Twenty blue devils

Chapter 29

Clearly, Nelson Lau was on pins and needles. “I suppose you're wondering why I asked you to come and see me,” he said, twiddling with his ballpoint pen.

"Kind of,” John said.

"I trust it wasn't any trouble.” He turned the pen with his fingers, round and round, tapping it on the desk at each half-rotation.

"Nope."

"It's just that I thought it would be better to talk here at the Papeete office, rather than back at the Hut. It's more private.” Round and round went the pen. Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. “Don't you agree?” Tap.

"Nelson,” John said, “how about just telling me what you want to tell me? Also, if you don't stop fooling with that pen I'm gonna rip your arm off."

"Oh. Yes. Well.” He laid the pen down. Now his upper lip began to pulse with tiny puffs of air. The finicky little mustache twitched along with it. John tried looking out the window. Nelson's office had an expansive view of the busy quays and docks of Papeete Harbor.

"Let me give you some figures,” Nelson said, twitching away. “Mostly through our American operation we sell about six hundred thousand pounds of roasted beans a year in the form of our several coffees. Now, inasmuch as it takes a hundred pounds of green beans to make sixty pounds roasted, that means that we have either to harvest or to buy a total of a million pounds of green beans a year. Are you following me so far?"

"I think I'm managing to hang in there,” John said.

"Now then,” Nelson continued uneasily, “we can harvest only about two hundred thousand pounds a year here, from which it follows that we have to buy an additional eight hundred thousand pounds a year from other growers around the world. Now, of those eight hundred thousand-"

"Nelson, this is really interesting, but how about getting to the point? I've got a lot on my plate today."

"The point is-” said Nelson with heat, but then seemed to lose impetus. He sagged in his high-backed leather chair and crossly mumbled something.

John turned from the window. “What?"

"I said-I said I need your advice."

John forgot all about Nelson's mustache. He stared at him, amazed. “You what?" He hadn't meant to say it out loud, but these were words he had never in his life expected to hear from his older brother. No wonder the poor guy was looking so uncomfortable.

"As an FBI agent. You know about these things."

"What things, Nelson? What are you talking about?"

Nelson started fiddling with his pen again. Tap, tap, tap. “The thing is, I had it backward. We all had it backward. Tari wasn't stealing from us at all. Tari was right.” Tap, tap-

John took the pen out of Nelson's hand and placed it firmly in the pen-and-pencil caddy on the desk. “About what?"

"About our paying too much-ten times too much-in some cases twenty times too much-for some of the beans we buy from other suppliers."

"Is that right?” John murmured. Wheels began to turn. “Are you sure?"

Of course he was sure, Nelson said. He had spent the last two days poring over the books, and he was certain of his facts. Of the 800,000 pounds of beans purchased annually, 300,000 pounds came from two growers-about 100,000 from Java Green Mountain in Indonesia, and about 200,000 from the Colombian firm of Calvo Hermanos. And in virtually every order from these two suppliers, Paradise had been paying at least ten times the market value. Beans that should have cost $1.50 a pound had been ordered-and paid for-at $15 a pound. Beans that were bringing $2 on the international market had been entered on Paradise's books at $20. Paradise had been buying virtually the cheapest arabica beans available and paying the world's highest prices.

What's more, this had been going on for almost five years. The result was that they had been overpaying these two suppliers by about-Nelson had to swallow before he could get it out-$6 million a year.

"Six-!” John looked at him. “You're saying that in the last five years Paradise has overpaid something like thirty million bucks for its beans?"

"Exactly,” Nelson said wretchedly.

"Whew,” John said. “I think I'm starting to see why you have to charge thirty-eight bucks for a pound of coffee."

"It's not funny, John.” He sat there behind his handsome teak-and-leather desk, wringing his hands and looking miserable. “What's Nick going to say when I tell him?"

"Nelson,” John said gently, “how could this happen? Why did it take Tari to find out about it? Why didn't you see it before?"

Nelson reared back defensively. “It wasn't my job. Brian was supposed to stay on top of coffee prices, not me."

Ah. Brian. Things were beginning to add up. “But you're the comptroller."

"We don't work that way, John. We're a family, we don't go around checking on each other. The books balance and we make a profit; it never occurred to me to review the invoices themselves. Coffee prices are unbelievably complex. They change every day, sometimes more than once a day. You have to know the industry. And as you know, I'm no coffee expert-I've always been the first to admit that."

Not in John's hearing, he hadn't. “Look, Nel, tell me this: How do you make a profit? If you're paying ten times what you should for your beans, then you must-"

"Charge ten times what we should for our coffee. Yes, I suppose that's what you could say we've been doing. But not from any intent to overprice, you must understand that. Our prices necessarily reflect the value we put into the product in the way of labor, equipment, and costs. And the product is simply-"

” ‘The World's Most Expensive Coffee,’ “ John said.

Nelson frowned at him, as if deciding just how much offense he ought to take. Then he blinked and hesitated.

"'Bar None,'” he said.

For a second, they continued to look at each other, then burst into gales of laughter.

"Oh, dear…” Nelson said when he could speak. “Oh, dear… what are we laughing at anyway?"

"Probably all those yuppie types sitting around in all those latte bars, scarfing the stuff down and talking about how buttery it is, how chocolaty, how, how…"

"Piquant," Nelson said, beginning to shake again.

"And all the while,” laughed John, “they're drinking the cheapest crap in the world, only they can't tell the difference."

"And obviously,” said Nelson, “neither could we!"

And off they went again. This was certainly a new Nelson. It was the first time since they'd been children that they'd laughed together this way, and it felt good. Good God, if it kept up, he was liable to wind up actually liking the guy.

"Do you know what?” Nelson said when they quieted down. “You haven't called me Nel in thirty years. No one has."

John couldn't think of anything to say. “Yeah, well.” This was followed by a somewhat awkward pause.

"In any event,” said Nelson, “the reason I wanted to talk to you was to ask if this has the earmarks of something… something illegal. I don't mean on the part of Java Green Mountain and Calvo Hermanos, I mean on our part-that is, on the part of… of someone at Paradise."

"Yeah, it does,” John said. “It sounds like money-laundering."

Nelson winced. “That's what I was afraid you'd say.” He began to reach for the ballpoint pen again but at a guttural rumble from John he pulled his hand back and laid it in his lap. “But look, I'm not clear on what this money-laundering business is about. I thought I was, but I'm not. It has to do with drugs, doesn't it?"

"Usually, yeah."

"But where would drugs enter into this? We pay ten times as much as we should for green beans and we sell the finished product for ten times what it's worth. The growers do very well indeed, the consumers pay through the nose, and we make an innocent, modest profit. It's hardly a model of keen business practice, but where do drugs come into it? Where does money-laundering come into it?"

"It's pretty complicated, Nelson. I'd rather-"

"I think I can manage to hang in there,” Nelson said. Definitely a new Nelson.

All right, then, John said. The Colombian drug cartels had a long-established system of working with their American dealers. The American dealers-importers, they were called in the trade-didn't pay for the dope up front, they maintained open “accounts” with their Colombian sources and settled only after the stuff had been sold on the streets.

"Sound business practice,” said Nelson with something close to approval. “Receipts first, then payments. It's a question of cash flow. Any sensible businessman would prefer to handle it that way."

But these “businessmen” had a problem unique to international drug-trafficking, John explained. Most of the money that was collected was in great armloads of small-and medium-denomination bills-truckloads, really, amounting to many millions of dollars. The question was: How did you get it out of the country and into Colombia? And the problem was that you couldn't carry more than $10,000 out of the United States unless you declared it with Customs, something these guys were not eager to do. And you couldn't put all that cash in a bank checking account and draw a check on it either, because banks had to report deposits of $10,000 or more.

One way of getting around this involved smurfing, which-

"Ah…smurfing?” Nelson said.

Smurfing, said John. Multiple bank transactions of seven, or eight, or nine thousand dollars-anything under ten. A van holding maybe fifteen runners shows up in the financial district of a big city in the morning just as the banks open. The runners pile out, head for the banks, and buy cashier's checks (which can be made out to any name you want, and which usually don't require identification). Then they run off to the next bank with another load of cash, and the next, and the next. A single runner can convert $150,000 in a day. And the following day they're in another city doing it all over again.

"But why is it called smurfing?” Nelson wanted to know.

"Because of the way they all scoot off from the delivery van like a bunch of little Smurfs. You know."

Nelson didn't know. “In any case, I fail to see what this has to do with us,” he said irritably.

Patience, John counseled. Once the cash was smurfed into checks it would be “layered,” that is, electronically transferred from Account A in Bank I to Account B in Bank 2, splitting it up and recombining it until its origins were lost somewhere in cyberspace. Once you had a dozen banks and twenty accounts involved, the money was virtually untraceable. At that point, it could safely find its way into the accounts of an international importer such as Paradise Coffee.

And from there it was an easy matter to move it out of the country in the form of inflated payments for purchased goods. You paid $10 for $1 worth of goods and sold the finished product for ten times what it was worth. You made out, the books balanced-and $9 had been laundered and was on its way back to Colombia. It was done in the gem trade, it was done in the metals trade…and, so it seemed, it was done in the coffee trade.

"Are you telling me,” Nelson asked slowly, “that in the past five years, we've been responsible for supplying thirty million dollars to…to drug lords in Colombia?"

"I'm ready to bet on it,” John said. “That Colombian coffee grower, Calvo Hermanos they wouldn't happen to be in Medellin, would they?"

Nelson's face was all the answer that was needed.

"And the other one, the one in Java, they're probably backed by some of the Colombian drug biggies. It's an old story, Nelson."

"It's horrible,” Nelson said. He looked grim, almost sick. "Why?"

John understood what he meant. “For money, probably. The dealers typically pay legit firms ten percent for this kind of service. So somebody here was collecting…oh, around…"

"Six hundred thousand dollars a year,” Nelson said.

"Right, but that's only part of it. Think it through; the inflated payments to the suppliers are made with drug money, not company funds, right? But-"

"But,” Nelson said, speaking slowly as he took it in, “the inflated returns from our sales should go right into our own coffers-only they don't, do they? They've never shown up in our financial records. That means…that means…"

"That we're talking about somebody raking off a lot more-a whole lot more than six hundred thou a year."

Nelson groaned and pressed his hand to his forehead. “I feel as if I'm in a nightmare. John, how could he? After all Nick's done for him. Oh, I've never thought he was quite as perfect as everyone else did, but never would I have expected this from him. Not in a million years."

It was time to let Nelson in on recent developments. “Nelson, Brian wasn't quite what we thought. There's a lot about him that you and I didn't know."

Nelson's mouth hung open for a minute. “Brian? What does Brian have to do with it?"

John was startled in his turn. “What?"

"I'm talking about Rudy. Rudy's the one who actually buys the coffee. You know that, John. Rudy's the one who signs the purchase orders in the first place, and then signs off on the invoices-not Brian. Rudy's our buyer."

"Rudy…" John sat back in his chair and digested this latest screwy twist, or maybe it wasn't so screwy. “What do you know?” he said half to himself. “Now that really throws a new light on things."

"What's this about Brian?” Nelson said. “What didn't we know about him?"

"A lot,” said John. “I'll tell you later. Right now I want to go over to the hospital and have a few words with Rudy."

"But he's not in the hospital, he's right here, down on the docks.” Nelson turned in his chair and pointed out the window. “See the gray-and-white ship, the one with the block and tackle?"

"The rusty one?"

"Yes, the rusty one."

The ship was the Beaune, Nelson said, an interisland schooner; that is, a small freighter with a regular local route. Every few months two or three thousand pounds of Paradise beans were put aboard to go to resorts and small roasteries on Bora Bora, Rarotonga, and Pago Pago. As it happened, the beans were being loaded this morning and Rudy was on board overseeing things.

"Well, then, that's where I'm going,” John said, standing up.

Nelson got up as well. “I believe I'll go with you."

"No, I think it'd be better if I talked to him by myself."

"Pah.” Nelson breezed imperiously by him and through the door. “Don't be ridiculous, John. Of course I'm going with you. You don't know how to handle Rudy. It takes a delicate touch."

Say hello to the old Nelson again. For a moment the hair on the back of John's neck automatically bristled, but only for a moment. Then he laughed and followed Nelson out.

"Okay, big brother, show me how to handle Rudy."