Washington, DC
November 3
9:45 p.m.
Kim had worked at the Washington Hilton, one of the biggest and busiest hotels in DC, during law school. She knew its eleven hundred guest rooms, its acres of function space, its forty-two meeting rooms, its four restaurants and bars. She remembered the service corridor, the loading dock, and the freight elevator. Tonight and every night, the hotel buzzed with crowd cover. The night manager was happy to help her. Returning felt almost like coming home.
Gaspar had asked no questions for the past hour while they collected Sylvia’s mail from the Crown Vic and transferred to the Hilton. He’d felt her urgency, perhaps, but whatever his reasons, he had stuck with her and demanded no explanations.
She wondered how long he’d wait.
Kim picked up the banker’s box containing Sylvia’s newer mail from P.O. Box 4720 and dumped it out on one of the beds. She pushed envelopes with both hands, seeking recognizable logos amid the junk. Marketers were ever smarter. Separating the gold from the dross wasn’t simple. Evidence was easily missed.
Five items looked promising.
She scooped junk mail into the box and shoved it aside. She carried possibles to the desk and rooted around for a letter opener. She unfolded contents and sorted them into piles.
Two senders: Jensen & Associates, C.P.A, and The Empire Bank of Switzerland.
Gaspar said, “OK, Sunshine, I give up. What’s all this about?”
Kim glanced at her watch. Seventy-three minutes of patience. She wondered if that was some sort of personal best. It probably was. She said, “I know why they killed Harry.”
He shrugged. “Everyone knows why they killed Harry. For the money.”
“It’s more complicated than that. If I’m right, Sylvia and Harry were about to be on the wrong end of the IRS for back taxes, penalties and interest of $137 million. More than twice Harry’s total Kliner stash. They’d have lost everything and gone to prison.”
No reaction.
She said, “And they would have taken Cooper down with them. And they still can.”
“How?”
She said, “You need to decide if you really want to hear this. It ain’t going to be pretty. It’s going to be a train wreck.”
“But you’re sticking with it.”
“You don’t have to.”
“Because I’m not Zorro.”
“You have a family. And twenty years to go.”
“Tell me what you know.”
“You sure?”
“You deaf? How many times do I have to say it?”
“Sylvia’s mail tells the story,” she said. Then she hesitated. She took a deep breath. “And Finlay confirmed it for me.”
Gaspar said nothing. He just headed for one of the upholstered chairs.
“Don’t get too comfortable,” Kim said. “We’ve got an appointment in thirty minutes at the Swiss Embassy and a flight to Zurich at 1:12.”
“Fill me in, Susie Q,” he said.
She pulled the redwell’s contents, and divided them into three batches. “We were right about the laundering. Harry figured out a way to exchange the Kliners for real money. Caribbean casinos.” She tossed the first group into his lap. “Photographs of Harry and Sylvia at blackjack tables in four separate establishments over four years. Tried and true. They bring the Kliners out of Atlanta in small batches. They buy chips, they gamble a while, they cash in the chips for real money. Pretty simple, even with Harry’s full time job. Short flights from Atlanta to the Caribbean. Easy enough to confirm by flight records.”
He asked, “But what did they do with the clean money? Stupid to bring it back and hide it in the closet.”
Kim tossed him the second set of redwell contents. “Bank records. Deposits to Caribbean banks.”
Gaspar thumbed through the half dozen statements. “They run for slightly less than five years. Stop abruptly three months ago. Offshore, like we thought.”
“But then they screwed up.”
“How?”
“Two ways. First, they never claimed any of their gambling winnings on their income taxes to get the clean money into the paper trail. Fraud would have been a lot harder to prove when the IRS got on their tails. Bought them extra time.”
He shrugged. Tax issues had never impressed him much. She figured he’d never been on the wrong side of the IRS. Those bastards were meaner than the FBI by a long shot.
“Second?”
She held paper in each unsteady hand. Raised Finlay’s contributions in her left first. “The Caribbean bank statements are fakes, too. Meant to comfort Harry, maybe. The money wasn’t there. It was deposited somewhere else. Might still be there.”
Gaspar lifted his eyebrow. Didn’t reach out for the paper. Touching meant plausible deniability destroyed.
Kim raised Susan Kane’s mail from box 4720 in her right hand. “These confirm.”
“Where is the money, then?”
“Empire Bank of Switzerland.”
Gaspar smiled. “Of all the gin joints in all the world.”
She smiled back. “Poetic, isn’t it?”