by Joseph Badal
CHAPTER 53
Race had surmised that the mobster, Vitaly Orlov, must be, at a minimum, the subject of police investigations in Dallas. Orlov might even have been arrested at some time in the past. Race spent several hours in the early morning looking at Google postings about Orlov. He discovered a trove of information about the man, from his date of birth, to the names of his wife and children, to charities he supported, to the companies he owned, to his arrest record. He thought he might be able to use his password hacking system to enter Orlov’s computer, but the only websites with which the man had any relationship were the sites for his strip clubs. There was nothing there but promotional messages about the clubs’ dancers and atmosphere. The guy had done a masterful job creating a positive public persona. Even though he was in the adult entertainment business, he appeared to be nothing less than a legitimate businessman.
Then he went back to Orlov’s little notebook and tried to come up with information from his bank account records. He agonized over the information there and became more frustrated by the second. He’d slammed the book down on the desk in his motel room and was about to pack up to hit the road, when an idea struck.
“How did Orlov pay Evan McCall and Karl Swenson?” Race asked himself. “What if he used one of the accounts in the notebook?” He realized the way into Orlov’s accounts might be through wire transfers he’d made into McCall and Swenson’s accounts. He needed to get those bank account records. McCall, according to news reports, was being treated for a severe concussion in a Dallas area hospital. That left Swenson.
Karl Swenson hadn’t even attempted to sleep the night before. His mind reeled with dire thoughts about what might happen.
“Aren’t you going in today?” his wife asked him.
“Goddammit, can’t I take a day off without you nagging me?”
“I wasn’t nagging; just asking. Are you feeling all right?”
“I’m fine.”
His wife looked at him, huffed, and left the den where Swenson had been parked since early that morning.
Swenson surfed the Internet on his cell phone for current information about the murder of Vitaly Orlov in Dallas. But there was nothing new. Orlov’s death meant that there were unlikely to be any more paydays coming his way. That wasn’t all bad, he told himself. He’d put away a lot of money that Orlov had paid him, and, with the mobster’s demise, maybe the connection between them had been severed. However, his mind was twisted around a few questions that weren’t answerable without more information. What worried Swenson the most was the possibility that Orlov had left behind evidence that would prove they had communicated with one another.
“Why did I get in bed with that asshole?” Swenson said under his breath. But the answer quickly came to him. He’d never felt he’d had a choice. The business trip to Dallas. The evening in the strip club. The hour he’d spent with one of the dancers. “One little hour,” he whispered. “One damned hour, and it all came down.” Orlov had video of the time he’d spent with the dancer. It was a classic record of sexual depravity that had festered, unfulfilled, in a corner of Swenson’s brain for decades. The stripper had teased the inclination out of his brain and encouraged him to escape the bonds of his conservative, religious upbringing. But she’d had no idea just how violent that inclination was, until he’d beaten and choked her to death.
Race learned from local news that the Albuquerque police had discovered his safety deposit box. He thought, Thank God I emptied the box. He tallied his cash reserves and came up with four point three million dollars. Fortunately, he’d used a different ID for each box he’d opened, so it was highly unlikely the authorities would discover his other caches. He had more than enough cash on hand to last him a lifetime.
He called a charter company at the Albuquerque Sunport and reserved a private jet for a flight to and from Kansas City, where Surety Collectors Insurance was headquartered. Where Karl Swenson lived. A call to Swenson’s office had informed him the man was out for the day. Then Race called the Swenson home number.
“Hello.”
“Mr. Swenson?”
“Who is this?”
“Is this Karl Swenson?”
The man hung up.
Race called back. When the man answered again, Race said, “You hang up again and I’ll tell your wife and your employer what I know.”
The man moaned. “What do you want?”
“Drive to the Park & Ride at 3rd and Grand. Take the 3 p.m. Main Street MAX bus southbound. Sit in the next to last seat.”
“What—?”
Race hung up and went to work on a disguise—large nose, dark glasses, handlebar mustache, and a blue baseball cap. Then he drove to the airport. The flight to Kansas City took three hours. There he picked up a rental car using another credit card and ID he’d purchased on the Dark Net and made the thirty-minute drive to the corner of 74th Terrace and Broadway, at the south end of the Main Street MAX bus route. He parked his rental car and boarded the next north-bound bus. At a few minutes after 2 p.m., he left the bus at Crown Center, bought a cup of coffee and a roll at a small shop, swallowed another pain killer to try to numb the pain in his left arm, and waited for the 3 p.m. bus to arrive.
The 3 o’clock bus arrived at Crown Center at a few minutes before 3:15. There were four other people in the queue to board it. Through one of the windows, Race scanned the bus’s interior. He spied Swenson at the back. Other than looking as though he hadn’t shaved and appearing worried, he resembled his photograph on the Surety Collectors Insurance website.
Race boarded the bus, took a seat in the middle, on the other side of the aisle from Swenson. There were ten people on the bus and most were seated in the front half of the vehicle. Race twisted slightly in his seat and watched Swenson out of the corner of his eye. As each minute passed, Swenson seemed to become more agitated. He continually turned to look out the windows on both sides and huffed loudly. Two women who were seated near Swenson at the rear stood and moved closer to the front.
Within fifteen minutes, all but two of the other passengers had gotten off the bus. Race stood, left his seat, and moved to the rear seat, behind Swenson. The man had watched Race move toward him and then whipped around when Race sat down.
“Face forward,” Race growled.
Swenson quickly obeyed. “What do you want?” he rasped.
Race poked him hard in the back of his neck. “Shut up.”
As Swenson rubbed his neck, Race dropped a pen and piece of paper over Swenson’s shoulder onto his lap. He said, “I want the name of the bank, the number, and the password for the account into which you deposited monies from Orlov.”
“Who are you? I—”
Race smacked the man on the back of his head this time. He hit him so hard that it sounded as though someone had thumped a melon. “No more questions, asshole.”
Swenson’s shoulders slumped.
“Last chance, Swenson.”
The man cleared his throat. “I want the original of the video.”
Orlov must have blackmailed Swenson to get him to cooperate, Race realized. “I’ve got it here in my pocket,” he lied. “You give me the information I want and you’ll get the video.”
“Show me the video.”
This time, Race punched the back of Swenson’s head, which caused the man to yelp. An elderly male passenger turned to look at Swenson. After a few seconds, the man turned away.
“Write down the information I asked for.”
Swenson scribbled for a few seconds and then handed the paper and pen back over his shoulder.
“Now, please give me the video.”
Race said, “Patience, asshole.” He took his cell phone from his shirt pocket, placed it on his right thigh, and pulled up the website for the Swiss bank Swenson had identified and clicked on the customer service number. When the call was answered, he picked up the phone and asked for the Wire Department.
“This is Karl Swenson. Account number 634987512; password 9825640. Please give me t
he current balance in my account in American dollars.”
After a minute, the man on the other end of the line said, “Mr. Swenson, the balance in your account as of the end of business today was one million, four hundred thirty-eight thousand, seventy-two dollars and fifty-eight cents. Is there anything else I can do to assist you?”
“Actually, there is. Would it be possible for you to email a log of all deposits into my account, including dates, amounts, and the names of the banks from which those deposits originated?”
“That would be no problem, Mr. Swenson. Would you like me to use the email account we have on record?”
“Please hold for a second,” Race said. He pressed his phone against his chest and poked Swenson. “Do you have your cell phone with you?”
Swenson nodded.
“Open the email account you use to communicate with the Swiss bank.”
Swenson nodded.
Race moved his phone back to his ear. “That would be fine. Thank you.”
After he disconnected the call, Race put his own phone back in his shirt pocket, took Swenson’s cell phone, and waited for the email to arrive from the Swiss bank.
“Are you going to give me the video?” Swenson said.
“As soon as the email comes through.”
They rode in silence for five minutes, until Swenson’s cell phone pinged. Race opened an email from the Swiss bank. In the message, he saw that all of the deposits to Swenson’s account had come from one Cayman Island bank account: number 1113794876, titled Romanov Enterprises. He wrote down the account’s name and number and the name of the bank on the same piece of paper on which Swenson had written his account information. After he pocketed the paper and returned Swenson’s cell phone to him, Race pulled his sheathed knife from his jacket pocket, removed it from the sheath, and waited for the bus to make its last stop on the southbound route. Then he stood and stepped into the aisle next to Swenson.
The man looked up at him with a semblance of relief in his expression. His eyes were wide with anticipation. Race guessed that whatever was on the video that Swenson seemed to want very badly was so incriminating he was willing to give up almost anything—including one-and-a-half million dollars in a Swiss bank account.
Race bent over and put his face inches from Swenson’s. “Why’d you do it?”
His eyes leaked tears and his voice sounded hoarse. “I didn’t mean to hurt anyone.” He choked for a second. “I ruined my life.” After another pause, he asked, “Can I please have the video now?”
Race straightened up and glared down at the man. “I lied. I don’t have the video.” He moved his hand with the knife away from his leg.
In an instant, Swenson went from defeated to devastated. His body seemed to collapse from within, and he slumped in his seat as though he didn’t have the strength to hold himself up. As though he was beyond despair. In that instant, Race knew that Swenson hadn’t exaggerated. He had ruined his life. But Race also realized the man had no idea how much worse his life was about to become. Prison would be hell for someone like Swenson.
The last of the other passengers had left the bus.
“End of the line, gentlemen,” the driver announced as he stepped down through the front door of the bus.
Race turned on Swenson and hit him in the head with a right hook that seemed to vibrate up Race’s arm to his shoulder. After the man slumped to the floor, Race moved to the rear exit door and down to the street. As he walked to his rental car, he tossed the knife into a trash can. Then he used a burner phone to call the Kansas City FBI office and asked to speak with an agent.
“Special Agent MacAuslan.”
“Agent, are you familiar with the Three Ghouls case?”
“Can I get your name, sir?”
Race said, “Why is that the first thing law enforcement people always want to know? No, you may not have my name. If you’re smart, you’ll listen carefully. There’s a man on the Main Street MAX bus that just docked at the 74th Terrace and Broadway station. His name is Karl Swenson. He’s the CFO of Surety Collectors Insurance Company. Swenson fed appraisal information on valuable coin collections to a man named Vitaly Orlov in Dallas. Orlov then hired a guy named Evan McCall, who hired the Three Ghouls to steal coin collections. In turn, Orlov sold the coins to wealthy collectors all over the world.”
“Hold on, sir. I can’t write that fast.”
Race blurted a laugh. “Don’t play games, Agent. I know you’re recording this conversation and trying to trace the call. It won’t do you any good. Just pay attention. Swenson has a cell phone on him. There’s an email from a bank in Switzerland that will tell you how much he was paid by Orlov for the information he provided. It will also show you the account in the Cayman Islands from which Orlov’s money was wired. If you contact Detective Barbara Lassiter with the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Department in Albuquerque, she can provide you with more information.”
DAY 12
CHAPTER 54
Race returned to Albuquerque, to his motel, gathered up his things, and planned to head west. He didn’t have a destination in mind. It just felt right to him to drive toward the coast. It was after midnight when he stopped in Kingman, Arizona. Before he went to bed, he tried to identify something that had aggravated him all day. There was something that felt undone about the way he’d left things. An errant thought had nibbled at his brain on the drive from Albuquerque. But the substance of whatever his memory tried to dredge up just wouldn’t surface. He went to bed, resolved to work on whatever it was after his brain was rested.
The same old dream returned at some point that night to wake him. As usual, he was drenched in sweat and his head ached. He sat up and noticed a sliver of sunlight peek through a corner of the curtains. Race groaned and forced himself to get out of bed. He showered and hurriedly dried himself and dressed, then dug into his suitcase for Orlov’s notebook. He turned to the page in the back with what he’d assumed was information about Orlov’s bank accounts and looked down the list to the Cayman Island bank from which Orlov’s wire transfers to Swenson’s bank account had originated: Cayman First Security Bank. He placed a finger on the line and read aloud the bank’s initials: CFSB. Then he ran his finger across the page to the last column . . . the column with what he’d presumed were account numbers. He went to the dresser and picked up the piece of paper on which Karl Swenson had written his account information and on which Race had written the bank account from which Orlov had wired funds to Swenson.
The number on the piece of paper read: 1113794876. But the number on the page in Orlov’s notebook read: 1113794876-848259. Race scanned the other account numbers on the page and noticed something about them that hadn’t resonated with him before. All of the account numbers were hyphenated, with a series of six numbers after the hyphen. Something about the final six numbers seemed odd to Race. He studied all of them for several minutes, took a five-minute break, and then returned to the notebook page. And then he saw it: in every case, the numbers after the hyphen were the same six digits as on the Cayman First Security Bank line, but in different order. The suffix to the account on the first line was 598248. The numbers after the hyphen in the second line were 248895. Every line had the same numbers in the suffix, just in different sequence.
Race felt butterflies erupt in his stomach and a chill run down his spine. He booted up his computer and opened the site for the Cayman bank, accessed the customer on-line link, and typed in the numbers 8-4-8-2-5-9.
A pop-up showed on the screen: Welcome, Mr. Orlov. What service may we provide you today? Below the pop-up was a list of services next to check boxes. Race clicked the cursor on CURRENT BALANCE. Within ten seconds, the screen showed that Orlov’s account had over three million dollars in it.
It took an hour to query all of Orlov’s accounts on-line. By the time he’d finished, he’d discovered a total of forty-two million, two hundred sixty-two thousand, nine hundred one dollars and thirty-two cents. He thought about what might happen t
o all that money if the Feds discovered the accounts. They’d probably confiscate it. Maybe the insurance company would sue to recoup the losses they’d paid to the estates of the Three Ghouls’ victims. Or, perhaps Orlov’s family would claim it all.
Then an idea came to him that seemed to be infinitely more justifiable and elegant than any of the other alternatives he’d just considered. He opened the website for a national victim’s assistance group and found the organization’s telephone number. He called the number and asked to speak to someone who handled contributions.
“This is Natalie Johnson. How may I assist you?”
“Miss Johnson, my name is Vitaly Orlov. I would like to make a contribution to your organization, but need wire transfer instructions so my bank can wire funds to your account.”
“That’s very nice of you, Mr. Orlov. But I should advise you that we only allow wire transfers into our account in an amount greater than one thousand dollars. Do you plan to make a contribution of that size or greater?”
“Greater,” Race said.
“Wonderful. Would you like me to email the instructions to you, or can I give them to you now over the phone?”
“Now would be best.”
During the next hour Race purged all of Orlov’s accounts and transferred the money to the charitable organization.
There was other research that Race had planned to do. He felt energized as he Googled a number of Orlov’s clients’ names from the Russian’s notebook and found, for the most part, they were respected members of finance, industry, government, and old name families from across the planet. He went through the notebook, page by page, until he found a transaction that had closed five days after Mary and his daughters had been murdered. Orlov had apparently sold the coins the Three Ghouls stole from Race to a man named Jean-Louis Rambert of Nice, France. Race studied everything he could find on the Internet about Rambert.
Race then took photos with a cell phone of every one of the client pages in Orlov’s notebook and sent the photos to Detective Barbara Lassiter’s email address.