Chapter 70
GUIN SCOTT-EVANS WORE a mask, a bikini made of iridescent feathers, and glittering high-heeled pumps. She held out her hand to me, said, “Have you seen Tommy or Carmine anywhere? They’re late for the ball, Jack, and I so wanted to dance.”
“Jack?” Mo-bot called, and rapped on my doorjamb.
I startled awake from a nap on the sofa in my office, sat up, looked around groggily, saw the wonder lady moving toward my desk, and groaned. “Time is it?”
“Four in the afternoon,” she said. “Sci just called. Cadaver dogs sniffed Héctor Ramón’s body at the Harlow estate.”
That woke me up. “Any other bodies?”
“They’re looking.”
Mo-bot is by nature a mothering type. She also has a case of OCD when it comes to messiness, and rearranges my desk whenever she can. She started stacking folders, said, “Found a few things in those files you brought me.”
“Tell me,” I said, sitting up, desperately wanting a cup of coffee now.
Maureen looked down at the hopelessness of my desktop, hesitated, sighed, said, “It’s better I show you.”
I followed her down the hall to Sci’s lab, trying to figure out why I was so damn tired, then remembering that facing down a mobster and a conniving brother is a stressful thing, wrings you out. I stopped in the office break room, got a cup of coffee, and then went to sit beside Mo-bot at her workstation, looking at an array of screens that displayed scans of various legal and financial documents detailing the activities of Harlow-Quinn Productions and the making of Saigon Falls.
“This is dense stuff,” Mo-bot began. “And some of the accounting practices at work here are as archaic as a film studio’s. And forgive me, I haven’t waded through half of it yet, but—”
“But you’ve found something,” I pressed. Much as I love her, Mo-bot has a tendency to qualify everything if I let her.
She nodded, annoyed. “Until roughly twenty-four hours before they disappeared, the whole kit and caboodle was on the verge of insolvency. They were burning through cash at an astonishing rate, shooting in Vietnam.”
“That’s what Sanders said,” I replied.
“He did,” Mo-bot replied. “He also said that Thom predicted a white-knight investor, which is what he got.”
“When?”
“Day after they got back,” she said, and typed on her keyboard.
Up popped evidence of a ten-million-dollar deposit in the account of Harlow-Quinn Productions.
“Canceled check?” I asked.
“Ahead of you.”
A scan of the check appeared on the screen, made out to Harlow-Quinn. The check was drawn on a Panamanian bank and dated two days prior to the Harlows’ disappearance. The account holder was identified as ESH Ltd.
“Who’s ESH Ltd?”
“Don’t know,” she admitted. “Yet. But here’s the really interesting thing.”
Mo-bot gave her computer another command, and records of four other payments from ESH Ltd to Harlow-Quinn appeared. One for two million. Three for five million each. All had been made within the last twenty-four months.
I glanced at the total, said, “Twenty-seven million. There’s the deep, deep pockets. Whoever ESH Ltd is, they own a third of this film, maybe more.”
“Sounds about right,” Mo-bot agreed. “Whoever they are, they’ve got lots of money in the Harlow-Quinn game.”
“And yet Terry Graves never mentioned getting a ten-million-dollar cash infusion,” I said.
“Hard to believe,” Mo-bot said.