Farrell touched the green sheaf to his nose and inhaled. He rubbed his hands together and danced about the office damn near singing to himself. His legs quivered. He knelt, his fingers on the edge of the desk, and whispered: “You ballsy bastard! You fooled them all!”
This risk had a different quality than the sort he associated with physical jeopardy. It was dreamlike, rather than immediate and sensory. Yes, he experienced the same flutters and shakes of postexperience, as if he’d free-climbed El Capitan at Yosemite or solo-shredded a fifty-five-degree slope in the Wyoming backcountry. This danger wasn’t tangible, that was sure. Somehow that made it more enticing. Farrell no longer was bound by pitch of rock or steepness of slope; Farrell played with the limits of his imagination.
He settled back into his chair, waved the telegram back and forth, knowing he wanted more, to see what he could really do with the system. He flipped on his computer and punched in a series of numbers to see how much money he could make in six months. Halfway through the computations he hummed; it was as if the hypothetical figures on the screen were an indicator of the pleasures he would get taking these risks. He realized that, deep down, he didn’t care about the money. The profits he made were like mountains he was able to point to after he’d skied them. Only now the mountains were dollar signs. With them he could measure how well he rode the line between success and discovery.
Suddenly, chills ran through his body. His teeth chattered. His legs jumped. What should he do now? Whom should he tell? Cordova? He lurched from his chair to race across the office to pull the file from his credenza. He dialed in the numbers of Cordova’s satellite pager. The country code—502—and the city code—9—indicated the pager talked to the satellite from Quezaltenango, a Guatemalan city hard by the border at Chiapas. But Cordova could be anywhere when he received the message.
The computer tone beeped. Farrell hung up, slumped into his chair. He imagined himself far out on a winter ridge about to drop into three feet of powder.
The phone rang. “Jack?”
“Jorge, the line’s bad. You sound a million miles away.”
“The nature of the import-export business,” he said.
To Farrell the possibilities were endless: Cordova was sweating in the jungles outside Lima, Peru, or drinking Pernod on the fie St. Louis in Paris, or sunning off Ipanema Beach in Rio. “Colon is such a shit hole,” Cordova said. “Not a decent restaurant in the whole town.”
Colon, Panama. It was a shit hole. Farrell told him he remembered that one of the local bistros served a passable barbecued red snapper.
“Overbroiled usually,” Cordova sniffed. “But enough. To what do I owe the honor?”
“The packages have all been received.”
“Magnificent,” he said. “Mr. Cortez’s trust has been well placed. When can we be ready to work again?”
“I figure another week until the circle is completed.”
“And the freight. Can you handle more?”
“Four times as much,” Farrell said.
“Slowly,” Cordova said. “Let us work slowly.”
To prolong the conversation, Farrell tried to discuss an article he’d read recently about the trophy fishing off the coast of Mauritania, but Cordova cut him short, saying he had a meeting to attend. The line went dead. In that moment Farrell was twelve again, far out in the woods during deer season, the thrill of hunting with a rifle alone for the first time fading as dusk approached; the boy wasn’t sure how to get back to the cabin. He felt terribly alone.
Farrell traced a fingernail across the green paper, wondering if he could indeed quadruple the amount of cash without exposing himself. He hunched over the folder with a pen, drawing a diagram of the system. He had based it on a shell game: as long as he moved the cash at a rapid pace, through different accounts and banks and countries, within days only the most tenacious investigator could possibly trace the money’s origin and only then with the help of Cordova or himself.
It worked like this: The U.S. government requires banks to fill out a form for any cash transaction of more than $10,000. Not filing and getting caught would bring the Internal Revenue Service or the Justice Department down on the bank but quick. Farrell needed accounts in the names of businesses that as a matter of course dealt with large sums of cash. Cordova arranged for four companies that traded currency in the U.S.-Mexico border community of San Ysidro to open twelve separate accounts with Farrell’s bank.
About the same time, Farrell flew to Panama, to Colon, in fact, and met with an attorney there named Miguel Ochoa, whom he knew from deals he’d done in connection with his old job. In two days, Ochoa had organized PXZ Inc., a shell corporation the registered directors of which included Ochoa, Raul Romero—a security guard in Ochoa’s office building who received $200 for signing his name—and Linda Ho, a Hong Kong notary who often worked with Ochoa.
For a $1,000-fee, Ho registered a Hong Kong parent company to PXZ Inc. that she named Peso Ltd. and opened an account in that name at a prominent Kowloon financial institution. Farrell contacted the attorney in Basel, who, in turn, contacted an attorney, Herr Luptfa, in the tiny principality of Liechtenstein. For a $2,000 fee and a $400 a year retainer, Luptfa created Bueno Vista Anstalt, with himself, the Basel attorney, and a Liechtenstein notary as directors.
In effect, the companies and countries acted as screens through which Farrell filtered the cash. The week before he received the green verification slips, armed security guards carried in the two locked, steel boxes which would become a regular sight at the bank. Inside, lay approximately $100,000 in cash. Into twelve separate accounts, sums of $9,000 were deposited—just below the federal reporting limit.
On a Friday, Farrell began a series of wire transfers to the bank in Kowloon. The Basel attorney had notified the Hong Kong bank by registered mail to expect the deposit and to directly wire the money to the Swiss bank account of Buena Vista Anstalt.
All that was needed to complete the circle was a wire transfer of cash to PXZ in Panama, or the creation of a new entity, which would accept the cash into an account in Farrell’s bank or, for that matter, in an account at any of the other banks in San Diego. There the money would be. For all intents legal. Farrell’s commission: 7 percent, which he arranged to deposit in a bank account set up in Basel. Of course, as the deposits accumulated in his own bank, he could expect bonuses and a substantial increase in his salary.
Now, as Farrell sat in the rear of his camper in western Utah, he remembered how smug he’d been sitting safely in his office. He’d calculated that the machine could handle as much as $250,000 a month without setting off serious alarms. Any amount beyond that would require a different kind of cash-intensive business to provide cover.
The phone rang again in his office.
“Jorge says you’ve hooked a marlin,” Gabriel said.
“It’s a beast of a fish, but all I can see is the ripples he makes on the water, a little piece of green paper,” Farrell said.
“You shall have to come to Cabo soon to fish,” Gabriel said.
“I’d like that,” Farrell said.
With the tone of a teenage boy stealing whiskey from a liquor cabinet, Gabriel said: “There really is nothing quite so blazing as the unpredictable, is there, Jack?”
Farrell’s stomach did a slight flip-flop. This man, this relative stranger, seemed to understand things about him that few others did. The odd feeling of nakedness made Farrell light-headed.
“No, Gabriel,” Farrell had croaked. “Nothing.”
A coyote howled somewhere out in the desert. Farrell locked the door to the camper and crawled into the bunk fully clothed. He remembered how talkative Lena had been the night after he’d completed the third transaction. He knew that she spoke of the dogs, of the garden and, of how much better she felt. He heard few of the particulars. He’d drunk too much, partly in celebration, partly to mask the uneasiness that had nagged him since speaking with Gabriel.
“Jack, you’re not lis
tening again,” Lena said.
“I am, too. You were talking about bougainvillaea,” he said.
“Ten minutes ago.”
“I’m sorry … I must have been somewhere else …”
“You say that like it doesn’t happen every day,” Lena said. “I asked you to look at this.” She pushed a newspaper at him. Circled in red was an a help-wanted ad for nurses in an experimental nursery.
Farrell looked out across the patio. “You haven’t finished with your plans for the garden.”
“I’ve been spending too much time out there,” Lena said. “I’m about ready to let these plants grow on their own for a while.”
“Maybe a nursery isn’t the way to start again,” Farrell said.
Lena hugged her shoulders. “A nursery is a full floor away from labor and delivery.”
“That’s not far,” Farrell said.
“I haven’t worked in eight months,” Lena said. “It’s a start.”
Later, they had walked to the beach. They sat against the breakwall under a half-moon. The wind was blustery and cold, the air saturated with spring scent of the ocean. Lena tussled with Punta. Rabo laid her head in Farrell’s lap. Farrell put a Bob Marley tape in their cassette deck and the hypnotic strains of “No Woman, No Cry” floated across the sand toward a group that stood around a bonfire.
Lena said, “I thought you’d be more supportive.”
Farrell said, “I just want you to be sure.” He asked himself whether it was true. As long as Lena had remained at home, he hadn’t had to give her much thought. This changed everything.
Lena placed her hand on his: “Did I ever tell you that for a long time when I was young, I blamed myself for my mom’s multiple sclerosis? I was seven and I’d left one of my strap-on roller-skates on the back porch. She tripped over it and landed hard on her hip. About a year later she was in a wheelchair.”
Lena ran her fingers through her hair. “I thought for sure that I’d done it and I lived with it until I was thirteen, not telling anyone. I read later in a magazine that it was impossible, that MS is a hardening of tissue in the nervous system, not injury.”
She kicked her heel into the sand and Punta squealed and dug at her foot. “Guilt can make us blind. I want to open my eyes again.”
“I thought you were doing pretty well,” Farrell said.
Lena gave him a look that struck him as strange. “Maybe I’m just doing as well as I can. What about you?”
Farrell shrugged. “The past month I’ve been frantic, setting up these deals for Gabriel. Today I figured out how to make it all work.”
“You make that sound bad.”
“Not new anymore,” Farrell said. “Even though the kinks have to be worked out of it, I know it’s only a matter of time before it loses its newness and I’ll tire of it and look for more. Does that make sense?”
“I’m no explorer,” Lena said softly. “I’m not like you.”
“What does that mean?” Farrell asked defensively.
“Just that,” Lena said. “Most of what I experience is here, inside.”
She shifted away from him, bending forward to hug her knees. He wondered how she managed to be so strong and yet so vulnerable at the same time. He felt suddenly guilty at what he’d been doing in secret with Cortez and Cordova. He didn’t allow himself to dwell on it more than a moment. He reached out to hug her. Lena tensed for a moment, then leaned back into his shoulder and shut her eyes.
April 3, 1986
I was brave last week for the first time in I don’t know when. I answered that ad in the paper. Dr. Maddy Crukshank, a plump, bespeckled woman met with me. I told her straight off about Jenny. I didn’t want her to find out my problems from some personnel jerk back in Chicago. She listened, and when she finally spoke, I could hear the hesitation in her voice. But I was honest and told her I would be better for those kids because of what has happened. I’ll care more. There was a long silence, then she showed me around. Dr. Crukshank’s ward is more of a research lab than a nursery. There are two rooms where she cares for babies with special problems—low birth weight, prematurity, congenital disorders. I’d forgotten how tiny and helpless they are, lashed down by tubes and monitors. There was a moment during the tour when time slowed. I was looking at a premie, four pounds, attached to a plastic umbilical tube to a feeding bag. Her skin was mottled. She tried to wave her hand, but it snagged on another cord that was taped to her chest. I fought off the urge to pick her up from the little crib and hold her.
Dr. Crukshank had stopped talking and I startled, thinking I’d blown the interview. She took off her glasses, wiped them on her smock, and told me not to worry: the baby’s mom comes in twice a day to hold her.
Near the end of the interview, she sat me down in her office and told me the truth—that she was nervous about me. For a second I thought I’d cry, but I held it back and told her how my dad always said to stick your chin in the thing you fear most.
She hesitated again. I told her the truth: I’ll never forget my daughter, but I’ve buried her. She studied me, her right knee wiggling back and forth, until I thought I couldn’t take it anymore. She gave me two months probation.
April 21
Snipping the orchid bush yesterday, I noticed something flitting. A yellow monarch butterfly. I haven’t seen one in years. Pesticides have all but wiped them out. When I was a little girl, my father would find cocoons among the pussy willows in the backyard and snip the whole branch and put it in a big caning jar for me. I’d watch until one day I’d notice a crack in the pupal case. Hours later, an orange monarch, wet and exhausted, would squeeze from the shell. I’d take it out into the driveway and twist off the top of the jar, watching as the sun dried the butterfly’s wings. Once I put my finger in and it crawled on. I held it up to the breeze and it flew away. Don’t know why I think this is important.
Anyway, now, instead of a nurse, I’m a researcher. Of a sort. Maddy—Dr. Crukshank wants everything informal—she has me weighing and taking notes on the behaviors of the babies for a paper she’s writing. Basically, we’re trying to find out which fabrics babies of low birth weight are most comfortable with. Maddy says their skin is so sensitive that they seem irritated by anything but the softest of covers.
Some of the parents are addicts. Maddy says I will see more of them. I can’t understand.
Chapter 13
WARM DAWN LIGHT SHONE on the sagebrush, throwing filigreed shadows westward on the melting snow patches when Farrell started driving again the next morning. Motion soothed him after so many months in one place. He drove for hours without rest, enjoying the rattle of the steering wheel, the piping of his tires on the road, and the fragrance of the first desert flowers wafting through his open window.
When a rut or frost heave in the road broke the hypnotic state, his mind cast back to Lena’s writing and he was struck by the loneliness between the lines. He passed the turnoff to the road that led north to Idaho, bit at the inside of his lip, and said out loud, “I’m so sorry.” But the sort of guilt he’d experienced as a child—the awkward twist in his lower abdomen, the dryness in his mouth, and the pressure behind his eyes—would not come; he had not felt that in years. There was only the knot at the back of his neck again and the twitching of his cheek.
As much as he tried to calm these tics by thinking ahead to the steep cliffs of Lake Tahoe, he could not; Lena hovered around him constantly and he was forced to get out of the truck once near Elko to dispell her presence. There he stared up at the vast brooding range of desert rock known as the Rubies, where the only skiing is by helicopter. He considered stopping for the night to see if he could get a ride into those mountains and lose himself in deep powder turns. Overriding this whimsy was the thought of Inez. He tried again to figure out why she used her “technique.” He allowed the possibility that it jarred the skiers from ordinary thoughts before they pushed off. Too easy.
He recalled his feelings in the Y Couloir, how she had overwhelmed hi
m, how he had wanted to crush her, how he had wanted to let her take him down into her embrace. Those same longings built within him again until he ran back to the truck. He jammed hard on the gas, squeeling his tires westward ho.
He made Reno by dusk and crossed the California line in the dark. Coming back to the state where it all happened triggered a brief spell of vertigo, which he managed to quell by leaning out the window on the road toward Truckee, a twisting four-lane that races steep, then flat through forests of thick-waisted, wind-weary trees. The balsams filled the chill night air with a prickly, seductive scent that tickled Farrell’s nose until he was unsure whether to sneeze or breathe in more.
The Shady Pine Motel squatted in the middle of a row of honkey-tonk pasta joints, ski shops, and curio nooks in the center of Truckee, just a few miles from Squaw Valley. It was a low, plank wood building painted white with muted blue shutters and a dark shingled roof. Farrell parked. The street was almost deserted this late in the season. He was about to go to the office to get his key when The Wave rapped him on the shoulder with his knuckles, which caused Farrell to jump.
“Don’t you ever just say hello?” Farrell hissed. “I almost crapped my pants.”
“Did rap, Collins mon, right on your clavicle,” The Wave said, his grin so broad that Farrell couldn’t stay angry with him.
“Everyone here?” Farrell asked.
“Except Inez,” The Wave said. “She’s down in San Francisco meeting some German who invested in the film. She’ll be back first thing in the morning. We got a meeting at seven A.M. She and Page have signed all the permission contracts to let us film. I’ll tell you, from the sound of it, mon, we’ll be into some hairball stuff.”
The Fall Line Page 18