Of course, it helps if people think a former Green Beret is running the company, investing his own money in the venture, because an ex-Green Beret must be an honorable man. During this time of war, surely an ex-Green Beret wouldn't be defrauding people out of millions of dollars in fraudulent properties and mortgages.
But then, Eddie Champagne wasn't exactly an ex-Green Beret. Dixon Woods was. Eddie Champagne, not even a raspberry beret. But the people behind White Rose Partners didn't know that. They just knew he had money and reputation and stories. And he had connections to more money. And when things got dicey, when it looked like there might be a problem, well, he had a human ATM in Cricket O'Connor.
What they were running out of was time.
Or at least that's what Sam's source at the IRS told him. After Stan managed to drag his two partners back out to their boat, we got Cricket back to my mother's and let Sam work the phones to find out what he could on White Rose Partners and what more he might find on Eddie Champagne.
One of Sam's sources at the IRS was an investigator named Lenore. Like his source at the FBI, Kyle, Sam had never actually met Lenore face-to-face. But when an ex-girlfriend got into a bit of jam and was facing a potentially hazardous audit-one that would probably show her husband just how much money she'd spent out with Sam-Sam called in a few interagency chits and ended up on the phone with Lenore, who simply hit the delete key a couple of times, and Sam's girlfriend's problems disappeared.
Over the years, he'd found that Lenore was one of the more dependable people out there, if only because she never seemed to fall for any of his charms, which Sam found both admirable and baffling. He thought of sending her a photo of himself from his younger, more muscular days, but decided, ultimately, that if she worked for the IRS, she probably knew his financial portfolio pretty well and was sure that, charm-wise, that was a black mark.
Still, he always tried to put a dash of sugar into their conversations. He called her under the aegis of just checking into an investment opportunity, making sure all was legit. A perfectly reasonable thing for someone to do, Sam thought, if one had the connections. But as soon as he brought up the White Rose Partners, he could actually hear her training take over. "I'm going to need to call you back, Samuel," she said abruptly.
She always called him Samuel. She was the only person alive who called him Samuel. But this time it didn't sound remotely affectionate, like it usually did. Fifteen minutes later, she called him from a secure conference line, which required him to enter his social security number to gain access. That was the thing about talking to people at the IRS: A real paucity of secrets existed.
"Why do you want to know about White Rose, Samuel?" Lenore said when they were finally hooked back up.
"I've got a buddy, name of Eddie Champagne, who told me they were a great investment group," Sam said. He heard her clicking away in the background, and for a long time she didn't respond. It always bothered Sam that people in government had such poor phone skills, that they couldn't pretend to have chitchat while they sourced your every word. It was harder to do back when everyone was still working on typewriters, Sam wagered, though he was sure he would have been annoyed by the sound of the dinging return and papers being shuffled, too.
"Samuel, you know you're not investing anything. You need to see about getting more in your 401 (k), you want my opinion," Lenore said finally.
"I was just going to give them a few thousand dollars," Sam said, not that he had a few thousand dollars. "My girlfriend, she's looking to put some seed into…" Sam didn't know what he was saying. He figured if he just let the words drift, Lenore would pick them up. She did.
"Let me put it to you this way," she said. "You give them money, you'll never see it again and, most likely, you'll be a plaintiff in about two months."
Lenore explained that White Rose was under investigation for mortgage fraud, but the problem was that no one had rolled on them yet. They were still making investors money, or at least enough to keep them hoping it was all legit. Right now, she said, it was the banks who were flagging them.
It was a classic scheme: White Rose used straw buyers to purchase land at full or slightly above full price; then they would bump up the price significantly on the contracts they sent to the mortgage lenders, thus generating huge extra fees on top of the mortgage. To make it all work, they had an accounting firm, two separate mortgage brokers and three different appraisers on the payroll. They had paperwork in order, she said, W-2s, pay stubs, everything, but it was all falsified. They ended up with the land, which they could resell, and which they usually did, flipping parcels within thirty days if they could, often for even larger profits based on the faulty appraisals, huge back-end fees and loans they'd have to touch. "They got people who got other people, too," Lenore said. "I wouldn't be surprised if they had a few flexible people at the banks, too."
"I guess I won't give them any money," Sam said, trying to sound as innocent as possible.
"Samuel," she said, "you can drop that ruse if you like. Our conversations are confidential."
"Are they really?" Sam said.
"Probably not," she said, "but if someone didn't want you getting this information, you wouldn't get it."
Sam knew that was one of the fringe issues related to working with me-there were forces on the inside working for and against me. And if I was being tracked, Sam was being tracked, and all of this was getting approved by someone.
"How not surprised would you be about persons in the banks?" Sam asked.
"Enough to know that it's going to ring some bells on Wall Street," she said.
That sounded fairly dire. If Sam actually had stocks or bonds or whatever it was people did on Wall Street, he'd figure out how to utilize that information. He made a mental note to tell Veronica, since he was fairly certain she actually knew about that sort of thing.
"You got anything on their investors?" Sam said, figuring, What the hell? Might as well just drop all pretense.
Lenore told him it was just as simple as could be. People were being duped, but paid. Investors put in their money, were probably promised a healthy return, and then, at least to start with, got it. The market in Miami was hot, just like in every other metropolitan area with a halfway decent view. And just like every other place, the market had turned to shit. "It's just a matter of time before they stop getting dividends on investment," she said. "They've been running this now for quite some time without a hiccup."
It made sense to Sam, knowing that they were coming to Cricket every two weeks for cash. They were probably seeding their largest investors to keep the money flowing in, waiting for the next explosion in the market. But that hiccup? It was here.
"So Stanley Rosencrantz," Sam said. "Ballpark net worth?"
"Enough to fill a ballpark," Lenore said. "Won't matter, though, when he's doing Fed time."
Sam liked it when Lenore threw out terms like Fed time. This got Sam thinking. "Would it be possible to get a few of the addresses they've bought and sold?"
"No," Lenore said, but he heard her clicking in the background, and in a second his phone beeped, letting him know he'd received a text. That's how the IRS worked. They said no, but they meant yes. "Before I lose my job, is there anything else you might need to know, Samuel?"
He wasn't going to do it, but… "You have anything on Brenda Holcomb?"
Lenore gave out a perceptible sigh. He heard the familiar click-clack of keys again. "She's not right for you," Lenore said. "You be good and stay with Veronica."
"You're a sweetheart," Sam said. "But it's not like that."
"It's always like that with you, Samuel," Lenore said. He had to admit that she had a point. She'd been looking into women for him for too long. It was just his policy to make sure women he slept with weren't sleeper agents for terrorist organizations, or, at the very least, didn't have husbands in the mafia. "And, Samuel? You might want to tell your friend Eddie Champagne, if you see him again, that he's now officially on the no-fly list, along with his friends at White Rose. In case you're curious."