Don't Take Any Wooden Nickels (37 page)

“Human smuggling,” I said finally. “Manno Seafoods is a front for a group of people who smuggle illegal immigrants in from China.”

Gordo let out a small whistle.

“Thanks a lot, Callie,” he said. “You coulda warned me.”

“I had no idea,” I told him. “I’m working a completely different investigation that has to do with them. But somehow there’s a connection. It doesn’t make any sense.”

And it didn’t. Once Gordo promised me he would watch his back and we hung up the phone, I sat in the kitchen for a long time, trying to fit the pieces of the puzzle together.

How could Manno Seafoods be connected to CNA? It made no sense! These were two investigations I was running, two totally separate inquiries on behalf of two totally separate people in two totally separate situations. And yet, they intersected. What—or who—was the common denominator, either wittingly or unwittingly? Shayna? Earl Ray? Verlene?

I pressed my hands against my eyes and tried to think it through.

Manno Seafoods was on record with the IRS as being a donor to CNA, a group that arranged funding for charities. But since Manno wasn’t really a legitimate business, then obviously their donations to CNA weren’t legit either.

CNA itself had to be a decent company, or they wouldn’t have such good ratings across the board with all of the watchdog groups. I needed to get a look at the breakdown of their finances, so I went down the hall to the office, got online, and downloaded the file Gordo had said would be waiting for me.

Sure enough, once I took a look at the file, I realized that the breakdown of figures provided a very clear picture of the financial workings of CNA. Figures that had essentially been “hidden” when looking at CNA as a whole were now strikingly obvious when examined division by division.

For the Small Agencies Division, the percentage of fundraising costs versus the total amount raised was appallingly high. If this
division stood alone as an agency, there is no way I could ever recommend anyone to become affiliated with them. Why this had never become an issue to the company as a whole, I didn’t know. I had a feeling CNA concentrated its scrutiny on the larger, more prominent divisions and left Maureen pretty much to her own devices. Sadly, I had seen this before with other nonprofits; usually, once we turned down their request for a grant, they would finally catch on to what was happening within their own agency and clean up their act.

In this case, I now felt certain that this connection with the smugglers was a singular effort by Maureen Burnham conducted within the boundaries of her position as the head of the Small Agencies Division.

But why? What was she trying to do?

I thought about it and decided that all of these machinations must be providing a way for working some money through the system. Maybe when Manno “donated” a chunk of cash to CNA through Maureen Burnham, she would apply just a small percentage of that “donation” to a corresponding charity—to make it look legitimate—then pay the rest back out as a “commission” to a “donor broker.” Perhaps, then, the broker kicked back some to her, ergo the need for her to invest that cash somewhere logical, like jewelry. The remainder of the money then would be given by the broker to whomever it was down the smuggling chain who was waiting for it. Or maybe the broker was the mastermind for the whole thing, the one to whom the money was due, and he kept it for himself.

I thought back over all of Maureen Burnham’s references, good and bad, and I realized that I hadn’t been seeing the picture that was being painted in front of me. Apparently, Maureen spent her time recruiting small nonprofits, promising a full range of services once they signed up with CNA. That was her job, after all. But once they signed up, she either ignored them and sent almost no money their way at all, or she gave them plenty of attention along with full funding. I guessed that the places in the latter group were
the only ones she really cared about, since they were the ones who were unwittingly instrumental in providing a secondary paycheck in her direction. I looked at the list of nonprofits that had received the greatest funding, and I realized that those charities were located in areas known for heavy smuggling: Miami. Seattle. California.

And now here on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, with Advancing Attire.

I reached for the phone and dialed Agent Litman. He didn’t answer, so I left him a voice mail, stressing it was urgent he contact me as soon as possible. I was just about to send him a text as well when the phone rang in my hand. It was Litman, calling me back.

“That was quick,” I said, answering the phone. “Thanks so much.”

“You said it was urgent. What do you want?” he snapped.

Forcing myself to remain calm and professional, I asked if he had ever heard of CNA, or the Comprehensive Nonprofit Alliance.

He was silent for a long moment.

“Why do you ask?” he said finally.

“Because I think I’ve made a connection between them and Manno Seafoods. I think Manno is somehow working money to the smugglers through CNA. More than that, I have a whole list of CNA donors that are probably bogus, that are likely doing the same exact thing.”

Litman cursed, demanding to know where I had gotten this list. I told him that I had my sources.

“We’ve got a leak in this department!” he exclaimed. “If you got that information from one of my agents, I need to know about it now.”

“No,” I said, thinking of the poor woman whom Gordo had charmed at the IRS. She didn’t know what she was getting herself into. “This information came from somewhere else entirely. Trust me, it wasn’t from the Department of Immigration and Naturalization.”

“Where is this list now?” he asked. “Do you have it there?”

“Yes.”

“Then listen carefully to what I’m telling you. I need you to fax that list of agency names to my office, and then I need for you to destroy it. That list could put you in a lot of danger, Callie. You aren’t safe as long as you have those names in your possession.”

He wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t already know!

“I’ve got your fax number on your card,” I said. “I’ll send over the list now.”

“Go ahead. I’ll wait.”

He didn’t disconnect the call, so I set down the phone, carried the list to the office, and faxed it over. Once it was feeding through, I returned to the kitchen and picked up the phone.

“Are you getting it?” I asked.

“It’s coming in now,” he said. When it was finished, he told me he would hold on and wait while I burned it.

I retrieved the paper from the fax tray, but when I carried it back into the kitchen, I had no intention of burning anything. Knowing Litman was listening, I picked up a piece of scrap paper from the counter, carried it over to the sink, then loudly struck a match and burned the paper to a crisp, washing the ashes down the drain when it was finished.

“Done,” I said into the phone.

“Good,” he replied. “Now, do you remember what we discussed about obstruction of justice? I need to know where you got that list, Callie, and I’m not going to take no for an answer.”

I shook my head firmly, though of course he couldn’t see me through the phone.

“Bring me up on charges if you want,” I told him, “but I’m not going to reveal my sources. Suffice it to say that I came at this information in a very roundabout way. It has nothing to do with you or the INS.”

“Understand that I can have you held for an uncomfortably long period of time,” he threatened. “Sometimes the wheels of justice turn very, very slowly.”

“Hey, Litman, at least I called you and told you about it,” I said. “Look, I’m investigating CNA for a local charity, that’s all. Obviously, you’ve heard of them. There’s a woman there named Maureen—”

“Maureen Burnham, yes, we know. She’s been under investigation for quite a while.”

“Well, I was kind of digging around about her, and I turned this stuff up. That’s all.”

I took his silence as acquiescence, for the moment at least.

“Webber,” he said, “you are about to push one too many of my buttons. Don’t the words ‘cease and desist’ mean
anything
to you?”

“What can I say?” I replied. “Up until a few minutes ago, I had no idea that CNA was connected in any way with smuggling.”

“Well, now I hope you’ll choose to forget it, and let us do our jobs.”

I agreed to stay out of his hair and hung up the phone.

Then I called Tom and left a message on his voice mail, asking him if there was any way—any way at all—that he thought he might be able to use his connections to get me in on that INS raid tonight.

Forty-Two

While I was waiting for Tom to call back, I went outside with Sal, wondering when I would have time to fix the gaping hole in her fence. I went to the shed, bringing the list that Litman thought I had burned. Now that I had faxed it to him, I doubted I would need it myself, but I still was reluctant to part with such weighty information. Instead, I dug out an old aluminum canoe paddle from a pile, pulled off the end cap, rolled up the list, and dropped
it down inside. Then I tucked the paddle back where I had found it and closed the shed up tight.

Once we were back inside, I headed for the shower, leaving the bathroom door open so I could hear the phone. It finally rang as I was getting dressed; it was Tom, sounding in excellent spirits. He told me they had taken his mother out of intensive care and moved her to a private room.

We talked about that for a few minutes as I pulled on tweed slacks and a cream-colored sweater. Apparently, his mother’s CAT scan had turned out well, and there was good movement in both hands and feet.

“Anyway,” he said finally, “enough about us. I know you called for a reason. It sounded important. What’s up?”

“I need a favor,” I said, thinking this was the first time in our relationship I had ever uttered those words. I didn’t really like favors and obligations, but Tom was a master at pulling strings, and it seemed like such a small request in the grand scheme of things.

As simply and benignly as I could, I explained that I had been doing some investigating for Advancing Attire and that I had run up against a brick wall, because it turned out that the INS was already involved with the situation, from a different angle. Did he know anyone, I asked, who might have the authority to allow me to ride along on an immigration bust? I wouldn’t get in the way, I said, I just wanted to be there, to help close out my own investigations.

Fortunately, Tom didn’t seem unduly alarmed by my request. I knew I had sugarcoated things a bit, but the fact remained that I needed him to help me become part of an official government operation. He said he knew someone important with the Department of Justice, which had jurisdiction over the INS, and they might be able to help.

I provided the details, reminding him that this was all quite confidential. He assured me he would look into it discreetly and get back to me, one way or the other, in the next couple of hours.

That done, I hung up the phone and stood in the kitchen, trying to decide what to do next. Though I was sick and sore, my main draw was to the water, to my trusty canoe. I decided to go for an abbreviated ride up the river. I didn’t have the strength or the time to paddle the full five miles, especially since I had agreed to have lunch with Kirby at 1:30. But as long as I kept it short, I should be able to get a little time on the water.

First, however, I needed to spend a few minutes updating the database on my computer. Once that was finished, I went online and did some quick reading about Chinese human smuggling. Primarily, I was interested in the money chain and how it worked. What I read reaffirmed what Litman and Hank had told us, that it could cost anywhere from $30,000 to $80,000 to be smuggled from China to the U.S., and that it usually involved payments at both ends: a deposit to get started on the trip, and then the balance at the other end, either in the form of years of backbreaking labor by the immigrant or heavy payments by relatives already established in the U.S.

If money had to change hands along the line, I thought as I signed off and then shut down the computer, then perhaps the nonprofit angle was a clever way for them to do it. The money that needed to be moved from both ends to the middle could be given as “donations” to CNA. And as long as Maureen Burnham funneled most of that money out to a broker, who then facilitated its distribution to the snakeheads, their plan worked. Since Manno Seafoods seemed to be some sort of immigrant processing station, then I could only assume that the donations they were giving to CNA were actually what was left of the “front-end” money, the deposits, after expenses had been deducted along the way.

My head hurts too much for this.
I grabbed my coat, called Sal, and headed out to the canoe. We hit the water at a slower-than-usual pace, and I tried to let the beauty of my surroundings temporarily erase all thoughts of snakeheads or immigrants or money laundering. But in the end I finally just took
it all to the Lord in prayer, asking for wisdom and closure with Shayna’s and Verlene’s cases—and tact and grace with Kirby.