Swimming To Catalina

“One bank could finance all that?”

“No. But there’s something else I haven’t told you.”

“Go ahead.”

“A couple of years ago, Oney sent me to a man named Barone, who runs some sort of financial services company. Barone asked me if I’d like to make a substantial investment for an absolutely amazing return, tax-free.”

“Uh-oh.”

“Yes, but I didn’t see it at the time. I gave him half a million dollars, and every month a man delivered cash payment to me. I’d give the money to Barone and he would send it abroad, for a fee, where it would be invested in a company name.”

“He’d launder the money?”

“Yes, I suppose that’s what you’d call it.”

“Sounds like loan-sharking or drugs. Nothing else could bring that kind of return on an investment.”

“It was working out to about ten percent a month,” Vance said.

“Sounds like a lot. Vance, but if Barone was loan-sharking, he’d be bringing in ten percent aweek.”

“I was stupid, I know. After a few months, I put in another million dollars.”

“They were digging you in deep, then.”

“Yes, very deep. So when I told Oney I wouldn’t be his television spokesman and that I was resigning from the Safe Harbor board and moving all my accounts, Barone came to see me.”

“I can guess what’s coming next, I think.”

“Probably. I told him I was pulling out of his investment scheme, too. He told me that I couldn’t-that if I tried, I’d be in deep trouble with the IRS, that the publicity would destroy me. I got pretty angry. I-I believe the expression is cleaned Mr. Barone’s clock-and I threw him out of my office into the street. I was about to call my lawyer when I got a call from David Sturmack. He asked me to wait twenty-four hours while he tried to sort things out to everyone’s advantage. I agreed. That was around one o’clock. Late that afternoon, Arrington was kidnapped. I got the first phone call around six.”

“Let me guess,” Stone said. “In all this, Ippolito and Sturmack can’t be directly implicated; they could deny everything, and it would be your word against theirs.”

“I realized that when I got that phone call; that’s when I decided to take matters into my own hands.”

56

Stone listened to this with a sinking heart, having the strong feeling that a bad situation was about to get worse. “What did you do?” he asked Vance Calder.

“First, I talked with Lou Regenstein, and told him I pla

“I’ve heard of him,” Stone said.

“Billy was very sympathetic, and I was surprised, since he is a former police officer, that he didn’t insist that I go immediately to the police and FBI.”

“So am I,” Stone said.

“It was the first thingyou said to me,” Vance said. “I expected the same from Billy, but he didn’t even mention doing that.”

“What did he suggest?”

“He suggested that I turn the whole thing over to him, that I let him deal with both the kidnappers and the business of the stock.”

“Is O’Hara a stockholder?”

“In a small way; he’s one of the valued employees who own small parcels.”

“Go on.”

“So the next time the kidnappers called, I told them that Billy would be dealing for me, and then negotiations began. Billy met with them, and brought me back a series of proposals. They included paying a ransom of a million dollars, which he knew I could well afford, selling my stock, keeping my money in Barone’s hands and giving him more, and…”

“Becoming a television spokesman for Safe Harbor and remaining on the board,” Stone said. “Now we’ve got them. That implicates Ippolito, though not necessarily Sturmack.”

“Yes, I suppose it does, under certain conditions.”

“What conditions?”

“That I become Ippolito’s chief accuser and testify against him in court. I should tell you right now that I willnever do that. The only real leverage they had against me was Arrington’s safety, and now that she is safe, that is gone.”

“But, Vance…”

“No buts about it; I am not going to become publicly involved in this; there is simply too much at stake for me.”

“You’re forgetting something, Vance; they still have a great deal of leverage against you.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Your investment with Barone.”

“I will deny that. They have no contract, nothing with my signature on it. All I have to do is take the loss of the million and a half dollars I invested, and then wash my hands of them.”

“It’s not going to be as easy as that, Vance.”

“What are they going to do? Report me to the IRS? They can’t do that without implicating themselves. If the IRS began to investigate me, I would just deny everything. The only way they could tie me to Barone is on Barone’s testimony and, in the unlikely event that he gave it, it would be his word against mine.”

“Vance, let me tell you, nobody ever achieved happiness by lying to the IRS. If they believed Barone’s story-or more likely, an anonymous tip-they could make life very difficult for you.”

“How?”

“Have you ever heard of a tax audit?”

“I’ve been audited three times; on each occasion they had to accept my return as filed, and on one occasion they actually had to refund nearly fifty thousand dollars. Let them try again, if they like.”

“It’s not going to end there, Vance; first of all, the reasons for the audit would somehow find their way into the press, and then your coveted privacy would be gone. At least half the people who read about it are going to believe you’ve done something illegal, which, of course, you have.”

Vance furrowed his beautiful brow, but said nothing.

“Moreover, if Ippolito and Barone want to sink you, they’ll do more than just make an anonymous phone call; they’ll give the IRS chapter and verse on your foreign investments. They’ll fax them copies of the offshore bank statements; they’ll do whatever is necessary, and you may be sure that none of the documents will make any reference to Barone or Ippolito. It will be your word against theirs, all right, but the evidence will all point to you, not them.”

Vance was looking really worried now.

“You have to understand that the day you gave them that money, you kissed it goodbye.”

“But they did actually produce a return on my investment,” Vance protested.

“Which you gave back to them to reinvest, right?”

“Well, yes.”

“So, in fact, you gave them a million and a half dollars, and you’ve never actually collected a dime in earnings from it.”

“Well, not yet, I suppose.”

“Not ever, Vance. Somewhere along the line, Barone would have come to you, very apologetically, of course, and told you that the market in whatever your investment is had crashed, and you’d lost everything. He would sob that you’re not alone,he lost everything, too. He didn’t, of course, but that’s what he’d say. You couldn’t even take a tax loss, the way you could have if your investment had been legitimate.”

Vance looked slightly nauseous now. “I don’t believe this,” he said. “It was an investment, not a gift.”

“It was a scam, pure and simple, Vance.”

Now anger flicked across the gorgeous sunta

“Makes you want to get back at them, doesn’t it? They’ve kidnapped your wife, robbed you, humiliated you, and tried to extort your investment in Centurion right out of your hands. And that would be only the begi