“Let me start from the beginning,” Allegra cut in quietly.

She faced me. “I knew her as Alexis. Annie said that that was her second name, but Annie never told me her first name, so I only know her as Alexis.”

I nodded.

“And one of the things she did here was to sometimes run the analysis of data we would gather about new clients. Just to double check on what my team did. She said that it was important that we screened people thoroughly, in case they had anything in their backgrounds that would draw the attention of authorities, such as people who turned out to have a criminal background or ties to the underground. She advised me that if I took on those kinds of clients, I would expose my business to unnecessary risks. I didn’t want to do the spot-checking myself, so I asked her to do it. She was good at checking the consistency of financials, for example, that people gave us as part of what we required from new clients if they wanted to open an ongoing account with us.”

“One of the last checks she did was on a new client from South America. He’d not been referred by other clients, and could not be vouched by anyone we knew here in Vegas, so we asked him for more than the usual set of things that we normally require before taking a new client on. Alexis was immediately suspicious after she studied the documents he sent, and gave me her analysis about him the day before she left. She recommended that I don’t take him on as a new client, and, unusual for her, actually told me to bring the information to someone, maybe anonymously.”

I knitted my eyebrows, beginning to understand now.

“A week later, the man showed up. He’d only previously communicated through his assistant, so we were surprised to see him in the flesh.”

“He’d waved a lot of cash in front of me, and was charming, etc., but I told him that no, we couldn’t accept him yet. Later, he managed to get a date with one of our girls, though, and somehow, she’d let slip while they were out that she’d heard through the grapevine that I’d hesitated because of some analysis that had been given to me. So he returned the following week, telling me, in not so many words, that whoever had done the analysis had gotten it wrong, and that he was a very bankable client”