“This is Amy Parkens. I’m looking for my daughter, Taylor. And my grandmother, Elaine. It’s an emergency. My grandmother should be in the senior recreation room.”
“I’ll check,” said the woman on the line.
“Hurry, please.” Amy’s eyes scanned the wreckage as she waited, but the wait wasn’t long. Gram was on the line.
“What is it, darling?”
“Gram, are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m up five bucks.”
“Someone broke into our apartment. The place is destroyed.”
“You’re not serious.”
“Yes, I’m here right now. Where’s Taylor? Is she with you?”
“She’s — I left her with the counselor. Outside. Let me see.” Gram went to the window and scanned the playground. Kids were tumbling and running in every direction. She searched the swing set, the monkey bars. Finally she saw her. “Yes, she’s right outside playing on the teeter-totter.”
“Oh, thank God.”
“What about the money?” asked Gram.
Panic struck. “I didn’t even think to look. Let me check.” She hurried to the refrigerator, cordless phone in hand, stepping like a hurdler over toppled furniture. She stopped in the kitchen doorway. The cabinets had been emptied. Appliances had been yanked from the walls. Gram’s favorite dishes were broken, the pieces scattered everywhere. The doors to the freezer and refrigerator were wide open. Their food covered the floor. The odor was pungent — meat or something was rotting in the heat. That was what she had smelled earlier.
Amy checked the bottom shelf of the freezer, where Gram had stashed their nest egg.
Her hand shook as she spoke into the phone. “It’s gone. The box, the money. Everything is gone.”
Gram could barely speak. “What do we do now?”
“What we should have done in the first place. We call the police.”
Part 2
25
Ryan didn’t call the police. Sure, he’d been robbed — robbed of the paper trail that could prove his father was an extortionist. He needed help, but not from law enforcement. He needed a lawyer. A good one.
From a phone booth in the hotel lobby, he called his friend Norm back in Denver. With the two-hour time difference, he was still in his office at the end of the business day, feet up on the desk, leaning back in his leather chair.
“Norm, I need your help.”
“What’d you do, steal the locks off the canal?”
“This is no joke. I’ve been ripped off.”
He straightened in his chair. “What happened?”
In a matter of minutes, he told Norman everything. The extortion. The rape conviction. The scam at the hotel. Saying it all on the phone was less agonizing than in person. Knowing his father had committed rape made it almost easy; he seemed less deserving of protection.
Silence lingered after Ryan had finished, as if the pensive lawyer was still absorbing it. Finally, he spoke: “It’s curious.”
“Curious?” he said, chuckling with frustration.
“It’s a nightmare, Norm.”
“I’m sorry. I know it’s awful. What I meant was, the extortion is curious. Your father commits a rape, and then twenty-five years later he blackmails somebody for five million dollars. It doesn’t make sense. You would think someone would have been blackmailing him, threatening to expose the sealed juvenile records or something along those lines.”
“What does that mean exactly — the records are sealed?”
“It means they’re absolutely confidential. By law, nobody can find out what crimes a person committed as a juvenile.”
“So it’s possible that even my mother wouldn’t know?”
“Definitely. Would your mother have married a rapist? That’s why it makes sense that somebody could have blackmailed your dad. Not the other way around.”
“Except my father wasn’t exactly the kind of rich man you’d target for extortion. I don’t know what’s going on, really. All I know is that some woman is walking around Panama right now with every bit of information I came down here to get. Not to mention my plane tickets and my passport.”
“Did you have any original documents in the bag?”
“Just copies. I left the originals in the safe deposit box.”
“Good. Here’s what we do. First thing, we get you a new passport. I’ll take care of that tomorrow. Do you have any kind of photo ID?”
“Yeah, driver’s license. They didn’t get my wallet.”
“Excellent. Go back to the bank tomorrow. If you talk to the same person who helped you this morning, your license should be sufficient to get you back in the box. Especially if you tell them your passport was stolen. Make another set of copies of the juvenile record, the account statements, everything that was in your bag. But don’t take any documents from the bank — not even the copies. Have the copies made right there on the premises, then bundle it up and ship it overnight to me. I don’t want you carrying anything on your person.”
“Then what?”
“I’ll get the passport to you through the embassy. But you’re probably stuck down there for at least another day.”
“Good. Maybe I can find that woman.”
“I wouldn’t go to the police, if that’s what you’re thinking. The political climate in Panama today is far different from the dictatorship that existed when your father opened these accounts. They may not look too favorably on the heir to extortion money.”
“I wasn’t going to call the police. I thought I’d just cruise the major hotels. I know her MO. Maybe I’ll spot her hitting on another stupid American who thinks with his crotch.”
“Something tells me you won’t see this woman cruising bars around the city. This is bigger than that.”
“What do you mean?”
“The woman was a diversion, obviously. She got your attention while somebody else walked off with your bag. Thieves work in teams like that all the time. But we can’t assume that’s all there is to this.”
“You don’t think it was a random hit, then.”
“Do you?”
“I think it was triggered by my visit to one of the banks today, but I’m not sure how.”
“It’s possible somebody got a tip from a bank employee that you came in and opened your father’s safe deposit box. Maybe that somebody wanted to know what you had removed from it.”
“You’re saying I’m being followed?”
“We’re not talking nickels and dimes here, Ryan.”
“Yeah, but you’re making it sound like some big conspiracy.”
“Call it whatever you want. But if these people can afford to pay your father five million dollars, they can sure as hell afford to put a tail on you.”
“Or worse,” said Ryan, his heart suddenly in his throat.
“A lot worse. Take my advice. Don’t waste your time looking for some mysterious woman in a tan suit. Let’s focus on the three million dollars in that second account. We need to find out where the money was transferred from and who transferred it. That’s the root of the extortion.”
“All the banker at Banco del Istmo would tell me is that it came from another numbered account in the bank. Bank secrecy laws prohibited him from giving me the name of the other account holder.”
“I suppose that’s right,” said Norm. “The bank owes a fiduciary obligation to both account holders. They can’t disclose one to the other without the consent of both customers.” He drummed his fingers on his desktop, thinking. “Somehow we have to persuade him to tell us more.”
Ryan thought for a moment. “I bet that woman in the tan suit can help us.”
“I hardly think she would.”
“Maybe she already has.”
“I don’t follow you.”
Ryan was smug. “It’s probably better that way.”
“Careful, my friend. The last time I heard that tone in your voice you nearly got me kicked out of college. We’re not talking dormitory pranks here. You’re in a Third World country with no passport, and God only knows who may be watching you. Don’t be taking stupid chances.”