Damage Control (9 page)

Dom hadn’t realized it because he’d never given it any thought. Now that he did, it made sense.

As Venice went on, she used the cursor as a pointer. “If I’m doing the math right, for the two years previous to that time, they averaged an income of four-point-three million dollars a month, with expenses of just about four-point-three million a month. They were just breaking even. I haven’t had time to find out where all that money went, but it’s probably not important for our purposes. At least not yet. Now look at this.”

She clicked, and the records scrolled at a dizzying speed, stopping on another set of numbers. “Here are the records for the first month after the scandal broke. Expenses stayed at four-point-three million, but revenues dropped to three-point-six million.” She clicked again. “The month after that, they brought in two point seven. Fast forward a few more months, and they’re getting only eight hundred twenty thousand dollars. The month after that, two-eighty. They’re hemorrhaging cash.”

Gail made a face. “I don’t understand—”

“I’m not done yet,” Venice said. She scrolled month by month. “Look here. That trend continued month after month, not a single deposit over three hundred thousand. Until three months ago, when they started making four million again, and then five. Last month it was five-point-nine million dollars.”

“Now, give me a minute or two,” she said before disappearing into thought while her fingers pounded the keyboard.

Confident that the results would be impressive, Dom waited quietly with Gail while Venice worked her magic.

“Oh, now this is interesting,” Venice declared when she was done. A new image appeared on the screen, this one showing two lists of names. “The list on the left shows the various contributors from twenty months ago, back when Crystal Palace was in its heyday. On the right is the list of donors from five months ago, during the darkest of their dark days. You can see there are way, way fewer donors.” She stroked the keys, and after only a few seconds, the computer spit out the number 0.992.

“Okay,” she explained. “Of those remaining die-hard faithful, ninety-nine-point-two percent of them were on the original list of donors.”

“Isn’t that to be expected?” Dom asked. “I can’t imagine that accusations of statutory rape are going to bring in a lot of new donors.”

Venice pointed to the priest as if to indicate that he was her brightest pupil. “You just made my point,” she said. “Because look here.” More clacking and another screen change. “This is a list of the donors over the past three months, when they were making money again. If we match them against the original faithful, we get ...”

More tapping and a new number on the screen. “Zero-point-four-six-four. That means that of the one hundred twelve recent donors, only forty-six-point-four percent gave money before the scandal.” She looked up. “Put another way, fifty-three-point-six percent of the newly inspired donors never gave to the Crystal Palace before.”

“You tell us that with such grave emphasis,” Gail said. “What exactly are you suggesting?”

Venice looked like she didn’t want to speak the thoughts aloud. “I think someone paid the church to allow the kidnappings to happen.”

Gail’s jaw dropped. “
What?
”

“I’ve heard Dig say it a thousand times,” Venice pressed. “There are no coincidences. How convenient to receive unique donations just before such a huge outlay. That money was given for a
reason
. The timing is what it is for a
reason
. Because of timing alone—the contributions coming right before a major outlay of ransom money—the two have to be connected somehow.”

More furious typing. “Here it is. Those sixty new donors represent nearly ninety percent of the donations received, and wouldn’t you know it? While the individual amounts are all over the board, those sixty, isolated out and taken together, come to just north of six million dollars—almost exactly twice what the ransom was.”

Dom squinted at the numbers. “It’s six-point-two,” he said. “I think you’re stretching.”

“You have to correct for random givers,” Gail said. “Not all of them are going to be a part of whatever plot this is.” She turned to Venice. “What can you get us about those sixty donors? Almost all of them appear to be corporations.”

Venice turned back to her friend the keyboard. “Give me a few minutes. Talk quietly among yourselves.”

Dom watched, fascinated by the speed of Venice’s fingers, and by the variety of expressions on her face as she plowed through whatever databases she was invading. Her big brown eyes cycled among frustration, amazement, surprise, and awe.

Ten minutes later, she was done.

“Sorry that took so long,” she said. “Especially since I didn’t come up with anything useful. I’ve got All American Industries, CEO Dennis Hainsley, no record of either beyond individual white pages listings. I’ve also got a Global Transformations Inc., with an equally invisible CEO named Harold Scolari. Interestingly, it appears that Global Transformations is a subsidiary of All American Industries. I’ve got Tiger Creek Industries, also invisible, and Big Daddy Carpet Cleaning, run by an apparently nonexistent person named—wait for it—Nancy Drew. Every one of these companies has Federal Employee ID numbers, and every one of them pays taxes. All this, despite the fact that no one has ever praised them, blogged about them, or filed a DUNS request. Does this pattern remind you of any companies you know?”

Gail and Dom looked at each other, and then they both got it at the same time. “The Family Defense Foundation,” they said in unison.

Venice’s eyebrows danced. “Bingo.” Jonathan Grave was the king of the cutout corporation. He’d funneled millions of dollars to Resurrection House through the Family Defense Foundation.

Dom decided to test-drive the theory. “Maybe these companies believe in the mission of the church but don’t want to be associated with the scandal.”

It was obvious that Venice had already considered this, and had rejected it out of hand. “Where were they before the Pastor Mitchell was accused of boffing a child?”

“They saw that the Crystal Palace was being run out of business, and they thought it was a witch hunt.” Dom realized that he was taking the role of devil’s advocate, but the stakes here were very high.

“I don’t buy it, Dom,” Gail said. “That feels completely wrong to me. This feels more like government cutouts.”

“
Our
government?” Dom said. “And why would they do that?”

“I guess that’s what you need to ask Wolverine when you meet with her,” Gail replied. “When does that happen?”

“This afternoon at three,” he said. “I guess I can float these names past her and see what she comes up with.”

“Meanwhile, I’ll keep poking around the sources I can find,” Venice said. She looked to Gail. “Any and all assistance is appreciated.”

“Not me,” Gail said. “I’m boarding the first flight I can find to Scottsdale. See if I can’t leverage an audience with Reverend Jackie Mitchell.”

“Leverage?” Dom asked.

“You like ‘persuade’ better?” Gail asked with a smile.

“Reading your body language, I’m thinking ‘extort.’ ” She tasted the word. “I can live with extort,” she said. “In fact, I kind of like it.”

C
HAPTER
S
EVEN

T
o call this rutted pathway a road was to overstate the case by half. Steep and unpaved, the dirt-and-grass clearing was barely wide enough for the Toyota, and it was steep enough to make the little engine scream. It was going to be a very long twelve-point-one miles. The jungle pressed in from both sides, and overhead, the canopy was so thick as to render Jonathan’s party invisible from the air. No wonder the aerial map was so unhelpful.

“What are those plants with the great big leaves?” Tristan asked from the backseat. “They’re everywhere.”

“I call them the plants with the big leaves,” Jonathan said. He’d never been a flora-and-fauna kind of guy. In his experience, terrain and indigenous living things were either tactical tools or they were irrelevant. As far as he knew, the plants with the big leaves weren’t a source of food, so their only relevance was their ability to provide cover for people who wanted to do him harm. They unnecessarily lengthened the trip.

At this rate, Jonathan figured it to be at least a sixty-minute trip to the village. Every few hundred yards, the road bulged to the right, providing space to pull over to allow an approaching vehicle to get by, or for a faster vehicle to pass from behind.

It turned out to be a ninety-three-minute trip.

As Boxers drove the SUV up the steep hill into the village of Santa Margarita, people on the narrow street cast curious glances their way. Jonathan guessed that white faces were rare in these parts, and that a collection of three was unheard of. Throw in the cammies and the weapons, and the locals had every right to turn away as they did, pretending not to see. Some turned their backs, some stepped into buildings, but in general, everyone looked everywhere but at them.

“These folks are scared,” Jonathan said.

“What’s your bet?” Boxers asked. “Are they afraid of us, or are they afraid of getting caught in the act of something?”

“Why are we letting ourselves be seen like this?” Tristan asked.

“Because I don’t know how to be invisible,” Boxers quipped. To Jonathan: “The kid’s got a point. I don’t like all this attention. Scared people drop dimes on the people that scare them.”

Indeed they do
, Jonathan thought.

Though small, the village was colorful, every building painted a different pastel. Jonathan figured that the colors helped to make their drab lives a little easier. Yes, that was jingoism, and no, he wasn’t going to apologize for it.

“Drop a dime?” Tristan asked. “You mean call the police or something?”

“That’s what I meant,” Boxers said, “but that ain’t gonna happen.” He pointed through the windshield to a squatty building on the left side of the road. “There it is,” he said. He turned the wheel and headed in that direction.

“What are we doing?” Tristan asked.

“Not now,” Jonathan said. As they pulled to a stop, he unbuckled his seat belt and opened his door while Boxers did the same, in his case grabbing his ruck.

“That’s not a church,” Tristan said.

“Stay put,” Jonathan ordered. “This won’t take long.”

“What are you doing?”

Jonathan winked. “Stacking the odds in our favor.”

Digger and the Big Guy walked with purpose to the front door of the little brick and block building that they knew to be the telephone substation. He noted the concrete roof, which eliminated his biggest fear regarding what lay ahead.

Boxers asked, “Do you have the key?”

“Always.” Jonathan pulled a leather pouch containing his lock picks from a pocket in his sleeve. After checking to make sure that the door was indeed locked, he inserted the tension bar with one hand, and the rake with the other. Five seconds later, the door floated open, revealing the electronic guts of a telephone switching station. “Need help?”

Boxers gave him an annoyed look. “I’m offended. Just keep an eye out.”

While Jonathan stood at the open door, Boxers entered and walked to the far corner of the twelve-by-twelve single-room structure. The Big Guy pulled two orange thermite grenades out of his ruck. He placed one in a panel box that that looked like a knot of multicolored spaghetti, and staged the second one atop a larger panel that had to be the building’s main electrical supply, closer to the door. Moving back to the first one in the back of the room, he braced the grenade with his left hand, his thumb pressing the safety spoon, and pulled the pin with his right. Because thermite grenades had notoriously short fuses, he stepped back quickly as he let the spoon fly. Three seconds later, the grenade belched out a white-hot, forty-five-hundred-degree ball of fire that consumed the panel and its contents, filling the building with smoke.

He repeated the process on the building’s power supply on the way out, and then rejoined Jonathan, closing the door behind him. “I hate those damn things,” he mumbled as he headed back to the truck. “They don’t even go boom.”

“What did you do?” Tristan gasped. “Did you set the building on fire?”

“Not the building,” Jonathan said. “Just the contents. The brick won’t burn.” They were moving again.

“We can’t afford the risk of someone making a phone call,” Jonathan explained before Tristan could get the question out.

“Aren’t the police going to come for the fire?” Tristan asked.

“Who’s going to call them?” Jonathan countered. “It’s a gamble, but I think it’s a safe one.”

“You
think
it’s safe?”

Jonathan let it go.

A few minutes later, they turned a corner to the left, and the hills flattened out to reveal what appeared to be a much older part of the town. A cluster of worn wooden homes surrounded a circular patch of ground—maybe a half acre—that probably would have been grass-covered if given a chance, but that frequent wear had left a churned mess of clotted mud. Presently, a scrum of children—boys and girls aged, say, seven to twelve—was playing soccer in the space, several displaying remarkable skill at the game.

The church of Santa Margarita dominated the western edge of the circle, backlit by the late-afternoon sun. To Jonathan’s eye, the place looked more Methodist than Catholic, its thirty-foot steeple casting a shadow across the soccer field. No larger than twenty by thirty feet, the place had clearly been built with a lot of love. It gleamed with a fresh coat of white paint.

“Those kids are good,” Tristan said of the soccer players.

Boxers slowed the vehicle at the edge of the field and craned his neck to survey the area. Jonathan did the same, looking for unusual clusters of people, or physical movement that might indicate an impending ambush.

“What are we waiting for?” Tristan whispered from behind.

Jonathan ignored him. Nothing he saw gave him pause. Adults of varying ages sat in front of their tiny homes, watching the children either from stoops or from lawn chairs. Most seemed engrossed in the game.