Sure enough, The Lion had found proof of the theft on a certain piece of hardware, as well as the names of those he suspected of participating in the heist, but no actual bitcoins.
“Yes, that’s true,” The Lion said. “But I can’t get the coins back if they’re not in the wallet we thought they were in.”
“But they’re on the network!” Javier said. “I can see them.”
The Lion couldn’t see Javier tapping his finger against his computer monitor for emphasis. He was looking at blockchain.info, the public ledger website of all transactions in the bitcoin network. The ledger showed his bitcoins, but did not reveal who had them, or where they might be stored. All it told him was that the bitcoins existed somewhere in the Internet.
The Lion said, “Yes, you can see them. But that’s all you can do. Without the new key, you cannot get to them.”
“So we get the key from the kids. It has to be one of them, it has to be,” Javier said.
“Yes, I agree. It has to be one of them.”
The main culprit, a boy who went by the handle of Dark Matter, had managed to fake the balance in Javier’s digital wallet, making it appear that he had the bitcoins in his account when, in fact, they’d actually been transferred out. It took him weeks to even notice the theft.
“What can I do?” Javier asked.
“I’m afraid I’ve done all I can,” The Lion said. “I’ll expect payment immediately.” The line went dead.
By now, Soto knew the money was missing, and the deadline for the bitcoins’ return had passed. Javier hid his face in his hands. He contemplated suicide. He had brought this nightmare on himself. At no point in time had Javier planned to lose more than half of his clients’ assets, but that was what had happened, and the ultimate reason for this catastrophe.
Fifteen years earlier, Javier had launched his boutique financial management firm, Asset Capital, with a small initial investment from a wealthy banking client who believed that the ambitious child of Mexican immigrants could generate big profits. He was right. Working with an independent broker-dealer, word spread of Javier’s financial gifts; and until a few years ago, Asset Capital had been managing about $105 million.
Business, as his father often said, was like a relationship. If not properly cared for, it would sour.
After some bad picks put him in a hole, and some aggressive maneuvers only dug that hole deeper, Javier was in serious trouble. He spoke about his financial troubles to a cousin in Boston, and the next day got a phone call from a stranger inviting him to a meeting. What the meeting was about, the other party wouldn’t say, but implied that he (whoever he was) could solve all of Javier’s money problems.
The meeting took place in Javier’s office in Newton. The man who showed up refused to give his name, but he was obviously Mexican and spoke Spanish with the same regional accent as his cousin. Javier suspected that the solution to his problem would somehow involve drug money. He should have told the man he wasn’t interested, but desperation eclipsed his better judgment. He had so much at stake: a wife and son to support, a mortgage, bills, tuition, and car payments-not to mention the prison time he would face when his clients discovered the fraud.
“The Man with No Name” dangled the right carrot in front of Javier’s face. According to him, if Javier made it into the organization, all his money problems would be gone. He wouldn’t say more. At the end of the meeting, the man left with Javier’s Social Security number and a promise to be in touch.
What followed was a series of phone calls, more meetings, and several business trips, all done under the radar by using burner phones, forged documents, encrypted messaging services, and even a couple dead drops. It was all very covert, but Javier went along blindly. He told the same story to each person with whom he met or spoke, and there were plenty.
They wanted to know about him as a person, what made him tick, the reason he got out of bed every morning. He had to be someone levelheaded and trustworthy, and they seemed willing to overlook his current business troubles. People can learn from their mistakes, he was told.
They asked about his wife. Her name was Stacey. They seemed to like that he’d been married for seventeen years. It showed he was grounded. Javier had met Stacey at his thirtieth birthday party. She was the caterer, and although not Mexican, she made mouth-watering churros, delectable taquitos, and these amazing margarita cupcakes, which got most of the seventy guests completely wasted. Javier flirted with Stacey throughout the evening and scored her number as she was putting the last of the dishes inside her catering van.
They asked about his hometown of Winston and his son, Guzman Antonio Martinez-or “Gus,” as his friends at The Pep called him. They liked that he was active in his community, his church. They smiled with him when he talked about coaching his son’s Little League team, back when Gus was passionate about the sport.
“We all love baseball,” one of the Mexicans had said.
They wanted to know everything they could learn about Javier’s parents, specifically their life in Tepito, friends his mother still kept in touch with, enemies the family might have. He told them about growing up in New Bedford, Massachusetts, and detailed his résumé, including his work for Wells Fargo before going out on his own.
It was the most thorough interview Javier had in his life and he still didn’t know what the job entailed.
Finally a man named Carlos, who spoke with him in a hotel room in Ciudad Juárez, told him what he had long suspected.
“We need a new money manager to help us expand our influence in America,” Carlos had said. “There’s a lot of money to be made, Javier… if you have a level head and a smart sense for business.”
That was when the first girls showed up, long-legged and draped in silky negligees. It was a night Javier would never forget. What Javier later read about Sangre Tierra made his boyhood nightmares seem like fairy tales. But the allure of easy money, beautiful women, and the drugs-yes, he had sampled and enjoyed-proved too powerful to resist. The cash Javier made from laundering Sangre Tierra’s drug money paid back the debt he had kept secret from his clients, and made him a millionaire many times over.
The money meant nothing to him now.
Javier’s joints cracked as he got up from his desk. He used to be in better shape, but the women and drugs had turned him soft. They’d turned his mind soft, too. How had he not used better security to safeguard the bitcoins?
With his feet in slippers, Javier padded along the hallway of his spacious home; his robe flapped open. Beneath his robe, he wore boxer shorts over which his ample belly protruded. He had been to the office only a few times since the theft; in those days, his beard had grown thick.
At the entrance to his kitchen, Javier paused. Something wasn’t right. He just had a feeling. He took a single step into the room and saw him.
A steely bolt of fear raced up Javier’s spine. He thought of running, but his legs wouldn’t move. He wanted to scream, but he had no voice.
Standing in front of the coffeemaker was a man Javier knew well. He had long, dark hair tied in a tight ponytail and wore a silken shirt decorated with a floral design, suitable for any of the nightclubs Javier frequented.
The man smiled, his grin twisted and wicked. Javier gazed in horror at the gold teeth, each ornately designed. He knew who this man was and, more frighteningly, what this man did. Fausto Garza whistled, summoning seven men into the kitchen. The men all had brown complexions, and they came in a variety of heights and sizes. One even had a shock of dyed bright red hair. Some were dressed casually, while others wore tactical clothing, but all of them carried rifles.
“Hello, Javier,” Fausto Garza said to him in Spanish. “Tenemos que hablar de negocios.” (“We’ve got business to discuss.”)