فصل هفدهم

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Tarry Ross

While Avery was at work the two women finished the last two cupboards of files. They had a mountain of photocopied pieces of paper.

By two-thirty in the afternoon it was all in boxes in a storage room in Georgetown.

Over the next few days Tammy flew in and out of the Caymans and carried the papers to a one-room apartment in Brentwood, near Nashville.

There she started the long job of listing and describing all the contents. Mitch had told her it was urgent.

Tarrance was surprised when Abby came to the meeting instead of Mitch. But she was no less efficient.

She gave him the instructions for wiring the first million dollars to a bank in Freeport, in the Bahamas.

‘And when do we get the files?’ Tarrance asked. ‘As soon as we hear the money’s in Freeport, we’ll send you a key to a storage room somewhere in Memphis. Any questions?’

‘Yes. Are you making progress in getting the dirty files?’ She smiled. ‘We already have most of what we need.

By the time we finish we’ll have ten thousand dirty files for you.’ Tarrance was excited. ‘Where are they?’

‘Not with the clean files, I promise you.’

‘But you have them?’

‘Yes. Would you like to see a couple?’

‘Of course.’

‘You can. as soon as Ray is out of prison.’

Tarry Ross was known to the Palumbo family as ‘Alfred’. The fewer people who knew his real name, the better;

then his employers, the FBI, would never hear about his profitable extra work. The Palumbo family decided to help the Morolto family.

Lazarov told them he wanted some information out of the FBI. The Palumbos said they would do it for half a million.

Lazarov agreed, and Vinnie Cozzo from the Palumbo family met Ross.

‘Make it quick, Cozzo,’ Ross said nervously.

‘Did you ever hear of the Bendini firm in Memphis?’ Cozzo asked.

‘No.’ The rule was always to say no at first. And always make them wait: that way the price went up. Of course he’d heard of Bendini, Lambert & Locke.

Vinnie went on, ‘There’s someone down there named Mitchell McDeere, who works for this Bendini firm.

We want to know if he’s been talking to your people. We think he’s selling information to the FBI. We just want to know if we’re right, you know? That’s all.’

Ross listened with a straight face, though it wasn’t easy. He knew everything about McDeere. He knew that McDeere had met Tarrance half a dozen times now.

He knew that tomorrow McDeere was suddenly going to get a million dollars.

‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he said. ‘How much?’

‘Two hundred thousand.’

‘In cash?’ Ross said in amazement.

‘Yeah. You can see we’re real serious about this. Can you do it?’

‘Yes.’

‘When?’

‘Give me two weeks.’