Fields of Wrath (Luis Chavez Book 1) (16 page)

PART IV

XIX

Jason had been in no mood for a party. His lawyers had called with the bad word from Crown Foods’ legal team. It would be another week before a revised offer was ready. Though they’d insisted it was all clerical, experience told Jason this wasn’t good. Only days before, the same opposing lawyers had made promises about pulling all-nighters and working the weekend.

One of the Marshak lawyers, a middle-aged man named Burt, was the bearer of all this bad news. “If I had to guess, I’d say it’s something new. They finished their final round of due diligence last month. We duly resolved the issues that came up. They weren’t holding anything back for contingency’s sake.”

“But
right now
?” Jason asked. “If it’s from an outside source, they must know we’re down to the wire. Somebody’s trying to sabotage the deal.”

The sigh on the other end of the line seemed to confirm this.

“It’s a possibility,” Burt said. “But that it came up immediately after you rejected their original offer suggests inside knowledge. If you’d signed in the room, this would all be moot. Who really benefits by sitting on the information until it’s almost worthless?”

Jason wanted to present at least a few theories of what the “new information” could be before calling Glenn. He thought about it for half an hour or so, trying to come up with a few ideas, but none surfaced. He needn’t have bothered.

“I know all about it,” Glenn said, cutting him off. “Donald Roenningke just gave me everything they have.”

“What is it?”

“That’s asking the wrong question,” Glenn snarled. “What’s more important is to find out who gave it to them.”

“If I could take a look, maybe I could—”

“I want to send it to my lawyers first,” Glenn countered. “I’ll let you know what they find out.”

My
lawyers, not
our
lawyers
, Jason thought, knowing Glenn meant his personal team.

“We’ll talk at the house later,” Glenn said.

“At the house?” Jason asked.

“Constance’s party?”

Before Jason could reply, Glenn hung up.

While he loved his cousin and her children, a party to celebrate the oldest’s graduation from preschool seemed ridiculous. This was on top of an actual graduation ceremony that morning at the preschool.

He had tried to come up with an excuse, but Glenn’s word was final. Which was how Jason found himself two blocks from his uncle’s multiacre estate, dreading the typhoon of children he’d soon be enduring in the old man’s terrace and gardens. He looked forward to approaching it with a stiff drink in his hand, then remembered how many professional contacts and colleagues had been invited. If Glenn caught him with a drink in his hand, he’d get another lecture.

A wonderful, calming idea popped in his head like a gift from God. It was accompanied by a pleasant rush of endorphins, and he began to relax. He plucked his cell phone from his pocket and dialed.

“Hey, where are you right now?”

A few hundred yards away, Glenn paced through his study, chewing a piece of nicotine gum. He hadn’t smoked in decades but kept the gum around for the cravings. He’d found this box in a desk drawer, and though it had expired over three years earlier, he’d popped two pieces into his mouth and followed them up with a glass of scotch.

“Are you all right, Daddy?”

Elizabeth lit into the room in a floral-print dress. Though now in her early forties, to Glenn she didn’t look a day older than the incoming college freshman he’d dropped at Boston College two decades earlier. For someone who lived the mostly charmed life of a billionairess, she was by all accounts a good person. The biggest surprise was her success with men, her husband Phillip proving to be a far more solid citizen than Glenn had given him credit for early on.

At times he wondered if his son-in-law would’ve been a better protégé than Jason. But he was determined the name on the building remain Marshak.

“Daddy?” Elizabeth repeated.

“Fine,” Glenn said. “How’s the party? Are Constance and her friends having a good time?”

Elizabeth, oblivious to what lay in the two padded envelopes on Glenn’s desk, smiled and took her father’s hand.

“They’re loving it. Everyone’s in the garden. Come down.”

“Of course,” Glenn said, giving his daughter a peck on the cheek. “Five minutes.”

Elizabeth smiled again and left. Glenn poured himself another drink.

When he came down half an hour later, he took the outside stairs off the study’s balcony, hoping his daughter wouldn’t notice how long he’d stayed in after her exit. As he descended, he lurched forward and had to grab the rails to prevent himself from tumbling onto the concrete below. A waiter sprang to his aid, grabbed his arm, and helped him the rest of the way down.

“New shoes,” Glenn said by way of explanation.

The house’s grounds were arranged so that there was an impressive approach in both the front and back. The house was set back from the street a good thirty yards, cars arriving at a rotunda, where they were met with the home’s majestic Mediterranean facade, Spanish-tiled roof, and enough windows to indicate bedrooms in the double digits. But it was on the back patio that jaws really dropped.

The rear of the house emptied out onto a wide veranda that overlooked a series of tiered gardens that stretched out over eight acres. In it were samples of every kind of plant in the Marshak empire: lemon trees, beds of wild strawberries, and rows and rows of grapevines. Beyond several fountains and hidden within an orange grove was an Olympic-sized pool ringed with cabanas. It was the pièce de résistance of the tour, and Glenn delighted in his visitors’ awe, even though he hadn’t been in the pool for years.

From the rear terrace he couldn’t see Constance or her friends. They’d probably tired of the activities closer to the house and ended up by the pool. This was fine by him. Fewer would notice if he slipped away.

The anonymous allegations were distracting him, though not as greatly as a niggling impulse to call Henry. Glenn knew if he got Henry to call up Donald Roenningke, this whole thing would be over. Henry’s word was unimpeachable. If he said there was nothing to the charges, Donald would take it to heart. Signature pages for the Crown Foods contract would be on Glenn’s desk by the next day.

But this would require Glenn to admit to his brother that he needed him to sort out a crucial matter for the company that he couldn’t do himself.

And Henry would
love
that.
He scowled.

There had to be another way. Something he hadn’t thought of yet.

“Glenn?”

Someone was trying to flag him down from the side of the house. He considered ignoring them, but the second time they called his name he recognized the voice.

“Glenn,” said Jason, jogging over. “There’s someone I want you to meet.”

Jason stopped short, looking his uncle up and down, and extended a steadying arm.

“Why don’t you come inside?” Jason asked, lowering his voice.

“Fuck off,” Glenn growled.

When last they’d spoken, his nephew had been frantic over the Crown Foods setback. Now he was upbeat, as if nothing had happened.

“What’re you so happy about anyway?” Glenn slurred, aggravated.

He looked past Jason and spotted a young woman in an ill-fitting dress. She hadn’t moved from where Jason had left her at the corner of the house.

“What the
fuck
?” Glenn bellowed. “What the holy
fuck
?”

Glenn lumbered toward her. He didn’t know her name, but he didn’t have to. He’d had more than his share of field girls to know what she was. But bringing her to a party? This was going too far.

“Jason,” Glenn said, sobering. “What do you think you’re doing bringing that . . .
person
here?”

Jason ran to her side, trying to take control of the situation.

“This is Odilia. She’s a friend. A very special one.”

Glenn spat in Jason’s face with such violence that Odilia flinched. Jason staggered backwards.

“Glenn?”

“Get her out of here!” Glenn seethed, gripping Jason’s arm so hard his knuckles whitened.

“But Glenn—”

Glenn twisted his fingers in Jason’s flesh.

“If you don’t have the mental faculties to understand why bringing her here is a bad idea, take my word for it. Get her out of here right now. And you get out, too.”

Jason looked ready to protest when Elizabeth appeared on the veranda. Only then did Glenn notice the other guests and hired help had discreetly moved away.

“Hi, how are you?” Elizabeth said to Odilia.

Odilia smiled back, but Jason already had her by the elbow.

“Let’s go.”

Jason yanked Odilia toward the house. Elizabeth turned to her father angrily.

“Why did you have to do that?” she asked.

“Are you crazy?” he shot back. “This family has enough free spirits. If Jason doesn’t start acting more like the next CEO and less like his father, I just might have to go outside the company to find our next chief executive.”

With that, Glenn headed back into the house, wishing for the umpteenth time in his life that Elizabeth had shown any interest at all in the company business.

XX

Bullet holes?
A sniper’s nest?
Laundering illegal workers?
Slavery?
Crooked cops?

Michael’s head hadn’t stopped spinning since he’d entered the little café across from the courthouse and Luis started talking.

“Wait, you said you spent the night in Annie’s guest room closet?” he asked, trying to slow it down a little.

“I didn’t have much of a choice.”

“This was in the downstairs bedroom?” Michael prodded.

“Upstairs. The one farthest from the stairs on the left.”

Michael nodded. It was a small test but a test nevertheless.

“And the records? You have them?”

“My son printed out the bank error,” Maria said, speaking for the first time. “The other records are in my car, both the ones for the people that actually worked at my brother’s farm, but also the hundreds of fake ones that were at the accounting firm across town. That’s why we’re here. We can give them all to you and your team. You can use this, right?”

Michael hadn’t expected any of this. He’d initially hoped the priest might come back with something, but he’d mostly forgotten about him after hearing nothing for a week. Then came the e-mail threat with the photos of him and Annie. Any thoughts he’d had of resurrecting the case himself were duly vanquished. Better to let sleeping dogs lie.

But this was even bigger than Annie had hinted. It wasn’t just a big case, it was the career maker he’d been looking for. It was clear the targets in the case already had his scent, so he had to keep his distance. Strike only when the opportunity presented itself. Anything else would be career suicide.

And maybe he could just get to the blackmailer before the blackmailer got him . . .

“What about the Marshaks?” he asked. “That’s the last piece of the puzzle.”

“That’s where it gets thin,” Luis said, turning to Maria.

“Santiago worked in the Marshak fields before getting his own land, land he bought from the Marshaks,” Maria explained. “We located four other small farms in Ventura County with the same pattern of ownership. Marshak field hands worked for the Marshaks for several years, then got farms of their own, though it would have seemed out of reach economically.”

“And you believe they might have been ‘laundering’—to use your word—workers for the Marshaks as well?” Michael asked. “This is a company with literally thousands of workers on the books. You’re saying they’ve got thousands more working some unmarked spur fields away from prying eyes to cut costs?”

“Your theory, not mine,” Luis said. “But if they have the support of local law enforcement and the land commissioners, who is going to know the difference between one anonymous hundred-acre square of land and the one across the street? There are miles and miles of fields up there. You keep eighty percent of your business legal, and you’re still saving literally tens of millions of dollars, if not more. And if you’re not paying them but instead holding these transit debts over their heads, then we’re talking about human trafficking and, well, slavery.”

It was a provocative word, Michael knew, but provocative words looked great in banner headlines. Still, there was something missing.

“But what about the money? It went into Santiago’s account, only to be drawn out a moment later?” Michael asked.

“My son theorized that’s why they used Santiago,” Maria explained. “If the INS ever discovered one of the illegals working on a Marshak farm, they could turn around and pin it all on Santiago. That their employment forms were signed by Santiago, that money moved through his account to ‘pay’ them, so that’s where the buck stopped. It’s genius, really. A new way for a big corporation to use illegal labor but ensure that someone expendable is holding the bag if there is a bust. They were completely insulated.”

Michael considered this. That it was the Marshaks was obvious. Who else had the resources to come up with a scam like this? For whom else would the benefit outweigh the risk?

“I hear what you’re saying and I want to believe. But what I believe doesn’t matter in this case. Other than the fact that the Marshaks offered to buy the land and, as good neighbors, offered assistance in the form of extra workers to help with the harvest, what concrete evidence do you have linking them to these invisible workers?”

Neither Luis nor Maria replied.

“I mean, that’s the big point, right? What you’ve brought me looks like evidence that Santiago Higuera was involved in some sort of tax fraud. Then there’s a bank error. Then there’s an accounting firm that may or may not have been aware of a fraud that may or may not have existed. There’s nothing there to do with the killing of Annie Whittaker. Nothing to do with the kidnapping of Odilia Garanzuay.”

“Who else would have the money to run a scheme like this?” Maria interjected. “Or even need that many workers?”

“Do you even know these alleged workers exist? Or could they just be names on a piece of paper for some wider fraud scheme we haven’t even thought of?”

“Odilia exists,” Luis said quietly.

“That’s only one person,” Michael said, sitting back in his chair. “You have to think of this the way a lawyer would. That’s how it was constructed in the first place. It doesn’t matter what you think. It matters what I can prove in court.”

The downcast look on Maria’s face told Michael that she’d thought this was a slam dunk. That he’d throw himself at their feet in gratitude. Sure, they had discovered perhaps the first actual document worth presenting as a piece of evidence in an eventual case against the Marshaks. But good God, any lawyer worth his salt would discount the pages in a heartbeat as dummied up or the actions of a single actor.

“In fact there’s not even anything here that could involve the office of the LA district attorney. Maybe a couple of Ventura County sheriffs. But even then I don’t think they’d have enough for a search warrant, much less an arrest.”

“You’re saying we did this for nothing?” Maria snapped.

“No!” Michael retorted. “Not at all. I am, in fact, inclined to believe your theory. I think you may well have uncovered the major evidence this case will eventually rest on. But you don’t know how it stitches together or who to pin it to.”

Michael turned to Luis.

“You said you’d be my witness, so
be my witness
. This time in the Marshak fields. Find out where they keep the workers. And if what you heard about the recruitment of the workers is true, I need you to find out how they get them here. Also, find out exactly what they’re told will happen to them if they don’t do what their bosses say. There’s not a judge in the state that’ll sign a warrant against a family that powerful or connected unless they have to. But I promise you, if you get that, I can do the rest.”

“What about the part that puts this in your jurisdiction?” Luis asked.

“If they were transported through Los Angeles, as Annie hinted, that’s for me. If you can prove the Marshaks paid for any of this, that’s for me, as their offices and banks are here. And, naturally, if you can prove that they kidnapped Santiago from our safe house here in the city, that’s for me, too. I know it’s asking a lot, but if there are thousands of people working up there under threat of violence, we can get justice for them and hopefully send a message to others not to do the same.”

Michael eyed the pair carefully. It was do or die time, and he was being as blunt and honest as he could. They’d either wilt or rise to the challenge.

“We won’t let you down,” Luis announced, getting to his feet. “Just make sure you hold up your side of the bargain.”

Michael watched them go. Boy, he’d underestimated this priest. Now he just had to make sure he cut off the head before the body had a chance to react.

“You’re going
back
to the farm?” Miguel asked, his cell on speaker as he continued to type lines of code into his laptop. “I thought you were all done with that.”

“Try and sound a little disappointed,” Maria said. “I’m dropping off the priest, and I’ll be back in the morning.”

The priest.
When his mother had told him what she was trying to do, he was incredulous. If some cartel types had killed his uncle, they needed Rambo, not some Jesus freak.

“Did you talk to the DA?”

“
Deputy
DA. And we did. It turns out Santiago really was onto something big. I think we can help.”

“Be careful,” he urged.

When he got off the phone, Miguel allowed himself a little celebration. It had turned out Basmadjian’s range of business interests was wider than Miguel had known. Even more problematic, the ways his men had hid his assets and laundered illicit funds through legitimate fronts were so half-assed that the only work he’d managed to do so far was to undo the damage of his predecessors. Having his mother out for another whole night was a big help. Hell, if she stayed away a full twenty-four hours, he might finish the whole thing.

It was as thrilling as it was terrifying. He was a teenager suddenly in charge of laundering close to fifty million dollars. This meant setting up dummy corporations across four states, establishing physical drops or mailing addresses for each, opening countless corporate accounts, and getting access to Basmadjian’s own accounts to make it happen. He hadn’t expected to be thrown into the deep end so quickly, but they must have wanted to know right away if he had the goods. It was either brilliant or reckless. Which depended on him.

He opened a desk drawer, took out a glass box and papers, and rolled the first of several joints.

It was rush hour, so Maria and Luis decided to eat dinner before braving the highway. There was a small Mexican restaurant off MacArthur Park that both knew, so they went there.

Most diners chose to sit at the outdoor tables, but they wanted privacy and asked to be seated inside. The walls were covered with murals, and the waitress sat them under an elaborate fresco of the Virgin of Guadalupe.

Though Luis was in street clothes, Maria still smirked at the waitress’s choice.

“Do you think she knew you were a priest even without the collar?”

Luis shrugged. “They always know. I don’t know how, but they do.”

The waitress returned, and Maria ordered a margarita. Luis stayed with water.

“Do you have a plan?” Maria asked after the waitress left. “Or do you plan to go up there and just what? Put yourself in God’s hands and see where he leads you?”

“Does it have to be one thing or the other?” Luis offered.

“Well, as I’m being dragged along with it, I’d love to know what I’m getting myself into.”

“Okay,” Luis said. “Then I plan to go to where I saw these guys that one night and search from there. There aren’t going to be many cars on the road. I’m hoping we get lucky and see something familiar.”

“But by ‘lucky,’ you mean ‘hope that God points them out to you.’”

Luis sighed as Maria grinned victoriously.

“As a priest I’m to provide a vessel through which God’s will is executed on earth. At the same time, as a man I’m on earth to exercise my own free will. I have to balance that and have faith that I’m on the right path.”

Maria laughed as the waitress placed a margarita in front of her.

“That sounds like a very convenient way to have your cake and eat it, too.”

Luis smiled. “Maybe it is. I can only tell you what I believe. My faith is everything to me. I’m still learning how to express it, but the feeling is a hundred percent. It allows me so much freedom—yes, freedom—knowing what my purpose is on this earth. I don’t have the worries a lot of people do.”

Maria surprised herself with a pang of envy. What would it be like to live with that kind of belief? Then her eyes traveled up to the image of Mary above her.

“What?” Luis asked.

“Men can become your equal in the priesthood. But women, like Odilia, you can only save. It’s in that way they become objects. I’ve heard here and there about women who are brought up to the fields. Some are workers, but others are there just to service the men. I wonder if she was just an object to them, too.”

“Odilia?”

Maria nodded. “But I’ll bet if you ask those working in the Marshak fields about women, they’ll tell you they’re sending money back to their sainted mother, to their wives, to a daughter. Sons can make their own way, but women need their men to save them. How much of that mentality must come from the church? Worship a virgin, preach virginity to those holiest among you, and the rest of the world are whores in comparison.”