Carats and Coconuts (14 page)

If our rogue elf Stanley wasn’t
careful, he’d end up buried alive in that sludge.

The question is who would get to him
first?

He wasn’t far away. I could feel
it.

Not only was he nearby, but only he
and I and my parents knew the secret he was keeping.

Unless…he’d decided he could get a
higher price by sharing that secret.

And if he had, I hoped he enjoyed
sludge, ‘cause that would be his final resting place, if it wasn’t
already.

Back inside our comfy lodge in the
middle of the rainforest, Roman and I were nursing our chicha
hangovers with a carafe full of Colombian coffee and Stanley-sized
stories.

Well…to be factually accurate, stories
waaay bigger than Stanley’s four feet of hard-core smuggling
corruption.

“
Tell me about Stanley and
his wife,” Roman said, massaging his temples.

Evidently he was hurting from the
chicha even more than me. I hadn’t had to resort to temple
massages…yet. But damn if I wouldn’t love it if he’d use his
magical hands on my forehead too.

Between thoughts of Stanley and all
that chicha, I was hurting bad.

“
Stanley and Myra once had a
great life,” I began, picturing the two of them in the basement
apartment they’d lovingly restored in a building my parent’s owned
in New Bison, the Lake Michigan shore-side town my family also
called home.

“
Little did we know that
Stanley wasn’t just working for my parents. Along with some
Brazilian partners, he was deep into smuggling, bribery, and
corruption, all with the financial backing of a mega-investment
bank to the tune of $20 billion. No wonder there have been a few
Stone Age Indian-style massacres here in the Amazon jungle.
Stanley’s ring had been stealing from them.”

“
So Stanley once made his
family’s living from your parents and their dealings between the
Diamond District stalls and the Sol Larga. But when did he and his
Brazilian partners begin to corner the black market on rough
emeralds, aquamarines and the pink Morganite that they’d mined
illegally and stolen from the Sol Larga’s land?”

“
Good question. I’m still
trying to piece together the answer.”

“
Their shady escapades
worked for awhile, though, right?”

“
Indeed. By stealing the
rough gems from the Sol Larga then unloading ‘em in the markets of
Antwerp Belgium, they made a fortune.”

“
When did you begin to
suspect that Stanley was up to more than his Witherspoon
duties?”

“
When their enterprises grew
as large as the river Theodore Roosevelt’s history-making
expedition traversed, the same river that winds through this
Reservation…the River of Doubt.”

“
How so?”

“
Mining here is relatively
easy because it’s alluvial, which means the gems are close to the
surface, most often found in the riverbeds with nothing more than a
pan sifting the river bottom. But the doubt comes in as to who owns
the treasure…the Brazilian government or the indigenous people on
the land.”

“
Go on.”

“
Add to that the fact that
Stanley set up a corporation called FU Imports. I figured the ‘U’
was for Stanley and Myra’s daughter Ugenie, but I didn’t know the
‘F’ till Fosito took your grandpa’s bribe. One of Stanley’s
smuggling partners must be Police Chief Fosito.”

“
Right,” Roman said then
laughed. “FU stands for their names and not…”

“
Gotchya,” I said, nodding
my head at FU’s in-your-face bravado. “Anyhoo…Stanley was
responsible for converting U.S. funds into Brazilian money. Fosito
would evidently then arrange for the merchandise to get past all
the government roadblocks and checkpoints. The same blockades that
were supposed to be keeping Stanley and his wildcat mining crew
from pilfering the Sol Larga’s stones.”

“
But where did Stanley come
up with the kinda cash he’d need for that large-scale operation? Is
that where the big corporate backing comes in to play?”

“
This is where things got
even more dangerous. And when circumstances also dictated the
breaking point between him and Myra,” I said, taking a large swig
of the dark Colombian brew in my Sol Larga hand-crafted
mug.

Maybe the rich frothy brew would coat
my uneasy stomach. “Stanley forged documents with Fosito’s help and
his government contacts, tricking a large investment bank into
thinking they had the Brazilian government’s authority to mine the
Sol Larga lands.”

“
Which amounted to how much
cozy cash?”

I took another swig of liquid
courage.

“
Oh, about $100
million.”

“
I see. So on blind faith,
without ever setting foot in these forests surrounding the River of
Doubt, some $20 billion dollar investment bank used $100 million of
its investors’ money, no questions asked?”

“
The principals of Maple
Lynch were personal friends of Stanley’s. They then also brought in
their associates, who had been their college fraternity
brothers.”

“
The norm for the way the
world’s economy works, right?”

“
It appears that
way.”

“
So what are you not telling
me?” Roman asked, refilling my empty mug.

“
What makes you think I’ve
left something out?” I asked, damn near dropping my next eight
ounces of Colombian fortitude.

“
I know you, Zoey
Witherspoon. Sometimes better than I think you know
yourself.”

Well, here we sit, I thought, at the
turning point that could determine which of us lived and which of
us joined Stanley in the river sludge.

I
’d
had an idea brewing for a while as to how to catch Stanley.
Actually, over the holidays, I’d formulated a plan with my mom’s
help.

The way we had it figured, we’d have
to catch Stanley in the middle of one of his smuggling deals. After
we caught him, we’d make it very worth his while to change teams,
so to speak.

In other words, if he didn’t want to
play by Witherspoon rules, we’d be happy to hasten him to his river
sludge doom.

So now, all I had to do was catch the
little schmuck.

Okay…and then I had to convince him to
tell us all his smuggling secrets…except for one.

If I didn’t manage to shut his tiny
ass up about that one major issue, Roman and I would be joining him
in Sludge-ville.

Stanley’s smuggling schemes involved
not just Police Chief Fosito but also Brazilian state mining
company lieutenants. To keep the mining company reps on their side,
they needed to keep a steady flow of cozy cash lining their
pockets.

For the time being, Maple Lynch was
padding those pockets. But if my plan worked, they might not for
much longer, which would really shake things up.

If we interrupted Stanley’s money
flow, we’d have a chance to control his schemes.

All his partners knew their scheme
depended on paying bribes for unauthorized mining. But what if the
rough stones mined never made it to their Antwerp
payoffs?

That should do the trick and make
Stanley’s investors turn against him very quickly.

Allow me to lay out the cozy cash
trail for you…

Stanley borrowed funds for his schemes
from Maple Lynch, which is a subsidiary of a $20 billion
Toronto-based company that coincidently is the second largest
residential mortgage lender in Canada. That meant the National
Banks of Canada, the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Fund and a large
Hong Kong investment company that had partnered with them were
indirectly involved in the gemstone smuggling biz. It didn’t matter
that they didn’t know they were associated with a smuggling biz
based out of an Indian reservation in the Amazon
Rainforest.

A-mazing how the cozy cash world
works, right?

Mortgages, coffee, sugar,
gemstones…all related if you follow the cash.

The money Stanley borrowed from these
investors was used to buy stones from the Sol Larga and steal even
more. To boost his regular trade, Stanley was stealing from the
Indians for pure profit. And the Sol Larga hadn’t a
clue.

But they wouldn’t be clueless for
long…

Following a red-eye flight in the
family kingdom’s jet, Roman and I were now back in Manhattan for a
super-short trip. We were waiting for Stanley’s plane to arrive
from Brazil.

In fact, our plane was simply waiting
to taxi out again, back to the rainforest…with us…and
Stanley.

“
Here he comes,” Roman said,
watching the bank of monitors we were sitting in front of in one of
the customs inspectors’ secret rooms.

“
Indeed,” R said over my
left shoulder, “the black crow has landed.”

I laughed out loud at R’s use of the
black crow analogy. Boy was that apropos.

Nothing was a better omen of death
than a black crow. I could almost hear their eerie cawing in the
dark recesses of my mind. Like these natural scavengers, known for
hanging around large-scale fields of human suffering, Stanley was
getting fat off of the misery of others. He fed off the Sol Larga’s
misery of living on a land rich with what others would kill to
control.

“
Like a crow on the thatch,
soon death lifts the latch,” R quoted, keeping the eerie caws
circling around my head.

I tried to block my raven hang-up and
re-focus on the one in front of us.

Chief Valente had told us to expect
around 1,170 carats of our rough or uncut precious aquamarines and
pink Morganite on Stanley’s person.

That’s how it’s done in the U.S. The
stones are usually hand-carried through customs to make them
“official” imports, after which, they can then be shipped to
Antwerp and sold on the open market.

This morning, however, Stanley
wouldn’t be making his usual smooth trip through customs. We’d
tipped off the customs agents, and they were all ready to collect
on that tip.

Judging by the images we saw on the
monitors, the customs officials had found a ton more than 1,170
carats in the sealed plastic bags wrapped in tape in Stanley’s
luggage.

“
Unbelievable,” I whispered,
as we continued watching the screens and listened to the speakers
relaying the bust going down.

There was a second plastic bag in
Stanley’s suitcase, and it had much more than the first bag. Try
another 2,340 carats of what we in the industry call Bonus Stones,
which are extra large gemstones and fancy-colored diamonds. From my
vantage point, some were yellow and some blue.

All-told, I’d say those Zip-locked and
taped bags were worth well over fifteen mil. Yep, as in fifteen and
one half million dollars. In taped and sealed bags in a suitcase
belonging to a guy the size of an elf. And no, a man’s size doesn’t
matter, but what he does with his package matters a
bunch.

“
That lousy piece of paper
ain’t gonna do the trick,” I said, listening as Stanley pleaded his
case to one customs official who was examining a letter Stanley had
produced. It claimed to verify he’d purchased the stones from
“legitimate sources not involved in funding conflict.”

As the inspector seized Stanley’s
jewels, I laughed out loud again.

Stanley wasn’t carrying a Kimberley
Process Certificate, formally vouching that his gems were not, in
fact, conflict diamonds used to finance the world’s civil
wars.

“
Who would have ever thought
we could actually rely on the Kimberley Process?” Roman
asked.

And he was right. That entire system
has been riddled with problems, fraught with oversight failures and
leaks. Because it’s not always applied consistently, it actually
tends to encourage smuggling. But this time…yeah…it worked and
worked like a charm.

“
So what if I take the
stones back to Brazil or on to Antwerp without formally entering
the U.S.? Would that work for you?” Stanley asked, his voice
growing more desperate with each new plan he offered up.

That got a big ol’ “No way” from the
inspector dude.

With that, we decided it was time for
Stanley to meet his new bosses…

W
hen Stanley was led into the customs screening room and saw us
waiting for him, the look on his beet-red face was more priceless
than his bags full of Sol Larga gems.

“
How could you know?” He
asked me, the color now draining from his cheeks.

“
How could you
not
know I’d nail your
pathetic ass?!” I returned his question, ready to turn him into
sludge-fill myself.

No one fucked with my family. Either
one of ‘em.

“
How could you not think I’d
figure out your schemes?”

Stanley had no answer for that
question either.

Well, luckily for him, I had some, but
he wasn’t gonna like ‘em at all.