Wrecked (Josie Gray Mysteries #3)(72)
“It’s not drugs. He’s transporting cash. Millions of dollars in small bills that the cartel can’t deposit in the U.S. because of banking regulations. So Wally hides the money in the frames of old junk cars and ships it across the border. Then a transporter for the Medranos—”
Jimmy finished the sentence for her. “Uses runners to deposit the money in banks throughout Mexico. Son of a bitch.” He shook his head, his expression incredulous. “Wally Follet got himself mixed up with the Medranos.”
“What can you tell me about the Medranos and money laundering?”
“It’s not just the Medrano cartel. You ever hear of the Black Market Peso Exchange?”
Josie frowned. “The term’s familiar, but that’s about it.”
Jimmy grinned. “It’s ingenious. When people think of the cartels they think of drugs and guns. But there’s a money side too, a totally separate business.”
Jimmy pushed his legal pad across the desk, toward Josie. He drew a diagonal line across the paper and labeled one side U.S. and the other Mexico.
“It started with the Columbians, but it’s widely used in Mexico now, too. Basically, there’s all this cash that something has to be done with. In the early days, the cash was actually a problem. So some entrepreneur figured out how he could turn the cash into a money-making scheme. It’s basically laundering drug money and then putting it back into the economy.”
She nodded toward the pad. “Okay. Go ahead.”
Jimmy pointed to Mexico with the tip of his pen. “The drugs are manufactured here. Smuggled into the U.S. and farmed out to big-time dealers in key distribution sites like L.A. and Houston. Those dealers get paid a cut to ship out the drugs to small-time, Joe Blow dealers all over the U.S.” He tapped his pen on random places on the U.S. side. “The dope gets parceled out, eventually sold on the street in return for cash. Tens and twenties. Maybe fifties and hundreds. So what happens to the cash?”
“Joe Blow takes his cut and trades the rest in for more drugs.”
“Exactly. Meanwhile, millions of dollars of cash are flowing through the system, back up to our big-time dealers. They sure as hell can’t deposit that money in a U.S. bank. So our big-time dealers contract with someone locally to ship the cash to Mexico, just like you’re saying Wally Follet is doing. The money gets converted into pesos, then bought by U.S. businesses at a cheap exchange rate. Clean money, almost impossible to trace.”
Josie considered Jimmy’s explanation. “That’s a lot of different people dealing with a lot of money.”
“Exactly. That’s why the cartels rule with guns and murder. Too many people step out of line and the cartels lose their empire. But they don’t allow that to happen.”
“Evidently, Wally Follet figured out how to make it happen,” she said. “His son admitted that his dad took nine million dollars in cash and left town. That’s how I got involved. The Medranos kidnapped Dillon and put a nine-million-dollar ransom on his life so that I’d go hunt down Wally Follet and deliver him in exchange.”
Jimmy’s expression changed, as if he was finally understanding the magnitude of what she was saying.
“So what happens when someone like Wally Follet screws over the Medranos?” she asked.
Jimmy frowned deeply and sipped his coffee, looking at Josie as if trying to censor his words. He finally said, “The Medranos can’t afford to let Wally go unpunished. If it’s that easy to steal several million dollars from them, then the Medranos appear weak. This is a major breach in their system and they have to settle the score. Wally’s a dead man.”
*
After the ride back, Josie walked into the office and found Otto on the phone.
She sat down at her desk and opened the notes she’d been keeping on the case. She began typing up her thoughts on her conversation with Jimmy, and then stopped to scroll back to her original ideas about Christina Handley’s murder. She had written that Otto believed her murder was tied to the kidnappers, but Josie had a line of question marks after that statement.
Otto hung up and turned his chair to face Josie. “What’s the word?”
Josie rubbed at her bottom lip, staring at Otto and sorting through her thoughts. “I met with Jimmy Dare this morning.” After Josie quickly summarized her conversation with Jimmy, she gave her own analysis. “Here’s my issue. The cartel would have never taken such a bad shot and left Christina’s death to chance. Someone not only took a bad shot, but they also took the time to rifle through her purse, find the keys, turn out the lights, and lock the door on their way out. That’s not the work of the Medranos.”
“Who else makes sense? Who else had the motivation to kill her?”
“Let’s talk about that. The feds don’t know that Wally was working directly for the Medranos in a money-laundering scheme, right? They suspect he’s involved in a drug-or gun-running ring, but Hardner said they couldn’t find evidence. What if Wally went to the office the night Dillon was kidnapped to get the records before the feds could get to them? Hec said that his dad had been tipped off about the indictment. Maybe he believed those records could implicate him and Hec somehow.”
“So he calls Christina and gets her to meet him at the office that night. He gets the records and shoots her because she knows too much,” Otto continued her line of thought for her. “But how does he know to go that night? He just happens to show up the night Dillon was kidnapped?”