A. Staying Alone With a woman beside me, I suppose I should have slept well, but I was away from home and near the heart of darkness and I could not pass through the portal to my troubled dreams. A high-voltage anxiety coursed through me, like some grid from which the tortured lightning seems to leap. I sat on the edge of the bed with my face screwed up in the dark and begged myself not to do what I had a mind to, which was head to the bar, where the band was still tootling, to get one of those five-dollar shots of rye. It is not really an illusion that liquor makes you brave. It does, because it is so much harder to be hurt. I have a catalogue of significant injuries inflicted while I was crocked – second-degree burns from cigarettes and boiling liquids which went awry; twisted ankles; sprained knees; and some walloping insults from an angry wife that were hurled with the force of a cannonball. I survived them all with only a little Mercurochrome or an occasional trip to the emergency room. I had a right to think that was what I'd need.
I got up and, for comfort, like a child who fixes on a blanket or a teddy bear, went back across the veranda to my cabana, and found my Dictaphone. I spent an hour telling my story to myself, my voice hushed but still seeming to travel on the sweet evening wind so that I worried that Brushy might hear.
It was my father I thought about, my father and mother both, actually. I tried to figure how it settled with her, his being a thief. Many of the little treasures he carried off in his pockets were offered to her first. Perhaps I flatter her memory to say that she never seemed at ease. 'We don't need this stuff, Tim.' Encouraging him, I would say, to be a better man. She wore a brooch once that especially pleased him, a large ruby-colored stone in the middle and a lot of antique filigree, but usually she ended up declining anything, which led naturally to many quarrels when he'd had something to drink.
I talked to my mother about what was happening on a single occasion. I was sixteen then and full of opinions. 'He's no worse than everybody else,' she told me. 'They're thieves.'
'Everybody's a bit of a thief, Mack. Everybody's got something they're wantin to steal. It just takes the rest of us watching to make most folks stop.'
She was not so much trying to defend him, I thought, as standing a parent's high ground. Either way, I didn't buy it. I was still at the age when I wanted to be a better man than my father. It was a thirst in me. Unquenchable. One of those many appetites I tried to sate thereafter with the fiery taste of liquor. I never wanted to see a woman regard me with the blighted disappointment he saw from my mother. But, you know, life is long, and I loved my old man too, all those moody Irish songs and his hapless affection for me. He never told me to be better than he was. He knew what life was like.
I fell asleep upright on the sofa, briefcase in my lap. Brushy's searching about woke me. Even groggy, I recognized from the fretful way she inspected me that this was a woman who had awakened before to discover herself disappointed and alone, and I was quick to comfort her, having had some lonely mornings of my own. We had a fine time together, in bed and on the terrace, where we eventually took breakfast squinting and sweating in the unremitting sun. Around 11:00,1 stood. 'I'm going to meet that lawyer,' I said. Still in her robe, Brushy asked me to wait for her.
'You stay,' I answered. 'Get some snorkel gear from the beach attendants. Go look at the fishies. It'll make the trip.' 'No, really,' she said. 'I knew there was work to do.' 'Hey. You don't want to know. Remember?' 'I lied.'
'Listen.' I sat down beside her. 'This whole thing's turning mean. Just stand clear.'
'Mean in what way?' she asked. Her face became absorbed in lawyerly precision. She wanted to ask more, but I held her off. I kissed her quickly and headed downtown with my briefcase.
B. Foreign Banking The International Bank of Finance, whose block stamp appears on the back of each of the eighteen checks cut to Litiplex from the 397 escrow account, is a little tiny place, almost a storefront, except for the grand mahogany interiors. Since my days in Financial Crimes, it has been known as reliable. Ownership, as ever, is a mystery, but there are impressive correspondent relationships with some of England's and America's biggest banks, and rumor always had it that it was one of the American royal families, Rockefeller or Kennedy, somebody like that, with an ancient knowledge of the relationship between wealth and corruption, who was really behind it. I don't know.
I said I wanted to open an account, and in the cordial Luan way the manager presently appeared, an angular black man in a blue blazer, Mr George, an elegant fellow with that peculiar Luan accent, an island lilt fugued with the patois still spoken by the coastal peoples. George's office was small but richly paneled, with wooden columns and bookcases. I told him I wanted to discuss a seven-figure deposit, US funds. George didn't even twitch. For him stuff like this is every day of the week. I hadn't told him my name yet and neither one of us thought I was going to. This is an entire city where nobody's ever heard about ID. I want to be Joe Blow or Marlon Brando, that's fine. Bank passbooks down here all have your photo pasted inside the cover, no name.
'After deposit, if I want to transfer the funds while I'm Stateside,' I asked, 'what's the procedure?'
'Telephone,' he said. 'Fax.' Mr George wore round black glasses and a bit of mustache; he had long fingers which he raised in a steeple as he spoke. For phone transfers, he said, a customer was required to give an account number and a password; prior to the transaction the bank would telephone to confirm. I considered it unlikely that Jake was sitting in his office at the top of the TN Needle taking calls from bankers in Pico Luan. I asked about fax.
'We must have written instructions, including a handwritten signature or other withdrawal designation,' he said. Very artful, I thought. Withdrawal designation. For all those who didn't like names. 'And how long before the transfer takes place?'
'We wire to Luan-chartered institutions within two hours. If we receive instructions before noon, we promise good funds in the US by 3:00 p.m. Central Time.'
I reviewed all of this thoughtfully and then asked him for whatever I would need to open an account and whether I could do it by mail. George replied with an enigmatic Luanite gesture: white man can do what he likes. He opened a drawer for the papers.
'The account holder should kindly supply two copies of a small photo. One for the passbook, one for our records. And here, in this space, we should have the account holder's handwriting, whatever designation will be used to authorize withdrawals.' 'The account holder,' he said, surmising that I was a stand-in for somebody too important to be seen in C. Luan. And of course he never used the words 'signature' or 'name'. It struck me then that Martin had to have spoken to this guy. His description was dead on. 'Like trying to grab hold of smoke.'
In the office there was a small window, discreetly shaded by jalousies, through which you could see the street traffic passing. There was no screen, since on this side of the mountains there is nothing as troublesome as a bug. At that moment a bird landed on the windowsill, a little wrenny-looking thing, no make I recognized. He, she, it hopped around and finally took an instant to look straight at me. It made me laugh, I must admit, this birdy scrutiny, the thought that you didn't even have to be a mammal to wonder what gives with Malloy. George whisked the back of his hand and told it to shoo.
With the papers, I returned to the street. The sun was high now, savagely bright and thrilling after the indoor weeks in the Middle West. Down here I always understood how people could worship the sun as a god. The business district is only a few blocks, close-set buildings, three and four stories each, stuccoed in Caribbean pastels with roofs of Spanish tile. The tourists roamed among the business folk. Good-looking gals in straw hats and beach coverups, their legs tanned and fully revealed, strode among the suits with their briefcases. I looked around for more banks, the names of which were unobtrusively displayed on the building sides in English and Spanish, both of which are official languages. Many of the great names in world finance are present, with Luan affiliates housed in pocket-sized spaces like the International Bank's. In this modest fashion a $100 billion economy thrives, Luan-chartered corporations and trusts, funded with fugitive dollars, borrowing and buying and investing around the world, money without a country, as it were, and happy to stay that way.
I found the office of one of the big banks from Chicago, a name I knew – Fortune Trust – and told them I wanted to open a personal account. Same drill as across the street, except this time I wasn't just fishing and did it. I put down $1,000 American in bills and they took my picture twice with one of those machines. When the photos dried, they pasted one in my passbook and the other to their signature card. I elected to keep all deposits in dollars – I could choose from a menu of fourteen currencies – and said I wanted no statements, which saved me from the need to provide an address. Interest would be posted whenever I showed up to present my passbook. I checked a box on a form authorizing them to debit the account $20 US any time money was wired.
'And what will be the designation for purposes of identification?' asked the smashing young woman assisting me. By her accent I took her for an Aussie, here to scuba and be free of something, parents or a guy or the throttling force of her own ambitions. The whole place was free, with the gorgeous fish that decorated the warm waters, the sun, the rum, the sense that many of the world's rules were disregarded. I eventually realized she wanted my code word.
'Tim's Boy,' I answered. She asked if I cared to write it, and I did that as well. I was now free to transfer money in and out, to check my deposits by phone.
According to my prior calculations, I still needed one more account. For that, I did not even have to leave the building. There was a Swiss bank on the second floor, Zuricher Kreditbank, and I listened to the lecture on their procedures, which included access to funds out of either Swiss or Pico facilities and the full benefit of the secrecy laws of both nations. I deposited another thousand. I had two new passbooks now in my briefcase.
Outside, I stopped a guy on the street and asked if he knew of a secretarial service, somewhere I could have a letter faxed. I wandered down toward one of the big beachfront hotels where he directed me. I had my suit jacket off, tucked under my arm with my briefcase. I looked into the windows, as if I was shopping, but I was thinking solely about myself, wondering who I was, what I was going to be. A guy getting ready to cheat on his wife has to feel like this, examining the island curios and the fancy knits, the scuba gear in vivid colors, seeing but not seeing, senses focused mostly on his heart and pondering why this is necessary, what this hunger is that he just has to feed, how he'll feel forever after, with some fraction of him cringing whenever he hears words like 'faithful' and 'true'.
U You, I know what you think: usual Catholic upbringing, the only sin not forgiven is sex. But I'm looking at a bigger picture than that. Okay, it's true, most people's secrets are sexual; that's still the realm where a soul is most often unknown. Just ask Nora. Or Bert. We tell ourselves that nobody's hurt when the wishes become real, it's consenting adults, so who cares, but you can't sell that story to Lyle – or to me. Hurting happens. But we still have our needs. That's the point. Whatever it might be, sex or dope or stealing things, everybody's got some weird not-oughta-be that lights them up when it crosses their brain. Nora, Bert, and, in a few minutes, me – we were all members of a teensy-weensy minority group, having fulfilled our sly, unspeakable yearnings. For most people it goes the other way, hanging on that fulcrum where the greatest despair is not really knowing if misery is larger in the realm of fulfillment or restraint. Me, I'd about had it with that balancing act.
I was down at the Regency on the Beach now, and I walked through the hotel, its lobby of fronds and air like dry ice. I sat on a cane chair to think, but I was frozen up, unable to feel much. I asked the concierge to direct me to the secretarial service, and he introduced me to the attendant of their Executive Center. His name was Raimondo, short, sun-coppered, perfectly groomed. I told him I needed a typewriter and a fax machine and gave him fifty Luan. He took me to an area in back, right next to the hotel offices. Raimondo set me up in a small booth that resembled one of the firm's library carrels; an old IBM reposed there like a roosting bird. He offered to arrange for a typist, but I declined, and he left me alone after pointing out two phones and the John around the corner.
I ducked into the head then and studied myself in the mirror one last time. I was still me, a big graying galumph in a suit rumpled up like some elephant's knees, with this gone-to-pot face. I knew I was going to do it.
'Well, well,' I said, 'Mr Malloy.' Then I looked around to make sure nobody was lurking in the stalls who could overhear me.
Back in the carrel, I withdrew a piece of TN stationery from my case. I typed: TO: International Bank of Finance, Pico Luan Please immediately wire-transfer the balance of account number 476642 to Fortune Trust of Chicago Pico Luan facility, Final Credit Account Number, 896-908. John A. K. Eiger
In my briefcase I found the letter from Jake I'd brought along. I didn't remove it, just spread the sides of the case to get a good look, eyes reminding the hand, then signed Jake's name, the way I customarily do, a perfect imitation. Examining my work, I felt an odd flare of pride. I really am world-class. What an eye! Someday, for amusement, I'd have to take a whack at G. Washington on the dollar, frame a copy for Wash. I smiled at the thought and then below the signature wrote 'J.A.K.E.' I was guessing, of course. As a code, Jake could have used his mother's maiden name, or whatever was written on his last mistress's shoulder tattoo, but I'd known him for thirty-five years now and this didn't feel much like gambling. If he needed a password, he was hard-wired to come up with only one thing: J.A.K.E.
I gave the letter to Raimondo and watched him feed the paper through the machine. My heart suddenly bolted. 'The origination line,' I said.
He didn't understand. I tried smiling and discovered my mouth dry. On the fax, I explained, there was a line printed on the top to identify the sending machine. Some of the people I was dealing with were under the impression I was Stateside. I wondered if he'd be able to block that line out.
Raimondo went mutton-mouthed and hooded his eyes. This was C. Luan, nobody had names or a sure point of origin. He just shook his head in silent reassurance that no one around here would even consider setting that feature. At the other end, they wouldn't know if the fax had come from around the corner or from west Bombay.
After watching the letter buzz through the machine, I felt like a drink. I wandered out through the garden. I laid my jacket over my lap as I took a seat by the pool. The waitress came by in sort of a safari outfit, pith helmet and khaki shorts, and I ordered a rum punch, no rum. I wondered if I could stand this for the rest of my life, this nation of rock hounds, archaeologists, inland tribes, and sunning exiles.
Around the pool at this time of day there was pretty much nobody, a few scuba widows and a number of the babes who various big buckeroos stash down here and shtup whenever they pay a visit to their secret, hidden dough. These young ladies, each one generally better-looking than the next, naturally attracted my attention, but in a somewhat abstract way. They spend their days working on their tan, oiling down their perfect flesh, reading or plugged into headphones, and then when the heat is too great, they strut to the shower and cool down so that the nipples peak up in the tops of their skimpy little string suits. They excite the few guys around – the towel boys, the old goats like me – and, having made sure that they're still full of magic, lie down again for another couple of hours. I've never been in another place like C. Luan, where the cookies on the side all gather and are laid out together as if on a baking sheet, and it makes you wonder, What do these gals think, twenty-five or twenty-six years old, who are they and where do they come from? How does a person settle for life as a trinket? What do you tell yourself? This is great, this old guy's only here to paw me every other week, I'm living rich and free. Do they all need daddies? Or do they wish they'd had the luck and stuff to get through law school? Do they puzzle about where they'll be when they turn forty-three? Do they hope the guy is going to sack the wife, like he's always saying, that someday soon they'll have babies and a house in New Jersey? Do they figure they're just the same as an athlete, in great shape till the body goes? Or do they think, as I think, that life is neither sensible nor fair, that this, however objectively miserable it may be as an outcome, is the best that luck will allow and they'll enjoy the moment, since there will be time to suffer down the road?
I sat there about half an hour, as long as I could stand it, and then went back to the Executive Center to call the Fortune Trust office where I'd been today.
'Tim's Boy, checking a deposit by wire transfer to account 896-908.' I thought the voice on the other end belonged to my girlfriend, the glamorous young Aussie. The image of her, longhaired and lean, deeply tanned with eyes so light they verged on yellow, lingered – but there was a coy absence of recognition and I was simply shifted to hold, that electrical nowhere, as empty as whatever is between the stars. Up until then I'd been in control. A day in the life. But at that point, where I was, hoping and having no real connection, my bloodstream froze over and I was sure I'd lost my mind. I knew this was never going to work. Please, please, please, I thought and the only thing I wanted was not to get caught. I realized, with the exactness of clairvoyance, that I'd done all this simply to give myself an instant of pure fright. The man awake at midnight offers solace to his tormentors: Don't bother torturing me, I'll do it myself.
Now I could see it had to unravel. Jake in all likelihood had adopted a different code word, or had long ago transferred the money somewhere else. Maybe I'd miscalculated and the money was not even Jake's. It was Bert's after all. Or Martin's. In any case, Mr George, the General Manager at the International Bank, was probably out on the street, frantically waving to attract the police. This was not a casual infraction. They would ransack the nation. Bank secrecy was a national treasure, the key to an entire people's way of life. I remembered Lagodis's words with a painful clarity that felt like somebody was putting a brand to my heart: Watch where you step, mon.
I had escape plans, naturally. Sitting up late on Saturday night I'd thought of several and I comforted myself by remembering them now. I'd say I was investigating, trying to pierce bank secrecy only to confirm the commission of a crime and restore the funds to their rightful owner. I'd have Brushy phone the Embassy and her buddy, Tad the K. He'd think I was a hero when he heard how I was saving TN's money; he'd call his Governmental Relations folks and his lobbyists who knew half the pols in this country; they'd get me out in an hour. And who, anyway, was going to catch me? There was bank secrecy here, designed even to protect thieves, and no one knew my name. I didn't care what anyone said to lure me back on the premises at any of these banks. That there were problems with the wire. That the Aussie lass wanted to meet me for a drink. They'd never see me again. I'd thought it all through. It was a lark, a chance, a lottery ticket.
But standing here, I knew I was done joshing. The scheming, the fantasies – I'd had my fun. Now it turned out, I had never been kidding at all. It no longer seemed that Martin or Wash or anyone else had driven me to this. Instead, I was back with Leotis: So much of life is will. I'd made my choice. And I had no idea where it was leading. It was like some scary sci-fi story about a skywalking astronaut who gets cut loose and can't be retrieved and just drifts off forever into endless space. At that instant, if Raimondo'd walked by, I'd have given him another of those funny-looking Luanite fifties just to touch his hand.
'We confirm a deposit, Tim's Boy. Five million, six hundred sixteen thousand, ninety-two dollars, US' Just like that. Boom. She didn't even say hello when she got back on the line. From where I stood in the phone booth, I looked out a mullioned window to a stout palm and a bed of flowering shrubs with fronds like spears. A gal in a bathing suit was scolding her child. The doorman lugged somebody's case, and a little native bird, maybe against every improbable chance the one I'd seen in George's office, hopped down the walk, skittering a few steps, as if it was hoping no one was catching up from behind. All of this – these things, these people, this little dumb creature -appeared to me as if they'd been etched on time, distinct as the facets of a diamond. My life, whatever it was, was different. I started to speak, then started again. 'Can I give you a further transfer of funds, confirmed by fax?'
That, she said, was fine. I read from my passbook. To Ziiricher Kreditbank, Filiale Pico Luan. I repeated the account number. 'How much?' she asked.
'Five million, US' I thought I was safer, leaving something in this account, enough that Fortune Trust would continue to feel I was a customer worth protecting from inevitable inquiries. Not that they would think twice about the whole thing. This happened all the time down here, money hopscotching across, the planet. Nobody asked why. They already knew. It was being hidden from someone. Tax collectors, creditors, a weaseling spouse. But I wanted a second transfer to cut off the trail. Jake would raise hell at the International Bank. They'd show him they'd sent the money to Fortune Trust at his instruction. But secret is secret and Fortune wouldn't be saying where the money went from there, or whose account it landed in in the first place.
I waited more than an hour to call Zuricher Kreditbank to confirm the second transfer. All was well. My money was safe in Swiss care. I was ready to go back to Brushy. I wished I could drink wine with her. I wanted to be in the grasp of her strong skillful hands. Checking my watch, I reassured myself there was time to make love again before our plane. She would ask where I'd been, what I'd done. She'd want to know every secret. But I wouldn't tell. She'd inquire about Pindling; her brain would be full of intrigue. She'd envision a character like Long John Silver, with a macaw on his shoulder and a hook for a hand. Let her imagine. Ask me no questions, I'll tell you no lies. I felt dangerous and elusive. Light-headed, light-fingered, amused. On the way out of the hotel I poked my head in the John again, just a quick little look-see, a peek in the mirror to find out who was there.
Tuesday, January 31