Sue Grafton - R is for Ricochet

"Money laundering?"

"Right. Turns out Beck has an aptitude for financial shenanigans. Since he deals in high-end real estate, the basic infrastructure was already in place. There are half a dozen ways to fiddle funds when you buy and sell property, but the mechanism's slow and there's too much paperwork. With money laundering, you want to minimize the paper trail and put as many fire walls as possible between you and the source. His early efforts were clumsy, but he's getting better at this stuff. Now he's set up an offshore company – a Panamanian dummy corp called Clements Unlimited. Places like Panama, you can hide a lot of dough because the bank secrecy laws have been tight there since day one. 1941, they took their cue from the Swiss and went to coded accounts. Unfortunately for the bad guys, the numbered account isn't what it once was. Swiss banks don't offer the same level of protection, because they've taken so much flak for providing cover for thugs. They've finally recognized the necessity for getting along in the international banking community and that's motivated their signing treaties with a host of other countries. In effect, they've agreed to cooperate where there's proof of criminal activity. Panama isn't as eager to please. They've got lawyers who create companies in bulk and sell them off to customers who want to sidestep the IRS."

"You're talking about shell corporations, right?"

He nodded. "You can create a sham company according to your specifications or you can buy one ready-made. Once you have a shell in place, you funnel money from the U.S. by way of the shell to any financial haven you choose. Or you can set up an offshore trust. Or you do what Beck did, which was to buy himself a bank-in-a-box and start accepting deposits."

"From whom?"

"He makes a point not to inquire too closely, but his primary client is a big-time Los Angeles drug dealer, ostensibly doing business in scrap gold. Beck also dry-cleans money for a major pornography mill and a syndicate that runs a network of hookers and whorehouses down in San Diego County. Guys in the sin trades accumulate millions in cash and what can they do with it? Live lavishly and your neighbors will start to wonder about the source of your wealth. So will the IRS, the DEA, and half a dozen other government agencies. There's never a shortage of folks who need to run dirty money through the sluice and have it come up clean. The neat thing from Beck's perspective is that, until recently, what he's doing wasn't illegal in and of itself."

"You're kidding."

"Nope. Last year Congress passed the Money Laundering Control Act. Before that, the same basic transactions might have been the focus of an investigation or subject to prosecution under some other statute, but the laundering itself wasn't a crime. Sorry to be so long-winded. Bear with me on this."

"Don't worry about it. Most of this is news to me."

"Me, too. From what I'm told, the groundwork was laid in 1970 when the Bank Secrecy Act was passed. The BSA established reporting regulations for financial institutions – banks, brokerage houses, currency dealers, anybody issuing traveler's checks, money orders, shit like that. They're required to report certain transactions to the Secretary of the Treasury within fifteen days on a form called the Currency Transaction Report – the CTR – for any transaction over ten thousand dollars. Are you following?"

"More or less. How do you know all this stuff?"

"Most of it I picked up from my IRS pal in the past couple of months. He says in addition to the CTR, there's something called a Currency and Monetary Instrument Report, the CMIR. This is for the people who physically receive or transport cash – carry it, mail it, ship it – again, that's in any amount over ten thousand dollars. There's another form for casinos, but we don't have to worry about that here. Far as we know, Beck doesn't have ties to any of the big gambling operations, though that's another nice way to scrub a load of cash and get it squeaky clean.

"The government relies on financial institutions to track the flow of cash through the system. Obviously, there's nothing illegal about dealing in large sums as long as all the proper forms get filed. Try to bypass that and you're subject to severe penalties – assuming you're caught, of course. Beck made a point of cultivating a bunch of banker pals and for a period, he was bribing one of them to look the other way. The bank officer would prepare the CTR as required and place a copy in the files, only instead of shipping the original to the IRS, he'd run it through a shredder. Problem is, the banks tend to move these executives from branch to branch, and Beck lost his co-conspirator. That's how he came to the attention of Internal Revenue. Some new VP at Santa Teresa Savings and Loan noticed a pattern of small deposits that he was pretty sure were all linked to Beck or Beck's company. He's been breaking the big deposits into a series of smaller transactions, hoping to skirt the ten-thousand-dollar requirement for a government report. This is the fundamental maneuver in any laundering operation. It's called structuring, or 'smurfing.' Beck employed a regular road crew of smurfs, who'd go from bank to bank here in town – sometimes from city to city – buying cashier's checks or money orders in the smaller dollar amounts – two grand, five, sometimes as much as nine, but never over ten. The dribbles and drabs were deposited piecemeal into a single account, and then Beck would use wire transfers to move the whole of it to a couple of offshore banks. After that, he'd funnel it back to his clients in a more respectable form.

"Anyway, while all this was going on, the DEA was following the money from the other end, tracking funds through the system from a cartel importing marijuana and cocaine into Los Angeles. At some point, the two paths intersected and a red flag went up. I'd met the IRS investigator at a conference in B.C. about four years back. Shortly after that, he got assigned to the L.A. office to coordinate the task force. Once Beck's name surfaced, the focus shifted to him. The agent, Vince Turner, asked me to act as the local interface. His guys are keeping a low profile because the feds are trying to build a case without Beck's getting wind of it."

"Oh, good luck. In this town?"

"We're well aware," he said. "So far they've initiated mail and trash covers and they've been running surveillance, covering his movements in and out of the country. What they need now is an informant, which is where Reba Lafferty comes in."

I gestured impatiently. "You're kidding. She's in love with the man. She'd never rat him out."

"Don't be so sure…"

"I am sure. She's smitten. That's how she's managed to hold herself together for the past two years. They wrote to each other and talked on the phone a couple of times a week. That's how she survived. I got it straight from her."

"Just hear me out," he said. "You know the background on this."

"Of course. She ripped off his company for megabucks over a two-year period -"

"While she and Beck were having an affair," he said.

"I know that. So what?"

"So under the circumstances, doesn't it seem strange he'd take up with her again the minute she gets out?"

"Well, yeah. Matter of fact, I asked her about that myself. She claims he's forgiven her. She says he knew she was self-destructive and couldn't help herself. Or words to that effect."

He was shaking his head. "Nope. Don't think so. It doesn't ring true."

"I'm not defending the point. I'm just telling you what she said. I agree with you. It's hard to believe Beck would turn the other cheek. So what's the deal? I gather you know something I don't."

Cheney leaned forward, lowering his voice. I tilted my head closer and felt the whisper of his breath against my cheek as he spoke. "She took the fall for him. He had her set up accounts for a couple of phony companies. She'd invoice for bogus goods and services, then write checks out of accounts payable. He'd sign 'em and she'd send 'em off to a post office box. Later, she'd pick 'em up and deposit the money to a phony account. Sometimes, he'd wire the money offshore or she'd withdraw the cash herself and pass it on to him."