Blood Orchid

48

Holly felt better after lunch, the wine having helped her hangover, but when she got back to Grant’s house after work, she was tired.

Marina was sitting in the living room alone, a drink in her hand.

“Hi,” Holly said.

“Hello,” Marina said disconsolately.

“Where’s Grant?”

“He went to the grocery store,” she replied. “I wanted to go with him, but he wouldn’t let me.”

“It’s best you stay in the house, until we know you’re safe,” Holly said.

Marina nodded listlessly. “I spoke to the undertaker this morning, and he called back this afternoon. They’re releasing my mother’s and my aunt’s bodies tomorrow, and the undertaker is taking them back to Fort Lauderdale. I want to go back tomorrow to make the funeral arrangements, but my car is still at the airport in Sarasota.”

Holly sat down next to her. “Marina, you can’t go back to Lauderdale while Trini is still on the loose. He’s looking for you.”

“I don’t care,” Marina said. “I have to bury my mother and my aunt; there’s nobody else to do it.”

“I understand, but you’re going to have to postpone the funeral until it’s safe.”

“While their bodies rot in a funeral home?”

“The undertaker will take care of them; they’ll be embalmed and kept in cold storage.”

“Yes, at a hundred and fifty dollars a day,” Marina said. “I’ve already missed a lot of work because of Carlos’s funeral, and now this. They’re not paying me for the time off, either, and I only have a little in savings. I’ll have to put all this on a credit card, and I just got them paid off.”

“Marina, I know it’s expensive, but isn’t protecting your life worth a few hundred dollars?”

“Oh, I suppose so, but I feel so helpless.”

“Tell you what, I’ll send someone over to Sarasota to bring back your car. Do you have the keys?”

Marina opened her purse and handed them to Holly.

“I’ll send two officers over there tomorrow, and one can drive your car back.”

“Thank you.”

“But you can’t leave here, Marina. I hope you understand that.”

Marina nodded. “I understand.”

Grant came in from the garage, his arms filled with groceries. “There’s more in the car,” he said. “Give me a hand?”

Holly went out to the garage and got the remaining bags from Grant’s trunk. The top was down on the Mercedes convertible, and as she walked back into the house, something in the car caught her attention. It was a matchbook, lying on the console between the front seats, but she could read the name on it.TRICKY’S, it said.BAR AND GRILL.

They finished dinner and watched TV for a while, then Marina excused herself and went to bed.

“She’s getting pretty antsy,” Grant said.

“I know. She wants to go back to Lauderdale to bury her mother and aunt.”

“You’re not going to let her, are you?”

“Of course not.” They were both quiet for a moment. “Grant, what else do you know about the Pellegrinos?”

“Nothing I can tell you,” he replied.

“Oh, come on, there must be something else that you can tell me without compromising your investigation.”

“They’re very well connected,” Grant said.

“With whom?”

“You name it-if it’s a criminal organization, they’re plugged into it.”

“What sort of activities?”

“Whatever turns a million bucks-prostitution, gambling.”

“Prostitution? I thought that was a freelancer’s market these days.”

“There are some very fancy whorehouses in Miami,” Grant said. “You wouldn’t believe how fancy, and how beautiful the girls are. Or boys.”

“And the Pellegrinos are into that?”

“The Pellegrinosown that.”

“Jesus. And what sort of gambling? Bookie operations?”

“They’ve gone way beyond a bookie operation,” Grant said. “They’re on the Internet.”

“The Internet?”

“Come on, I’ll show you.” He led the way into the study and switched on his computer. He hit the Internet connection, then typed in an address. A title page came up, and there were buttons for football, baseball, golf, basketball, soccer, European soccer, South American soccer, dog racing, and horse racing. Grant clicked on one and got a display of odds on various games.

“Wow,” Holly said. “But that’s got to be illegal.”

“It is, in this country, but Pio and his pop are too sophisticated to get caught at it. The operation is based on an island in the Caribbean called Saint Marks. It’s a former British colony with very loose rules about gambling and banking.”

“How does it work?”

“Well, let’s say you want to place a fifty-dollar bet on a Yankees game. You hit the appropriate button, place a bet, give them a credit card number, and you get an on-screen receipt, which you can print out. If you win, the amount is credited to your card, and you can use it to pay down your bill, or you can take a credit refund.”

“Even if you’re in the United States?”

“Yep. You’d never be caught because there are too many people playing it, and the government doesn’t know who.”

“Can’t the Feds hack into their computer and find out who their customers are?”

“They’ve got their own computer experts working to prevent just that, but suppose we could? We couldn’t arrest everybody. What if we picked a hundred players and arrested and tried them to make an example of them? They’ve still got hundreds of thousands more playing. We couldn’t make a dent. We’ve made overtures to the government of Saint Marks, but the politicians there are well paid by the Pellegrinos, and they’re not going to cooperate.”

“What happens to the money they make? They can’t get it back into this country, can they?”

“That would be tough to do in any volume, but they own their own bank in Saint Marks, and they can wire money to any bank in the world, including ones in places with banking secrecy laws, like the Cayman Islands and Switzerland. They can launder it through dozens or hundreds of legitimate businesses. They own a resort in Saint Marks, for instance. But one of the puzzles is, exactly where is the money going? We’re working on that, but it’s a hard puzzle to break.”

“I don’t get it,” Holly said. “These guys are making all this money…”

“Hundreds of millions a year.”

“… and they’re sitting in Miami, running a restaurant?”

“That’s just cover; somebody else runs the restaurant. They live well, but not like the very rich people they are. I’d love to know where the money is going and who’s getting it.”

“And this is connected with your work in Orchid Beach?”

“No comment,” Grant said.

After they had gone to bed, Holly thought about the Pellegrinos. And she thought about Tricky’s, too, and what Grant might have been doing there. He wasn’t going to tell her, she knew, and she wasn’t going to ask. Not yet, anyway.