I drove to Enterprise on West 20th and rented a car. I left the Maxima with them, promising to return in a couple of days with a new license plate, and then I drove downtown to Georgia Avenue and my new office. I found it easily enough and was impressed. We had a ground-floor suite at the end of the block complete with a small parking lot big enough for maybe a half-dozen cars surrounded by a gated security fence. The gate was open so I drove in, parked, and entered through a side door: neat. Ronnie had done well.
“Hey, Ronnie. How are things coming along?”
“Pretty good, I think, so far. What d’you think of the place?”
“From what I’ve seen, I like it.”
He beamed. “Great. So, we’ve set up desks—all, but yours, since I figured you’d want to pick out your own furniture—and we need to order a table for the conference room. I’m going to leave that to Jacque… I love her. She’s amazing. Love the accent. She’s Jamaican. Did you know? Where the hell did you find her?”
I laughed. “Would you believe at my doctor’s office? She’s one of his patients. I paid her bill… That reminds me: see that she has some cash. I have a feeling she’s just about broke; Tim too. Where are they, by the way?”
“Jacque’s gone to Staples to get supplies. Tim’s in the back office. He grabbed it for his own. You’ve no objection, right?”
“Of course not. What’s he up to back there?”
“Who the heck knows? He’s damn brilliant. I can’t understand half of what he says. Our visit to Best Buy was quite the adventure. He’s ordered desktops for me, Jacque and someone else yet unknown and yet to be hired. He was thinking ahead, I guess—a printer and some other bits and pieces, and a MacBook and an iPad for himself, but the rest of what he needs he has to order: servers, routers, monitors and God only knows what else.”
Ronnie stopped talking for a second and chuckled. “He’s gonna cost you a small fortune before he gets done, but I think it’ll be worth it. The kid’s a genius… Hey, you want to see your office?”
“Sure. Show me.”
“It’s right here, in the corridor, just off the main office.” He opened the door and stood aside for me to go in, which I did.
It was big and bare, but I immediately fell in love with the great stone fireplace at the far end of the room.
“Hey, you two,” Kate said. “What’s going on? Wow, nice office, Harry. Very upmarket… Well, it will be when I get done with it.”
“When you get done with it? What the heck does that mean?”
“Well, you’re obviously going to be busy, so I’ll decorate it for you if you like.”
I nodded, thoughtfully, and said, “Oh-kay…”
“Great,” she said. “Tomorrow’s Saturday. I’ll make a start in the morning. What sort of budget do I have?”
“Whatever it takes, girl, whatever it takes… Kate, you’re working. What about the case?”
“It’s kind of stalled. You know how it is, Harry. We spend more time waiting for the experts: DNA, FBI… I’ll take a couple of vacation days and get it done.”
I shrugged. “Okay, if you think Henry will go for it.”
“Harry, I’m owed more than forty days. He’ll go for it.”
“If you say so. Okay, so Ronnie and Tim you already know. Jacque will be back soon and I’ll introduce you to her. In the meantime, I’ll fill you in what happened after I left you guys.” And I did. I told them first about my visit with Shady.
“Shady gave you information willingly?” Kate asked skeptically.
“No, just the opposite. He told me he wouldn’t give me any info, just that organized crime was involved and that the guys running whatever it was were untouchable. It wasn’t much, but it was something.”
“Sounds like Shady,” Kate said. “So do you have any idea what or who we’re dealing with?”
“No, but if he’s right, it’s big, and we need to find out what it is and quickly, before anyone else dies. I’m thinking it’s about the money Marsh scammed and they’re using Phoebe as leverage. Ronnie, go get Tim. I need you two to work together and find out.”
He went to find Tim, and Kate and I went out into the main office. I sat on the edge of one of the desks and Kate on one of the chairs.
Ronnie came back a minute later with Tim in tow with a laptop in one hand and an iPad in the other.
“Sit down, both of you,” I said. “Tim, I need you and Ronnie to get to work. Is that laptop capable of doing what you need until you get the good stuff?”
He grinned, poked at the bridge of glasses, looked at Kate, blushed, nodded and said, “It depends what you need. It’s not ideal, but for now, I’ll do what I can.”
I nodded. “Good.” I turned to Ronnie. “What d’you know about Frank Marsh?”
“Not much more than you. I know he was an investment banker and that he ran several successful hedge funds.”
I noticed that Tim had his iPad open and was typing notes into it.
“His main claim to fame though,” Ronnie continued, “was his ‘High Yield Investment Portfolio’ which was an extremely sophisticated Ponzi scheme.”
“What exactly are we talking about here?” I asked.
Ronnie nodded, looked at Tim who grinned at him, then said, “Ponzi schemes can be fairly complex, even when operated on a small scale, which Marsh’s wasn’t; he took his investors for more than one hundred million bucks before he got caught.
“It works like this: one person, sometimes a single group, coordinates every aspect of the scheme. That coordinator convinces numerous victims that they’re investing in a legitimate investment fund with promises of big returns. Most offer unbelievably high returns of twenty percent and up, but Marsh was smart. He didn’t do that. He guaranteed an ROI—return on investment—of fifteen percent. Pretty good, but still impossible to maintain in today’s economy. Four or five percent would have been achievable.”
Tim typed furiously on his iPad, soaking up all the details. Now that we were in the office, the geek seemed to be in his element.
Ronnie continued, “Well, anyway, the Ponzi scam artists are constantly on the hunt for new investors. They use the new investment money to pay dividends to the existing investors, and it works, at least for a while. For the scam to continue to work indefinitely, the coordinator would need to have access to an infinite supply of new investors… and that’s where, sooner or later, it falls apart. The supply of new investors runs out and funds dry up, as happened with Marsh and, to a much greater extent, Bernie Madoff.
“When that happens, the investors lose everything they put into it and, if he’s smart, the person running the scheme liquidates and leaves—vanishes before anyone can figure it out. Marsh got caught, but the money is gone. Where it’s gone to is the big mystery. I think it’s probably invested off-shore, in untraceable shell companies. Tracking those down is going to be a problem.”
I looked at Tim. “What d’you think?” I asked.
“I think it will take some time, but it’s not impossible. This,” he said and looked at the laptop, “is not up to it, but my servers won’t arrive until Tuesday, so it will have to do for now.”
“Can we hurry it up?” I asked.
He looked a little perplexed, did his thing with his glasses, looked up at the wall clock, then took out his phone and made a call.
“Hey, Jerry,” he said into the phone. “Look, I need that equipment like yesterday. Can you overnight it for me? I’ll pay the cost… Okay, that’s cool. You’ll send me a bill? Great. Thanks, Jerry.”
He ended the call, looked up at me and said, “Monday, by ten o’clock. That’s the best he can do. EPB will be here around five this afternoon to install the Wi-Fi, and it will take me an hour to set everything up on Monday, so I should be up and running by eleven, eleven-thirty at worst. That’s the best I can do.”
I nodded slowly, looking at him, thinking how fortunate I was to have attended Ronnie’s poker game where I met him. I had a feeling the kid was going to be my greatest asset.
“It will do fine, Tim. In the meantime, do what you can with what you have. Here’s what we need to know…”
I thought for a minute while Tim watched, poised over his iPad.
“Okay, I want to know everything there is to know about Frank and Phoebe Marsh, his Ponzi scheme, a list of investors, and I want you to try to track down the money. That’s priority one. I’m thinking that maybe Phoebe is the key to this thing.”
I paused, then continued, “Find out everything you can about a thug named Joseph James. He uses JoJo or JJ. I want to know who he works for, where he lives, the works. The same for one Benny Brown, late of this world, found dead in Ronnie’s car.”
I stopped for a second to make sure Tim was keeping up. He was.
“Find out all you can about the dead waitress, Penelope Ross and, if you can, what her connection is to the case, and to… Okay, that brings me to the Rose Café, now Lucky’s Diner. Who owns it? I think it’s a front for something illegal, human trafficking, maybe. I met another waitress there. Her name was Amber. I think she’s much more than a waitress. See what you can dig up on her.”
Again, I had to pause and think back over the past couple of days.
“There was a guy in the Sorbonne: small mouth, no forehead, a thug. It was him that snatched Phoebe Marsh. I need to know who he is and who he works for. I don’t know how you’ll pull that off… Hell, I’ll go talk to Laura, maybe she knows who he is. Finally, there’s money from the Ponzi scheme. We need to find—”
I was interrupted by the side door opening and a tight rear end clad in skin-tight jeans pushing inside.
“Okay, Tim,” I said. “That will do for now.”
A female voice with a Jamaican accent called out, “Hey, can somebody please help me get all this stuff in outa my car?” Jacque turned around, a large cardboard box in her arms.
She dumped the box right next to me on the desk and said, “Hey, boss, if you wouldn’t mind, please get your ass off my desk.” She looked at Kate. “Who’s this?”
I laughed and introduced them, then Ronnie and Tim went outside with her and began bringing in box after box of… I never did find out.
“So,” Kate said, “it begins, your genesis from cop to PI. I’m proud of you, Harry.”
I smiled at her. I was kind of proud myself.