Looking for Yesterday (10 page)

“I don’t know, they still charm me.”

I rolled my eyes at Derek and, smiling, he twirled me around the dance floor. We were at our second club, Mobius, having struck out at the Crazy Eights, where Amelia had gone the night before she was murdered.

“He’s cute, and I love that tat of scorpions around his neck, but what’s he doing with
her
?”

Derek mumbled into my ear, “You know, I regret ever getting this tat; it hurt, but they say it
really
hurts to remove one.”

“What’s wrong with her?”

“She’s
old
.”

“I think she’s hot.”

“You would.”

Derek pulled me closer. “I think you’re hot, boss, really hot.”

“I’d like to slug that woman.”

“Stay calm. Before this set ends, we’ll go talk with the bartender.”

“But she said I was
old
! And Mick said the same thing earlier today.”

“You’re Mick’s aunt; you’ll always seem old to him—even when
he’s
old. As for that woman, she’s stupid and insecure, reacting to that gray streak in your hair. How long have you had it?”

“Since high school. I used to dye it, but then I realized I was getting into some ageist, sexist thing and stopped. Now I’m kind of fond of it.”

“Does it make you feel old?”

“No.”

“What does?”

“People saying I’m old.”

Derek threw his head back and laughed so loudly that the couples near us stared. “And since when has what other people say mattered to you?”

“Well, in third grade, this asshole kid named Petey called me a ‘dirty Injun,’ so I beat him up and got a week of detention.”

“Geez, it’s a wonder you didn’t take your case to the ACLU.”

“Us ‘Injuns’ weren’t as trendy back then as we are now.”

Derek twirled me around once more and began ushering me off the floor. “Bartender’s not too busy right now. Let’s corner him.”

The bartender was mixing drinks in a cocktail shaker. He looked up and grinned when Derek said, “Hey, Don.”

“Ford, my man! Haven’t seen you in a while. Who’s your lady friend?”

“She’s a friend, but also my boss. Sharon McCone. We’re working a case together.”

Don shook hands with me, then asked, “Does that mean you can’t have a drink—on the house?”

I said, “I’d love a glass of chardonnay. We’re not as strict about drinking on duty as the cops are.”

“Ford?”

“Same.”

“Let me deliver this batch of apricot sunsets—good Christ, what is the drinking world coming to?—and I’ll be right back at you.”

I looked at Derek. “Well known man-about-town, are you?”

“You know me, Shar; I love the night life and now, thanks to SavageFor, I can afford it.”

SavageFor.com was a real-time search engine that Derek and Mick had created. Last year they’d sold out to Omnivore for a sum that would’ve allowed either of them never to work again in his lifetime. Mick persisted, because he loved detecting, but I was seriously afraid of losing Derek, who loved to play.

I said, “I’ve been meaning to ask you—”

“No, I don’t drink apricot sunsets or any of those concoctions with funny names.”

“Actually, it’s about—”

The bartender returned with our wine. As he set the glasses down he said, “You’re on a case. Must have something to do with this club.”

“Right,” I told him. “Three years ago on October twenty-first a woman named Amelia Bettencourt may have come in here with an unidentified man—”

“And the next night, her best friend killed her,” he finished for me. “But I never bought that. If it had been the other way, maybe.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I knew both girls. Amelia was always flashing around, trying to attract guys, with never a thought for Caro. But Caro, she was even more stunning to men, and genuinely cared for Amelia. If any guy hurt Amelia, he was just off Caro’s radar screen forever. Loyalty like that you don’t see much in the dating scene. Or many other places, come to think of it. There was no way Caro would’ve viciously murdered Amelia over that slimy snake Jake Green.”

“‘Slimy snake?’”

“You met him?”

“Yes. He seemed…kind of sleazy, but—”

Don gave me a conspiratorial wink and motioned me closer. “Let me give you the real skinny on Jake Green.”

A patron signaled him from the other end of the bar. “My relief’s coming on in five minutes. Grab that booth over there, and I’ll join you.”

11:02 p.m.

Don slid into the booth next to me, and another round of drinks immediately appeared. Derek and I reached for our wallets, but Don shook his head. “Your money’s no good in my place.”

“You own the club?” I asked.

“This and two others. But I like to keep my hand in at tending bar.”

I smiled. “I own my agency and could put in a few hours a day behind my desk, but I like to keep my hand in at active investigation.”

“Good woman. I like that. Then there’s the playboy here—”

“Hey,” Derek said, “I work!”

“Only because your father made that a condition in his will.”

Now this was new information. I looked questioningly at Derek. “We’ll discuss that later,” he said. Added to Don, “About Jake Green…?”

“He was in here three, maybe four times a week. At first with Carolyn Warrick and then with Amelia Bettencourt. Beautiful girls, but they were an intentional distraction.”

“From what?” I asked.

“His real business—laundering money. This is the Mission, right? Lots of Latinos, Hispanics, whatever they’re calling themselves now. You can’t tell who’s a legit worker with a mortgage and two kids to support from somebody with ‘assets’ he or she wants to move. The music, the dancing, the booze can cover up a lot of action.”

“And you permit this?” Derek asked.

“You want to stay in your business, kid, you better get real. Take me: Do I want this building burned to the ground? Or one of my employees raped or shot in the restroom? Do I want somebody following me home and posing a threat to my wife and kids? It’s a bad bargain, but I leave them alone, they leave me alone.”

“I get you.”

I knew a fair amount about money laundering, especially of the type that involved funneling funds into offshore banks that adhered to more stringent secrecy requirements than those in the US—primarily because Hy had been involved in a case the year before that dealt with the changing regulations within the Swiss banking community. It had revealed large-scale fraud, but how much illicit cash could be moved by a shoddy travel agent who met his clients in a Mission district bar?

Don must’ve seen the skeptical look on my face, because he said, “There’s a lot more money moving through this place than you’d think. And Sleazy Green’s in a perfect position to make it happen. Travel agent, lots of freebies from the airlines, lots of connections with the personnel and flight crews. Even with the increased security, if there’s a will, there’s a way.”

I nodded, thinking of Hy’s many stories about the mechanics of executive protection and hostage retrieval, especially the time when he’d taken a wrongly convicted—and stupid—American man out of Saudi Arabia by hiding him between the skin and the interior of a plane. I’d have to discuss this situation with him.

Don took out a card and scribbled on it. “My home number, if you can’t reach me at any of my clubs.” Then he stood and gestured to the waitress. “Another round for my friends, please.”

“Interesting guy,” Derek said.

“Mmm.”

“What?”

“Some connection between money laundering and gun control that I can’t quite make. Probably because of
that
.” I pointed to the glass of wine that had just been set in front of me.

“Hey, boss, you losing your drinking capacity?”

“That’s dangerously close to an old-person comment, son.”

“Don’t call me ‘son.’”

“Why not?”

“Because I’ve already got a Mommie Dearest. I don’t need another.”

6:31 a.m.

R
ain, slapping down on the deck above my bedroom. More god-awful January weather. I buried my head under my pillow, squeezed my eyes closed. Maybe if I concentrated really hard, I’d open them to a sunny April day.

Of course, I’d also have to close my ears, and I’d never figured out how to do that.

Well, I was awake now, no reason not to get on with the day’s business. I picked up the phone and called Hy in LA; he sounded alert, had probably been up for hours.

At the sound of his voice, I felt a lonely pang; I knew he was feeling it too, because his tone changed, became lower and more intimate.

“How you doing?” he asked.

“…Okay.”

“Just okay?”

“Yeah. You?”

“Tired. Disappointed that I’m not going to be able to make it home tonight.”

“No?” The lonely feeling intensified.

“No. I’ll probably have to— Well, anyway, what’ve you been doing?”

“I had some unpleasant reminders of my own mortality last night.”

“McCone, what happened?”

God, I shouldn’t have phrased it that way! It hadn’t been all that long since I’d been shot.

“Nothing important,” I said quickly. “I went clubbing with Derek.”

“Clubbing?
You?
”

“Because of this Warrick case.”

“And how did that lead to reminders of your mortality?”

“People in the clubs thought I was too old.”

A relieved silence. Then Hy laughed. “Well, face it, darlin’—we’re both a
little
old.”

“Thanks.”

“Whoops—this
has
gotten you grumpy.”

“I’m just grumpy in general lately.”

“Well, I’ll have to hurry up and get back there. Give you something to really feel grumpy about.”

I smiled at the teasing note in his voice. “Never.”

“Never?”

“Nope.”

A small silence filled the miles between us. Then I said, “I need to tap into your expertise.”

“I thought I sensed an agenda behind this call.”

“No agenda—I just missed you. But now that we’re talking—refresh my memory on the basics of money laundering.”

“What next?” His voice was amused. “Okay, money laundering. Conversion of ill-gotten gains to seemingly licit ones. There are five basic types: bank methods, smurfing, bulk cash smuggling, currency exchanges, and double-invoicing. Bank methods usually involve gaining a controlling interest in a financial institution and then moving the money through it. Smurfing is when cash is broken down into small amounts in order to avoid suspicion; bearer instruments, such as money orders, are used. Bulk cash smuggling: physically moving the cash to a bank in a country where secrecy requirements are greater than normal.”

“What I’m looking at is probably bulk cash smuggling, since the suspect has strong connections within the travel industry.”

“I’m assuming this cash is leaving, rather than entering, the US.”

“Right.”

“Our preventative laws have been in place since the mideighties. Cash withdrawals over ten thousand dollars have to be noted on a currency transaction report that identifies the person who made the withdrawal and the source of the money to the US Treasury. However, a person can make as many withdrawals as he or she wants under that amount from any number of financial institutions and not alert the feds. Or if the funds were received as cash and never deposited anywhere, the launderers just slip them into the old suitcase and go.”

“Airport screening—”

“Is not all it’s made out to be in the press. Flight-crew members aren’t under heavy scrutiny. People who fly the same route with the same airline on a regular basis aren’t either. Then you’ve got your private jets like RI’s; they don’t have as much range as commercial airliners, but they’ll get you across the borders. As of last year, security screeners seemed more interested in passengers’ inappropriate dress than smuggled cash.”

I smiled wryly, remembering the college athlete who was banned from his flight because his pants were at half-mast.

“You say you have a suspect?” Hy asked.

“A travel agent.”

“What’s the source of the money?”

“I’m not sure. I have a suspicion, but I’m going to have to dig deeper.”

“Not ready to share, huh?”

“You know me—I like to be right before I tell all.”

8:55 a.m.

When I got to the office, Mick handed me a file. “The deep background you asked me for.”

The file was thick. “You must’ve stayed up all night gathering this.”

“Not with the equipment I’ve got at home. I slept like a baby while this was coming in and printing out.”

“What about Jill Starkey? Are you keeping tabs on her?”

“She went to some newspaper columnists’ convention in Seattle yesterday. I’ve got an op from the Brent Agency monitoring her.”

Thank God Wyatt House was paying for this investigation!

“Good work,” I said, and moved on to my office.

As before, I was overwhelmed by the luxury of the space. I suspected Hy’s hand in this—a subtle lure to make me consent to the consolidation of our agencies. Well, it just might work.

The deep background information turned up a few facts that were interesting or downright amusing, but nothing of any real import.

Edna Sheep’s real name was Edna Finklesheep. She’d had it legally changed nineteen years ago. Well, no wonder.

Jill Starkey had been raped in her junior year of college; the rapist had been acquitted. She’d received extensive counseling from a therapist who was a member of the NRA. That explained her anger and her support of gun ownership.

Jake Green had bought a two-million-dollar home in Atherton, the expensive enclave on the Peninsula, three years ago. Money laundering yielded large profits.

Betsy Warrick—née Ames—had climbed a streetlight pole on Telegraph Avenue during the anti–Vietnam War protests at Berkeley and hurled water balloons at the police. They’d had to drag her down kicking and screaming. Her fiancé, Ben Warrick, had bailed her out.

Betsy, Betsy. Knowing you now, who would’ve thought?

Dave Walden had been an Eagle Scout and won a blue ribbon for his pygmy goat at the Sonoma County Fair when he was sixteen. Kayla Walden frequently visited a prominent plastic surgeon in Greenbrae, Marin County. Jethro Weatherford had spent two nights in jail for public drunkenness fifteen years ago; the authorities had then decided to leave him alone because he had walked on the proper side of the road, hadn’t stumbled, and hadn’t disturbed anyone.

And then came the biggie: a post on a cold case site from someone calling himself “RadioactiveMac.”

I ripped the page from the report, rushed down the hallway, and stamped into Mick’s office. “Did you think this was funny?” I asked, thrusting the page at him.

He scanned it, frowning. “I didn’t read it before I gave it to you. Do you think it’s serious?”

“Could be. Who the hell is RadioactiveMac?”

“I don’t know, but I can find out.” He swiveled around to his keyboard and began tapping out his magic on it.

I sat down on the corner of his desk, fidgeting and poking at a chipped fingernail. After a few minutes Mick said, “This is proving to be more difficult than I thought. The name leads to others, which in turn lead to still more. A typical way of disguising your identity.”

“But you
can
find out?”

“In time.”

“How much time?”

“Within the hour. I’m going to run a couple of very reliable searches.” He swiveled back, did more magic. “I’ll let you know when I’ve got something. What’s this in his message about you having a big fall?”

“The elevator crash. This guy is probably responsible for it.”

“Shit!” He swiveled back toward me, eyes wide.

I said, “While we’re waiting, I need to talk to you about Derek.”

“What’d he do—put the moves on you last night?”

“This is serious. I’m afraid we’re going to lose him. He doesn’t need the job or the money, and he likes to play.”

Mick laughed. “He does need both the job and the money. Derek’s a trust-fund baby, yeah, but there’s a provision in the trust that’ll keep him on the job.”

“What provision?”

“His grandparents were immigrants who were interned during World War II—at Tule Lake, I think. They had one kid, a daughter. After they were released, they moved here to the city, lived dirt-poor while the grandfather established a number of produce stands that mainly catered to the Japanese. The daughter married a Vietnam vet, Martin Ford, who had a lot of business smarts. He turned the produce stands into Fresh to You.”

That was a nationwide chain of high-end grocery stores. “No wonder Derek’s got a trust fund.”

Mick nodded. “And a lot of hard work went into establishing it. From what Derek’s told me, his father disapproved of his tendencies to play and overspend, so the trust only pays out basic living expenses—adjusted occasionally for inflation—and requires him to work at something ‘meaningful’ till he’s forty-five.”

“But SavageFor—” The real-time search engine he and Derek had developed in the days when such sites were almost unheard of.

“We sold it to Omnivore, remember? And creating it was just noodling around, not working.”

“Still, what you got for it would be enough for him to live on.”

“Not with his expensive tastes. And I’ve got a feeling they’re only going to get more expensive as he ages. By the time he gets his hands on the money he’ll be ready for a string of trophy wives and multiple vacation homes.”

“Kind of a harsh thing to say about your friend.”

“Nah, money’s not all that Derek’s about. He’s loyal, generous, and he’d put his life on the line for people he cares about. And that includes you.”

“So you don’t think we’ll lose him?”

“He enjoys the work so, no, not till his forty-fifth birthday—and then he’ll probably fly us all to Paris for dinner.”

Mick’s computer beeped. He turned to it and said, “Well, well.”

“What?” I leaned forward to look, but couldn’t make out what was on the screen.

“RadioactiveMac is someone we know.”

“Who?”

“Do you remember a guy named Daniel Winters?”

11:23 a.m.

I sat in my armchair reviewing the file on Daniel Winters.

He’d come to us as a client two years ago. A middle-aged archaeologist from Berkeley who had amassed a valuable collection of East African artifacts. He’d noticed certain objects missing, and suspected a household employee was stealing them. The employee, a housekeeper, had not returned to work the day after he questioned her. The normal procedure in such cases is to check with pawnbrokers and antique shops that don’t require proof of ownership or provenance—which I did, with no result. Then I received a tip from a high-end jeweler who had once been our client that Daniel Winters himself had been selling the artifacts to various unscrupulous dealers across a tristate area. He was overconfident enough in his ability to outwit me (and/or misinformed enough about my skills) to think I would help him, but I ended up turning him in myself.

Winters had escaped prosecution by fleeing the country; now, apparently, he was back.

He was back, and I was back in the news because of the Warrick case. A perfect reminder for him to harass me for exposing his crimes.

I wasn’t too worried about Winters. He’d never exhibited signs of violence; annoying messages were more his style. Still, I called the officer at the SFPD who’d handled the case and then copied and forwarded her the post. The department would be on the lookout now, since Winters was still a fugitive.

God, what a morning! The day, I decided, could only get worse.

2:30 p.m.

And it did.

Hy called: all hell had broken loose in an African country I’d never heard of, and a client, CEO of an American construction company working there, had been taken hostage. Hy was at Kennedy Airport in New York, awaiting his flight. He’d phone again when he changed planes in Johannesburg.

Ted went home early with symptoms of the flu that was ravaging the city’s population.

Julia Rafael, my only Spanish-speaking operative and a single mother, had had to bring her son, Tonio, to work after he finished preschool since her sister, who usually took care of him, had the same flu. He was a lively, bright child, and I loved him dearly, but his running down the hallway and bursting into my office drove me to distraction. Julia had nerves of steel when it came to her work, but by noon his behavior had her clawing at her beautiful, upswept black hair. She released it from its tortoiseshell comb and let it fall to her shoulders. Said to me, “Sometimes I think I should’ve stayed on the streets instead of having a kid and going legit.”

The remark didn’t surprise me; Julia was brutally honest about her past as a teenage hooker in the Mission district.

My operative Adah Joslyn, whom I’d lured away from the SFPD Homicide squad, phoned to say she and her husband Craig Morland—also lured away, but in his case from the FBI—were also flu sufferers. Why did newly married people always have to do things together?

It started raining again—pouring, actually.

And when I went down to the garage, I found that someone had backed into the Z-4 and broken its taillight.

I got into the car, pressed my forehead against the steering wheel, and wished for speedy recoveries and ongoing good health for those I knew and loved. And for anybody else who needed good wishes. Then I started to wish for Hy and me—that he’d be safe and return soon. I’d often thought of our lives as strange and dangerous, but this deep a concern had never really touched me at the core, as it did tonight.

My cell trilled—some melody Jamie had programmed in that I didn’t like but kept forgetting to replace with a normal ring tone. Hy? No, impossible that he’d have arrived in Johannesburg by now. I answered, and for a moment there was silence.

Then a muffled voice said, “You know the Presidio?”

“More or less.” Given its size, it’s impossible to know it all.