Thomas Perry - Blood Money

He looked down his list. “We’re also setting up twenty corporate foundations of our own. This does roughly the same thing. The corporations are closely held, with maybe one or two imaginary people owning all the stock. The donation comes from Abadabba Tool and Die Foundation, not a person. If the name and the donation amount get printed on a list somewhere, nobody knows anything. Since they never heard of Abadabba Tool and Die, they don’t know if it’s tiny or huge, or if this is a lot of money for them or peanuts. I’ve already got people printing out articles of incorporation, and after that we’ll cut papers for the foundations.”

“This is beginning to sound like a lot of paper.”

“A blizzard of it, and it’s all meaningless. If it didn’t have to be complicated, you wouldn’t need me. I’m also setting up twenty public foundations. A public foundation is one that can legally solicit donations from the public.”

“Why would we solicit donations from the public?”

“We don’t. But judging from where the money came from, there’s bound to be some that smells like dead fish—too suspicious to slip to a real foundation directly. We run it through one of our public foundations to clean it, then the foundation gives it to a charity. The report of where it came from might set off alarms at the IRS, but who cares? The worst they can do is shut down the foundation, which will already be shut down. They can’t put anybody at the foundation in jail, because they’re not responsible for where the money came from, only where it goes. Since they don’t exist, they’re not in much jeopardy anyway.”

“I have no way of knowing how much of the money is suspicious,” said Jane.

Henry Ziegler set down his paper and shook his head. “Probably not much. Bernie Lupus was a genius of a sort that ordinary people will never be able to appreciate, because you have to know so much just to imagine what he was doing. It’s possible that every dime has been washed, dried, fluffed, and folded so perfectly that it’s unrecognizable. But there’s a problem with trusting a murdered man. We know he made at least one mistake, and it was a big one.”

Jane felt a little uncomfortable, but she said, “I agree: let’s take as many precautions as we can.”

Ziegler picked up another piece of paper from the desk. “There will be some money that looks like some old guy’s fortune. That’s money that Bernie the Elephant invested fifty years ago in some bogus name and left to mature. This is good. All we need is a will for each account leaving it to some charity and a death certificate. We mail one copy to the bank and one to the charity and let them work out the details. They’re good at that, and it takes time, which is good for us.”

Jane let out a breath in a silent whistle. “This is pretty impressive.”

“I’m not anywhere near done.”

“I still have a question that’s on my mind.”

“Let’s get through this first,” he said. “The next tier of donations goes to the giant charities: United Way, Red Cross, Catholic Charities, United Jewish Appeal, UNICEF, March of Dimes, CARE, Salvation Army, and so on. They’re like big clearing houses. Whatever our imaginary people give gets mixed into a big pot. They give it away and account for it later. Then we go to the next level down.”

“What’s that?”

“Slightly smaller charities that specialize. Mostly it’s ‘Name That Disease’: National Cancer Society, Muscular Dystrophy, Alzheimer’s Association, AIDS, et cetera. We’ve got enough to swamp all of them, and they’re still big enough to swallow a few million without blinking. Then we go down another level to the relief agencies and single institutions: homeless shelters, battered women’s shelters, hospices, orphanages. You get the idea.”

“That’s it, right?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Not even close. We’ll actually run out of charities at some point. A lot of these places are going to freak out if they get a check for more than a hundred thousand, and we’ll have to give each of them more than that.”

“What do we do?”

“Branch out. We give money to a lot of causes that aren’t charities but get donations now and then. Some universities will have to get funds for scholarships named after made-up people. We give some to Indian reservations.” He looked at her sharply. “Did I see a funny look on your face? Some of the poorest people in the country live on reservations. We make out a check to the tribal council, such and such reservation, right? They decide what to spend it on to help their own community. They may or may not report it to anybody, because it doesn’t happen very often.”

“It wasn’t an objection,” said Jane. “I think it’s a great idea. I guess I’m surprised that you’re … that you’ve figured out so much.”

“Moving money is a talent,” he said. “Knowing how to do it is like being the world’s greatest nose-picker. Most of the time, people would rather you didn’t.

“Anyway,” he went on, “if you’ve been paying attention, you get the idea. We capture the biggest sums by putting them into our sixty foundations. We use the giant charities to sop up the next chunk, and move down from there. We’ll have to pay attention to the size of each gift, so some charity won’t choke on it and reach for the phone to call a press conference. If we still have money left at the end of it, we can start mailing checks to symphony orchestras and museums and arts councils and so on.”

“I still have a question.”

Ziegler put down his sheet of paper and met her gaze. “I know. Why don’t I want to take any money myself. The same reasons you don’t. I don’t really need it enough to die for it.”

“What about the impractical reasons? You could have said no, and been in no danger.”

He smiled sadly. “Bernie Lupus. I wasn’t exaggerating about what he must have been like. With a mind like that, he could have done anything. He could have been a great scientist or something. It’s one of the biggest wastes I ever heard of. It’s as if Einstein spent his whole life disconnecting smoke detectors in airplanes so he could have a cigarette, or rigging pay phones to get free calls. I guess I see this as a chance to change Bernie the Elephant’s life after the fact. If I had listened to your pitch and said no, then Bernie Lupus was just one more dead guy who made the Mafia richer. If I said yes, then it’s a whole different story. Everything Bernie did for fifty years amounts to suckering the worst people in the country into doing good.”

“And you?”

“Me?” Ziegler smiled. “Maybe if I run into him in hell, he’ll tell me how he did it.”

Jane was silent for a moment, then decided. “You’ll get to meet him tonight.”

Ziegler’s mouth dropped open. “Is he alive?” asked Ziegler. “Or am I going to be dead?”

“The first,” said Jane. “Maybe the second too. We’ll do our best to avoid that, though. Are you ready to travel?”

14

There were still lights visible behind the upstairs window blinds when Jane drove around the last curve. She stopped the car along the road and walked the rest of the way in the darkness, then stepped into the pool of light on the porch and rang the doorbell. She listened for the sound of footsteps on the stairs, and when she heard them they were wrong: too light, too quick for Bernie. Jane slipped to the side of the house and waited. The door swung open, and out on the porch stepped Rita Shelford.

Jane hurried to the porch, dragged Rita inside, closed the door, and bolted it. She leaned against the door and stared at Rita in silence.

Rita struggled to hold her eyes on Jane’s, then tried to avert them, but found that she could not. She took a breath and said, “I … decided … ”