Wicked Is the Whiskey: A Sean McClanahan Mystery (Sean McClanahan Mysteries Book 1) (12 page)

“Gertrude, I’m looking for a ledger that John had in his possession,” I said.

“Well, let’s look in Johnny’s room,” she said.

I followed her down the hallway into a bedroom in the back of the house. It was a simple room with a single bed, modest chair and a roll-up desk.

“Sonny, why don’t you roll up the desk there and see if it is in there,” Mrs. Miller said to me.

I rolled up the desk. Inside was a picture of Erin and Preston, kissing each other, some pens and pencils, some paperclips and other office materials, but nothing more.

I opened the drawers but they were empty.

I looked in the closet and found some of Preston’s clothes, but no ledger. I looked under the bed and in between the mattress and the box spring, but found nothing.

I searched the entire house — the basement, the attic, the closets — but could not find the copied ledger anywhere.

“Is there a special place John would spend time at inside or outside of your house?” I said.

“Well, Sonny, Johnny said the whole house was special because he had it built to keep me warm and happy,” she said laughing.

I doubled back to every place in the house where John may have hid that ledger — inconspicuous places in the attic or basement or a hidden cover in the wall, as well as anyplace he may have set it in his bedroom or the other rooms in the house.

I spent five hours looking for it without any luck.

“When Erin is well, I’ll bring her here,” I said. “Maybe she’ll have better luck than I.”

“You’re welcome anytime, Sonny. You go find those bad people who took my Johnny away.”

The next day I visited Lou Geraldi, a special agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration and long-time friend.

“Lou, I have something you’ll be most interested in,” I said.

I set an envelope on his desk that contained the white powder I’d got from Hall’s couriers. He opened the envelope and scooped out a small amount of the drug.

“Well, what have we here,” he said, smiling.

He opened his desk drawer and pulled out a small plastic tube. He placed the powder in the tube, then put a lid on it and shook it. The contents inside turned purple.

“Pure heroin,” he said. “We’re aware of a lot of increasing heroin activity in the tristate region, but this is the first I’ve heard of any activity in Maryville.”

“I imagine business conditions are changing quickly in that racket,” I said.

“You got that right. Heroin distributors are popping up everywhere. Last year we had more than 350 heroin overdose deaths in Pittsburgh and its surrounding suburbs. Twenty years ago we had fewer than 30 a year.”

“Why such a rapid increase in usage?” I said.

“Prescription pain medication is the primary driver. Americans are popping pain pills in record numbers. Do you know that America doctors wrote more than 250 million prescriptions for opioids in the past year alone?”

“Opioids as in opium?”

“Opioids refer to a broad category of drugs derived from opium or morphine,” said Lou. “They include prescription drugs, such as Percocet, Vicodin and Fentanyl. Their chemical is very similar to heroin.”

“And patients are getting hooked?” I said.

Lou nodded.

“In the past, heroin addicts tended to be street users who stood on corners in impoverished areas. Today, addicts include soccer moms, business executives, high school kids with money to spend and people from every walk of life, who got hooked after they had knee or back surgery. They started with prescription meds.”

“But why?”

“Because Opioids used to be reserved for the worst cases, typically to ease the pain of terminal cancer patients. That changed in the 1990s when big companies began marketing them as ‘safe’ medications to ease post-surgical pains.”

“I still don’t understand how people with prescriptions to pain pills transition to heroin,” I said.

“For some, their prescription runs out. Others do so because of the expense. Street heroin is about 10 percent the cost of prescription medication — and incredibly easy to find.”

“If Hall has established a big distribution center in Maryville,” I said, “how is she getting the heroin into the country?”

“There are a variety of ways they do it. Recently, you may have seen in the news that a submarine went ‘aground’ carrying eight tons of cocaine. Drugs, both cocaine and opium, have been shipped into the country by private airplanes, inside containers marked as food, cement/concrete, artifacts… you name it.”

I told Lou everything I knew about Victoria Hall — including my concern that Chief Sarafino was on Hall’s payroll.

“That might explain why we know so little about what is going on in Maryanne,” said Lou. “When drugs are a problem within a community, the local police are usually eager to bring in county, state and federal authorities to establish a task force. But they are also in a position to keep up us.”

“I don’t understand why would Victoria Hall want to take over Preston’s company if she merely wanted to distribute heroin?” I said. “

“My guess would be money laundering,” said Lou. “Heroin distributors can produce a lot of cash, but if they can’t find a way to launder it, they cannot enjoy it. We’ve been seeing increasingly sophisticated schemes to launder funds — particularly when millions of dollars are involved.”

“Any examples?” I said.

“International drug cartels have been working elaborate schemes with the world’s largest banks. The bankers profit handsomely by disguising wire transfers in such a way that they are almost impossible to trace.”

“How would they go about doing this?” I said.

“The cartels buy their own banks in South American countries,” said Lou. “The Caymans is a fine place to own a bank. They transport their illicit cash to their bank, deposit it, then wire it into the legal banking system and eventually recapture the funds as legal revenue, so they can begin living like millionaires.”

“I have only one more question for you today,” I said. “Victoria Hall has been keeping a handwritten ledger and she is keeping it in code.”

Lou smiled.

“That’s an old organized crime trick,” he said. “You can’t run a big operation by yourself. You have to send payments to many people. So they use an elaborate code system to conceal numbers and names.”

“Preston had a Xerox copy of Hall’s ledger,” I said. “But we don’t know where he put it.”

“If you want to bring down Hall, you need to find it,” said Lou. “We need to know how she’s getting drugs into that old building, how she’s getting the money out and how she’s likely laundering it through Preston’s company. If you can help me prove that, I can get a task force together to go in there whether Chief Sarafino wants us to or not.”

“No big order, that,” I said, smiling.

“I’ll make some calls and see what I can do, but we’ll need more hard evidence to go in there without the chief’s blessing,” said Lou.

“Then I’ll get you hard evidence,” I said.

Lou gave me his personal cell number.

“You need any help any time of the day, you call me and I will be there,” he said.

“Will do,” I said, “and I think I know someone who can provide insights into how Hall is using Preston’s company to front a massive heroin operation.”

Nobody would expect that Vinny Talenti was a multimillionaire, but he was. A retired Carnegie Mellon University professor, he was one of the world’s first ethical hackers. Though he was in his 70’s, he kept himself busy helping the world’s largest private and government organizations secure their data systems. 

“I have a difficult money laundering project for Mr. Vincent Talenti,” I said as I walked into his office and shook his hand.

“Goody,” he said. “So what do you got?”

I told him everything I’d learned about Victoria Hall and her heroin operation.

“You know as well as anyone that a private company like this can be clever about concealing its finances,” I said. “I need you to uncover what is really going on.”

“I like money laundering projects.” he shouted, his eyes bright. “I haven’t sunk my teeth into a good money laundering case in more than a year. So let me be clear. You want me to learn all I can about Preston’s company and what Victoria Hall may really be up to?”

“That's right.”

“Goody,” said Vinny.

“This work could be very dangerous,” I said. “I know you're a clever man, but something big is going on, and I want you to be careful.”

“Scouts honor,” said Vinny.

“Also, I hope to have a second project you can assist with. Hall kept a coded hand-written ledger. We are trying to locate a copy of it. It will have code in it that we need a mastermind like to crack.”

“How much do you think that will cost?” I said.

“Well, I’d say two projects as fun of these should run about $5,000 dollars.”

“Why $5,000?” I said.

“Because that’s all I can afford to pay you for letting me work on both!” said Vinny.

Island Jim sat at his favorite table in the rear of the Leaf and Bean cigar and coffee shop in downtown Pittsburgh’s Market District, a legendary establishment frequented by some of the city’s most fascinating characters.

“How goes it, Jim?” I said as I clipped a cigar and lighted it.

“Not bad for an old guy but it’s early yet.”

Jim started his cigar shop to front his numbers-writing business, but ended up creating a line of fine cigars, Leaf by Oscar, that took off nationally and made him a very well-to-do fellow.

When he wasn’t traveling to his cigar plant in Honduras or visiting the more than 1,100 cigar stores around the country that sold his cigars, he was sitting at the back table in his establishment doing what he always did: keeping up with the goings on in Pittsburgh and having fun.

I grabbed a Leaf by Oscar in the large humidor, paid the cashier and was soon sitting with Jim puffing away.

“I can tell by the look on your face you’ve got a live one going on.”

“That I do,” I said.

His gray hair spilled out of his cowboy hat and onto his blue-jean shirt.

I told him everything that happened since Erin Miller walked into my pub.

“The short of it is this: I know that Victoria Hall is distributing heroin from the old industrial campus that houses Preston’s company in Maryville. I wonder what you may have heard about it?”

“Word on the street is that there’s a sizable amount of heroin moving out of Maryville,” said Jim. “It’s supplying distributors in this region and well beyond. It’s been an open secret the past year or so, but volume has ticked up considerably in recent weeks, since John Preston was fished out of the Monongahela.”

“Victoria Hall told me sales had surged since Preston died,” I said. “What she didn’t tell me is her operation is probably clearing out inventory before shutting up shop. What do you know about her?”

“I read plenty about her in the Wall Street Journal and the business mags,” said Jim. “I read them all these days now that I’ve become something of a cigar mogul.”

Jim laughed aloud, as surprised by his massive success as anyone.

“She has an MBA from an Ivy League school and had established herself as a turnaround specialist for distressed companies,” he continued. “As her reputation grew, she was able to attract more investors to raise the capital she needed to either buy out distressed companies or partner with their owners. Maybe her prior success was legitimate, but maybe it wasn’t. One thing is certain, however: Her investors in Preston’s operation include thousands of poor saps who are addicted to the opiates she is pushing.” 

I shook my head in disgust.

“You have to give her credit, though, for getting away with it for so long,” said Jim. “She has a stranglehold on the town of Maryville for four years. She’s managed to keep the feds from intruding into her business. That is not easy to do.”

“She had the goods on the Maryville police chief’s dad — and the stranglehold on him continued once his daughter took over as chief.”

“I’m aware of that,” said Jim. “But here’s something that you may not be aware of that will surely interest you.”

“Go on.”

“Now I may not be the smartest fellow in the world,” said Jim, “but a fellow like me, who sits around a cigar joint most days, has a bit of free time on his hand. And I enjoy a good riddle. I was curious to learn who might be behind everything that is going on in Maryville, so I did a little poking around on my own.”

“What did you find?” I said.

“Well, when Hall moved Preston’s operation to the old industrial campus four years ago, I began getting wind the heroin operation shortly after. So, I wondered, what was the story of that that old campus?”

“Yes?”

“Well, Preston’s company operated from it, but the company wasn’t purchased by Preston’s company.”

“Who was the buyer?”

“Victoria Hall,” said Jim.

“It’s possible that Hall has a real estate portfolio and leased the property to Preston’s firm?” I said.

“That’s exactly the case,” said Jim, “but that isn’t the interesting part.”

“What is the interesting part?”

“The former owner of the campus is erstwhile mobster Salvatore Mosconi,” said Jim. “That information is public record and available on the county’s website.”

“An odd coincidence.”

“Here’s what’s more interesting,” said Jim. “The old campus was appraised at $685,000, but Mosconi sold it to Hall for only $100,000.”

“Well, then,” I said. “It’s time for me to pay Salvatore a visit.”