The Chameleon Conspiracy (4 page)

I called the principal of the Milwaukee Trade and Technical High School’s Evening School, from which Ward had graduated, identifying
myself and my business. The secretary told me politely that the principal in the seventies and eighties, Donald Peterson,
had retired to Arizona, but offered to give him my number. Within five minutes, my phone rang.

“Yes, I remember Ward well,” said Peterson. “I hope he hasn’t done anything foolish. Has he?”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “Please tell me about him.”

“He was a decent young man. Very curious, loved geography and photography, and he said he wanted to be a photographer for
National Geographic Magazine
someday. I always wondered if he fulfilled that dream. He did manage to graduate in spite of his handicap.”

“Handicap?”

“Yes, he was dyslexic, with serious learning disabilities. Until he graduated he had difficulty reading and writing. Now,
compound that with his speech impairment, and you can understand why we really tried to help him.”

“But what speech problem do you mean?

“He had a serious stutter.”

My blood pressure went up. Stutter? None of the victims had mentioned that. In fact, most of them described a smooth-talking
person. Although even a bad stutter can be cured, the hunter in me smelled blood.

“Thank you very much,” I said. “I’ve got one last question. Do you happen to have Ward’s picture?”

“You know, I must have it somewhere,” said Peterson. “Ward loved photography, and he took many photos of class
events. I’m pretty sure he sent me copies of several shots he made at graduation.”

“If he was the photographer, doesn’t that mean he isn’t in those pictures?”

“No, I think he should be, actually, because he used a timer for the shutter, I guess. So he could run and be in the picture.”

“Mr. Peterson, could I ask you a favor? Could you please send me those photos? I promise to send them back.”

“Let me find them first.”

Four days later, an envelope came in the mail with three color pictures of smiling high school kids at a party. In the attached
note, Donald Peterson identified most of the students by name, apologizing that he couldn’t remember them all. Ward looked
like a nice kid, your neighbor’s son. No especially distinctive features, overgrown light-brown hair, brown eyes, nice smile.
They were a lot livelier than his formal high school graduation photo in the file. I wrote down the names of classmates Peterson
had identified, and asked Esther Quinn, our office admin clerk, to run a check on them with their current addresses. I wondered,
grumbling to myself a little, why Esther and I were stuck doing the legwork the FBI had neglected.

I called Donna Swanson, the first name on the high school principal’s list, at her home in Los Angeles.

“Yes, I remember Albert, but I haven’t heard from or seen him since we graduated,” she said. “If you need current information,
you should call his best friend, Tyrone Maloney. They must have stayed in contact. They were buddies.”

Later, Esther handed me an address and phone number. “Tyrone Maloney has a bicycle store in New York,” she said.

I decided to get some fresh air and see a face. I went to his store in SoHo, on the southern part of Manhattan. Maloney was
a stocky fellow, with blond hair and a broad smile.

That smile disappeared when I told him who I was and asked him about Albert Ward.

“Bad news?” he asked. “Has he been found?”

I ducked the question. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, has he been found? The last time I heard from him was more than twenty years ago, and I haven’t seen or heard from
him since.”

“When was that, the last time you heard from him?”

“Let me see,” he said, frowning a bit. “That must have been 1982 or 1983.”

“Can you tell me about it?”

“He left the United States at the end of 1980 after saving up some money. He wanted to travel the world, take photographs
and sell them to travel magazines. He had no family left in the United States, so he figured he could do anything.”

“Do you know where he went?”

“Yeah, I do. He went on a freighter to Hong Kong working as a cook’s assistant. He liked jobs where he didn’t have to talk
a lot. Because of his stutter, you know.”

“Did he stay in Hong Kong?”

“He did, but then he moved on. I received a few postcards from China, Thailand, and Pakistan.”

“Which one came last?”

“I think the one from Pakistan. I haven’t heard from him since.”

“Did you try to find him?”

“I called a few of our mutual friends, but none of them had heard anything. None of his postcards carried a return address,
so I could never write back. He didn’t write much, just one or two lines saying he was having a great time, see you soon,
stuff like that.”

“Do you still have those postcards?”

“I’m sorry, no, I never kept them. Tell me, is he OK?”

“I don’t know,” I said candidly. “Not yet, at least.”

It was getting dark. I decided that instead of returning to my office, I’d go home and walk Snap, my happy-go-lucky golden
retriever. Though he had a tendency to overdo it with his licking and jumping on people with his long front legs that
almost reached my shoulders, he was a loyal friend who always seemed able to put a smile on my face even when I was in a
bad mood, which wasn’t all that infrequent. He sure as heck deserved more attention than a bunch of stale files, now resurrected.

I had to decide on a direction for my investigation. Shooting in the dark has its advantages, because sometimes you hit targets
you didn’t know were there. But on the other hand, the odds aren’t great, and you waste time when you find out what you hit
is irrelevant. I knew that Ward, for lack of a better name to call him, was already long off the U.S. radar. He wasn’t going
anywhere years after he’d vanished, if he hadn’t done that thus far. So time wasn’t of the essence—a reverse form of a phrase
I had frequently used when I (briefly) practiced law and wanted to move lazy people into doing something. He couldn’t get
more
lost. I thought of Alex, my Mossad Academy training instructor, who used to say that
urgent
is the legitimate son of
neglect
. But now, I was practicing futility. I needed to get a more current physical description of my man—or men. I called the
OTS, the Office of Thrift Supervision, a federal agency that regulates the federal and some state savings banks and savings-and-loan
associations. I was hoping that its examiners might have included identification information in their reports.

“That South Dakota case is a really old one, inherited from the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, our predecessor regulatory agency,”
said Brian DiLorenzo, an assistant general counsel. “The documents may be archived. Actually, they may even have been destroyed
under our regular document retention schedule. Hold on.” I heard him click on his computer keyboard. “Well,
it seems that $20 million is a lot for just one in what looks like a series of scams. I see here that we still have these
files open.”

“Could I please have a copy of any investigation reports? I’m trying to figure out where the money is. Maybe we could recoup
some of it.”

A few days later a big envelope containing four inch-thick folders came by Federal Express. DiLorenzo’s attached note said,
“You’re in luck. Enclosed are pertinent documents of the scams perpetrated by your con men against four regulated institutions.
Please call me if you need further assistance.”

I leafed through the files. They included the reports of four savings banks that had been had by a con man—or maybe con men?—
and various regulatory steps that OTS’s predecessor agency had taken when it seized the four failed institutions. One document
attracted my attention. It was a letter written by Harrington T. Whitney-Davis on letterhead of Fidelity Trustees of America,
Inc., the name of the firm he had misleadingly and fraudulently used to perpetrate his scam on the South Dakota savings bank.
In the letter, Whitney-Davis confirmed that he had received $560,000 from the savings bank to purchase limited-edition treasury
securities as an investment for the bank. There was an impressive looking signature by “Harrington T. Whitney-Davis,” but
there was also a handwritten note attached: “Tim, I’ll call you later on today concerning dinner. HTWD.”

So the manager of the defrauded savings bank was having dinner with fraud artist “Whitney-Davis.” Maybe it meant nothing,
but when you’re a manager of a savings bank, meeting for dinner the person who later took off with $20 million belonging to
the bank and its customers might not be that innocent.

“No,” said the OTS attorney I called after reading that file. “There was no criminal investigation of the savings-bank manager.
Why do you ask?”

“Did you try to figure out why he was such easy prey for Harrington T. Whitney-Davis’s scam?”

“I wasn’t working at the Federal Home Loan Bank Board at the time, and the only information I have is what I’m seeing in the
file. Our examiners must have been satisfied that there was no criminal wrongdoing by anyone at the savings bank. They never
made a criminal referral to the FBI about any bank insider.”

“Do you know who the bank manager was during the scam and whether he still works there?”

“He was asked by the bank’s board to resign after the scam was discovered. Being cleared of criminal charges doesn’t mean
he should be allowed to make more mistakes. So the bank let him go. If it hadn’t, the regulatory agency would have done so
when it took over the insolvent bank. His name is Timothy B. McHanna.”

I called FBI Special Agent Kevin Lee. “Sorry, I haven’t looked up the file yet,” he said.

“I’ve got a different question. Did you interview Timothy B. McHanna, the manager of the defrauded savings bank in South Dakota?”

“Let me see,” he said, clicking on his computer. “Yes, he was interviewed, but apparently he never became a subject of an
FBI investigation.”

“And?”

“That means we didn’t establish that he might have been engaged in any criminal activity.” He sounded so formal.

“I guess being gullible isn’t a crime yet,” I muttered. But it was lost on him. “Do you know where McHanna is now?”

“Let me look him up for you.” A moment later he said, “He’s an essential witness against Whitney-Davis, if that defendant
ever shows up again. So we’ve kept track of him. McHanna now lives in New York City.”

He lived on the posh Upper West Side of Manhattan, inside a prewar residential building, one of those sporting a royal name
written in stylish lettering on a long green canopy, with a uniformed doorman who opens your car door. McHanna had certainly
come a long way from his $37,000-a-year job as manager of a small savings bank in a small dusty town in South Dakota.
Additional inquiries brought me to his business: McHanna Associates, business consultants, located in the equally high-rent
Financial District. A quick search of public records showed that the company had four employees and described its activities
as “providing consulting services to foreign banks seeking correspondence and other business arrangements with U.S.-based
banks, as well as providing other services to the banking industry.” McHanna Associates also provided “consultancy services
to charities in the United States for their international banking needs.”
Nice niche with plenty of opportunities,
I thought. I decided to pay him a visit.

In a small and nicely decorated office, I introduced myself to the receptionist and mentioned the South Dakota savings bank
and Whitney-Davis. “Mr. McHanna will see you now,” he soon said.

“Tim McHanna,” said a short, bald man in his late fifties, and gave me his hand for a firm shake as I walked into his office.
His eyes were a dark brown. He was dressed in a tailored dark suit with a yellow tie. His initials were embroided on his button-down
white shirt, and he wore golden cufflinks.

“I’m really ashamed that Whitney-Davis conned me,” he said without my asking. He was eager to give me his version. Too eager,
I thought. I went over the history of his relationship with “Whitney-Davis” with him. No great discoveries here—the same
story already chewed up by savings-bank examiners and the FBI.

I decided to change course. “Please tell me about your business,” I said in an interested tone. “I hear you’re providing services
to foreign banks.”

Clearly relieved that I had changed the subject, McHanna launched into explaining his company. Due to increased U.S. trade
with many foreign countries, overseas banks found it increasingly important to associate themselves with U.S. banks that could
be their correspondents to collect on checks drawn on U.S.-based banks, and provide for all their other banking needs in the
U.S. The relationship could be unidirectional or
bidirectional, meaning that each bank at its discretion could decide whether to use the other bank for a given transaction.
There was no exclusivity commitment by either bank.

“Do you provide additional services? I read someplace that you also assist charities.”

He hesitated for a moment. “Yes, in fact we do, but it’s not what we are promoting these days.” There was a subtly reluctant
tone in his answer.

“Is business good?” I didn’t want to reveal that I had picked up on his lack of enthusiasm to elaborate.

“Can’t complain,” he replied.

Back at my office, I ran a quick check on McHanna. There was something about him that I didn’t like. Maybe it was because
he had the sweetness of a funeral-home director. A newspaper interview I found far back in the LexisNexis database service
increased my interest. A small savings-industry newsletter had interviewed McHanna during the period that Whitney-Davis was
perpetrating his scam, but before it was discovered. In the interview, McHanna boasted how innovative and resourceful thinking
could increase the profit base of a small savings bank. “We are developing additional investment vehicles for our customers
that will add an international aspect to our line of products. We will enable our customers to invest in foreign currencies
through Tempelhof Bank in Zürich, Switzerland. That’s why we hired the services of Mr. Harrington T. Whitney-Davis, a renowned
financial advisor.”

Hello, my friend,
I said to myself. I thought of a verse from the Bible my father had liked to quote: “Do two walk together, unless they have
agreed?” We would soon see how these men had conspired.

I checked the FBI report again—nothing about Switzerland. Same went for the bank examiners. I double-checked with their agencies.
Nothing in the file. I went to see McHanna again, unannounced. If he was happy to see me, he was doing a good job of hiding
it. Instead, he looked concerned.

“Mr. McHanna, I forgot to ask you one other question,” I
said. “In the end, did your savings bank in South Dakota finally launch the idea, offering your customers some foreign-currency
investment opportunities?”

He was stunned. After he recovered, he said slowly, “Well, actually, we didn’t.”

“Why not?”

“If I remember correctly, the board didn’t think the product fit the needs of our customers. They were mostly farmers and
small-business owners.”

“So the program was abandoned?”

“Yes. And right after that we discovered the fraud, and I tendered my resignation.”

Hmm. Brian DiLorenzo of the OTS told me that the savings bank had fired McHanna. What else might he have embellished?

“Have you seen or heard of Mr. Harrington T. Whitney-Davis since?”

McHanna turned his eyes to the window on his right and scratched his nose. “No.”

My friend,
I thought,
your mouth says no, but your body says yes.

I remembered the course about body language taught by the Mossad psychologist.

Research has shown that many, but not all, people tell the truth when they look to the left trying to remember events. When
they look to the right they rely more on their imagination, and therefore they’re either intentionally lying or their answers
cannot be relied upon. If a person questioned touches any part of his or her body, that indicates stress and the likelihood
of a lie. Look at the person’s pupils. They dilate when someone is lying. Same goes for a dry mouth that a person tries to
moisten by licking his or her lips.

“And what about Tempelhof Bank? Do you still have any relationship with them?” I asked.

McHanna’s smile disappeared. “I’m not sure. I would need to check on that. Anyway, I don’t think it’s relevant to your investigation,
Mr. Gordon. This information is a trade secret of my company, and has nothing to do with my former employment.”

He had a point, I thought, but I had plenty of them as well. He had just given me a reason to follow that lead and go to Switzerland.