Twenty Blue Devils (29 page)
"Exactly,” Nelson said wretchedly.
"Whew,” John said. “I think I'm starting to see why you have to charge thirty-eight bucks for a pound of coffee."
"It's not funny, John.” He sat there behind his handsome teak-and-leather desk, wringing his hands and looking miserable. “What's Nick going to say when I tell him?"
"Nelson,” John said gently, “how could this happen? Why did it take Tari to find out about it? Why didn't you see it before?"
Nelson reared back defensively. “It wasn't my job. Brian was supposed to stay on top of coffee prices, not me."
Ah. Brian. Things were beginning to add up. “But you're the comptroller."
"We don't work that way, John. We're a family, we don't go around checking on each other. The books balance and we make a profit; it never occurred to me to review the invoices themselves. Coffee prices are unbelievably complex. They change every day, sometimes more than once a day. You have to know the industry. And as you know, I'm no coffee expert—I've always been the first to admit that."
Not in John's hearing, he hadn't. “Look, Nel, tell me this:
How
do you make a profit? If you're paying ten times what you should for your beans, then you must—"
"Charge ten times what we should for our coffee. Yes, I suppose that's what you could say we've been doing. But not from any intent to overprice, you must understand that. Our prices necessarily reflect the value we put into the product in the way of labor, equipment, and costs. And the product is simply—"
” ‘The World's Most Expensive Coffee,’ “ John said.
Nelson frowned at him, as if deciding just how much offense he ought to take. Then he blinked and hesitated.
"'Bar None,'” he said.
For a second, they continued to look at each other, then burst into gales of laughter.
"Oh, dear...” Nelson said when he could speak. “Oh, dear... what are we laughing at anyway?"
"Probably all those yuppie types sitting around in all those latte bars, scarfing the stuff down and talking about how buttery it is, how chocolaty, how, how..."
"Piquant,"
Nelson said, beginning to shake again.
"And all the while,” laughed John, “they're drinking the cheapest crap in the world, only they can't tell the difference."
"And obviously,” said Nelson, “neither could
we!"
And off they went again. This was certainly a new Nelson. It was the first time since they'd been children that they'd laughed together this way, and it felt good. Good God, if it kept up, he was liable to wind up actually liking the guy.
"Do you know what?” Nelson said when they quieted down. “You haven't called me Nel in thirty years. No one has."
John couldn't think of anything to say. “Yeah, well.” This was followed by a somewhat awkward pause.
"In any event,” said Nelson, “the reason I wanted to talk to you was to ask if this has the earmarks of something... something illegal. I don't mean on the part of Java Green Mountain and Calvo Hermanos, I mean on our part—that is, on the part of... of someone at Paradise."
"Yeah, it does,” John said. “It sounds like money-laundering."
Nelson winced. “That's what I was afraid you'd say.” He began to reach for the ballpoint pen again but at a guttural rumble from John he pulled his hand back and laid it in his lap. “But look, I'm not clear on what this money-laundering business is about. I thought I was, but I'm not. It has to do with drugs, doesn't it?"
"Usually, yeah."
"But where would drugs enter into this? We pay ten times as much as we should for green beans and we sell the finished product for ten times what it's worth. The growers do very well indeed, the consumers pay through the nose, and we make an innocent, modest profit. It's hardly a model of keen business practice, but where do drugs come into it? Where does money-laundering come into it?"
"It's pretty complicated, Nelson. I'd rather—"
"I think I can manage to hang in there,” Nelson said. Definitely a new Nelson.
All right, then, John said. The Colombian drug cartels had a long-established system of working with their American dealers. The American dealers—importers, they were called in the trade—didn't pay for the dope up front, they maintained open “accounts” with their Colombian sources and settled only after the stuff had been sold on the streets.
"Sound business practice,” said Nelson with something close to approval. “Receipts first, then payments. It's a question of cash flow. Any sensible businessman would prefer to handle it that way."
But these “businessmen” had a problem unique to international drug-trafficking, John explained. Most of the money that was collected was in great armloads of small-and medium-denomination bills—truckloads, really, amounting to many millions of dollars. The question was: How did you get it out of the country and into Colombia? And the problem was that you couldn't carry more than $10,000 out of the United States unless you declared it with Customs, something these guys were not eager to do. And you couldn't put all that cash in a bank checking account and draw a check on it either, because banks had to report deposits of $10,000 or more.
One way of getting around this involved smurfing, which—
"Ah...smurfing?” Nelson said.
Smurfing, said John. Multiple bank transactions of seven, or eight, or nine thousand dollars—anything under ten. A van holding maybe fifteen runners shows up in the financial district of a big city in the morning just as the banks open. The runners pile out, head for the banks, and buy cashier's checks (which can be made out to any name you want, and which usually don't require identification). Then they run off to the next bank with another load of cash, and the next, and the next. A single runner can convert $150,000 in a day. And the following day they're in another city doing it all over again.
"But why is it called smurfing?” Nelson wanted to know.
"Because of the way they all scoot off from the delivery van like a bunch of little Smurfs. You know."
Nelson didn't know. “In any case, I fail to see what this has to do with us,” he said irritably.
Patience, John counseled. Once the cash was smurfed into checks it would be “layered,” that is, electronically transferred from Account A in Bank I to Account B in Bank 2, splitting it up and recombining it until its origins were lost somewhere in cyberspace. Once you had a dozen banks and twenty accounts involved, the money was virtually untraceable. At that point, it could safely find its way into the accounts of an international importer such as Paradise Coffee.
And from there it was an easy matter to move it out of the country in the form of inflated payments for purchased goods. You paid $10 for $1 worth of goods and sold the finished product for ten times what it was worth. You made out, the books balanced—and $9 had been laundered and was on its way back to Colombia. It was done in the gem trade, it was done in the metals trade...and, so it seemed, it was done in the coffee trade.
"Are you telling me,” Nelson asked slowly, “that in the past five years, we've been responsible for supplying thirty million dollars to...to drug lords in Colombia?"
"I'm ready to bet on it,” John said. “That Colombian coffee grower, Calvo Hermanos they wouldn't happen to be in Medellin, would they?"
Nelson's face was all the answer that was needed.
"And the other one, the one in Java, they're probably backed by some of the Colombian drug biggies. It's an old story, Nelson."
"It's horrible,” Nelson said. He looked grim, almost sick.
"Why?"
John understood what he meant. “For money, probably. The dealers typically pay legit firms ten percent for this kind of service. So somebody here was collecting...oh, around..."
"Six hundred thousand dollars a year,” Nelson said.
"Right, but that's only part of it. Think it through; the inflated payments to the suppliers are made with drug money, not company funds, right? But—"
"But,” Nelson said, speaking slowly as he took it in, “the inflated
returns
from our sales should go right into our own coffers—only they don't, do they? They've never shown up in our financial records. That means...that means..."
"That we're talking about somebody raking off a lot more—a whole lot more than six hundred thou a year."
Nelson groaned and pressed his hand to his forehead. “I feel as if I'm in a nightmare. John, how
could
he? After all Nick's done for him. Oh, I've never thought he was quite as perfect as everyone else did, but never would I have expected this from him. Not in a million years."
It was time to let Nelson in on recent developments. “Nelson, Brian wasn't quite what we thought. There's a lot about him that you and I didn't know."
Nelson's mouth hung open for a minute. “Brian? What does Brian have to do with it?"
John was startled in his turn. “What?"
"I'm talking about
Rudy
. Rudy's the one who actually buys the coffee. You know that, John. Rudy's the one who signs the purchase orders in the first place, and then signs off on the invoices—not Brian. Rudy's our buyer."
"Rudy..."
John sat back in his chair and digested this latest screwy twist, or maybe it wasn't so screwy. “What do you know?” he said half to himself. “Now that really throws a new light on things."
"What's this about Brian?” Nelson said. “What didn't we know about him?"
"A lot,” said John. “I'll tell you later. Right now I want to go over to the hospital and have a few words with Rudy."
"But he's not in the hospital, he's right here, down on the docks.” Nelson turned in his chair and pointed out the window. “See the gray-and-white ship, the one with the block and tackle?"
"The rusty one?"
"Yes, the rusty one."
The ship was the
Beaune
, Nelson said, an interisland schooner; that is, a small freighter with a regular local route. Every few months two or three thousand pounds of Paradise beans were put aboard to go to resorts and small roasteries on Bora Bora, Rarotonga, and Pago Pago. As it happened, the beans were being loaded this morning and Rudy was on board overseeing things.
"Well, then, that's where I'm going,” John said, standing up.
Nelson got up as well. “I believe I'll go with you."
"No, I think it'd be better if I talked to him by myself."
"Pah.” Nelson breezed imperiously by him and through the door. “Don't be ridiculous, John. Of course I'm going with you. You don't know how to handle Rudy. It takes a delicate touch."
Say hello to the old Nelson again. For a moment the hair on the back of John's neck automatically bristled, but only for a moment. Then he laughed and followed Nelson out.
"Okay, big brother, show me how to handle Rudy."
Papeete's commercial harbor was out of another time, a lively, old-fashioned South Seas port from the days before there were huge, anonymous container ships and robotlike, hundred-foot-high cranes. Here, most of the quays were lined with battered, midsized interisland schooners that were being chain-loaded by their Tahitian crews one dented drum or one case of milk or canned goods at a time, for shipment to the outer islands. Lots of bustle, noise, cursing, and laughter.
The
Beaune
was no exception. It was docked between two equally seaworn, equally work-scarred freighters, and you couldn't look at it without thinking of Joseph Conrad, and the old China Sea trade, and grizzled, bleary-eyed, seen-it-all sea captains in dingy whites. When John and Nelson got there, a line of four perspiring Tahitians was swinging the cargo onto the foredeck, where two more men used a block-and-tackle arrangement to get it down into the hold. There were cases of Hinano beer, of Twisties Cheese-Flavoured Snacks, of Biscuits Mckay
("C'est OK!")
, of canned beef stew, of soap flakes, of frozen fish croquettes.
"Your coffee's already stowed,” one of the men told Nelson. He shrugged his chin at the string of big plastic sacks of ice cubes that was being hefted along the line. “For the captain's drinks,” he said, laughing.
"I don't doubt it,” Nelson said primly.
They found Rudy on the enclosed bridge with Captain Thorwald, a big-boned, middle-aged Dane whose whites were by no means dingy, but who otherwise made a satisfactory old sea dog, what with his graying Captain Ahab beard and hard, bronzed, windburnt face. The captain bent over a drafting table to scrawl his signature across the bottom of a form, gave Nelson a brusque hello, and went off to speak to the harbormaster, leaving them to the modest comforts of the bridge.
John and Nelson stood just inside the door. “Hello, Rudy,” John said.
Rudy seemed to sense something in the air. He looked from one to the other, waiting for them to say something more.
"Rudy,” John began, “we've been—"
Nelson cut in, shrill and excited. “Where did all that money go, Rudy? What was it for?"
John almost laughed aloud. Good old Nelson and his delicate touch.
But it brought results. Although Rudy at first swelled himself up to protest, he changed his mind and decided to give it up before the first word was out. He looked stolidly, almost wistfully, at them for a moment—
how could you ever hope to understand?
he seemed to be thinking—then turned sadly away from them and walked to an open window, leaning on a built-in cupboard and staring out across the harbor toward the two sleek, gray missile cruisers tied up at the French naval base at Fare Ute.
"It's a long story,” he said.
Here it comes, John thought. He's cooking it up right now. I can practically see the gears turning.
It was all Brian's fault,
he's going to say.
It was all Tari's fault.
Anybody who was dead and couldn't speak for himself.
But John wasn't even close. When Rudy turned back to face them he spoke only two words and they had nothing to do with Brian or Tari.
"Don't move,” he said.
He was standing about eight feet from them, no longer even remotely wistful, and in his right hand was an object shaped something like a snub-nosed revolver, like a .38-caliber Police Special, in fact, but made of gaudy orange-and-black plastic. John would have taken it for a clumsy Halloween toy except for the strip of black plastic that jutted down from the base of the grip and held a row of three red cylinders that looked convincingly like twelve-gauge shotgun shells. From where he stood John was uncomfortably able to look straight up the stubby barrel and see that a fourth shell was already chambered. With his thumb Rudy slowly cocked the hammer.