Money, Money, Money

6 .

THE OFFICES OF Wadsworth and Dodds were in a side street off Headley Square, close to the Municipal Theater and the Briley School of Art. As Ollie crossed the small park outside the school, and then the square itself, a fierce wind almost blew his hat from his head. He clutched at it with both hands, cursed at the wind, and at God-who was also on his list of people, places, things, and supernatural beings he hated-and then proceeded across the square to the building in which the publishing firm was housed. The wind moaned beneath the eaves of the old landmark building as he mounted the low flat entrance steps and walked into the lobby, stomping slush from his shoes. He checked the lobby directory-Wadsworth and Dodds was on the fourth floor of the six-story building-and walked toward the waiting elevator, its fancy grillwork door looking like it had come out of a spy movie set in Vienna.

"Whoosh!" he said to the elevator operator, and took off his hat when he noticed there was a lady in the car. The gesture did not go unnoticed. The woman, a good-looking broad in her late fifties, Ollie guessed, with still splendid legs andpoitrines, ah yes, smiled almost imperceptibly. He figured she worked out a lot. One of these days, he'd have to go to a gym, lose a few pounds, though not anytime soon. Maybe after he learned his five songs. His next lesson was tomorrow night, he could hardly wait.

Wadsworth and Dodds occupied the entire fourth floor of the building. Ollie took one look at the receptionist behind the desk and figured she could have profited from the same aerobics classes the broad in the elevator most likely attended. Ollie hated fat people. He considered them unsightly and weak-willed whereas he thought of his own girth as perfectly suited to his height and his large bone structure. When Fat Ollie Weeks looked into a mirror he saw an impressive figure of a man, whose very presence struck fear into the hearts of underworld types.

"May I help you, sir?" the fat lady behind the desk asked.

Ollie flashed the tin.

"Detective Weeks," he said, cutting to the chase. "I'd like to talk to whoever runs the place here."

"You'd want Mr. Halloway, our publisher."

"Okay," Ollie said, and snapped the leather case shut. "Could you let him know I'm here, please?"

The fat lady picked up her phone, pressed a button on her desk panel, listened, said, "A Detective Weeks to see you, sir," listened again, said, "Yes, sir," looked up at Ollie, and asked, "May I ask what this is in reference to, sir?"

"No," Ollie said.

The fat lady looked startled. "Uh," she said into the phone, "he won't tell me. Yes, sir," she said. "Yes, sir." She hung up, smiled at Ollie, and said, "He'll be with you in a moment, sir. Won't you please have a seat?"

"Thanks," Ollie said, and began roaming the waiting room.

Framed posters of Wadsworth and Dodds books lined the walls. The firm's logo was a distinctive open hand with a silver globe sitting on the palm and radiating rays of light, the fingers tentatively closed around it. Ollie didn't recognize any of the titles.

Behind him, he heard a buzz from the phone on the fat lady's desk.

"Mr. Weeks?" she said. "He'll see you now. It's the end of the corridor, the door on the right."

Ollie nodded.

The corridor leading to Halloway's office was similarly lined with framed posters of books Ollie never heard of. The closed walnut door on the right, at the end of corridor, had no markings on it. He knocked, heard a man's voice call, "Come in, please," twisted the brass doorknob, and entered. He was in a corner office with floor-to-ceiling bookcases on two walls. The other two walls were windowed, enclosing a walnut desk that matched the entrance door. A white-haired man in his early fifties, Ollie guessed, sat behind the desk. He rose the moment Ollie entered the room. Extending his hand, he said, "Richard Halloway, how do you do?"

Ollie took the hand.

"Detective Oliver Weeks," he said, "Eighty-eighth Squad."

"Sit down," Halloway said. "Please," and gestured to a brown leather wingback chair studded with brass buttons. Ollie sank into the chair.

"How can I help you?" Halloway asked.

"One of your salesmen was murdered on Christmas Eve," Ollie said. "His name …"

"What?" Halloway said.

"Yes, sir. His name's Jerome Hoskins. From what his wife …"

"Oh my God!" Halloway said.

"From what his wife tells me, he sold books in your northeast corridor."

"Yes. Yes, he did. Forgive me, I'm … forgive me."

He was shaking his head now, demonstrating how overwhelmed he was. Little white-haired guy in a gray flannel suit and a bow tie with red polka dots on a black field, shaking his head and looking appalled and overcome with sudden grief, all of which seemed somewhat phony to Ollie. Then again, he'd never met a book publisher before.

"Did his territory include Diamondback?" he asked.

"Yes, it did."

"Lots of bookstores up there, I guess."

"Not many. But enough. We're a small firm, last of the family publishing houses in this city, in fact. We're constantly trying to expand our market."

"You sell your books for cash, Mr. Halloway?"

"I'm sorry, I don't understand the question."

"Hoskins had seven hundred dollars and change in his wallet. Seemed like a lot of cash to be carrying around."

"I have no idea why he would have …"

"Any idea why he might have been carrying a gun?"

"Diamondback is a dangerous section of the …"

"Tell me about it."

"Perhaps he felt he needed protection."

"Do all of your salesmen carry guns?"

"Not to my knowledge. In fact, I didn't knowJerry carried one until this very moment."

"How many salesmen are there?"

"Including Jerry, only five. As I told you, we're a small firm."

"Is Mr. Wadsworth still alive? Or Mr. Dodds?"

"Both dead. Christine Dodds is the sole stockholder now. Henry Dodds's granddaughter."

"How about you? Are you a member of the family?"

"Me? No. No, what gave you that idea?"

"Well, you being thepublisher and all …"

"Oh, that's just a title," Halloway said airily. "Like President or Vice President or Senior Editor."

"Pretty important title, though, huh?"

"Well … yes."

"Who are these other four salesmen? I'll need to talk to them."

"Jerry was the only one based here, you know. In this city."

"Where are the other ones?"

"Illinois, Minnesota, Texas, and California."

"Can you give me a list of names and phone numbers?"

"Yes, of course."

"And the names, addresses, and phone numbers of the bookstores Mr. Hoskins visited in Diamondback."

"I'll ask Charmaine to get those ready for you," he said.

Charmaine, Ollie thought. A slender wraith who weighs a ton and a half bone dry. He watched as Halloway picked up the receiver, pressed a button, and told his receptionist what he needed. There was something crisp and efficient about his motions and the way he rapped out instructions. When at last he replaced the receiver on the cradle, he seemed to suddenly realize that Ollie had been observing his every move. He smiled pleasantly. "She'll have those for you when you leave," he said.

"Thanks," Ollie said. "Tell me what you know about Jerry Hoskins, okay?"

"Tell me what you're looking for."

"Well," Ollie said, "I guess I want to know what a book salesman was doing with types who'll shoot a man at the back of his head and drop him in a garbage can."

"Good Lord!" Halloway said.

Ollie didn't know there was anyone still left on the planet who said, "Good Lord!" He had the feeling all over again that Richard Halloway was faking surprise and sorrow.

"Most of the gangs in Diamondback are dealing drugs," he said, and watched Halloway's eyes. Nothing flickered there. "Hoskins wasn't doing dope, was he?"

"Not to my knowledge."

"Whowouldknow?" Ollie asked.

"Pardon?"

"If he was doing drugs. Or dealing drugs. Or involved in any way with controlled substances."

"I can't possibly imagine Jerry …"

"Whocouldpossibly imagine it, Mr. Halloway?"

"I suppose our sales manager would have known him better than anyone else in the firm."

"What's his name?"

"She's a woman."

"Okay," Ollie said.

"I'll ask her to come in."

CARELLA AND MEYER went to the Banque Francaise at ten that morning of the twenty-sixth with a court order to open Cassandra Jean Ridley's safe deposit box. The manager of the bank was a Frenchman from Lyon. His name was Pascal Prouteau. In a charming accent, he said he had read about Mademoiselle "Reed-ley's" death in the newspapers and was very sorry. "She was a lovely person," he said. "It is a shame what 'appen."

"When did she first open the box, can you tell us?" Meyer asked.

"Oui, messieurs,I 'ave her records here," Prouteau said. "It was on the sixteenth of November."

"How many times has she been in that box since?"

Prouteau consulted the signature card.

"She was 'ere a great deal," he said, looking surprised, and handed the card to Carella. He and Meyer looked at it together. "We'll need a copy of this, please," Meyer said.

"Mais, oui, certainement,"Prouteau said.

"Let's take a look in the box," Carella said.

What they found in the box was $96,000 in hundred-dollar bills.

There was also a sheet of paper with a lot of figures on it.

They asked Prouteau for a copy of that as well.

THEY KNEW THE LADY had been smurfing even before they checked the figures against her two checkbooks and her passbook.

The handwritten notes in her safe deposit box looked like this:

"Missed a day," Meyer said.

"Thanksgiving," Carella said.

The next deposit was made almost two weeks later.

"According to her calendar, she came East on the eighth of December," Carella said.

On the identical dates she had listed for withdrawals from the safe deposit box, there were corresponding deposits in either of her two checking accounts or her savings account. Each deposit was for a sum of money less than $10,000, the maximum cash deposit allowed under a federal law that had gone into effect almost three decades ago. Anything more than that sum had to be reported to the Internal Revenue Service on a so-called CTR, the acronym for Currency Transaction Report. Cassandra Jean Ridley, it would appear, had been engaged in money laundering, albeit on a relatively minor scale. Smurfing, as it was called in the trade.

In order to be charged with laundering, a person had to disguise the origin or ownership of illegally gained funds to make them appear legitimate. Hiding legitimately acquired money to avoid taxation also qualified as money laundering. The U.S. Treasury Department cautiously accepted a State Department Fact Sheet estimating that as much as four hundred billion dollars was laundered worldwide annually. Of this, fifty to a hundred billion was said to have come from drug profits in the United States alone.

If Cassandra Jean Ridley's transfers of cash were indeed necessitated because the money came from drugs, she was small potatoes indeed. According to the evidence they now possessed, she had introduced a mere $200,000 into the banking system, and had then separated it from its possible criminal origins by passing it through several financial transactions. In police jargon, this was called "placement" and "layering." But street sales of drugs were usually transacted in five- or ten-dollar bills, and the $96,000 they found in her safe deposit box was in hundreds. It seemed certain she hadn't been running around the street selling dime bags of coke to teenagers.

Her checkbooks showed somewhat substantial amounts written to department stores all over the city in the weeks before her murder. The lady had been moving money around and spending it profligately. The only sum they could not account for was the $8,000 in $100 bills they'd found nestling in the top right hand drawer of her desk-presumably currency suspected in a kidnapping that had drawn the attention of the Secret Service.

They knew several other things about Cassandra Jean Ridley.

She had been a pilot in the U.S. Army.

She had lived in Eagle Branch, Texas.

This last bit of information might not later have proved significant if Ollie Weeks wasn't at that very moment speaking to Jerome Hoskins' sales manager in the publishing offices of Wadsworth and Dodds.

KAREN ANDERSEN was a tall brunette wearing a charcoal black business suit with wide lapels and white pin stripes. Her handshake was firm and her smile was welcoming. Ollie wondered at once if she was wearing black thong panties and a garter belt under the tailored slacks. Halloway filled her in on the reason for Ollie's visit-

She seemed equally appalled by the news of Hoskins' murder.

- and then left them alone in his office while he attended a meeting in the firm's conference room. Karen asked Ollie if he'd care for a cup of coffee. It was close to twelve noon; he was beginning to get hungry. He wondered if the offer included a croissant, a donut, or at least a slice of toast. He accepted it nonetheless, watching Karen's ass as she walked to a folding door that opened to reveal a small kitchen unit. A coffee maker was already prepared for brewing. She hit a button. A red light went on. Karen walked to a chair facing him. She crossed her long legs. He wished she was wearing a skirt. She tented her hands. Long narrow fingers, the nails painted a red to match her lipstick. The savory aroma of perking coffee set Ollie's salivary glands flowing.

"So," she said, "what is it you want to know?"

"What was he doing in Diamondback?" Ollie asked.

"Selling books, I'd expect."

"At oneA.M . on Christmas Eve?"

Karen looked at him.

"That's the ME's estimated post mortem interval. The time of his death. The time someone fired a nine-millimeter pistol into the base of his neck."

"I can't evenimagine what he was doing up there at that hour."

"How many bookstores was he selling to?" Ollie asked. "In Diamondback?"

"Four. We're trying to expand our market there."

"What sort of books do you sell?"

"Mostly non-fiction. We have a small fiction list, but nothing significant."

"Books that would appeal to a Negro audience?"

"To a what?"

"A Negro audience."

"You said Negro."

"Yes."

"Some of them."

"Like what?"

"Oh, any number of our titles."

"Was Hoskins having any kind of trouble with his accounts?"

"Trouble?"

"Deadbeats. Slow payers. Whatever. Personality differences?"

"No problems that I know of. We're an easy firm to deal with. As I said, we're trying to expand our markets. Not only in Diamond-back, but all over the United States. Coffee's ready," she said, and uncrossed her legs. She rose, walked to the kitchenette, poured coffee for both of them. "Sugar?" she asked. "Cream?"

"Both," he said.

He was hoping she'd offer him something to eat. His eyes whipped the counter top, saw nothing but an open box of granulated sugar. She knelt to open a mini-fridge under the counter, took from it a container of skim milk. She spooned sugar into his cup …

"Two, please," he said.

… added milk, carried it to where he sat. She smelled of expensive perfume. He wondered what the hell she was doing selling books for a rinky-dink firm like Wadsworth and Dodds.

"Five salesmen," Ollie said. "Was what Mr. Halloway told me. Charmaine's supposed to be getting me their names and phone numbers."

"Why?" Karen said.

"I want to talk to them. See what they can tell me about him."

"I doubt if any of them knew him that well. Aside from sales conferences, their paths wouldn't have crossed all that often."

"Worth a few phone calls," Ollie said, and shrugged.

"I'll see how she's doing," Karen said.

She lifted the phone on Halloway's desk, stabbed at a button on the face of the cradle. "Hi," she said, "it's Karen. Have you got that information for Detective Weeks?" She listened, hung up, nodded, said, "She's bringing it in," and then folded her arms across her chest, and looked across the room at Ollie.

"Would you guys be interested in a book by a bona fide police officer?" he asked.

Karen looked surprised.

"Would you?" he asked.

"What kind of a book?"

"You know, make-believe."

"Fiction?"

"Sure, fiction. But by somebody who reallyknows police work, never mind these faggots who make it all up."

"Who'd you have in mind?" Karen asked.

"Me," Ollie said.

"I didn't know you were a writer."

"You probably didn't know I play piano, either."

"I confess I didn't."

"Do you like 'Night and Day'? I can play that for you sometime."

"It was never one of my favorites."

"I can even play it with a Latin beat, if you like."

"I don't think so, thanks. Why? Do I look Latin?"

"Well, the dark hair and eyes."

"Actually, my parents were Swedish."

"So would you be interested?"

"In what?"

"A fictious book about police work? I've had lots of experience."

"Would it have a Latin beat?" Karen asked, and smiled.

"I had more of an American cop in mind."

"We sell lots of books in the Southwest."

"What's that got to do with the price of fish?"

"Large Latino audience," Karen said, and shrugged.

"I could throw in a few wetbacks, I suppose," Ollie said dubiously. "But it might ruin the subtle mix."

"Oh, you already have a mix in mind, is that it?"

"No, but I thought if I could talk to somebody up here, one of your editors …"

"I see."

"… he could maybe fill me in on your needs, and I could prepare an outline or something. I have to explain something to you, Miss Andersen …"

"Yes, what's that?"

"If a person is creative in one way, he's usually creative in another. That's been my experience, anyway. Take Picasso, you ever heard of Pancho Picasso?"

"Does he write police novels?"

"Come on, he was a famous painter, you heard of him. The point is, he also made pots."

"I see."

"What I'm saying is, if you're creative in one way, you're creative in another. My piano teacher says there's no limits to where I can go."

"Maybe you'll even play at Clarendon Hall one day."

"Who knows? So have you got an editor up here I can talk to? Give your company an exclusive look at the book?"

"I'm not sure any of our editors are free just now," Karen said. "But we may have something you can look at."

"What do you meanlook at?"

"Something one of our editors may have prepared. Defining our needs. As I said, we don't publish much fiction …"

"Always room for a bestseller, though, am I right?"

"Always room."

"You had more bestsellers, maybe your salesmen wouldn't end up in garbage cans with bullet holes in their heads."

"Maybe not."

"Was he doing drugs?" Ollie asked.

"Not to my knowledge."

"Did he have a black girlfriend up there?"

"He was married."

"Did he have a black girlfriend up there?" Ollie asked again.

"He washappily married."

Dainty Charmaine came in with the names and addresses of Hoskins' customers in Diamondback, and the names and addresses of his fellow sales reps in the United States.

One of them lived in Eagle Branch, Texas.

WALTER WIGGINS had grown up to believe that beating the system was the only way to cope with the system. The way he looked at it, the system was stacked against the black man, and any man of color would be foolish to try living within the rules white men had established to control and punish the black man.

Wiggy committed his first theft-a two-dollar water pistol from a variety store on Hayley Avenue, the wide thoroughfare that skewered Diamondback north to south-when he was six years old. His mother forced him to take the toy pistol back to the owner, which Wiggy did after much wailing and protesting. Two days later, he went back to the store again-without his mother this time-and stole the water pistol all over again.

The owner of the store was white, but Wiggy didn't feel he was striking a blow for black power-which words were all the rage then-or anything else. He merely felt he was getting a water pistol for free, fuck his mother. He kept committing petty thefts until the time he was thirteen and joined a street gang named Orion, after which his life became a merry round of rumbling, doing drugs, dealing drugs, and eventually master-minding (he thought of it as such) the ring (he called it a posse, in the Colombian style) that now supported him in the life style to which he had become accustomed. It would never have occurred to Wiggy that living within the system was a possible alternative to the life he'd chosen. Wiggy the Lid was a big man in this part of the city. He even fancied himself to be famous outside of the six square-blocks he controlled in Diamond-back.

It annoyed him enormously that he'd had to pay for cocaine being peddled by a man he thought of as an amateur. It annoyed him even further that he'd had to hand over the money to a pair of white chicks holding guns bigger than they were. This guy Frank Holt-if that was his name, which Wiggy doubted-had come recommended by a cousin of Wiggy's in Mobile, Alabama, who said he'd met him with a man named Randolph Biggs in Dallas, Texas, when the three of them were setting up a run from Mexico, this was four years ago. Apparently this Frank Holt person-who'd later found himself stuffed feet first in a garbage can with a bullet hole at the back of his head, courtesy of Wiggy the Lid himself-had recently purchased some very good shit in Guenerando, Mexico, and through various levels of subterfuge had smuggled it into the metropolitan area where he was peddling a hundred keys for a million-nine. One look at the guy, you knew he was new at the trade, however long ago Wiggy's cousin had worked with him. Patted him down, found him carrying an ancient piece out ofCasablanca, trusted Tigo and him alone to test the shit while he sat outside with a brother named Thomas who could've broke him in half with his bare hands. Beating the system was what this was all about. Why pay a white man a mill-nine when you could shoot him in the head and take the booty home free? Like the water pistol.

Not that there wasn't profit enough in the trade even if Wiggy had played it by the book. Pay Frank Holt-or whatever his name was-the money he wanted for his hundred keys of truly very good shit, and then take it from there. In the long run, because Wiggy'd been careless or stupid or both, he'd had to fork over $19,000 a key to the two blondes in the Lincoln Town Car, who'd driven him back to his so-called office on Decatur and watched while he'd opened the safe, the one named Toni-which he was sure wasn'ther goddamn name, either-sitting there with the AK-47 leveled at his head while he twirled the combination dial, a smile on her face, her splendid white-cunt legs crossed.

Wiggy had failed to beat the system.

Oh yes, he knew he'd be selling off his newly acquired ten-key lots for twenty-three grand a key, a twenty-one percent profit on each key, for a virtual overnight gain of $400,000 on his $1,900,000 investment. Yes, he knew that, and that wasn't bad for a kid who'd stolen his first water pistol at the age of six. He knew, too, that there'd be profits for everyone down the line, but he didn't give a shit about anyone but himself. His one-kilo buyers would step on the drug by a third, diluting it to produce 1,333 grams or some 47 ounces of cocaine. This would be sold for about $800 an ounce, the profit margin rising the closer the drug came to the street. What had started in Mexico for $1,700,000 would end up on the streets of Diamondback at a retail price of close to $9,000,000. From door to door, all anybody made was money, money, money, but Wiggy was in this for Numero Uno alone. It did not disturb him to know that some of the kids buying highly diluted shit from sad-assed street dealers were scarcely older than he himself had been when he swiped that water gun.

What bothered him was that he'd allowed two titty blondes to cold-cock him and deprive him of an even greater profit. He would have to get that money back somehow.

What he didn't know was that his $1,900,000 had already been wire-transferred to Iran-where it would buy even more money at a huge discount.

THE REDHEADED PILOT had told them the man's name was Randolph Biggs and had said he lived in Eagle Branch, Texas. She'd given them a fairly good description, too: a tall, broad-shouldered man with thick black hair and a black mustache. She had told them he was a Texas Ranger, but they couldn't go ask aboutthat, eh,amigo? And besides they felt she was either lying or had been lied to. How could a Texas Ranger be involved in a scheme flying dope out of Guenerando, Mexico?

Eagle Branch was just across the Rio Grande from Piedras Rosas, Mexico-where, legend held, a former U.S. Marine had broken an American drug-prisoner out of jail there, oh, twenty, thirty years ago. Legends die hard. The people in Eagle Branch still talked about the daring escape. To them, it had become almost mythic. They insisted that the escaped prisoner's girlfriend had lived and taught school right there in Eagle Branch. Who knew? It could be true. The people in Piedras Rosas were indifferent to the story. They wouldn't have cared if a whole Marinebattalion had freed the entire prison population. They were of a mind to believe that the corrupt guards at the local jail, if paid enoughmordida, would let everybody go free, anyway. Most of the people in Piedras Rosas were more intent on crossing the river and making their way north, where Wiggy the Lid was selling cocaine to dealers lower down the chain of command who would eventually step on the drug and sell it to Mexican immigrants without green cards living in shitty neighborhoods where they pined for the good old days in Piedras Rosas.

Both Francisco Octavio Ortiz and Cesar Villada possessed green cards and were therefore free to come and go as they pleased, taking trips hither and yon in pursuit of their chosen occupation, which was earning-if that was the word-millions of dollars smuggling drugs up from Colombia and selling them to assorted gringos from across the border. On the seventh day of December this year, they had turned over to a pretty redheaded pilot one hundred keys of very high quality cocaine they'd purchased from the Cali cartel, a notorious association of traffickers operating out of Colombia's third-largest city. She had given them in return $1,700,000 in hundred-dollar bills, which they'd counted to ascertain the proper value and then-generously, they felt-had skimmed ten thousand dollars off the top, to give to her as a gratuity.

They had smiled all around.

Gracias, gracias, muchas gracias.

Now, in this little border town of what they estimated to be fifteen, twenty thousand people, they were looking for a man named Randolph Biggs, who had given the lady the money she'd subsequently passed on to them.

They didn't mind losing the ten thousand, which, after all, had been offered of their own free will, in gratitude, as an act of South of the Border generosity.

What annoyed them was thatall the money was counterfeit.