latin for ‘you’re screwed’.”
“I told him you were traveling. That’s when he used the subpoena word.”
“Call Don Tierney and ask him to stall them. Tell him it’s probably Randolph Shields applying the pressure.”
“Are you making a nuisance of yourself again?”
“I’ve just begun.”
After ringing off, Scarne sat on a couch and started reading some of the articles in the Sink newsletters:
“Czech Republic Seeks Extradition of Nigerian in $60 M Internet Scam”
“British Virgin Islands Hedge Fund Collapses; Investors lose $140 M”
“PwC (Bermuda) Partner Met Madoff; Gave Him Clean Bill of Health”
“Offshore Bank Refuses to Turn Over Records, U.S. Says”
“Accounting Firms Agree to Pay $30 M to Settle Nevis Fraud Action”
“Turkey Seeks Evidence from Massachusetts in $100 M Ponzi”
“Belgium Seeks Identity of Website Casino Fraudster”
“Montserrat Banker Allegedly Embezzled $14 M”
“$10 M Judgment Entered Against Barbados Insurer; Minister Resigns”
He was astounded at the sheer variety and sophistication of the Ponzi schemes, money laundering, investment frauds, securities violations and other scams the world over, not to mention the colorful rogues who perpetrated them. Some of the bilk-artists had been caught and prosecuted but skipped town. They now operated under new names, using dummy or shell corporations in friendlier jurisdictions, trying to keep one step ahead of overmatched regulators and cops. A section in Offshore Confidential entitled “Reggie’s Regulators Hall of Shame” contained profiles and photos of various government ministers who looked the other way – and got rich – while the banking and securities laws of their nations were flouted. Another column detailed the status of all the libel actions brought against Sink. According to a note at the bottom of the column, Offshore Confidential never lost a libel suit.
After two hours Scarne just stopped reading. Since Sink only reported on confirmed cases in a trillion-dollar sewer of offshore corruption, that meant there were hundreds, maybe thousands of crooks still undiscovered. The fact that Victor Ballantrae owned an offshore bank didn’t mean he was one of them, but it begged the question: Why own an offshore bank?
Scarne needed a drink. He went to the kitchen and took a quick inventory of the refrigerator and pantry. Meyer’s Dark Rum, limes, orange juice, grenadine and maraschino cherries. Bless you, Mario. Five minutes later he was sitting in front of his laptop sipping a Planter’s Punch. After a workout it was important to replace electrolytes, he told himself.
As he expected, the Ballantrae Group website was a font of useless information. The company had $56 billion under “active management,” whatever that meant, up from $40 billion a year earlier. The interests of its clients “always came first” and its management team include
d “the best and the brightest” of financial advisors, research analysts and trading specialists who offered “a unique spectrum of expertise and investment products.”
The company’s 128-page, four-color corporate magazine, the Ballantrae Eagle, could be downloaded as a PDF file, and Scarne did. The corporate logo, a golden eagle’s profile surrounded by Olympic-looking torches, dominated the cover and graced every page of the magazine. The logo was also prominent on the many shots of buildings, plush offices, corporate jets and the Ballantrae yacht, the Botany Bay. A Freudian ship, Scarne wondered?
Victor Ballantrae, a large man with a red beard, was pictured with American Presidents, past and present; dictators; prime ministers; governors, mayors; members of Congress; Hollywood stars; famous athletes, and, of course, children of all colors, both healthy and sick. Ballantrae’s philanthropic deeds were well documented, but Scarne soon tired of Ballantrae’s expansive smile, which he thought looked piratical. I’m being unfair, he admitted. I’m looking for a reason to dislike the guy. But there’s just something…
The next section did nothing to allay Scarne’s discomfort. The Ballantrae Group’s corporate structure was diagrammed in a “tree” chart that looked like something Darwin would have designed for The Origin of the Species. The Ballantrae Group was represented by the trunk and scores of subsidiaries branched out from there: Ballantrae International Bank, Ballantrae Trust, Ballantrae Financial Services, Ballantrae Investment Banking, Ballantrae Bank of Panama, Ballantrae Aruba, Ballantrae Groupo Mexico, Ballantrae Venezuela Ltd., Ballantrae Group Suisse, Ballantrae Français, Ballantrae Development Corporation, Ballantrae Bullion and so on. There were so many branches and sprouts that Scarne had trouble reading the small type. He counted 23 that were in boldface. A note at the bottom of the page proudly stated that the subsidiaries in bold had been added within the previous year. Rapid expansion like that took a lot of cash. How did a company continue to pay those high C.D. rates? Could it really be a giant Ponzi?
The rest of the magazine and the bulk of the website itself were devoted to brief profiles of the subsidiaries and some of their directors. All were apparently doing wonderfully although any references to revenues and profits were vague. The offshore bank in Antigua rated only a few lines and no photo, which Scarne found curious. He also found it strange that he came across no photos of Alana Loeb, or at least none that were identified as her. She was listed by title in a corporate directory (in addition to being Chief of Staff, she was the Ballantrae Group’s Corporate Counsel and a director of several subsidiaries). There were dozens of attractive women on the website in group photos who were not named in captions. Scarne wondered if Loeb was among them. Sheldon had described her as stunning. None of the women in the pictures quite qualified. He remembered Sheldon’s age and reserved judgment on his taste in women. Of course, Emma Shields had also been impressed.
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