by Jean Martino
“Apparently not, love,” he said, as casually as he could manage sensing the change in her mood.
“That’s nonsense,” she snapped. “Cindy told me almost two years ago they had bought that house.”
“I know, and that puzzled me too. The only thing I can think of is that Michael must have told her they were buying it and led her to believe it was theirs. Perhaps he even had her sign papers that she thought made them the owners. But it seems that is not the case now. I don’t understand how it all happened, Linda. But Max looked it up in the police data base and it’s a fact.”
“Shit!” she cried, leaping to her feet. “How can this be? Roger McLean? Why would he let them live there and why would Michael pretend it’s their house and why didn’t Cindy know the truth if that’s the case?”
She folded her arms, walking back and forth barefoot across the shag carpet. “It’s got to be a mistake, Scott,” she said. “It doesn’t make sense.” Then she stopped walking and turned to stare at him. “What the hell is going on at this McLean’s Investments Company?”
“Right now,” he said, sitting up and reaching for his scotch, “I don’t know. But according to Max, and this is strictly confidential for us only, the FBI is investigating McLean’s Investments; who they suspect has been used by certain unnamed people to launder money through their accounts, through offshore or underground banks and then bringing it into the US under different names.”
“Oh my God!” she cried. “Drug money?”
He shrugged. “Don’t know that at this point. It could come from a host of different criminal activities, including the sale of components to make nuclear weapons, or arms dealing, as well as narcotics dealing.” He didn’t want to add the one thing that he feared the most; terrorism financing. It would freak her out more than it had him.
“I don’t understand this money laundering thing. What is it?”
“It’s not easy to explain,” said Scott. “But simply put it’s when certain crime organizations in different countries buy and sell illegal goods, then, to avoid detection and taxes, deposit their ”dirty money” in offshore banks that can get away with being unregulated by the world banking system. The money can be exchanged into foreign currencies to deposit in another bank, and eventually the owners of this money need to legitimize it into a country’s economy. At this point they use complex methods to get it into, let’s say, the United States, using it to buy melted down gold, jewellery, real estate, absorbing it into Casino profits, and sometimes buying stocks from Investment Companies who are willing to turn a blind eye as to where the money comes from.”
“My God!” she cried. “And you think Michael is somehow involved in all this?” she asked, her eyes flashing.
“Honey, I don’t know those answers right now but I am checking it out and hope it will give us the answers we need to find Cindy and Michael. I tried to tell you this morning that there would be some things turn up that could be very difficult for you to accept or understand. Please try not to panic. At this time we are just working on assumptions and don’t know the whole story.”
“Don’t panic? Understand? Scott, I have almost a million dollars tied up in stocks through that company and Michael was taking care of it for me. And now he is missing and you’re telling me the company is being investigated for fraud! Goddamit! I could lose everything as well as my daughter and her husband.”
“Oh shit!” he cried, leaping off the couch. “I knew you had some investments with them through Michael but not that kind of money.”
She was biting her lips so hard they had turned red. He was at a loss as to how to deal with this new bit of information. Linda was hurting badly about Cindy and Michael missing and now he had heaped this new fear on her that she could face financial ruin. Where did he take it now? How could he possibly help her calm down before she chewed her lips raw.
“I’m going in there tomorrow morning first thing,” she said, “and telling them I want my account liquidated, all the stocks as soon as possible. I want my money out of there. I want--”
He took her in his arms and held her tight. “Of course you do,” he said. “We’ll go there first thing in the morning. I promise you, Linda, they won’t rip you off. I won’t let them.”
As he held her he remembered Max’s words earlier that day; “Don’t go messing with the big fish on your own, buddy.” Well he had to find out now where this Roger McLean lived and what the connection was between him, Michael, and that house somehow. And there was still that mystery of Cindy writing the initials CD on that yellow legal paper. Did she mean Carl Denholm? Had she uncovered something that they still didn’t know about? Had they run for their lives to avoid something horrible happening? Roger McLean held the key to the mystery. He just had to find a way to find out without putting his and Linda’s lives in danger.
CHAPTER 12
Friday morning June 20, 2003:
On learning Detective Walker and Mrs. Martino were in the lobby, Wainwright’s first reaction was to have the receptionist tell them he was in a meeting. “What do they want now?” he asked her irritably.
“Mrs. Rossi said she needs to talk to someone about her investment account and asked for you specifically.”
Knowing there was no one else he could pass them onto because Roger McLean now had the only access to Michael’s accounts, he said, “Tell them I’m on an important conference call and will be with them in a few minutes.”
After she left his office and closed the door behind her, Wainwright pressed the button that would connect him directly to Roger McLean’s office at his Beverly Hills home. He had not talked to Roger since that morning two days ago when he had gone to the house himself. Roger seemed to want to persist in keeping him out of whatever was going on, but this now was his excuse to somehow get involved in it.
The phone rang for a long time and he was about to hang up when Roger’s voice roared through his ear piece making him start. “Yes!” Roger said, knowing the call was from Wainwright because he had a direct line to him. “What is it now?”
“Sorry to bother you, Roger,” said Wainwright. “But Mrs. Rossi is in the lobby and told the receptionist she wants to discuss her account. As that’s one of Michael’s accounts and I don’t have access to it I was hoping you could tell me what to tell her about it.”
“Hold on,” said Roger irritably, then switched on his computer and clicked the icon for Michael’s data base and entered the password. Nothing opened. He tried again, and again, and still nothing came up on the screen. “What the shit’s gone wrong with this machine!” he cried out loud, turning it off then on again and clicking the icon again. Still nothing. “Goddamn it!” he yelled. What the hell had happened to Michael’s accounts? Had someone gotten into it and changed the password on him? Shit! He should have done it two days ago himself. He had taken it for granted no one else could get in there anymore and put off doing it like a goddamn fool. And he had not done any work on those accounts either, knowing they were all settled into mutual funds for now and little needed to be done.
When Wainwright had first told him Brampton had taken off he had gone in and checked Carl Denholm’s account only and everything looked fine there so he had decided to not look further. His main concern now was to find a broker he could trust to take over. He had set up an interview on Monday with one of the long term brokers at McLean’s, who he knew was ambitious enough to want to get involved for a price.
But now something had gone terribly wrong. Someone had to have changed the password to stop him getting in. He doubted that Buddy would have done it either. Buddy was too timid; had no back bone. If someone had gotten in there and changed the password again it could have been Michael, wherever the hell he was. He took a deep breath then picked up the phone keeping his voice as steady as possible, not wanting Wainwright to know he couldn’t get in. He would panic and screw them even more with his incompetence.
“There’s something wrong with the computer,” he told Wainwrig
ht. “I have to get someone in to fix it. Tell her everything is kosher and not to worry and for God’s sake don’t tell her I am in control of her account now.” She obviously had no idea what was happening, he decided, and he wasn’t about to divulge anything until he had talked to Buddy Bremerton and had him check out the computer. Damn Michael to hell! Wherever he was hiding right now he was in deep shit!
“I should tell her not to worry then?” said Wainwright, not knowing where he could even begin to explain if she asked for specifics.
“Use your own judgment,” snapped McLean. “She probably just wants to know how rich we made her. But if she wants to start digging deeper then tell her you’ll have to get back to her on it.”
“Thanks, Roger,” said Wainwright, as the phone went dead on him.
When he got rid of Wainwright, McLean placed a direct call to Buddy Bremerton. “Buddy! What in hell has happened to Michael’s data base? I can’t get it to open on my computer. Try it from there and tell me if there’s a problem.”
“I’ll need your new password,” said Buddy in a weak voice, feeling the pressure.
“I didn’t change it yet,” said McLean. “Hadn’t gotten around to it. It’s still the same one you gave me two days ago. Do you remember it?”
“Yes, sir,” said Buddy. “I’ll see if I can open it from here.”
Buddy left him holding for five minutes, then returned. “I’m sorry Mr. McLean, but I can’t get anything to open either. It’s as though the whole data base for those accounts has been wiped out.”
“Don’t be ridiculous!” yelled McLean. “Try again. Call up Carl Denholm’s account.”
Another five minutes dragged by, then Buddy’s nervous voice came back on the line. “I found Mr. Denholm’s account,” he said, his voice cracking.
“Then why can’t I get it to open?”
“It’s in the firm’s master data base now,” said Buddy. “It’s... it’s in the dead zone, where all the accounts that show zero balances go if no activity has been recorded for a month or so, or we feel they won’t be used again.”
“What the hell are you telling me? Denholm’s account had millions in stock values. There has to be a mistake.”
“I tried several ways to find it,” Buddy replied. “I can’t explain it, but it’s been cleared out.”
McLean suddenly felt dizzy, the hairs on the back of his neck prickling. Could Michael have done something to close all those goddamn accounts and taken off with the goddamn money! He gave Buddy another account name to try. Buddy came back with the same answer. “It’s showing a zero balance and also in the dead zone,” he told him. McLean gave him several more. The answers came back the same. “Keep this to yourself,” he warned Buddy then hung up.
He called the bank where he had opened the special account that only Denholm and his associates used to transfer money into, and from which, at rare times, when those account holders decided to sell some stock, monies could be transferred out of and back to the investors’ bank accounts. Only he and Michael had authority to use that account. Not even Wainwright was privy to it because usually monies went in and right out of it into the stock funds leaving a very small balance to keep the account open. The Accountants didn’t mess with it either; all they needed was the statement Michael gave them once a month to record his accounts activities in total. He was starting to feel ill. Michael had authority to transfer money out of that account too when those account holders wanted to sell. And because of the secrecy of those transactions and need for privacy of those account holders, and because he was away overseas at least three months of every year, he had given Michael discretionary authority to make transfers in and out of that bank account without his being notified. The horror of the whole situation and its possible consequences was now beginning to unfold before him in nightmarish proportions. How the hell had he been so stupid as to give Michael that authority?
When he finally got through to the bank manager, and learned that over the last twenty four hours monies had been continually transferred into that account from various sources and then out to various banks in Las Vegas, he came so close to fainting he had to hold on to the edge of his desk to steady himself.
“What was left in the account’s balance as of this morning,” said the bank manager, “was transferred into your own personal account with First National bank and this account was closed by authority of Michael Brampton.”
“He can’t do that without my approval!” yelled McLean.
“I’m sorry, sir,” said the manager. “But that’s the way the account was set up.”
“So where did all that money go?”
“I don’t have that information,” said the man. “The account was set up for access on the internet and as you would know there would be no paperwork involved. It would all have been done using account numbers leaving no audit trail. Without your internet bank account password we could not access that account. If you’d like to make an appointment and come in we can discuss it further.”
Roger slammed down the phone, his face drained of color. My God! Michael had somehow sold all the stock and had the monies transferred to those investors’ bank accounts in Las Vegas. He had given Michael a license to steal from him allowing him to set up that account on the internet and not even monitoring it. He hadn’t even asked Michael for the password for the internet bank account. Shit! He logged on to the internet and went into the stock market account, checking some of the stocks he knew those investors had held.
After a half hour he knew the worst. The stock dumping had sent it spiraling downwards as other brokers and investors got wind of the selling. He just prayed it hadn’t happened until after Michael had sold his own mutual funds stocks. If it had, then those investors would have lost millions. My God! When Denholm found out about this he would kill him. He’d have to get to him first before he found out, try to smooth it over, tell him there was some computer glitch that he was working on. But what about that money flooding into those bank accounts in Vegas? Oh God, those investors up there would have already heard about it and been flooding Denholm with calls wanting to know what the hell was going on. He covered his face with his hands. What the hell could he do now?
He stood up and paced back and forth across the room. He could take his wife and kids and grandkids to their house in Bermuda, hide out, hope Denholm wouldn’t be able to track him, wait it out until he felt it was safe to surface again and return to LA. He stopped in his tracks, his fear turning to anger. No fucking tin horn broker like Michael Brampton was going to send him running like a cornered rat. He had done nothing wrong. It was all on Michael’s head now.
* *
Wainwright pressed the intercom button and told the receptionist to bring Detective Walker and Mrs. Rossi into his office.
“I would like to see a current statement on my account,” said Linda when they were seated, “showing all the stocks I have invested in and their current values to date.”
Wainwright forced a smile even though the ulcer in his duodena was flaring up with a vengeance. “I’ll take care of that as soon as possible and get it out to you,” he said.
“You don’t seem to understand,” she said. “I want it now. Today. I know Michael was handling my account but surely there is another broker who has taken over Michael’s accounts while he’s away.”
“I’m afraid not,” said Wainwright. “Michael had told me he was taking his laptop with him and I understood he would continue to work on his accounts from wherever he went. You have to understand that every minute of every day the values of stocks can change. It’s not something we can cut off at any one point.”
Scott, who had allowed Linda to explain what she wanted without his interference, interrupted, “Are you telling us that Michael took a laptop with him and yet no one here has been able to contact him through it?”
Wainwright’s eyes were bulging now from the extreme pain in his upper stomach. Every word and thought was causing him pain. “That�
��s what he told me,” he said. “But I have no way of knowing for sure if he did that.”
“For him to continue to monitor the stock market he would have needed to be on the internet,” persisted Scott, as Linda listened carefully, her heart racing. “In that case, someone in your company must be in constant contact with him to keep him informed of the stock changes. I suggest Mr. Wainwright you tell us who that could be.”
“And,” added Linda quickly, “I want to discuss liquidating some of those stocks right now.”
“I’m sorry,” said Wainwright. “You’ll have to excuse me for one moment. I have to take something for this ulcer before it explodes inside me.”
He hurried out of his office and rushed to the executive’s bathroom, grabbing the bottle of Mylanta and taking two large gulps from it. Dear God! he thought miserably. How could he tell them that he didn’t know anything; that Roger McLean had taken over Michael’s accounts which included hers. He felt like the biggest failure in the world and the biggest joke in the company. Now he knew why he had been hired five years ago. He didn’t have the guts to stand up to anyone. They hadn’t wanted a president as much as a fall guy; a façade of a president who just sat there and looked official and didn’t know what the hell was going on in his department or with his staff. The other vice presidents and managers had control of their few staff, but he had control of nothing. NOTHING! He wanted to scream it out loud and tell the world what a fool he was.