by Steve Levi
“It’s reasonable to assume—”
Swensen cut him off again. He picked up the warrant and shook it at the two Cookie-Cutters. “I’m betting this is a freelance operation. You figured to buffalo me with paperwork. Wrong! You boys don’t need a warrant to see any of the files in the other room. Those files are all from federally insured institutions. But you do need a warrant to see what RMD, LLC is doing with legal money. I think this look-and-see is just a way to see if I will spill the beans and say RMD, LLC has money here and what it’s going to be used for. All these documents,” he pointed at the briefcase, “are public documents, and if you don’t already have copies, then you are one sad team of investigators. No,” Swensen stopped Cookie-Cutter one from breaking into the conversation. “No. The real point of this little, little exercise,” he said, pointing at the briefcase, “has nothing to do with files and everything to do with cash. I can’t legally tell you if RMD, LLC has cash here. You’ll have to get a warrant to find that out. I’m betting you can’t get a warrant because you have diddly when it comes to proof that RMD, LLC is laundering money. Even if RMD, LLC had millions here, it’s legal money. The only thing RMD, LLC cannot do is run it through a bank. Until then, you’re all bluff. Get the blue blazes out of my company, and don’t come back unless you have a real warrant.”
Chapter 22
“Foam?” Charlie Schanche gave Noonan a strange look as though he wasn’t sure of what he heard. “You mean like Styrofoam?”
“Or car-wash foam. Anything that would have looked like foam anywhere along your route.”
Schanche looked like exactly what he was: a burned-out Vietnam vet. He wore a badly beaten green military-issue jacket with a frayed collar and cuffs, faded jeans, and combat boots. The jacket had a POW-MIA patch on the shoulder of one sleeve, an Air CAV patch on the other, and a faded American flag on the right breast. His gray hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and he had crow’s feet deep enough to mine coal. His hands were gnarled like those of a workman, and he smoked cigarettes so fast he was lighting the new one with the smoldering butt of the old. He was wearing a baseball cap with the words Vietnam Vet across the front.
Schanche thought for a moment. “No. I can’t remember anything even looking like foam. There was a lot of water in the tunnel, and there were some bubbles on the surface but nothing like foam. Is it important?”
“Maybe. Maybe not.” Noonan said as he wrote the comment in his notebook. “You’re a vet, aren’t you?”
Schanche smiled and indicated his baseball cap. “Hard to tell, eh?”
“How many tours?”
“Six in Vietnam, one in Cambodia.”
“Cambodia? We weren’t fighting in Cambodia.” Noonan gave him a puzzled look.
Schanche gave a wry smile. “We weren’t fighting in a lot of places I’ve been.”
“No doubt.” Noonan smiled. “How long have you been working for Swensen?”
“Oh, off and on for eight, nine years. I come and go.”
“Nothing permanent. I mean, is this a part-time job?”
“Part-time for some, full-time for me. That is, it’s the only job where I’m working consistently. I do some contract mechanical work sometimes—cars, trucks, engines, you know. Hands-on.”
“Been riding a bike long?”
“Grew upon an Indian. Yeah, I’d say so.”
“Now, the day the armored car went missing, you were bringing up the rear?”
“Yeah, back-end duty.”
“When you got to work, did you go into the garage at all?”
“Well, sure, we all did. Had to get the bikes.”
“So you and the others went into the garage and got the bikes. Then what?”
“Well, George was lead. He did the check-in. The rest of us—me and John and Ramon—got on our bikes and waited in the yard. Armored came out with George behind it. We took off. Simple.”
“How long have you worked with George?”
“Three to four years.”
“So you’ve been working at Swensen longer than he has.”
“Pretty much so.”
“Well, if you’ve been working longer than George, why didn’t you do the check-in?”
“Didn’t want to. Too much responsibility. I’m happy on the bike. He wants to do the check-in, fine with me.”
“Was the decision made there in the yard?”
“Naw. Always been that way. Whenever we’re together, George and me, he does the check-in.”
“I thought the assignments were random.”
“They are. Sometimes I’m with George. Sometimes I with Ramon or John or any of the others. I don’t like to do the check-ins, so I don’t.”
“Do the others mind you not doing the check-in?”
“No. They get an extra buck and a half an hour for being in charge.”
“You don’t mind if they get paid more?”
“Nope. I’m happy with the ride and no responsibility.”
“What kind of responsibility are we talking about?”
“Most of the time, not much. Look at the route on the city map. Check the invoice with the license plate of the armored, pull on the back door to make sure it’s locked, wave to the drivers. That’s about it. Nothing ever happens. It’s all routine.”
“Well, something happened this time.”
“Luck of the draw. But it wasn’t a robbery. The armored just went missing.”
“It wasn’t a robbery?”
“Nothing stolen. Even if it was, the money’s insured. No one loses in this business.”
“Any reason to think the drivers were involved?”
“Not really. Charlie and Harry have been with the company longer than me. Started with old man Swensen, I mean, John, back in the days of dirt. If they were gonna do any robbing—and that’s what you’re thinking, right? —if they were gonna do any robbing, they’d have done it long ago. And with money in the armored. The missing armored didn’t have any money inside.”
“How do you know there wasn’t any money in the armored?”
“Because of the route. We were going to the mall to make pickups. Runs like that we don’t have money in the armored because we’re picking it up.”
“So the armored was empty?”
“As far as I know. No reason for any money to be in the armored. Like I said, we were picking up money, not dropping it off.”
Chapter 23
Curtis Jackson was going to be taking a busman’s holiday. He hated busman’s holidays. That’s why he never took one. If you were going to have a holiday, make it a vacation. A West Coast vacation. A vacation where you went to a place you had never been and always wanted to go to for one or two fun-filled weeks. You jammed every bit of pleasure you could into those eleven days—with a day and a half of travel on either side of the eleven days.
But not this year.
Not this week.
It was a banking conference on Maui, as far as he could get from North Carolina and still speak English. He was going to be Schultz from HOGAN’S HEROES. He didn’t see anything, he didn’t hear anything, he didn’t know anything. He’d have a perfect alibi; eleven days in Maui with lots of receipts to prove he’d never been off the Big Island. Maui was the Big Island, wasn’t it? If not, he didn’t care. He was just going to be a long way from North Carolina when the strange things were going to happen.
Tuesday night he had dinner at the airport in Virginia Beach. He had a debit-card receipt to prove it. Then he went through Security with his passport. Once inside the airport, he took a cellphone picture of his boarding pass and e-mailed it to his office. He bought a Scotch on board and kept the receipt. By the time he got back from Maui, no one was going to doubt he had been far, far away from North Carolina for the week when everything had gone into a basket of spiders.
Chapter 24
“The bait’s been taken. All parties are moving in our direction.”
“It’s about time. We are on a tight time schedule. This
has got to work.”
“Relax. The bankers are on board. The cops are busy looking for an armored car that doesn’t exist, and the feds are being snookered by their own rules. We only need the feds to make one last stupid move, and we will be in the clear and long gone before anyone knows what’s what.”
Chapter 25
Noonan did not expect to find anything in the Pamlico Tunnel. He didn’t find anything, so he was not disappointed. There was nothing to find. It was exactly what everyone described it as: a tunnel. Yes, there was ongoing construction work. Yes, it required a convoy to get through. Yes, there were side alleys where someone could hide but were not large enough to hide an armored car. Yes, both sides were controlled by traffic personnel. No, no one had seen the armored car. No, there had not been strange or suspicious activity before or after the disappearance of the armored car. No, no one had any theories as to how an armored car could disappear in a tunnel. No, there had been no foam of any kind in the tunnel.
Armed with his cell phone, measuring tape, and notebook, Noonan started at one entrance of the tunnel and lock-stepped his way to the opposing entrance. Then he did the same thing from the other side of the traffic pattern. He examined all the so-called alleys and niches in the tunnel, on both sides, and took a special interest in the drainage system. The widest alley was barely four feet wide, clearly not wide enough for an armored car, and it had a three-foot-wide storm drain running down the center of the alley. There was removable grate on the top of the trench-like storm drain. The trench was built at an angle so water could course out of the tunnel. The alley ran about ten yards before it opened onto an overlook. From there it was a drop of about two hundred feet to a pool of water below. There was a railing at the overlook to keep anyone from slipping into oblivion. The mountainside from the overlook upward was a sheer cliff. On both sides of the overlook, the ground was ankle-deep in mud with no sign it had been disturbed.
Noonan retraced his steps until he found the scrapes the guards had mentioned. There were three sets on each side of one of the alleys. The scratches were long parallel lines just like the security men had told him. Noonan measured them. He wrote in his notebook they were five feet long and separated by eighteen inches. There were some vertical scars above the parallel lines that ran to the ceiling of the alleyway. Noonan could not reach the ceiling, but he could see scrap marks along the edges of the I-beam running down the center of the alley.
While Noonan could not find anything to raise himself to the level of the I-beam, thanks to the miracle of modern technology—albeit courtesy of the cursed tool of Satan—he could zoom in on the I-beam from several angles with his cell phone. The resulting pictures were not “most excellent” as the younger generation would say, but as Noonan’s generation did say, the electronic photos were “adequate, interesting, and useful.” As Noonan was inwardly smiling about how the advance of technology was making the job of the crime fighter easier and more productive, the curse of the same technology began pulsating in his hand.
Evil incarnate was on the phone.
“Captain, it’s so good for you to take my call.”
Noonan rolled his eyes. Then he said nothing because, quite frankly, there was nothing he felt he could say without risking an administrative court martial. When the moment of silence became oppressive, the Sandersonville Commissioner of Homeland Security Edward Paul Lizzard III continued as Noonan waited with bated breath for the inevitable royal command.
“You are hard at work on the armored car thing, right?”
“That is correct, Commissioner. The non-crime investigation you ordered.” Short was always best with Lizzard. The boom was coming, so Noonan held his breath. What bizarre request was about to be delivered over the demon of electronic origin?
“A matter of national security has come up, and I . . . we need your unique assistance at this moment.”
Noonan held his breath; the curtain for the theater of the absurd was about to be raised.
“The Department of Homeland Security has been entrusted with a unique but time-sensitive task here in Sandersonville. It is a small task; I am sure you can handle in a matter of moments seeing you are in situ at the moment.”
“In situ,” Noonan mouthed nonchalantly, wondering if Lizzard even knew what the term meant.
“You know, in place, so to speak. You are working for the Swensen Armored Car Company, and a matter of national security has arisen involving the company. It’s all hush-hush, you know. Undercover and all.”
Noonan rolled his eyes. “Well, I see. What is it, exactly, you want me to do?”
“This is all secret, Captain, so you are to keep this matter close to your vest pocket.”
Vest pocket? thought Noonan. Where did that come from?
“The United States Department of Revenue, Financial Division, part of the FinCEN, Financial Crimes Enforcement Network in Revenue, needs our assistance.”
Here it comes!
“I . . . we have been asked to verify some moneys in the possession of the Swensen Armored Car Company vault. The money is not to be seized, moved, or sequestered; just examined to the extent it is there. And how much is there. Am I being clear?”
Lizzard was clear, but Noonan was not about to let the commissioner off the book so easily. “Sequestered? The money is not to be sequestered? What exactly does the Financial Division expect me to do? I mean, am I to count the money? I can’t count the money without sequestering it. That is, I can’t walk into a vault and be told five million dollars of all the money on a shelf is from one customer. Money is in a vault, not in boxes, per se. The vault of the armored-car company is like a bank vault. All the money is in piles, boxes, or bags by denomination. There is no way to tell which specific one hundred dollar bill came from one business and which twenty dollar came from another.”
Lizzard sounded exasperated.
“Let me put it another way, Captain. FinCEN knows there is a certain amount of cash owned by a specific company that uses the Swensen Armored Car Company. It assumes the cash is being held in situ in the vault of the Sanders Armored Car Company. All you have to do is look at the vault records of the company in question and see if there is an outstanding amount of money in the form of cash listed as being held by this company. Then you walk into the vault and make sure there is at least the same amount of cash in the vault listed as owned by the company. Simple.”
Here comes the kicker, Noonan thought as he asked, “Will I have a warrant?”
“Captain, this is all very hush-hush. National security and all. We don’t want the bad people to know we’re looking at their money. Use your charm.”
“Who are the bad people in this case?”
“No need for you to worry about it, Captain. You will be met at the armored-car company by two FinCEN agents.”
“Will they have a warrant?”
“Hush-hush, Captain. This is all hush-hush.” Before Noonan could respond, his cell phone went ghost.
Chapter 26
“Bait taken.”
“Assemble the team. We want to be long gone by the time the sun comes up.”
“Plan in place. Hotel reservations made.”
Chapter 27
One thing about Harry Sandusky: every time you figured you’d seen the last of him, poof, there he was again. He was like a bad penny. This time he came with friends.
“What is it, Harry?” John Swensen said as he looked up at the cadaverous insurance representative. Sandusky was not alone. He was with three men who pulsed accountant. They were all dressed in ill-fitting black suits with white shirts and dark-blue ties. They all had jacket breast pockets filled with pens. They all had briefcases. Black, of course.
“Halloween coming early, Harry?”
“John,” Sandusky started his sentence with someone else’s name, which, for him, was odd. His sentences usually started with the words I, North Carolina Mutual Indemnity, or Harry Sandusky of North Carolina Mutual Indemnity. “John,” he repeated, “the
re’s been concern about this missing armored car.”
“So you’ve come for a surprise audit?”
“Well, you know, John, North Carolina Mutual Indemnity is a cautious company.”
“With three auditors?”
“Oh, these gentlemen are not from North Carolina Mutual Indemnity. No, no, no. They are bank auditors from the State of North Carolina. North Carolina is concerned over this missing armored car. See, they,” (pause) “and North Carolina Mutual Indemnity are concerned this . . . this . . . this matter might be a cover for a robbery. You know, while everyone is looking for the armored car, someone is making off with the cash.”
Swensen shook his head. “Harry,” and to the three men, “gentlemen, you are free to look over any of these records.” He pointed to the bank of file cabinets along the wall of his office. “All you have to do is show me proper identification, and you can go to work. I don’t know what you will find because these records are regularly audited by, I assume, your office.”
There was a momentary pause and then Sandusky came back with an almost embarrassed wheezing. “It’s not these records the State of North Carolina is interested in,” he said. “It’s the cash in the vault.”
“Then what you are asking is a bit more difficult. The files,” Swensen indicated the file cabinets, “I have written permission to show you. The cash is a bit more complicated. To audit the cash we have on hand means you will have to add up all of the individual ‘cash on hand’ accounts in those files,” again pointing to the bank of file cabinets, “and then see whether the total amount of cash in the vault matches the number.”
Harry started to say something, but Swensen stopped him. “That makes it sound easy. Unfortunately, it’s not. As auditors are told every year—and keeping this as simple as possible for you, Harry, there are four different kinds of money accounts we keep separate. That is, when you walk into the vault, you will find four different areas where money, as in cash, is kept. One is for the federal government. The cash in that area are old bills going back to the Federal Reserve to be destroyed. As our bookkeepers take in cash, when we find old, torn, or faded bills, they put them aside. Once every six months we send them to the Federal Reserve. The value of those dollars is in the records of the individual companies so that none of the companies loses a dime. But the actual dollars are separate.”
