23. Ari
CHAPTER 23
ARI
T en thirty p.m. on Tuesday, and Digby Rennick was scribbling on the walls in his office while I sat on the second largest of the rocks in his Zen garden. Sounds weird? It was weird, but I’d grown used to it. Rennick’s domain took up the whole top floor of AnyBet’s Las Vegas headquarters. His assistants—Lila Margot and Caryn Hermes—usually sat in a vestibule outside, but tonight, Caryn was tucked up in bed while Lila spun in slow circles in Rennick’s swivel chair.
Inside the office, which was bigger than most apartments, the space was split in two. The left-hand side was mostly empty, with a desk at the far end and a glass table surrounded by four squat stools in the middle. The windows had been covered up to make more space for Rennick’s mathematical graffiti. Lila told me that once every spot was full, they repainted the walls and he started again.
The right-hand side of the room still had its windows. And it also had the Zen garden. Fine gravel covered a sunken floor, with four rocks at one end and a fountain burbling away in a pool at the other. One of the rocks was new. Digby almost had a meltdown the other day when his feng shui expert told him it was in the wrong place, but several sturdy straps, six people, and brute force had resolved that issue. Right now, Dusk was walking around barefoot, raking the stones into swirling patterns. Shoosh, shoosh, shoosh.
“Hey, this is actually quite relaxing,” she said, sounding surprised.
Lila paused mid-spin. “Not so crazy after all, huh?”
“Guess not.”
Rennick wasn’t crazy, but he was crazy smart. A savant. A human calculator. He liked to do things his own way, and he’d built a successful company based on his abilities.
So, why were we all in the office so late?
Because sometime around midday, Rennick said, “Hmm,” and began writing faster, then went to look up stuff on his computer. Lila was certain that was significant, and since she was closer to him than anyone, she knew things like that. But nobody dared to interrupt and ask for details.
Then a half hour after the “Hmm” moment, Erin had called with her theory about golf, Jace Fuller, and our mysterious loan shark-slash-hirer of dark web thugs. It sounded farfetched. But occasionally, even the wildest theories turned out to be true; I knew that from experience.
And the Fuller family made sense as suspects.
Dusk and I had headed to the Galaxy while Lila stayed to make Rennick coffee, but by the time we arrived, Kelsey and Jace Fuller were on their way out of the bar. Seemed they’d been there for drinks and not lunch. That was where things got interesting. They spent an hour walking around the resort, but not the fun parts. They skipped the restaurants and casino in favour of the parking garage, the pool deck, the children’s play area, and the tired mini-golf course that a few tourists were half-heartedly thwacking balls around. Jace gestured at the surroundings as they walked, and Kelsey was making notes on a tablet. He invaded her personal space at every opportunity, and although she remained professional, she looked far from happy to be there.
“He so thinks he’s building a freaking golf course,” Dusk whispered.
“This isn’t a social visit, that’s for sure.”
“Tell Echo. She’ll start digging.”
“She’s finished skipping around the planet now?”
Dusk nodded. “Jez went to San Gallicano with Cole instead of taking off after her, so she’s set up shop somewhere for now.”
Caryn was at lunch when we arrived back at AnyBet, so I’d borrowed her desk and video-called Alexa. Today, she had a rabbit filter over her face. The coat and scarf she was wrapped up in were real rather than computer-generated, and even in cartoon form, she appeared thoroughly miserable as I explained the situation.
“Can you look at Jace Fuller?” I asked.
“Of course, and Kelsey too. If I don’t freeze to death first, that is.”
“Where are you?”
She shrugged. “That’s not important. Be vague with Jez about this, okay? I thought she’d never meet another man she liked, and if she realises we have solid suspects, she’s going to fly right back here to take care of the problem. Which is completely unnecessary.”
There was a lot to unpack there, the most interesting snippet being about Jerry’s past. Another man? Honestly, I’d never pictured her as the relationship type. She was so independent, and didn’t she live with a whole gang of women?
“She was involved with a guy before?”
“He was a slimy little quisling, and the breakup was totally not her fault. But I’ve background-checked Cole, and he doesn’t seem to be a treasonous snake, so she should spend more time with him.”
There was a window behind Echo, and it was starting to snow. The bunny ears turned frosty.
“Shouldn’t Jez be the one making that decision?” I asked.
“She’ll come around to my way of thinking.”
“And that’s why you’re hiding on a mountain somewhere?”
“Just keep your mouth shut, okay?”
That conversation had taken place hours ago. Since then, I’d video-called with Zach, stuffed myself with sushi from a platter Lila had ordered for Rennick—he hadn’t eaten a thing—and reread my own background checks on the Fuller family while I waited for Alexa to dig up any dirt she could find.
Stanley Fuller’s name had come up early in the investigation due to his informal offer to buy the Galaxy, but with nothing else pointing to his involvement, he hadn’t progressed up the suspect list. If not for Jerry’s instruction to keep the investigation hush-hush, I might have spoken with the man, but I hadn’t wanted to risk word of my visit getting back to Cole.
All my research suggested Stanley wasn’t the type of man to resort to common thuggery, but his sons… I’d figured all the big decisions would be made by the boys’ father, but what if Jace was trying to play God and influence his thinking? And was Jackson involved too? He was the golfer in the family.
Jackson Fuller, the older son, was easy to find. As well as several wins on the PGA Tour, he’d landed a number of sponsorship deals, and he was also fond of falling out of nightclubs in Nice, Milan, and London with pretty young women on his arm. He’d been arrested twice—once in Los Angeles for driving while intoxicated and once in Lisbon for carrying drugs. Thanks to high-priced lawyers, he’d wriggled out of the charges.
Jace Fuller? There wasn’t much information on him. He’d kept his nose clean, or at least, he hadn’t gotten caught. If Erin and Kina were right, he wasn’t too good at hiding the darker parts of himself. Did his wife know he paid for sex? That he hit on contractors who clearly rejected his advances? His social media account was a mix of car videos, pictures of him at fancy events, gym selfies, and photos of stuff . Expensive watches, designer clothing, snapshots of a luxury apartment. He had money, and he liked to flaunt it. I was reading through the captions when Rennick let out a quiet, “Yes!”
Lila leapt up. “Ohmigosh! You found it?”
“Yes. Not an exact million—it’s just over that—but there’s a significant anomaly.”
“A loan?” I asked.
“An anomaly. In no way has it been accounted for as borrowings. How much do you know about accounting?”
“I know that I keep copies of my receipts and invoices in a folder, and at the end of each quarter, I give them to my accountant.”
Rennick sucked in a breath. “Do you recall the issue we had in the Torres case? The shortcuts taken with the bank reconciliations?”
Lila looked at the floor because that had been partly her fault, and she’d paid dearly for the error. I nodded.
“There’s a similar error here. Not the same, but similar.” He glanced at his calculations. “Accounting is a balance. Every debit has an opposing credit. If cash comes into the business, you debit your bank line. If there’s a sale, you credit the revenue line. If you borrow money, you credit a liability. Do you follow?”
Not really. “Kind of? ”
“In the trial balance, each bank account has a separate general ledger account, so every currency is accounted for separately. But the financial statements are presented in US dollars. So, each transaction is translated at the rate from the previous day and recorded in the profit-and-loss account or on the balance sheet. But the currency sitting in the balance sheet isn’t retranslated daily—it’s revalued once as part of the month-end procedures.”
“Okay.”
“You wouldn’t find the anomaly by looking at the accounting system alone. It was necessary to compare the accounting entries with the transactions in the bank accounts themselves.”
“How did you get those?”
He looked puzzled for a moment. “You sent them to me last week.”
Fucking Alexa.
“Ah, right. Yes. I did.”
He gave me a strange look, and Dusk giggled because she knew exactly where the bank statements had come from.
“The bank accounts matched up, but then I began analysing the blockchain transactions from the Bitcoin wallet.” Rennick strode to his desk and ate a piece of leftover sushi. “Ugh, this is warm. Now, the patrons who opted to pay using Bitcoin have been disproportionately lucky. I’d guess they were gaming the system—counting cards, possibly—but that’s a separate issue. Plus Bitcoin was extremely volatile during the period in question. Together, those issues meant the Galaxy needed to pay out more Bitcoins than they had in the wallet, and it seems whenever they ran low, they just transferred more Bitcoins in from a second wallet. That second wallet isn’t included in the accounting system, and neither were the transfers. When the first wallet was revalued at the end of the month, the differences were lost in the foreign exchange account.”
My head was spinning, but thankfully, Lila helped us out by summarising.
“So there’s probably a loan, but the money the Galaxy received wasn’t recorded in the system. And due to a series of errors, the balance owed accidentally ended up being recorded as income in the profit-and-loss account?”
“Exactly right.”
“So the Galaxy’s lost even more money than they thought?”
“Yes. And they paid tax on it too.”
“And were there any particularly unlucky players? Anyone who lost an excessive amount of money?”
“Large losses? Yes. But no one that stuck out. I’ll give you a list of the most sizeable transactions.”
Oh, man. This was a real mess. “Who does the second Bitcoin account belong to?”
“Finding the answer to that question falls under your remit, not mine, I’m afraid.” Rennick tapped two numbers on the wall. “That’s the number of Bitcoins that have been transferred from wallet two to wallet one. And that’s the Bitcoins left in wallet one.”
“Why didn’t they just transfer the whole lot in one go?”
Rennick shrugged. “Why did they do any of this? Lila, do you want to get a late dinner?”
“Sure.”
How would Jerry feel about the discovery? The Galaxy owing money wasn’t ideal, but at least we had evidence one way or the other. Plus we had the Jace Fuller angle. If there was a way to connect the two… Why would the Fullers loan money to a failing business? Presumably so they could pressure Uncle Mike to sell, but then their plan was thwarted when he died.
“Thank you for everything,” I told Rennick. “Honestly, I have no idea how I would have worked this out on my own. I could skip a couple of invoices?”
“No need—it was fun.”
Fun? Fun? “Okay then.”
Next time I found a hellishly difficult problem involving math or finance, I knew who to come to. Did I want another case like this one? The beginning was frustrating, but now that it was ramping up, I felt the familiar buzz of excitement in my belly. The thrill of the chase.
“There is one other interesting tidbit,” Rennick said as we walked to the door.
“What’s that?”
“Every Bitcoin transaction is recorded on the blockchain. When those Bitcoins went into wallet number one, they were worth five hundred bucks.”
“Five hundred bucks? So someone just…left them there, and they increased in value?”
“For over a decade. There were no transactions during that time period.”
Who would leave money dormant like that? Who could afford to? Someone wealthy, which came back to the Fuller family again. Tomorrow, I’d speak to connections I had in the city. If Kina was right and Jace Fuller liked to rub people the wrong way, there had to be stories.
The lights turned off automatically behind us, and Rennick shepherded Lila toward his electric sports car. Dusk’s SUV was parked nearby. It had started life as a Porsche Cayenne with illegally tinted windows, but there were a bunch of unexplained buttons that she’d told me not to touch. When I asked what would happen if I used the cigarette lighter, she’d just laughed.
“Guess Echo’s gonna be busy,” she said as the engine roared to life. “Serves her right for meddling.”
“She wants me to keep the details from Jerry.”
“I agree with her on that part. Jez would be on the next flight back to Vegas, and at least one of us needs a healthy sex life.”
“Nobody else on the team dates?”
“Not really. Priest marries random women from time to time.” A message lit up on the car’s dash, but it wasn’t in English. “Sin has to work tonight, which means I’ll stay at the Johansen place.”
“What language is that?”
“Arabic.”
“I didn’t realise you spoke another language.”
“We all speak other languages. I’ll drop you off at the house and come back later.”
“You still think it’s worth staying there?”
“We can’t be sure that our suspect is only recruiting via Amber Road, and if some whack job shows up to trash Cole’s home, we’d like to prevent that.”
Would Dusk really wade into a fight? The other girls I’d met had a hard edge to them—Jerry, Tulsa, Sin. Even Alexa. But Dusk? She seemed like such a sweetheart. The kind of girl who’d bring tissues after a breakup and come over with chicken soup when you were sick.
But I wasn’t in a position to disagree, so I nodded. After all, I wouldn’t be able to take on multiple intruders, and Dusk might be able to call in reinforcements.
“I’ll call Jerry. Tell her about the loan but not the possible connection to the Fuller family.”
“That would work. If you don’t tell her anything at all, she’ll be suspicious.” She tapped the screen, and it went blank. “I’ll bring snacks. We can watch a movie. Hey, it’ll be fun.”
Fun. Vegas wasn’t fun, not anymore. My heart was in Santa Cruz, and I couldn’t wait to get back there.