“Yeah.”
“Jackson is the kind of guy who would actually have those photographs. File drawers full of things on everybody from the governor of Colorado to your pet goldfish. He’s like the J. Edgar Hoover of the legal profession. He can make things happen. And your brother-in-law Brent has given him every reason to pull out the stops.”
“Terrific. Does this mean Jackson knows about the money?”
“Only if someone at the FBI leaked it, which I doubt. But he’s sure getting close.”
They rode in silence for a moment. The city lights of downtown Denver were coming closer.
“What’s happening with the yearbook search? Find any millionaires in my dad’s high school class?”
“Nothing yet. Still working on it.”
“What about the Cayman corporation? I brought a lot of grief on myself trying to find out who transferred that money into my father’s account. I definitely want to follow up on that.”
“My investigator is on it. Hopefully he won’t actually have to go all the way to the Caymans.”
“How am I going to pay this investigator of yours? He’s racking up some serious hours.”
“Don’t worry about it. He’s on retainer. You’ll just have to cover his out-of-pocket expenses.”
“How ’bout that. Some good news.”
“Don’t be so negative. Let’s hear what the FBI’s concerns are. If they say your dad owes back income tax, you pay the penalty and you’re on your way. We just don’t know yet.”
“You think the FBI knows about the two million in the attic?”
“I don’t see how they would. If they don’t, we still have some time to decide what you should do about that. As the executor of your father’s estate, you have sixty days to file your sworn inventory with the court. That’s the form on which you would have to disclose the money.”
“But what do I tell them at this meeting you’re supposed to set up? We can’t put that off for sixty days.”
“The first meeting I was just planning on listening. I don’t even want you to be there.”
“I’ll be there,” he said firmly.
“As your lawyer, I don’t recommend it. It’s best if I go alone and find out what their focus is. Then we can regroup and decide whether you should talk to them.”
“Norm, I trust you like a brother. But I have to be there. I have to.”
He sighed, but he didn’t fight it. “If you go, you can’t say anything. Don’t roll your eyes, don’t scowl.”
“I can do that.”
“Good. We have to approach this meeting like a business negotiation, quid pro quo. It’s like I said before, my gut tells me that this thing is bigger than even your father knew. If that’s the case, I seriously doubt that you’re a target of the FBI’s investigation. But they’ll want to put pressure on you to name names, to help them find out who’s behind the money. And if they find out about the extortion, they’ll want to know everything about that, too.”
“The only person I can name is dead.”
Norm glanced away from the road, looking Ryan in the eye. “I knew your father. As far as I could tell, he wasn’t savvy or dishonest enough to orchestrate a five-million-dollar extortion scheme on his own. The FBI will want to know who he was working with.”
“Well, that puts us behind the eight ball. Because I have no other names to give them.”
“Names aren’t essential. Just give them something to go on. What about that woman who scammed you in Panama?”
“I have no idea who she was.”
“There must be something you could tell the FBI to help find her. I’m not saying we walk into the very first meeting and spill our guts. But if it gets to the point where we’re forced to negotiate for immunity for you or anyone else in your family, it’s essential that we have something to offer the government in return.”
Ryan reached down into his bag. “I may have something we can offer.”
“What’s that?”
Ryan folded away the plastic bubble wrap. “It’s the glass from the bar at the hotel. The one that woman was drinking from.”
“You told me you gave it to the bank officer at Banco del Istmo.”
“I wasn’t about to give up the only piece of evidence I had that could lead me to the person who had followed me. I gave him a glass from the hotel. I didn’t give him this glass.”
Norm was about to chew him out for having lied to his lawyer, but he was more intrigued than angry. “You think any of her fingerprints are actually left on it?”
“I did my best not to smudge it. I bought this bag and bubble wrap right at the hotel especially for it. I was hoping it might help me find that woman eventually. But if things go sour, as you say, maybe the FBI will be interested to see how good I am at preserving evidence.”
“Depending on where the investigation goes, the FBI could be very interested.” Norm looked closer and inspected the dried lipstick along the rim. “There might actually be enough dried saliva here for a DNA analysis.”
“I take it we now have something to negotiate with?”
“It’s a good start. We could always use more.”
“That’s pretty much it,” said Ryan.
Norm sensed something in Ryan’s voice. “You’re holding back, aren’t you?”
Ryan looked away. It was time to tell Norm about Amy. It only took a minute.
Norm pounded the steering wheel and drove angrily off the highway. The truck stopped in the parking lot to a motel. “Damn you,” he said harshly.
“What?”
“I’m fed up already. The glass was one thing. Hiding this Amy from me is another. You keep acting like you’re the know-it-all doctor and I’m the stupid patient. You tell me only what you think I need to know. That won’t work. I’m your lawyer. You’re my client. I need to know everything.”
“I’m not playing games with you, Norm. I just don’t want to get Amy involved with the FBI.”
“Why not? Hasn’t it occurred to you that she might be the safety valve I talked about? Maybe she has the information that your father used to extort the five million dollars. Maybe it was her job to release the information to the public if anything untoward ever happened to your father.”
“Yes, I did think of that. But it’s not fair to get her involved until I’ve ruled out one other possibility.”
“What’s that?”
Ryan lowered his eyes, speaking softly, almost ashamed. The fact that he had felt some early chemistry with Amy made it even more difficult to explain. “I need to know if she’s connected to the victim. Of the rape, I mean.”
“What are you thinking?”
“I’m not sure. We know my father was convicted of rape as a juvenile. That means there had to be a victim. Obviously, Amy is too young to have been the victim herself. But maybe her mother or her aunt or someone in her family was raped. I just want to make sure that the money my father gave to Amy wasn’t Dad’s way of making amends for that, a way of easing his own guilt.”
Norm nodded, seeming to understand. “Problem is, those court records are sealed. Hell, they were probably destroyed years ago. By law, juvenile records are destroyed once the offender reaches a certain age, usually somewhere in his twenties. I don’t see how you could ever verify the victim’s name.”
“Right now, it’s my number-one priority. When we met last Friday, she gave me a one-week deadline to prove that the money came from a legitimate source. That means she should be calling me tomorrow or Friday.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know,” he said, staring out the window.
“But by tomorrow, I better think of something.”
“That’s a pretty short fuse. What if you’re stumped?”
He glanced at Norm, troubled by the thought of telling anyone his father was a rapist — let alone a woman who might have known the victim. “Then I’ll do the only thing I can do.”
“What?”
He looked away again. “I’ll ask her.”