For Blood or Money
24. Investigating Angel
I WAS SLOW GETTING UP and would still be asleep if Riley had not been knocking on my door. I dragged myself upright and couldn’t figure out what she was doing here in the middle of the night.
It was 9:00 in the morning.
Damn.
Well, what could I tell? As close as I could come to it, I hadn’t had a cup of coffee since I was at Peg’s apartment and I had the headache to prove it. That was when? A different life ago? At least a week. But I was dedicated to being on the program now.
No caffeine.
I could sure use a cup of coffee, though.
Riley took Maizie out for a walk while I showered and shaved. I was in my robe in the kitchen when Riley got back.
“Can I make your oatmeal for you?” she asked. “You can go ahead and get dressed.” I suppose it was a nice offer and she didn’t mean anything by it. I suppose I should have been happy to have the help. I suppose I’m an ass.
“Don’t rush me, Riley,” I snapped. “I can take care of myself.”
“I just thought I could help,” she said.
“I don’t need a mother to look after me. I just need to sort out which pills I should take.”
The instant crushed look on her face was more than I could bear. I turned my back on her. I could hear the stunned silence behind me. I still couldn’t bear to face her. I had to do something but I could scarcely trust myself to speak.
“Please put the oats in the water when it boils, would you,” I spoke very softly, but I heard her say “Okay.” I went into my bedroom and closed the door.
I sat on my bed and tried to get a grip on myself. What was happening to me? Riley didn’t deserve to be treated like this. I didn’t mean to hurt her, but it was evident that everything I said was wrong. I just needed to get a grip.
Then I started to panic. What if I hurt her and she left? What if she was already gone?
The anxiety I felt sent my heart racing and I was afraid I was going to have another attack. I almost called for her, but I was in my robe and nothing else. I moved quickly and pulled on underwear and socks. I went to my closet to choose a suit.
I froze.
There were too many of them. How could I have gotten so many suits. I could never make a choice among so many. What if I offended one?
Damn.
They are inanimate objects, I thought. I can’t offend them.
I closed my eyes and grabbed one out of the closet. I did the same with my shirt and tie. It didn’t make a difference. I got dressed and rushed into the kitchen.
Riley was still there. She smiled at me tentatively and I did my best to smile back. She placed a steaming bowl of oatmeal on the table and I sat down.
“Thank you,” I muttered.
“You’re welcome,” she said. She turned back to the kitchen door.
“Riley, please don’t leave me. I’m sorry,” I said in a rush, half rising from the table.
“I won’t leave you, Dag,” she said, turning back to me. She came around the table and laid a hand on my shoulder. I looked up at her and took a bite of oatmeal. I didn’t taste it, but it didn’t make a difference. Riley wasn’t leaving. There was no need to panic. The world was slowing back to normal. I was okay. She reached around and straightened my tie, flooding my senses with her fresh clean scent.
“Can I ask you a question, Dag?” she said, sitting across from me.
“That’s one,” I said. “Do you have another?” She smiled.
“Why do you always wear gray suits and white shirts?” she asked. “You have different styles, but they are all gray. All your shirts look the same. You’d look good with a little color on.” This time it was my turn to chuckle. The panic had subsided.
“It’s a big secret,” I said. “I manage to function just like a normal person most of the time, but the fact is I’m colorblind. Not quite completely. I can see a small range of colors, but they are muted and I don’t see colors in the red range at all. I know what colors are there most of the time, but I don’t really see them. I identify colors by what is missing rather than by what I see.”
“Dag, I had no idea!” she exclaimed. “When you commented on my red leather peep-toed pumps with the stacked wooden heel a few weeks ago, do you mean you couldn’t see the color?”
“Red leather peep-toed pumps with the stacked wooden heel,” I repeated. “I’m sure that is not what I said. It was the wrong shade of gray. I knew I had to be missing some of the color information. I merely deduced that it was red. I do it automatically. It’s embarrassing when I’m wrong.”
Riley glanced toward the living room and my one piece of artwork.
“You spend so much time looking at that painting, but you can’t see the colors?” she asked.
“I know they are there,” I said. “Knowing is what’s important.”
We loaded Maizie into Riley’s car and went to the office. I was feeling a lot better.
“I think we should change the passwords,” I said when we got into the office and Maizie had settled into her bed. I looked at her a little enviously.
“Do you think it’s a good idea to change passwords now?” Riley asked. “Maybe we should wait till the end of the month.”
“Why? Because I’m acting irrationally?” I asked.
“No, Dag. I wasn’t implying anything.” I could see that this was going the same direction as our earlier conversation. It was time to nip it in the bud.
“You are right,” I said. “I have been acting irrationally. For some reason, I’m having spells where nothing seems real and I can’t control how I’m responding. It has to be the drugs. So what should we do today instead?”
It was the right thing to say. Riley had several ideas of what we should get started on. Top of the list was getting started on our investigation of Simon’s murder. Riley was ready to press her investigation of the girls at the condo based on references to it that she found in “Simon’s things.” She held out a stack of discs from her file recovery work on Simon’s computer. I didn’t even think about the fact she’d told me the file recovery had failed. She must have gotten something for her effort.
Something else had finally dawned on me. It had bothered me from the start. There was no “accidental explosion” of Simon’s plane. Oksamma had booby-trapped it and then had blown it up exactly where it would be the hardest to investigate. But he had been seen and had left one body behind at the airport. What else did we know?
Oksamma appeared to work for, or at least with Bradley Keane. Jordan was not moving on Bradley because he wanted to crack the smuggling and money laundering scheme and still didn’t have enough hard evidence to link him to Oksamma.
We decided to do some more investigating. I started sifting through Bradley’s personal finances to see if I could provide Jordan with the evidence he needed. If Simon could uncover Bradley’s illegal activity, I could do it with the help of Simon’s laptop. Riley wanted to see if there was any connection between Angel and what Simon had discovered. She was determined that there was a connection between the women of the condo and Bradley’s activities. I couldn’t see it, but it got us working.
As it turned out, it was Riley that uncovered the only clue of the day. It was nearly four and it was already dark outside.
“Remember how I told you there was a link between the condo and Simon and Bradley?” Riley said as she came into my office. She sprawled in her usual fashion on my sofa while I stood looking out the window.
“We haven’t found any link, though,” I said. “I’ve been through all Simon and Bradley’s personal accounts as well as all the business accounts. The only record I ever found was Simon’s cash machine transactions at the market. That and he obviously met Angel there.”
“We were looking for the wrong thing,” she said. “It isn’t Simon and Bradley. The condo is owned by Brenda Lamb.” That got my attention.
“She hasn’t used her maiden name for years. I always assumed they’d put it on the business just so it wouldn’t be Barnett, Barnett, and Keane. But even with that, what’s the connection?”
“There is no sign that she has been active in the business for years,” Riley continued. “I doubt that she even has an office there. But look at all the pictures that have been published over the past ten or fifteen years. She’s on all the boards of all the important arts organizations, governor’s task forces, community fund drives. She knows everyone.”
“Everyone who is male,” I said remembering the number of pictures Riley pulled up.
“And who is the clientele of the private party at the condo?” Riley asked. “Important men who exercise a code of silence. Why? Because someone has something they all want.”
“Or because someone has something on them.” Bingo. The condo was a perfect front for blackmail. I’d seen the security cameras. No doubt the image of Riley and me arriving with Cinnamon was somewhere in their files. Brenda may have looked at it and filed it away for future use.
“How much do you think Bradley and Brenda could make a year on private fees for “membership” in their little club?” Riley asked. “Business contracts? Deals? Acquisitions? Cash under the table?”
“Riley,” I said, “Simon told me he’s been converting cash into cash cards for nearly a year.”
“Yes. It’s actually a pretty popular new service. They work exactly the same way a bank ATM card works, except that the card is ‘charged’ with the amount you pay for and there is no other personal information on it. So if a thief got hold of your cash card, even if they got your PIN with it, your maximum liability would be what you put on the card. It has no links to any other bank accounts or personal data like a bank card would have.”
“And how long has Angel been in business?”
“A year or more, raking in cash hand over fist. She said someone else owned the business before her and Simon helped her acquire it.”
“Are there any more of these places?”
“Sure, it’s a franchise.”
My brain shifted into overdrive. Riley had seen Angel take in $25,000 in cash card orders in one day. It took five transactions. Cash transactions of less than $10,000 didn’t have to have a bank form filed for FinCEN, but when Angel took $25,000 to the bank, she had no difficulty filing a form on legitimate cash sales. If there were even five of these franchises in a city, times, say, ten cities, they could process over six and a quarter million dollars a week. Jordan was going to love this. I picked up my phone.
“Riley, you are a genius,” I said. “I love you.”
“Last time you said that I at least got dinner out of it,” she responded.
“I promised dinner at the Ninety-nine when I got back. We’ll go.”
“Let’s try some place different,” she suggested rapidly. “I’d rather not go back there just now. It’s 25 for $25 month. Want to try something new? I’ve heard Andaluca is good.”
“You make the reservation. We’ll go after I talk to Jordan.” She was off and happy, and so was I.
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