Payback

by Morgan St. James

  I always seem to have this sixth sense about con games and such, or maybe I just tell myself I do to justify getting into sticky situations. As Kate explained what had been going on, I remembered experiencing a weird feeling that something mystifying was about to happen when the three of us first suspected the clever embezzlement scam we uncovered. I couldn’t deny it—the same feeling niggled at me now. I wanted to know more although at the same time I knew I shouldn’t even think about becoming involved. There was enough to deal with due to Reid and Cunningham’s vendetta. I certainly didn’t need more.

  That said, of course I pressed Kate for more information, but she said she wouldn’t know much more until she met with her contact. Then she would decide if she wanted to take it on.

  I knew one thing for certain. Kim and I would not let her go to the meeting alone.

  9

  KIM STOOD AT MY FRONT door an hour later, her rolling case beside her. One look at her happy face told me she was not having problems with Nathan. In fact, at first impression, she looked just the opposite. Sort of glowing.

  The three of us hadn’t been together in over a year. After a group hug, I directed her to the other guest room so she could stow her case and change her clothes if she wanted to. Fifteen minutes later she joined us in the living room wearing a pair of faded jeans and an oversized FACR tee shirt. It felt so good to have both of my best friends with me.

  She reached for the Chocolate Covered Goji Berries and popped one into her mouth.

  “Mmm. What is this? Some trendy Southern California thing? It’s good, though. Tastes kind of like a mix between chocolate-covered cranberries and cherries.” She reached for one more handful.

  I chuckled. “What do you mean California thing? Don’t you have them in DC? I decided we would have healthy sweets, so I stopped at Whole Foods. These little delights are supposed to help fight aging, give you more energy, help control weight and a whole lot of other things because they’re loaded with antioxidants. I figure I need all the help I can get as I inch toward the big Five-O. But, enough of a health lecture. You didn’t tell us what spurred this sudden trip. After you fill us in we have something to share with you.”

  I swear it was like old times. That’s one thing with good friends. It doesn’t matter how much time passes between seeing each other. All it takes is a few minutes and it seems like you were together only the day before.

  While Kim sipped wine and continued to savor chocolates, she said, “Okay, my trip. It’s sort of pleasure and—” a mischievous smile teased her lips—“undercover work.”

  Her own escapade momentarily forgotten, Kate gasped, “Really? Undercover work? We’re all ears, aren’t we, Cami?”

  “It stays between the three of us, right?”

  In chorus we said, “Of course.”

  “Okay, something very interesting has been reported to Nathan from Homeland Security that also involves ATF—you remember that’s Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and the Drug Enforcement Administration.”

  “Do I remember?” I said. “I don’t know if you remember, but back when we were with FACR, I had a million dollar job for ATF. I earned a sweet commission on that one.”

  “Okay, let me continue. Homeland Security has a pretty secret facility here right in the middle of the city. Much of it is dedicated to wiretapping drug dealers and arms traffickers. And it is all very legal, but it just isn’t common knowledge.”

  Kate’s eyes sparkled with interest. “Tell us more.”

  “It seems there’s a mole inside the agency, and that’s where I come in with the perfect opportunity to check some things without arousing suspicion.”

  She gave an enigmatic smile. “It just so happens that they are moving to a bigger facility, a little bit more out of the mainstream. Activity has increased so much that the current facility can’t handle it. They also felt even though their building bears the name of a fictitious company, and you can only enter through a guarded parking lot, it still is on a main boulevard and therefore somewhat exposed.”

  Wow. A secret wiretapping facility. “I thought I knew most of the Federal facilities in town when I was with FACR, but I sure didn’t know about that one. You mean, I could be driving past it and never know what the building held?”

  “Right. In fact, unless there was a project, it wouldn’t have come up in your database. You would probably never even pay attention to the building. But once you were inside, you would know. Nathan told me it’s the typical setup when highly classified information is on the premises. If someone is inside who doesn’t have proper clearance, red lights spaced along the ceiling flash to let everyone know. There are rooms filled with banks of equipment with credentialed access only doors.”

  Along with more background information Kim told us how the whole idea of her coming to LA to do what she called some research came about. The request for a waiver to buy all the furniture and fixtures for the new facility from a source other than FACR had come across her desk a few weeks before. FACR, the mandatory government source, actually manufactured similar types of furniture and fixtures shown on the request. According to mandate, if any government entity wanted to buy from a private sector company it required a waiver. The estimated cost for this project was three million dollars, and such a big job would never get a waiver easily. Accordingly, Kimberly’s rep in Southern California had directed the waiver to her for consideration. She didn’t approve it and happened to mention it to Nathan that night, and that’s when everything began to come together.

  He told her some kind of huge Mexican money laundering scheme was going on in the Los Angeles area and wiretaps had been established to try to pinpoint how millions and millions of U.S. dollars from illegal drugs and firearms were being converted into pesos to funnel back to the suppliers in Mexico.

  He said Los Angeles has become the epicenter of narco-dollar money laundering with couriers regularly bringing duffel bags and suitcases full of cash to many businesses in the Fashion District. Imagine that. Duffle bags and suitcases full!

  As we listened to her talk about black market peso exchange schemes, we learned that a wealth of information about numerous suspect businesses had been amassed from the taps, but recently every time they got close enough to plan raids, somehow an alert was passed on to the suspects. Then either the business suddenly closed its doors or was raided, but there was nothing to find.

  Kate said, “You know, being that I run FraudBusters, I recall hearing some rumors about an ingenious money laundering scheme, but I never really got involved in checking it out. Maybe I should have paid more attention. Maybe this is the same thing the chatter has been about.”

  “There are so many things going on right under our noses. It could be related—or not,” Kim said. “At any rate, they are pretty sure the weak link is someone inside what I’ll call the WT Center. I don’t think it actually has an official name other than an extension of Homeland Security, but that makes it easier for us to discuss it. So, to make a long story short, I’ll be meeting with the Director of the facility on Monday, presumably about the project. Nathan alerted him that I’d be coming, and he will go along with it. That way I can snoop around and find out about a lot more than the project. I’ll make it seem I’m asking questions about everyone’s scope of work to suggest the right products, but I’ll meet with the Director after hours to share what people have told me. We are hoping someone will slip.”

  I was getting a little confused. “But, you do want to also get the furniture job, too, don’t you?”

  She laughed and reached for the bottle to fill her wine glass. “Of course I do, you dodo. After all three million isn’t pocket change. It will be a good job for us, but hopefully as I tour the facility and get friendly with the workers, I’ll also be able to get a lead on who might be leaking the information. You know how good I am at disguising leading questions as innocent chatter.”

  10

  IN SOME WAY THAT MADE me feel like she and Kate were both on the pro
wl after bad guys and involved in intrigue, while all I had to deal with was Reid and Cunningham. True, bad guys were after me, too, but mine were a different sort of bad guys—not criminals, just jerks. Mine wasn’t a life or death situation either, unless you considered my dreaming of the death of their agency.

  The next hour zipped by.

  “So,” Kim asked, “are we going to meet Milt?”.

  “Of course. We’ll all have dinner together while you’re here. He’s really looking forward to it after hearing all the stories about our escapades.”

  The conversation turned to life among the movie stars. They wanted details about my glamorous Hollywood lifestyle as compared to their professions—the parties, the awards ceremonies and which celebrities I liked the best.

  I hadn’t laughed so much in a while. It is amazing how fast time passes when you’re having a good time. Naturally, we slipped into reminiscing about some of the scrapes we had gotten into as a team.

  Kim updated us on what was going in DC since she had taken over the marketing division. “It’s really been gratifying, and I’m glad I accepted the offer to be Director. Would you believe we’re on the brink of having sales of a billion dollars a year?”

  When I worked for FACR sales were always good, hovering just above six hundred million, but nearly one billion dollars worth of furniture being produced in Federal prison factories? That was pretty astounding.”

  She continued, “Yep, and everything is on the up-and-up now. No more shady deals going on with me at the helm.”

  Kate interjected, “And Nathan? Everything still terrific with you two?”

  “You bet. I’ve never been so happy. He’s still the same crusading Nathan. We were happy the new administration tapped him to stay on as Attorney General. Not only that—“a smile lit up her face—“um, we’re considering adopting a child. Not a baby, but one of school age.”

  That sort of threw me. Kate had a son and daughter who lived with her ex in Arizona, I’d never been married or had children and was happy that way, but also never pictured Kim as a mom. She said the decision wasn’t firm in their minds yet, but she and Nathan had thought more and more about building a family and giving a child a chance. So many couples dreamed of a baby, but she and Nathan were professionals who were not really geared to raising a baby. Still, they knew they would be great parents.

  Kim added, “ You know, so many older kids have no hope of being adopted. If we go forward, we want to give a home to a child around seven or eight years old. And, who knows, we might even expand that to two.”

  The setting sun turned the sky into a brilliant abstract panorama of orange shot with streaks of purple and gold. It would be another beautiful warm day if what they said about orange skies held true. We went onto the patio and sat there watching the colors evolve until they were finally taken over by a deep cobalt blue that would soon turn to a dark night sky. It was about seven-thirty when the last bits of color were gone, and time for dinner.

  One nice thing about living where I do is that wonderful restaurants are an easy walk from my house. I reeled out some options: C&O Trattoria for Italian, Baja Cantina for Mexican, Siamese Gardens for Thai, Kifuni Sushi Bar—one of my favorites, or Islands if we just wanted a hamburger or a sandwich. Any of them were an excellent choice. In the end, we decided upon Baja Cantina. They have a lovely patio where we could enjoy the temperate Southern California weather and people watch at the same time.

  I told my friends, “There aren’t that many restaurants in the greater LA area with interesting histories, but Baja Cantina is one of them. It’s in a Spanish-style building that I understand was originally built as an apartment building in the 1940s to house men working on the nearby oil wells. It was used as residences until the early 1960s when it housed several little businesses. Baja Cantina took over the space back in 1975, and as the word spread it became a popular beach eatery. They took more space in the nineties, right about the time I discovered it.”

  Kate said, “And you have all of this trivial knowledge about a charming restaurant because—“

  “Because I love little historical bits like that. I could give you a whole song and dance about how I researched it, but actually I looked it up on the net after the first time I ate there.”

  We ordered Margueritas all around. I had the Sizzling Fajitas with Grilled Prawns, Kim ordered a Steak and Pineapple Quesadilla, and sticking to her healthy eating, Kate decided upon the Fresh Catch Grilled Fish and Vegetables. That night it was Tilapia. No wonder her figure looked like a twenty-year-old swimsuit model. We savored really good Mexican food while talk of money laundering and suspicious banking deals was put on hold. Never good to discuss stuff like that in public. When we were back at my house, we could fill Kim in completely about Kate’s upcoming clandestine meeting and my escalating feud over advertising accounts.

  Couples of all ages and types strolled along Washington, enjoying the beautiful weather and the sights. Some middle-aged men obviously on vacation sported button-down shirts and Bermuda shorts, regular stockings and oxfords or sandals. Young beach types, tanned and toned, paraded in bathing suits or Daisy Dukes showing off the bottom of their taut butts while their boyfriends strutted along bare-chested showing off their toned bodies. In contrast to the California casual favored by locals, some of the women were “done to the nines” as the old saying goes. Gobs of sparkly jewelry, spike heels, and clothing suitable for going to a play or the Music Center. Washington Boulevard near the beach in Marina Del Rey is the best place to people watch.

  All three of us couldn’t help staring as an aging, but still handsome man driving a silver Ferrari zipped into a space in front of the restaurant. He got out with the grace of a tiger. Tight jeans and a body shirt that looked like it was sprayed on emphasized his buff body.

  Kim squealed, “My first celebrity sighting. He’s that guy from the protein supplement commercial. I can’t remember the name of it, but I sure recognize him. I think he claims to be about seventy. Either it works, or he has wonderful genes. Look at those muscles and body tone.”

  The waiter seated him at a nearby table and within minutes he was joined by a woman who looked young enough to be his granddaughter, assuming Kim’s information about his purported age was correct. The tops of her obviously fake boobs hovered above an outrageously plunging neckline. I wondered if she used some kind of tape to keep them from falling out. Between the skintight white jeans and four inch heels, it was hard to tell if she was a working woman or a starlet. I’ll admit, her face did look somewhat familiar. The way they kissed, left no doubt they were not father and daughter, or for that matter grandfather and granddaughter. Ah, California.

  After dinner, we took a leisurely walk along the canals toward my house. I found it interesting that the timing of Kim’s trip also played into something Kate had in the works. Maybe fate was orchestrating our lives again.

  11

  WE TALKED UNTIL NEARLY midnight when Kim finally began to fade. Not surprising, though. With the time difference, it was three in the morning her time. However, we did get one very important thing settled—no way was Kate going to that meeting alone. Assuming her woman of mystery was right, it was entirely possible she was being watched. I mean, who sets up a meeting in the Ladies Room of an observatory unless they are really worried about a man or men following them?

  I had arranged to take the whole day off on Thursday and Friday. Kim’s undercover bluff wasn’t until Monday afternoon, so we had Thursday to come up with a plan.

  Friday morning around eleven-thirty we set out in separate cars—Kate in her rental and Kim and me in my car. The plan was to take the 10 Freeway to Vermont, then follow Vermont up to the turnoff for the Observatory. Just about everyone in the world knows legendary Los Angeles traffic is a challenge to say the least. In fact, Angelinos rarely speak in terms of miles. Instead we estimate travel time and then add a reasonable cushion for the constantly inching along traffic, which is what we did that morning.
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br />   Kim and I wandered around the Depths of Space exhibit, trying to stay close to the Ladies Room. First we checked out the Planets area with its scale models. The exhibit even included a chance to see what you would weigh on different planets. Well, no one could live on Venus, but I’d only weigh around one-hundred-seventeen pounds there. After that we moved to the exhibit called A Familiar Star Pattern. You can move around that one and see how familiar patterns change from different angles. But, more important, it moved us even closer to the Ladies Room, while in no way arousing suspicion.

  Kate entered just before one o’clock and we got into position. According to plan, she would go into the restroom, meet with the woman, get her information and go directly to her car. Meanwhile, we would stay around the exhibits for a few minutes so we weren’t all leaving together. That way we would also see if anyone followed her or the woman. We agreed that we could wait until we got back to my house to figure out whether Kate should get involved.

  I thought Kim seemed a little nervous, but then she was never quite as adventurous and Kate and me. She whispered, “I don’t have a great feeling about this. Something seems off. I didn’t see anyone go in before Kate, but maybe the woman was inside already.”

  I whispered back, “Could be. Or, maybe she’s late.”

  A few minutes later, Kate came out and hurried up the stairs to the main level.

  “Maybe the woman was in there already, like we thought, and now she’s just waiting until the coast is clear.”

  After a short wait when no one came out, we exited the building and headed toward the parking area. A knot of people clustered around a cordoned off area near the closest parking lot. Two police cruisers with their top lights still flashing blocked some of the access. Officers appeared to be questioning several people.