That is the gift of the training — you learn to read the shape of a thing without having to trace every line of it, the way a doctor reads an x-ray.

Dirty money came in looking clean.

Clean paperwork went out hiding something dirty.

And at every point where a real human being had to put a real name to the lie, the name was Jim’s.

Julian was not advising anyone.

Julian was running it.

And he had built the whole structure so that every piece of paper that could put a person in prison led to Jim, and every account that held the money led, through layer after offshore layer, somewhere no prosecutor would easily follow.

He had spent, I could see, a great deal of care on that part especially — the layering, the distance, the patient construction of deniability.