Purely by Accident

by Jim Beegle

  “What about security? I mean for the money. Wouldn’t it be easy to show up at one of these banks and pretend to be someone you are not and get access to the money, since they go to such extremes to keep the ownership quiet?”

  “Not really. First, most of those accounts are numbered. That means that in order to even begin to gain access to the account you have to know the account number. Secondly, you usually have to offer some type of authentication. A passport for personal identification or an affidavit listing you as the agent of the party who holds the account is always required. In some cases, a Power of Attorney, or a partnership agreement will do. Although, the affidavit is better.”

  “So it would be hard for someone to steal money from one of those accounts. Forgive me for laboring the point.” he wiped his mouth with a paper napkin, “but my client is very paranoid about security.”

  “I understand,” Marin answered, “and so do those banks. Their only draw for new business is their reputation. They try to be very cautious.” Mark stopped listening and marveled at how much poise Marin had when she was talking about something she knew a lot about and obviously had a passion for. It was amazing to see how she commanded his attention when talking about something as impersonal, albeit complex, as the international movement of money. “But, sometimes things still go wrong.” Mark had been listening for this opening and jumped on it.

  “I was doing some reading on my own and decided that,” he said. It was, for the most part, a true statement. He did not have to tell her that his reading materials had come from a safety deposit box in the Bahamas, did he? “Wasn’t there a guy in Houston that got away with a lot of money in the mid-seventies? Ten million dollars I think”

  “Fifteen,” she said. Mark’s mind went through a small panic. He was now one of a few people living who knew that the money taken in 1974 was a little less than eleven million and not the fifteen reported by the press. He relaxed when he realized that Marin would not know any of this.

  “I’m sorry, I think it was fifteen million, now that you mention it.” he said covering quickly.

  “A man who worked in MIS managed to steal fifteen million from the Southwest Bank of Houston. As a matter of fact, I was working there when it happened.”

  “Really?” Mark was almost embarrassed at how easy it was becoming to lie. “So you must have a pretty good idea what happened? I mean with what you know about all this they probably used you to help them track some of the details down?”

  “Well,” she paused as the waiter refilled her tea glass, “I was just a clerk then. It wasn’t until later that I had anything to do with the International Wire Department.” Mark had figured that this would more than likely be the case and was prepared for it.

  “But there are records somewhere I suppose?” he said almost as an afterthought.

  “I suppose,” she replied.

  “I don’t know how much you know about writing software,” he paused to take a drink from his coffee.

  “Little to nothing.” she told him while he drank.

  “One of the best ways to figure out how to keep something from happening again is to do a case study of what has happened before. Kind of like how the FAA improves the air traffic control system by reviewing every accident that happens.” Marin nodded her head to let him know she was following his line of logic. “It would be the same way here. If I could somehow understand how this guy, it was a guy I assume?” Marin told him it was. “Anyway, knowing how this guy got away with it would help me understand some of the pitfalls that could go wrong with my work on this project. Especially since I haven’t a clue how any of this works. And I doubt seriously that I would ever understand it to the degree that you do.” He decided that a little flattery might go a long way. It brought almost an immediate return.

  “What can I do to help you?” she asked him. He was almost ashamed of himself. He had been leading her in this direction for the last fifteen minutes. He knew that, despite her protest, he would pay her for her time. That helped a little, but he still felt guilty about lying to his friend.

  “Oh, Marin. I couldn’t ask you to get involved in this.” Well, he thought to himself, at least that part is true.

  “No, I really want to help. Just tell me what you need.” He could see that her face, as well as her voice, was honest and trusting, deepening Mark’s own shame.

  “If you wouldn’t mind,” he began, “see what you might be able to find out about what exactly happened and as much of the how it happened you can. Don’t do anything wrong or get yourself in trouble, but if there are any records anywhere that would give me some ideas I would be very grateful.” Marin lifted an eyebrow to indicate that she understood what grateful meant to Mark. “I can arrange to pay you for your time. We can make you a consultant on the project and pay you an hourly fee.”

  “All you need is some idea of how that happened?” she asked looking for more defined direction.

  “Well,” he said grinning a grin that communicated something to that effect, “now that you ask. As a matter of fact, if you could analyze whatever you find and make some educated guesses as to how this guy was able to pull it off, and any thoughts you may have, it would be valuable beyond your imagination. I would even list you in the credits an on the copyright.” This last bit of bait seemed to get her attention more than the offer of payment.

  “It may take me some time,” she said, now thinking. He could see in her face that a new question had crossed her mind: “Why don’t you just ask Amy for this information?” was what she wanted to ask him. Mark looked down at the table and played with his fork. He decided to answer the question even though it had never been vocalized.

  “Amy is gone right now. Besides,” he leaned into Marin as if he were afraid that his wife could hear him all the way from Europe. “Amy may be very good at what she does, but I’ll bet she would be lost without you when it came to this kind of stuff.” This answer seemed to please Marin a great deal. They finished their lunch and, over Marin’s protest, Mark paid the check for both of them. They quickly walked back to the bank building. The wind had started to blow in even stronger gusts and brought with it cold arctic air. Mark walked with her into the atrium of the building. He took out a business card and began to write on the back.

  “If you can find something give me a call and I will come by and pick it up. My email address is on the back of the card in case it’s easier for you just to attach a file.” He recapped his pen and handed Marin the card. “Look, don’t go to a lot of trouble and don’t give me anything that isn’t public-record type stuff. The last thing I want is to cause you a problem. Keep track of the time you spend doing this and we will pay you the standard consulting fee.” Marin listened to all this as she put his card away in her purse. When she looked up at him Mark could read the question on her face. “The standard fee is one hundred dollars an hour, plus expenses,” he told her, answering the question that she had not voiced but wanted to ask. They parted with a wave.

  “I’ll be in touch, soon” she called after him.

  “I’m counting on it.” he said as he entered the revolving door that would take him back outside into the cold.

  Mark got back to his office and retreated behind his closed door to work on the software that had to be discussed in Phoenix on Monday. He found an email from Sandy with his flight information and locator code in his inbox. It would be a flight to Phoenix late Sunday, meeting on Monday morning, and then back to Dallas Monday night in time for Amy’s return. He might see a little of her Monday night.

  If her trip had gone well she might be keyed up and want to talk. More than likely having changed time zones thirteen times in a day would get the best of her. He would not see much of her until Tuesday night or Wednesday morning. She would spend the time sleeping and trying to readjust to Central Standard Time. He didn’t begrudge her the sleep or envy her the adjustment phase. He was still recovering from his little hop to Nassau.

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nbsp; He was soon deep in the software program and lost all track of time until Sandy stuck her head in the door to say goodnight. An intense dislike for fighting five o’clock traffic and the prospect of going home to an empty house caused him to stay right where he was for several more hours.

  He worked until about eight o’clock. He would have continued to work beyond that if it had not been for the noise coming from his stomach. He gave up trying to work and gave into his stomach about eight-thirty. Before leaving for the night he sent the list of complex computer commands to the printer in his office. While it generated a laser-printed copy of the program, he used to his phone to call Mr. Jim’s and order a large pepperoni and onion pizza. He would stop on his way home and pick up his dinner. He collected a handful of papers from the tray on the printer and absentmindedly began reading them as he walked through the offices to the garage and his car.

  Halfway between his office and his home he stopped in a nondescript strip mall and picked up the pizza he had ordered twenty minutes before. The spicy odor from his dinner filled his car as he drove the rest of the way home while trying to follow a hockey game on the radio. He was sure that his car would still smell like pizza in the morning when he drove back to work. He made a note to himself to leave the windows down tomorrow after the got to Micronix. He moved the pizza, the printouts, and the hockey game into the house. Sitting at the breakfast bar in the kitchen, he ate pizza, ignored the hockey game, all the while making notes of things to fix in the margins of the printed pages from his office. He did this until well after midnight before once again giving into a call of nature, this time sleep, and moved off to bed.

  The routine of the morning before was repeated just as it had been hundreds of times since coming to live in Highland Park. Alarm, make coffee, shower, shave, drink coffee, dress, drink more coffee, and finally drive to work. This morning he added carrying the laptop he had taken with him to the Bahamas. He was later getting out the door than he expected; it had taken him several minutes of searching to locate the briefcase he had carried the computer in from the night before. The drive was much the same—too many people trying to go to the same general place at the same time.

  Mark was in the office before Sandy arrived. He took out the stacks of paper he carted home only a few hours before. Now they were corrected in the hieroglyphic writings of a computer engineer even though they smelled very much like pepperoni pizza. When Sandy arrived she looked in to see her charge laboring over the computer screen unaware of anything else going on in the world around him. He stayed that way all morning long. At noon Sandy came in to ask him if he wanted her to pick him up something to eat. Sandy knew that when Mark was this absorbed in what he was doing eating sometimes took a back seat to writing code. He told her thanks but that he planned on bringing this thing to a point where he could stop and download onto a disk so he could work there this weekend. “In fact” he told her, gathering things to put in his briefcase, “because it looks like I will be working most of the weekend to get ready for this trip to Phoenix on Monday, I am planning on leaving here in an hour so I can beat the crowds out of town and work in peace and quiet.”

  “A good idea” she told him. Sandy knew that for all the refinement he had gone through in getting to where he was in Micronix, her boss was still at heart a software engineer. When software engineers wrote code they all liked to do the same things; put music on as loud as they could stand it and drink anything that contained a lot of caffeine. She smiled to herself, knowing what kind of quiet weekend he had planned. As soon as she left, Mark began saving files to his hard drive that would then be uploaded to his Dropbox account. Over the course of a few minutes, Mark assured himself that the files were saved. When he finished working on it at the ranch he would save the files again, but also put it on a thumb drive to take with him. It had taken the phone company months to get the necessary services run to the ranch in order to allow him to do that. It had involved running a cable out to his property and installing a shielded service box in his basement to hook all the old and new lines into.

  When the files were transferred he collected some papers off his desk, stuffed them into his briefcase, and headed for the elevator that would eventually take him to his car. As soon as he got to the outside parking garage, Mark realized that the temperature had continued to fall. He could already see his breath in the gray midday light. The weather report he listened to on the car radio confirmed what he had suspected. A cold front, early for this time of year, was pushing into the area and the temperature would continue to drop all day. Even though it was still early Mark ran into a good deal of traffic heading out of town. When he got to Ft. Worth instead of taking Interstate 820 north and connecting to Texas Highway 114, he headed south with every intention of catching Interstate 20 going toward Abilene. More to the point, going to Eastland. It was a little out of the way, going to Runaway Bay by way of Eastland, but there was something there he wanted to see. And something he wanted to do. Amy had asked him once how he could stand driving the three hours to the ranch just to spend the weekend there. He did not answer her directly but did tell her that he did not mind the drive at all. It gave him time to think and plan and was actually a very good way to figure things out sometimes. Other times it was just a way to unwind.

  As he cleared the remnant of the Ft. Worth traffic headed west, his mind, really for the first time with any seriousness, began to think of all the money in the bank in Nassau that for all intents and purposes was his to do with as he chose. Or was it? He filled his pipe with one hand while keeping the other on the steering wheel. He lit it and let his mind wander over the questions that were beginning to form there. New problems were added to his mental list of things to find out as he dealt with his new-found wealth. Could he keep it? What if he gave it back? Was there a reward? Could he be prosecuted as an accomplice? How would he tell Amy about the money? Would it make her feel bad about how she had treated Cecil knowing he had been rich and left it all to them? How would she react period? Then a thought crossed his mind that scared him. Should he tell her at all? The Amy questions were the ones he settled on to ponder as he drove the one hundred and fifty miles or so to Eastland, Texas.

  When he pulled his car off the interstate and on to the main road that connected the town of Eastland to the interstate, he had not managed to answer a single one of these new questions. It was the same ground that Amy and he had covered just about a month ago in saying goodbye to the late Cecil Lawrence, who had turned into the even later Mr. David Cameron. He stopped at the Wal-Mart just off the interstate.

  Wal-Marts in towns like Eastland were more than just a place to buy something in. In most cases, after Wal-Mart arrives, smaller mom-and-pop businesses, like a local drug store, and who cannot compete with Wal-Mart, soon disappear. Once the transition occurs, the Wal-Mart begins to occupy a place in the community far greater than just that of a store. It becomes the central part of social life for lots of people in the area. Directions are given from one place to another in relationship to where the person is coming from and going to using the Wal-Mart as the point of reference that everyone knows about. Neighbors meet each other in the aisle. Soon wives no longer tell their husbands they are going to Wal-Mart. They just say, “I am going to the store,” and both parties understand what that means.

  Inside he went to the household section of the vast store and picked out an assortment of silk flowers and plants. Money changed hands at the cash register and Mark left the store with the flowers now in a dun-colored, plastic, all-purpose shopping bag. From the Wal-Mart parking lot, he drove about a mile or two down the main street until he came to South Marsh. The road itself was marked by a sign installed by the city some years before; there was also another marker that simply said “Eastland Community Cemetery” and pointed down South Marsh. The sign had an arrow painted on it to indicate the direction to be followed. The road was hard -packed dirt, rutted by the water from the rains that ran down it. It was hard to driv
e at any speed over twenty miles an hour. Mark stopped at a metal-sided one-story building just across the dirt street from the cemetery’s main entrance. The sign on the door said that the building was the Eastland County Community Cemetery Office. Mark looked through the glass front door to find a large middle-aged woman sitting behind a counter that formed the lobby area of the building. He guessed this buffer area was to keep the living public separated from the living county employees. The other cemetery customers either waited out back on the truck or across the street. The lady looked up from her work as Mark quickly closed the door to keep the cold air out and the natural gas warmed air in.

  “Can I help you?” she asked Mark as he approached the counter. The tone of her voice let Mark know right away that she really did mean to be of help.

  “Yes, ma’am. I am looking for the plot of the Cameron Family. David Sr., David Jr., and Vera. David Jr. and Vera are buried there now I believe.” The lady did not say anything in reply but took a large old book off the shelf behind her desk and began to turn pages in it. She did this for the better part of ten minutes before she found what she was looking for. She wrote something on a piece of paper from her desk and walked up to the counter to give it to Mark. While he looked at the paper she pointed across the street and told him that the graves were located in what was now referred to as the “old section” of the cemetery. The Cameron plots were in Section E5A she told him, which was what she had written down on the slip of paper.

  Mark left his car in the office parking lot, choosing to walk across the street with his Wal-Mart bag of flowers to the plot he had been directed to. The lady in the office building was good at explaining things and Mark found the graves without much trouble. He took the flowers out of the bag and forced them into the ground close to the headstones. He divided the flowers evenly between the two graves, half to Vera and half to Little David. He stepped back on to the path in order to admire the placement of the flowers when something else caught his eye.