Leverage in Death: An Eve Dallas Novel (In Death #47)(39)

“His art gallery is a colossal failure from which he draws a tidy salary for doing nothing much at all. He pays the staff a pathetic wage, offsetting that, from what I can, see by allowing them to display their own art. If said art manages to sell, the gallery takes seventy percent. He also rents the space for private parties.

“A colossal failure,” Roarke repeated. “On paper. But I’d deem it a reasonable success as a vehicle for laundering money. You’ll want to pass on what I sent you from my little exploration to whoever handles that sort of thing at the NYPSD.”

“Whose money is he laundering?”

“I can’t tell you unless you give me the go on crossing certain lines. But I can guess much of it comes from those high-stake games. He enjoys them occasionally. Nothing out of the ordinary, but he does have connections there.”

“I knew it.”

“Some might come from art. However poorly he manages his own gallery, he does have connections and contacts in the art world. Cash sales aren’t unheard of, and cash is easily washed. Still more may come from other areas, but washing cash he is. And even with that, he’s a complete git.”

Eve shook her head. “It bothers you more that he’s a git than that he’s a criminal.”

“Well, of course. He’s a git, and money slides through his fingers. He has a couple of accounts reasonably well cloaked. A few million here, a few more there. He pays no rent for the gallery as his family owns the building, but he lists rent on his expenses, and merely juggles it from one pocket to the other.

“I want a biscuit,” he said, pushing up to go into the kitchen.

“I don’t have any biscuits in there. What about investments?”

“He’s with Buckley and Schultz,” Roarke said from the kitchen. “It appears Buckley himself handled his portfolio until about eight years ago, when he passed it down the chain. Banks doesn’t have enough personal wealth for Buckley to handle personally.”

He came back in with a plate holding two big cookies chunky with chips.

“Those aren’t biscuits. Those are cookies.”

“I don’t suppose you want one then.”

“Give me a damn biscuit.”

She took one, bit in. “Warm. Good.”

“They are. Now Banks’s portfolio is managed by Schultz’s grandson, and competently enough, who appears aboveboard. Though my impression is he’s passed it to another in the firm. But to confirm that, I’d cross the line you cling to.

“Just keep going.”

“All right. Our boy bought a small chunk of Quantum stock in November, fifty thousand, in the margin. He put in an order to sell this morning, just after the bombing.”

“Panicked.”

“He did—but perhaps just tiptoeing along that line—I stumbled over some correspondence. His broker advised him, strongly, to hold on to the stock, by rightfully telling him he had little more to lose, and ascertaining the stock would level at least.”

“Did he listen?”

“In his way. His response? Fuck it, Tad. Whatever. My take is he bores very easily. But his initial reaction leads me to believe he wasn’t in on the scheme.”

“Maybe not. Maybe Tad was. Maybe he didn’t know he was in on the scheme. Maybe being a scamp, a wanker, and a git, he was also a dupe. Whatever else, he’s dirty. Money laundering’s frowned upon.”

“A pity, as it comes out so crisp and clean.” He polished off the cookie. “Willimina Karson paid his gallery thirty thousand and change—for art. Econo paid his gallery nearly a hundred thousand.”

“Interesting. And he’d get seventy percent of that. I’m going to talk to her in the morning, push out what I can about what she told Banks on the deal. I’ll go another round with him, and interview the two I culled out. Both of them would have had some access to Rogan, have means to study him.”

She pushed up, walked to the board. “You’d have to have inside info. Sure, there’s buzz about the merger, but they kept the lid on the details until they had it set. And this scheme took weeks, if not months, to refine. So they had to know more than the average onlooker, even money people. Speculation, sure, but enough to plot this out means solid data.”

She turned back. “Am I wrong?”

“If you knew what to ask, how to ask, who to ask, you could find out more. Then there’s the politics and bureaucrats. So you’d have information there, as the deal rolled through the red tape. You’d have some leaks.”

“So some assistant to some assistant with the right clearance could brag to his buddies over a brew about drone work on a big deal.”

“Possibly.”

“Yeah, I figured.” She pressed her fingers to her eyes. “Okay. It’s a heist.” She dropped her hands again. “You know about heists, and you know about money, about business, about deals. You know how to cheat and steal.”

Thoughtfully, Roarke eased a hip onto her desk. “I’m taking all of that as a compliment.”

“It’s a heist,” she repeated, “but at the base it’s a con. You know about those, too. It’s not what you did, using innocent people, killing them, but you know how to set up heists, grifts, cons, thefts.”

“Still taking the compliment.”