A Legitimate Businessman Read online

  “Still, this is a little too coincidental for my tastes,” Sinclair said. Others around the table nodded. “Katrina,” he said, scribbling something down on the notepad in front of him. “I’ll take action to call my folks in Europe and see what the talk is.”

  She nodded in reply. “So,” Danzig said. “We have the statements from an informant known to be a reliable source who allegedly has photographs of the suspect in his possession. The suspect was in Europe at the time of the theft. I think we have enough for a warrant.” Danzig waited for a few moments to let the room absorb it. When the eyes were back on her, she continued, “With that said, I feel like we need to interview him first. This could be entirely circumstantial, or a very elaborate con on LeGrande’s part.”

  Sinclair leaned back in his chair at the far end of the table. “Brian, does CHP think LeGrande is a flight risk?”

  The tall patrolman turned in his chair to face the Assistant Special Agent in Charge. “Without a doubt. He definitely has the means. We assume that he’s got a bug out bag ready to go with a clean passport and money. But will he? I’ve always believed that’d be a last resort. LeGrande likes being the Duke of Long Beach. He’s got this little game he’s running down there, and I think he means to keep it up. He’ll feed us people every so often. They’re good enough to keep us interested and to satisfy his obligations to the State of California, but we know they’re basically minnows. Meanwhile, we know he’s running this side business with the passports and we know he’s setting up jobs, otherwise he wouldn’t have any information to feed us. LeGrande wouldn’t sell out Burdette unless it was the last option he had, so perhaps they had some kind of a falling out. I definitely think LeGrande is running some kind of a game here, and he won’t bug out unless he knows he’s going to lose. I think he likes the idea of playing with us.”

  “Okay, let’s run with that. What does winning look like for him? What’s LeGrande’s end game?”

  “He wants his slate cleaned to end his obligation with us.”

  “And you expect his intention is to keep his operations up once he does that.”

  “Without question.” Valero smiled, but it was more a humorless crack in his face. “We have no reason to believe that he’ll stop if he gets a deal from the state. We’d need to launch a new investigation to break open whatever racket he’s got, and that will take time. Plus, whatever Burdette has done is outside of our jurisdiction. You’re in a better position to nail him for forgery, and that could have broader implications, depending on who he’s making passports for. That lets us all take him off the streets now, and it’s a cleaner prosecution since he’s been a CI of ours for so long.”

  “Bet the CT guys would love to take a crack at him too,” Riordan said.

  Sinclair turned back to the front of the room. “It’s your call, Katrina.”

  “I’m not entirely convinced yet that Fischer and Burdette are the same person. LeGrande has concocted a pretty elaborate story, and this Fischer seems like an odd fit for it. I think it’s very possible that LeGrande has the relationship that he claims with Burdette, and I think there’s a strong possibility that this could be a false flag. This feels like he could be protecting his friend.”

  “Why would he frame an innocent man, let alone go through the trouble of finding someone to be a patsy?” Sinclair asked.

  “Could be they have some shared history and LeGrande wants to get him back for something.” Danzig was extremely deliberative by nature and didn’t like being put on the spot to speculate. Her approach to crime was much like a scientist’s. She’d develop a hypothesis and then test it. If it proved false, she’d rule it out and try it again. Speculating on her feet with little to go on but intuition had always made her nervous. “I need to look Fischer in the eye first. That’s why I think we need to interview him. On the strength of that, we can make the call to arrest him.”

  “Ok,” Sinclair said, moving the meeting to closure. “I trust your judgment.” Sinclair turned to face Valero again. “Brian, I’m going to call the division commander to fill him in on our next steps.”

  “That’s not necessary.”

  “I’ve been meaning to get in touch to introduce myself anyway. We wouldn’t be here without you guys, and I want your brass to know that too. If there’s going to be a takedown, CHP will get equal credit.”

  Danzig always appreciated that about Sinclair. The bureau had a reputation, well-earned Danzig could admit, of not working and playing well with others. It hadn’t been her experience in New York, and certainly not in Europe, where they simply didn’t have the weight to throw around. She knew that Sinclair came up in a different track and had spent much of his career working with other law enforcement agencies, so he didn’t have the superiority complex around local cops that infected so many of her colleagues.

  “We appreciate that,” the lieutenant said. “What about LeGrande?”

  Valero was speaking to Sinclair, but Danzig seized the opportunity and answered. “We hold off on arresting LeGrande. We don’t want to spook Fischer, and if it turns out that this isn’t our guy, we might lose Burdette altogether. Our backup plan has to be that LeGrande will try to contact Burdette if it turns out Fischer is a plant.”

  Sinclair was silent for a moment, and Danzig was having a hard time reading the room. Had she jumped the gun?

  “Katrina, is there anything else?”

  Danzig scanned the room for a moment, watching the eyes track back to her. Her presentation didn’t go exactly as planned, but she’d gotten the outcome she wanted. That was good enough.

  “I think we’re good here,” she said.

  Eighteen

  Burdette landed at SFO in the early afternoon, but his body had little clue of where on Earth it was. He‘d cleared Immigration and Customs using a passport Reginald knew nothing about, so whomever he was working with wouldn’t know what identity Jack used reentering the country.

  Jack figured out Reginald’s plan somewhere over mid-America.

  There was no FBI.

  Reginald was running a rather elaborate con.

  Forging the credentials would be no problem for him, and Jack doubted that Megan or the staff would even think about asking for a badge. When most people were confronted with seemingly legitimate authority figures, they tended to fall in line. Reginald had already given Jack the threat. Now he was simply showing part of his hand to establish that he was for real.

  Jack’s first call leaving the airport was to Megan. Hers was the only voice he’d wanted to hear that entire interminable flight, and he felt like he was actually going to crawl out of his skin at times because he couldn’t talk to her and knew it would be hours before he could.

  “Yeah, I just landed,” he said after her greeting. She sounded worn, worried.

  “What’s going on, Frank?”

  “Well,” his eyes flicked to the rearview to clear left before changing lanes and accelerating, the throaty supercharged V8 opening up in a familiar growl. Not the same as the Maserati though. “I’m beginning to think this is some sort of scam.”

  “What? Who would do something like this?”

  “It’s no secret that I made a lot of money in the stock market, and god knows they made such a big deal out of that when we started releasing wines. Remember the piece that Spectator did when the ‘09 Peregrine came out? Well, someone probably used that to figure me for an easy mark. They could have hacked my email to see when I was going to be out of town to pull that FBI routine. Or someone was just following me. If you think about the money involved, it’s not that far-fetched.”

  Megan was silent for a few moments. Jack could see her brow creasing the way it did when she was thinking through something and smiled, despite his exhaustion and foul mood.

  “So, you don’t think that was really the FBI?”

  “No, I think it was someone posing as the FBI to get me to do what they want.” Jack paused. He knew he needed to tread carefully here. The logic of the con was that un
less Jack complied, LeGrande would tell law enforcement about Jack’s alter ego. There was no logical reason the FBI would be investigating Frank Fischer, so from Megan’s perspective, this would make little sense.

  “The guy you spoke to at the winery, the one who said he was a distributor.”

  “Yeah, what about him? He gave me a kind of a creepy vibe.”

  “Well, when I spoke to him, he said that I had two days to pay him a couple million dollars or he was going to send the FBI after me.”

  “What!” The words erupted from Megan’s mouth before she probably even knew what she was saying. “Why didn’t you tell me? We have to call the police. Right now.”

  “Meg, I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to worry while I was gone. I also didn’t want you contacting the police without me.”

  “Well, I’m pretty fucking worried now.”

  “I know, and I’m sorry.”

  This was all happening so fast, and what Jack really needed was time and space to think. The decisions he made in the next few hours would impact not only him, but also his employees potentially for the rest of their lives. They were all good people who didn’t deserve getting pulled into his conflict with Reginald. Two people were already dead because of that. Well, technically five, but three of them Jack had a hard time feeling sorry for.

  Jack would not allow anyone else he cared about to be injured because of Reginald LeGrande.

  “I think this is a pretty common blackmail ploy, actually. I’ve read about things like this before, especially among people like me who keep a lot of money overseas. Guys show up pretending to be the FBI or the IRS saying they’re investigating you because of where you keep your money and demand you transfer over some exorbitant sum or you’ll go to jail for tax evasion.” Jack tried hard to sound nonchalant.

  “Well, could you?” Megan demanded, sounding vaguely accusatory. Jack justified keeping his money in offshore tax shelters as a kind of hyper-libertarian Robin Hood complex. He didn’t agree with how the government spent his money, so he was going to try and limit how much of it they could get. Megan thought this was batshit crazy but most of the time wrote him off as an eccentric millionaire.

  “Everything I do with my money is perfectly legal. Hugh wouldn’t do business with me if it wasn’t. Besides, the government is taxing the hell out of the winery, and every time I put my money into that, they’re getting their cut.” Jack was silent for a short while as he considered his next move. “The next time they show up, I’ll have Hugh and maybe a sheriff’s deputy waiting.”

  Megan was quiet again for a while as well. Then, “Does that mean we can finally call the police?”

  “I promise I will talk to them.”

  Jack began to calm somewhat, though he was still on edge, he was not as precariously balanced as he was when he and Megan started their conversation. Maybe be bought himself some crucial time, even if it was just an hour or two, to think through a plan. Then, Megan said, “But the FBI guys...they were asking about someone named Jack Burdette. They said you know him. Who is he, and what does he have to do with all this?”

  Goddamn it, Jack mouthed, wishing he could shout it. In his haste to wrap this up quickly, he’d completely forgotten that Reginald‘s fake feds had mentioned him by name. That was Reginald’s bowshot, that he knew about Jack’s double life. Shit. Whatever he’d just built up with Megan was now unraveling. “I’m not sure what any of that is about,” he said at length. “Look, I‘m piecing this together with the information I have.” That much was true, at least. “I should be up there in about ninety minutes. Why don’t you let Corky handle the closing and meet me at my house. We‘ll talk this through once I get cleaned up, okay?”

  “Okay, Frank,” she said tentatively.

  They said their goodbyes and disconnected. Jack called Hugh Coughlin.

  “I was wondering when I was going to hear from you,” his attorney said in a loaded voice when he picked up the phone. Hugh had a law degree from UC Berkley and an MBA specializing in the wine industry from UC Davis. He was one of the foremost experts on the mechanics and the laws of the business and hadn’t spent one brain cell on criminal defense since law school. Which was in the seventies. Coughlin stood on the shorter side and was edging in on the pudgier end of the spectrum, which wasn’t surprising since his clients were all wine makers and restaurateurs. However, people who discounted him because of his stature did so at their own risk. Coughlin paid for his undergraduate degree with the GI Bill after serving in the Marines in Vietnam. Jack had seen people underestimate him on occasion, and Coughlin had subsequently taken their heads off and hadn’t stopped there. Even though he’d never practiced criminal law, Hugh was a dogged and relentless negotiator. Reginald’s fake FBI agents were in for a fight. Even though Hugh had never practiced criminal law, he at least knew the law, which was more than could be said about the opposition. Jack was confident that Hugh would make short work of them.

  “Busy couple of days,” Jack said honestly.

  “I’ll bet,” he said. When Jack didn’t say anything else, Hugh opened up. “Now you want to tell me what the holy fuck is going on here, Frank? Why in the hell am I getting panicked phone calls from Megan that the FBI is at your winery? Any who is this Jack Burdette?”

  “Hugh, someone is trying to blackmail me. They dressed up a couple thugs to look like the gestapo and sent them into the tasting room to scare me into paying.”

  “Well how the hell do you know all that?” Hugh snapped, not necessarily at Jack—Frank, rather— but more at the logic of his response.

  “Because the blackmailer told me, Hugh,” Jack deadpanned. “Guy shows up on Sunday pretending to be a distributor and gets Megan to call me. Once he gets me on the phone he said that I needed to pay him ten million dollars or he’s going to tell the FBI that I launder money overseas.”

  “Goddamn it, I knew that tax haven shit was going to get you in trouble, Frank. But you never goddamn listen.”

  Jack smiled despite of himself and the situation. Hugh Coughlin, who looked every inch a wine industry lawyer, was still a true vulgarian down to his bones. He could paint a tapestry of profanity like an old-world master and turn a soccer hooligan blue. “The blackmailer,” Jack said, “to prove he’s legit, sends a couple guys pretending to be FBI the next day. I don’t think it’d be all that hard to get a fake badge and credentials. Christ, you could probably get an actual badge on eBay for that matter. Even if it was fake, our guys wouldn’t know the difference.”

  “We need to get the police involved, Frank. And we probably need to talk to a criminal attorney. We should’ve done it already.”

  Jack had already thought of this. Call Reginald on his bluff and double down on the Frank Fischer legend. Of course, Reginald would just hand them the passport photos he had, recount their years of debriefings, which for all Jack knew had been recorded. It was an option, but not a good one.

  “Hugh, I held off on calling the police until I got home. I couldn’t manage this from Europe. Don’t lecture me about letting people do the work for me again.” The words came out with a raw, unvarnished anger that Jack had not only not seen coming but also had not intended in any way. “I’m sorry to snap at you. I’m just worn pretty thin. We’ve got this thing with Paul that’s already out in the open. If people find out that I’m being blackmailed too, they’re going to think that something real is going on.”

  “Something real is going on,” the old attorney asked in a soft but stern tone. “Frank, are you being totally up front with me? Why have you been so reluctant to call the police?”

  “Yes, I am being up front with you.” But when he said the words, it brought him a heartsick pain. Hugh had been good to him, had mentored him in the wine business the way a father would. How many nights had they spent in Hugh’s backyard or walking the grounds at Kingfisher? Over countless bottles of wine, the cagey old lawyer schooled Jack in the mysteries of this business, lessons that would’ve taken Jack a lifeti
me to learn on his own. The two formed a deep and lasting bond over the last ten years, and it was Coughlin, again not unlike a father, who tried to point out to Jack what should be so obvious—that Megan McKinney was far and beyond the best thing in his life. Lying to him in this way was as tangible and visceral a betrayal as it was consummate.

  “I promise I will call the police,” Jack said, echoing what he’d said to Megan just a few minutes before. “Look, I’ve just flown across half the world. I need to get some sleep. I will talk to you first thing in the morning, and we’ll figure out what to do next, okay?”

  “Okay, Frank.”

  Jack drove on in silence through the rolling, golden hills bathed in the orange light of evening. His windows were down, and the rush of crisp, fresh air felt good on his face. He’d made stupid, uncharacteristic mistakes over the past two days, and he could not think of a way to undo that damage or even minimize it. Nor was the right next step clear to him. He’d backed himself into a corner with Hugh and Megan because any normal person in this situation would contact the police and report being blackmailed. Jack could have used that but would have needed to make up a thing to be blackmailed about because he certainly couldn’t tell them the truth. Then, he’d be living under the specter of a false secret that would be worth several million dollars to a stranger. That was a long lie to keep up.

  Now the two closest people in his life were expecting him to contact the police because it’s what Frank Fischer would do. There was no logical, rational reason for him not to do that.

  Jack cried out a deep, bellowing roar of frustration, fear, and confusion. He screamed because he didn’t know what else to do. It was a raw and anguished sound, like that of an animal. Not one that had been tortured or cornered, but rather, one that had been separated from its pack and did not know the way home.

  Jack continued for a time trying to calm down. He was failing.