Four O'Clock Sizzle: An Inspector Rebecca Mayfield Mystery (The Rebecca Mayfield Mysteries Book 4) (15 page)
Authors: Joanne Pence
“By now, I’ll admit that watching the van, the two businesses, and wanting to know what was going on, had become an obsession. I also saw, every day, soon after the restaurant opened, its manager would walk to a small business. Everything was written in Japanese, so I couldn’t even tell what it was. One day, I said what the hell and walked in and asked if it was a Japanese travel agency. The one man in the office said no, that it was a bank. All I can tell you is it had damn few customers.”
“Did you get its name?” Rebecca asked.
“No. I couldn’t read anything, and the man’s English wasn’t the best. But I did some research and learned that the Yakuza, the ‘Japanese mafia,’ are involved with a number of such small ‘personal’ banks and other white collar institutions. I was pretty sure I’d just stumbled across one such business. I also learned the Yakuza are attempting to move many of their operations to places outside Japan. To do it, they formed front companies.” Connor paused a moment, looking from Rebecca to Richie, and then said, “I believe both Kyoto Dreams and Easy Street Clothiers are two such companies.”
“Damn,” Richie muttered.
“Everything I saw told me this story is about a whole lot more than a male version of ‘Sex in the City.’ I was really excited about it, frankly, and decided to put hints in my article that something big is going on.”
“Hold it, hold it,” Richie interrupted. “You stumble across something that might be the Yakuza and you decide to jab at it? Are you friggin’ crazy? Why not just go to the cops?”
“I wanted to build enough interest that people would want to know a whole lot more. Crime, sex, drugs—they sell,” Connor said. “And I would be the guy with the information. I could turn it into a book, you know, True Crime. And once I had that, I could shop it to Hollywood.”
“You
are
crazy,” Richie said, his mouth wrinkled in disgust.
“But not crazy enough to investigate them directly. I hoped others would do it. But I also knew that a story in the
San Francisco Beat
would have no following unless something were done that would put it under the nose of every journalist in the city and beyond.” He swallowed hard. “I decided a good way to get that attention would be to light a small fire at each place of business. Not a big fire, but just enough of one to get someone to put two and two together … and come up with six, as in the six bachelors.”
“You piece of shit!” Richie bellowed. “One of those places was mine!”
Rebecca gave him a quick glare. “Go on,” she said to Connor.
Connor turned paler and shakier, and tried not to look at Richie as he did as Rebecca asked.
“Of course, I wanted the attention to be with Kyoto Dreams and Easy Street. With things like this, it’s the first few that get noticed. Others are just collateral damage.”
“Collateral …? I’m going to kill him, Rebecca,” Richie muttered.
“The first fire I lit was the Easy Street Clothiers storeroom. It was easy to reach and the store was popular with the right people. I didn’t want to go to Kyoto Dreams next—that would be too obvious. So, I debated which place should be second. The hotel had all kinds of security because of their clientele, Logan Travis’ home was a fortress, and although the tour boat company was usually locked up at night and easy pickings, it had scheduled a huge private party. When I learned Big Caesar’s was closed on Monday night, it was no contest. I torched it.”
Rebecca’s hand clamped down hard on Richie’s arm before he had a chance to react. He gave her such a hard look, she actually found it a bit unnerving.
“The next morning, I reached Kyoto Dreams a little after six,” Connor continued. “I expected it to be completely empty, but as I was approaching the alley, a black car turned into it. I hurried towards the alley to see where the car was going, and why it was there so early. I hid where I could see into the alleyway, but I was pretty sure no one could see me. The black car stopped by the restaurant. A man got out, and put a black bag in the dumpster, then got back into the car and drove off.”
“What kind of car?” Richie asked.
“I don’t know. It was still dark at that time in the morning, and the car was black. It looked like a good-size sedan.”
“So then what did you do?” Rebecca asked.
“As soon as the car left, I looked in the dumpster. I’d brought gloves for the arson, and used them as I opened the bag. When I saw what was in it, I started to run out of the alley. But as I did, I saw a car at the entrance. I don’t know if it was the same one or not. All I know is I ran in the opposite direction. The car turned into the alley and sped towards me. Near the corner, a small, neighborhood grocery had its back door propped open, probably airing the place out as it started business. I ran inside, through the store, and out the front door. I kept running down streets, through alleys. I also kept seeing dark cars turning in my direction. I have no idea if I was being paranoid—with good reason—or if someone was after me. All I know is, I was scared.”
“With good reason, as you said,” Rebecca told him.
Connor nodded. “I thought so. I also thought that it would be easy—if whoever tossed the head had connections to Kyoto Dreams—for them to find out who I was since I’d used credit cards to pay for my meals. It made me afraid to go home.”
“You didn’t think to report finding the head to the police?”
“The front page of the
Chronicle
told about a man dying in the Easy Street fire—and also mentioned the Big Caesar’s fire, plus the connection to the
Beat
article. And I was responsible for the death of the man in the first fire. So now, not only was a murderer after me, but the police as well. I had no idea what to do. My plan for publicity was working—but it gave anyone who was looking for me my name.
“I took a room in a hotel, but it cost money and I had little. A couple of days of this went by, and then I decided to go to Richie. I had gotten hints from people who talked to him that he knew how to make things go away, to fix problems, and I definitely had a problem I needed fixed.”
“You’re such a dumbass.” Richie scowled.
Connor lifted his rifle. “That’s no way to talk to a man who’s armed!”
“Maybe you’ll shoot me and put out of the misery of having to talk to a dickhead like you!”
“Please,” Rebecca said to Connor. “Tell me what happened.”
“Well, I’d once followed Richie from his club to his house.” Connor spoke to Rebecca as if Richie wasn’t even there. “So I went there. I saw the lights on, but I was worried about who might be there with him. I parked and decided to sneak around back to look in the window to see if Richie was alone. But for some reason, by the time I’d reached the yard, the lights had gone off. I almost left, but the more I thought about it, I decided to see what I could. I mean, maybe he shut them to watch TV? I crept up to the deck and to the kitchen window, only to find Richie staring back at me. You two know what happened next.” He looked at Richie. “You could probably use some motion detector lights in your yard.”
“You son of a—”
“Not a bad idea,” Rebecca said. “Given the kind of people who seem to come looking for you!”
Richie glared. “You’re taking his side?”
“In this,” she stated.
“Well, if you two are done arguing,” Connor went on, “that was when I left the city. I remembered this abandoned shack from when I was a teenager and would come out this way to party. How did you find me?”
“None of your goddamned business!” Richie bellowed.
“You really need to come in with me,” Rebecca said. “It’s too dangerous for you here.”
“It’s a lot more dangerous for me to go into the city as long as a murderer is looking for me. I can’t do it!”
“The best thing for you to do is to give us all the information you have. Work with us to catch the killer. It might help you with your other … situation.”
“I don’t know,” he said.
“She’s right,” Richie told him. “Now, don’t shoot. I’m just getting out my wallet.” Richie pulled out a couple of tens and held them out for Connor. “Get yourself a decent meal. I can’t stand to see anyone, even an asshole, starving. After that, you might be able to think more clearly. If anyone can protect you, it’s Inspector Mayfield.”
Connor looked stunned that Richie would help him. Actually, so was Rebecca. She figured the hungrier he got, the more likely he’d be to turn himself in.
Still holding the rifle on them, Connor grabbed the money and backed away until he got back into the trees. There, he turned and ran.
“God, but I hate guns pointed at me.” Richie faced Rebecca. They still sat on the ground. “If that SOB had decided to shoot first and talk later, I’m hoping you’re wearing that little ankle pistol you often carry.”
She hiked up her jeans leg just a little way, and the pistol was visible. The way she’d been sitting, it was in easy reach.
Richie grinned. “A badass, all right.”
Richie gave Shay a quick rundown of Connor Gray’s explanation.
“That confirms what I’m seeing,” Shay said.
“Which is?” Richie asked.
“Both businesses were in financial trouble a couple of years back, and then, while teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, they both began making more money than ever before. Want to meet?”
They agreed to meet at a coffee shop near Shay’s home in the Presidio Heights area.
Shay only had coffee, but Rebecca and Richie each ordered large, meaty sandwiches and fries, both feeling hungry after their foray into the north bay. Then Shay took over.
“It’s money laundering,” he said.
“So Courtney was right,” Richie said. “Pierre told me what she’d said about money laundering through the LA Fashion District.”
“I don’t get it,” Rebecca said. “I mean, can you really launder much money through a clothing shop?”
“Through a high-end one you can,” Shay said. “Bosque’s shop used a clothing manufacturer in China to send shipments of clothes they made at low cost to Easy Street. Their invoices, however, showed much pricier merchandise than it was. When the clothes sold, the books were rigged to show that they sold for more than they really did. All those extra funds were then deposited in cash into a bank account as a formal, legal transaction from the sale of the clothes.”
“So that means,” Rebecca said, “all the extra cash the store is depositing, must have come from the sale of drugs, right?”
“Exactly,” Shay told her. “In this way, the cash deposits skirt the warning flags provided by current financial transparency laws and regulations, and so the drug money is washed.”
“Any type of trade across international borders,” Richie said, “is an opportunity for illegal transactions to be buried among the billions of legal ones. I’m not saying there’s any connection between the growth of international trade deals and drugs entering the country, or with rich people and politicians becoming wealthier than ever, but it might be more than a coincidence.”
“Soon after this started,” Shay added, “Bosque opened three more stores. It looks like he probably laundered around three thousand a day in San Francisco alone, so who knows how much money, in total, was involved.”
“And the same sort of thing was done with Kyoto Dreams?” Rebecca asked. “But restaurants don’t do nearly the business of a clothing store, I would think.”
“Restaurants are commonly used for laundering,” Richie said. “Did you ever watch the TV show,
Breaking Bad?
A restaurant called Los Pollos Hermanos was a front for all kinds of things.”
“The strange thing about restaurants,” Shay said, “is the best ones for money laundering are those with the least customers. Let’s say a restaurant has no customers. On its books, it shows all fake information—maybe that it bought $1000 worth of food, paid $1000 for staff, rent, etc., and sold $3000 worth of food in a day. They deposit $3000 as profit from the restaurant, but in fact, it’s all cash from drug money. They keep showing this pattern, everyday, on their books—varying the amounts a bit, of course. But every day they withdraw some money from the bank, and make a deposit of cash from drug deals. In my example, in a week, if the restaurant is open every day, they can launder $21,000 in drug money and not serve one customer. The problem comes in when the restaurant starts to attract real customers. When that happens, it has to actually buy some food, hire cooks and waiters, and so on. The more customers, the less room for fraud since restaurants, depending on size and what they serve, do have a finite amount of money they can make without attracting government or bank regulator notice.”
“Did they make the deposits into the small Japanese bank that Connor Gray talk about?”
Shay shook his head. “I doubt it. The one used here is a mid-sized, legitimate bank.”
Rebecca thought about all she’d learned. “So what happened? With all this planning and so on, why were Tanaka and Bosque killed?”
“Who knows?” Shay said. “Maybe something scared them and they wanted to get out of the business. Ironically, Bosque’s businesses might actually have done well on their own. He had gotten a good reputation for style, even if not the quality of the clothes he sold. And, it might be he didn’t like hearing about the low quality. He started invoicing a lot of wholesale clothes from the US, UK, and Italy, and I suspect those were legitimate. Kyoto Dreams books, on the other hand, looked like Tanaka might have continued to struggle.”
“Shay is saying,” Richie interrupted, “that what was going on in these men’s lives that caused them to become targets isn’t showing up in the numbers he’s looking at. That’s up to us to figure out.”
“It makes sense,” Rebecca said. “But it also means there were more people involved than just Bosque and Tanaka. They needed others to work on the books for them, make bank deposits and withdrawals, and so on.”
“And that kind of coordination can lead to problems. Or jealousy. Or who knows what,” Shay said.
“It seems, Rebecca,” Richie said, “someone needs to look into who’s tampering with the invoices and books at Easy Street and Kyoto Dreams. That’ll tell you who’s doing the money laundering, although it still doesn’t pinpoint your murderer.”
“True, but it gets us closer, I’m sure,” Rebecca said. “Shay, thank you!”
“Remember,” Richie said, “Shig Tanaka was a friend. He might have crossed a line because he felt desperate, but nobody deserved to be killed the way he was. I want to know who killed him, and see that justice is done.”
Rebecca shuddered at his words. “We’ll figure it out. I promise.”