Hooligans

PYRAMIDS

I took a couple of wrong turns before I found DeeDee‟s street. A red Datsun Z sat in the driveway and

there were kids playing hide-and-seek in the yard next door. From the outside of the house,

everything appeared normal. Obviously death had not made its presence known to the neighborhood

yet.

Lark answered the door and ushered me inside. The house was dark, oppressive, silent. The rituals of

passage had not yet begun. There were no flowers, no covered food dishes from the neighbors, no

mourners sitting silently, trying not to stare at the casket.

Lark sat on one of the hard, uncomfortable antiques, her hands folded in her lap, looking at the floor,

unsure of how to act in the presence of tragedy. I could tell it was a role uncommon for her, that she

was accustomed only to the good things in life. Tragedy thus far had passed her by.

“Dee‟s sleeping,” she said, after moments of strained silence. “The doctor gave her two shots before

she quieted down. I don‟t know how long she‟ll -be under. A couple of hours, at least.” She paused,

fiddling with the hem of her skirt. “Mr. Seaborn called. Thanks for telling him. He seemed to be

honestly concerned.”

“I‟m sure he is,” I said, trying to think of something more significant to say. “I just came by to see

how she‟s holding up.”

“Hard to say,” Lark said. “I don‟t know what‟s going to happen when she wakes up. She was in shock

when the doctor got here.” She looked up at me suddenly and asked, almost with desperation, “Was

Tony breaking the law when it happened? I think Dee‟s more worried about that than anything. Not

for herself. She doesn‟t want people to remember him. badly.”

. .

“I can‟t say for sure,” I said, “but it‟s possible.”

“How did he die?”

“I‟m not sure about that either,” I said, and trying to avoid telling her a bald-faced lie, I added, “He

could‟ve drowned. Apparently he was in the water for some time. He washed up near Saint

Somethings Island, wherever that it.”

“Saint Simons,” she said. “It‟s south of here, about fifty miles.”

“They‟re doing the autopsy there,” I said.

She shuddered when I said the word. Then she looked up suddenly. “I almost forgot,” she said.

“Mickey was by. He said if I saw you to tell you he needs to get in touch. He says it‟s very

important.”

“Do you have my number?” I asked, getting up to leave. I had really wanted to see DeeDee and had

little else to say to Lark. She nodded. “I‟m staying at the Ponce.” And she nodded again. “Well,” I

said, “if! can do anything.

“You did the toughest thing of all,” Lark said. “It was nice of you, telling her that way instead of.

The sentence seemed to die in her mouth, as if she were unsure how to finish it. I put my arm around

her and hugged her until I felt the tension begin to ease, It was a hug I could use, too, just feeling

someone close to me, to share a moment of caring with.

“You ought to have somebody here with you,” I said.

“No, not yet. Dee wouldn‟t want that.”

I left and drove back to the Warehouse. The Stick‟s black Pontiac was lurking in front. Inside the

converted supermarket Stick was reading a computer printout.

“You‟re back early,” he said. “Did‟ya get my message?”

Obviously he had not heard about the events at the track and I wasn‟t in the mood for details. It was

only midafternoon but I felt like my cork had been pulled for the day.

“I‟m dead,” I said casually.

“A lot of people are having that trouble these days,” he drawled. “How are things at the track?”

“There was an accident,” I said. “Three horses went down.”

“What!”

“One of the horses split a foreleg in the stretch and took two other nags down with it.”

“Are the jockeys okay?” he asked.

“Busted up but they‟ll live. Lost two of the horses.”

He whistled through his teeth, but that seemed to be the extent of his interest.

“And how are things at the bank?”

“I thought you‟d never ask,” Stick answered with a smile. “I tumbled on to how they‟re using the

bank to wash their money. The bad news is, as far as I know, what they‟re doing is legal.”

“Impossible!” I snapped.

“Well, to some extent it‟s legal,” he said, amending his original comment. “The account Cohen uses is

in the name of the Abaca Corporation. According to Charlie One Ear, Abaca owns Thunder Point

Marina, Bronicata‟s restaurant, the Porthole, the Jalisco Shrimp Company, etcetera. I checked the

account and there are daily deposits, but never more than a couple thousand dollars.”

“That‟s inconsistent with what Lark told you.”

“Hang on,” he said, “I‟m not through yet. I only had that one account number, so I decided to check

the daily tape. That‟s a chronological list of all the deposits made at the bank each day. Lo and

behold, there‟re ten deposits for ten grand each, all within seconds of each other.” He made a grand

gesture with his hands and smiled. “Pyramids,” he said.

“Pyramids?”

“Cohen has this thing for pyramids.”

“I don‟t understand.”

“It‟s simple, once you tumble on to it. Cohen puts a hundred C‟s in, Abaca shows a deposit of only

ten grand. It only gets complex when you start trying to decipher the whole system.”

“Well, try, „cause you‟ve lost me,” I said.

“First, let‟s assume that Seaborn is in collusion with Cohen. Cohen is using the bank as a washing

machine. The whole point is to move a lot of cash through the bank without making the IRS

suspicious, right?”

“Uh-huh.”

“That‟s where the pyramids come in. What happens, let‟s say Cohen makes his daily deposit. . . ten

grand, for the sake of discussion. The deposit goes into the Abaca Corporation. That‟s the base

company, okay? But the computer is programmed to immediately dispense that money, by

percentage, into several other accounts. It never appears as a ten-grand deposit because the computer

spreads it over ten other accounts before making the deposit.”

“Does it always go into the same accounts?” I asked.

He shook his head. “There‟s a code designation on the account number that tells the computer what

set of accounts the money goes into and what percentage goes into each. Then each of those accounts

is spread over five or ten other accounts. So what they got is pyramids.”

“So every dollar that goes into the bank is diverted into so many other accounts, you don‟t see any big

sums going anywhere and it doesn‟t wave any red flags at the Lepers,” I said.

“Exactly,” he said. “If you weren‟t looking for something, you‟d never tumble over it. Thing is, they

seem to be using these accounts for legitimate purposes. Payrolls for Triad employees, accounts

payable and receivable for the Bom Dia restaurant, Jalisco Shrimp Company, Thunder Point Mar ma..

. the Seaview Company, Hojan and Rajah, whatever that may be. . . hell, there could be a couple of

hundred accounts. This Cohen is a genius. If he had to, he could probably legitimately account for

most of the money going into these pyramids.”

“There‟s got to be a reason for going to all that trouble,” I said. “There‟s got to be some skimming

accounts, or payoff accounts.”

“Yeah, I agree,” he said. “But what are they? We‟re looking at one pyramid off another here. Creative

bookkeeping compounded by creative computer techno logy. So maybe some of these accounts are

payoff accounts or skim accounts; there‟s no way to tell which ones.”

Stick was right. The system, although devious, was not illegal. What was illegal was using the bank t

channel illegal monies from gambling, prostitution, narcotics,, and whatever else, into legitimate

accounts and then siphoning off some of those accounts without reporting the income to the IRS. The

big question was how they were doing it.

“We‟ll never unravel it all without a key list of all their accounts,” said the Stick.

I said, “Stick, we‟re close to nailing them. Cohen must have this defined somewhere. It‟s far too

complex to keep in his head.”

“Probably in a computer of his own,” said Stick. “And there‟s no way we can access a private

terminal.”

“Then one damn thing is for sure,” I said. “We‟ve got to keep Cohen alive. He‟s got the key to the

puzzle.”

“Wanna put „em under protective custody?” Stick said. “I can‟t think of anything else to do. We‟re

baby-sitting „em around the clock now.”

“Yeah, and so far it hasn‟t helped any of them,” I said.

There was one other possible answer. We could offer to put Cohen in the witness protection program

if he would cooperate with us. And I know what my answer to that proposal would be if I were

Cohen. I‟d tell me to get stuffed.

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