The Blue Zone

CHAPTER THREE

They took the cuffs off Raab inside FBI headquarters at Foley Square in Lower Manhattan, leading him into a stark, narrow room with a wooden table and metal chairs and a couple of dog-eared Wanted posters tacked to a bulletin board on the wall.

He sat there staring up at a small mirror that he knew was the two-way kind, like on some police drama on TV. He knew what he had to tell them. He’d rehearsed it over and over. That this was all some kind of crazy mistake. He was just a businessman. He’d never done anything wrong in his entire life.

After about twenty minutes, the door opened. Raab stood up. The same two agents who had arrested him stepped in, trailed by a thin young man in a gray suit and short, close-cropped hair, who placed a briefcase on the table.

“I’m Special Agent in Charge Booth,” announced the tall, balding agent. “You’ve already met Special Agent Ruiz. This is Mr. Nardozzi. He’s a U.S. Attorney with the Justice Department who’s familiar with your case.”

“My case…?” Raab forced a hesitant smile, eyeing their thick files a little warily, not believing he was hearing that word.

“What we’re going to do is ask you a few questions, Mr. Raab,” the Hispanic agent, Ruiz, began. “Please sit back down. I can assure you this will go a lot easier if we can count on your full cooperation and you simply answer truthfully and succinctly to the best of your knowledge.”

“Of course.” Raab nodded, sitting back down.

“And we’re going to be taping this, if that’s okay?” Ruiz said, placing a standard cassette recorder on the table, not even waiting for his response. “It’s for your own protection, too. At any time, if you like, you can request that a lawyer be present.”

“I don’t need a lawyer.” Raab shook his head. “I have nothing to hide.”

“That’s good, Mr. Raab.” Ruiz winked back affably. “These things have a way of always going best when people have nothing to hide.”

The agent removed a stack of papers from the file and ordered them in a certain way on the table. “You’ve heard of a Paz Export Enterprises, Mr. Raab?” he started in, turning the first page.

“Of course,” Raab confirmed. “They’re one of my biggest accounts.”

“And just what is it you do for them?” the FBI agent asked him.

“I purchase gold. On the open market. They’re in the novelty gift business or something. I ship it to an intermediary on their behalf.”

“Argot Manufacturing?” Ruiz interjected, turning over a page from his notes.

“Yes, Argot. Look, if that’s what this is about-”

“And Argot does what with all this gold you purchase?” Ruiz cut him off one more time.

“I don’t know. They’re manufacturers. They turn it into gold plate, or whatever Paz requests.”

“Novelty items,” Ruiz said, cynically, looking up from his notes.

Raab stared back. “What they do with it is their business. I just buy the gold for them.”

“And how long have you been supplying gold to Argot on Paz’s behalf?” Agent in Charge Booth took up the questioning.

“I’m not sure. I’d have to check. Maybe six, eight years…”

“Six to eight years.” The agents glanced at each other. “And in all that time, Mr. Raab, you have no idea what products they make once they receive your gold?”

It had the feel of a rhetorical question. But they seemed to be waiting for an answer. “They make a lot of things.” Raab shrugged. “For different customers. Jewelry. Gold-plated stuff, desk ornaments, paperweights…”

“They consume quite a lot of gold,” Booth said, running his eye down a column of numbers, “for a bunch of desk ornaments and paperweights, wouldn’t you say? Last year over thirty-one hundred pounds. At roughly six hundred forty dollars an ounce, that’s over thirty-one million dollars, Mr. Raab.”

The number took Raab by surprise. He felt a bead of sweat run down his temple. He wet his lips. “I told you, I’m in the transaction business. They give me a contract. All I do is supply the gold. Look, maybe if you tell me what this is about…”

Booth stared back, as if bemused, with a cynical smile, but a smile, it appeared to Raab, that had facts behind it. Ruiz opened his folder and removed some new sheets. Photographs. Black-and-white, eight-by-tens. The shots were all of mundane items. Bookends, paperweights, and some basic tools: hammers, screwdrivers, hoes.

“You recognize any of these items, Mr. Raab?”

For the first time, Raab felt his heart start to accelerate. He warily shook his head. “No.”

“You receive payments from Argot, don’t you, Mr. Raab?” Ruiz took him by surprise. “Kickbacks…”

“Commissions,” Raab corrected him, irritated at his tone.

“In addition to your commissions.” Ruiz kept his eyes on him. He slid another sheet across the table. “Commissions in the commodities market run, what? One and a half, two percent? Yours go as high as six, eight percent, Mr. Raab, isn’t that right?”

Ruiz kept his gaze fixed on him. Raab’s throat suddenly went dry. He became aware he was fiddling with the gold Cartier cuff links Sharon had given him for his fiftieth birthday, and he stopped abruptly. His glance flicked back and forth among the three agents, trying to gauge what was in their minds.

“Like you said, they use a lot of gold,” he answered. “But what they do with it is their business. I just supply the gold.”

“What they do with it”-Agent Booth’s voice grew hard, losing patience-“is they export it, Mr. Raab. These novelty items, as you say, they aren’t made of steel or brass or gold plate. They’re solid bullion, Mr. Raab. They’re painted and anodized to make them look like ordinary items, as I suspect you know. Do you have any idea where these items end up, Mr. Raab?”

“Somewhere in South America, I think.” Raab reached for his voice, which clung deep in his throat. “I told you, I just buy it for them. I’m not sure I understand what’s going on.”

“What’s going on, Mr. Raab”-Booth leveled his eyes at him-“is that you’ve already got one foot in a very deep bucket of shit, and I guess we just want to know, regarding the other, if it’s in or out. You say you’ve worked with Argot for between six and eight years. Do you know who owns the company?”

“Harold Kornreich,” Raab answered more firmly. “I know Harold well.”

“Good. And what about Paz? Do you know who runs that?”

“I think his name is Spessa or something. Victor. I met him a few times.”

“Actually, Victor Spessa, whose real name is Victor Concerga”-Ruiz slid a photo forward-“is merely an operating partner in Paz. The articles of incorporation, which Agent Ruiz is laying out for you, are from a Cayman Islands corporation, BKA Investments, Limited.” Ruiz spread out a few more photos on the table. Surveillance shots. The men looked clearly Hispanic. “Are any of these faces familiar to you, Mr. Raab?”

Now Raab grew truly worried. A trickle of sweat cut a slow, cold path down his back. He picked up the photos, looked at them closely, one by one. He tremulously shook his head. “No.”

“Victor Concerga. Ramón Ramírez. Luis Trujillo,” the lead FBI man said. “These individuals are listed as the key officers of BKA, to whom the simple household products your gold is converted into are consigned. Trujillo,” Ruiz said, pushing across a surveillance shot of a stocky man in a fancy suit climbing into a Mercedes, “is one of the leading money managers for the Mercado family in the Colombian drug cartel.”

“ Colombia !” Raab echoed. His eyes bulged wide.

“And just to be clear, Mr. Raab.” Agent Ruiz winked. “We’re not talking the B-school here.”

Raab stared at them, his jaw in his lap.

“The gold you purchase, Mr. Raab, on behalf of Paz, is melted down and cast into ordinary household items, then plated over or painted and shipped back to Colombia, where it is reconstituted into bullion. Paz is just a sham operation. It is one hundred percent owned by the Mercado drug cartel. The money they pay you…for your ‘transactions,’ as you call them, is derived from the business of narcotics distribution. The gold you supply”-the agent widened his eyes-“is how they ship it home.”

“No!” Raab leaped up, this time eyes fiery, defiant. “I have nothing to do with that. I swear. I supply gold. That’s all. I have a contract. This Victor Concerga solicited me, like a lot of people do. If you’re trying to scare me, okay, you got my attention. It’s working! But Colombians…Mercados…” He shook his head. “No way. What the hell do you think is going on here?”

Booth just rubbed his jaw as if he hadn’t heard a word Raab had been saying. “When Mr. Concerga came to you, Mr. Raab, he said he wanted to do exactly what?”

“He said he needed to buy gold. He wanted to convert it into certain items.”

“And how was it that in order to do that he was first introduced to Argot Manufacturing?”

Raab recoiled. He saw it now. Clearly. Where this was starting to lead. Argot was owned by his friend. Harold. He had introduced them.

And for years Raab had been paid handsomely for having set up the deal.

That was when Nardozzi, the Justice Department lawyer, who had to this point remained silent, leaned forward, saying, “You understand the definition of money laundering, don’t you, Mr. Raab?”