Trunk Music

leased to his company, TNA Productions, through a dealership over there in Vegas. You might want to check it out if there’s time. It’s called Ridealong-one word-Incorporated. The address is two thousand and two Industrial Drive, suite three-thirty.”
    Bosch’s jacket, with his notebook inside it, was on a chair on the other side of the room. He wrote the name and address down on a little pad that was on the night table.
    “Okay,” Rider said, “so now we go on to his business, and this is where it gets pretty interesting. I’m really only halfway through the records we pulled out of his office, but so far it looks like this guy was into a class A scam. And I’m not talking about ripping off some schmuck’s student screenplays. I think that was just his side hobby. I’m talking about him running a laundry. I think he was a front for somebody.”
    She waited a beat before going on. Bosch moved to the edge of the bed, excitement tickling the back of his neck.
    “We’ve got tax returns, production orders, equipment rentals, pays and owes from the making of several films-more than a dozen. All of it straight-to-video stuff. Like Veronica said, it’s just this side of porno. I looked at some of the tapes he had in his office and it was all pretty awful stuff. Not much in the way of narrative unless you count the buildup of tension waiting for the female lead to get naked.
    “The only problem is that the ledgers don’t match what’s on the film and most of the big checks paid by TNA Productions went to mail drops and companies that I’m finding out don’t exist anywhere but on paper.”
    “How do you mean?” Billets asked.
    “I’m saying his business records show a million to a million five going into each of these so-called movies, and you look at the tapes and, I’m telling you, there can’t be more than a hundred, maybe two hundred thousand involved. My brother works in the business as an editor, and I know enough to know that the kind of money Aliso’s books show being spent on these movies is not being spent on these movies. I think that what he was doing was using these flicks to launder money, lots of money.”
    “Run it down, Kiz,” Billets said. “Just how would he do it?”
    “Okay, start with his source. We’ll call him Mr. X for now. Mr. X has a million bucks he shouldn’t have. Whether it’s from drugs or whatever, he needs to clean it up, legitimize it so he can put it in the bank and spend it without drawing attention. He gives it to Tony Aliso-invests it in Tony’s production company. Aliso then makes a cheap movie with it, spending less than a tenth of it.
    “But when it comes to keeping the books, he makes it look like he’s used all of the money for production costs. He’s got checks going out almost weekly to various production companies, prop companies, movie equipment companies. All the checks are in the eight-to nine-thousand range, just under the government reporting limit.”
    Bosch listened carefully as she spoke. He had his eyes closed and concentrated. He admired Rider’s ability to cull all of this out of the records.
    “Okay, then at the end of production, Tony probably dubs a few thousand copies of the flick, sells them or tries to sell them to independent video stores and distributors-because the chains wouldn’t touch this crap-and that’s that, end of show. But what he has done is turned around and given back to Mr. X, his original investor, about eighty cents on the dollar in the form of payments to these dummy companies. It’s a shell game. Whoever is behind these companies is being paid with his own money for services not rendered. But now the money’s legit. It’s clean and he can walk into any bank in America and deposit it, pay taxes on it, then spend it. Meantime, Tony Aliso takes a nice production fee for his end of it and goes on to the next flick. It looks like he was handling two or three of these productions a year and clearing half a million in fees himself.”
    They were all silent for a few moments before Rider spoke again.
    “There’s only one problem,” Rider said.
    “He’s got the IRS on him,” Bosch said.
    “Riiiiiight,” she responded, and he could visualize the smile on her face. “It’s a nice scam but it was about to go down the toilet. The IRS was going to take a look at Tony’s books later this month, and there is a good chance that if I could come up with this in just one day, the feds would pick up on it in