Thomas Perry - Dance for the Dead

The man reflexively leaned back away from her. "Mary, you have to understand that things don't work the way they once did. It's nice to see you, but - "

Mary turned and nodded to Jane, who was still sitting in the overstuffed chair next to the marble table where the pens were chained. She stepped forward to join them, but she didn't smile. Mary said, "This is Katherine Webster from the Treasury Department. This is Gene Hiller, my old friend."

The man looked from one to the other. "Now wait a minute," he said. "What's going on?"

"Don't worry," said Mary. "If your time is coming, I don't know about it. Let's talk."

Jane began to open her purse and fiddle with the little black wallet, as though she were about to pull out a badge.

Gene Hiller looked around him again, then said quickly, "This way."

His office was small, a place where he could hang his coat while he was out in the computer room. As soon as they were inside, Mary closed the door and stood in a place that made it impossible for him to sit behind his desk where he felt safe. Jane could see that Mary had once been very good at this.

"Here it is, Gene," she said. "I've made a deal with Katherine here. I'm going to give the money back voluntarily." She seemed to notice the sweat forming on his pale forehead. "I'm not - confirm this for me, Katherine - not expected to testify against anyone who may have had anything to do with any of the illegal activities in which I was once engaged."

The muscles in his shoulders seemed to relax so that his neck actually got longer. "What... brings you here?"

"It seems I can't go to Zurich, pick up a check with a lot of zeros on it, and fly back here to hand it over." She gave Jane a sarcastic smile. "There's very little trust left in the world."

"I see," said Gene, but all he could see was that in Mary's mind Jane represented what was stopping her.

"My attorney tells me that in order to get past the judge a week from now, it has to be voluntary, and apparently spontaneous, as evidence that I feel remorse and have been rehabilitated sincerely. I can't appear to have bought my way out with the Treasury Department. This puts me in a serious bind. Consequently I have to ask old friends for help."

The threat was not wasted on him. If for some reason she could not give them the money, there was something else she could give them. "What do you want me to do?"

"An electronic transfer," she said. "Receive the money, then send it on a second later. Write this down, and get it right. Credit Suisse, 08950569237. If they need a transfer request, I'll sign one and you can fax it. If they ask for verification tell them I've furnished identification. The name I used was James Barraclough."

Gene looked at her for a moment. "Want to tell me why you put a false name on a numbered account in a Swiss bank?"

Mary said, "I'm rehabilitating myself these days, not giving anybody lessons."

His eyebrows slowly began to rise. He smelled something. "Where exactly do you want these funds sent?"

Mary took a deep breath and blew it out. "Turn on your payroll computer and punch up the account number where you send the money for federal tax withholding. Can you do that?"

"Sure. What then?"

"Transfer all of the money from the Swiss bank into that account without ever having it appear on your computers as a transaction received by this bank. Give it to the I.R.S."

She looked at Jane Whitefield. Her eyes were wet and red and hot. "You think that will do it?"

Jane nodded solemnly.

Gene Hiller took the paper and walked into the computer room. There was a screen with a long list of transactions he was supposed to monitor - money the Federal Reserve was lending the bank overnight, money the bank was moving into accounts all over the world to cover investments it had made during the day, adjustments to the accounts of the various branches, like water being poured from a pitcher to even out the levels of a hundred little cups.

Gene ignored these and went to another terminal, typed in the name of the Swiss bank and waited while their machine signified that it had heard and recognized his machine. Then he told it he had authorization to close a numbered account and transfer the money. He typed in the number and waited. After a moment he said, "You sure this number is right? It doesn't usually take this long."

"It's right," said Mary firmly. "Tell them again."

As he prepared to do it, something happened. Letters and numbers appeared on the screen to fill in blanks. He stared at it for a moment, then looked up at Mary. "Jesus, Mary, two hundred and six million dollars? You stole two hundred and six million?"

Mary almost smiled. "No, Gene. I only stole fifty-two. The rest I inherited. Send it now."

Gene typed in the number of the Internal Revenue Service account and tapped his return key. Before his fingers rebounded from the keyboard, the money was gone. He stared at the screen as though he were having trouble believing what he had seen, and certainly couldn't believe what he had done.

Mary said, "Probably nobody is ever going to ask you about this, but if they do, you don't know a thing. You didn't do it. That's part of the deal I made. There can't be any way in the world for anyone to get a penny of it back." She patted his shoulder. "That means you too, Gene."

"I'm not that stupid," he said. "Anybody who asks the I.R.S. to refund his two hundred and six million dollars is going to get a lot of things, but none of them will be a check."

"Right," said Mary. She leaned down and gave him a peck on the cheek. "Thanks, baby. Now I'll leave you alone for the rest of your life."

She walked out of the computer room with her head high and her shoulders back. Jane could tell that she was in pain, but she stood erect until Hiller had let them out the fire door and they were around the corner getting into the car. As soon as she sat down the strength seemed to go out of her, and her head rested on the seat.

"Mary?" said Jane. "You okay?"

"It was better than I ever dreamed. All the time I was in that house I was so scared, so hurt, that I thought he had opened an account just to take my money. But you have to open a numbered account in person. How could he do it that fast? He had me, but he had no place to put my money except in the account where he kept all the money he had stolen for years. I got to take every penny he had and pour it all into a sewer."

28

Jane drove fast across the flat plains of northern Texas. The night was just beginning, and she knew that she would need to use this time well. The trip from California to the Texas bank had taken them all day.

She tried to imagine what Barraclough was doing now. She was convinced that Mary knew enough about money to be reliable in her guess that Barraclough had driven to a bank in San Francisco that morning. He and Farrell could not have returned before about noon to find Mary gone and his two trainees dead.

He would have found Farreirs white station wagon by one o'clock and figured out that Jane and Mary had gotten into another car. Then he and Farrell would have spent more time disposing of the two bodies, cleaning the farmhouse of evidence that a woman had been held there, and removing any objects or prints that connected him with the property. That still left him with a van and two cars, with only Farrell to help him drive. He needed at least one person, perhaps two more people, he could trust to drive the vehicles back to Los Angeles. The most likely candidates would have to come all the way up from Enterprise Development in L.A.

She guessed that Barraclough would have been finished with all of this by nine or ten in the evening, about five hours after the time when all of his stolen money had disappeared. She said, "Is there some way Barraclough would know his account in Switzerland was gutted?"