Clear Skies Page 10

  CHAPTER 19

  (Saturday Evening— Monte Carlo)

  Slade, Roche, and Isa stood behind a ring of spectators to watch Palmer and Hewitt tackle baccarat with overt enthusiasm, for much higher stakes than their table companions. In a scene-stealing gown, the front slashed to a crystal-embellished waistline revealing tantalizing glimpses of cleavage, Palmer drew a crowd.

  Isa moved forty-five degrees to see the couple seated at the opposite side of the table facing the croupier. Concealed among spectators, she studied Palmer for fifteen minutes, while the pair’s extroverted behavior and high-value bets created excitement at their table, attracting even more people to watch.

  Palmer turned her head and spoke to Hewitt when the croupier pushed a pile of chips toward her after her first win of the evening. She took her time to stretch across the table and rake in the pile.

  Isa slipped away from her position among the spectators to rejoin Slade and Roche standing further back.

  “I’ve got it. I know what’s been niggling at me about her,” she said. “We thought the killer shot Chloe in Tokyo and assumed this woman here must be her younger sister, Carol, impersonating her after a major makeover. We were wrong. I think this woman here tonight is Chloe, the person I worked for in Tokyo, my former college classmate and the wife of Richard Palmer. The dead body in Tokyo must be her younger sister.”

  “Why do you think so?” Slade asked.

  “I didn’t notice earlier, but this woman has a dark brown mole on the left side of her neck. So did Chloe. I didn’t pay attention to its presence or absence in Tokyo, but I remember in our student days, she hated it like a blemish inherited from the devil himself.” Isa glanced at Palmer again.

  “And Chloe also has a congenital ear defect—a deep depression in her left earlobe, giving it a misshapen appearance. She always wore large earrings to conceal it, even at college—I mean always. I never saw her without them, and this woman is wearing large earrings. I didn’t notice whether the dead woman in Chloe’s apartment wore earrings. Maybe you should contact your Tokyo colleagues and see if the corpse has a mole on her neck and a defect of her left earlobe. If not, your body is probably her younger half-sister Carol or another woman who’s gone to a lot of trouble to look like Chloe.”

  Isa’s confidence convinced Slade to pull out his cell phone, walk to the lobby, and call Tokyo.

  “Makino, Slade here. Hope I haven’t caught you at lunch.”

  He paused as Makino said he was back at his desk, though the tone of his voice suggested there were better things to do than take a call from Slade.

  “I need you to check a couple of facts for me.” Slade stepped outside and caught his breath from the sharp temperature drop in the deepening fall evening, chilled by a bracing sea breeze.

  “Look at photos of Palmer taken in situ at the crime scene; not at the morgue. Check to see if she was wearing earrings.” He moved sideways to let a party of tourists walk past him with the eagerness of casino first-timers.

  “Also, ask Abe to examine the body for a mole on the left side of her neck and a deformity of her left earlobe. If those are not present, tell him to look for signs of facial plastic surgery. And please get back to me ASAP.” Slade recalled the usual glacial speed of Makino’s work. “No more than ten minutes.”

  By the time Makino called back twenty minutes later, Slade had lost patience. What he learned frustrated him even more.

  He returned to Isa and Roche, thankful for the overheated atmosphere of the gaming room.

  “No earrings, no neck mole or left earlobe deformity, and curiously, no sign of facial reconstruction. But Abe says it’s possible for a skilled surgeon to minimize telltale traces and use laser treatment to finish the job. But it’s still hard to explain since, Isa, you said the Harris sisters looked noticeably different in appearance. Her reconstruction must have been a daunting project.”

  “I’m even more certain now that this woman is Chloe, and I’m pretty sure she’s the person I worked for in Tokyo and assumed was the corpse stretched out in the living room.” Isa let a pause lie before she went on. “I remember Chloe frequently boasted about her sister envying her better looks. But was this enough to goad her into having plastic surgery to look identical to Chloe? And what brought her to Chloe’s Tokyo apartment? Why was she killed there last weekend?” Isa looked at Palmer again.

  “All good questions still lacking answers. And why does Chloe, calling herself Carol, seem unmoved by news of her sister’s death?” Slade said.

  “Are you sure she did not have a twin sister?” Roche asked.

  “One hundred percent sure. Chloe was the only daughter from her mother’s first marriage and Carol the only daughter from her mother’s second partner,” Isa said.

  “A truly baffling case,” Slade said.

  Roche laughed. “Sans blague! No kidding. Baffling, bordering on surreal. The more we learn, the more time I should spend at my computer to catch up with the IT forensics on these guys. I have to make a couple of calls.” He looked at Slade. “I’ll go back to the hotel for an hour of quiet concentration and join you again if you’re still here.”

  Isa remained concealed behind the crowd. Slade walked around the table to stand behind Palmer and Hewitt in the hope of hearing their private conversation, but they spoke infrequently, and he did not catch more than a few disjointed fragments.

  He followed when the pair left and headed to the bar, where they ordered two Jack Daniels on the rocks. They finished their drinks, and instead of returning to the tables as expected, went to the cage, with Slade close behind. Both Palmer and Hewitt handed over their combined stack of plaques and chips to the cashier, in exchange for a receipt and effusive reassurance of an immediate transfer to Palmer’s private Monaco bank account. Slade watched the couple return to the bar. After five minutes, he rejoined Isa standing in a crowd of tourists at the side of the gaming room.

  “From the quantity of plaques and chips they just cashed in, I’d say the transfer to her bank is worth the twenty million euros they started with minus roughly fifty thousand euros lost at the table.” Slade lowered his voice. “This looks like a classic case of money laundering with a five-figure win for the casino. If Miles overheard correctly when they arrived, Palmer must have taken around twenty million euros in cash to her local private bank. Her cooperative financial enabler at the bank transferred it to her casino account, no doubt keeping it off the bank’s official books for a hefty fee. This allowed her to purchase twenty million euros worth of chips and plaques. She played at a table for a while, lost some, and cashed the remaining chips and plaques in at the cage, practically all unused. The casino deposited the money into her casino account and transferred the funds to her local bank account under the guise of winnings. On the record this time.”

  Slade paused to straighten his tie. “They took their time over dinner and challenged the table for little more than an hour with exaggerated enthusiasm that looked more staged than natural. Did you see the intense concentration of the other gamblers at their table? Did Palmer and Hewitt focus like that?”

  Isa shook her head. “So she started with ill-gained cash and played a money transfer game.”

  “Yes. It’s that simple. And paradoxical,” Slade said. “Law enforcement agencies have spent a fortune on developing sophisticated computer profiling, data-mining, and data-matching techniques to spit out hidden patterns of money flows and uncover criminals involved in money laundering. But here, Palmer and Hewitt laundered money the old-fashioned way in public view like skilled veterans, and their behavior would have remained undiscovered if we hadn’t put them under orthodox visual surveillance for another purpose.”

  Slade took hold of Isa’s elbow and guided her through the crowd toward the bar.

  “Casinos are known conduits for money laundering, and although they’ve heightened their surveillance, there are so many part-time and itinerant workers, patterns often aren’t seen, and laundering behavior slips through
the net. And perhaps the cashier Palmer favored is on her payroll. I’m sure she’ll visit her private bank tomorrow morning and instruct her enabler to transfer the money to an offshore account,” he said.

  They stood in a discreet location overlooking the section of the bar where Palmer and Hewitt sat talking to four white-suited Chinese men who’d just arrived. At that moment, Roche returned.

  “Their guests from the Chevalier,” he said, nodding in the direction of the Chinese. “I came in behind them. It looks like they’re staying at the Hotel de Paris as well.”

  “Alex, go over and listen to their conversation,” Slade said. “We’ll wait for you here.”

  He looked at Isa. “I don’t doubt for a second that this group is the money source.”

  Roche stood behind the Chinese men and stooped to retie a shoelace, then pretended to check his cell phone for messages. When Palmer and Hewitt left the Chinese and strolled to the exit, Roche rejoined Slade and Isa.

  “It was hard to hear so near the slot machines, but I’m pretty sure Palmer told them she’d reserved a private room for their high-stakes poker game from nine tomorrow night. The most senior-looking Chinese said they understood how the game would proceed.”

  They followed their targets out of the casino and watched them stroll back to the Hotel de Paris.

  “I think they’ll stay in for the rest of the night,” Slade said. “Let’s go back to our hotel and take stock.”

  CHAPTER 20

  (Saturday Night— Monte Carlo)

  Slade called Isa soon after they returned to their rooms.

  “I have to go through a bunch of messages and reports from Tokyo in my inbox and touch base with Roche to find out what he’s uncovered with his IT forensics. If you’re still awake, I’ll go to your room to discuss what we have so far and see what you can add.”

  “And to relax a little, maybe? I’ll be awake,” she said.

  Slade hung up and focused on his emails.

  The first came from Abe. The medical examiner reconfirmed the lack of physical markers on the left side of the victim’s face and the absence of signs of facial plastic surgery, which did not conclusively prove the absence of reconstruction. He noted that she’d dyed her hair a lighter shade of blonde, but staked his retirement nest egg on her being a natural blonde and not a brunette. Slade recalled Isa’s statement that Chloe’s half-sister had dark hair and filed this observation as yet another disconnected piece of an illogical puzzle.

  The next email, from Makino, confirmed that the rumored assassin, Tomofumi Sakata, was involved. A DNA match linked a fragment of black hair found on the victim’s dress with Sakata’s DNA profile on file since his short stay in prison for unprovoked assault ten years earlier. Makino’s team had not tracked him down in Japan, but a tedious search of security camera footage of airport departures placed him traveling under an assumed name and false passport. He had boarded a late-night Air France flight from Tokyo’s Haneda Airport to Paris the same day as Naomi Kato’s violent death. Makino had sent a request to the French authorities to find and detain the suspect and emailed his passport photo to Slade.

  He also reported that Ono and her staff backed up Isa’s account of her whereabouts on the morning of Naomi Kato’s death. They confirmed her attempts to call Slade’s cell phone from a fixed line at the couturier’s premises before she left for the CIB.

  Slade forwarded the report to Roche just seconds before Mark Miles called.

  “Where are you now? Is this a good time to talk?” Miles expected to find them in the casino still.

  “Yes. Your timing’s perfect. Palmer and Hewitt are back in their hotel, and we’re back in ours.”

  “So they didn’t spend a lot of time at the tables.”

  “Correct, but they handed back plaques and chips worth close to twenty million euros, and a bank transfer of that amount is on its way from Palmer’s casino account to her Monaco bank account.”

  “And I bet they didn’t win that at the tables.”

  “Correct again. A textbook case of impeccable laundering. What have you learned about Palmer’s casino account?”

  “I’ve got Ben here with me, so I’m switching to speakerphone, so he can jump in if he wants to.”

  “Hi, Dan,” Fontaine said in the background.

  “Well, we have a person, let’s call him a ‘cyber-specialist,’” Miles said. “He’s not with the department. In fact, he doesn’t exist as far as the administration’s concerned, but we use his IT skills to check bank account movements, hotel reservations, intracorporate communications, and other matters of interest.”

  We have one of those in Tokyo too, except he’s on staff. Slade envisaged Roche meandering through the bowels of the internet next door.

  “What did he find?”

  “So far, he’s tracked transactions in and out of Palmer’s online Monte Carlo Casino account as well as her Hotel de Paris reservations.” Miles paused, and Slade could hear him ask Fontaine to pass him some papers before continuing. “It’s a joint account. Richard Palmer and his wife opened it at the casino twelve months ago. Since that time, Mrs. Palmer has established a routine of staying at the Hotel de Paris for two days and visiting the casino on two consecutive nights every two months. We reckon she receives twenty million euros in cash from the Chinese on the Chevalier and takes that to her friendly Monaco financial institution for an immediate off-book transfer to her casino account. The same evening, she buys gaming chips equivalent in value to the transfer. Later that night, the cashier moves a similar, slightly lower amount, which one might assume is payment of winnings, back to her on-book Monaco bank account. How’s that for a lucky winning streak?”

  “We saw that go down tonight and came to the same conclusion. And I don’t think luck has anything to do with it.”

  Miles murmured agreement. “We don’t know yet which local bank she uses or where the money goes from there, but our cyber guy is following the money. It’s a bit like looking for a grain of sugar on the beach, but he’ll locate the trail, given more time.”

  “How long will it take? Slade asked.

  “He’s working on it now. On the second night, she withdraws a moderate amount of cash—about fifty thousand euros—from her casino account, to buy plaques of that value, I assume. Later that evening, the cashier transfers roughly twenty million euros out of her account, probably to her on-book Monaco account, and again it’s presumed equivalent to the value of her supposed winnings.”

  “It looks like that will happen tomorrow night again. Roche overheard them discussing a private poker game at the casino with their Chinese guests from the Chevalier.”

  “So they would have us believe they’re routinely lucky at poker too,” Miles said.

  “Some people believe it. The Palmers have a reputation among folks at the marina as big winners. A more rational explanation would be that their complicit Chinese opponents have also set up a casino account to buy a bunch of plaques and chips on the second night like Palmer. And of course, they lose practically all of it to her.”

  “If the Chinese lose to Palmer, it’s sure to be a rigged game. Most Chinese are consummate gamblers. I’d like you and Fontaine to work daytime surveillance on Palmer and Hewitt tomorrow and the following day. I’m sure they’ll visit Palmer’s private Monaco bank and transfer the funds to a hidden bank account of a shell company they own, operating out of a one-room office in the British Virgin or Cayman Islands or another tax haven. If we know which bank they use here, it’ll be easier for your cyber-specialist to pick up the trail.”

  Offshore private banking had become so virtual and difficult to track that without the skills of ethical hackers like Roche and the cyber-specialist in Marseille, investigators often encountered a blank page. Slade recalled his early days at the FBI working with a financial crimes team. He’d learned that a concealed bank account could be located in one country while the legal structure owning it was seated in an anonymous offshore company. This entity, in
turn, belonged to a trust in another country and the trustees were based in yet another country. Well-rewarded professional enablers across the private banking industry assiduously safeguarded the money of people wanting to hide their wealth from the taxman and the regulators.

  And the Palmers were sure to be using the best private banker available to camouflage the trail to their money.

  “No problem. We’ll position ourselves at the Hotel de Paris early and keep you informed,” Miles said, snapping Slade from his reverie and back into the conversation.

  “Mrs. Palmer will meet us tomorrow morning at the Hotel de Paris. We have an eleven o’clock appointment,” Slade reminded him.

  “Good chance for us to take a break,” Miles said. “You can do the sums yourself, but it looks like, by tomorrow evening, she might have raked in two hundred and forty million euros in twelve months if past bimonthly transactions have been identical. That shouldn’t be too difficult for our guy to trace.”

  “Circumstantial evidence points to the money being payment from the Chinese in return for a service. We have a pretty good idea now about how they pay. Now we have to find out why,” Slade said.

  “I have an idea about that.” Fontaine jumped into the conversation. “I went into the wrong business. I’m a born cleaner.” He laughed, and Slade heard him rustling papers. “I found an email printout that must have slipped underneath an armchair in a guest cabin of the Chevalier. I have a person’s name, a company name, and the company’s address in Shenyang city in the Huanggu District of Liaoning province of north-eastern China. I’ve already checked. It’s an industrial area and the company manufactures fighter planes for the military, so there’s the connection with—”

  “Can you scan the message and email it to me?” Slade broke into Fontaine’s report, his spine tingling.

  “Done already, my friend, as I speak. You’ll find it when you check your emails again.”