Stuart Woods - Under the Lake

Howell skimmed through it, and it seemed straightforward enough. The property had transferred from Donal O’Coineen to Eric Sutherland, and O’Coineen had signed it. Or had he? Howell thought for a moment. “Would you have a record of old business licenses?” he asked. In addition to being a farmer, O’Coineen had been a well digger, Enda McCauliffe had said.

“Sure. In what name?”

“Donal O’Coineen. Try 1951.” He followed her to another row of filing cabinets.

“Here you are,” she said, extracting a sheet of paper. “Here’s the renewal application for 1951.”

Howell took the application and the deed to a window for better light and compared Donal O’Coineen’s signature on the application with the one on the deed. They were identical, or near enough. O’Coineen had signed over his land to Eric Sutherland, and almost immediately after that had taken his family and left the farm. Shortly afterwards, the roadbed had given way, and the farm had been obliterated. It all added up. Howell felt disappointed. The story had excited him, and now it was over. At least he could get back to work on Lurton Pitts’s book, now, with this O’Coineen thing settled in his mind.

He took the deed and the application back to the girl. “Thanks,” he said. “I really appreciate it.” He was about to hand her the papers, when his eye caught something, and he took them back. Under O’Coineen’s signature on the deed was another signature.

The document had been witnessed by one Christopher F. Scully.

Scotty burst into the cabin, startling Howell, who was banging away on the word processor.

“I’ve got him, John!” she cried. “He’s dirty and I’ve got him!”

Howell clutched his chest. “Well, do you have to give me a coronary in the process? I’m at that age, you know.”

“You’ll be younger than springtime when I’ve told you what I’ve found,” Scotty said, throwing herself on the sofa and kicking feet in the air, losing her shoes in the process.

“All right, all right, what is it? What have you found?”

“Bo has got a passport,” Scotty crowed, triumphantly.

Howell looked at her incredulously. “So what? So have several million other Americans.”

“Not in the name of Peter Patrick O’Hara, they haven’t.”

“Come again?”

“It’s got Bo’s picture in it, but O’Hara’s name. It’s a phony!”

“Is that it?”

“Huh?”

“Is that all you’ve got? You’re going to ring up the FBI and turn him in for a phony passport? This is going to get you a Pulitzer? I can see the headlines in the Times now – ‘INTREPID REPORTER CATCHES SHERIFF WITH INCORRECT TRAVEL DOCUMENT.' Swell.“

“Well, listen, that’s not all,” Scotty replied, undaunted. “The only place he’s been is Switzerland. Lots of times.”

“Oh, that’s different. Make that headline, 'REPORTER UNCOVERS SHERIFF’S SKIING HABIT.'”

“Come on, John, don’t you know what’s in Switzerland?”

“Alps.”

“Banks, dummy. Secret banks. Banks you can walk into wearing a bad wig and a false nose, carrying a suitcase full of thousand dollar bills, and they don’t ask any questions.”

Howell looked thoughtful. “What did you do with the copies of Bo’s ledger sheets?”

“In your desk drawer.”

Howell got them and spread them on the dining table. “Look at this,” he said.

Scotty ran over. “What? What?”

“These lumps of numbers that were interspersed throughout the ledger pages. Look at this first group.” He pointed.

D121 A 1845

F0720

L002 F 1005

Z 1110

S241 Z 1611

F 1716

D122 F 1200

A 1645

“Okay, I’m looking.”

Howell read through it and did some mental calculations. “Right. Yeah. It’s just shorthand for an airline schedule. See? The times are on the 24-hour clock. Depart Atlanta on Delta flight 121 at 6:45 PM, that would be, arrive in Frankfurt at 7:20 the next morning. Get Lufthansa 002 at 10:05, arrive Zurich at 11:10. Then back to Frankfurt on Swissair in the afternoon, and a noon flight back to Atlanta the next day.”

“Great! Check the other groups.”

Howell moved along the pages. “Some variations. Look, this time he came back through New York; another time he went out through New York; another time through London instead of Frankfurt. Mixing it up. Doesn’t want some bright immigration officer to remember his face.”

“Don’t they do any sort of checking on the passport in immigration or customs?”

“Yeah, they run your passport number through the computer to see if it’s real and if you’re some sort of problem – history of smuggling, that sort of thing.”

“But his passport isn’t real. Wouldn’t they catch that?”

“It probably is real, just false. Bo wouldn’t have much trouble running over to the courthouse, finding an old birth certificate of somebody who’s died, probably as an infant, and using that to apply. I don’t know if the state department checks with the courthouse, but even if they did, Bo would find that easy to handle.”

“How does he get the money out, then?”

“Carries it. U. S. Customs doesn’t look in your baggage on the way out of the country, only on the way in. He wouldn’t go through customs in London or Frankfurt, because he’s just changing planes inside a restricted area. And Swiss customs, if they looked in his luggage, wouldn’t bat an eye. Can you imagine how much cash must get carried into that little country every year?”

“How much money has he moved, then? Add it up.”

Howell got a calculator and added the column of two-digit figures in the right margin. “Well, if these figures represent money, he’s got $940,000 in a Swiss bank.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Amazing how much savings a hard-working fellow can accumulate in just over three years, isn’t it?”

“But we’ve got him, now. We’ve got the goods.”

“Got him for what?”

“Well, to begin with, the passport. I’ve got the number, it could be traced.”

“Obtaining a false passport. Okay, my guess is that’s a one-to-five sentence in a country club federal prison. With good behavior, out in, say, eight months.”

“Well, there’s the drug dealing.”

“What drug dealing? I don’t know about any drug dealing. Neither do you.”

“But his ledger sheets.”

“We don’t know what the ledger sheets mean. A schedule, maybe, but we don’t know of what. Besides, all we’ve got is photocopies of some numbers and letters in block capitals. You could have forged those. You’ve had enough access to Bo’s handwriting, haven’t you?”

“Well, yes, but… ”

“They were illegally obtained, too. Never stand up in court.”

Scotty frowned. “Isn’t it illegal to take large amounts of money out of the country?”

“Nope. If you take out more than $5,000 in cash or negotiable instruments at one time, there’s a federal form you have to fill out, but he wouldn’t bother. Now, the money’s gone. How’re you going to prove he took it out?”

“His travel schedule. He’s never spent much more than a day out of the country on these trips. It’s obvious he’s ferrying money, isn’t it?”

“Obvious, maybe, but not provable. He likes skiing but gets tired the first day.”

“How about the IRS? They could get him for tax evasion, couldn’t they? I mean, that’s how they got Al Capone.”

“Evasion of taxes on what? I repeat, the money’s gone. Nobody saw him take it, that we know of. Swiss banks don’t talk to the IRS. Al Capone was a visible figure in lots of visible businesses.”

“Well, Bo’s dealing in drugs.”

“I doubt it. Bo’s too smart to push junk. Look at his schedule. He’s being paid off by somebody to look the other way. That’s what’s going on. Maybe.”