Ian Hamilton: The disciple of Las Vegas

Ava took a few steps forward and stood across the table from Marx. “I’ve been brought in to help find the money. I thought they’d told you about me. My name is Ava Lee.”

“They said they were bringing in an accountant. They didn’t give me a name. They also didn’t tell me you were a woman — a young woman.”

“What did you expect?”

“Someone more like Dog the Bounty Hunter.”

She smiled and extended her hand. “Well, I’m Ava Lee.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Marx said. He stood and reached across the table to shake her hand. His palms were sweaty. He was a large, flabby man, the kind who spent his life indoors behind a desk and had no appetite for exercise. His wrinkled grey slacks were half covered by the tail of his white dress shirt, and his stained blue tie hung loosely around his neck.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“Not really,” Marx said, his eyes darting manically around the room.

“Anything I can do?”

“Yeah, let’s get this over with so I can get on a plane and get back to Vancouver.”

“What’s been going on?”

He waved a hand over the boardroom table. “They’ve been using me as a punching bag,” he said. “I think they’re trying to pin this entire fiasco on me. That’s what’s been going on.”

“How so?”

“For the past three days I’ve been stashed away in this room getting grilled by Mr. Chang and one or another of the other senior financial people here. They come in together, ask questions, and then talk to each other in Chinese or Filipino or whatever language they’re speaking, as if I’m not even in the room. Then they start up again. I’ve answered the same questions ten times.”

“That must be unpleasant,” Ava said.

“Really? Let me tell you how it started when I got here. They stuck the most incredibly detailed and one-sided non-disclosure agreement in my face and told me to sign it. I said I was an employee and that I’d already signed one in Vancouver. They told me I needed to sign that one too, and if I didn’t they’d fire me and then sue me for the missing money. So I signed, of course, but things didn’t get any easier.”

“Well, it isn’t my style to make threats, so why don’t we sit and chat. Unless I’m completely misinformed, this is now my project, so you only have to concern yourself about dealing with me.”

He seemed to relax as he looked down at the files. “There’s a lot of information here, but truthfully, I’m not sure how relevant it is.”

She sat at the table, removed a new Moleskine notebook from her Chanel purse, and wrote Ordonez across the top of the first page. Ava always used a new notebook for each case, and when the job was completed — successful or not — it was stored away in a safety deposit box at the Toronto-Dominion Bank a few blocks from her condo. “Let’s forget about the files for now,” she said. “Upstairs they told me a little about this land transaction. Why don’t you tell me about this deal from your side. How did it start?”

His right hand ran through his thin sandy hair. “I’m the comptroller for the Canadian operation and the only non-Chinese member of the management board. We meet every Monday morning to review ongoing investments and discuss any proposals that come our way. It’s a very static enterprise. We’re not in sales or manufacturing, so the business is stable and more or less predictable.

“Well, about six months ago Philip — Mr. Chew, Tommy Ordonez’s brother — brought a proposal to the table that was a bit unusual. In the ten years I’ve been with the company, he’s never brought any business to the table. Most of the new initiatives originate from below or come as a directive from Manila. So it was a surprise when Philip informed us he had entered into an agreement to develop a residential community with a golf course in the Kelowna area. You know Kelowna?”

“I do. It’s a prime vacation destination,” Ava said.

“Lots of money, summer cottages, retirement homes, celebrities. It’s tough to think how you could go wrong putting money into a development there. Anyway, Philip described it as a sweetheart deal. We were going to partner with a company called Kelowna Valley Developments, run by a man named Jim Cousins.”

“Why ‘sweetheart’?”

“KVD was fronting the first two million to secure the deal. We didn’t have to put in a dollar until KVD had spent that money, and any money we put in would be to buy the land. The way Philip described it, Cousins would acquire various tracts and handle all that financing until the property was registered. We didn’t have to put our money in until we had title. In terms of security, it doesn’t get much better.”

“How much land was involved?”

“About 1,600 acres that we acquired in dribs and drabs. There were fifteen separate land transactions. Normally we would have expected to get that large a tract in two or three buys, but Philip was happy with the way it was structured. He said it lessened our exposure to any fallout.”

“Did the management committee approve the project?”

“It was strictly a formality. Philip was just being polite in keeping us informed. He made all the decisions for the company in Canada — at least, all the decisions up to an individual expenditure of five million dollars. Anything above that amount had to be approved at the head office in Manila.”

“So Manila approved it?”

“No. They had never heard of KVD until Deloitte got involved.”

“How is that possible? There was close to fifty million dollars invested. I thought you said Philip Chew had signing authority only up to five million.”

“Philip told me to treat each land purchase as a stand-alone deal until we had purchased all 1,600 acres. At that point he was going to go to Manila to get approval to roll them up into one package.”

“What if they had said no?”

“Not a problem, really. No one’s ever gone wrong buying land in and around Kelowna. We could have sold it in a heartbeat.”

“Assuming you actually owned the land.”

“Yeah, assuming.”

“And you never suspected that something strange was going on?”

Marx shook his head, and Ava could see how tired he was. She could imagine what Chang and the others had put him through.

“There wasn’t really the opportunity. Philip told us about the deal on a Monday and a week later I was getting the paperwork to support the first purchases. It just kept rolling in. It wasn’t until Deloitte started asking questions that I realized it was a bit off-centre.”

“Who signed the cheques?”

“Philip and me.”

“All under five million?”

“Yeah. Like I said, that was the threshold.”

“Mr. Chang told me you met Cousins.”

“Twice, both times in Vancouver. I offered to go to Kelowna but he put me off.”

“He came to your office?”

“I met him in Philip’s office, and they acted like the best of friends. Looking back, that was also kind of strange, because Philip isn’t the most sociable character.”

“Describe Cousins.”

“Big, bluff guy in jeans and an L.L. Bean chamois shirt. I know about the shirt because I asked. He looked as if he had spent his life in construction or lumber. He had that outdoors look.”

“Tall?”

“Over six feet.”

“Any physical characteristics that would make him stand out in a crowd?”

Marx shuffled the files in front of him, then opened one and leafed through it. “Here, these are photos from the security cameras at the office. They’ll give you some idea.”

The photographs were grainy and the angles disjointed, but they were good enough for her to see that Cousins was rangy, rugged, and dressed like a cowboy. His face was blurred but she got a general sense that he was a handsome man with a thick black moustache and a full head of hair, combed straight back. “You never ran a credit check on him?”