Mahu Surfer (33 page)

He brought up some spreadsheets he’d created after looking at bank records for Mike Pratt, Lucie Zamora and Ronnie Chang. Lucie’s was the most interesting, because there was almost no activity there. She made the occasional cash deposit, and wrote checks for things like the HECO bill—Hawaiian Electric Company— and the phone bill, to Verizon. No checks to Butterfly, no checks that resembled rent or car payments. Like Brad had said, Lucie was a cash basis customer.

Both Mike and Ronnie had made large cash deposits shortly after they returned from Mexico. Mike had made two deposits, about a week apart, for $5,000 each. “The government requires the bank to fill out forms for amounts larger than ten grand,” Harry said. “That’s probably why he split it up.”

Ronnie had made one deposit, for nearly $7,000. We figured he’d spent the rest on gifts for Lucie and his new board.

“What do you think Lucie did with her ten grand?” Harry asked.

I shrugged. “No clue. But she might not have had the money yet—remember all that crystal meth that I found in her apartment. Maybe she was holding out for a higher price, or waiting for demand to go up.”

I sat back. “This is all interesting, but there’s another guy I’m interested in now.” I told him what I knew about Rich, what I’d learned from Sampson’s reports, my own searches, and my conversations with Dario and with Rich himself.

Harry logged on to the Internet. “What do you want to know?”

“For starters, I’m curious now to know who owns that house where Rich lives, and if there’s any way to find out if he pays rent, and how much he pays.”

“You can’t start out with something simple, like where he went to school?” Harry grumbled. But he applied himself to the laptop, and not too much later he said, “The house is owned by the Sandwich Islands Trust. Isn’t that Terri’s family foundation?”

“Yup.” I frowned. “So it’s probably a Bishop deal, like Dario said. So much for my theory that Rich is living off drug money.”

“Nobody says he isn’t. It’s just that if the Clarks own the house where he lives, he’s probably not paying much rent.”

Harry applied himself to the computer again. When he looked up, he said, “You aren’t going to be able to use this information in court. I just want to let you know before you see it.”

I shrugged. “If I get some real evidence, I can always get subpoenas.”

“Well, you can’t tell anyone you’ve seen this.”

“Come on, Harry. What did you find? Pornographic pictures?”

“Nope. His bank statement.” He swiveled the screen around toward me.

“Jesus, Harry! I didn’t know you could crack the bank’s computer system right in front of me!”

“Uh-huh. Well, now you know. I’m getting good at this stuff—this is my fifth break-in in the last couple of weeks.” He pointed at the screen. “Unfortunately, if Mr. Sarkissian is raking in drug money, he’s keeping it under his mattress, not in his checking account.”

Rich’s balance looked like mine, right after I’ve paid all my bills. A five-figure number—if you counted the numbers after the period. “I don’t even want to know how you got in there,” I said. “But you’d better get out quickly.”

Banking With Dario

Harry hit a key, and the screen disappeared.

“Umm… Harry…” I said. “How about we try Dario Fonseca’s account?” I knew I was stepping over a line there, but I had been ignoring Dario, in the face of mounting evidence, for a long time. At first I’d been reluctant to consider that he was involved because I had such strong feelings about him—I worried that they were coloring my judgment. I didn’t want to wait any longer for Ruiz and Kawamoto to come up with a link to The Next Wave through the District 2 vice cops. It was time for me to get over my personal feelings and do the digging I had to.

I rationalized it by the nature of being undercover. If I was in Ruiz’s position, or Kawamoto’s, I could get a subpoena for these records. I could ask them to do that, and then wait. And wait. Or I could get over those scruples and set Harry loose.

“With pleasure.” He leaned over the keyboard again. I noticed that his dark hair, which usually fell into his eyes, didn’t any more; probably Arleen’s influence. Harry had met Dario a few times in the past, and they’d never gotten along. He had always suspected that Dario had something to do with my decision to quit surfing and go to the police academy.

His dislike of Dario had been cemented when I had finally confessed, not too long before, the story of what had happened between Dario and me. “I can’t believe you’re still willing to be friends with that guy,” he said, as he tapped the keys. “I’ve been telling you for years there’s something not quite right about him.”

“He has his good points. He got me this house, didn’t he?”

“Your friend Ari is the one who arranged the house. Dario only made a phone call.”

“But he didn’t have to make it. And he stuck up for Rich Sarkissian over that punching incident.”

“Saving his own neck,” Harry said, continuing to talk while he hunched over his laptop. “Protecting his store from a lawsuit. Hello!”

I looked over his shoulder. We were looking at Dario’s bank account, and the balance wasn’t that much bigger than Rich’s. “He must have more accounts,” I said. “How about the store?”

“All his accounts are linked.” Harry pulled up a summary page. There was an account for the store, and then a joint account with America Fonseca. “Who’s that, his mom?”

“Probably his wife,” I said.

Harry looked up, and his mouth was open like a fish’s. “Yeah, that’s the way I reacted the first time I heard he was married.”

“But I thought he was… you know.”

“Gay. Turns out he’s bi. Or, as Ari says, omnisexual. That Dario will fuck anything that doesn’t run away.”

“Jesus.” Harry shook his head.

“Him, too, probably,” I said. “Hard to run when you’re nailed to a cross.”

“That’s just sacrilegious,” Harry said.

“You’re a Buddhist.”

“Yeah, a Buddhist with good manners.”

“Back to Dario,” I said. “How can he be so short of cash?”

“Give me Ari’s full name,” Harry said. I spelled it for him.

“Hold on a minute,” he said. “I recognize that name. Remember that guy you asked me to look up, Harry Pincus?”

I nodded. Harry applied himself to the laptop again. “I think it’s the same guy. In 1999 Harry Pincus was arrested in Minneapolis on federal charges—for a bunch of financial crimes relating to the viatical business.” He looked up at me. “You know what that is?”

I shook my head. “It’s when a terminally ill person sells his insurance policy death benefits, at less than face value, to a third party. Now, that’s not illegal—but there are lots of scams. Our Mr. Pincus was accused of recruiting AIDS patients in Minneapolis, getting them to sign up for life insurance with companies that didn’t require a physical exam, then buying their benefits.”

“That’s creepy. And illegal?”

“Well, signing up for insurance under false pretenses is. But see what happened is that these patients weren’t dying, and Pincus couldn’t cash in. He couldn’t pay his investors—the people who put up the cash to buy those benefits—because the patients weren’t dying. That’s when he started fiddling with the money, and attracted the attention of the Feds. Eventually he filed for bankruptcy and the Feds realized they couldn’t make a case, so they dropped the charges.”

“Somehow Lucie found out about Ari’s past,” I said. “She did some work for him, and we know she was nosy. But was she blackmailing him? Or was she just holding the information for future use?”

“Perhaps his bank account will tell us.”

Ari, at least, had some money in his account, although there was a lot of money flowing in and out. “He’s trying to put together a deal for Bishop Clark’s land,” I said. “So he’s probably paying architects and lawyers. I know Dario is one of his investors.”

“If that’s the case, then we should be able to match the transactions,” Harry said. I went to the kitchen and got us another couple of beers while Harry went back and forth between the two accounts. While I drank and occasionally peered over his shoulder, he punched keys and made notes on a pad. Finally he was done.

“Okay, I was able to see a pattern here,” he said, showing me the pad. “Starting about six months ago, Ari started getting deposits into this account from what looks like three different sources. Each source puts in $25,000 at a time.”

“That’s a nice chunk of change.”

“Especially because each source has put in about $225,000 so far. I can match up Dario’s withdrawals with Ari’s deposits in each case. Now, every month for the last six months, Dario has transferred $25,000 to Ari. And each time, he makes five cash deposits of $5,000 each just before the transfer.”

“Why not just one deposit in the right amount?”

“Remember what I said earlier? Because the bank has to report transactions greater than or equal to $10,000. And by the way, making small deposits like this is also illegal. It’s called structuring.”

“Who ever expected you’d be the one telling me what’s illegal.”

“Since Dario doesn’t want to show where he got that cash, he makes deposits into his account that go under the radar.” He showed me a number of other big deposits Dario had made in cash, all of them under $10,000. “Now where do you think he gets all that cash from? Selling surfboards and cappuccinos?”

The wheels were turning in my head, and I didn’t like the direction they were going. “Back at the station, when we see somebody making large cash deposits, we figure that money usually comes from drugs.”

“It’s hard for me to imagine Dario standing out in the parking lot of The Next Wave peddling nickel bags.”

“Dario doesn’t do retail. He must be the middleman. The contact Lucie had at The Next Wave who supplied her with merchandise. He may even be the one who commissioned her to go to Mexpipe and bring drugs back. I’ll bet he’s got a whole lot of Lucie Zamoras out selling.”

“Selling what? Dope? Heroin?”

“Ice,” I said. “That’s what Rik said Lucie was selling. And I know they make crystal meth in Mexico, which is where the first three victims all went a little while before they died. There’s probably a lab somewhere here on the North Shore that converts the crystal into ice.”

“There’s no way the cash just comes from the store?” Harry asked.

I shook my head. “I’ve been in and out of that store a lot over the last couple of weeks, and most of the big transactions I’ve seen are on credit cards. Sure, people buy lattes for cash, but I’m guessing most of his sales are plastic.”

I sat back and thought. “Rik said Lucie’s source was at the store. I suppose it could be Dario. But I just don’t like it.”

“You don’t like it because Dario’s your friend,” Harry said.

“No, I don’t like it because I don’t like Dario. I’m scared that I’m trying to pin something on him just because he raped me ten years ago.”

Harry shook his head. “I think the numbers show it’s got to be him.”

“What are these numbers over here?” I asked, pointing to a different column of figures.

“About four months ago, Dario took out an equity line against the store. He’s already drawn down nearly a hundred thousand on that line.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah. And it’s all going into Ari’s account. Have they been running up extra expenses?”

“I know they’ve run into zoning problems, and deed restrictions on Bishop’s land. Maybe that’s why they’ve needed extra cash.”

“Dario’s about to run into a big problem,” Harry said. “See here, these are the store revenues. With business taking such a steep dive, there’s no way he’ll be able to afford the expense of running the store, paying for merchandise, paying his help, and paying the debt service on this equity loan. He must be sweating bullets right now.”

I got up and started walking around the living room. “I’m trying to get my head around this,” I said. “If Dario’s selling ice out of The Next Wave, why isn’t he rolling in cash?”