He handled larger sums than that, frequently. But this had come from Miami via DHL (risky but successful) with an urgent message attached. The sender needed clean money by Friday for a down payment on a Singer Island condo. There was another bidder for the unit, and the sender’s wife wanted this unit, and this unit only. And the Florida real estate people had been infected by the anti-money-laundering virus and needed to see the right kind of paperwork with the money. Next fucking thing you knew you wouldn’t be able to buy a candy bar without presenting documents with your fifty cents or however much a fucking candy bar costs nowadays. The sender didn’t actually say all that in his message but Pleski got the drift. The main point: make this clean by Friday.

There was no “or else” attached, but there didn’t need to be. Pleski didn’t think his life was at stake, unless the sender’s wife was a much crazier cunt than he imagined. But this was a client Pleski didn’t want to lose. His regular fee was half of 1 percent, not much in this case, but a lot from this client over the course of a year. And Pleski had a lifestyle to maintain.

But by Friday? Nowhere near enough time to cycle the funds through a stamp or art auction. Or one of the real estate gambits he ran in jurisdictions where real estate agents hadn’t been deputized by anti-money-laundering authorities. (There was one property in Malta he had bought and sold for clients a dozen times, everybody on both sides always showing a profit.) The quickest way to launder was through a casino (buy chips, then cash them in—winnings!) but that required a compliant casino manager, and the guy he worked with in Interlaken had recently been fired, and Pleski hadn’t even begun to try to groom his replacement.

And so his thoughts turned to his banker, Catherine, non-erotically this time. Although, speaking of erotically, that doofus he’d seen hanging over her desk the last time he’d seen her clearly had more on his mind than banking. Barnstable, that was his name. When he’d taken Catherine out for a drink, she’d talked about him. About what a pain in the ass he was. How he’d blocked some good trades. And, worse, he’d been asking questions about him, Pleski, that Pleski didn’t want anyone asking, ever. Since then he’d read about Barnstable on the local English-language news site. Dead. Killed in a tragic accident on the lake while sailing alone. Apparently he’d been one shitty sailor.

Good to know.

He called the Holborn Bank and asked for Catherine Cole and made a date to see her.

News

NEWS

One child sick in Beauvais. Her pediatrician prescribed rest and fluids, and then the child started to vomit uncontrollably.