Suspicion

by Joseph Finder

  The wind howled and bit.

  “That’s the Devil’s Punchbowl down there. And that’s Crested Butte. Imagine driving this, huh?”

  Danny paused for a few seconds. “Lot of fun, I bet.”

  Galvin laughed again, one sharp bark. “This is an old wagon road built to connect a couple of mining towns. Hacked and blasted out of the mountainside over a hundred years ago. I’ve driven it, and let me tell you, it’s an asshole-puckering experience.”

  They stood there in silence for a long moment. Galvin at the edge of the cliff and Danny ten or twenty feet away, not far enough.

  “Don’t do this, Tom.”

  Galvin didn’t reply. A long silence passed. Maybe it was only a minute, but it felt like four or five.

  Then he said, “I know you went to the back of the mountain, and you saw I wasn’t skiing. You saw me with someone.”

  “I got hit in the head. I don’t remember anything.”

  Galvin inhaled, exhaled. “You know about the Parsis in India, what they do when they die?”

  Danny shook his head.

  “The Parsis believe that earth and fire and water are sacred elements that must never be defiled. So they prohibit cremation or burial.”

  “What do they do instead?”

  “They take the bodies of their loved ones to a place they call a Tower of Silence, and they put them on a marble slab for the vultures to eat. A couple of hours later, the vultures are fat and happy and the flesh is gone.”

  “Leaving only the bones.”

  “That goes to feed the soil, I think. I forget. Anyway, so a while back, the vultures in India started dying out. And it turned out that the hospitals in India were administering painkillers to patients. Painkillers that are toxic to vultures. So you kill pain in humans, you kill the vultures.” He paused. “But we need the vultures.”

  “The circle of life.”

  “Like this road, sorta. You can be the best professional driver in the world, but one slip, and you’re over the side. Or there’s a rock slide. Or a boulder comes down at you. Or your brakes get wet. You do everything right, but there’s always a factor out of your control.”

  “What’s your point, Tom?”

  “I need to come clean with you,” Galvin said. “I’m in serious trouble.”

  50

  “What kind of trouble?” Danny asked. He felt his body start to uncoil.

  “Ever think about just, you know, disappearing? I mean like, go off the grid.”

  Danny nodded, didn’t know what to say.

  “Just disappear forever,” Galvin went on. “Leave all this behind. Shuffle off this mortal coil. Erase your digital footprints and go somewhere like Belize or Madagascar or New Zealand and start over.”

  “Sure,” Danny said slowly. “Sometimes.” But he had the feeling Galvin wasn’t speaking hypothetically. “Of course, it’s probably not so easy to do anymore. With everything online and all . . .”

  “There are books about how to do it. People who specialize in it. I’ve thought about it a lot. I’m out on my boat and I slip and fall over the side and my body’s never found.”

  “And you’re alive and living in Madagascar.”

  “Like that.”

  “A fantasy, sure. But you can’t do it. You have a wife and kids. We have people who depend on us.”

  Danny turned to look, but Galvin seemed to be peering into the chasm. “Tom,” Danny said quietly. He paused for a few seconds. “You almost sound like you’re planning to kill yourself.”

  “Remember I told you I was just a lucky son of a bitch?”

  A smile played on his lips, but not a happy smile. Danny watched and waited. Galvin was still peering down at the yawning chasm below their feet. “Look up right place, right time, you’re gonna see my picture, right? Well, my luck finally ran out.”

  Danny nodded. “Your luck . . . with, what?—Money? Business?”

  He shook his head. The wind howled. It stung Danny’s cheeks and ears.

  His mind raced. Was Tom Galvin about to unspool some elaborate lie to explain what Danny had seen? When in fact Danny had seen nothing more than a meeting, two men in a slopeside shack. Galvin, though, seemed to be agonizing over something, struggling.

  “About twenty years ago,” he said, “I went down to Cancun to scout out an investment opportunity in Playa del Carmen. A couple of Mexican businessmen had a vision for a high-end, luxury resort on the Mayan coast near Tulum. I thought the business plan looked great, the location was perfect. The lead partner was this guy named Humberto Parra Fernández y Guerrero.” Galvin pronounced the name quickly and fluently in his native-sounding Spanish. He paused for a long time. “The guy seemed to be loaded. Someone told me he used to be the governor of the state of Michoacán before he went into business. I guess that’s one way to get rich in Mexico—get elected to political office and then make a bunch of deals.”

  Danny nodded.

  “So Fernández and his associates wined and dined me, showed me a good time. They knew I was working for one of the biggest mutual fund companies, so I represented a hundred billion in assets. And they really seemed to want me to invest some of that money.”

  “Okay.”

  “I went back home. Told my bosses I thought we were onto something that might really work big-time. I convinced them to make the investment. A month later I went back down to Playa del Carmen, and we closed the deal.” He paused. “Mexicans are big into family, you know? Fernández invited me to have dinner with his wife and his daughter. His beautiful daughter.”

  Danny smiled. “Celina.”

  “I asked her to join me for dinner the next day, and we totally, you know, clicked. Head over heels. I stayed down there in Mexico and we started seeing each other. Really fell in love. When I first met her, I spoke a little high school Spanish, but, man, did I learn the language.” He laughed ruefully. “After I got back to Boston, I started making up reasons to fly back to Mexico. I had to see her. I couldn’t stop thinking about her. Lina would fly to Boston, or we’d meet here, in Aspen, or go to New York for a weekend. Four months later we got married.

  “Well, I guess her dad saw something in me he liked. I was family now, but that wasn’t the main thing. He saw I had a good head for deals. I was a young guy on the make, and he liked that. He gave me some money to invest on my own, not with Putnam—half a million US dollars—and I guess I did all right. More than all right. Good timing, good picks, whatever whatever—and I more than doubled it in five months. So he gave me more cash.” He shrugged, turned back to Danny. “What can I say? When you’re hot, you’re hot. I didn’t double it in five months again, but I beat the market easily. He said no one in Mexico even came close to what I was doing. Pretty soon he was one of my biggest private clients.

  “And then one day, I told him I was thinking about leaving Putnam and going off on my own, starting my own investment-management firm, and he said he had a proposal for me. He had a hundred million dollars for me to invest.”

  “Jesus.”

  Galvin nodded slowly, as if remembering his own amazement. “He said he’d see how I did after a year, and if I kept performing the way I’d been performing, there’d be more. A lot more.”

  “Amazing. So he wasn’t just rich, he was super-rich.”

  Galvin made a funny head movement, half nod, half tilt, accompanied by a shrug. “Or so I thought. But the money came with one condition. He had to be my only client. I had to agree to invest no other money besides his. So I had this huge decision to make. Do I leave Putnam and go off on my own with one client? Who happened to be my father-in-law?” He turned slowly and said, “Let’s walk, okay?”

  Danny followed Galvin along the middle of the road. It was off camber, sloping down toward the outside edge. The surface was dirt and loose gravel, caked with snow and ice and scattered with the detr
itus of broken rock.

  Galvin pointed. “If you look over there, you can see the old mining town. It’s a ghost town now.”

  “You’ve really driven this road?”

  “Sure.”

  “Not in the Suburban, though . . . ? The wheel base is too long.”

  “No, I used to have an old Land Rover Defender 90.”

  “Love those trucks.”

  “I miss it.”

  “But I wouldn’t call this a road.”

  “Not here it’s not. It’s barely a trail. Forest Service wants to close it. They’re losing too many tourists.” He kicked a rock, sending it over the edge. It rolled wildly downhill, accelerating, and then launched into the air and plummeted down toward the stream.

  Danny couldn’t hear the rock hit ground. It was too far away.

  “So obviously you made the deal,” Danny prompted.

  “Here’s the thing. I’d been working for Putnam for five years by then, and I was making around three hundred grand, maybe three fifty. And I’m thinking, why in hell should I bust my butt working for chump change when I could be making real money?”

  “Sure.” Danny winced inwardly—three hundred fifty thousand dollars a year didn’t sound like chump change to him—but he said nothing.

  “I was tired of being a lackey. Working for idiots in a giant bureaucracy. The only reason to keep working there was job security. And, I mean, you want job security, go work for the post office.”

  “Sure.”

  “Here, finally, was a chance for me to prove how good I really was. Put myself on the line every single day. And I ran the numbers. I figured, if I run my own fund, I’m gonna make two and twenty—two percent management fee, twenty percent of the profit, right? Assuming I make twenty percent and I don’t splurge on fancy office space, whatever whatever, I’m taking home five mil. In one year, Danny. Five million bucks in my first year.”

  “Not bad for a plumber’s boy from Southie.”

  “And get this: Worst-case scenario, if I screwed up and lost money, I’d still pocket a million bucks! How could I say no to that?”

  “You couldn’t.”

  “I couldn’t. A no-brainer.”

  “But you strike me as the kind of guy who always does his due diligence.”

  Galvin looked at him, surprised to find Danny a step ahead, then gave a sly smile. “You really are a smart SOB, aren’t you? But look, here’s the reality: A guy offers you a hundred million dollars to play with, the chance to set up your own shop, how close are you really gonna look? You think Putnam or Fidelity asks all their investors how they made their money? Right?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Anyway, my first year, I beat the S&P by eight points. The guy was happy. His partners were happy.”

  “Partners?”

  “Turns out my bride’s dad wasn’t your run-of-the-mill entrepreneur.” He paused for a beat. He looked at Danny. He waited a few seconds longer.

  Maybe he was being dramatic. Or maybe he knew that once he told Danny, nothing would ever be the same.

  Galvin let out his breath. “Turned out I was working for a Mexican drug cartel,” he said.

  PART

  FOUR

  51

  When it finally came out, Danny was surprised at how matter-of-fact it sounded. How undramatic.

  And what a relief it was to have this confirmed.

  “Whoa,” Danny said softly.

  Did he sound convincingly shocked? He hoped so. After all, it wasn’t entirely contrived. He was astonished that Galvin had just revealed something so explosive, so dangerous. That he trusted Danny enough to tell him.

  But the question still remained: Why was he talking about this?

  “Lina’s dad was what you call a pez gordo in the Sinaloa cartel. A big fish. A jefe. I guess he was sort of like their chief financial officer.”

  “You had no idea until then?”

  “I had a pretty good idea something was squirrelly. But like I say, I didn’t look too hard. Maybe I didn’t want to know.” Galvin furrowed his brow and scowled as he talked, as if it pained him to speak.

  “You’re telling me you’re a . . . you launder money for the cartel?”

  “No,” Galvin said firmly, almost with distaste. “I don’t launder money.”

  A distant sound of a motor revving, big and throaty. A long way off, but it seemed to be coming from where they’d parked. Galvin turned around. It didn’t sound at all like the Suburban. Maybe just a passing truck.

  Galvin gave Danny a quick, puzzled look, but then he resumed walking down the middle of the path, and Danny fell in alongside.

  “They don’t need me for that anyway. They’ve got major banks for that.”

  “In Mexico?”

  “Here. In England. All over the place. You can Google the HSBC bank in London and the Wachovia bank here. Famous cases.”

  “Then what did they want from you?”

  “Their own money manager. Their own private equity investor.”

  “The cartel did?”

  Galvin nodded. “Lina’s dad was a smart dude. He saw all the cash they were generating—billions of dollars a year, and most of it sat in warehouses or locked away in suitcases. And he wondered why they couldn’t do something with all that money. Invest in real estate or restaurant chains or the stock market. Grow it, right? That’s what they wanted me for.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  He kept walking a while longer, as if he hadn’t heard.

  “Tom,” Danny said.

  Finally, Galvin stopped. He stood close to Danny. “I can’t have a private conversation at home. They’ve got it bugged. In Boston, too. They monitor my phone calls. They read my e-mails. Out here there’s no mobile phone reception, so no listening devices.”

  “The cartel, you mean? They monitor you because they don’t trust you?”

  “Oh, it’s nothing personal. They don’t trust anyone. They want to make sure I’m not cooperating with the FBI or the DEA, selling them out. I run two billion dollars of their money. They have to be careful.”

  “I’d think you’re the one who really has to worry. You could go to jail.”

  Galvin’s expression was inscrutable.

  “Is your car . . . safe? To talk in, I mean?”

  “Not in Boston. This one I just leased, so they wouldn’t have had time to wire it up. But the driver listens.”

  “Your driver . . . ?”

  “Works for them, not for me. He’s not just a bodyguard, he’s a minder, too. Golden handcuffs, Danny. Golden handcuffs.”

  “But . . . I still don’t get why you’re telling me all this.”

  “Because I know you’ve seen some things, and I don’t want you poking around and asking questions. For my sake, and for your own sake. You saw me on the mountain. I don’t know what else you’ve seen, but I want to protect you.” He paused to watch a hawk, black with a yellow bill and a white-banded tail, gliding on the wind, tilting and swooping and searching for prey. “And something else. I’ll be honest, I’m scared out of my mind, and I don’t know who else to talk to.”

  Surprised, Danny looked at him. Galvin’s face was strained and creased.

  “Scared of what?” Danny said.

  “You understand you can’t tell a soul? I can’t emphasize that strongly enough. For your own sake. And Abby’s.”

  Danny nodded. The mention of Abby’s name clutched at his insides.

  “The cartels have sources in US law enforcement like you wouldn’t believe. Especially the DEA—that place is riddled with moles. A couple of weeks back, the cartel got an internal DEA report about a new informant. Someone who was giving the DEA extremely in-depth information on the Sinaloa cartel. Names of contacts in the US, cell phone numbers, e-mail addresses. The name of a log
istics company I helped create that we use as a shell, mostly to move cash around. Information that could only have come from me, they decided.”

  Danny swallowed hard. It tasted bitter, metallic.

  “So they did a sweep of my office. The house, my cars, even the plane. Everything.”

  “And?”

  “At first they thought the informant had to be Esteban, my driver.”

  “Esteban? But why?”

  “I’m not entirely sure. But they said it had to be someone who had access to my home office. Not my office downtown. I’ve got close to a hundred people working for me, but as far as any of them know, they’re working for a family office. I’m the only one who knows the truth. I’m the only one who’s in touch with cartel leadership. I’m the only one who has their personal e-mail addresses and cell phone numbers. So it had to be someone who had access to my home computer or my BlackBerry.”

  “And that’s why you had to fire him?”

  “Danny, the truth is, I didn’t fire him. I told you, he didn’t work for me. He worked for them. One day he was just . . . gone. I’m pretty sure they killed the guy.”

  Danny closed his eyes. That image of Esteban, mutilated so horrifically, came to mind. “Wow,” he said at last.

  “You know what kind of retirement package these boys offer? An all-expenses-paid one-way trip through the wood chipper. Understand? But that didn’t plug the leak. The information kept flowing.” He paused for a long time. “Now they think it’s me.”

  “You mean your own father-in-law would have you whacked?”

  He shook his head. “Who knows. He might have, if he was still alive. But he’s been gone a while. He had a stroke ten, twelve years ago.”

  “So you have no protector anymore.”

  Galvin nodded.

  “But why the hell would you cooperate with the DEA?”

  Galvin was silent for a long moment. He looked uncomfortable. As if there was something he couldn’t bring himself to say. After a few seconds, he shrugged. “That’s their theory. They think I made a deal. That I’m cooperating with the DEA to stay out of prison. That I sold out to save my own ass.”