“So how does Doc Don produce the real thing?”
“He’s got some system of getting hold of birth certificates and other I.D., so he can get real stuff instead of forging it; it’s like you buy a new identity, you know? The real thing.”
“Anything else, Benny? Search your heart.”
Benny thought. “Nope, that’s it. I didn’t see Jimmy after the end of October.”
“I found you this time, Benny; I can find you again.”
“Honest, Cupie.”
“Honest,” Cupie repeated, then he burst out laughing. Honest? From Benny Calabrese?
R
ussell Norris stepped out of the airplane in George Town and into the hot Cayman sun. Sweat immediately broke out on his forehead and under his arms, and he was glad he’d worn one of his old Brooks Brothers I.R.S. suits instead of something better. He’d be soaked by the time he got out of here. He walked straight through the airport and found a cab. It was a measure of his confidence that he carried no overnight bag, only a briefcase.
Norris had labored in the Internal Revenue Service vineyard for twenty-five years, had retired with a pension that covered his mortgage payments and basic expenses, and had promptly begun offering himself as a hired gun against the auditors who had been his colleagues for so many years. Mostly he represented taxpayers who had trod too near the line and were being audited; he negotiated settlements that only a former auditor could manage, and his clients loved him for it.
For the last years of his career, Russell Norris had headed a service task force that had put the fear of God into Cayman banks. He had begun by simply auditing the hell out of anybody who had a Cayman account and prosecuting those who had lied about such an account; this made many people reluctant to deal with the banks, and finally, as a result, in 1986 he had been able to negotiate a new treaty with the Cayman Islands government which significantly altered the terms under which the banks could surrender information to the American authorities, principally the I.R.S.
Beyond that he had made himself personally felt in the Cayman banking community in such a way as to enable him to successfully elicit information not covered by the treaty—on a strictly confidential basis, of course. He had done this by force of personality and by implied threats—in fact, not always implied.
As he shuffled through the copies of bank statements and other documents faxed to him by Ed Eagle, he recalled the past hoops through which he had put this particular organization. They would stand him in good stead today.
The taxi stopped in front of the bank, and Norris got out into the burning sun once more. Tourists were paying thousands to experience this climate in January, but Norris was warm of nature and could not wait to get back to the chilly joys of a Virginia winter. He walked into the bank, marched straight through the customer area until he came to a mahogany railing broken by an electrically operated gate. He cast an eye around the small sea of desks until he found a bank officer who knew him, then stood quietly, burning his gaze into the fellow’s face until he caught the man’s eye. The officer blanched, frowned, and looked around for assistance. Everybody else had busied himself
with work. Forced to make a decision, the man pressed the release button, and Norris proceeded through the gate.
He kept straight on toward a paneled wall, opened a door, walked past a secretary who had not been quick enough to halt his progress, and stepped into a large, beautifully appointed office.
The president of the bank, a Cuban named Rouré, nearly bit through the Upmann cigar clenched between his teeth. Norris waited a moment for the full effect to set in. This was why he had worn the old suit, instead of one of the more recent ones from the Polo Shop; he wanted the memory in the man’s mind to match what he now saw—a hard-nosed, no-nonsense civil service warrior. Norris walked over to the desk, sat down in a large chair, and pulled out the stenographer’s shelf from the desk.
“Now,” he said, opening his briefcase, “let’s begin.”
“I thought you had retired,” the astonished Cuban managed to say.
“You don’t believe everything you hear, do you, Mr. Rouré?” He took a sheet of paper from the man’s desktop and wrote down a number, then handed it to him. “I want to see the records on this account,” he said. “All the records.”
The banker did not look at the number. “You must be mad,” he said. “You know very well I would be breaking Cayman law if I disclosed any information about one of our accounts.”
“I am mad,” Norris replied calmly. “Imagine how much trouble a madman in my position could cause you.”
Rouré stared at Norris for a moment, and Norris could almost see the wheels turning. He picked up the sheet of paper. “I’ll be back in a few minutes,” he said.
Norris held up a hand. “No,” he said. “Sit down.”
The banker sat down.
“I don’t want you to go and get the records; I want you to pick up the telephone and order the records brought in here. We’ll see them together.” Norris smiled.
“I am of a mind to telephone the American ambassador right now,” Rouré said.
“You may do that if you wish,” Norris replied, “and if you do, the world will fall on your bank from a great height. I know a federal prosecutor in Miami who is working on the Noriega case, and he would just love to know a few things I could tell him.” Norris tried not to hold his breath. This was a bluff, and if the banker called it, he wouldn’t have the cards. He did have one more card, though. “There’s also the business you were doing with BCCI.” The huge international bank had collapsed recently, and it was likely that Rouré had done business with them.
He knew he had won when beads of perspiration appeared on Rouré’s forehead. He filed the Noriega and BCCI connections away in his memory for possible future use.
“Why do you want this information?” Rouré asked, obviously buying time while he made a decision.
“Señor Rouré,” Norris said placatingly, “let us say that these records are not yet the subject of an official investigation; I emphasize,
not yet
.”
Rouré puffed rapidly on his cigar. A cloud of smoke rose above him and drifted toward an air-conditioning intake. “Your sight of this file will not go beyond this office?”
“I didn’t say that. You should know that the funds in this account are stolen. Not simply illegally earned, not borrowed, not laundered to prevent payment of taxes. These funds were stolen outright. I should think that would make some difference to you.”
“Of course, this bank would never knowingly receive stolen funds,” Rouré said, spreading his hands. “Why didn’t you say so to begin with?” He picked up a telephone and tapped in a number. “Bring me the file on account number…” He read the number from the sheet of paper, then put the phone down and smiled at Norris.
“Of course, I am willing to cooperate with you, if you can substantiate what you have just said to me.”
Norris took a thick sheaf of papers from his briefcase, walked around the desk, and placed them before the banker. “These are brokerage account records substantiating the ownership of these funds,” he said, turning pages and pointing at figures. “As you follow through the paper trail, you can see how the woman of the house initiated purchases of shares for her husband’s account. Finally, you see how she ordered all three accounts to be liquidated and the funds transferred to her checking account. Then you see, here, how she wire-transferred the funds to the account in this office.”
“Yes, yes, I see,” Rouré said. “A substantial amount of money.”
“A very large theft,” Norris said. He knew Rouré was relieved to find that the amount in question was only three million six instead of a hundred times that, and that the account holder was a California housewife instead of a Colombian drug lord; he would have had second thoughts about revealing confidential information about a client who might put a bomb in his car.
A young man entered the office and placed a thin file folder before Rouré, then said something in Spanish.
“Wait a minute,” Norris said. “Let’s stick to English, here.”
“My colleague has told me that we have just received coded instructions to wire-transfer nearly the entire balance
in the account to a bank in Mexico City,” Rouré said.
“Just now?”
“Only a few minutes ago. He was on his way to my office for approval.”
“I don’t think we need detain your colleague further,” Norris said. When the young man had left, he walked around Rouré’s desk, rummaged in the man’s humidor, chose a Romeo y Juliet, and sat down.
Rouré leaned across the desk and lit the cigar with a gold lighter.
“Señor Rouré,” Russell Norris said, puffing on the cigar, “I believe I may have a solution to your problem.”
“Problem?” Rouré asked, raising his eyebrows. “I have a problem?”
“Of course you do,” Norris replied, smiling. “For the past three minutes or so, you have been dealing in stolen funds.” He raised a hand to stave off the banker’s protestations. “Ever since I told you they were stolen. But if you follow my instructions exactly, you can forget about it. The matter will never arise again.”
Senor Rouré looked interested. Norris began telling the banker how he could save himself an awful lot of trouble.
C
upie Dalton parked as close as he could to Venice Beach, then walked the rest of the way. It was a warm day for January in L.A., and the sun had brought the Venetian insects out of their holes. The muscle freaks were lifting away in the weights area, pausing only to rub oil onto their bodies and flex for the gawking passersby; small-time pushers were selling dope by the joint; T-shirts and cheap sunglasses were the sale items of the day; and every third creep seemed to be on roller skates.
Cupie found the Don Dunn Studio of Artistic Photography with no trouble; the owner had opened his front doors wide to admit the warm air and hot prospects. Dunn himself was bent over a contact sheet with a large loupe pressed to the pictures.
“Hang on a sec,” he said, squinting through the magnifier. He made a mark with a grease pencil, then stood up. “Good day to you,” he said.
Cupie thought him surprisingly formal for a skinny man with shoulder-length hair and a scraggly beard, dressed in a tie-dyed T-shirt and greasy dirty jeans. He was like a wraith from the sixties.
“And good day to you,” Cupie said. He’d hated hippies in the sixties, and he hated them now, although this one, at least, seemed to be working for a living. It was for this reason that Cupie didn’t hit him right away. “Doc Don, I presume.”
Dunn’s eyes narrowed. “We have a mutual friend, do we?”
“Yeah, but I think he’d rather I didn’t use his name. I’m not here to get my picture took, you see; I’m here to find out about somebody whose picture you took.”
“I’m in the photography business, pal,” Dunn said, “not the information business.”
“That ain’t the only business you’re in,” Cupie said, smiling. “You’re a purveyor of funny paper,
pal
, and you and me have some talking to do.”
“Take a hike, mister. I got a business to run.”
Cupie produced the photograph that Ed Eagle had sent with the money. “This guy came in here at the end of October and placed an order, maybe even had his picture taken.”
Dunn barely glanced at the photograph. “Never saw him before,” he said. “Good day to you.”
Cupie glanced at the swinging doors behind the photographer; the angle was good. “And good day to you,” he said, shooting a swift right to the man’s solar plexus.
Document Don Dunn left his feet and flew backward through the doors, leaving them flapping.
Cupie followed him at a more leisurely pace. He produced a hundred-dollar bill and waved it before Dunn’s eyes, which were tightly closed as he sucked in air. “Now,
just so you won’t think I’m not polite, I’m going to offer you this for your assistance.”
“Go fuck yourself,” Dunn said, struggling to his feet. He pushed off the wall behind him and launched a backhanded chop toward Cupie’s throat.
Cupie had not been expecting this, and he barely got a forearm up in time to block it. Having done so, he got hold of Dunn’s skinny wrist and twisted his arm up high behind his back. Dunn was a lithe fellow, and the hand went right up to the nape of his neck before he complained.
“Let me explain something to you,” Cupie said, pushing the man hard against a wall and pinning him there. “You’re in a business like this, every once in a while somebody like me is going to wander in here and want to know something about somebody. The way to handle that is to charge for it and send the guy on his way happy; that way you don’t get an arm broken.” He jerked up on Dunn’s wrist for emphasis. “If you get my meaning.”
“I get it, I get it,” Dunn said.
“I think you do,” Cupie said, “but before I let go of you, I want to be real sure. Y’see, I could just beat the shit out of you, then destroy this place looking for what I want, and that’s what I’m going to do if you give me the least bit of trouble when I let go of you. Do we understand each other?”
“We understand each other,” Dunn gasped.
Cupie let go of the man’s arm and stepped back, just in case Dunn didn’t really understand.
Dunn grasped his shoulder with a free hand and whimpered.
Cupie pulled his jacket back to reveal the automatic pistol on his belt. “And just in case you think you can go for a shooter or something, I want you to forget about that, too.”
“Okay, okay,” Dunn said. “What do you want?”
Cupie held up the photograph again. “He was in here around late October.”
“Yeah, I remember.”
“What’s his name?”
“People don’t tell me their names,” Dunn said. Cupie was drawing back to swing again when Dunn started talking faster. “I mean, not their real names.”
“Of course not,” Cupie said. “What was the name he wanted on whatever he ordered from you?”