The Trust (26 page)

“What?”

“You’re saving me,” he confessed, “from calling Torres.”

“Why her? I don’t trust that woman. I don’t like her. And she can go to hell for all I care.”

“Why?” the big man asked.

“She’s a bull in a china shop. I still don’t know why she trampled me at SKC. Or in Palmer’s office. But if you ask me, the more heavy-handed, the more likely the breakage. And I’m not taking chances with JoJo’s life.”

“But she’s been working the case a long time.”

“So.”

“Torres knows the players. She may be a hard-ass. But she’s the fastest way to get JoJo Kincaid back. There’s no need to bring her up to speed. And besides.”

Biscuit was logical. I had to give him that. “Besides what?”

“The FBI has jurisdiction. You don’t want to waste time on politics between different law enforcement agencies.”

“You got that right, bubba.” A couple of weeks in Charleston, and I was already sinking back into the Southernisms.

“So you’re calling Torres?”

“Okay.”

She answered on the first ring. “Tell me—”

“Are you still in Charleston?” I interrupted.

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“Behind you.”

“What are you talking about?”

A horn blared, and I whirled round. So did Biscuit. Torres had pulled off to the right side of the road and pushed open the passenger door.

“Hurry up.” She signaled us to get inside. “We’re backing up traffic.”

*   *   *

Torres caught me off guard.

Standing there on Meeting Street, I was a guy on the edge. I could almost feel my veins from inside out, the nanosecond of calm and then the surge of blood through vessels, the sudden burst of adrenaline that screams, “Attack, attack, attack!”

I wanted to tell the FBI about JoJo. But one look at the heavy-handed agent who threw me under the bus at SKC, and I saw red. She was tailing me. Or so I thought. The realization pissed me off.

“What are you doing here?”

“Get in.” Torres eyed the big lawyer at my side. “What are you looking at, Lumpy?”

“It’s Biscuit.”

“I should have known.”

The two of us hopped into the car, me in the front, Biscuit in the back. We closed the doors. And she hit the gas, speeding down Meeting Street, blowing through every yellow light. A thousand questions raced through my mind. But in my anger, I never asked any of them.

All I could do was lash out. “Why don’t you tell us what’s going on? Rather than running around half cocked and scaring the crap out of everyone.”

“Who’s in trouble?”

“JoJo Kincaid. She’s been kidnapped.”

“Hang on.” Torres never blinked. She never slowed down. With a cadaver’s pulse, she punched several numbers into her phone and waited to connect. “Walker, get a team to Charleston. Yesterday is too late.”

The two spoke for a few moments. When Torres finished—the cavalry on the way—she glanced at me with a no-nonsense look. Eyes steady. Lips pursed. Antennae up. I saw compassion in her features.

Maybe it was the vertical creases between her eyebrows. Or the sense of foreboding. But her expression made me think I had rushed to judgment. Her instructions were simple and to the point. “Start at the beginning.”

Over the next forty-five minutes, I poured out the whole story. Everything from my call with Palmer to the mystery package containing JoJo’s finger. Didn’t hold back. Not once. She gunned down I-26. We crossed the West Ashley Bridge, looped back to Charleston, and the whole way I had one mission, one thought. And that was saving JoJo Kincaid.

Biscuit filled in details. He explained how Highly Intimate Pleasures brought him to the Palmetto Foundation. He described his contact with accountants for the Catholic Fund and its beneficiaries. He complemented my observations with his.

The agent listened and drove. She nodded every so often. Or she requested clarification. She was a good listener, no hint of the angry crab I first met in Palmer’s office.

Torres turned onto Gillon Street. She cursed the cobblestones underneath, parked, but left the motor running. In a measured voice, she issued a directive. “From now on, nobody blinks without telling me. We clear?”

“What about Father Ricardo?”

“Not sure.”

Her response ticked me off. “First you ordered me to spy on Ricardo. Now you’re not sure he’s dirty?”

“Your priest keeps hitting our radar,” she began. “But we don’t know how he fits in.”

He’s not my priest.

“‘Fits in’ what?” pressed Biscuit.

“A Colombian drug cartel.”

“Father Ricardo’s a pusher?” For a moment, Biscuit forgot JoJo. The word “pusher” crossed his lips like a declaration of victory over Highly Intimate Pleasures.

“Maybe,” she replied. “But if I had to guess, he’s laundering the cartel’s money.”

Of course.

Every stockbroker knows money laundering is a risk. Our compliance departments make us watch instructional films about those brand-new eight-figure accounts. The ones too good to be true. There are no happy endings in these videos. Stockbrokers get fined. We lose our licenses. We go to jail.

As a trustee at the Palmetto Foundation, I had not been thinking about new accounts. I was evaluating an orphanage in the Philippines. I was grinding my teeth over photos of kids without limbs—thinking how great it would be to neuter the men who interrupted their childhoods.

“What’s money laundering got to do with the Palmetto Foundation?” asked Biscuit.

“Have you ever heard of layering?” the agent replied.

“No,” he said.

I had. “Layering is wiring money from one organization to the next, over and over, until it’s impossible to identify the source.”

“Not bad,” Torres said to me. “The Palmetto Foundation is the perfect vehicle to wash money.”

“Because we’re a charity. Our name legitimizes the cash.”

“Right.”

“I get it. But the Catholic Fund is a charity too. And they have a great name for washing money. Why use us?”

Biscuit eyed both of us, weighing our words.

“You’re just another layer.” Torres spoke as though she were in a classroom. “It’s that simple.”

“I don’t buy it. The Catholic Fund paid us six hundred and fifty thousand dollars. That’s a big expense for ‘just another layer.’ How much does it cost to wash money anyway?”

“You got paid one percent, which is peanuts.” Torres twisted from the steering wheel in order to face me in the front and Biscuit in the back.

“What do you mean?”

“Money launderers charge anywhere from six to twelve percent to wash money. But I’ve seen costs as high as twenty-five percent.”

“And I thought our problem was tax fraud.”

“Who said it isn’t?” The agent sounded too casual for my comfort. “I think the Palmetto Foundation gifted money to a criminal operation. That’s enough to make the IRS crazy.”

“Great.”

Torres piled on. “The Patriot Act. The Money Laundering Control Act. A couple of international treaties. I’d say you and your board violated everything in sight.”

Biscuit, ever the vigilant attorney, raised his eyebrows and shook his head, signaling me to shut up. I don’t think Agent Torres caught the motion.

“You weren’t there to see the pictures of the kids.” Now, I really didn’t like her one bit. She was still holding the $25 million wire over my head like a ball-peen hammer.

“How’s HIP fit into all this?” asked Biscuit, deflecting the conversation away from me—or exploring the impact on his clients.

“If I’m right about money laundering,” she continued, “your adult superstore is what we call ‘placement.’”

“Which is what?”

“When you mix legitimate funds with illegal funds in cash businesses,” I explained to Biscuit.

“Which makes it impossible,” he said, “to distinguish between the two.”

“Right. That’s probably why HIP has a bar. It’s a cash business.”

“Forget the bar,” Biscuit observed. “My wife would kill me if she saw any HIP charges on our credit card.”

“There’s just one thing,” I said, growing exasperated, returning my attention to Torres. “I don’t buy the money-laundering explanation.”

“Why not?” Torres’s cell phone rang. She checked the caller ID but ignored the call and focused on me.

“Palmer was too savvy. Not the kind of guy to get duped.”

“Don’t kid yourself.”

Biscuit turned pensive, his face puzzled. Our conversation was troubling him. That much was clear. But I could not tell whether it was my objection about Palmer, or if Biscuit had moved on, mentally that is, and was chewing over a different issue.

“Money launderers are ingenious,” Torres continued. “I’ve seen them infiltrate organizations a million different ways.”

“Why don’t you spare us the accolades,” I said, growing impatient. “And focus on JoJo.”

“When the captors make contact, we’ll nail them and get her.” Torres spoke in cool, confident tones. “My team is on its way now to wire the Palmetto Foundation for sound.”

“And what about Claire?” I pressed. “You’re following the money, right? They already took JoJo.”

“We’re watching Claire twenty-four seven.”

Good thing,
I decided, my mind racing. “What about Ricardo? If you’re right, if he’s tied into the goons—then you put JoJo’s life in jeopardy the minute he sees you.”

“Where is he now?”

“Reachable by cell phone. That’s all I know.” I handed Torres my copy of the contact sheet, the one we had put together in the Palmetto Foundation’s conference room.

“Claire’s still at the office.” Torres’s words were half statement, half question.

“She was when we left.”

“Get her out,” Torres instructed. “So my team can tap the Palmetto Foundation’s offices.”

“You’re kidding. We need to bring her inside the tent.”

“The fewer people who know, the better.”

“JoJo is her stepmother.”

“I don’t care.”

“It’s her father’s money at stake.”

“I don’t care.” The agent sounded like a broken record.

“This makes no sense. Why don’t you find Ricardo and bring him in?”

“And sweat him out?” For a moment, I thought Torres might add, “Like they do on television?”

I cut her off. “Whatever it takes to get JoJo back.”

“We don’t have anything on the priest,” she explained. “For all we know, he’s under duress right now. We nab Ricardo. Moreno kills Mrs. Kincaid and moves on.”

“But we still have forty million of the Catholic Fund’s money.”

“Who’s Moreno?” asked Biscuit.

“The Colombian drug lord,” Torres said.

“We need to understand the plan,” I said, trying to insert order into a three-way dialogue. We were all talking over each other.

“You’re meeting at ten o’clock tomorrow morning?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“And Ricardo’s the only one with access to the kidnappers?”

“Indirect. But yes.”

“We won’t hear anything until tomorrow. Which is fine, because we’re about to spring a trap and take them down.” Torres sounded confident.

Too much conviction,
I decided. “What do you mean?”

“Because, Grove, you’re about to send shock waves all the way back to Moreno.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The ransom demand is for two hundred million dollars?”

“Yes.”

“You’re paying it.”

“No fucking way,” I snapped.

Torres smiled like the Cheshire cat. “I thought you might say that.”

“Look, Agent Torres. I know money. I don’t care what you and your team of experts say. There’s no way I’m giving up our leverage. Two hundred million dollars. Give me a break.”

“Why’d the kidnappers up the ante?” asked Biscuit, the chaos of a three-person conversation returning. “The Palmetto Foundation only has forty million dollars of the Catholic Fund’s money.”

“It sounds to me,” I said, “like we’re a target of opportunity. The goons may have a priest working for them. But this isn’t church.”

“That simple?” asked Biscuit, seeking confirmation from Torres.

“Grove’s right,” she confirmed. “Opportunity is that simple.”

“Simple or not,” I interrupted, “we’re not wiring them one dime.”

“Hey, Grove.”

“Yes?”

“I know a little something about the people we’re investigating. You pay, you might have a twenty percent chance of getting Mrs. Kincaid back alive. You don’t pay, and you have a one hundred percent chance of getting her back in messenger bags.”

“Not happening. We’re not paying.” I was adamant.

So was she. “Yes you will. And here’s why.”

Fifteen minutes later, I got it.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

BISCUIT’S HOTEL ROOM

“Do me a favor, captain, and send up a vodka martini. Twist of lemon.”

Biscuit cradled the receiver. He folded his beefy arms behind his head and swung his size 12 feet onto the bed’s golden spread. When he leaned back, the occasional chair begged for mercy and threatened imminent collapse.

Other than room service, there was no reason to stay in Charleston. If Father Ricardo was laundering money, it was only a matter of time before the FBI raided Highly Intimate Pleasures and shut down the operation. Biscuit’s clients were on the verge of winning.

The big man considered Mrs. Jason Locklear. He owed her a call but preferred to see her reaction in person. He could swing by her house tomorrow and brief her on his progress. She might even crack a smile, the closest she would ever come to an attaboy.

Nothing like success to shut people up.

He found it impossible, though, to revel in client victory. JoJo Kincaid’s life hung in the balance, and until she was free, there was nothing to celebrate. Not only that, but Grove’s remark was still gnawing at him: “Palmer was too savvy. Not the kind of guy to get duped.” Grove, the FBI, himself—everybody was overlooking something. Biscuit just couldn’t figure out what.

His cell phone rang. Biscuit looked at the caller ID and said, “I should have guessed.”

“You didn’t call on Monday.” Mrs. Jason Locklear was on the line, large and in charge, her tone snappish.

“I’m down in Charleston.”

“Vacation?” She sounded annoyed.