Here's one on the letterhead of the Central Bank of Nigeria, signed by the head of the International Remittance Department himself.
Look!"
"The Central Bank of Nigeria doesn't have an International Remittance Department," said Saul. "That's not what a central bank does. A central bank sets monetary policy; it doesn't chase down lost inheritances or charge fees to move money out of the country. These are counterfeits, every one of them. Counterfeits with forged signatures."
Laura caught that, the distinction between "counterfeit" and
"forged."
Counterfeit:
a false item or document.
Forgery:
something altered to resemble an authentic item. A signature would be forged.
Plastic flowers would be counterfeit. Her father had been caught up not in a counterfeit world but in a forged reality, one that had been altered to appear as something else.
It was a nuance lost on her brother. "I don't know," he said.
"These don't look like forgeries."
"Actually, they do. Counterfeit documents are often more elaborate and more official-looking than the real thing. A real document doesn't need to impress you with its authenticity; a counterfeit does." Detective Saul leaned in. "I doubt many people, Nigerians included, have ever seen an official document from the Central Bank or know what the letterhead of the Office of the Niger Delta Petroleum Commission looks like. Or if such an office even exists. An Anti-Terrorist Clearance Certificate? Anti-money laundering paperwork issued by the UN? Pure invention."
"The fees and documents," said Detective Rhodes, "are really only limited by the con man's imagination."
Warren turned a sour gaze on his mother. "You didn't know about any of this? You didn't happen to notice that, oh, Dad was receiving documents from the Central Bank of Nigeria?"
Rhodes answered for her. "Your father's credit card statements showed regular payments to Mailboxes & More. They have a store down in Sunnyside."
"I stopped by," said Officer Brisebois. "It's not far from my place, really. I couldn't open Mr. Curtis's mailbox without a warrant, of course, but the lady behind the counter told me not to bother. The box was empty." Then, to Laura's mother, "You wouldn't have any idea what your husband might have done with the original documents? The hard copies."
"The barbecue," she said.
"Pardon?"
"The barbecue. He made a fire a night or two before the—the accident. I hadn't thought much of it at the time, but... he fired it up, even though the yard was full of snow. Said it was good to light it now and again, keep it from getting cobwebby." She looked at Laura, eyes wet. "I should have known something was wrong. We hadn't used that barbecue in years."
"But even without the originals, we've got a shitload of evidence right here," said Warren. "Messages sent back and forth between Dad and these criminals. Names, email addresses, phone numbers, the works."
Detective Rhodes spoke to Warren slowly, as if addressing a particularly slow-witted child. "They use free web-based email accounts, send out mass mailings—so many that they eventually get shut down. Now, it's true that our Tech Unit can sometimes and with great difficulty trace them back to a specific IP address.
But even then, the messages might bounce across a dozen different countries first. All we can really say is that the emails your father received were
probably
sent from Lagos city, in Nigeria."
"I set up Dad's email account," said Warren. "His spam filter was on."
"The people behind these cons can get around spam filters.
They prowl the internet constantly; it's what they do. They search classified ads, hang out in chat rooms, scroll through online directories. It's not that difficult to pull an email address out of the air.
Spam filters stop a lot of it. But they don't catch everything."
"Okay, okay, I get it," said Warren. "The internet is anonymous, we know that. But look." He held up a sheaf of their dad's emails. "We've got lists of phone numbers as well. Surely you can trace the numbers or something, find out who was making those calls."
"We do have phone numbers," said Rhodes. "And no doubt your father sincerely believed he was speaking with high-placed bank managers and government ministers in high offices. But the area codes tell a different story."
Saul took it from there. "Nigeria is like the Wild West. The odds of finding anyone based on a phone number are almost nil."
He slid the phone records over. "You see? The numbers all start with an eighty. In Nigeria, area codes that begin with eighty are for mobile phones, usually pay-as-you-go. You purchase minutes with no ID required, no background checks, no paper trail. The numbers, and the phones themselves, are more or less disposable.
They're used and then discarded. Untraceable."
"Okay, okay," said Warren. "The phones may be disposable, but not the money. My dad sent more than two hundred grand out of the country. What about that? Someone had to sign for those payments. Someone had to deposit them into their account. If we find those accounts, we can freeze the money, maybe get some of it back."
"I'm afraid that's not possible," said Saul.
"Why the hell not?"
"Most of the money in this type of scam is paid by bank draft or wire transfer, usually using Western Union or MoneyGram.
The funds can be sent to one office, then picked up at another.
Anywhere in the world, really. Again, there's no paper trail, no background checks, no bank account numbers, no vetting process.
Postal money orders, wire transfers, online payments: it's like sending cash."
"You might as well be stuffing an envelope with unmarked bills," said Rhodes.
"Police in Nigeria would have to nab a scammer at an actual agent's office," the older detective explained, "just as he was in the act of picking up cash with false ID in hand, and even then...
What? We don't have an extradition treaty with Nigeria. Even if we did, the people who collect the payments are usually low-ranking mules. And I imagine the police in Nigeria have more pressing matters to deal with than staking out the local MoneyGram to protect foreigners like ourselves from ourselves. It's the nature of 419."
Laura looked up, attention piqued as always by a new term.
"Four one nine?"
"That's what they call these scams. The name comes from the section in the Nigerian Criminal Code that deals with obtaining money or goods under false pretenses. Any kind of fraud, really. It's entered the lexicon over there." Laura's renewed interest encouraged Saul. "Nigerians have a wry sense of humour," he said. "Four one nine now refers to any sort of ruse or swindle. A boy who tries to hide his report card from his dad will be accused of trying to
‘419' him. Girls who have a boyfriend on the side are said to be
‘419ing' the fellow. They've got pop songs over there that celebrate the wiles of the 4l9ers. Some of the more flamboyantly successful of these scammers have been elevated to folk hero status. But don't be fooled: 419 is a business. It brings in hundreds of millions of dollars a year. It's bigger than Nigeria; it's as old as sin. As old as desire. These 419ers, they prey on people's dreams. Average loss in a 419 scam is somewhere to the tune of $250,000—often more. The going rate for dreams, apparently."
"They're laughing at us," said Warren. "I can hear the fuckers now, living large on Dad's money. I tell you, if I find these assholes..."
"Not a smart idea," Saul replied. "The 419 business is intimately intertwined with more violent crimes. Narcotics, human trafficking, bank robberies, you name it. The syndicates that run the heroin trade in Nigeria often have their fingers in 419 as well.
And 419 can be just as lucrative, but with less mess."
"You seem to know an awful lot about Nigeria," said Warren.
"I do."
Laura looked at the detective. "You've been there, haven't you?"
"I have."
"Lagos?"
He nodded.
"What was it like?"
"It was like looking into the future."
"That bad?"
He nodded.
"Here," he said. "Let me show you something." He produced a Google Maps version of West Africa. "Nigeria's here, at the bottom of the bulge. The Niger River runs through it, empties into the Atlantic Ocean at the Niger Delta. The Delta is a huge area, home to one of the richest petroleum fields in the world. It's also one of the most dangerous places on earth. The militants and local warlords in the Delta have declared war on the oil companies. You might have heard about it in the news."
They hadn't.
"Masked men," Saul went on, "in speedboats, attacking pipelines and oil wells, blowing up offshore oil platforms. The militants have been kidnapping and killing foreign workers with an unsettling ease as well. And not just workers. Any foreigner is considered fair game. In fact, oil, kidnappings, and 419 fraud are Nigeria's three biggest growth industries, and they often overlap.
The Niger Delta fuels Nigeria's economy."
Literally,
Laura thought.
"Lagos is over here." The detective ran his finger back along the coast. "Not in the Delta, but on the same coast. The city was named by the Portuguese. Means swamp or pond water or something. This entire stretch of shore used to be known as the
Slave Coast. It was dangerous even then. The early explorers wrote warnings on their maps:
‘Many go in, few come out.'
If you were to show up today, start poking around, asking questions, odds are you'd end up in Lagos Lagoon with a surprised look on your face.
For anyone thinking of making the trip to Nigeria to recoup their losses, my advice is simple: don't."
Laura now understood the significance of the empty hallway on the other side of the glass. The detectives were telling the truth.
No one
was
watching. Why? Because there would be no more investigation, no follow-up.
They've already put Dad to rest. They're just walking us through the why of it.
She looked at the older detective, said, "The money's gone, isn't it?"
He nodded.
The money. And her father too. "You're not going to arrest anybody, are you?"
"We'll forward what we have to the RCMP and they'll log the information, but—honestly? There's not much more we can do."
Officer Brisebois had been studying Laura's face. When he spoke his voice was soft. "No one," he said, "is going to be arrested."
CHAPTER 41
Heavy rains had left Lagos steaming with humidity. On nights like this, even silk clung to the skin.
Cemetery Road makes a clean cut through the Lagos mainland.
South from the Badagry Expressway, past the Baales Palace and the mosque, it takes a sudden turn, slicing across side streets before rejoining the expressway farther down. In doing so, Cemetery Road carves out a sizable stretch of territory, with the cyber cafes of Festac Town at one end and the bridges of Lagos Lagoon at the other.
Any headstones that might yet have stood along Cemetery Road had long been lost, buried by the false-front clutter of petrol stands and apartment block add-ons. But if you knew where to look—past the Ayodele Nursery School, where the road suddenly turns, and before it crosses Odofin Street—youd find a high wall and wrought-iron gate. This slab of whitewashed cement, with its mausoleum-like entrance, might easily have been mistaken for the entrance to the street's namesake graveyard. It wasn't.
It was the gateway to the International Businessman's Export Club, though it wasn't labelled as such. Wasn't labelled at all, in fact.
Winston waited as the thin man with the swampy eyes buzzed the gate, then turned to face the surveillance cameras.
The click of tumblers unlocking. And inside: a surprising sight. An open courtyard angled with luxury cars, their surfaces beaded with water, gleam-polished and parked in their own reflections. Even in the grip of a raw-throated fear, Winston passed this stationary parade of vehicles with something akin to reverence.
Audi, Benz, Cadillac, Rolls—the names tripped off the tongue like honeyed sweets.
Boxes within boxes. Past the courtyard of cars, a second door, heavier than the first, and beyond that, another courtyard. High walls, no windows. Cobblestones stained with scorch marks, and the weight of heavy air trapped inside.
At the far side of this courtyard, another door, and once through it, a warren of interconnecting rooms—interconnecting buildings, actually—with corridors and angles that didn't quite line up. The thin man flowed through them with a singular grace, nonetheless. Down one hallway and up the next. Rooms adorned with art, African and otherwise, and in one antechamber waiting area a pair of languid-lidded women who watched Winston pass with an indifference that bordered on contempt. He nodded to them, but they did nothing in response. Not even blink.
Somewhere: the sound of someone coughing. The sound grew louder as they entered a passageway lined with mirrors and came to a final door. And then—the smell of mentholated balm and something sweeter still, like fruit, overripe, or blood on the back of the tongue.
"Oga, sir, I have him."
A large room, dimly lit. A wide desk. A face that was turned away, coughing into a handkerchief. Shoulders straining against the seams of a dress shirt with every hack, every gasp. The voice, when it came, was weak. Was strong. Was both. A wave of a hand, with back still turned. "Sit, sit." And then: "Tunde"—for that was the name of the man with the swampy eyes—"fetch the boy something iced to drink."
