Death, Taxes, and Hot Pink Leg Warmers (18 page)

I searched the Valley Produce account next. Whereas the bills for Stillwater Spirits were suspiciously low, the bills from Valley Produce were unusually high. I paid less for tomatoes and lettuce and carrots at the grocery store. Well, I would pay less for them if I ever bought any fresh vegetables. I tended to forget about them down there in my refrigerator’s crisper, the only reminder a funky smell and an odd-colored goo in the plastic drawer. Alicia had cleaned the crisper on more than one occasion since she’d moved in with me, pretending to be the host for a new game show called
What the Hell Was That?
She awarded me ten points when I identified a brownish-red blob as the baby carrots I’d bought the month before after having to squint to see a road sign. They might’ve helped my eyesight if I’d remembered to eat them.

I looked over the remaining expense accounts. The invoices for the dairy supplier seemed reasonable. Same for the utility bills. The cleaning company charged a higher-than-average fee for a business, but I supposed it took some extra effort to shine the long poles, vacuum up all the glitter, and clean the bodily fluids out of the fabric in the VIP room. The janitors came in before hours, when nobody else was in the club, and could easily leave a stash of drugs somewhere inside. I made a mental note to ask Josh whether he could hack into the security system feed so we could watch the cleaning service in action.

I e-mailed the invoices for Stillwater Spirits, Michelson’s Meat and Seafood, and Valley Produce to Nick’s e-mail address at the IRS, along with a personal message.
Buy me a drink, big boy? XO, Sara Galloway.

*   *   *

At the office Monday morning, I checked in with Nick. “Did you get my e-mails?”

He nodded. “I’ve already called Stillwater Spirits for a quote.”

He handed me the bid they’d faxed to him. He told me he’d claimed to be the manager of Billy Bob’s, an enormous dancing and concert venue in nearby Fort Worth. Though the quote was for four times the amount of liquor Donald Geils normally ordered for Guys & Dolls, Stillwater Spirits offered a mere five percent discount off their usual prices. They’d also refused to waive the delivery charge, citing rising gas prices.

Nick was a slick negotiator, so if the company had refused to match the prices it gave to Guys & Dolls, it was clear there was more going on between the liquor wholesaler and Don Geils than the purchase and delivery of alcohol.

I handed the fax back to Nick. “Looks like we’ve nailed down one piece of the puzzle.” Why not try for another?

I perched on the corner of Nick’s desk and used his phone to dial the number for Valley Produce. When the call was answered, I told the representative I ran a sandwich shop in the Dallas suburb of Arlington and asked for a quote on an order virtually identical to that placed by Guys & Dolls each week. The woman ran the figures and gave me a number far less than what they’d charged Geils. Something was definitely up there, too.

We called Christina, put her on speakerphone, and gave her the scoop.

“I’ll notify our agents in South Texas,” Christina said, “and have them keep an eye on Valley Produce. With some luck, we’ll catch a truck with meth on its way to Guys and Dolls to prove the connection to Geils. Ditto for Stillwater Spirits. We’d need to nab the truck once it’s picked up the goods at the club. When do they make their deliveries?”

“Stillwater delivers once a week, on Tuesdays,” I told her. “Valley Produce comes twice a week. Mondays and Thursdays.”

“Got it. I’ll get some agents to stake out the back door of the club, too. Of course I’ll keep trying to make a buy from Theo. Might as well approach this from as many angles as possible.”

With any luck, the case would soon be over. I wasn’t sure how many more pat downs, forehead thumps, and “pipsqueaks” I could endure.

As I hung up the phone, Eddie appeared in the hallway between my office and Nick’s. “Ready?” he asked me.

“Yep.” I bade Nick good-bye, grabbed my purse and briefcase, and followed Eddie to the elevators. Today would be our final interview before the Tennis Racketeers’ trial would begin.

We rode down to the ground floor and headed outside. A cold front had swept in overnight and the day was chilly and windy. We ducked our heads against the wind and fought our way down four blocks to the offices of the appraiser’s attorney. My curls were a wild mess by the time we arrived.

Agent Ackerman met up with us at the security desk in the lobby. “Fifteenth floor,” he instructed as we stepped into the elevator.

I finger-combed my hair back into place, jabbed the button for our floor, and up we went.

To our surprise, we were led to the attorney’s office right away. His digs were spacious yet spare, his furnishings modern and minimalistic.

The two men stood to shake our hands.

The appraiser, Darren Williams, had coarse blond hair and a ruddy complexion. The ruddiness could be the result of windburn accumulated on the slopes of Aspen, where he owned a luxury ski condo purchased with profits from GSM. He appeared nonplussed by the prospect of going to jail.

Williams’s attorney, Julian Vanderhagen, was a short and slight thirtyish man with a shiny bald scalp, rectangular glasses, and the personality of a rabid jackal. He gestured to a trio of chairs facing his desk. “Take a seat.”

Unlike the other defendants and attorneys we’d met with, Williams and his lawyer made no attempt to assert a claim of innocence. They must have realized the appraisals were so obviously overstated it would be a waste of time to argue that Williams had acted in good faith. Heck, I was no real estate expert, but even I knew you couldn’t compare the market value of a home in the exclusive Highland Park area to one ten miles away near an industrial park in a rundown area of Garland. The appraiser hadn’t merely compared apples to oranges, he’d compared apples to orangutans.

Rather than debate the actual facts, Vanderhagen addressed only the issue of proof. “You all have an uphill battle,” the jackal said, leaning back in his chair and crooking his arm over his head as if he didn’t have a care in the world. “People don’t understand complex financial transactions and they sure as hell don’t understand taxes. The U.S. attorney will have a difficult time getting a jury on board. I know it. You know it.”

Eddie shrugged. “Ross O’Donnell has handled hundreds of cases like this. He knows how to spell things out. He’ll have no problem convincing the jurors to convict.”

Given his enormous caseload, Ross had probably taken only a cursory glance at the file so far. But the three of us were scheduled to meet with him this afternoon to plan our trial strategy. We’d have him up to speed in no time.

“All right.” The jackal sat up, intertwining his fingers in front of his chest. “Let’s suppose the government gets a conviction. The punishment will likely be a year’s probation, maybe a month or two in jail. After all, Judge Trumbull is a bleeding-heart liberal, and it’s not like these men killed anyone.”

The Tennis Racketeers may not have ended anyone’s life, but they sure made life hard for a lot of people. They had not only stolen people’s homes and savings, they’d also issued a blow to their victims’ self-esteem, wreaking both financial and emotional devastation.

Vanderhagen smirked outright now. “Mr. Williams will be back on the slopes before the ski season is over.”

Williams quirked his brows, the gesture a not-so-subtle equivalent of “in your face!” The guy put the ass in “Aspen.”

I tried not to show how pissed off I’d become. “What’s your point?”

The attorney cocked his head. “My point is that there’s no sense in putting Mr. Williams on trial when the best you can hope for is a slap on the wrist. We’ll agree to a six-month jail term and a thirty-thousand-dollar fine.” He spread his hands wide and grinned, as if he’d just proposed sending us on an all-expenses-paid cruise to the Bahamas and expected us to jump at the offer.

“Not gonna happen,” Ackerman said.

“Nope,” Eddie added.

I offered a snide smile. “Not a snowball’s chance in hell.”

Vanderhagen’s client had screwed desperate people out of their homes and owed seven hundred thousand in federal income taxes. Did they really think we’d settle for such a short sentence and tiny sum?

The jackal’s smirk grew even smirkier as he threw my words back in my face. “You realize there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell that Uncle Sam will collect the full amount of taxes allegedly due?”

The jerk was right, of course. Neither GSM nor its owners had sufficient assets remaining to pay the taxes owed in full or to make their victims whole again. Still, they were far from paupers.

Ackerman offered the plea deal he’d already run by Ross. “Five years, two hundred grand.”

Once again Vanderhagen threw our words back in our faces. “Nope. Not gonna happen.”

“The government won’t budge on that offer.” Ackerman stood. “You change your mind, give me a call.”

Vanderhagen made no move to get up. “
You
change
your
mind, give
me
a call.”

What the hell was this guy? A parrot? “Polly want a cracker?” I asked.

He narrowed his eyes. “Excuse me?”

I didn’t reply. I simply stood and followed Eddie and Ackerman out of the room.

*   *   *

We picked up sandwiches to go from a downtown deli and spent the afternoon in Ross’s office at the Department of Justice, planning our trial strategy. Once Ackerman and Ross nailed down the mortgage-fraud part of the trial, Eddie and I addressed the tax-evasion charges. Because juries sometimes tired of listening to one witness drone on, we decided Eddie and I should both testify. I would detail how I’d extracted the pertinent data from the paperwork, while Eddie would run through the tax computations.

I pulled a set of documents from my briefcase and handed those to Ross. “I’ve marked where I found the relevant numbers.”

He flipped quickly through the stack, which included bank statements, brokerage-account data, and printouts from GSM’s bookkeeping records. “Think you can summarize this in a half hour or less? Much longer and the jurors’ eyes will glaze over.”

I could hardly blame them. Numbers aren’t exactly sexy. Well, maybe the number 8 is. It’s voluptuous. “No problem.”

Ross placed the documents in a manila folder and folded his hands. “Looks like we’re good to go. See you all at the courthouse tomorrow morning. Nine sharp.”

chapter twenty-one

Amateur Hour

According to the income accounts, Monday night was the slowest night of the week at Guys & Dolls. To bring in more customers, the place hosted an amateur hour from seven to eight. All you needed to participate was a pair of breasts, a willingness to expose them, and identification proving yourself to be at least eighteen years old. Neither the breasts nor the identification were required to be authentic.

I took a break, standing next to Christina, Nick, and Tarzan near the front doors to watch the show. It was like the split in Lu’s pants, another train wreck, horrific yet impossible to turn away from.

The first girl was a slightly chubby redhead in a black string bikini dancing around to that stupid song about humps and lovely lady lumps. Seriously? Humps? Lumps? The lyrics seemed to have been written by a sexually deviant Dr. Seuss.

The girl pulled off her top and twirled it around in the air. Unfortunately, the strings wound around her fingers and when she went to throw her top into the audience she found her hand hopelessly tangled in it. Unable to do two things at once, she stopped dancing and stood there, tugging on the fabric, trying to free her hand.

“She’s kinda hot,” Tarzan said from the other side of Nick. “I wouldn’t mind screwing her brains out.”

I took another look at the girl, who appeared hopelessly confused by the knot in her hand. “I think you’re too late.”

Tarzan cocked his head. “Huh?”

Too late for him, too.

The girl finally freed the top and flung it out into the audience, obviously expecting the men to make a grab for it. By then, though, the men had grown bored and turned back to their buddies and their beers. The top fluttered forlornly to the floor.

“That’s just sad.” I felt simultaneous amused by and sorry for the girl on the stage. I knew what it was like to suffer a career setback. I was half tempted to tuck a dollar into her bikini bottoms myself.

The next amateur dancer was a tall, surprisingly broad-shouldered bleached blonde with store-bought boobs who danced in a glittery blue thong to Aerosmith’s “Dude (Looks Like a Lady).” She strutted back and forth across the stage, stopping at either end to undulate and bend over provocatively to make bedroom eyes at the audience from between her legs.

“This dancer has better moves than the first one,” Christina noted.

Nick cut us a look. “She’s also got a loaded G-string.”

I squinted. Yep, Nick was right. The triangle of cloth bore an unmistakable bulge. Apparently some of the customers were already too sloshed to notice, having met their two-drink minimum and then some. Several men clamored around the stage and tucked dollar bills into the dancer’s G-string in return for a kiss. When the performer segued into Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way,” a few of the men finally clued in and returned to their seats, whooping and catcalling when the others who’d failed to make the connection received their kisses.

The third performer was a pretty girl with dark hair. She wore black stretchy shorts and a sheer pink blouse. Her boyfriend stood at the stage, looking up at her and shouting words of encouragement as the DJ cranked up Def Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar on Me.” When the young woman put the tip of her finger in her mouth and sucked it seductively, the crowd went wild, the men cheering her on. Once she began to remove her blouse and move, however, it became clear the girl had far more cleavage than she had rhythm.

“What is she doing skipping forward and back like that?” Christina said. “Square-dancing?”

The crowd turned on the girl, some of them laughing while others booed and hollered for her to get off the stage. The sexy smile she’d started with faded into an angry, embarrassed scowl.