St Kilda Consulting 02 - Innocent as Sin

it only occur during normal business hours?”
    Foley nodded. “They sure can’t just be shoved under the front door of the nearest local branch bank. There are proprieties to be observed, or our lawyers will feed the feds their restraining order and make them eat it.”
    Bertone stubbed out his cigar. “Then we must be certain the account has been emptied before the FBI and the IRS can act.”
    “I can’t do anything before Monday morning.”
    “So says Kayla Shaw. You will test her words.”
    “Look,” Foley said wearily. “I’ve already tried everything I can think of on the remote-access portal.”
    “Then go to the bank. Try it there.”
    “But—”
    “Call me as soon as you arrive.”
    All Foley really heard was the chance to escape. He reached for the door handle. “Yeah, sure, whatever.”
    Just before the door closed, Bertone said clearly, “Do not make the mistake of thinking that Gabriel is the only killer I control.”
    Foley shut the door and forced himself to walk, not run, away.

54
    Chandler Mall
Sunday
11:55 A.M. MST
    R and hung up his cell phone and crowded Kayla into a little alcove behind a towering potted plant.
    “Grace can’t believe that you just realized you have Bertone by the short and curlies,” he said against her ear. “I’m having a tough time myself.”
    “That’s because you’re not an honest banker.”
    “Isn’t that an oxymoron?” He oofed softly when her elbow met his belly.
    “I was an honest banker. That means I never thought of my client’s money as, well, accessible to me. Their money was just numbers in a column.”
    “So when did the lightbulb come on?”
    “When I realized I hadn’t given the password on Bertone’s new account to anyone. You can add money without a password, but you can’t subtract it from the account, even as a transfer to another of the client’s accounts. I was going to tell Bertone at the party, but I forgot.”
    “Before or after the handcuffs?”
    “About the time Bertone was telling me how he required special service from his bankers.”
    “Yeah, that’d be downright distracting. But was the rest of what you told Foley the truth?” Rand asked.
    “Which part?”
    “The one about not being able to move money from a remote access portal.”
    “I think it’s true.” She shrugged and nibbled along Rand’s chin. “But true or not, Foley won’t be able to. When it comes to computers, he doesn’t know his butt from butter. He won’t be able to do anything until Monday morning.”
    Rand kissed her hard, then straightened. “I hope that’s enough time.”
    “For what?”
    “Grace to get that restraining order on the account.”
    “Is there a problem?” Kayla asked.
    “With bureaucrats, there’s always a problem.”

55
    Scottsdale
Sunday
12:02 P.M. MST
    G race tapped her finger impatiently on the scratched and gouged end table next to the rump-sprung bed.
    “Of course I know it’s the weekend,” she said crisply into the phone. She’d been so informed by a series of underlings until she had finally broken through to the judge’s personal underling. “Unfortunately, criminals don’t work regular hours.”
    The person on the other end of the line repeated his unwillingness to disturb an already overworked judge on the judge’s birthday.
    “As a former judge, I sympathize,” she said. “However, as a judge, I wouldn’t have minded the few minutes it would take to lock down a money launderer’s accounts. I would consider it time well spent.”
    She closed her eyes and listened to the same unwillingness restated in different, less polite words. Pushing him any harder would just make him angry, which would make him even less helpful later on.
    If there was a later on with Bertone’s account.
    Why do laws work so well against the lawful?
    “Thanks, I really appreciate all you’ve done,” Grace lied sincerely. “If anything new breaks on this, I’ll call you.”
    She hung up and said bitterly, “But I don’t know quite what to call you. Joe will. He’s good with those kinds of words.”
    Pushing herself to her feet, she straightened her T-shirt over the growing mound of her pregnancy and headed for the unbolted doors connecting two of the cheesy motel’s even cheesier rooms. The sharp scent of cleaning chemicals tainted the air of every room in the Scottsdale Sun-Up Inn, but Room 203—the one that had been reserved in her name—was rank with old cigarette smoke barely covered by some