'Yes. Since I bought the agency. We bought it together.'
She looked out of the window again. Worried. 'What if he scares Toby? What if one of the neighbors sees him and calls the police? Then we'll have to explain.'
'No one will see him and no one will hear him. You ever see a ninja movie? That's Pike.'
She squinted out the window some more, then came back to the table and picked up her glass. 'How can he see at night while he's wearing those sunglasses?'
I gave her a little shrug. There are some things even the great and wonderful Oz does not know.
In a little while Pike came back and we went through the records. Karen got more wine.
There were two hundred fourteen entries made into eight different First Chelam account numbers, all of which were immediately transferred into two accounts in Barbados. The records were spread over six pages of computer printout, showing single-spaced rows of numbers without meaning, dates to the far left, account numbers to their right, amounts to the right of that, destination accounts on the far right, with dates going back four years and eleven months. I would read the sheets, then pass them to Pike, and he would read them. Karen watched us and drank the wine. It was sort of like reading a phone book with phone numbers but without names.
I said, 'Let's start with the most recent deposit and you can walk us through every transaction.'
'God, they're all the same.'
'You told me that most of the deposits come through Harry, but some of them come through Charlie.'
'That's right.'
'Then they're not all the same. There are Harry deposits and there are Charlie deposits.'
She nodded and said, 'All right. What are you looking for?'
'I don't know. All we can do is dig into what we have and see if something presents itself.'
'Oh.'
'Most of the time, in what we do, there are no clear or ready avenues. Detectives look for clues, and clues tell you what's going on and what to do about it. Do you see?'
'Of course.' She didn't look convinced. I think she was trying to relate it to banking.
'I'll need a pad and a pencil.'
She got up and went down the little hall and came back with a yellow legal pad and a Paper Mate Sharpwriter pencil. She also got more wine. She seemed tired, but I didn't think it was just the booze. Her hip brushed the jamb when she came back through the door. I said, 'Let's start with the transaction I saw in Brunly. Tell us how it was arranged and who arranged it, and how you were told to do what you did and as much as you know about where the money came from and where the money went. Don't leave anything out. Things that you take for granted we don't know anything about. We'll do that one, and then we'll walk through every transaction for as far back as you can remember.'
She nodded gamely, and we began.
We went through as much of each transaction as she could remember, starting with the latest and working backward. She remembered more than she thought she would because a lot of what had happened was repetitious. Most of the answers were the same. Charlie's secretary at the meat plant would set the meetings just as she would for Charlie and any other business associate. At the meetings, Charlie would tell Karen which of the eight First Chelam accounts the money should go into and into which of the two Barbados accounts it should be transferred. There were no receipts given and no statements mailed and nothing to prove that someone named Charlie DeLuca was either putting cash into the First Chelam Bank or moving money from one account to another. Karen assumed that someone in Barbados checked to make sure that the right amount of money was being fed into the accounts, but she wasn't sure.
Somewhere in the middle of it, Toby came into the hall and looked at us with big eyes. 'Mom?'
I said, 'Hi, Tobe.' Mr. Bright and Cheery.
Karen put down her wine and gave him the Barbara Billingsley smile and went over to him. 'Hey, pal, you get the homework done?' She'd had three or four glasses of wine by then, but she was doing okay.
'Uh-huh.'
'You know Mr. Cole? And this is Mr. Pike, his associate.'
Toby smiled uneasily, knowing that something wasn't right, that his mom didn't get sauced and have late-night meetings with guys sporting tattoos and sunglasses to talk over wrap-around financing and short-term mortgage envelopes. He looked nervous. 'You okay?'
She ran a hand through his hair and looked sad. 'Sport, it's been a helluva day. Why don't you get ready for bed?'
He glanced at Pike and me, then he gave his mom a kiss and went back down the hall. Karen watched him go and then she turned and trudged back to the table and Barbara Billingsley was gone. Karen Lloyd's face was older.
I said, 'You want to knock off until tomorrow?' She shook her head. 'No. Let's get this done.' Two hours and eleven minutes later we had filled the legal pad with two columns. HARRY had been written above one column and CHARLIE had been written above the other, with deposit dates on the left of the columns and amounts in the middle and destination accounts on the right. There were seven different account numbers under the HARRY column, but only one account number under the CHARLIE column. All of the HARRY accounts were transferred to the same Barbados destination. The CHARLIE account went to the other Barbados location. There were one hundred eighty-one entries under the HARRY account and thirty-three entries under the CHARLIE, with all of the HARRY deposits coming every Thursday, as regular as the sunset. The HARRY deposits were from $107,000 to $628,000, and they were spread more or less equally among the seven accounts. The CHARLIE deposits were different. They started about twenty-eight months ago, and sometimes they would be made twice in one week and other times there would be eight or nine weeks between them. Irregular. The first couple of years the deposits were relatively small, with nothing over $9,800. A little less than five months ago the deposits went from four figures to five, with a high of $68,000. All of the deposits since then had been large, but still much smaller than any of the HARRY deposits.
We stared at our numbers and our chart, and Pike said, 'You see it?'
Karen said, 'What?'
I turned the yellow pad around so it would be easier for her. 'Harry brings money, and Charlie brings money, but only Charlie tells you where to put the money.'
She nodded. 'Yes.'
'Look at it. Every time Harry brings money, it goes into one of seven accounts, but it never goes in the eighth. Every time Charlie brings money, it goes in the eighth and never into any of the other seven.'
She frowned and brought the pad closer. The frown made her look more strained, but now there was maybe a little hope. ''I've never thought about it, but I guess that's right. Do you think this means something?'
I made a little shrug. 'I don't know. I'm looking at things in a certain way and they're adding up, but maybe they add up in other ways, too. Maybe the Harry accounts are DeLuca family accounts, and the Charlie account is a personal account. Maybe the money Charlie gives you is the piece that Sal cuts for him, and maybe it's bigger than the piece Sal cuts for the other
Pike grunted. 'Or maybe not. Maybe it means something that we can use.'
Karen looked from me to Pike and then back to me. The hope you could see in her faded. She said. 'It seems iffy.'
'It is iffy. If you want certainty, go to the cops. There's witness protection.'
Her face set, then she got up and went to the hearth. The cat followed her with his eyes. 'We've been through that.'
'It's still an option.'
'No. It is not. It is not an option for me.' Her frown deepened and she stared at the mantel. The pictures of her and Toby were there. She chewed her upper lip, then looked back at me. 'Charlie's secretary called back this evening. She said I'm supposed to meet Charlie tomorrow. I told her no. I said that I'm not going to do it.' That's why the drinking.
Pike said, 'Bad move.'
Her nostrils tightened and she looked at him. 'What do you know?'
