Flamingo Coast, page 1
Praise for Flamingo Coast
“A complicated tale told with deceptively simple ease. Clever in plot, exciting in execution, and tinged with mystery. What more could you want from a thriller?”
—Steve Berry, New York Times and #1 international bestselling
author of the Cotton Malone thrillers
“Loved it! Flamingo Coast is a clever, fast-paced thriller that features ex-IRS Special Agent Jennifer Morton as she digs into the sordid world of white-collar crimes, only to discover that her pursuit is much more personal, and dangerous, than she could ever have imagined. Highly recommended.”
—D. P. Lyle, USA Today bestselling and award-winning author
of the Jake Longly thrillers
“Flamingo Coast is a bold, bracing, and blisteringly original tale that bristles with energy. Equal parts revenge and redemption, Martin Jay Weiss effortlessly blends the best of Nelson DeMille and Lisa Gardner.”
—Jon Land, USA Today bestselling author of twenty-five novels
and the new Murder, She Wrote book series
“I loved Flamingo Coast. A fun, fast-paced ride through the dark, mysterious world of off-shore banking that will draw readers in from the very first page.”
—Cristina Alger, author of the bestselling international
thriller The Banker’s Wife
“Weiss has written a captivating financial thriller that packs a punch, starring a heroine—Jennifer Morton—who delivers a mean uppercut.”
—Steve P. Vincent, USA Today bestselling author
of The Omega Strain
“A buzzsaw of a thriller! Weiss grabs you from the very first sentence and doesn’t let you breathe again till he throws you into the thunderous climax. If you like novels with gusto, pizzazz, riveting characters, and fine writing, you’ll love Flamingo Coast!”
—Shane Gericke, bestselling author of The Fury
“Weiss’s fearless female protagonist, Jennifer Morton, exposes global corruption in a breathless, cinematic page-turner I couldn’t put down!”
—Carrie Smith, award-winning author
of the Claire Codella mysteries
Praise for The Second Son
“The Second Son is that rare novel that hooks with the first line and never let’s go. One of the best thrillers of the year!”
—John Gilstrap, New York Times bestselling author
of the Jonathan Grave thrillers
“[The] Second Son’s cutting-edge thrill ride through Silicon Valley spawns from a spiderweb of dark family secrets. Weiss’s story is strikingly original, artfully mixing classic mystery themes with modern technology. A must-read for thriller fans.”
—K. J. Howe, internationally bestselling author of
The Freedom Broker and Skyjack
“A riveting, cleverly plotted thriller for the modern age, The Second Son combines action, intrigue, and romance against the vivid backdrop of colorful California culture. Readers will keep turning the pages late into the night.”
—A. J. Banner, USA Today bestselling author of After Nightfall,
The Twilight Wife, and The Good Neighbor
This is a Genuine Vireo Book
A Vireo Book | Rare Bird Books
453 South Spring Street, Suite 302
Los Angeles, CA 90013
rarebirdbooks.com
Copyright © 2019 by Martin Jay Weiss
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever, including but not limited to print, audio, and electronic. For more information, address:
A Vireo Book | Rare Bird Books Subsidiary Rights Department,
453 South Spring Street, Suite 302,
Los Angeles, CA 90013.
This is a work of fiction. Any references to real people or places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Set in Dante
epub isbn: 9781644280478
Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data
Names: Weiss, Martin Jay, author.
Title: Flamingo coast / Martin Jay Weiss.
Description: First Trade Paperback Original Edition | A Genuine Vireo Book | Los Angeles, CA: Rare Bird Books, 2019.
Identifiers: ISBN 9781947856585
Subjects: LCSH Fathers and daughters—Fiction. | United States. Internal Revenue Service—Fiction. | Criminals—Fiction. | White collar crimes—United States—Fiction. | Suspense fiction. | BISAC FICTION /
General | FICTION / Thrillers / Suspense
Classification: LCC PS3623.E45553 F43 2018 | DDC 813.6—dc23
For my father
Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name
But what’s puzzling you
Is the nature of my game
—“Sympathy For The Devil,”
The Rolling Stones
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Chapter 1
Jennifer Morton couldn’t get the last image of her father out of her mind. The look on his face—their shared countenance—weighed heavily. He was once her raison d’être, her anchor, now he was the reason she was on a runaway power cruiser seeking retribution.
The yacht hit a set of pounding whitecap swells and the unmanned wheel shuttered. Jennifer braced herself and watched the island lights fade away as they charged out to sea. There was no turning back, even if she wanted to. Two men were hunkered down somewhere in the bulwarks, planning their attack. It was time to make her move.
She slipped through a teak hatch, found her way into the engine room, and went to work. As she rigged a detonator to the fuse box, her mind drifted back to the earliest memory of her dear old dad, when she was barely five years old and he had taken her for a joyride on his most prized possession—a vintage mahogany Chris-Craft Capri—befittingly christened The Great Escape. She remembered how the classic Italian speedboat shimmered from endless pampering as it cut through the rippled surface of the sea like a skimming stone, the warm summer breeze flowing through her long auburn curls, and how safe she had felt as her father preached life lessons: “When it comes to money, people will do unthinkable things…”
She was too young back then to know that The Great Escape was more of a decision than a desire, or to understand the scope of her father’s betrayals. Three decades later, it was payback time. She would soon feel safe again, or so she hoped.
She set the time delay. She had two minutes, which felt like an eternity, so she tucked behind two bolted-down ice chests and prayed for the first time in years. She asked to be forgiven for the sin she was about to commit. It was a big one, she silently confessed.
The hatch door sprung loose and she saw one of the men approaching through the relentless rain, then the other, and they were both about to fire their sanctioned Glock 23 pistols when the cruiser crushed a crestless six-foot swell, lifting them off their feet. They both landed face down. The yacht shimmied through a series of whitecap rolls, sending them back to the quarterdeck.
Jennifer checked the timer.
Twenty seconds left.
Her father’s deep, throaty voice continued to echo in her head as she pulled herself back through the porthole: “Whatever you desire—love, money, revenge—doesn’t matter…”
One of the men spotted her and fired.
Jennifer dived behind the downriggers.
The yacht struck another enormous wave and knocked the shooter back down.
Jennifer climbed up to the ledge.
Ten seconds left.
The islet lights were barely visible now. The cruiser had drifted too far out for anyone to see them. Jennifer shut her eyes and her father’s final words resounded: “The more you have, the more you want. And the more you get, the harder it is to protect yourself. Unless, you take it all and disappear…”
Everything that had been murky was now perfectly cle
Jennifer leapt, jackknifed into the raging sea, and descended into the ink-black void.
“…And there is only one way to truly disappear.”
A thunderous explosion bellowed above.
Chapter 2
Four Months Earlier
Jennifer Morton was trapped inside a six-by-six-foot windowless room on the forty-seventh floor at One Worldwide Plaza. The office—or closet—they had placed her in had been set at an uncomfortably cold temperature, but she had grown used to it. She had been auditing Global Currency Arbitrage since early November, spending every waking hour behind piles of financial documents, determined to find some hidden, undeclared gems. The hedge fund darling had been red flagged for years, not only because all four of their funds had been churning out extraordinary returns for far too long, but also because so many of their investments and acquisitions were in foreign countries that were hard to track, where tax evasion was common.
And this wasn’t GCA’s first barbeque. They had been audited three times in the past seven years, always passing with flying colors.
The IRS smelled smoke and wanted Jennifer to find fire, but after scouring through five years of corporate returns, company ledgers, backup records, statements, and receipts, she found nothing suspicious, inappropriate, or out of order. Their books were spotless. In fact, it seemed as if GCA overpaid their federal taxes and were entitled a substantial refund.
They were going to have a very merry Christmas.
As Jennifer was about to head back out into the coldest, wettest winter New York had had in years, her gut told her that she was missing something. There was something going on at GCA, maybe something nefarious, but she had nothing to go on…
And then there was a knock on her door.
The GCA comptroller, who had cooperated fully and provided her with every document request, came by to bid her farewell. He was a few years older than her, maybe late thirties, and he was handsome, smart, and charming to boot.
“Never thought I’d say this to an IRS agent,” he said, “but I’m sorry to see you leave.”
She laughed. “I appreciate you being so helpful.”
He had been almost too helpful, she thought, but that’s not a crime.
He checked the hallway to make sure no one was in earshot, and then shut the door.
Is he going to tell me where the bodies were buried? Is he looking for immunity?
He sat on the edge of her desk and leaned in close. His aftershave smelled good. And he looked good in his $5,000 custom Italian suit. “I just wanted to say…I was thinking…” He struggled to find the words, and then he came out with it: “Maybe we can go out sometime.”
She was used to getting hit on whenever she planted herself in companies for too long. Despite her conscious efforts to wear the least-revealing navy Liz Claiborne business suits, layered sweaters, and no makeup, guys would inevitably look for excuses to pass by, make idle conversation, and offer unnecessary help. It may have been another reason her boss knew she was the right agent to send out to high-profile audits; her looks were disarming, and office crushes caused many men to make foolish mistakes.
“I’m flattered,” she told the comptroller, “but we have a policy—”
“No one would find out,” he assured her, lowering his voice, “I have a place in the city.” He set his cell phone on her desk and touched her hair. “How ’bout tonight?”
Truth be told, the GCA comptroller would have been her type. He was attractive, well educated, age appropriate, and good at his job.
Unfortunately, he was also a creep.
She asked him, “Do your wife and kids know about your place in the city?”
He blushed, held up his left hand, and stuck out his ring finger, as if he were showing her a bank statement to support a capital loss. “What wife—?”
“I can see the indent,” she said with a snigger. “Bet you a hundred bucks there’s a wedding ring in one of your front pockets.”
He turned a deeper shade of red. “It’s kind of complicated, my situation.”
“I’m sure it is.”
“As long as we’re discreet—”
“Not going to happen,” she cut him off. If he was hiding things like a wife and three kids on Long Island, she could only imagine what he was hiding on the hard drive in his office. She was now absolutely certain he had been cooking the books.
He got up to leave, without a hint of shame, and then turned back at the door. “I had my phone with me—”
“You knocked it off my desk.” She reached down and came back up with it.
He grabbed it back and headed out. “See you around,” he said dismissively, like she just blew the deal of a lifetime. “Good luck.”
“Good luck to you, too,” she said. And he was going to need it, because while he was hitting on her, she had migrated all the data from his iPhone onto a highspeed backup device, where she would later extract all his passwords and company access passes.
The audit was over. But she was just getting started.
—
As night fell upon the midtown skyscraper, Max Culpepper entered the Global Currency Arbitrage boardroom and took a seat at the head, a formidable patriarch with a coiffed head of white hair and thick-rimmed Oliver Peoples that helped hide his shifty baby blues. “Congratulations,” he began, “we made it through another review without a glitch!”
His band of four portfolio managers applauded.
He held up his hand. “But I still want to play defense for a while, just as a precaution.”
The bleary-eyed PMs stared back, their smiles fading.
Culpepper knew they’d be expecting a celebration, some kind of bonus, and they would be disappointed. He also didn’t give a shit. GCA was under a scope and he didn’t want to draw any more attention. “I want to show losses on each of your yearend statements,” he told them. “And not just a two- or three-point slide. Something substantial.”
One of them whined, “We’ve suppressed profits for the last two quarters.”
“The market’s up,” another added. “More investors will cash out.”
“Come on, fellas,” Culpepper countered. “We’ve pulled a boatload of cash from these deals. We get sloppy, we get Madoffed.”
“When I joined the firm,” the whiny PM said, “you assured me that we’d have a say in these matters. Can we at least discuss this?”
Culpepper looked around the room at their sorrowful expressions. These thankless Ivy League pencil pushers should be kissing my ring, he thought. I had the brilliance to set up the systems, the balls to initiate the funds, and the generosity to hire them. The rate of returns sold themselves. They only had to keep a secret, which they were all only too happy to do, especially when they bragged about their Hampton homes, diamond dripping society spouses, African safaris, and debutant balls…
Unfortunately, he also needed them to look legitimate. So he begrudgingly complied, “Of course we can discuss this. That’s why we’re here.” He glanced at his $750,000.00 Patek Philippe (not what he paid, of course) and feigned what seemed to be a genuine smile. “Who would like to begin?”
He listened to their objections and then spent the next hour convincing them why they needed to comply, reminding them of the old adage: It doesn’t matter how you make your money, it’s how you keep it. They also discussed new ways to improve their systems and falsify statements to lure new investors. Culpepper thought it was a productive meeting. Of course, he was unaware that on the impasto portrait of Adam Smith hung behind him was a tiny recording device feeding their conversation through a fiber-optic portal, and that the IRS agent that had just wrapped up their audit was wearing wireless earphones in the office next door, listening to every word.
—
Disguised in thick-rimmed glasses and a custodial uniform, Jennifer pored through every file on the comptroller’s computer until she found the real company ledgers, which were completely different than the books and records she had been shown. Her heart raced when she realized what they were hiding. Global Currency Arbitrage had not only been evading taxes, but they were in violation of fraud. Big-time fraud. It was a now a criminal case. She just had to get the evidence out of the building.
She filled up a 5TB portable drive and then put in another. There was a lot of data and downloading seemed to take forever: 73 percent...75 percent...76 percent...
