I saw where this was going. I knew Ronald Soranden had it in him to use this for personal gain. Soranden had always struck me as a man with hidden larcenies running rampant in his little IRS heart. His secret in-house name at the IRS was “The Toad” because of how he looked, and because he might, in the privacy of his office, flick his tongue out and snag flies. Now, hearing all this, nothing he did in the way of intimidation or blackmail felt unlikely or out of character for him.
“He blackmailed you,” I said.
“Did he ever,” Volker replied. “It was always just the two of us. No witnesses. He told me that for a hundred thousand dollars he could make it all go away. He acted as if he was doing me a big favor, that for a hundred grand, he could actually save me money and keep me out of prison, that it was his head on the chopping block if any of this got out, not that I would ever have any sort of proof of what he’d done. I could either pay him or go to prison, up to me. He gave me two weeks to think about it but suggested that I might start rounding up cash if I wanted to work with him and keep out of prison. He said all this as if he were doing me a favor, that he was, in fact, my friend.”
“Solid IRS technique, but used somewhat differently,” I said. “Believe it or not, blackmail isn’t in the IRS field manual. At least not by that name.”
“Couldn’t prove it by me,” Volker said. “In the end we had to raid Marta’s IRA after all, pay the ten percent, and she’ll have to pay income taxes on it this year. We cleared fifty thousand, left a pittance in the account to keep it open. And I stripped my savings accounts at the bank and credit union, and after all that we still came up short.”
“By thirteen thousand, six hundred,” I said.
“You got it.”
“And you gave it all to Soranden.”
“In cash. Untraceable. His word against mine if any of it got out.”
“When was that?”
“Toward the end of June. The twenty-second.”
“And then he went missing and ended up dead.”
Mike shook his head. “That was … horrible. Unbelievable. I didn’t have a thing to do with it, but … what would the police think if they got wind of him blackmailing me like that?”
“If he blackmailed you, he probably blackmailed others.”
“Wouldn’t really have helped me, would it?”
I shrugged. “It might have. If the police found out he was blackmailing others, you’d be in the pool, but that’s all.”
“Which I didn’t want to be. I didn’t want any of this to get out. I’m still at risk for tax evasion, don’t you think?”
“No question about that. But prison’s unlikely.”
“Still.”
“Yeah. You’re out a hundred grand and you’d still owe the IRS that hundred thirty-six thousand. More now. I don’t suppose you’d care to go to the IRS, tell them the entire story, see if what Soranden did would get you off the hook, put this behind you?”
“No way. I just want it to go away. I mean, it seems as if I’ve, well … that I’ve suffered enough. More than enough. This has been pure hell, these past months. I just wanted to put the money back into our business account and be done with it, try to replace everything we’d lost, which will take time, years. I don’t know what Soranden did to bury what I’d done—four years of unreported income—but it appears to have gone away like he said it would. I haven’t heard anything about it since.”
“But then …” Marta said.
“Not sure about that,” Mike said. “It might stir things up that we should just let lie. It’ll take a while, but we’ll get through this.”
The two of them had been talking things over before Lucy and I got there. “Not sure about what?” I asked.
Marta looked at her brother. “Now that we’ve gone this far, I think we should at least ask.”
I didn’t know where all that was going, but they were going to figure it out themselves, didn’t need me asking “what?” every few seconds.
“I don’t know,” Mike said.
“Last night you said something about a finder’s fee.”
“I think the money’s gone, Marta.”
“We don’t know that. We should at least ask.”
Mike stared at his shoes for a full minute. Finally, he looked up at me. “You’re kinda high profile, Mr. Angel.”
“Not by choice, but yeah.”
“You’re the one who found Soranden’s head. I mean, his skull.”
“Which is an important part of a head. It was something of an accident, me finding it five seconds before Lucy did.”
“Last thing I want is high profile. But you … you’ve got ways to, I don’t know, keep things quiet?”
“Some of what I’ve done this past year has been about as quiet as anything the National Security Agency has done. Just don’t ask me to tell you about it.”
He offered up a tentative smile. “National Security Agency. I sorta like the sound of that.”
“It’s a skill I’ve been developing.”
Volker looked at his sister. “Marta?”
“Ask him, Mike. It can’t hurt. Not now, for heaven’s sake, after all you’ve told him. And Lucy.”
“I suppose not.” He gave me an inquiring look. “If you’re accepting new clients, Mr. Angel, I think I’d like to hire you.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
WHEN YOU’RE ON a roll, everyone wants to hire you.
“Mort,” I said. “Hire me to do what?”
“Us,” Lucy said. “Hire us. Let us not forget your assistant who is quite a bit more than your basic little gofer.”
Volker had a question in his eyes. Same question he had at the bowling alley. Time to clear that up.
“She’s thirty-one years old,” I said. “Normally we wouldn’t hand out ages like business cards, but she has been an exception for … well, for obvious reasons.”
Volker stared at Lucy. “Are you sure?” he said to me.
“A while ago we cut off an arm and counted rings—” An elbow in the ribs brought that to an abrupt halt. I continued with, “It has been verified a hundred ways from Sunday, up one side and down the other.”
Marta laughed softly. “It’s okay, Mike.”
“Hire us to do what?” Lucy asked.
“To … to try to get some or all of that hundred thousand back,” Mike said. “While keeping all of this quiet, of course.”
“Are you still moonlighting?” I asked.
“Some. Yes.”
“Gotta cut that out. At least get Evelyn’s permission to go outside the business, which I think she would okay as long as it doesn’t cut into the bottom line. And you need to start reporting it as income to get all of this under control.”
He lowered his head. “Yeah, okay. I’ve been doing it after hours, putting in fourteen- and sixteen-hour days, but … okay.”
“You need to pay quarterly estimated taxes. Try to get that done today, tomorrow at the latest.”
He looked up. “That mean you’re taking me on?”
“Not yet. Evelyn’s still my client. She asked me to find out what was going on. I’m going to tell her. No choice, Mike.”
“I want to be there when you do.”
“Don’t see any conflict there. How about today at five? I’ll give her a call, tell her I’ve got an answer regarding that money that went south.”
He blew out a breath. “Yeah, okay. I’ll be there. I mean, I’ll stay there. I took a long lunch to be here, but I’ve got a couple of clients coming in this afternoon. Any chance you can give me an answer now, about seeing if you can get my money back? Some of it anyway?”
“Not yet. I’ll have to ask my partner, Ms. Clary. I have an idea she’ll be thrilled with the idea, Soranden being in the news as he is, and the subject of a red-hot FBI investigation.”
“Not much hope there, huh?”
“Don’t give up yet,” I said. “My powers of persuasion are … legion.”
* * *
“
Yeah, right,” said my assistant when we were back in the howling Toyota. “Legion.”
“Ma hangs on my every word, kiddo. You’ve seen her.”
“Hangs. Great metaphor, Mort.”
“We can’t all be English whizzes, but stick with me, kid. Pick up what you can.”
“Bullshit is useful? Since when?”
“Since Congress made it their de facto modus operandi. Now how ’bout lunch?”
“Fabulous segue, and you used a bunch of Latin too. But, okay. Where?”
“Drive-thru at Taco Bell?”
“Anything but.”
“Let’s go talk to Ma first.”
* * *
As I’d thought, Ma was thrilled at the prospect of trying to get Volker’s money back from Soranden, who was about as dead as people normally get and unlikely to cough up so much as a wooden nickel.
“No,” she said. “We’re layin’ off Soranden.”
“I thought we were after Munson’s bonus. We might have a pretty good fingernail under that case now.”
“We were, now we’re not. The case is still a dog and the FBI’s all over it and square dancin’ with that bunch is a loser.”
“But—”
“No.”
“Mike is—”
“No.”
“And—”
“No.”
“Okay, then. We’ll talk later.”
“No, we won’t.”
* * *
She’s such a kidder.
“Legion,” Lucy said as we left the Peppermill Casino and walked over to the car.
“Shut up.”
“But thanks for the buffet. The salad was good.”
“Not enough calories to support life. You lost more calories going through the line twice than you got by going through the line twice.”
“Unlike you, Mr. Prime Rib and chicken, shrimp, egg rolls, mashed potatoes, pecan pie, ice cream, and a whole lot of other unhealthy stuff.”
“Stop. You’re making me hungry again.”
“It’s two forty. What’ll we do between now and five, when we’ve gotta be at Joss & Volker’s?”
“Not sure about me, but you are about to get all over that pile of Soranden crud since we got it. Especially now that we might be hitting it from two directions.”
“Ma told us to keep away from Soranden. And I think that would be from either direction, Cowboy.”
“She’ll come around. I have powers of persuasion I haven’t tapped yet.”
“Yeah, right. We should put money on that.”
“Fifty bucks, same as last time when you lost that bet this summer about where Shanna was headed.”
“You’re on.”
* * *
Lucy leaned over the table, thumbing through Soranden’s paper debris. “What’re you gonna do?” she asked me.
“Supervise my assistant, of course.” I pushed off and spun a complete circle in the office chair, great bearings, then wagged a finger at her. “Get on it. Check his car maintenance.”
“Like car maintenance is the key to what killed him. Look at this stuff. FBI went bonkers with it. I’m surprised they didn’t include his elementary school report cards. And you supervise like chimpanzees do ballet.”
“That’s an image.”
“You could help. This is a mess. And don’t tell me to start with car maintenance or I’ll wallop you.”
“Mmm, testy.” I came over, put an arm around her waist, pulled her close, and said, “You smell good.”
“Back off. It’s just balsamic vinaigrette.”
I picked up a sheet that listed magazines and periodicals found in Soranden’s office at the IRS. Most were puzzle mags: crosswords, Sudoku, logic puzzles. “I never figured The Toad for this kind of thing,” I said, discounting issues of IRS Weekly and a well-thumbed copy of Accounting for Psychos.
“Probably did it in his office with the door closed. He was really quite a crook, wasn’t he?”
“We all were.”
She bumped me with a hip. “You weren’t. But he was in his office, planning blackmails and doing puzzles, getting paid how much per hour, ripping off Uncle Sam?”
“Oodles.”
“Oodles, huh?”
“Right. Speaking of which, how ’bout this doodle sheet?” I picked up a copy of Soranden’s meanderings, the kind of thing people do when they’re put on hold, brain spinning in circles, listening to bad Muzak. Circles, spirals, dollar signs, a few stars, junk squiggles. It also had reminders: “5:00 A.J., E’s B-day!, RM & PL@TJ’s.” And a lot of odd phrases like, “about three u-boat there,” “astute statue,” and “si, a horse is ashore.” I finally recognized much of it as a curious mix of anagrams, anagram-like nonsense, and half-assed palindromes.
After a while Lucy said, “Really weird stuff, but I guess he was a puzzle freak, bordering on half smart.”
“I never thought he was short on brains, only integrity.”
She picked up the sheet. “‘Live evil, vile Levi.’ That’s over the top. ‘Doom mood,’ ‘rat tar’, ‘toot, otto.’ And ‘OCD, Doc?’ Okay, I like that one. ‘Honest? Not she.’ That’s good too. ‘Bob’s boobs bob.’ That’s a palindrome. ‘Drool, O’Lord.’ Wow. Like I said, kinda smart, but on a scale of one to ten, I give him a creep rating of nine point five with leaking corpses being a ten.”
“Leaking corpses, speaking of creepy.”
We phoned the numbers on the doodle sheet. Numbers in area code 916 got us a body shop and an extended care facility, both in California, neither of which had heard of Ronald Soranden. The 917 number was an overlay to the 212 area code. The phone was answered by a guy in a bored voice, heavy Brooklyn accent, in the maintenance facility of the Port Authority in Manhattan. He’d never heard of Soranden either.
“Port Authority?” Lucy said.
“Buses. Young girls from Kansas with no talent get off in the Big Apple thinking they’ll be the next Paris Hilton—okay, talent-wise how hard could that be—and end up walking Eighth Avenue.”
“Yeah, that sounds like fun.”
* * *
Four fifty-seven p.m. Lucy and I were back at Joss & Volker. Evelyn and Michael were there, as expected. Evelyn was just finishing up with a client, a middle-aged woman in Christian Louboutins, according to Lucy—heels like a giraffe, damned ugly, looking as comfortable as Marine footwear at Guadalcanal.
“How do you know that sh … stuff?” I whispered.
“My mom has a few pairs of Louboutins. Very expensive. Hers don’t have heels like that, though. She’s not that dumb.”
“Yeah? How expensive? More than forty bucks?”
She grabbed my arm and hustled me toward a water cooler in the waiting room, got me a drink, which was kind of her. I glanced back at the Louboutins, created by visionary podiatrists to enhance their already terrific retirements. “How much would those run for real?” I persisted.
“About a hundred yards. Two if you were lucky, then the heels would break.”
Man, I hate smart-asses. But her response made me think the price of women’s shoes is a gender secret. If one of them spills the beans, the rest are obligated to stone her to death. If you see some dame hobbling around in shoes you don’t think she could give away on Craigslist, do not ask her how much they cost. Some of those dippy broads carry guns and their feet hurt.
Eve’s client left, working on her club feet, black toenails beneath a veneer of polish, and the four of us gathered in Eve’s office around her conference table. She glanced at Mike, then gave me a darting look with a question in it.
“Got an answer for you,” I said to get the ball rolling.
Mike was gazing intently at his hands. Eve turned to him. “I’m so sorry, Mike. I didn’t know what else to do.”
“It’s okay,” he said. He looked at me. “Now what?”
“It’s your story,” I told him. “You should tell it.”
He went through it. He wasn’t happy. He started off slow, then picked up a littl
e speed. I didn’t interrupt, didn’t need to. I listened to make sure it was the same story. And it was. All of it, including Soranden’s blackmail.
When he finished, Eve said, “Oh, I wish you’d come to me back when you needed that extra income.”
He hung his head. All the abject signs you get from a kid who tried to raid a cookie jar, pulled it off the counter, broke it into a thousand pieces. Four years ago, he’d needed the job and hadn’t trusted her enough to get permission to moonlight. It had finally come back on him and he looked sick.
“I wish I knew what to say,” he said. “I managed to screw everything up. Everything. Even with the IRS.”
She put a gentle hand on his arm. “We’ll get through it, you and I.” She turned to me. “But what about the IRS, Mort? Can they come back on Mike after all this?”
“The IRS can come back on Jimmy Hoffa, so, yeah, they can come back on you,” I said to Mike. “But maybe Soranden fixed it. He would have access, passwords, ways to do that, and you probably weren’t his first victim, so maybe he made it go away. Which means I’m not sure I’d walk into the IRS office with a rousing mea culpa right now and put myself back on the hook for a hundred fifty grand and a possible but very unlikely indictment. All of that could still happen, so you’re going to be living on a tightrope for a long time.”
“How long? What’s the statute of limitations?”
“There’s no statute of limitations on tax fraud, which yours was. They could come after you when you’re ninety. Of course, by then the penalties and interest would be about the same as the national debt so they would have trouble collecting.”
“Oh, Jesus.”
“And,” Eve said delicately, “Mr. Soranden is dead. How is that likely to … to affect Mike?”
“No idea. Now we wait and see what happens. Of course, it would be nice to get the money back, but we’ve got no way of knowing what The Toad did with it.”
Eve looked startled. “The Toad?”
“His in-house moniker. Never to his face, of course, but I offer it up as insight into what his underlings thought of him.”
Gumshoe Rock Page 15