Death of a Bankster (5 page)

“Solid work.”

“What about the body? Do we want to control the timing of their finding Crawford’s body?”

“I’ll take care of that from here. You two shut it down.”

“Okay, Captain. We’ll get on home.”

“Good. You’ve got your stories straight about what you did in Phoenix during your short sightseeing vacation and all that?”

“Yes sir. All square with brochures and ticket stubs from the places we visited, all in our luggage. The hotel room and rental car don’t need to be sanitized. We’re playing it as we were here and we used both of them.”

“This was Linda’s first assignment. Does she have any pangs of conscience or whatever?”

“No. She understands why you’re doing what you’re doing. She was shook when Crawford was shot. That shocked us both frankly, completely unexpected. But no, she handled it like a veteran. Then again, after that episode with you last year she is a veteran. You plan to solve the Crawford murder?”

“That’s not my assignment. However, if the local cops solve it, depending on who the killer was, that might affect my assignment. I’ll need to monitor the situation and be ready to improvise and step in if necessary. This surveillance should have been clean and quiet. The unexpected murder turned it into a swamp with overlapping authorities.”

“If you need me, I’m a phone call away.”

“Remember, you’re a local cop yourself, so you can’t always be leaving that to come work with me.”

“If you need me, I’m a phone call away.”

“Thanks, Gene. Oops, I still can’t get used to calling you Clark. You were Gene too long. Okay, be sure your buddy’s van is sanitized.”

“We took care of that yesterday. No traces can be found.”

“Okay. Thanks, ah, Clark, got it right that time.” The two men laughed. “Seriously, I couldn’t have done it without you. Before you board that plane smash that untraceable cell phone and scatter the parts over several miles in the desert.”

“Wilco, Captain. Take care.”

“Hug Linda for me. I still need to get up that way for a visit.”

“Anytime, Captain. You’re always welcome.”

With that, Ryan Testler hung up the phone.

* * *

Maddie got home in time to play a little catch with her eleven-year-old son, Bradley. His fastball was getting a bit tougher to catch, but she figured she could handle it for a few more years. After dinner, while Bradley did his homework and played some video games, Maddie cleaned the kitchen along with her mother. Rita had lived with them since Maddie’s divorce from Bradley’s father, Curtis, and the death of her own husband, Maddie’s father, who had also been a cop.

When her father died, her parents had been married for fifty years, a record Maddie had hoped she and Curtis would break, but they had fallen far short. Maddie and her mother had been good for each other during those tough years. She couldn’t imagine how it would be raising Bradley alone, a single parent, without her mother’s help.

After cleaning the kitchen, Maddie joined Bradley in something they shared many nights, reading ten pages each from one of the Hardy Boys mysteries. Rita had given Bradley the series for a past Christmas. Bradley was more than able to read them alone, but it had been a ritual they had shared for several years, a ritual Maddie wanted to continue as long as Bradley was comfortable with it. The joint readings gave them a way to look forward to quality time together, while allowing Maddie the opportunity to occasionally talk with her son about whatever was on his mind. Sometimes, the stories also gave her an opening to explain a little about her own job.

After Bradley went to sleep, Maddie planned to fix some popcorn and join her mother to watch a Kirk Douglas movie. Rita had carried her teenage torch for Kirk into her senior years. Maddie understood why. In his prime, Kirk Douglas had been a hunk, and Rita still saw him that way as she and Kirk had aged together. He was a fine actor. Recently, Maddie’s mother had begun to make comments about Robert Mitchum. “No one can replace Kirk,” she had said, “but I know all his movies so well that it may be time for a new man in my life, or maybe a second man,” she added with a chuckle.

Maddie envied her mother. After having accepted and grown into her life as a widow, Rita seemed completely comfortable with herself and her life. When her husband died, she gave up her enchantment with men. “What can I tell ya? I’m a one-man woman. Your father was that one-man.”

Chapter 7

Maddie’s morning started like many others, with a cup of coffee and half of a bagel on the patio with her mother while they tag-teamed getting Bradley off to school.

At times, Maddie found her mother exasperating; still she adored the woman who was indispensible if Maddie was to remain a cop. As for Rita, she loved the arrangement, or seemed to. It allowed her the opportunity to beat the same drum to Bradley, as she had to Maddie, about heaven and how you get there. She did it with love, not brimstone, so it was okay with Maddie who had grown up with that same message. As with most of us, her mother was her mother and nothing on earth would change her. The nuns at the school Maddie attended had served up the same message in the daytime. At least they had when they weren’t preaching fractions, decimals, and the multiplication tables. Rita’s messages were sandwiched around Maddie’s father beating the drum about being a good cop. As for Maddie’s ex-husband, Curtis beat … well, that’s another story for another time.

“So what’s in your plans for today?”

“Annie Smiddle and I are going shopping. To the mall, then the grocery store. We’ll leave in about two hours and be back before Bradley gets home.”

“You and Annie Smiddle are getting pretty chummy aren’t you?”

“Yeah. We’re both widows. She lives alone. She had one son who was killed in the Middle East, so she’s completely alone. She’s crazy about Bradley.”

“That’s nice. She seems to be a good woman. Your feet must be feeling better if you two are going traipsing around in the mall.”

“Feet are doing pretty well. But my hemorrhoids are killing me, Madeline Jane.”

“I don’t really need to know that mother. Have you seen a doctor about them?”

“Not yet,” her mother said while refilling their coffee cups. “But I need to. The damn things look like a handful of purple M&Ms.”

“I’m not sure they make purple M&Ms, but how do you know how they look?”

“I looked at them using that handheld mirror in your bathroom.”

“Thanks Mom. You’ve succeeded in changing the taste of my bagel. I’m glad my mirror came in handy. How ‘bout running it through the dishwasher today?”

“I didn’t sit on the damn thing, Madeline Jane, I only looked in it. That’s what mirrors are for, you know.”

“I understand. Still, I’m kinda freaked out by the image of your hemorrhoids hovering over my hair mirror.”

“I don’t understand them being called hemorrhoids, they should be named asteroids.”

“That word was already taken, mother.”

“Un-uh,” Rita said. “The butt problem came way before them things in the sky. The word asteroids had to have been available and waiting to be used when they came up with hemorrhoids.”

The discussion of her mother’s hemorrhoids didn’t survive the interruption when Bradley hollered good-bye and headed out the door for the bus stop. Rita went back to bed. Maddie went in and took a quick shower, put on a pair of size ten black slacks, low heeled black flats, and a lime green jersey with half sleeves. Next she slathered on some make-up and ran a brush through her hair. Before leaving she poured a second cup of coffee into a big ceramic mug which would accompany her to work riding snugly in the dashboard holder of her getting-too-old Taurus. After this case, she was determined to get an SUV so she would have more room for a lot of things, including hauling Bradley and his friends.

She backed out of the garage and headed for the Crawford residence to meet the forensics team that would hopefully prove once and for all that Sam Crawford had been shot dead in his doorway last Thursday night. Their assignments would include hunting for evidence that might help Maddie identify the imposters who represented themselves as FBI Agents Powell and Withers, and, maybe, or instead, the fake medical examiner. While accelerating down her street, Maddie waved at Lenny the plumber who as usual for this time of the morning stood at the back of his open truck laying it out for today’s jobs. Then to Annie Smiddle who had trudged out to pick up her morning paper from the driveway, the housecoat draped from her drooping shoulders hanging lower in front than in back.

Maddie popped a few chewable papaya tablets with the hope they would help settle her stomach. Last night she and her mother had watched
Out of the Past
, a movie starring both of her mother’s hunks: Robert Mitchum, as the good guy, and Kirk Douglas as the bad guy. The female lead was Jane Greer. The movie was good, so was the popcorn and soda. She had consumed too much and it now knocked at her door wanting to be let out. Maddie hoped the papaya would allow it to be patient, buy her some time.

Bill Molitor and his forensics crew arrived at Paige Crawford’s home in a van, pulling to the curb behind Maddie. Well, technically this was still the home of Sam and Paige Crawford, pending the determination of whether or not Sam was still among those who cared about owning a home.

Maddie and Molitor’s crew put booties over their shoes and pulled on latex gloves before going inside. After giving them an overview of the claimed murder, Bill’s team got to work with Maddie spending most of that time on the phone.

Five minutes later, Bill called over to Maddie. “We’ve definitely got blood traces on the floor inside the front door, right where you said, in the grout lines around the tiles. There was considerable blood which spread out toward the center of the room. How tall was Mr. Crawford?”

“The printout from his driver’s license shows five-eleven. Does that check?”

“Based on the description you passed on from the two witnesses, both saying his left foot dangled out the doorway over the porch, yeah, the blood’s in about the right place for a shot to the head.”

“That’s how it was described,” Maddie said, “anything else?”

“We’re not done yet, but so far, no. If the story’s accurate we likely won’t find any more blood farther in, but we’ll check. Do we know the direction from which the shot was fired?”

“Mrs. Crawford and Carla Roth had no idea. The fake FBI agents told Mrs. Crawford they saw dust blow from up on a distant hill. That could be bull. Based on the time it took them to get to the door, unless they paused before coming to the house, they would have been no more than several houses away, maybe in a car at the end of the street. Of course, this assumes the shooter was one of the fake feebs.”

“That seems likely, doesn’t it? One of those guys being the shooter.”

“That’s the only thing about this case so far that does seem likely, so maybe it’s not. Why else would anyone misrepresent themselves as cops and get tangled up in a murder? I think they wanted to take the body and Sam Crawford’s computer and smart phone, as well as look through his desk and stuff.”

“Professionals?”

“Best guess, yeah. Good guess too. Amateurs don’t show up with fake FBI cards and someone standing by to play the medical examiner. The important point right now is these imposters were in here a while. In the study for certain, the desk, maybe looking for a floor or wall safe behind pictures or wherever. See what you can find that might point us toward the perps. Assuming Crawford is dead we can’t talk to him, so I’d sure like to have a heart-to-heart with these imposters.”

Bill nodded before returning to work with his crew.

Maddie called her partner, Sue Martin, who had spent the morning focusing on the public and police records on Paige and her husband. “What have you found on Mr. and Mrs. Crawford?” Maddie asked.

“No bad shit. They’re both clean. Credit’s good. Paige Crawford worked a few years as a dress designer, but she ended that a few years after they were married. He’s fifty, she’s forty-two. What I looked at said they’ve been married sixteen years. No kids. This was the only marriage for both of them. Paige has had a parking ticket, Sam two speeding tickets, but no big speed. No arrests. No reports of domestic violence or disturbing the peace. The Crawfords appear to be the kind of folks we hired on to serve and protect. In shorthand, I got nada.”

“Run that nurse, Carla Roth, through the mill. She’s really the only corroboration there is so let’s take a peek under her tent.”

* * *

“Have you learned anything new from Sam Crawford’s computer and phone?”

“Not really,” Ryan said. “I had a local man I can trust help me take a look. It’s on the way back to you so you can have some of your experts turn back the covers, but I doubt you’ll find any secret compartments in there. Sam Crawford is not some agent trained in the backchannel use of a computer. For him, I think it was merely a working tool, a few encryptions, but my guy here got through those. A few more names I didn’t have, but mostly just support and confirmation about stuff I already knew. Sam Crawford was carrying the water for his boss, Maxwell Norbert, the top dog at Nation’s First Bank & Trust, a Phoenix bank wholly owned by a holding company in L.A. I need you to look into the holding company, its officers and shareholders. Sam was the point man for bringing money into the U.S. banking system in large amounts, without reporting it to the IRS or Treasury.”

“For the group we suspect?”

“
Al Salaam Fi Al Hamilani
, which translates from Arabic as
Peace for the Lambs
. It’s an Islamic Foundation headquartered in Pakistan. Their website claims they exist to raise money to care for and educate the children of innocents killed by bombs dropped by CIA drones. I remain way short of the evidence you’d need to get the right agency to shut the bank down and make arrests, if that ends up being the best course of action. I think we’ll be better off turning the bank into a way station from which we can monitor their whole operation: the movements and uses of this cash. Who gets it and where they pass it on, how it’s ultimately used.”

“Clearly,” Ryan’s boss said, “this
Peace for Lambs
Foundation is a vehicle used to bring money into the States. Once the money is in this Foundation’s bank account, the funds are dispersed out to fund sleeper cells, and plan and prepare for terrorist activity in this country. Sam Crawford and his accomplices at the bank aid and abet those activities, at least the funding for them, by easing the undetected flow of their funds. I’ve asked some of our friends at the DOD for what they have on the foundation, but, to date, the Department of Defense has not gotten back to me. So far, we have not been able to prove any of the amounts brought in have been paid out to fund terrorist cells and sleepers, but that’s got to be what this is all about.”

Ryan Testler reported that he had just convinced Sam Crawford to pass on the identity of each check payee, also the identity of who cashed each check. “Of course,” Ryan's control said, “that step can't be taken now that someone has stepped on Sam Crawford. If all this was really about legitimate charity toward children, neither the bank nor the Islamic foundation would feel a need to avoid reporting to our government their bringing in or moving around of these funds.”

“Sam Crawford responded to my earliest contacts because he wanted to build a get-out-of-jail-free card in case these large unreported transfers of cash became known. Whoever put Sam down did so at just the right time—for them, not for us. A good guess is someone learned that Sam had been talking to us—with me.”

“What’s your next move?”

“First,” Ryan said, “I need to determine if the murder of Sam Crawford disrupts the activities of this
Peace for Lambs
Foundation. If it does, then it’s likely the foundation killed Crawford. If not, if things continue pretty much unchanged, then the foundation was likely not involved in the murder. I’m also working on a plan for substituting the bank president, Maxwell Norbert, for Sam Crawford to keep this mission running. If I can do that, we move up the food chain. A perfect result would be for Norbert to be leveraged into hiring one of our finance whizzes to replace Sam Crawford. That would likely get us direct contact with the Pakistani foundation, and give us real time knowledge of each disbursement from the bank account.”

“How you going pull that off?”

“Like Crawford, this Maxwell Norbert likes the respect and recognition of being a big-shot banker. They like the side money they get through these illegal actions. The idea of going to jail for these types is incomprehensible. To know this, all we need do is remember that virtually none of the fat-cat bankers went to jail for the activities which led to the enormous taxpayer-funded bailout of the banks. Crawford had made it clear that Norbert was the guy pulling his strings. Crawford had no other firsthand knowledge of anyone else other than Maxwell Norbert, and the bank in Pakistan which transfers over deposits documented as donations. Crawford had the names and addresses of the local Islamic charities in various cities to which he hand-carried funds drawn on his bank. When you trim off the fat, Crawford functioned as a glorified mule, packing money with a sufficient imprimatur to make it all look right inside and outside his bank.”

“That all fits, Ryan. Pakistan is one of the countries which does not have a financial information unit (FIU) holding membership in the international Egmont Group. Pakistani banks are not required to report cash moving between their and U.S. banks. This means our only look-see on such funds is the reports filed by the receiving U.S. bank.”

“Crawford admitted to me that he blocks those very reports from going to our government. Without Pakistan being in the Egmont Group, no transfer-out report comes from Pakistan, and with no transfer-in report made by Nation’s First Bank & Trust, we have no knowledge of the flow of these funds. Someone, the foundation it would appear, is paying executives at Crawford’s bank to not report these transfers in.”

Ryan’s boss in Washington, D.C., went on to say, “I’ve had my staff put together a log of Sam Crawford’s travel itinerary. He made regular stops in Washington, D.C. where neither the bank nor the Islamic foundation has facilities. We figure those trips were to pick up cash brought in through diplomatic pouches into the Pakistani Embassy in D.C. I had a copy of his itinerary left at the drop. You should have it by now.”

“I do, sir. The D.C. stops could explain how Sam Crawford and this Maxwell Norbert skim their personal payoffs. Through bifurcating their payoffs from the foundation funds Crawford and Norbert cannot be caught through a trail of money moving into the foundation account and then into their own pockets. Smart.”