Lansdale, Pennsylvania

8:15am

Joe Costa stepped out of his cruiser and onto Willow Lane. He was a lead detective in the Chester County sheriff’s office which serviced Lansdale, a bedroom community of the greater Philadelphia area.

Joe was a little worried about the stomach problems he’d been having that morning.

The detective looked up at the Linder house, a nice looking brick structure, with a two columned front entrance that stood behind three large oak trees filling the front yard. A grey SUV was parked up onto the curb in the back of the driveway, and sticking halfway out of the open garage was a dark red sedan suffering from a beat up back end, all of which gave Joe the feeling that his hopes for a blissful morning on the can were about to be dashed.  

 “Okay, gentleman what do we have this morning?” Joe asked two policemen waiting for him on the front step of the home.

“Come on in. I hope you had a light breakfast,” remarked Officer Tom Lightman.

Joe stepped into the house, observing that the front door and lock were intact. There was no smell of blood to knock him over, but Joe definitely smelled gasoline.

“The victims are in the kitchen,” Officer Rudy Jenkins informed Joe.

The spacious front foyer to the home featured a winding staircase to the second story and an oriental runner lining the middle of the wood stairs. Joe glanced at the living room on his left and dining room on his right, both holding furniture that pointed to an annual income light years away from Joe’s detective pay grade. The morning sun was shining through the bay window in the living room and landing softly on the grand piano.

The gasoline smell came alive as Joe walked closer to the kitchen, which was positioned behind the front staircase, so he took a few seconds to reset his concentration. The doorframe to the kitchen entrance and all surrounding wall space was torn to shreds and Joe ran his fingers across the bullet entries, realizing that no small gun could produce that kind of damage.

Mr. and Mrs. Harold Linder were each tied to a chair on the backside of the kitchen island, their throats had been slit, and Harold’s left pinky was on the floor. Mrs. Linder’s body was soaked with gasoline, but her head was dry, and no gasoline could be found on Mr. Linder. The Linders looked to be in their 50’s.

Mrs. Linder was missing a large patch of hair, her right eye socket was broken, and her right hand fingernails had blood and skin on them indicating severe scratching of the attacker. 

“She must have put up a hell of a fight,” Joe said calmly, running his fingers lightly through Mrs. Linders’ hair and finding a sizeable lump on the side of her head. Tiny glass pieces covered the Linders’ clothing.

“We found another guy in this hallway.” Officer Tom pointed to the back hallway leading to the garage. “You should see the garage.”

Joe looked at Officer Tom in disbelief. “More bodies in the garage?”

“No, but the sedan is a quarter way out of the garage…its front doors are open, the keys are in the ignition and its rear end is smashed in,” Officer Tom stated flatly.

      Faint laughter suddenly filled the house and the two officers looked at the detective. Another burst of laughter….from a woman… upstairs. They drew their guns and fanned out.

      Joe spotted the staircase in the kitchen leading to the back of the house and started his way up the stairs with his gun pointed upward to the second floor landing. The stairs led to a bedroom, bathroom and a closed door that Joe suspected was another bedroom. This part of the house was above the garage. Another two steps up led into another empty bedroom, and Joe walked through this bedroom only to find Officer Tom in the main upstairs hallway. Officer Tom had checked all other rooms upstairs, so they headed back down to the closed bedroom door.

      Officer Tom aimed the gun at the door and Joe fired it open, finding two people moving under a white bed sheet. They looked to be on top of one another. A college-age young man looked out from the bed sheet, his face radiating complete rage over the ecstasy interruption. The naked young man, excited sky high, climbed out of the bed and pulled a golf club from underneath, completely ignoring Joe’s announcement of who he and Officer Tom were. The next thing Joe knew, this kid was charging him with the club, and he might have clobbered Joe over the head were it not for Officer Tom shooting the ceiling as a warning. The young man halted, dropped the club, and looked over at the bed where the woman he was with hid under the bed sheet.

      “Who the hell are you?” he drunkenly slurred. The young man sported short, brown hair and looked around 5’11’’ and 170.

      “Cool it son, I’m detective Joe Costa,” Joe shouted. “Do you live here?”

      The young man sat down on the bed and looked sheepishly up at Joe. He didn’t say anything for a few seconds and Joe thought about asking the question again.       

      “Mom, we have company!” the young man suddenly shouted, before shaking the woman in the bed.

      Joe put his gun away, wondering why the boy had no problems shouting for his mother with a naked girl in his bed.

      “This isn’t friggin’ happening,” the deep voice said despairingly from under the bed sheet.

      “Whoever is under the covers, please show yourself,” Joe said not so firmly, thinking now that the voice didn’t sound much like a woman.

      Hands emerged and slowly pulled down the sheet to reveal a young man looking slightly younger than the other. He was beet red.

      Officer Rudy came running into the room. “Whoa! What is going on here…two boys?” he asked with a mild chuckle of astonishment. “Wait a minute, I know you…you’re Tom Rivers.”

      Officer Rudy pointed at the newly revealed young man and looked over at Joe to explain.

      “Joe, this kid quarterbacks for Woodland High”, the officer said excitedly. “Who’s this other guy?”

      Joe raised his eyes to the golf club swinging young man in a way to prompt an answer.

      “Umm….Jimmy Linder…I’m their son.”

      Jimmy Linder was 19 years old and just completed his freshman year at Colgate University.

      Joe walked over to Jimmy and thought about sitting down on the bed but changed his mind. The whole bed reeked of alcohol and Joe had a real good idea whose SUV was parked in the driveway.

      “Son, where were you last night?” the detective asked. He looked over at Tom Rivers who was sitting in the bed and had the bed sheet pulled up to his chest.

      Jimmy stood up, found his boxers on the floor, and headed to the door of the room. “Mom! Dad! Hello? You guys want to come up here please?”

      The young man looked back at Joe and the officers. “I don’t know…I got piss drunk with a bunch of high school buddies…Tom and I didn’t get home ‘til maybe three this morning…are you here to arrest me for getting drunk?”

      Joe was certain this boy was still drunk, and he decided not to answer Jimmy’s question.

      “How did you get into the house this morning?” Joe asked.

      Jimmy looked at Joe like it was a stupid question and scratched his ass. “Huh? I don’t know…we came in through the back door and walked upstairs…we spent the past month at a buddy’s house in the Hamptons.”

      Tom started sobbing in the bed and Joe realized that these two could not be ruled out as suspects, though there was not a scratch on the young man - his mother had clearly scratched her attacker mightily – and somebody this drunk likely could not have pulled off a triple homicide.

      “And you guys didn’t trip over anybody on the floor in the back hallway?” Rudy asked.

      Jimmy was vividly trying to be serious but he burst into laughter and didn’t address the question.

      Joe sat on the bed with Jimmy. “Son, we hate to break this news to you, but your parents are dead…”

Fifteen seconds of awkward silence ensued before Joe told Officer Rudy to stay with Jimmy and Jen while Joe and Officer Tom continued checking things around the house.

Joe walked downstairs with Officer Tom, desperately trying to remove the image of the two naked young men from his mind. They walked into the garage to look at the sedan, which was sporting a fresh looking rear end smash and a shattered driver side window. Joe then walked out to the awkwardly parked SUV, opened the door and spotted an open bottle of vodka on the front passenger seat.

“Well, forensics is on their way…what did the Linders do for a living?” Joe asked, stepping back into the house.

“The cleaning lady that called it in this morning told us that Mr. Linder was a leading cardiologist in the area.”

Joe stroked his chin, let out a long breath, and met Officer Tom in front of the two dead Linders.  “Okay…so this muscle guy tries to fend off the home invaders while the Linders try to get away in their sedan?” the officer asked.

Joe nodded his head. “Right, so, at some point, probably before they get dragged out of the sedan, the bodyguard is iced with a single gunshot to the back of the head….Does that make sense? This guy is firing away, tearing up the kitchen, so how do our intruders take him out with a bullet to the back of the head?”

Nobody said anything for a minute or so.

Officer Tom stepped forward. “So, why does this couple need a bodyguard? They must have been expecting the intruders.”

Joe patted Officer Tom on the back for his solid deduction, and pulled out his notepad to start writing down a list of things he would need to cover.

1)      Talk with neighbors – anybody hear anything?

2)      SUV in the driveway – most likely Jimmy’s

3)      Talk with medical peers

4)      DNA underneath Mrs. Linders’ fingernails.

5)      Who is Bill Walters?

6)      Why wasn’t Mrs. Linder set ablaze?

7)      How could Mr. Linder withstand losing his pinky?

            Officer Tom walked back into the kitchen and announced that he had figured out how the intruders got into the house: a long panel window in the family room had its entire glass cut from the frame and placed intact on the lawn outside.

 

September 1, 2002

9:30 am

Peter Hansen

            “Peter Hansen,” I stated firmly into the receiver while glancing at my watch. I had a 10:30 a.m. appointment with Steven Angle, the lead singer for World Wind who just hit the 100 million albums sold mark last month.

“Peter, it’s Martin….we’re all set. The committee is announcing its recommendation for Lycor this Friday…They are going to kill the drug,” Martin asserted into the phone. “I think Oleg and his partner made a fine example out of the good doctor and his wife.”

“Well, I’m sure they scared the hell out of them,” I said. “Does the doctor still have his kneecaps?” I let out a mild laugh and leaned back into my chair.

Martin cleared his throat. “Uh...they had to kill them both, actually.”

The just poured coffee hit my thighs and I sprang out of my chair, thighs stinging and my frontal lobe under assault.

“What?” I yelled back at Martin. “That wasn’t part of the deal!”  

I started to get dizzy, so I braced myself against the desk.

“Come on now, Peter,” Martin said in a less cheerful tone. “You’re not exactly holding the cards here, but you know that. We have been over and over this. The Violas own you, don’t forget that.”

I collapsed back into the chair, scalded thighs and all, and put my pounding head into my lap.

The Violas.

What had started as a simple money laundering deal had now morphed into a murdering criminal network funded by my firm.

“Got it, loud and clear,” I told Martin. “I’ll fall in line.”

That day, five off shore accounts funded a total of $110 million into the Swiss Bank brokerage account of PLH, Inc. On Thursday of that week, PLH shorted the stock of Lycor Pharmaceuticals at $84.

On Friday, Lycor Pharmaceuticals announced that its proposed cholesterol reduction drug, Zintar, was causing too many kidney failures in the clinical studies, and the Lycor stock plummeted because Lycor had been counting on Zintar’s revenue to make up for the wave of Lycor drugs opening up to generic competition over the next five years.

By Friday afternoon’s market close, Lycor Pharmaceuticals stock was trading at $57. 

PLH’s profit: $25.39 million.

Not too shabby for a celebrity money manager used to dealing with the obnoxious world of whiny sports and Hollywood stars.

By the end of 2001, PLH Capital was down 51% for the prior two years thanks to a huge downturn in the stock market over that time. My celebrity investors were told a different story, however, with the annual report going out to these clients in January 2002 showing a total loss of only 10% since the beginning of 2000. The dot com bubble burst in the spring of 2000, but thanks to the money laundering mercy of the Viola drug cartel deep from the heart of Mexico, I could afford to lie to my celebrity clients.

The Violas started laundering money through PLH capital in September, 2001, and everything went fine until I lost a chunk of their money in a pharmaceutical stock that nosedived on bad news for one of its drugs.  After that, things got much worse. Julio knew that I had lost a lot of his money over a stock bet on the outcome of an important heart drug study, so that is how he came up with this crazy inside information plan for these drug studies. But how he found Dr. Linder I never knew, and asking too many questions was risky business. I should never have bet on that drug study; maybe I was trying to show Julio that I truly was a good stock picker, but, instead, I made everything so much worse. The world of money laundering was stressful at first, but became way less shocking and disturbing over time. Nobody got hurt or even threatened, and took very little of my time. This drug study shakedown was a different story because it was 100% disturbing and nasty and people got killed over it.

Shortly after this drug stock loss, I learned how the family had asked Oleg to start forcing this Dr. Linder of Philadelphia to give up inside information about the pharmaceutical drug study he was leading. If the inside information pointed to good news for the drug company, I was told to buy the stock ahead of time, but if the information pointed to bad news, I was to short the stock. This part of the strategy, including how much money to spend and what off shore accounts to use, was just conveyed to me recently over the phone by Julio Viola.

I only met Julio once, on a boating trip in August, 2001 that was hosted by the Lick Brothers of Miami Beach; the brothers were in the middle of building an all-glass luxury condo tower right on the ocean. The trip was on a Saturday and I was in Miami visiting a college buddy of mine, Carl Williams, an amazingly successful real estate agent for the $1 million plus market and very good friends with Bruce and Jim Lick. Their boat was half a football field long and seemed to hold ninety to one hundred people easily, though only twenty of us were traveling on it that day. When the flame throwing stilt walkers came onto the boat for the early evening entertainment, I told Carl that he had outdone himself and I reminded my old buddy that my celebrity friends never invited me anywhere.

Julio and I began talking over the buffet dinner, with him describing himself as a Mexican industrialist, but he seemed more interested in my investment firm and peppered me with questions about my asset size, number of investors and use of off shore accounts. The guy had a really annoying nasal whistle when he laughed and I wondered how he got anywhere in business with it.  The night drew to a close and Julio told me that he wished to invest some of his money with my firm, but I thought he was joking.

            The following Monday, I found out just how serious he was. An acne-scarred, mustached man in a crazily expensive dark blue suit was waiting for me in our lobby when I came in that morning at 7 a.m., and he told me that he represented the Viola family. Judy, my receptionist, was sitting at her desk and typing madly on the computer. The mustached man didn’t offer up his name, and quickly got to the point. $70 million had been deposited overnight in a Swiss bank account, and, when the man told me how to move the money, it became clear that I was helping the Violas wash their cash. Basically, I was told to move the money around various European accounts before moving it on shore as a formal investment in my firm. A Belgian cement company, two French steel manufacturers and a Spanish vineyard were all involved in the transactions. I would have to coordinate nine different wire transactions that day.

            The mustached man continued to talk and I began to panic because it looked like Julio Viola was involved with a large drug operation in Mexico, and I was now deep into it. Granted, my investment results thus far in 2001 were pretty bad, but I didn’t need to descend to the dregs of money laundering for a Mexican drug lord.

            “There must have been a misunderstanding with Mr. Viola on the boat on Saturday,” I told the mustached man while springing up from my office chair. The twenty years I had spent building my firm were flashing right in front of me, like a sandcastle towering mightily just ahead of a crashing wave.

            The man smiled, but not in a friendly way. “There has been no misunderstanding, you’re wife’s name is Claire and your sixteen year old son is Charlie, right?”

            I looked at him, crossed my arms, and leaned over the desk. “What, so you’ll screw with my family if I don’t cooperate, is that it?” I yelled as softly as I could without being heard out in the hallway.

            “Peter, I am just the messenger here,” the mustached man said before reaching into his bag and pulling out a satellite phone. He dialed a number, began speaking in Spanish to someone on the other end, and, after maybe twenty seconds, he handed the phone over to me.

            “He wants to speak to you.”

I grabbed the phone, thinking that I had a pretty good idea who was on the other line.

            “Hello?” I said into the satellite phone. There was a loud hissing sound on the line.

            “What’s this about me screwing with your family?” the voice asked. “You whined to me Saturday night about the lousy stock market, your investment results and your need for new investors, so here I am helping you out.”

            It struck me quickly that Julio Viola wasn’t somebody you yell at, so I tried to calm down. “Please, Julio, this is all too complicated for me and I’m only looking for much smaller sized investors right now.”

            “Look, do as Martin tells you, and you won’t need to worry about anything,” Julio said firmly.

            “There’s no changing your mind about this, is there?” I asked.

            “No, Peter, but this is a good thing, a very good thing, just remember that, alright?”

            “Okay,” I said. Taking a huge breath, I handed the phone back to Martin and he talked with Julio for another minute.

            By noon that day, we had completed all nine wire transactions.