The Whistleblower: A Short Story

By Brad Parks

From international bestselling author Brad Parks comes a gripping story and prequel to his new thriller, The Last Act.

After a career rising through the ranks, Mitchell Dupree has finally landed his dream job: compliance director for the Latin American division at Union South Bank. It's a comfortable place to work, with a family-like atmosphere.

Except this family has secrets. Mitch quickly notices a string of suspicious transactions that he worries may be coming from a notorious Mexican drug cartel, the brutal and fast-growing New Colima syndicate. As he probes deeper into the bank's dealings, Mitch must play a dangerous and complicated game, figuring out who to trust . . . and how safe his job--and his life--really are.

Includes an exclusive sneak preview of Brad Parks's next novel, The Last Act

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
• Release date: Jan 3, 2019
• ISBN: 9781524744823

Brad Parks

International bestselling author Brad Parks is the only writer to have won the Shamus, Nero, and Lefty Awards, three of American crime fiction’s most prestigious prizes. His novels have been published in fifteen languages and have won critical acclaim across the globe, including stars from every major prepublication review outlet. A graduate of Dartmouth College, Parks is a former journalist with the Washington Post and the Star-Ledger (Newark, New Jersey). He is now a full-time novelist living in Virginia with his wife and two school-age children. A former college a cappella singer and community-theater enthusiast, Brad has been known to burst into song whenever no one was thoughtful enough to muzzle him. His favored writing haunt is a Hardee’s restaurant, where good-natured staff members suffer his presence for many hours a day, and where he can often be found working on his next novel.

Book preview

Cover for The Whistleblower

ALSO BY BRAD PARKS

Say Nothing

Closer Than You Know

THE CARTER ROSS MYSTERY SERIES

Faces of the Gone

Eyes of the Innocent

The Girl Next Door

The Good Cop

The Player

The Fraud

Book title, The Whistleblower, Subtitle, A Short Story, author, Brad Parks, imprint, Dutton

An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

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Copyright © 2019 by MAC Enterprises, Inc.

Excerpt from The Last Act © 2019 by MAC Enterprises, Inc.

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ISBN 9781524744823

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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CONTENTS

Also by Brad Parks

Title Page

Copyright

THE WHISTLEBLOWER

Excerpt from THE LAST ACT

About the Author

One glance was all it took.

Did Mitch Dupree know, in that first skim of the contract, he was gazing at something that would irrevocably change his fortunes, send his life into a different orbit?

Of course not. He was a bank compliance director, not an oracle.

At that early stage, he just thought the whole thing was seriously screwed up. His predecessor, freshly retired, must have been asleep when he approved it. Or dead above the shoulders.

Either that, or he had knowingly committed professional malpractice serious enough to get him tossed in jail. No one with even a rudimentary understanding of US banking laws could have okayed this Mexico thing.

Or maybe Mitch was missing something. Yes. That had to be it. This was only his second day on the job. Once he dug a little deeper, got a few more answers, it would all make sense.

So he bookmarked the matter, setting it aside for when he could give it his full focus. He was still trying to get the lay of the land.

And there was a lot of land to cover. The Latin American division at Union South Bank stretched from the Mexican border to the tip of Chile, from the Rio Grande to the Strait of Magellan. There were scores of deals involving USB and its Central or South American partners, spread across nineteen countries, five time zones, and two continents. Mitch, as compliance director—really, a one-man compliance department—was responsible for all of it.

In some ways, this felt like the job he had been working toward his whole life. A dream job is what he told his wife, Natalie. He had double-majored in Spanish and international relations at Georgia Tech, cut his teeth for a few years in Coca-Cola’s South American operation, then earned an MBA in finance and accounting from Emory—always with an eye on global banking. Coming out of B-school, he hooked on with USB’s compliance division, but on the domestic side. He worked his way up for a decade, keeping his Spanish sharp by chatting with restaurant workers and day laborers. When the opportunity finally came open to oversee compliance for Latin America, he leapt at it.

It took him a few weeks to return to the thing in Mexico, which he had come to think of as the Mexican Conundrum. Like it was a drink with too much tequila. Or a bacterial disease.

By that point, he had come to understand his predecessor, Roger, had been considered old-school—which, in this case, was a euphemism for incompetent. The guy seemed to believe not in the letter or spirit of the law, but in some antebellum code of honor whereby a gentleman didn’t pry too deeply into another gentleman’s affairs.

Which was fine. If it was the 1810s.

Since this was the 2010s, and the regulatory environment had become a smidge more demanding, Mitch needed more answers.

It just made no sense. USB had established a relationship with a consortium of Mexican casas de cambio—currency exchange houses—that allowed anyone with a wad of cash, be it pesos or greenbacks, to walk in and make a deposit that, for a small transaction fee, would be routed to an account at USB.

No automatic reporting of transactions above ten thousand dollars. No inquiries as to the source of the funds. No ID required beyond a sloppy signature on a deposit slip.

It was a clear violation of the US Bank Secrecy Act. Practically an invitation to a criminal enterprise—like, say, a Mexican drug cartel—to launder money. Because when that cash landed in an account at USB, it was instantly transformed from wrinkled and wrong to fresh and clean. You could do anything with it.

Once he was sure he hadn’t