Blood Orchid (Holly Barker 3)

“It is, in this country, but Pio and his pop are too sophisticated to get caught at it. The operation is based on an island in the Caribbean called Saint Marks. It’s a former British colony with very loose rules about gambling and banking.”

“How does it work?”

“Well, let’s say you want to place a fifty-dollar bet on a Yankees game. You hit the appropriate button, place a bet, give them a credit card number, and you get an on-screen receipt, which you can print out. If you win, the amount is credited to your card, and you can use it to pay down your bill, or you can take a credit refund.”

“Even if you’re in the United States?”

“Yep. You’d never be caught because there are too many people playing it, and the government doesn’t know who.”

“Can’t the Feds hack into their computer and find out who their customers are?”

“They’ve got their own computer experts working to prevent just that, but suppose we could? We couldn’t arrest everybody. What if we picked a hundred players and arrested and tried them to make an example of them? They’ve still got hundreds of thousands more playing. We couldn’t make a dent. We’ve made overtures to the government of Saint Marks, but the politicians there are well paid by the Pellegrinos, and they’re not going to cooperate.”

“What happens to the money they make? They can’t get it back into this country, can they?”

“That would be tough to do in any volume, but they own their own bank in Saint Marks, and they can wire money to any bank in the world, including ones in places with banking secrecy laws, like the Cayman Islands and Switzerland. They can launder it through dozens or hundreds of legitimate businesses. They own a resort in Saint Marks, for instance. But one of the puzzles is, exactly where is the money going? We’re working on that, but it’s a hard puzzle to break.”

“I don’t get it,” Holly said. “These guys are making all this money . . .”

“Hundreds of millions a year.”

“. . . and they’re sitting in Miami, running a restaurant?”

“That’s just cover; somebody else runs the restaurant. They live well, but not like the very rich people they are. I’d love to know where the money is going and who’s getting it.”

“And this is connected with your work in Orchid Beach?”

“No comment,” Grant said.

After they had gone to bed, Holly thought about the Pellegrinos. And she thought about Tricky’s, too, and what Grant might have been doing there. He wasn’t going to tell her, she knew, and she wasn’t going to ask. Not yet, anyway.

49

The following morning, Holly sent two officers to Sarasota in an unmarked car to bring back Marina’s car. “Just put it in the garage,” she said, giving them the address of Grant’s house, “but bring the keys back to me.”

Harry Crisp called just before lunch. “Good morning.”

“Good morning, Harry,” Holly said warily.

“I’ve got some more stuff on your Russian, Bronsky, from the organized crime division of the Justice Department.”

“Oh?” Harry was going to supply information?

“He was part of the New York Russian mob, centered in Brighton Beach, in Brooklyn; nothing big, just an enforcer, and our information is, a particularly cold and cruel one, in an organization noted for its cruelty.”

Holly was immediately suspicious. “Wait a minute, Harry: He was ex-KGB, and he’s just an enforcer? That doesn’t sound right to me.”

“It’s what my people found out, Holly. I’m sorry if it doesn’t mesh with your preconceived notions about the guy.”

“Does he have any connection to the Pellegrinos, apart from his association with Trini Rodriguez?”

“Nothing we can nail down.”

“Then he’s a dead end.”

“A nice turn of phrase, in his present circumstances, but yes, his identity leads us nowhere.”

“How about some information that leads us somewhere, Harry?”