Purely by Accident

by Jim Beegle

  While Hamilton worked for a bank and held a high position with them, it did not mean that he had the kind of money that would be needed to mount this kind of operation. It just as easily could be the federal people. Their pockets were deep and they had access to all kinds of people who specialize in the stuff that had wrecked his weekend. But, in the final analysis, it could be any one of a dozen people, or entities between Hamilton and some branch of the government that Mark knew nothing about. The food chain had started growing longer the minute he told Hamilton about the money. It doubled in size every time the story was retold. The roster of people in the know had moved past Mark’s knowledge days ago, and he knew it.

  “Anyway, I will call you sometime late tomorrow afternoon or evening from out of the country and we can negotiate a deal for the return of the money. I want you to start that process before I call. If you need something or it’s not going well, call me and leave me a message. I’ll pick it up when I get off the plane,” he told her, still avoiding telling her where he was going.

  “You remember what I told Hamilton I wanted?” Once more Amy nodded to him to indicate that her memory was functioning. “Once I am sure we are going to be free from any trouble because the money has been in my control recently, then I will have all the money transferred to IBC.” He stopped and took a drink from his Coke. “I will more than likely be gone for a few days, hopefully no more than three, but when I get back this will all be done and over.” Before Amy could say anything else their dinner arrived.

  As soon as the food was placed in front of him, Mark found that he was very hungry and dived in without any hesitation. They ate in silence, each lost in their own thoughts regarding the money and what would have to be done about it. When dinner was over and the plates cleared, Mark ordered coffee and Amy requested a brandy. They were sipping their drinks when Amy returned to an earlier question that Mark had failed to answer.

  “Mark,” she said to him, putting her glass down and looking directly into his eyes. “Where are you going? Where is the money?”

  He had been expecting this question for several days now and was very surprised that she had not pushed him very hard to know sooner than this. Then again, this was one of the first times they had been together and able to talk to each other since Monday night. He looked at her closely before finally answering.

  “I can’t tell you Amy,” he finally replied. Fire instantly ignited in her eyes and the skin around her mouth tightened as well. She started to speak but was interrupted by the waiter bearing their check. Mark produced a credit card and once more the young man withdrew.

  “Why?” she finally managed to ask through set and clenched teeth. “Don’t you trust me?”

  “Keep your voice down,” he told her, looking to see how far away the waiter had moved. “Amy, think. You’re an officer of the bank. What if I tell you and something goes wrong before we can get this worked out? What if we can’t negotiate our way out of this?” he asked. “If you know where the money is and how to get to it, then you have a legal obligation to go to the other officers of the bank and report it. If you don’t, then you’re an accomplice to a crime. If this thing goes south and IBC needs a scapegoat, Amy Vogel goes to jail.” He stopped to let what he had just told her sink in.

  He could tell from the look on her face that she was not ready for this kind of explanation. He was sure she had several comebacks for what she thought he was going to say, but was totally unprepared to hear that what he was doing and why. For a brief second, Mark thought he saw a moment of regret cross her face. She started to say something but fell silent. During her pause, the waiter returned Mark’s credit card and thanked them for dining at Fresco’s. Without saying anything more, they rose from the table and moved to the parking lot.

  Once they were behind the closed doors of the rental car, she took his hand, looked straight at him, and spoke again. “Mark, take me with you.”

  “What?” he said, not knowing what was coming next.

  “Tomorrow, wherever you are going,” she said almost pleaded. “Let’s just leave, you and me. Let’s just go to the airport, fly away, and live the kind of life all that money could give us. There is so much money that we would never have to come back. We would never have to work again unless we wanted to. Whatever law still applies to the money wouldn’t matter if we never come back to the United States. We could never spend that much money.”

  Mark had serious doubts about the truth of her last statement, at least where she was concerned, but he let it go.

  “You can’t look me in the eye and tell me you haven’t thought of keeping it all, chucking DECCO, and making a new life?”

  “Of course I’ve thought about it, Amy.” He said moving his hand from hers so he could start the car. “I have also thought about Cecil and what all that money bought him - a life on the run hiding himself, hiding from himself, and hiding the money. In the end, what did it gain Cecil, Amy?” he asked her, real anger, buried since Cecil died, rising in his voice. “Dead too soon and with his only friend someone whom he met purely by accident. That’s no way to live. Besides, it’s not our money. It wasn’t Cecil’s to give and it isn’t ours to keep.” He made the last statement slowly so that the words were crisp and there was no doubt how he felt. As he said it, his mind went back to a few weeks ago and the conversation he had with Mr. Willies. The memory of the conversation and the look in the older man’s eyes came back to Mark and caused him once more to hold fast to his decision.

  “Besides,” he continued with a somewhat calmer voice, “someone who doesn’t mind breaking the rules knows the money still exists and that we have control of it. Do you think just because we leave the country they are going to stop trying to take it away from us?” he asked his wife. “We would have to spend the rest of our lives on the run looking over our shoulders. Granted, we would run with first-class seats on every flight, but it’s still running, and that’s no way to live. Not when I can give it back and be done with it.” He was surprised at the passion that her questions had triggered in him. He was also surprised at the harsh tone he had used explaining it.

  He backed the car out of the parking lot and onto Lemon Avenue. The ride home was made in silence. He couldn’t tell if Amy was angry with him or if his comments had forced her to consider what he had said. Whatever the reason for her silence, he could tell that she was deep in thought. His mind, on the other hand, was anything but focused, it wandered from Dallas to Nassau to a cemetery in Eastland and back again.

  * * *

  The only light in the room was the quarter moon shining through the lace curtain and the red LED display on the clock. It read 1:34. The little red dot in the upper-left hand part of the display was lit so that if the person looking at the clock in the darkness had missed the obvious, he or she would know that it was 1:34 a.m. and not 1:34 in the afternoon. Mark was well aware of what time it was. He had been lying in bed beside Amy for over three hours now checking every fifteen minutes or so to see if he was asleep yet. He reasoned that if he could still tell what time it was, he was still awake.

  He and Amy had arrived home without saying much more to each other. He had warned her that, once they got home, she could say nothing to him about the money or his plans to travel. Once back at the house, Amy went in through the door on the side of the garage while Mark waited in the car. Moments after seeing her vanish into the garage, the large metal garage door began to open, allowing Mark to drive in and park the rental car in the spot usually occupied by his white Malibu. He got out of the car, took her by the hand, and led her to the junction box for the phone lines coming into the house. To reinforce his request that they not discuss the money now that they were home, he showed her the small taps installed in the box.

  Inside the house, Mark had gone to his desk and sorted through the mail Amy had left for him. Amy excused herself and went upstairs to the bathroom. While she was gone Mark went to the car, removed the briefcase from the trunk,
and placed it in the chest freezer beside the door. Not the best place, but maybe safe enough. He quickly went back to the den.

  When Amy returned, she headed for the bar and poured herself a rather large nightcap in order to help her sleep. At the moment he envied her the relief. He could tell from the gentle rhythms of her breathing that she was deeply asleep beside him. About an hour ago he was sorely tempted to go downstairs and see if he could find sleep in one of the bottles at the bar. He gave up on the idea after a few minutes of consideration, deciding that it would be better to be sleepy than drunk.

  The clock now read 1:48.

  He finally gave up pretending that he was going to sleep, got out of bed, and dressed. Quietly he slipped out the bedroom door and went downstairs, not really knowing what he was going to do, but knowing that he did not want to wake Amy regardless of what he decided. Halfway down the stairs, he remembered the prospectus that Pat had mailed him, which he had not yet taken the time to read. He had planned on trying to do it at the ranch, but all that had gone out the window when he discovered the taps.

  He stopped on his way to the garage long enough to start a pot of coffee. When he was satisfied that he would soon at least have coffee to stay awake, he retrieved the briefcase from the freezer.

  He took his frosty briefcase into the den, set it on the desk, and popped open the locks. The first thing he saw when it opened was not the prospectus or even his laptop computer but a manila file folder. He was reaching for it when he remembered that it held the records Marin had given him Friday night. Friday night, he sighed to himself. That seemed like a lifetime ago. He absentmindedly opened the folder and started looking at the documents it contained.

  Marin had told him that it was a reconstruction of how Cecil had diverted the money out of the bank. Just as Cecil had indicated, the amounts he started with were rather small. What seemed to play out was how good Cecil had been at playing the overseas markets. He had made very few bad trades, and it was easy to see how the money had grown to over ten million dollars.

  He took the folder with him and retraced his earlier steps into the kitchen for more coffee. Returning to the den, he continued to read and follow the accounting for the funds. Right before he reached the last page he stopped reading and put down his cup. He backtracked several pages and followed the column of numbers back to the point where he had stopped earlier. Mark hated spreadsheets. He had learned to hate them after looking at what must have been several thousand of them when Micronix was in the process of selling out to DECCO. But just because he hated them did not mean he did not understand them or how to read them. Something in the spreadsheets that Marin had given him, the ones he held in his hand, did not seem right.

  He went back into the kitchen. When he returned to the den with more coffee, he started his computer, making sure it was not connected, even wirelessly, to the internet. Within several minutes he was deep into Microsoft’s Excel spreadsheet program, transferring numbers from the sheets Marin had given him into a digital form on the computer screen. That process consumed over two hours while he consumed more coffee before he sent his work to the printer. While the printer ran, he fished into the desk for one of his pipes, the elegant Corona Old Boy pipe lighter, and a pouch of fragrant tobacco.

  When the printer stopped running, he gathered the pages it had disgorged, his smoking paraphernalia, and his empty coffee cup and headed toward the French doors that lead out into the backyard. On his way out, he automatically refilled his cup.

  Outside he sat at the small table close to the edge of the concrete patio, filled his pipe and began to smoke and study the results of two hours’ worth of work. It was here, still smoking and reading, that Amy found him several hours later after she had gotten up to the screaming demands of the alarm clock. A new workweek had just begun.

  Mark, upstairs in the bathroom, went through his morning regimen. He was downstairs and in a very few minutes was dressed in the uniform of an office drone and headed to Dallas. When he left he gave Amy a quick kiss and told her he would call her later. With his eyes, he warned her not to say anything in the house or to anyone other than Ketchem. He hoped his look had communicated something else to her: be careful. Before he could leave, she held out her hand for him and in return he took her in an embrace that he barely remembered. When she broke the embrace she looked up at him and told him something he had not heard her say in a long time.

  “I love you,” she said. He was taken aback when he heard it. He was going to reply, but when he turned to do so, she was already leaving the room. He just stood there for a moment, not sure what to do or say and not at all sure about his feelings at the moment.

  He left his house in his rental car looking, for all intents and purposes, as if he were going to work. He carried nothing more than his briefcase and, naturally, a coffee cup. He drove the same route that he ordinarily took right up to the point where he reached the north/south freeway that he usually took south into the heart of the city. Today he turned north and drove as if he were headed for the DFW International Airport; at least anyone following him would have thought so. He continued to follow Texas State Freeway 183 right up to the last exit, Valley View Lane, before going into the massive DFW Airport complex.

  On the southwest corner of Valley View and 183 stood an Embassy Suites Hotel. At least it was currently an Embassy Suites. The property had changed hands four or five times over the last few years. Mark was sure that they must have a sign painter on staff who came with the building. He was particularly interested in it this morning because it was an old hotel and built, like most older hotels, with a service exit at the back of the building. Mark knew this because he had gotten lost last July looking for the bathroom after meeting with some people from DECCO who were staying there. Instead of finding the men’s room, he found himself standing outside on a loading dock that, in the warm Texas sun smelled of rotting garbage and sour milk, just like most hotels’ loading docks do.

  Armed with his briefcase, he went into the building and presented himself at the hostess station for the restaurant. She seated him and took his order for coffee, leaving him with a menu. When the waitress brought the coffee, he asked her for a few more minutes to decide what he needed for breakfast.

  Just as she was about to leave him to his deliberations, he asked her the way to the restroom. She indicated the general direction with her hands. He thanked her and rose to follow her pointed directions. The idea was to convince anyone watching that he had stopped for a quick breakfast on his way to the airport. He planned on eating breakfast, but not here. He also planned on going to the airport this morning, just not to this one.

  Instead of stopping at the entrance to the men’s room, Mark kept on going down the long hallway and, just like last summer, out the service door, and onto the loading dock. But unlike last summer, instead of stopping and going back, he continued down the concrete stairs. Using the building as cover, he walked into the parking lot of a strip mall that had a donut shop, a unisex hair salon, and the one thing he also remembered from last summer—an Enterprise Rental Car Center.

  He was the only one there at that time of the morning and, within thirty minutes of arriving at the Embassy Suites, Mark was in his second rental car in less than twenty-four hours, headed not for DFW International, but to Austin, 150 miles south.

  <<<<<<<>>>>>>>

  Jack Walker sat in the Ford Taurus and was beginning to worry. He had followed this guy from Dallas to what appeared was going to be a departure gate at DFW. Okay, so the guy decided he was hungry and had time to spare before the flight, so he stopped for breakfast. Lots of people do that, but that was over an hour-and-a-half ago.

  Jack had been doing this kind of work for years; first for the Army, then for the Dallas police force, and finally on his own as a private investigator. In fact, he owned the agency that was hired to wire this guy’s houses and to follow him. Jack had started out in this business, like almost everyone in the private inve
stigation trade, doing domestic cases and hack- work for cheap-ass lawyers. It had taken several years of collecting exhibits for divorce cases to come to the conclusion the hours and the money was much better doing industrial investigating. That had been ten years ago. Since then he had built the company into one of the best in North Texas.

  Right now all of his years of training and experience were telling him something wrong. Normally, he would have dispatched a number of rookie investigators to do this part of the surveillance instead of doing it on his own.

  However, it was close to Christmas and most guys he used for this type of stuff found walking inside the warm comfort of the mall watching the scantily clad housewives go about their holiday shopping much more appealing then tailing a guy all over hell’s half acre. He really couldn’t blame them either.

  In fact he would be doing the same thing himself except in this case, the client who had hired him last week to do the job had insisted that someone senior in his firm be detailed specifically to the subject. There had even been talk of a bonus if the guys paying for the job found out what they needed to know sooner rather than later.

  Jack had no idea what these people were after, or what this particular guy had done, to warrant personalized attention. That was usually the case though. He rarely knew the ‘what and why’ of any of the work he did. For the most part, the details mattered little to him. In fact, outside of the amount of his fees, there was little else he really cared to know. He did a lot of jobs like this, young business guy, almost always a man, who was trying to steal company secrets, and the company wanted proof.

  So, Jack took this job himself. Oh, he had teams of different people working over the weekend when the guy made his trip out of town, but they had been given advance notice about that so they had been able to plan ahead. In fact, he had prepositioned a few of his people close to the guy’s place in the country. Jack had already checked to make sure the taps and bugs were working right before the guy showed up.