“Igor, what are you doing here?” It wasn’t just Igor; he’d brought Sergey with him too. Sergey was sitting on the couch scanning his phone. Igor was standing with his back to me, staring out the front window at Mike Murphy’s auto repair shop across the street.
Sergey ignored me. Igor turned around. “I wanted to see this office you refuse to leave.”
He didn’t look impressed. I couldn’t blame him. My office looked like what it was—a cheap strip mall space. He would’ve liked my office at Simpson & Scott much better. It was on the eighteenth floor of a high rise building in downtown LA.
“It’s not the office that’s keeping me in Santa Veneta,” I said, which he already knew. It made me wonder why he’d driven up from LA. Was he trying to intimidate me?
Igor didn’t respond, but continued to stare at me.
I licked my lips and breathed deeply in an attempt to slow my heart rate. When I knew in advance I’d be seeing Igor I could prepare myself. But his showing up in Santa Veneta unannounced was messing with my head, which was likely his intent. “Can I get you something to drink?” I asked. “Coffee? Water?”
He shook his head. “I came to talk to you.”
“You didn’t need to drive all the way up here just to talk to me. That’s what phones are for. Or video conferences, if you prefer.”
“We talk in person. Safer that way.”
I wasn’t sure why he thought an in-person conversation was safer. If he was concerned about our conversation being recorded, it could just as easily be recorded in-person too. But I said, “Of course. Let’s go to my office.”
Sergey finally looked up from his phone, but he remained seated on the couch in the reception area while Igor followed me. Igor sat down heavily in one of my office guest chairs and I took the seat behind my desk. “What did you want to discuss?”
“I need you to set up ten companies.”
I reached for my pen and a blank legal pad. “Sure. Have you decided on corporate structure yet? Corporation? Partnership? LLC? There are pros and cons to each.”
“We’ll get to that later. Each of these companies is going to hire you.”
“Hire me to do what?” I asked.
“Provide legal services.”
“I assumed. Can you be more specific?”
He waved away my question. “You will send each of these companies a retainer agreement for ten thousand dollars each. The money will be wired to you, and when it’s gone, the retainers will be replenished. I will direct you how to spend the funds. Do you understand?”
I stared across the desk at Igor. Yes, I understood. He wanted me to use my client trust account to launder his dirty money. If these companies deposited money into the bank, the bank would be obligated to question the source of the funds and report any suspicious activity to the government. But a lawyer depositing funds into a pooled client trust account had no such obligation.
I realized this was the purpose of Igor’s unannounced visit today—to lay out the scheme and see whether I was willing to go along with it. “Yes,” I said.
“Good.” Igor stood up. “I’ll meet you at the gallery tomorrow morning at ten.”
I agreed, mentally calculating I’d need to leave the house by seven to allow time for traffic, which I was sure to hit somewhere along the way.
I ended up leaving the house at six a.m. because Agent Diaz wanted to meet with me and Alex before I met with Igor at the gallery. We rendezvoused in a grocery store parking lot again, but a different grocery store than the last time. Today we had three cars since we’d all driven separately, so Alex and I slid into the backseat of Agent Diaz’s car. As soon as I’d shut the door, Agent Diaz handed me a shopping bag. I peeked inside and saw a package of legal pads, a box of pens, and an I Heart LA coffee mug.
I reached for the coffee mug first. “Is this supposed to be a joke?”
“Use it as a pencil cup,” Agent Diaz said. “If anyone asks, you can tell them it was a gift from Alex.”
I turned to Alex, who looked like he’d just woken up. His black clothes were wrinkled and his face was covered with stubble. Obviously he hadn’t bothered to shave this morning. “I can’t really see you buying me this, can you?”
“No,” he yawned.
Agent Diaz sighed, then took the cup from my hand and tossed it onto the passenger seat. “If you don’t like mine, go buy one of your own. It’s the pen that’s important.” Then he reached into the bag and pulled out a pen that was lying loose at the bottom. “It’s a recording device.”
I took the pen from him and examined it. “Really? It looks like a regular pen.”
“That’s the point. It’s a regular pen too. You can write with it. In fact, you should write with it, so no one will suspect anything if they see it sitting on your desk. It’s voice activated.”
Agent Diaz showed me how to turn it on and off and I tested it out with the three of us. It recorded our conversation perfectly. “This is so cool!” I knew recording pens existed, but I’d never used one before. Although I liked the novelty of it, they seemed unnecessary these days since anyone could record anything they wanted on their phone. When I pointed that out to Agent Diaz, he admonished me.
“You are not under any circumstances to attempt to record Igor or any of his men with your phone.”
“Why not?” I asked.
Alex answered for him. “Because if they notice, they will kill you.”
“Do you think Igor’s suspicious of me?” I hadn’t gotten that vibe from him at the gallery Saturday night or when he came to my office yesterday.
“Igor’s suspicious of everyone,” Alex replied.
“You don’t grow old in his line of work by trusting people,” Agent Diaz added.
“So, my phone is suspicious but my pen’s not?”
Agent Diaz pulled the box of pens out of the bag. They were the same black and silver design as the recording pen. “Not when you have a handful of them sitting on your desk and you write with them all the time. They’ll fade into the background, which is why you need a pencil cup.”
I nodded. “Understood. Once the pen records, how do I download the recording? Or am I uploading it?” The tech side was the part that always tripped me up.
“You won’t be doing either,” Agent Diaz said. “You have a briefcase, right?”
“Yes,” I replied.
“When you pack up your stuff at the end of the day, toss a pen into your briefcase with whatever else you normally take home with you. But leave the recording pen on your desk so it can record when you’re not there. Every few days Alex will give you another one and then you can swap them out.”
“What if I hear something important? Should I call him to pick it up sooner?”
“No,” Agent Diaz said. “Just stick to the plan.”
“Do you want me to listen to it in the mornings when I arrive? Obviously, I would only do that if was alone.”
“No, I want you to ignore the pen unless you happen to be writing with it. If it records anything pertinent, I’ll let you know. Any more questions?”
I stopped at Staples on my way to the gallery and bought a pencil cup, along with an assortment of colored pens, a package of highlighters, and a stapler. I arrived at the gallery five minutes before ten and Igor and Sergey were already sitting in the parking lot in Igor’s black Mercedes, Sergey behind the wheel and Igor in the back seat. I parked two spaces down from them, and they both got out of the car.
“What’s in the bag?” Igor asked as he and Sergey followed me to the front door.
“Office supplies,” I said, thankful I’d had the presence of mind to replace one of the pens in the box with the recorder pen before I left the Staples parking lot.
“We don’t have office supplies?” Igor asked, watching me punch in the security code.
“I don’t know what you have,” I replied as I unlocked the front door. “But I’m particular about my pens and paper. Don’t worry, I won’t charge you for them.”
Igor chuckled and he and Sergey followed me through the gallery to the windowless office in the back. I dropped my shopping bag and purse on the desk and slid my briefcase underneath. Igor sat down in the center of the sofa, which was really the size of a love seat, and spread his arms and legs wide. I was trying to figure out where Sergey was going to sit when Igor told him he could wait outside. Sergey closed the office door behind him, leaving me and Igor alone.