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“I have someone working on it who’s making progress.”
“Your hacker friend?”
“No, someone even better.”
“Still, forward them to me and I’ll put my people on it. Another set of eyes never hurts.”
Devine did so.
Campbell said, “We’ll have our forensic accounting people go over the surveillance footage, of course. But you have your MBA. What do you make of it so far?”
“Enormous amounts of money coming in from what looks to be foreign sources, and enormous amounts of money going out. Locust Group is one recipient. They own the Lombard Theater, on Broadway, and Michelle Montgomery’s walk-up in SoHo, and the brownstone on the Upper East Side that Christian Chilton lives in. That’s just the tip of the iceberg. There could be thousands, tens of thousands of properties and assets being purchased.”
“You said foreign. Can you tell the precise sources of the funds coming in?” asked Campbell.
“Numbered accounts, maybe Swiss, maybe Bahamas, maybe Chad. Offshore platforms, the routing is a labyrinth. It’ll take an army of your forensics accountants to unravel it. There were also what looked to be transfers of cryptocurrency of various types. This is definitely a global scenario.”
Campbell tapped his fish with his fork. “So what do you think is going on there? Money laundering?”
“The obvious answer, of course, would be yes. But in the world of modern finance, having an automated system like this in place to buy all sorts of assets and transferring money all over the globe could be completely legit. Speed is one’s friend in this arena, and lots of firms do things similar to this, although not with near the same velocity and scale.”
“Do you really think it’s legit?” asked Campbell.
“Except for two things, I would tell you I’m not sure.”
“What are those two things?”
“Sara Ewes and Jennifer Stamos being murdered. That is obviously not something that typically happens in connection with big investment firms doing these sorts of transactions. So hopefully it will be enough to take them down, right?”
He looked at Campbell; the man didn’t seem overly confident.
“What is it?” asked Devine.
“There’s the matter of proof.”
“What I got—”
“—is inadmissible, Devine. Fruit of the tainted tree.”
“But I’m a civilian.”
“Any competent defense lawyer would argue that you had been effectively deputized by the government, and, indeed, used a piece of specialized surveillance equipment provided by the federal government. We won’t have a legal leg to stand on.”
“I guess not,” conceded Devine.
“But there are perhaps ways to work around that.”
“I sure as hell hope so. What did you learn about Hancock, the imposter in NYPD detective clothing?”
“We can’t confirm this yet, of course, but my sources told me it sounds an awful lot like a chap named Eric Bartlett. He’s a former CIA operative. Left government service about eight years ago. He’s popped up here and there working for some unsavory types. But he was too slippery to catch and hold. He’s previously pulled impersonations like this for different clients.”
“Well, hopefully we can put an end to those impersonations, and to him. Because I don’t want to run into that guy again if I don’t have to.”
* * *
When Devine got home later that night, Tapshaw’s light was out, but Speers’s light was on. He knocked on her door.
“Yes?”
