Read Online Death of a Bankster by David Bishop - Free Book Online

while. In the study for certain, the desk, maybe looking for a floor or wall safe behind pictures or wherever. See what you can find that might point us toward the perps. Assuming Crawford is dead we can’t talk to him, so I’d sure like to have a heart-to-heart with these imposters.”
    Bill nodded before returning to work with his crew.
    Maddie called her partner, Sue Martin, who had spent the morning focusing on the public and police records on Paige and her husband. “What have you found on Mr. and Mrs. Crawford?” Maddie asked.
    “No bad shit. They’re both clean. Credit’s good. Paige Crawford worked a few years as a dress designer, but she ended that a few years after they were married. He’s fifty, she’s forty-two. What I looked at said they’ve been married sixteen years. No kids. This was the only marriage for both of them. Paige has had a parking ticket, Sam two speeding tickets, but no big speed. No arrests. No reports of domestic violence or disturbing the peace. The Crawfords appear to be the kind of folks we hired on to serve and protect. In shorthand, I got nada.”
    “Run that nurse, Carla Roth, through the mill. She’s really the only corroboration there is so let’s take a peek under her tent.”
    * * *
    “Have you learned anything new from Sam Crawford’s computer and phone?”
    “Not really,” Ryan said. “I had a local man I can trust help me take a look. It’s on the way back to you so you can have some of your experts turn back the covers, but I doubt you’ll find any secret compartments in there. Sam Crawford is not some agent trained in the backchannel use of a computer. For him, I think it was merely a working tool, a few encryptions, but my guy here got through those. A few more names I didn’t have, but mostly just support and confirmation about stuff I already knew. Sam Crawford was carrying the water for his boss, Maxwell Norbert, the top dog at Nation’s First Bank & Trust, a Phoenix bank wholly owned by a holding company in L.A. I need you to look into the holding company, its officers and shareholders. Sam was the point man for bringing money into the U.S. banking system in large amounts, without reporting it to the IRS or Treasury.”
    “For the group we suspect?”
    “ Al Salaam Fi Al Hamilani , which translates from Arabic as Peace for the Lambs . It’s an Islamic Foundation headquartered in Pakistan. Their website claims they exist to raise money to care for and educate the children of innocents killed by bombs dropped by CIA drones. I remain way short of the evidence you’d need to get the right agency to shut the bank down and make arrests, if that ends up being the best course of action. I think we’ll be better off turning the bank into a way station from which we can monitor their whole operation: the movements and uses of this cash. Who gets it and where they pass it on, how it’s ultimately used.”
    “Clearly,” Ryan’s boss said, “this Peace for Lambs Foundation is a vehicle used to bring money into the States. Once the money is in this Foundation’s bank account, the funds are dispersed out to fund sleeper cells, and plan and prepare for terrorist activity in this country. Sam Crawford and his accomplices at the bank aid and abet those activities, at least the funding for them, by easing the undetected flow of their funds. I’ve asked some of our friends at the DOD for what they have on the foundation, but, to date, the Department of Defense has not gotten back to me. So far, we have not been able to prove any of the amounts brought in have been paid out to fund terrorist cells and sleepers, but that’s got to be what this is all about.”
    Ryan Testler reported that he had just convinced Sam Crawford to pass on the identity of each check payee, also the identity of who cashed each check. “Of course,” Ryan's control said, “that step can't be taken now that someone has stepped on Sam Crawford. If all this was really about legitimate