“Assuming there was cheating.”
“I’m not a man who puts his head in the sand,” Chang said. “Fifty million dollars or more is missing from our company’s coffers, and Philip’s signature is on every agreement.” He knocked back his cognac in one shot and looked at Ava. “Find out what happened, find out why it happened, and find as much of the money as you can.”
(7)
It was just past nine thirty in Manila, which meant that offices in Toronto were open for business. Ava turned on her laptop and went into her phonebook. She hadn’t spoken to Johnny Yan in three months but she hadn’t heard of any change in his employment status at Toronto Commonwealth Bank through their mutual friends from York University.
When Ava attended York, almost a third of her class were of Chinese origin. Some of them had naturally gravitated towards one another, and bonds were formed. By the time she graduated her group was down to ten close friends, all of them committed to succeeding and all of them committed to helping each other. It was the Chinese way — not much different from the ties that Uncle had forged over the years, although the scale was obviously much smaller.
She called Johnny on the hotel line and he answered on the second ring. “This is Ava,” she said.
“Where are you? I don’t recognize that country code.”
“Manila.”
“Lucky you. It’s snowing like hell here.”
“Johnny, I need a favour. Can you talk?”
Johnny knew what Ava did for a living, so nothing she asked for surprised him. “Shoot,” he said.
“The company is called Kelowna Valley Developments and it had an account at one of your branches. The sole signee was a guy named Jim Cousins. The account would have been opened about six months ago, and over those six months around fifty million dollars was deposited and withdrawn. I need to know where the money went.”
“Do you have an account number?”
“No.”
“God, you always make me do extra work.”
She laughed. “Johnny, one more thing. I think Cousins had a personal account there as well, and I’d like to know how active it was. You may have to go back further. In fact, it would be helpful if you could go back as far as you can.”
“Two years is about the maximum the system will allow.”
“That’s fine.”
“How quickly do you need this?”
“Now.”
“Of course,” he said, laughing. “I have a meeting starting in ten minutes and I’ll be tied up most of the morning. I won’t be able to get to it until lunch time.”
“I’ll wait up.”
Ava hung up and signed into her email. There was a note from Derek saying he had moved into her condo for a few days and that he intended to contact Mimi. And by the way, he wrote, is she the short, chunky brunette or the tall blonde with large breasts?
Before leaving Toronto, Ava had barely had enough time to get things sorted. She had been reduced to firing off last-minute emails to her sister, Marian; her mother, Jennie; and her best friend, Mimi. However, she did have time to talk to one of her closest male friends, Derek Liang. Derek was the only other person she knew who practised bak mei, one of the oldest and deadliest martial arts, and she employed him from time to time in her work. He lived in Richmond Hill, a northern suburb of Toronto that was predominantly Chinese, and had expressed interest in moving downtown. What he really wanted was to meet some women who weren’t the usual Chinese princesses he dated. She had left a key to her condo for him with the building manager and told him she would let her friend Mimi know he was moving in. The moment she had said it, she felt a flutter of regret.
Ava deleted Derek’s message and opened an email from Mimi. The subject line read MARIA. Ava, I gave your name and email address to a woman last night. Her name is Maria Gonzalez and she’s an assistant trade commissioner at the Colombian consulate. I met her at a business function and we chatted. She flirted with me in a nice, shy kind of way. I asked her if she was gay. She is. So I talked about you and told her she should contact you. I know how private you are and I’m sorry if you think I was being indiscreet, but Ava, this is a wonderful young woman. She’s beautiful, tall, graceful, and smart. Don’t be surprised if she contacts you. And don’t worry, I’ll take care of Derek. Love, Mimi
Ava sighed. The last thing she needed was for her personal life to get in the way of business. She lay on the bed and tried to nap, but her mind was racing. Uncle’s information about Jackie Leung had caught her off guard, and now as she digested it she felt surprise and a touch of alarm. She had been threatened before by people she had rousted, but it had always amounted to nothing. She wondered if this could be different.
Leung’s case had been a nothing job, a simple matter of the active partner in a business trying to move the company’s assets before the passive partner, the investor, caught on. She had cornered Leung in Ho Chi Minh and forced him to give everything back. That had meant keeping him locked in a hotel room for most of a day and dunking his head in the toilet every hour or so. She was new at the game then, less sure of herself and less sure about what tactics would work. When he finally capitulated, they drove in his car to the bank to make the money transfer. Just outside the bank he said he needed to get some papers from the trunk, and then he charged at her with a crowbar.
Ava had broken his arm and his nose. She took him to a hospital to get patched up and then drove back to the bank to conclude the business. When they returned to his car, she locked him in the trunk. She had no idea how long it took for someone to find him.
She thought she had handled Leung with only as much force as was needed. If he hadn’t attacked her he wouldn’t have been hurt at all, except for his ego and his wallet. Just as she was wondering what part of the ordeal had made him angry enough to pay people to come after her, her phone rang.
“This is an interesting account,” Johnny said.
She noticed he was using his cellphone. “What did you find?”
“It looks like it was used as a transit account — money in and then, just as quickly, money out.”
“Can you give me the amounts and dates?”
“Do you have a notepad? There’s quite a bit of detail here.”
“In front of me.”
“I’ll give you the deposits first.”
“Go ahead.”
There were fifteen deposits, all of them less than $5 million, just as Louis Marx had described. The dates were random. In one week three deposits had been made and there was a gap of close to three weeks between two others. The very first deposit was for $4 million, Ava saw. Marx had said that Cousins fronted $2 million. That meant that the $2 million Cousins was supposed to have put in the account was never deposited. As Johnny gave her the deposit amounts, Ava kept a running tally. They totalled $58 million, a bit more than Chang had said.
“What a strange pattern,” Ava said.
“The withdrawals are even weirder,” Johnny said.
“How so?”
“The day after each of these cheques was cleared, a wire was sent to Costa Rica for almost that exact same amount.”
“Costa Rica? That’s hardly an offshore haven.”
“I know, and what’s stranger still is that the money was sent to six different banks and to fifteen different individuals. Crazy, huh?”
“Give me the details,” she said.
As she copied the names and the amounts withdrawn, a pattern began to emerge. “Johnny, those wires weren’t the only withdrawals, right?”
“No. Every time a wire was sent, money was transferred on the same day to another Toronto Commonwealth account.”
“Jim Cousins’ personal account?”
“Yep.”
“And if I’m doing my numbers correctly, it looks like it was for three percent of every deposit.”