Page 144 of Maddy's Justice

After another fifteen seconds, Troy said, “They’ll kill me.”

“You better start worrying about what I’m gonna do,” Carvelli said.

“Please!” Troy sobbed then, “No, no, don’t hit me,” he said as Carvelli raised his hand.

“I’m not sure. I don’t know anything about a kidnapping.”

“You’ve said that several times.”

“If she is still in the states, she’s in a compound in Wisconsin.”

“Turn the recorder on,” Carvelli told Sorenson.

“Where is this place in Wisconsin?”

“I don’t know for sure. I went there by helicopter. I never paid much attention to where we were going.”

“Who does know?” Carvelli asked.

“I don’t know. Probably several people.”

Carvelli’s head came up and he sat back when he realized he knew someone who could tell him where this place was.

“The helicopter pilots. They know, don’t they?” Carvelli asked.

“Sure,” Troy agreed nodding his head.

“Did you ever fly up there from here?” Carvelli asked.

“Once but I couldn’t tell you who the helicopter service was. I was only there maybe, four times. I usually went up there from Chicago,” Troy said quite relieved he was done being slapped.

By this point, Troy had spilled all he knew about the drug trafficking. Carvelli sensed he was still holding back. Not a word about money laundering.

“Tell me about the money laundering operation on the thirty-eighth floor of the Wells Fargo Center.”

“How do you know…” Troy started to ask.

“That doesn’t matter. We know about it. How does it work?”

“Cash is brought in every night by armored car. Who notices an armored car pulling into the underground of a big bank building?

“It’s counted then goes back out in FedEx, UPS and Postal Service boxes the next day. They get sent to hundreds of small cash businesses. It gets deposited into small, local banks. A few days later, that bank issues a cashier’s check to a phony vendor and, voila, it’s clean.”

“Why a law firm to handle this?” Carvelli asked.

“Who looks more legitimate than a law firm?” Troy replied.

“A whorehouse?” Sorenson asked.

“Very funny,” Troy said. “It was Stafford, Hughes who it set up. They used small, local law firms to handle the setting up of businesses for the cash to pass through. The local firms did not know anything about the real purpose. They were just handling the local and state legal formalities.

“Who would suspect a large-scale money laundering business in a very respectable bank building by a respectable law firm? Especially in a downtown Midwestern city.”

“How much?” Carvelli asked. By now, he was nervously looking at his watch worried about Maddy.

“Billions, every month. And everybody gets a piece each step of the process. Stafford, Hughes, just the partners who are in on it, rake in a cool hundred million plus every year. Washed clean and tax free.”

Carvelli looked at his watch again and said, “Take another break. I’ll be right back.”

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