Loose Ends (21 page)

“God. What a score.”

Jindal chuckled. “That’s peanuts. With insider trading, the
broker
might be in on it too. If so, he could leverage all the money in his accounts and make those trades without telling any of the investors. He gives them a nice high return for the year, something believable – say, twenty to twenty-four percent – and they go home happy, never knowing their funds were at risk and used to make hundreds of millions, maybe, depending on how much the broker had under his control.”

“Wouldn’t that trigger an SEC investigation?”

“Cal, Cal, Cal. Even hundreds of millions are just a blip to the big trading houses like Lehman or Bear Stearns. They control hundreds of
billions
in assets, and one billion is a
thousand
million. Your guy is small potatoes. He can hide his trades in the noise. The SEC won’t even assign an investigator for less than a billion unless it’s a celebrity and they want to make an example out of her.”

Aghast, I stared at the receiver. “Thanks, Jindal. You’ve given me a lot to think about.”

Jindal’s voice turned hopeful. “You got any other tips, Cal? Something that might be happening tomorrow instead of last week?”

“I wish. Talk to you later.” I hung up, and then put my head back, staring at the ceiling.

Hundreds of millions of dollars, he’d said. Two hundred grand was Mira’s buy-in, I felt sure, the good faith money showing Dennis that her insider information wasn’t bullshit. That also meant this heist had been in the works for a long time, at least in concept. Could Mira have meticulously plotted and planned it, bringing Dennis in at the right time to handle the deal? They’d parted in hostility by all accounts, but there seemed no specific reason for the bitterness. My suspicious mind wondered if even the divorce was fake, a ploy to put distance between them for the scheme.

How much would they do, how long would they wait for money enough to be really rich?

Mickey had said Dennis controlled about two million in client money. If he used that much for leveraged puts and calls…two hundred million, assuming Jindal knew his stuff. Which he did. One way or another it would end up in the Caymans, I felt sure. Then, a few months to a year from now, Dennis, Mira and Talia, separately or together, would take permanent vacations to someplace without an extradition treaty and live happily ever after. If they didn’t rip off Dennis’s clients, perhaps no one would ever know.

I remembered the sign holder in front of Mira’s house, another confirmation she was planning on leaving. She didn’t need the money, but not disposing of the property might seem suspicious. After the heist, she might be watched, so she’d keep everything very normal, sell and rent a nice condo for a while, maybe quit her job and not take another. Dennis would buy high quality documents for the three of them and one day they’d simply…disappear.

My cop instinct was to drop a big old dime on them. One anonymous tip to the FBI’s financial crimes division and they’d be on the case. The interstate and international transfers of funds put the ball in the Feds’ court, and unlike the SEC they’d think a mere nine figures was worth looking into.

I thought about Talia, how she’d felt as she clung to me as we dashed from the warehouse. For a brief moment I’d felt like a mother, a possibility that seemed to recede as time went on. What would happen to her with two parents in prison? What did I care about the money they’d scammed from investors? Some mutual funds would take hits, but anyone properly diversified with a buy-and-hold strategy would be fine, would recover soon enough. Only traders like Jindal or big investors with narrow portfolios would get hurt badly. Somehow I couldn’t find a lot of sympathy for some poor multimillionaire who might have to sell his private jet because he took a gamble and lost.

I knew about gambling, and I knew about losing. You’re only a loser if you don’t come back next time and win.

The one thing that rankled was Mira’s check, the one that would have bounced. Cheating the lowly P.I. that saved her daughter seemed like a sleazy move for someone with millions on the way…so sleazy that I found it hard to credit. Why would a woman who’d meticulously planned this whole thing over the course of years screw the one person who could blow the whistle on her?

Unless she didn’t plan on me being around at the end.

But what if I had tried to cash the check right away, dropping it off after our first meeting? I should have, but I’d been so busy. If I had, I might have learned it was worthless and everything might have blown up in her face.

What other explanation could there be?

And then I realized that I didn’t actually know the check would bounce. I’d taken Thomas’ word for it. What if the check was good? Why had the contractor taken it and left me ten grand in untraceable cash?

Untraceable. That was the key. For some reason Thomas was protecting me by severing the one connection that might permanently tie me to Mira. If the whole house of cards did come crashing down and the FBI or IRS went over her records with a fine-toothed comb, I’d be on the rack with no leg to stand on, to mix a metaphor. They wouldn’t care about my ethics or any unwritten code; they’d nail me to the wall for not reporting the kidnapping, the heist, and every other illegal activity I may have witnessed.

At my prosecution they’d argue that by doing my civic duty I could have prevented everything that followed – the heist, the insider trading, Bill’s death, losing Lattimer and maybe Dennis and Mira. They might even try to pin the dead thieves on me somehow. The Justice Department with the scent of guilt in its nostrils was a nightmare I wanted nothing to do with.

Folding the
Chronicle
reminded me of one more loose end I’d like to tie up. Opening up my address book, I dialed Cole’s number. Yesterday I’d finally wormed an admission out of one of the typists in the office pool that he should be back today.

The line picked up. “Cole Sage.”

For a moment my throat seized up. There was no reason to fear speaking with him, but I’d been trying so hard to reach him for so long I froze.

“This is Cole Sage,” his gravelly voice repeated.

I cleared my throat. “Yes, Cole, this is Cal Corwin. How was your jaunt?” I was proud of using that word. So sophisticated.

“Not bad. I got some information I needed. What can I do for you?”

“Meet me,” I said impulsively. I hadn’t been meaning to, but suddenly I wanted to.

“Is this urgent?”

I squirmed, not willing to stretch the truth today only to have it snap in half tomorrow. “Not urgent, but…”

“Then not today, Cal. Probably not this weekend, either. I have a lot of catching up to do.”

Damn. I said, “I just got finished with a case that involves you, at least peripherally, but I really don’t want to discuss it over the phone.”

“Hmm. Maybe Sunday afternoon, then?”

Victory! “How about somewhere at the Embarcadero, about five?”

“You buying?”

I laughed. “I am, actually.”

“Then it’s a date.”

My stomach got all warm and fuzzy at his words, even though I was sure he didn’t mean that the way it sounded.

Pretty sure.

Damn hope-monkey. Get off me, you bastard.

“Cal?”

“Uh-huh. Yeah, it’s a date. Meet in the lobby and we can decide on the spot.”

“Okay.”

“And Cole?”

“Yeah?”

I played my trump card to seal the deal. “You may not want to write it, but there’s a story you’re going to want to hear.”

“There always is, Cal. There always is.” Cole paused. “Bye, Cal.”

“Bye.”

I put the phone down and smiled. Finally, things were looking up.

The End
of
Loose Ends
.

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In A Bind:
California Corwin P. I. Mystery Series Book 2

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IN A BIND
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In A Bind

by

D. D. VanDyke

Chapter 1

September, 2005

“Oh, California! If you want to attract a man, you have to pull your lower chakra
in
, not push it
out
.” My mother, Starlight Corwin – she’d had it legally changed from “Sandra” – sat lotus on her ancient sofa, the one I had never been able to convince her to get rid of. Hands pressed against her belly and back as she breathed deliberately in and out, looking like nothing so much as a more serene Yoko Ono clone.

Chloe and Kira, my mother’s fawn Pekingeses, watched with calm interest. Snowflake, my Russian White, leaped into my arms. I rubbed his head and he purred contentedly.

“Who said I wanted to attract a man? And aren’t you a Buddhist, Mom? Chakras are Hindu,” I said archly, as if I hadn’t had to put up with my mother’s eclectic amalgam of every mystic and New Age belief imaginable for my entire life.

“
I’m a Buddhist, I’m a Hindu, I’m a Muslim…
” Starlight sang airily to the tune of Berlin’s
Sex
(
I’m a…).
“Buddhists know about chakras too. And call me Starlight. ‘Mom’ is a label that I eschew.”

“Eschew, huh? To paraphrase Sun Tzu: she who believes everything, believes nothing. Mommy Starlight, I gotta go.” I leaned over and kissed her on the forehead, placing Snowflake in her lap. As I did, my blazer fell open, revealing the holstered automatic on my hip.

“Tsk tsk. You know I don’t like guns in my house.” Mother Starlight closed her eyes and tilted her head back, rolling it side to side.

I sighed. “Guns go with my job now and my profession before. You know, the one that I lost to buy you the house? And I’m not leaving them in my office safe.”

“You’re not a pig anymore honey, praise the God and Goddess,” my mother replied. “You could get rid of them. All that negative energy and you put it right next to your body.”

With a pained laugh I said, “It’s not radioactive. It’s just a tool to protect myself and the only negative energy comes from the jerks this hardworking P.I. has to deal with.”

“Don’t come to me for healing when you get hip cancer.”

“Bye, Mom. And there’s no such thing as hip cancer.”

“You’ll see. I’ll try to ward you again.” She curled her hands into circles with her middle finger and thumb and began to chant. “
Om…Om mani padme hum
…”

I carefully locked the front door behind me. If I left it up to my mother it would not only stay unlocked but would probably stand open for every bum, doper and junkie who happened to wander by. Starlight believed the best of everyone. Except me, it seemed.

I call that selective memory, or maybe Mom just killed off all those brain cells before she gave up the hard drugs. Might have been the only good thing about Dad dying. For a little while, she became rational.

More than usual, anyway.

Turning to face the sloping San Francisco street, I descended the steps of our Victorian’s front porch and turned left. The three-block walk to my office was hardly enough to get my blood pumping, so I circled left again at the end of the block and took a zigzag path to eventually approach the building from the rear. Despite leaving the force two years ago the cop in me whispered in my ear: keep your eyes open, vary your route and take nothing for granted.

Another Monday morning. Monday was usually an interesting day, a day for cases to show up unexpectedly, I’d found.

Though, I mused, they could hardly be unexpected if I expected them on Monday. I should toss that noodle-baker to Mom. She loved all things philosophical and metaphysical. It would keep her entertained for hours.

September had brought sunshine even as it sent the girls and boys of summer back to school and I breathed deep of the fresh air, smelling wet concrete and the stubborn grass growing in the verges. I never understood how anyone could live down in smoggy L.A. if they could choose the City by the Bay and the fresh sea air of its setting. Sure it stayed chilly, but if warm weather was the goal, an hour’s drive over the coast range and into the sunny San Joaquin Valley to the east would do it. Me, I’ll take the dense cold fog and vibrant life of the Mission District any day.

Walking through the courtyard that formed a private parking lot in back of my office, I ran my hand along Molly’s flank. The azure Subaru called to me and I patted her fender in affection. “Be patient, girl. Next Saturday we got a rally up in Hollister.”

Shadows from the surrounding three-story buildings chopped the tarmac into slices of light and dark and the breeze brought the intermittent scent of java and pastries from Ritual Coffee Roasters. The aroma convinced me to turn away from my office and exit the courtyard to the east onto Valencia. A short walk brought me to the café where I picked up two tall lattes and six pastries – two for me, four for Mickey. Normally I only got him three, but for some reason today felt like four. I’d learned to yield to these flashes of insight, the ones that popped up every now and again ever since the bomb blast rattled my noggin and ended my career as a cop.

Just for a moment I caught sight of a half-familiar figure in the glass of the display case, and then it was gone. I racked my brain as I juggled the cup caddy, bag and door handle, scowling at the bum – sorry, homeless man – half-blocking the entrance.

On a whim I stopped, pulled out Mickey’s fourth apple turnover and dropped it into his grimy hands. He didn’t even thank me before he stuffed it in his face.

What a bum.

There, Mom. That ought to buy me some good karma, or maybe a little blessing from Saint Francis, all for under two bucks. Funny how Mother believes in every god except Dad’s, the Big Guy Upstairs. She’d say the Catholic Church is The System and the Pope is The Man anyway, and it’s her duty to Fight the Power or something.