The Accountant (2016)

J.K. Simmons: Ray King

Photos 

Quotes 

• Christian Wolff : [cocks gun] 

  [speaks softly] 

  Christian Wolff : Your name?

  Ray King : Ray. Raymond King.

  Christian Wolff : Who employs you, Raymond King?

  Ray King : I'm a Treasury agent.

  Christian Wolff : Are you a good one?

  Ray King : [pauses]  No. No, not particularly.

  Christian Wolff : Is that it?

  Ray King : K- Kids. I'm a dad. I've got two kids.

  Christian Wolff : Grown?

  Ray King : Yeah. Yes, yes, they're all- they're all- grown up.

  Christian Wolff : Were you a good dad, Raymond King?

  Ray King : [trembling]  Yeah. I've been a good dad. I'm a lousy agent, and I've been a weak man. But that, I didn't screw up. That I got right.

  [starts weeping] 

• Ray King : I spent my whole life only recognizing my lucky breaks after they were gone.

• Ray King : I was old ten years ago.

• Ray King : Do you like puzzles, Marybeth Medina?

• Ray King : Say you're the head of the Sinaloa Cartel. Now the cartels count their money by weighing it in eighteen wheelers. But one sunny Mexican day, your in-house money scrubber comes to you and says you're 30 million light. Who can you trust to do the forensic accounting to track your stolen cash? Deloitte & Touche? H & R Block?

• Marybeth Medina : Christian Wolff, last year, ran $75,543 through his accounting firm.

  Ray King : Whoa. Who is Christian Wolff?

  Marybeth Medina : The accountant.

  Ray King : 75 grand? That's chump change.

  Marybeth Medina : Agreed. But he ran another $287,765 through Kim's Nails, $445,112 through Great Mandarin Chinese, and, you'll love this, $505,909 through Paul's Laundromat. Paul's Laundromat? Are you fucking kidding me? He's playing with us. He can't clean that kind of money through an accounting firm. The paper trail's too heavy. So he's laundering it through cash businesses. All of those are in the same strip mall south of Chicago.

  Ray King : ZZZ?

  Marybeth Medina : I mean, he doesn't care about the traffic. It's a front. All of it. Christian Wolff, Carl Gauss, Lou "Lewis" Carroll. He's using the names of famous mathematicians as a cover.

  Ray King : Charitable contributions here to Harbor Neuroscience. Last year alone, that's gotta come close to...

  Marybeth Medina : $1,000,100. That one's not a cover. That's the real deal. I checked.

  Ray King : So, you're telling me this guy risks his life doing forensic accounting for some of the scariest people on the planet, collects his fee, goes through all the trouble of laundering it, and then gives almost all of it away?

  Marybeth Medina : Well, what if he's taking other means of payment?

  Ray King : Yeah, possible. yeah.

  Marybeth Medina : I caught him, Ray.

  Ray King : Maybe. Pack a bag. We're going to Chicago.

• Ray King : It was taken three years ago in Antwerp by an undercover Interpol agent. Their target's on the far right.

  Marybeth Medina : Yeah, Zalmay Atta.

  Ray King : Go on.

  Marybeth Medina : Ran the world's largest opium pipeline. Ties to Karzai and Ghani, Taliban. I mean, he was considered untouchable.

  Ray King : Look at the rest. Tell me what you see.

  Marybeth Medina : [flipping through surveillance pictures]  Yeah, I remember most of these arrests. They were... they were huge.

  Ray King : Focus. They're not all arrests.

  Marybeth Medina : [looking closer]  It's the same man.

  Ray King : "Lou Carroll". For what it's worth, it's an alias. The Hong Kong photo goes back about five years. In that one, he's "Carl Gauss". Tokyo, Tel Aviv, Naples. There was a sighting in Tehran. All describing the same man. "An accountant", "Our accountant", "The accountant".

• Ray King : Marybeth Ascension Medina. Graduated University of Baltimore cum laude with a degree in criminal justice. Two years Baltimore PD as an analyst, two more at Homeland, analyst again, and the last five years here at Treasury. Analyst. You did the heavy lifting on Agent Lorenz's case last month.

  Marybeth Medina : I worked on it, yeah, but Agent Lorenz...

  Ray King : Why haven't you applied for promotion to agent? You're already doing the work.

  Marybeth Medina : Analyst is a good fit. And I enjoy the work, so...

  Ray King : Well, you're a liar, Medina.

  [pulling up a rap sheet] 

  Ray King : Ward of the state of Maryland's foster care and juvenile detention systems from age 11 to 18. Weapons charges, assault and battery. Ouch. Attempted murder.

  Marybeth Medina : Those records were sealed.

  Ray King : [turning his computer monitor around]  Is that a nine-millimeter?

  Marybeth Medina : [standing to leave]  .45.

  Ray King : You better sit your ass back down in that chair, young lady. This is a big moment for you. Make a good choice.

  [she sits back down] 

  Ray King : Lying on a federal employment application is a felony. So right now, I'm the only thing standing between you and significant prison time.

• Ray King : So, what's your story, Medina?

  Marybeth Medina : You know my story.

  Ray King : I know what the courts said.

  Marybeth Medina : Stuffed a handful of cocaine up a drug dealer's nose, pistol-whipped him into the trunk of his car. I was 17. It was August. He cooked for three days, but lived.

  Ray King : Do you regret it?

  Marybeth Medina : The coke was half borax. Same shit he kept selling my sister. She's a dental hygenist in Annapolis now. Married, three kids. No, I don't regret it.

  Ray King : That's rough.

  Marybeth Medina : All due respect, Director King, what the fuck do you know about rough?

• Ray King : Men kill each other for any number of reasons. Money, power... fear. Nine men would die that day at the Ravenite, but for none of those reasons. No, they'd taken something from the man who was killing them. Something that couldn't be made whole again. Something very important to him. And he was there for his pound of flesh. Little Tony Bazzano. I'd been wedged in a van for six months listening to that arrogant little prick belch, fart, and brag. I didn't recognize his voice with all the fear in it. Our man had come for revenge. And he got it. Nine dead. Imagine you're a Treasury agent approaching the twilight of a spectacularly dismal career. And then one day, that break you should have been looking for. Francis Silverberg, a black money legend. Cleaned cash from Monte Carlo to Havana to Vegas. He cooked the books for the Gambino family for 40+ years. Until one day, the boss, Big Tony Bazzano, thought maybe the old man's age made him vulnerable to prosecution. Ordered his son, Little Tony, to kill Francis. Kid fucked it up. Francis ran, became a federal informant in return for protective custody. Could have turned my career around if only I'd listened. I didn't. He was processed out, and he lost the only protection he had. The protection that he was promised when he testified against Big Tony. And this time, Little Tony got it right. He had Francis in a couple hours. Down in a filthy basement in the Bronx, nailed to a chair, tortured to death. So I, uh, volunteered for a joint task force. Sat outside the Ravenite in a surveillance van for months hoping to get a shred of evidence to use against Francis' killers. I went in there hoping I could ease my guilt. And I met our accountant. Why he let me live, I didn't know. But he changed my life. Gave my notice at the Department. I started looking forward to the day again. You know, feeling the sun on my face. Quit drinking. Was on my way out the door... and then the phone rang.

  [answering the ringing phone] 

  Ray King : Ray King.

  [narrating] 

  Ray King : I'll never forget that voice.

  Justine : Do you like puzzles, Raymond King?

  Ray King : She tells me she works for the accountant. And that a shipping container packed with Chinese nationals is passing through the Port of New York. Few months later, one ton of uncut Juarez cartel product is entering Miami.

  Marybeth Medina : All those cases you put together...

  Ray King : Smoke and mirrors.

• Marybeth Medina : So, who is he? This accountant.

  Ray King : Prisoner 831. Fort Leavenworth, maximum security.

  Marybeth Medina : Military prison? So he was in the Army?

  Ray King : Army lent him to us to track al-Qaeda money launderers. He was transferred from Leavenworth to our detention facility in D.C. Did the work of five men. Data mining, cluster analysis. He roomed with Francis. They kept to themselves, played chess, ate together, sat in the TV room together. They were inseparable. And then one day, a guard told Wolff why Francis hadn't called or written since he got out. That his burnt body had been found in a Staten Island landfill. Wolff snapped, went after the guard. He fractured the man's skull with a thermos. Escaped from a third-floor window. Took the thermos.

  Marybeth Medina : That's all you got? I mean, Leavenworth, he'll have military records...

  Ray King : Records are all heavily redacted.

  Marybeth Medina : Well, then, arrest records, something?

  Ray King : Spring of 2003, at a funeral home in Kankakee, Illinois. Our boy sends six locals to the hospital with a variety of injuries. No one knew Wolff. The older man who came with him was identified as a colonel, U.S. Army.

  Marybeth Medina : A funeral home. Whose wake?

  Ray King : One customer that day.

  [showing her a newspaper obituary] 

  Ray King : Mrs. Lauren Alton. Mrs. Alton taught first grade for 13 years in Kankakee. Survived by a husband and two boys, ages 12 and 10. By all accounts, an ordinary life, well lived. But cut short. And then a fight breaks out. A brawl, really. Over what, the authorities never pinned down. Deputies respond. A Barney Fife-type squares off with our boy, gets rattled, pulls his gun. The colonel just stepped in front of 831. Army collects both men. Police report names Wolff as "Solider One." And widower identified the colonel by name. His late wife's former husband. I checked; it's an alias. No more real than "Christian Wolff".

  Marybeth Medina : She was the dead colonel's ex-wife. And you think Wolff is what to him?

  [remembering what King said Wolff asked him] 

  Marybeth Medina : "Are you a good dad, Ray King?"

  Ray King : I've given up trying to figure out when I'll get a call. The "why", though, that I've got. Someone breaks his moral code.

  Marybeth Medina : Why are you telling me this?

  Ray King : I'm retiring in a few months. When she calls, somebody needs to be there to answer.