Deadly Waters (14 page)
Authors: Theodore Judson
10/3/07 14:19 Pacific Daylight Time
Brent Collingsworth of Collingsworth Realty, Inc., of Las Vegas, Nevada, had just gotten off the line to a client wanting to purchase another luxury condo in the rapidly growing southern suburbs when Mondragon and Taylor entered his office. The realtor made a quick sizing up of the two as they stepped inside his glass door: a middle-aged Latin dandy and a dowdy drinker on the steep, downhill side of sixty. They had been traveling a great distance that day, because their clothes were wrinkled and their faces red from the southern Nevada sunshine. Despite their fresh-off-the-road look, Collingsworth could tell they had money; the dandy was wearing real silk, and they both sported heavy golden Rolexes.
“How can I help you gentlemen today?” he asked, as he sent forth a smile that displayed every capped tooth in his head.
“We would like to invest in some commercial property west of here in Boulder City,” said Erin Mondragon, the dandy in silk.
“I have a complete range of properties out there,” said Collingsworth, reaching for a handful of brochures that showed the various bits of real estate he had to offer. “I wonder if you two gentlemen might not be interested in some other, more solid, opportunities I have here in Las Vegas itself. Here in the downtown—”
“We have a particular spot in mind,” said Mondragon.
“We were driving on this side of the Colorado, up by the end of Lake Mead in fact,” said Taylor, “and we saw your agency was offering a cluster of condominiums immediately south of the Lake Mead Recreation Area, and a large plot of commercially zoned land between there and the highway.”
“Yes, the Grand Vista Estates,” said Collingsworth. “I hate to tell you gentlemen those condominiums are already mostly sold. We were intending to sell the land south of there as a whole to a developer willing to build something, something rather spectacular, hopefully. It is the last land available in that direction. Any old how, as I was about to say—”
“The land isn’t for sale?” asked Taylor. “Your advertisements say it is.”
“Of course it is,” Collingsworth assured him. “You must understand, the land in question is rather expensive. The owner has held that property for decades.”
“We can appreciate long-term ownership,” said Mondragon.
“I’m sure,” said Collingsworth.
“You have other offers? asked Taylor.
“Not yet,” admitted Collingsworth. “The price is, as I say, rather dear, given the obvious value of the property.”
“Would this party take a check?” asked Mondragon.
The question set Collingsworth back a step. He had taken the two for serious small investors, and here they were making jokes. He put the brochures back in their pile.
“Take a check?” repeated Collingsworth. “We’re talking nearly three million dollars for the land alone.”
“How much extra for the available condos?” asked Mondragon, getting out his checkbook and starting to write. “We had the property evaluated before we came. I think five point five million should cover the entire package.”
“You must have done well in the market to have such cash on hand,” said Collingsworth. “Or is it...what?...show business? We get a lot of people from that world wanting to leave L.A.”
“We’re something like that,” said Mondragon. “My friend, Mr. Taylor here, is an actor of sorts. You will, of course, want to wait for the check to clear before you sign over the land.”
“Yes,” said the realtor, gripping the check in his hand, too busy figuring his
commission to think of much else. “I think we can do business, gentlemen.”
Later that same afternoon Taylor and Mondragon approached an architecture firm with a proposal to build a shopping center on the acreage they had purchased a couple hours earlier.
“Give us something big, something that will attract customers,” Mondragon told the firm’s business director. “Construction should begin in the spring of 2009.”
He and Taylor told the firm that was when they expected to have the financing arranged. They neglected to tell the architects they had already taken out a $40,000,000 insurance policy on the property that paid in case of a natural disaster such as fire, earthquake or, of course, flood.
10/10/07 09:12 Eastern Daylight Time
Monty Raffen, broker at the Wall Street firm of Porter, Porter and Ferryman, was baffled when two of his newest clients placed go-short orders.
“Mr. Mondragon, Mr. Taylor,” he said to the conference call monitor as he sat in Porter, Porter and Ferryman’s ultra-secure inner office, the only quiet room in the frantic brokerage house, “the Dow is at thirteen thousand. All basic signs in the economy are sound, in spite of the recent turndown. The GNP grew this last quarter. The recession is over. That little scare we had over housing is going to be history by next summer. The trend in commodities--even oil in the long run--is down. Everything that isn’t high tech is going to get cheaper and cheaper. Inflation could not be more dead. As for this new fighting in the Middle East, hey, when are they not fighting over there?”
“We aren’t predicting world peace,” said Mondragon.
“Yes, there’s no money in that,” said Raffen. “What I’m driving at is this: for the past decade we’ve been telling clients to purchase solid stocks and to hold on to them, and that simple advice has made our clients--and us--tons of money, a return of over three thousand per cent to be exact. I realize that this decade hasn't been as hot as the previous ten years. We’re only catching our breath. Nobody buys short any more. Nobody.”
“You have our orders,” said Mondragon. “Please do as we ask, Mr. Raffen, or we will take our business elsewhere.”
“Oh no,” said Raffen, bemused that these rich dummies were getting huffy with him, a professional who bought and sold millions of dollars of stock every day. “If a client wants to throw his money away,” he said, “we at Porter, Porter and Ferryman always let him do so.” He clicked a message via his palm pocket communicator to a broker in the outer office and told Taylor and Mondragon, “Your order is being carried out even as we speak.”
The two men thanked Raffen for his half-hearted compliance and did not contact their broker again for another seven weeks.
*
On the afternoon of October the Twenty-first, Darrin Benton, CEO and President of Darrincorp learned that someone had actually purchased two million dollars of his corporation short. He called his six executive vice presidents into his office. “Who has done this and what was the buyer’s motive? I demand that you find out.”
A quarter of an hour later, two of the vice presidents raced each other back into Benton’s office to tell him, “None other than your old rival John Taylor and some other fellow named Mondragon are the two idiots in question.”
Darrin Benton was delighted at the news. “I gave the old fool too much money,” he joked to his wet-faced vice presidents. “He apparently agrees and wants to give some of it back to us.
“Taylor has probably not heard of the new distribution center Darrincorp is building in Phoenix, or of the new software plant taking shape in San Diego. Darrincorp might be a little cash poor through 2008,” said Benton. “Come the summer of 2009, she will again be the queen of business filing systems.
“Be sure Taylor gets a company brochure like the other stockholders,” giggled Darrin. “Hell, invite him to the shareholders’ next meeting in Honolulu. He he. I’d love to see old Taylor in a grass skirt. God, this is priceless!”
11/10/07 01:08 Arizona Standard Time
Bob Mathers sat at the long bar in the darkened saloon and nursed his beer while a ballad about women, liquor and pick-up trucks filled the stuffy air around him, and several weary dancers skated about the tiny space set aside for them among the dive’s twenty-six tables. His attention was not on his beer; he was watching a table some fifteen feet from him. There Wayland Zah sat playing poker for matchsticks with some drunken tourists. Wayland was talking nonsense about an Oktoberfest in Prescott he had participated in. He was clearly oblivious to everything but the sensation of having a very good time. He had yet to realize that Bob Mathers was close at hand.
“You want to play for money?” Wayland asked an elderly man in a Harley-Davidson t-shirt. “State law forbids it, but since I’m an Indian I’m granted special privileges by the federal government. Federal law outranks state law, so we can play up to and including $5,000.”
“I didn’t know that,” said the tourist.
“Nobody other than Wayland knew that,” said Bob Mathers, resting his hands on Wayland’s shoulders. “The government itself doesn’t know it.”
“Hey, boss!” sang Wayland, stunned to see the deputy sheriff in a Flagstaff bar, a hundred and ten miles from Page. “What brings you down here?”
“Becky’s sister lives here,” said Bob, tightening his grip on Wayland’s shoulders. “She’s having a baby, and Becky is with her and her family at the hospital.”
“Having babies,” said Wayland. “You Mormons are good at that, boss. I didn’t think your kind went in for bars much. Is that real beer? Does Becky know you drink that?”
“I always carry a breath mint,” said Bob, lifting Wayland upright by his collar. “Excuse us,” he said to the tourists as he dragged the Navaho toward the men’s bathroom. “Mr. Johns and I need to talk.”
“I hope for your sake you’re not doing something illegal here, boss,” said Wayland. “Say, do you have any authority here in this county?”
“We’re still in Coconino,” said Bob, bringing the young man through the restroom’s swinging door.
“These Arizona counties are too damn big,” declared Wayland on the injustice of
political geography.
Deputy Mathers threw him against a titled wall and stood nose to nose with his young friend.
“Whoa!” said Wayland. “When did you join the Gestapo, boss?”
When he tried to wriggle free Bob put an arm on either side of him to hold him in place.
“Who are they?” he stared straight into Wayland’s face.
“Who’s who?” came the response. “You mean those folks I was playing cards with? They’re from California, boss. James, the fellow dressed like the Wild One, is a retired teacher. Teachers always dress like that when they get out of the classroom. I think he wanted to play for money, and I told him, ‘No way, Jose. I don’t want that on my conscience.’ You probably overheard me saying that.”
“I mean the Colombians on Lake Powell,” said Bob. “The ones using the name Charles Corello, the same name used by one of your friends I met in the doughnut shop. What are they doing on the lake? Hiding drugs?”
“Drugs?” said Wayland, making another attempt to break away. “The two guys you met were businessmen, like I explained. I don’t know nothing about somebody out on the lake.”
Bob stepped back and leaned against the stall door behind him
“That’s good,” commented Wayland. “You exhaled. I was worried about you for a second there, boss. Breathing is very good for your health.”
“What am I going to find at the bottom of Lake Powell?” asked Bob. “There’s no use in telling me you don’t know. We’ve got some divers coming, and they’ll tell us for sure.”
Wayland shook his head to indicate the whole episode did not matter. “You’ll find some oil drums,” he chuckled. “Empty oil drums. Those guys had these big barrels in the back of their truck and wanted to get rid of them. I don’t know why they didn’t take them to the dump. Mr. Corello told me to keep an eye on them; you know, boss, most of them couldn’t even speak English. So, they littered. Hell, half the people on the lake litter every day.”
Bob Mathers did not know what to make of Wayland’s revelation; he sounded sincere, but the notion of dumping empty barrels at the deep end of an enormous reservoir still made no sense. “What was the point of it?”
“It may have been some kind of joke,” Wayland shrugged. “Oh, the guy owning the barrels, I mean. I didn’t understand it myself.”
Bob told Wayland of the similar incident that had happened in Utah, which showed this was a much wider plot than a simple joke would entail. “I now know this was an entirely different group,” said Bob. “Another seven Colombians, some of them criminals.”
“I didn’t know about them,” said Wayland, telling the truth for the first time that evening. “Mr. Corello only told me about the men on Lake Powell. I guess they must’ve had a lot of oil drums to get rid of.”
“The men at Lake Powell,” asked Bob, “they took a private plane from the airport in Page?”
“I guess they did,” said Wayland. “I know they were going back to South America. Honest, other than dumping the oil drums, they didn’t break any laws.”
“The ones in Utah had phony passports,” said Bob. “I suspect your friends on the lake did too.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know the extent of what they did. Like I said, this was a joke, as far as I know.”
“Who’s they?” asked Bob.
“That guy Corello,” said Wayland. “And the Russian. The rest of that bunch, the Colombians, I guess they are the hired help. Like me. You know how rich people are like. They love playing stupid games. Look at the King of England and his horses. Most of these guys got nothing better to do. You take this Charlie Corello and Vladimir Petrovski—”
“Vladimir Petrovski and Charles Corello have never been to Arizona,” said Bob.
“You could have fooled me,” said Wayland. “They sure looked real while they were
here. Say, this a difficult thing to be bringing up right now, since you’re not wearing a uniform and drinking a beer, so you’re off duty, and I was wondering: Could you arrest me? I mean, if you wanted to?”
“In a heartbeat,” declared Bob. “If I find anything on the bottom of the lake other than empty barrels, I swear I will come after you no matter where you are.”
“This was a joke!” insisted Wayland. “Do you guys lose your sense of humor the day you put on your uniforms? This Corello character--or whatever his name is--is a friend of a friend of mine. I don’t know him at all, other than by that name... and that’s the truth, boss.”
“Is this friend someone you met in federal prison?”
“I have been in other places in my life,” said Wayland, sounding much offended at Bob’s implication. “You can check the prison record. Corello was never in federal prison with me.”
“I already have checked,” said Bob. “You knew him at Solano.”
“Did I?” said Wayland, assuming a not very convincing mask of surprise. “I was only there a couple days before I got transferred. Vladimir what’s-his-name was never in either place.”
“Vladimir Petrovski--the famous one, anyway--is a big time Russian spy who defected to the U.S. way back in the Eighties,” said Bob. “I checked him out, too.”
“No kidding?” said Wayland, looking pleased to know he was acquainted with an important person. “I knew he was from some other country.”
“What else can you tell me?” asked Bob. His demeanor had become more relaxed as he found his friend more believable. Wayland and he had stepped away from the wall and were now at a normal conversational distance from each other.
“I don’t know much,” admitted Wayland, which was true in general and false in this particular instance. “I know they have friends--the ones they’re playing the joke on--in South America. I think Mr. Corello and the Russian guy have money. The real money man, the guy they’re working for, is somewhere in South America,” he added, giving Mathers the excuse Mondragon had told him to give, should the authorities ever question him.
Bob Mathers, for his part, did not accept that this was only a game played by frivolous rich men using assumed aliases. He looked into his friend’s eyes a few moments longer and found no additional clues.
“You know more,” Bob told him. “This isn’t everything.”
“I gave you everything I know,” said Wayland.
“You better have, buddy,” said Bob, turning to leave, “or I’ll have to find you again.”