Diagnosis Murder: The Death Merchant by Lee Goldberg Page B

friend."
     
    CHAPTER TEN
     
    As soon as the accountant left, Mark leaned back in his chair and sighed. "I think it's pretty clear what Danny Royal pulled off here."
    "Maybe I'm just dead tired," Kealoha said, "and incredibly bored, but it isn't totally clear to me. I see the pieces, I'm just not sure how they all fit together."
    "Let's start at the beginning. We know that Danny Royal was in hiding with a new face and a new identity," Mark said. "You can easily buy both."
    "In L.A., you can buy good identities any day of the week on the sidewalk on Alvarado Street," Steve added. "Driver's licenses, social security cards, birth certificates— the works, for as little as a hundred dollars."
    "But Danny had another problem that wasn't quite so easy to solve," Mark said. "He had a lot of money he'd taken from somebody that he had to put into play without raising any attention. Unlike most crooks, Danny was smart enough to know not to be greedy, that to avoid detection you have to be patient instead. You have to invest or leverage the money, replacing the cash with assets, little by little over time."
    "You don't go out and buy a Ferrari, or go gambling in Vegas, or move into a mansion," Steve said. "You keep a low profile."
    "Which isn't easy to do with a couple hundred large in your pocket," Kealoha said. "Not that I'd know what that's like."
    "The banks have to notify the federal government of any deposits over ten thousand dollars, so Danny opened dozens of accounts just shy of the limit, kept some cash on hand, and put the rest in the Cayman Islands," Mark said. "He used that money to rent an apartment, buy a cheap car, and to lease the space for his restaurant."
    "The restaurant became the Laundromat for his money," Steve said. "He paid cash for everything he could, then once the place got going, he paid himself a salary, loaned the business money, basically funneling his money back through the restaurant any way possible."
    "He paid his taxes, established credit, took out a mortgage, and within a few years the money was clean. He was finally making real money rather than laundering what he already had," Mark said. "He'd become legitimate. But he never stopped being afraid."
    "How do you know he was scared?" Kealoha asked.
    "The fake passports and cash he kept in his safe-deposit box," Mark said. "I'm willing to bet he had more cash and IDs hidden in his house in case he needed to make a quick escape."
    "Odds are you're going to find out his social security number is legit," Steve said. "Probably belongs to some upstanding citizen who paid his taxes, never got in trouble with the law, and died five years ago. Or he's still alive in some rest home somewhere, not even sure what his own name is."
    Kealoha stood up, yawned, and stretched. "So where do we go from here?"
    "We go back to Los Angeles tomorrow," Mark said sadly, then adding hopefully, "unless there's something more you need from us here."
    Kealoha shook his head. "You've already done more than enough. I'm going to grab some lunch, then start going through all this stuff."
    "We could start on it for you," Mark said eagerly.
    "No, thanks," Kealoha replied, much to Steve's relief. "I've lined up some detectives at the station to help me out. Stop by HQ on your way to the airport and I'll fill you in on what we've got."
    Mark and Steve walked outside, pausing on the steps of the bank to take in the day, the warm sunshine, the sleepy pace of Lihue, a town that seemed architecturally trapped in 1977.
    "You don't look happy," Steve said.
    "We've hit a wall," Mark said. "The story ended here; it began somewhere else. We just don't have a clue where."
    "It's not our problem, Dad."
    "Then why do I feel this intense pressure right behind my eyes?"
    "I'm not a doctor," Steve said, "but it sounds to me like you need a vacation."
     
    There was nothing more Wyatt could do in Kauai, so he took the first flight out to Los Angeles. On the way, he turned on his laptop and browsed