This was always the bitter irony in such cases, she couldn’t help but think. Death ratted on people who were closet drug abusers, drunks, or having affairs with one and/or the other sex, or those who liked to whip or be whipped, or to string themselves up by pulleys and nooses and masturbate. Human creativity was endless, and West had seen it all. She had gotten out a ballpoint pen and was using it to turn pages of other paperwork. Though her forte was not cash and equivalents, treasury and agency securities, derivatives, investment banking, commercial and corporate banking, West knew enough to get a sense of what Mauney might have been intending on his travels.
In the first place, he had an alias, Jack Morgan, whose picture IDs on passport and driver’s license showed Mauney’s face. There were a total of eight credit cards and two checkbooks in the names of Mauney and Morgan. Both men seemed to have a keen interest in real estate, specifically a number of hotels along Miami Beach. It appeared to West that Mauney was prepared to invest some one hundred million dollars in these old pastel dumps. Why? Who the hell went to Miami Beach these days? West flipped through more paperwork, perspiring in the humid heat. Why was Mauney planning to drop by Grand Cayman, the money-laundering capital of the world?
“My God,” West muttered, realizing that Grand Cayman was three syllables.
She stood up, staring at the bright skyline, at the mighty US Bank Corporate Center rising above all, its red light slowly blinking a warning to helicopters and low flying planes. She stared at this symbol of economic achievement, of greatness and hard work on the part of many, and she got angry. West, like a lot of citizens, had checking and savings accounts at US Bank She had financed her Ford through it.
Tellers were always pleasant and hard-working. They went home at the end of the day and did their best to make ends meet like most folks.
Then some carpetbagger comes along and decides to cheat, steal, hoodwink, make out like a bandit, and give an innocent business and its people a bad name. West turned her attention to Hammer and motioned to her.
“Take a look,” West said quietly to her chief.
Hammer squatted by the open car door and examined documents without touching them. She had been making investments and saving money most of her life. She knew creative banking when she saw it, and was shocked at first, then disgusted as truth began to whisper. As best she could tell, and of course none of it could be proven at this precise moment, it appeared Blair Mauney III was behind hundreds of millions of dollars loaned to Domin ion Tobacco that seemed to be linked to a real-estate development group called Southman Corporation, in Grand Cayman. Associated with this were multiple bank account numbers not linked by identification numbers. Several of the same Miami telephone numbers showed up repeatedly, with no description other than initials that made no sense. There were references to something called US Choice
“What do you think?” West whispered to Hammer.
“Fraud, for starters. We’ll get all this to the FBI, to Squad Four, see what they make of it.”
The news helicopter circled low. The cocooned body was loaded into the ambulance.
“What about Cahoon?” West asked.
Hammer took a deep breath, feeling sorry for him. How much bad news did anybody need in one night?
“I’ll call him, tell him what we suspect,” she grimly said.
“Do we release Mauney’s ID tonight?”
“I’d rather hold out until morning.” Hammer was staring beyond bright lights and crime-scene tape.
“I believe you have a visitor,” she said to West.
Brazil was at the perimeter taking notes. He was not in uniform this night, and his face was hard as his eyes met West’s and held. She walked toward him, and they moved some distance away from others, and stood on different sides of crime-scene tape.
“We’re not releasing any information tonight,” she said to him.
“I’ll just do my usual,” he said, lifting the tape to duck under.
“No.” She blocked him.