Lean Mean Thirteen (Stephanie Plum 13)

“That's my girl,” Morelli said. He flipped a bagel back to Bob and took us home.

I'd gotten bagels, doughnuts, cream cheese, milk, orange juice, bread, and a jar of peanut butter. Dickie chose a bagel and loaded it up with cream cheese. Morelli and I ate doughnuts.

“Talk while you eat,” Morelli said to Dickie. “You went into business with Smullen, Gorvich, and Petiak. Then what?”

“It was all looking good. We bought the building, and then we were doing well, so we made some other real estate investments. Petiak and Gorvich both had home offices and I only saw them at the off-site Monday meetings. Fine by me. I always thought Petiak was a little creepy. He has this quiet way of talking, choosing his words as if English is his second language. And there's something about his eyes. Like light goes in but doesn't come out. And Smullen had ties to South America, so I saw him sporadically. It was a little like having my own firm. I had my own clients and my own staff. There were four names on the stationery, but I was usually the only partner in the building.”

Morelli refilled his coffee and topped off my coffee and Dickie s. “What went wrong?”

“It was Ziggy Zabar, the accountant. He figured out what was really going on, and he wanted to get paid off.”

“And what was really going on?” Morelli asked.

“It s actually very clever,” Dickie said. “They were using the

law firm to launder money. Petiak was a military guy until he got booted out for something… probably insanity. Anyway, he was a supply officer. Worked in a depot and had access to all the munitions. And he saw a way to tap into these depots all across the country and move munitions out of the depots into his private warehouse.”

“The warehouse on Stark Street?”

“Yes. Next comes Peter Smullen. Smullen is married to a woman from a cartel family. Smullen has contacts all over South America. These contacts have dope but need guns, so Smullen takes the dope, and Petiak delivers the guns. The last piece to the puzzle is Gorvich. Gorvich is the drug dealer. He gets the stuff from Smullen and packages it up and distributes it. Now comes the good part. The money Gorvich takes in for drug sales is recorded as payment for legal services. It gets deposited in the firm s account and is sanitized.”

Morelli took another doughnut. “So Petiak smuggles guns off government property, stores them in your warehouse, and then ships them off to South America. The cartel pays for the guns with drugs. The drugs gets shipped to Trenton, probably to the warehouse, where they're packaged and sold to local dealers. And the dealers pay for the dope in billable hours.”

“Yep,” Dickie said. “Genius, right?”

“Not exactly. Zabar figured it out.”

“Well, it was good in theory,” Dickie said. “It would make a good movie.”

'Where do you fit in all this?"

“I was the token real lawyer in the firm. I was supposed to give them some legitimacy. The only reason I know anything is because Smullen made a phone call from his office and I happened to be in the hall. He was on speakerphone talking to Petiak, and they were making plans to pull all the money out of the firm and disappear. Petiak said there was no rush. He said Zabar was taken care of and wasn't going to make any more problems. This was Tuesday morning, after the Monday partners' meeting that Zabar was supposed to attend. Smullen said if Zabar could figure it out, there were others in the accounting firm that could do the same thing. Petiak agreed but said they had to give Gor-vich two weeks to transact business.”

Bob came in and sat at Morelli s feet.

“You ate your bagel in the car,” Morelli said to Bob. “You'll get fat if you eat another bagel.”

Bob heaved himself to his feet and padded back to the living room.

“Was this when you cleaned out the Smith Barney account?” Morelli asked.

“Not right away. I didn't know what to make of it. My worst fear had always been that one of Gorvich's drug dealers would walk in and shoot up the office. I knew our client list was scary. A conspiracy never occurred to me.”

“You must have known they were all from Sheepshead.”

“Everyone has a circle of professionals they tap into when the need arises.”

“They bought their degrees on the Internet,” I said to Dickie.

“At the time, I didn't care. I didn't have the resources to make a success on my own, so I was willing to do some denial to get a partnership.”

“Why didn't you go to the police when they killed Ziggy Zabar?”

“I didn't know they killed Zabar. Petiak said he took care of him. That could have meant anything. Later in the week, the police came asking if Zabar had attended the meeting, but even then I still thought he was just missing. Petiak could have paid him off, and Zabar could have gone to Rio. Anyway, have you seen Petiak? He's not a guy you could walk up to and ask if he killed your accountant.” Dickie pushed back in his chair. “You need a television in here. How can you have a kitchen without a television?”

“I manage,” Morelli said. “So what I'm supposed to believe is that you heard a phone conversation suggesting your partners were going to take your money and run and you didn't do anything?”

“I didn't confront them, if that's what you mean. These are guys who have professional hit men on their client list. I represent Norman Wolecky. I backed out of the hall without making a sound, and when the building emptied out for the night, I went through all the financial records, and I found out how much money we had at Smith Barney. I knew from the phone conversation that something illegal had gone down, but I couldn't figure out what it was. I thought it was probably something like tax evasion. If it was tax evasion, I knew I was fucked. I signed the returns just like everybody else. What was pissing me off was that they were going to take the money and leave me behind to take the fall. I was sitting on this information, waiting for someone to come to me, and no one did. So Friday afternoon, I went to Joyce's house so no one would hear me, and I cleaned out the Smith Barney account. It was easy. All four of us have our own password to access the account. My plan was to wait for the Monday meeting. If they didn't say anything to me at the Monday meeting, I was going to leave the country and enjoy my forty million. Screw Smullen, Gorvich, and Petiak. My mistake was that I didn't leave soon enough. Smullen found out about the withdrawal and sent the goon patrol to my house Monday night.”