of months, then ship it back into the States. It was sweet-swee-eet. Insurance premiums got tax deductions going out, and the money coming back in as loans was tax free.”
“Like those old fake offshore consulting schemes.”
“But way better. Because when you hire a consultant you’re supposed to get something in return. A marketing plan or an advertising campaign. And the IRS can come by and ask to see what you paid for. But with insurance? It’s a…” Charters cocked his head toward Gage. “What do they call those things in outer space that sucks everything in?”
“A black hole.”
“That’s it. Insurance is just a black hole people throw money into. Everybody knows it.”
“How did Anston get his cut?”
“And Meyer. The firm was Anston amp; Meyer back when it all started. Anston was the tax expert, but in the deep background. Meyer was out front. He’s the one who brought in the customers.” Charters lowered his voice. “In order to get into the deal, the client had to do two things. One was to buy a legal opinion letter from Anston saying the tax shelter was legit and the other was to pay the accounting firm. And they always used the Big Four to make it all look like it was on the up and up. The opinion letter alone cost a butt load. A hundred grand.”
“And he used the same one over and over.”
“Exactly. Plus he got ten percent of the money the client saved on taxes each year by using his gimmick. They save a million, he gets another hundred thousand. It was like an annuity. And the same thing for the accounting firm. Except they got half a mil up front in addition to their percentage because they managed the whole thing and were on the hook if the IRS came knocking.”
“You know how many of these Anston and Meyer did?”
“If I had to guess, maybe a couple of hundred. Thirty or forty million dollars a year, could be a helluva lot more. And most of their fees were paid offshore.”
“How did Anston amp; Meyer move their fees back into the States? I don’t see them telling clients how to evade taxes, then pay them himself.”
“How Anston amp; Meyer did it, I don’t know.” Charters leaned forward. “But I’ll tell you about a guy I know. He had real cool deal. Every month he’d have the Cayman Exchange Bank pull fifty grand in cash out of his account and hand deliver it to Citibank, right across the street in George Town. Citibank would treat it as kind of an advance credit card payment. That way my friend could spend all kinds of offshore money in the States and nobody would know. And no one knows where the money is from because Citibank credit cards all look the same.”
“Almost.”
“Yeah, almost.”
“Your… uh… friend still doing it?”
Charters grinned. “Naw. He switched to debit cards, harder to trace the transactions.”
Linda walked up, placed down their orders, then folded up the check and stuffed it into Charters’s shirt pocket.
“Graham’s is on the house, but you gotta pay.”
Charters bit his lower lip as he watched her work her way back toward the counter, then exhaled and said, “I should’ve divorced my wife and married that girl.”
“True love or only so she couldn’t testify against you?”
Charters bit into a French fry. “Both.”
“Did Anston and his people ever get investigated?”
“Yeah, because they made the same stupid mistake everybody else did. They’d send the money offshore and it would bounce back into the States from the same company. It was too obvious they controlled the money the whole time. IRS didn’t like it. Didn’t qualify as an arm’s-length transaction. So Quinton-oops.” Charters offered a weak smile. “I hope you knew that already.”
“Let’s say I did.”
“You’re keeping me out of this, right?”
“Right.”
“Okay, let’s say somebody like Quinton figures out a way so it doesn’t look so obvious.” Charters leaned in again, stretching his arms out on either side of his plate. “He sets up a regular finance company somewhere in the Caribbean-”
“So the premiums go into the insurance company, then to the finance company, and then back to the States as loans?”
“Boom. Boom. Boom. And the IRS is blind to the whole thing… Beautiful. Just beautiful. And there are about as many Americans who understand how offshore insurance works as there are people who understand how a black hole does what it does.”
“When did they add the third step?”
“About six, seven years ago.”
“Is that how Anston got hooked up with Quinton?”
“I don’t know. I just know they’re hooked up somehow.”
S o how’d you get onto this trail?” Charters asked Gage as he pushed his plate away and wiped his mouth with his napkin.
“I’d rather not say.”
“Let me guess. We talked about Anston. We talked about Quinton. We talked about Meyer. We talked about Cayman Exchange Bank. Let’s see
… let’s see… whose name could be missing?” Charters smiled. “Who could it be? Maybe Charlie Palmer? My dear investigator. Or, shall we say, Anston’s dear investigator, may he rest in peace.”
“Why ‘my dear investigator’?”
“I paid him fifty grand for nothing.”
“Why?”
“Because Anston told me to. He said we needed some investigation done. I think I just paid for Palmer’s summer vacation in the islands. I never got any benefit from it. He didn’t need to go down there and talk to people in Quinton’s firm or at the bank. By the time you and the FBI were done, everybody knew what happened and it wasn’t like I had a defense.”
“I take it you paid him offshore, too.”
“Yeah. It was to Pegasus.”
Charters took a sip of coffee, then said, “I don’t know where you’re going with all of this, and I don’t want to know. But I’d be careful if you’re thinking about taking on Anston. The way his mind works scares the hell out of me.”
Charters set his cup down.
“Anston figured it might help if I started going to church in case he wanted to put on a character defense. You know, get some minister to come in to say how I wouldn’t cheat people or, if I did, it was unintentional or maybe the devil made me do it. Anston took me with him one Sunday to get me hooked up with a preacher. The sermon was about the Book of Job, and the suffering God had inflicted on the guy. Real graphic. Skin lesions and flesh falling off. I felt like throwing up.
“As we’re driving away, Anston gives me this matter-of-fact look and says about the spookiest, most megalomaniacal thing I ever heard a man say. He says:
“ ‘The minister has it all wrong. The real lesson of the Book of Job wasn’t that God tortured Job and killed his wife and his kids and destroyed all his animals and crops. It wasn’t that at all.’ Then Anston does a long pause, and says, ‘It’s that Job made God come to him.’ ”
Chapter 62
I hate this place,” Boots Marnin complained in his third international call to Marc Anston. “Everything is filthy and noisy. I can’t even sleep at night, between the imams calling the rag heads to prayer and horns honking and those goddamn Bollywood soundtracks blaring out of sidewalk speakers. And every day there’s another idiotic Hindu
