James Grippando - Found money

“What do you suggest I do?”

“Above all, keep perspective. At this stage in your life, two hundred thousand dollars sounds like all the money in the world. Ten years from now, you’ll be a partner in this law firm and it won’t even be a down payment on a house. And no matter what you do now, you’ll never recover the cash. It might as well have burned. You have a won derful future ahead of you. There’s just no point in making yourself a lightning rod for trouble.”

Marilyn leaned forward and touched Amy’s hand, looking her in the eye. “Listen to me, Amy. It was found money. Now it’s lost. Forget about it. And you and I will forget we ever had this conversation.”

Amy had no time to respond. Marilyn was on her feet, phone in hand, speaking to her secretary. Amy rose and started for the door.

Marilyn covered the mouthpiece. “Give my love to Taylor,” she blurted across the room, then returned to her phone conversation. Amy forced a smile and let herself out. That was Marilyn. Already on to the next client, the next set of multi-million-dollar problems.

While Amy battled the little problems of her own.

Liz Duffy went to lunch at Spencer’s, a quick place for salads on the 16th Street Mall. She sat alone at a table for two. A newcomer to Denver, she was still trying to meet new friends and build a new life without Ryan. She was picking at a grilled chicken Caesar and starting chapter two of a dog-eared paperback when her cell phone rang.

It startled her at first. She had never owned a cell phone before. Her lawyer had gotten it for her. Jackson had said it was for emergencies, just in case he needed to reach her. So far, he’d used it only to call and say hello — at least twice a day. Liz was flattered by all the personal attention. Jackson had a lot going for him. Brains. Looks. Money. Lots of money.

“Hi,” he said. “What are you doing?”

“Eating lunch. Are you calling just to bug me again?” she asked with a smile.

He turned the corner in his Lexus, merging into downtown traffic. “Actually, this is a legitimate business call. What do you know about your brother-in-law, Brent Langford?”

“Total loser. Hasn’t held a decent job as long as I’ve known him. Hasn’t had any job for at least six months. Why?”

“My private investigator has some interesting intelligence on him. Seems Brent was over in Pueblo shopping for a brand-new Corvette, over fifty thousand dollars’ worth of automobile. Later the same day he was at the Piedmont Springs Bar & Grill, bragging about how he’s coming into some serious money.”

“That’s interesting. Amazing, actually.”

“Maybe Frank Duffy wasn’t delirious after all when he promised you all that money.”

Liz winced, uncomfortable with her lawyer’s characterization. As far as the so-called promise went, she had told Jackson the same story she had told Ryan after the funeral, out on the front porch. “You know, I’m still not sure you’d call it an actual promise. Like I told you, Frank was trying to keep me and Ryan together. He just told me to hang in there, the money would come soon, or something like that.”

“Liz,” he said in a soft but stern voice. “Remember how important I told you it was that Frank made an explicit oral promise of money to you while he was alive?”

“Yes.”

“Remember what I said happens to waffles?”

She smiled. “They get toasted.”

“That’s my girl. So knock off the waffle voice, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Good. Now you work on that memory of yours. If you do your part, I’ll do mine.”

“What’s your plan?”

He stopped at the traffic light, checking himself in the rearview mirror. “One step at a time. This latest development could seriously raise the stakes in our property settlement negotiations. I was thinking I’d just take ol’ Brent’s deposition. Put him under oath and see if we can get some idea just how much money is out there.”

Out of respect for Frank, Liz thought before dragging the family into the divorce. But Brent was a Langford, not a Duffy. Hell, if she had asked Frank, Brent wasn’t even a human being, let alone family.

“Liz, what do you say?”

“Go for it, counselor. You’ll eat that moron alive.”

At noon Ryan called Norm from the Panama City Marriott. He had taken a room through tomorrow, until his new passport was ready. The passport, however, wasn’t his first order of business.

“I got it,” said Ryan, seated on the bed. “I got the scoop on the three million that was transferred to my father’s account at Banco del Istmo.”

“How’d you pull that off?”

“All it took was a little persuasion.”

“Something tells me I’d rather not hear the details.”

“And I don’t think I want to tell you. At least not on the phone.”

“What did you find out?” asked Norm.

“Believe it or not, the money was transferred in three hundred installments of nine thousand nine hundred ninety-nine dollars, and then one last installment of three hundred dollars for an even total of three million. It was spread out over a fifteen-year period. The last one was made a little over a year ago.”

“Sounds like they were trying to avoid some financial reporting requirements.”

“How do you mean?” asked Ryan.

“Banks are required to file a CTR — a currency transaction report — for any deposit of ten thousand dollars or more. That raises a red flag for the regulatory authorities. It’s a way of keeping track of the big money flow between banks.”

“But these transfers weren’t between two different banks. They were internal transactions, from one account holder at Banco del Istmo to another. Why would that attract anyone’s attention?”

“I’m sure the intra-bank transfer was the last layer of protection in a series of deposits and wire transfers that crossed several national borders. No doubt at least one of the banks along the way did business in the United States, which meant it would have been required to file a CTR for deposits of ten thousand or more. The final internal transfers at Banco del Istmo were each less than ten thousand dollars because they mirrored the amount of the inter-bank transfers.”

“That makes sense, I guess. It also explains why the name on the account at Banco del Istmo doesn’t mean a thing to me.”

“Who is it?” asked Norm.

“It’s a foreign corporation registered in the Cayman Islands. Jablon Enterprises, Ltd. I don’t have a clue who that could be.”

“Quite possibly, you never will. No doubt it’s just a shell corporation.”

“But even if it’s a shell, aren’t they required to have real human beings as officers and directors? Somewhere that has to be a matter of public record, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah, but the only place those records would be is in the Cayman Islands.”

“Then that’s where I need to go.”

“You’ll need a passport first. You should be able to pick it up at the embassy tomorrow morning.”

Ryan grimaced. “I hate to lose a day just waiting around.”

“Frankly, I hate to see you go. You’ve already been robbed, Ryan. And that was just for checking on your father’s account. If you start snooping around the Cayman Islands for the names behind this shell corporation, they may not be so polite the next time around.”

“I can be discreet.”

“Sure you can.”

“Can you do me a favor?”

“What, notify your next of kin?”

“Don’t be a wiseass. I need your help sorting this out. I’ve been thinking about this rape conviction. The fact that those documents were in the safe deposit box with the other bank records makes it clear that the extortion is somehow connected to the rape, agreed?”