"Chalker, Jack L - G.O.D. Inc 1 - Labyrinth of Dreams" - читать интересную книгу автора (Chalker Jack L)

"How'd you get that much bread?" she asked him suspiciously.
He sighed. "What I tell you is death to repeat," he warned. "Still, I said I'd
tell it all, and I see I do have your interest and maybe your principles, too.
Money's like that, sometimes. The money is not mine. It belongs to a large
multinational corporation that often makes the papers and is devoted to
supplying the public with all the goods and services that people want but which
they like to pretend are evil and so outlaw them. You know the company, I'm
sure."
We did. It used to be a mostly Italian holding company with some Jewish members,
but now it was strictly equal opportunity.
"The narcotics business in this area runs to billions a year," Nkrumah
continued. "There's a heavy demand to meet. The dealings with the suppliers are
strictly cash, now that even Switzerland and the Bahamas aren't totally safe
anymore, and sometimes that amount is very large. Many big banks are involved,
of course, but lately there's been a lot of heat on. A bunch of banks have been
exposed, and it has been very costly. Lately we've gone to a system of small and
intermediate suppliers, middlemen, between the big and small banks. This time it
was my turn to help out with confusing the source and the destination, as it
were. I took out a business loan for expansion at a major bank, and I was to
invest the money, as it were, in a number of places. The loan would later be
repaid, with interest -- all aboveboard. Never mind where it went from me; you know
what it came back as, and where the interest came from."
Yeah. Maybe a thousand percent interest over a short period from everybody from
suburban middle-class junkies to Johnny Redlegs's girls. It was a pretty clear
picture, and told us for the first time just where all that money Little Jimmy
made really came from. It was kind of clever. Everybody, including the cops,
knew Little Jimmy was a shark, but a little shark. Using a little crime to cover
a big deal was subtle. It was probably worked out by computers or something.
The plan was deceptively simple. Little Jimmy was small potatoes, but he really
could deal in millions without raising any red flags. Even a little outfit like
his had several million in capital. He would take the loan for "investment"
purposes and invest it, ostensibly in real estate and other ventures that looked
solid but were actually fronts. They, in turn, would pay the suppliers through
other dummy companies, and by paying large sums to companies for, say,
excavations or engineering work that never actually was done or needed to be
done. In return, the junk would come on up -- or over or wherever it came from -- and
hit the streets in a movement that would be totally unconnected to Little Jimmy.
The profits would be paid back through a totally different network that reached
the same dummy sources, which would then repay Little Jimmy's investments with
interest, and he'd repay the bank. In the meantime, the dummy companies would go
on the block and be absorbed or bought out by holding companies, getting the
rest of the money in the process, all neatly laundered and pressed and even on
the tax books, although with that kind of money you could always find enough
breaks to avoid the bulk of the taxes.
The weakness was that if you knew both ends, you might intercept things. This
was known, but, considering the risks involved in bilking that corporation out
of fifty bucks, let alone millions, it was considered acceptable, just as the
loans Little Jimmy took out were really paid back since otherwise he'd be out of
the loan-shark business in a hurry.
The loan had come in, from Tri-State Savings Fund, one of the bigger banks in