St Kilda Consulting 02 - Innocent as Sin

unenforceable antibusiness regs, and the lawyers find ways around them. Correspondent accounts are a legal superhighway. Nobody ever checks the correspondent accounts, not inside the bank and not at Treasury. Everybody is clean and everybody is happy.”
    Kayla wished she was happy about what she was hearing, but she wasn’t. If the feds came down on her, she wanted something more solid than a “defensible” position to shield her.
    The telephone light started blinking again, double time. Urgent.
    “So move the money and let me take care of the rest,” Foley said. “And if Andre comes up with any more big checks, do the same thing. I’ll keep you posted, but don’t get impatient. It will take time to do the background work and walk it up the line to Operations.”
    “You’re asking me to move millions of dollars of uncertain origin into the U.S. banking system,” Kayla said. “That’s called laundering.”
    “Not so long as I put a hold on the money.”
    “What?”
    “I’ll lock down the correspondent account.”
    “How will that help?” she asked.
    “It will be pretty much like the money never left Aruba. Then, after we investigate and find out that everything is kosher, we release the funds and let Andre Bertone do what he wants.”
    “But what if things aren’t kosher?” she asked.
    The phone light blinked rapidly.
    “I know what I’m doing,” Foley said. “Follow my instructions and I’ll take full responsibility.”
    “But—” My name will still be on the bottom line.
    “Unless you have a better solution?” Foley asked impatiently.
    Kayla didn’t. She just didn’t like his.
    “Cash the check. I’ll put the rest of it in motion,” Foley said.
    He turned his back on her and reached for the phone.

13
    Victoria, B.C.
Friday
12:15 P.M. PST
    R and McCree looked around John Neto’s suite in disbelief. There were TV cameras, lights, a makeup artist, a hair stylist, a continuity person with a clipboard and a frown, the telegenic Brent Thomas with an earnest yet horrified expression on his face, and a black man with a steel-tipped forearm prosthesis talking about war atrocities.
    Everything but a dancing pig.
    He turned on Faroe. “You didn’t say anything about a media circus.”
    “Interview, not a circus,” Faroe said. “ The World in One Hour is high-class crap.”
    “Quiet!” someone called out.
    Quietly Rand raised a middle finger. Then he leaned close and murmured in Faroe’s ear. “Just thought I’d let you know—from what I’ve read so far, Kayla Shaw isn’t good for it.”
    “Not a crook?”
    “Not likely. Read between the lines of her dossier. Backpacked all over the world. Younger sister has a Ph.D. in tropicaldiseases, married to a doctor, both working for Doctors without Borders. Close family until the parents died. Kayla doesn’t gamble, get drunk, do drugs, or hump along the casual sex circuit. Smart, middle-class, hardworking. Somehow Bertone twisted her. It’s how he does business.”
    “I’ll keep it in mind,” Faroe said. “You keep in mind that most white-collar crooks don’t start out to end up felons.”
    “You really think she’s a crook?” Rand asked.
    “I’m partial to the Mexican justice system—guilty until proven innocent. Grace feels like you do, if it matters.”
    Rand shrugged. Nothing mattered but getting close enough to Bertone to kill him.
    But he really hated to see an innocent ground to bits by transnational criminals and governments that were rarely better than they had to be to survive.
    “Take a break,” called someone.
    Ted Martin hurried over to Faroe.
    “Okay, is this him?” Martin asked, jerking a thumb at Rand. “The photog you told me about?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Okay, but he’ll have to wait. We’re just getting into it with Neto. Awesome stuff. That pink half-arm on his plum-black body says it all.”
    Rand stared at the man wearing jeans and a silk sweatshirt, rhapsodizing about a black man whose forearm had been hacked off with a machete and replaced by a white man’s prosthesis. Then Rand looked at Faroe and said, “I’ll wait until hell freezes solid.”
    “Okay, can you at least comb him out before we put him on camera?” Martin asked over his shoulder as he hurried back to Neto. “I’ll send over Freddie. She could make a woolly mammoth look good.”
    Faroe snickered.
    Rand said something under his breath and ignored both men. He found an empty chair, booted up Faroe’s computer, and began