The Boardwalk Trust (Beach Lawyer Series Book 2)

by Avery Duff

  “Definitely,” he said. “And you were right—I was overthinking it. Carlos—he was in on it.”

  “In on what?” Gia asked.

  “All of it.”

  CHAPTER 30

  From his car parked on Entrada, with Penko again beside him, Kiril had watched the three of them start up the stairs. The woman and girl walked ahead; the man brought up the rear. Crowds of people filled this canyon, all of them exercising. Physical activity in this country was now a social event—new equipment, the right shoes, shorts, shirts, hats, and drinks.

  Hydration, he was thinking. A made-up word for drinking water and selling water to people with too much everything.

  He recalled his own childhood. Every morning his grandfather had told him to take the herd to the mountain and come back at nightfall—with a full herd. Age seven, alone and cold, running to mountain pastures with the sheep. A real difficult life, but on the Westside of LA, difficult had to be invented.

  Penko had his eye on the stairs, too, their targets now halfway up.

  “Woman walk ahead of him,” Penko said. “Pedal.”

  Once Kiril explained to Gospodar the situation with Matteo Famosa—why they couldn’t go back for another pass to check their result in that long alley—Gospodar had calmed down. Even so, here Kiril was again with the oaf beside him, keeping an eye on the lawyer and the two females.

  “How fast did you make it up those stairs?” Kiril asked. “Your best time?”

  “Never do before. Looks like easy run.”

  Kiril checked the weather on his iPhone, waiting for Penko to be himself. Seconds later, swinging open his door, Penko jumped out.

  “I signal to you. Keep my time.”

  “Go,” Kiril said, tapping his phone. “Best of five.”

  Penko ran down Entrada and stopped at the stairs. Pulling up his sweatshirt hood, counting down on fingers to Kiril: Three. Two. One. Then Penko took off.

  Without bothering to set his timer, Kiril was already calling Ilina’s burner phone. When she didn’t answer, he hung up, irritated that he’d missed her. But how fair was that? Ilina had no control over client appointments. That moment when a man viewed the website and decided that Ilina’s alter ego, Candi—sultry and intelligent—was the Internet girl of his dreams.

  Last time they’d met, they’d laughed about the website’s legal language that said in every way possible: no promise of sexual relations was expressed or implied. Even more to the point:

  This Site Offers No Prostitution!

  All the girls joked about it, she’d told Kiril. “So sorry, Officer, I am new to your country. I did not know fucking for money was prostitution. In my country, this is called commerce.”

  Alexandra had passed along his message to Ilina, and a few nights ago, Ilina had slipped out of the house where she lived with Alexandra and the other girls, even though she was supposed to be working that night. They’d met at the top of Elysian Fields near Echo Park’s water tower.

  Halfway down the steep hillside, he’d kissed her. She’d kissed him back. He’d turned her around, and she’d held on to a tree while he raised her skirt and took her from behind, the position not meant to degrade but to let him spot any oncoming danger instead of losing himself in her alabaster face. Afterward, they’d walked arm in arm among the dying eucalyptus trees, preyed on, she said, by an Australian aphid that sucked all the sap from the leaves.

  “Nashville,” she said. “You know people there?”

  He’d looked into this place, Nashville, since last time they’d hooked up. It was there she planned to learn line dancing and visit the Grand Ole Opry.

  “No, but you love their music, and it is home of country music. All singers have swimming pools, look like guitars with strings painted on bottom of pool.”

  “All of them?”

  “Every one of them.”

  They were having fun now.

  “After we move there, I will build a pool to look like your pussy, dig the hole myself. And after that, we buy a big house on the Black Sea, invite your family for a long visit.”

  “Short visit,” she said. Dropping into her Candi routine, she said, “You must be a very strong, very wealthy man.”

  “Strong, yes. Wealthy? Not yet.”

  He’d known she was testing him. Asking him without asking, if he could live with the person she’d been: Candi. Kiril liked that about her. Not coming right out with it, telling him again and again how much she hated her life as an escort.

  She’d squeezed his arm with hers, and he grew hard again. Smart girl, this Ilina. But most of these girls from home started out smart. Like the others, Ilina had always lusted for America. At home, her life would’ve beat her down in ten years. Rough, cruel men like Penko were the norm, beatings and rape common. But after she’d landed in LA, everything looked like she’d seen on TV.

  “Even the Baywatch lifeguard towers,” she’d told him. “It’s LA, baby!”

  But now that she wanted out, like most of the girls, she was afraid. She’d heard all the stories about Poor Radka, the girl who tried running away.

  “When they found her,” she’d told Kiril, “they did not act angry. They take Radka back to the apartment, tell her to pack her clothes, wear a nice dress for travel, get her passport because her flight leaves that night. ‘Hurry, hurry,’ they say, and drive her to the bank, wait while she cashes out her accounts—forty thousand, I heard. After that, she sat in the back seat with a man and asked questions, but no one spoke to her anymore. When they reach the Tom Bradley, they do not stop. Then the man in back take away all her money, go through her pockets, too, and they drive her to Skid Row. ‘Take off your shoes,’ they tell her. ‘Why?’ she asks. The man in back hit her and rip shoes off himself. ‘You have no friends anymore. Get out,’ they tell her. They keep everything, even her phone. ‘Careful of the sidewalks—they pass along a flesh-eating virus.’ And they leave her in the dark and don’t ever come back.”

  It would be worse for Kiril. If they found him trying to run, they would kill him. Despite the risks, both of them wanted to break free of this clan and live a new life.

  “In my mind,” she’d told him, “whatever you do to make it happen is already forgiven.”

  Parked in the SUV on Entrada, Kiril watched Penko bolting down the stairs, three at a time. At the bottom, he looked over at Kiril, who stuck his head out the window.

  “You can do better,” he shouted.

  Penko took off again. The only downside to getting rid of Penko: his stench afterward.

  Kiril recalled what the girl, Alexandra, had said about Penko—that limp finger she’d shown him—and wondered if Penko’s cock problem drew him to younger women. Slender, no curves, like the girl in the Emerald Triangle. And now, perhaps, impotence was drawing him to little girls, like the one on the stairs.

  That gave him another good reason to run away with Ilina: leaving behind this sick man.

  “Money,” he’d told Ilina at Elysian Fields. “As much as we will ever need. That will come in time.”

  “How can you be sure?” she’d asked.

  “Because I am certain of it,” Kiril said, even though he wasn’t certain of it at all.

  CHAPTER 31

  By the time Robert and Delfina reached Gia’s house after visiting Teo, Delfina was asleep in his arms. He carried her up the front walk, and Gia put her to bed. Robert had been gathering his thoughts about Carlos for the past few hours, made a few notes, and assembled his panel of experts in the living room: Erik and Gia. They sat around a mesquite fire as Robert unraveled his latest theory about Carlos and the trust.

  He started with a bang. “First off, let’s be clear about one thing. Carlos was not a bad investor. Carlos was corrupt.”

  He let that sink in, then forged ahead.

  “All the e-mails Carlos sent SoccMom complaining about nonpayment, the lunches Jake Saxon of SoccMom didn’t show up for? All of it was bogus. The day Carlos told Saxon he was waiting for him at t
he Lobster’s bar, the Lobster was closed that day. Carlos’ entire paper trail about the missed meetings? All of it was subterfuge.”

  “Subterfuge for what?” Erik asked.

  “Bear with me, okay?”

  “I’ve eaten red meat. I can definitely hang.”

  “Carlos knew the Bulgarians,” Robert said, “and let’s keep calling them Boris. Doesn’t matter how Carlos knew Boris—maybe he bought dope from them, I don’t know—but he knew them.”

  “And the girl,” Gia said.

  “The girl, right. Evelyn told me that Carlos started dating a lot of different women. And I’m telling you that five-nine, one-hundred-fifty-pound, fifty-five-year-old Carlos Famosa doesn’t all of a sudden start dating lots of women. I’m saying, Boris made it happen. Maybe Carlos starts hanging out with them, feels like one of the cool guys for a change, and Boris makes the introductions. One way or another, for the first time in his life, Carlos had beautiful women digging him. And along the way, he met another girl.”

  “The girl,” Gia said.

  “Let’s call her Svetlana,” Erik said.

  “Done. And Svetlana, she’s a cut above the others, more refined.”

  “Extremely hot, though, right?” Erik asked.

  Before Robert could answer, Gia handed her laptop to Erik and Robert.

  “See if this helps,” she said.

  The link’s title: Photographs of Bulgarian Women. Five across and five down. An array of stunning women with radiant skin, mostly brunette.

  “Forget the bottom row,” Gia said.

  Some troll had inserted shots there of Bulgarian farm wives who resembled NFL nose tackles.

  “Supermodels, I get it,” Erik said, both men still checking out the top four rows.

  “Oye, Roberto,” Gia said. “Over here.”

  He handed back her laptop.

  “And Svetlana?” Gia asked.

  “Svetlana. Like I was saying, maybe she’s more refined, real girlfriend material, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t like spending money, traveling, getting gifts. Could be she tells him her parents are about to lose their farm, her mother has cancer, maybe she’ll have to go home. However it happened, it doesn’t take Carlos long to realize he’s punching above his weight. He needs more money, and his half share of the trust’s income doesn’t cut it anymore.”

  Gia nodded. “Makes sense.”

  “Erik?” he asked. “You good?”

  “Solid. Keep going, man.”

  “And here’s our boy, Carlos,” Robert said. “All that cash in the trust, and half of it belongs to his brother, but Teo’s not just any brother—he’s Carlos’ drunk brother. More than once, his spendthrift brother and his wife had showed up wanting more money for booze and drugs, threatening to sue, and the trust took three big hits over Teo’s brawling. Still, after all the mess Teo’s caused, the brothers are treated the same under the trust. For the past decade, Carlos hasn’t pulled a salary for dealing with all the busted water heaters, leaking roofs, and pissed-off tenants. It was that resentment, that and Svetlana, that’s why timid Carlos—el Débil—decided to do something bold with the trust’s money.”

  “The investments,” Erik said.

  “Right. But first, let’s look at Boris. He’s been growing dope up north, like you said, Erik. What Boris winds up with is a ton of cash and a need to clean it. Clean money that can be explained with a tax return, so Boris sets up two shell companies. Both look legit, and they get a legit check from a legit investor.”

  “The trust,” Gia said.

  “Check,” Erik said.

  “After that, Boris pays out Carlos’ invested money to people Boris owns. Tech consultants, limo companies, employees—consultants, that’s how I’d do it. I mean, who’s going to question a consultant who pays his income taxes and fails to come up with a SoccMom app that works? Happens all day, every day.”

  “The IRS doesn’t care?” Gia asked.

  Robert said, “Say it’s one hundred million dollars, and your last name’s Escobar? Sure, that’s a red flag, but I bet every year in the United States, there are a half-million transactions of three to five million dollars. Long as the IRS get paid its income taxes, it’s game over for them. Now, Boris? His money’s clean—he gets a tax return—and he can do anything he wants with it now. Buy a house, stock market, gift it to his boss.”

  “Whatever he’s told to do with it,” Erik said.

  “Yep.”

  “And Carlos?” Gia asked.

  “On the surface, Carlos gets IOUs from Vegas Rail and SoccMom. They can be converted to stock, but it’ll never get that far. Day one, it’s worth nothing—and Carlos knows it. So what’s really going on?”

  He let it hang there till Erik said, “Oh.”

  “Cash,” Gia said. “Carlos takes Boris’ dirty cash under the table.”

  Robert said, “¡Exactamente! Boris pays Carlos with dirty cash. Not the trust—Carlos. Let’s round the trust’s three point eight million up to four million—Carlos is taking a risk and doing Boris a solid. So let’s say four million in unwashed cash goes into Carlos’ pocket. Well, not his pocket—his floor safe.”

  “So he’s single, dating Svetlana, has four million in cash,” Erik said. “What’s not to like?”

  “What floor safe?” Gia asked.

  “A triple-XL safe in his bedroom,” Robert said. “Evelyn thought it was grandiose for his VSOP brandy, cigars, and watches. Same here, but I was wrong.”

  Gia said, “Sure, the safe was practical.”

  “For his stacks of money. And think about it. You’re Carlos. Which would you rather have? Close to four million of trust cash that half belongs to your brother? Or four million tucked in your floor safe, all of it yours?”

  Robert went over Carlos’ lifestyle. All his recurring bills, even his rent, were on autopay. His monthly nut came to $4,000 or $5,000. Once the plan was really up and running, he could’ve slipped that much dirty cash into his checking account each month, easy, and never have drawn attention to himself.

  Robert kept going: “Evelyn said Vegas was high on Carlos’ list, and cash is king over there. On a given day, he gives Svetlana, say, ten, twenty thousand cash. She pays for a suite at the Bellagio or the Four Seasons, first-class everything else. Watches, jewelry, sure, and she pays for rental cars on her card, takes his cash reimbursement. He could fly around the world that way, paying her cash, using her credit card—all that and still keep a low profile.”

  Erik said, “I can see my man Carlos in his bedroom with supermodel Svetlana, the bed covered in thousands, rolling around in it like the Wolf of West LA.”

  Gia threw a pen at Erik. “That Carlos you’re talking about or you?”

  “A good investigator paints a mental picture,” Erik told her. Then to Robert, “Keep talking. I’m right there with you.”

  “Carlos’ biggest problem just became: How do I spend all my cash money on the girl I love?”

  Erik said, “I don’t want to throw cold water on your theory—”

  “Not a theory, mi Oso. It’s what happened.”

  “What about probate court sanctions? You said the judge could sanction Carlos about two million for losing Teo’s money?”

  “So what? To the legit world, Carlos owns next to nothing. His house, rented. Car, rented. Stocks and bonds, nada.”

  “Nothing for the court to seize,” Gia said.

  “Even if that judge sanctioned him, Carlos is golden,” Erik said.

  “How I see it, too,” Robert said.

  “Until Svetlana split on him,” Gia said.

  Robert nodded. “Once Svetlana split—more like got her marching orders—Carlos lost his mind, went running back to Evelyn. Sent her real e-mails, trying to apologize, but Evelyn? She didn’t make time for him and still feels lousy about how she left it.”

  Robert continued: “And there sits Carlos, alone with the money, no girl, sold his soul. And he starts thinking about how he treated Teo.”

>   “That’s it? Leaving all those clues, just to tell Teo that?”

  “More than just that. Carlos took the money out of the floor safe—took the money to the desert and hid it.”

  Robert let that critical piece sink in: Carlos hid the money in the desert.

  Then he waited. Wanted to hear one of them say what he wanted to hear.

  Gia said it first. “Carlos was afraid. Boris was coming back for his money. And Carlos knew it.”

  “Son of a bitch!” Erik said. “That’s why Boris picked him up outside that frame shop. Boris was gonna to take back his money, and why the hell not? What’s Carlos gonna do about it?”

  Gia jumped up. “But Boris was too late.”

  “Carlos already hid it,” Erik said, on his feet, too, low-fiving Gia.

  “Excellente, mi chica! Gia was right—I was overthinking Carlos’ last trip to the desert. All these clues weren’t for me; they were for Teo. The Argonaut notice—come to the courthouse, Teo. I need to talk to you, to see you.”

  “And why didn’t he pick the IHOP for a tall stack of flapjacks and a rasher of bacon?”

  “Scared? Thinks he’s being watched?” Erik asked.

  “Hell, yes, and the courthouse? There’s a metal detector to get in and cops everywhere. A great place to talk, especially if you’re freaking out and afraid you’re being followed.”

  “Whether Carlos saw Teo at the first hearing or saw him there one or two weeks after the hearing, he didn’t care. He could tell Teo what he did, maybe set things straight between them. And if he never saw Teo at the courthouse, and somehow Teo wound up in Carlos’ study—even if Carlos was dead and Teo made it there as next of kin—Teo might’ve seen the three framed rocks Drew Freize was supposed to deliver. I went to the desert, and I went recently. That’s what Carlos wanted to get across to Teo if Carlos wasn’t around to tell him.”

  “Where? Which desert?” Gia asked.

  “The Mojave,” Robert said.

  On Gia’s laptop, he Googled Mojave Desert, clicked Wiki, and handed it back to her. “Ms. Marquez, if you’ll do the honors.”

  Gia started reading. “The Mojave Desert is an arid rain shadow desert and the driest desert in North America. It is located in the southwestern United States, primarily within southeastern California and southern Nevada, and it occupies a total of 47,877 square miles.”