Joel Goldman - Shakedown

Yates leaned toward me, his hands gripping the table. His eyes were robin’s-egg blue, the corners creased enough to be crinkly, not wrinkly. The hard set to his mouth made it clear that he hadn’t gotten to where he was on good looks and charm alone. He was the kind who smiled when he stuck the knife in you.

“How are you, Jack?” he asked.

“I’m fine. You’re fine. Troy’s fine. We’re all fucking fine. So can the bullshit.”

Troy smiled and rolled his eyes as if I’d made his point for him.

“I know this must be a tough time for you,” Yates continued.

“Save it, Ben. You don’t give a crap for what kind of day I’m having, so you can skip steps one through seven in the manual on building rapport while establishing power and get to the point.”

Yates leaned back, folded his arms over his middle and frowned like a disappointed father. Troy used the pause to jump in.

“Jack, you went to Wendy’s apartment what, yesterday? Or was it Thursday?”

“Thursday.”

“Where did she keep her computer?” Troy asked.

That she had a computer was a given. I didn’t know where he was going, but I could feel the setup coming.

“On a desk in the living room.”

Troy nodded. “That’s where I would have kept it. No reason to clutter up the bedroom and the kitchen is too small.”

He obviously wanted me to know that he’d been in Wendy’s apartment. If he hadn’t been by now, he wouldn’t be doing his job. I kept silent, not because I had anything to hide, but because I wanted to make Troy tell me what this was all about.

“You see, Jack, we got a search warrant this morning for her apartment. Once we told the judge that the daughter of one of our agents was missing, he couldn’t sign the warrant fast enough.”

Troy didn’t add that she was also a person of interest in an ongoing investigation involving murder and drug dealers, though I assumed he’d also explained that to the judge. I pressed back against my chair, forcing myself to stay calm, but I couldn’t convince the tremors. They scattered across my body. I put my hands down, letting them vibrate against my thighs, afraid they’d found something that incriminated Wendy. I forced the words from my mouth.

“What did you find?”

“That’s the thing,” Troy said. “It’s what we didn’t find that we’re interested in. These days, the first things we carry out of any place we search are the computers. You know that. Only Wendy doesn’t have one. Which gets us thinking.”

“About what?”

“About what happened to her computer. Young woman like her, works at the Board of Trade, dates one of our agents; she has got to have a computer. So we thought we’d ask you.”

“How would I know?”

Troy shrugged as if it was obvious. “You just told us. The computer was there when you were in her apartment two days ago. Now it’s gone. You were the last one to have seen it. Makes sense we would ask you what happened to it.”

“Me? You think I took Wendy’s computer? Why would I do that?” I knew the answer but wanted to make him say it.

“Look, Jack. Ben and I both have kids. We’d probably do the same thing. Try to help one of them out if they got into a jam, especially if we thought they got caught up in something not of their making.”

“That’s what you think? That Wendy is involved?”

It was Yates’s turn. He was all ice. “Wouldn’t you, if you found out that she was making less than thirty grand a year and had half a million dollars in her savings account?”

Credibility is the most valuable asset any suspect has. It can even be more valuable than innocence, as anyone who has spent half his life behind bars for a crime he didn’t commit will tell you. It comes from a lot of things, including demeanor, motive, opportunity, and means. It also comes from cooperation and the investigator’s ability to corroborate what the suspect says.

Credibility allows the suspect to be heard, to give shape and meaning to facts that, in other hands, would condemn rather than exonerate. I had a story to tell and the way I told it would mean more to Wendy than to me. I began by taking the?ash drive out of my pocket and setting it on the table.

“I didn’t take Wendy’s computer, but I did copy her hard drive onto this.”

Troy snatched it off the table, picked up the phone, and summoned a secretary.

“What’s on it?” Yates asked.

“I haven’t had a chance to look at much of it. There’s some routine e-mail between Wendy and Colby. The only thing of interest I saw is Wendy’s tax return from last year. She reported more than four hundred thousand in income from something called PEMA Partners.”

“Who or what is PEMA Partners?” Troy asked.

“I’m hoping you guys can figure that out. The only other partner I know of is Jill Rice. Her tax records are also on the?ash drive.”

“Isn’t she the one who turned her husband in for dealing drugs?” Yates asked.

“The same,” I told him, adding a quick summary of my conversations with Jill Rice about Colby’s purchase of her house and car.

Gina Tomkins, a secretary who had covered my bureaucratic backside more times than I could count, knocked and entered. She was a sturdily built, wide-bodied woman who’d raised five boys on her own and wasn’t about to be intimidated by Troy Clark.

“Copy this onto a hard drive and print everything that’s on it,” he told her, handing her the?ash drive. “If any of it is encrypted, get all the help you need to open it up.”

She nodded, gave me a wink, and left without speaking.

“What’s the connection between the Rice case and this one?” Yates asked.

“I assumed you knew that by now. I asked Ammara to get me the Rice file a few days ago. She told me that Troy had embargoed it. I figured he wanted to review it himself.” I glanced around the room. “Isn’t it in here somewhere?”

Yates’s disappointed-parent look turned into a narrow-eyed glare aimed at Troy, who shifted in his seat like he had diaper rash. Yates let him twist until Troy picked up the phone again and asked for the Rice file.

Yates only knew what Troy had already told him. Even if I told him the same thing, I knew that facts were like food- presentation counted for a lot. I started at the beginning when the FBI put me on the shelf. I told him about my visits back to Quindaro and freely confessed how I’d gained access to Thomas Rice at the penitentiary and used the same phony ID when I first questioned Jill Rice. I finished with Latrell Kelly’s death.

Yates didn’t move the entire time I spoke. As soon as I had finished, a wave of shakes ran through me. I closed my eyes. He still hadn’t moved when I opened them.

“You say that Jill Rice knew what her husband was doing,” Yates began, ignoring my condition. “And that he put assets in her name and had her file a separate tax return to protect her. Not that it would have protected her if you and your team had done a proper job tracing Rice’s assets. But your daughter doesn’t have that excuse.”

“Actually, she does,” I said. “I think Colby and Rice used PEMA to launder their drug money. I found out this morning that Colby and Wendy were secretly married last year.”

Yates leaned forward, dropping his chin, the worry in his voice almost enough to convince me that he was being sincere. “Jack, you have to know how this looks for Wendy.”

I nodded, ready to take what was coming, hoping that Colby was long gone by now.

“Yeah, I do. But not in the way you mean. You think she’s involved. I think she’s in trouble.”

“There’s not much difference from where I’m sitting.” Yates said.