Two for the Show

by Jonathan Stone

  A charitable trust—allowing the immediate transfer of stock ownership, of large blocks, without arousing suspicion. And by the time the IRS investigates or challenges the legitimacy of the trust—typically a matter of months if not years—their finding would be irrelevant, the money and trust administrators long gone, overseas, floating blithely, untraceably, island to island beneath a warm Caribbean sky. I know without even looking, and I will confirm it for myself later, that the laws of the State of Nevada are particularly conducive to such a trust. To a streamlined establishment and accommodating execution of such a trust, as they are similarly accommodating to the laws of marriage, divorce, property, and almost everything else.

  “The moment the money hits the charitable trust account, you will hear from your daughter, calling on a disposable cell phone, who will give you an address and a time where she can be retrieved. She will give it to you only once, you will repeat it back once, so we know you have it, and then we will destroy the cell phone. Do you understand?”

  Silence.

  Stewartson says it again. “Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  Dial tone.

  Concordant. Mellifluous. A steady, confident final chord.

  Stewartson and Sandi look at each other. Eminently pleased with themselves. For the two of them, in that moment, there is no one else in the world. I know at last, with certainty, that Archer Wallace and I, for all our essential contribution—maybe because of our essential contribution—are going to be cut out of this. The clue here is control, control of the assets that cash would never provide. I can tell only from the look that passes between them. I am enough of a detective to detect the ice in their veins.

  A charitable trust. Hah. And they are its fiduciary officers. Typical Washington-trained operatives. But clearly this was a legal and protective tactic. Money to be used for charitable good is not scrutinized so closely, nor so promptly, as it would be going into the account of an individual. There is the curving, complex line of bequests and grants, eschewing and delaying the immediate scrutiny of the IRS and its investigative arm, or at least throwing any investigation to a less aggressive or less competent investigative arm. Something the Stewartsons have thought through. Charitable trust. I can’t decide how deeply they relish the irony. Or whether they’ve even considered it.

  A charitable trust. Does that seem particularly clever? It’s not. It could be anything. Lots of options. The formation of an online bank with only one account on deposit. The formation of a corporation, with shares of stock. An investment in an Internet start-up, and the money disappears immediately into the operating costs and the sloppy bookkeeping of a bunch of twentysomethings. A major donor gift or pledge to a hospital that doesn’t actually exist. A series of college tuition payments to a school created on the Internet. The switching of funds, the press of a button, and importantly, the confirmation of that switching of funds. As personal identity becomes more fluid, leakier, polymorphous, financial identity becomes tentacled, sinuous, octopean as well. Corporate shells, layers of financial possession like layers of clothing, and they require a different kind of technocrat to unravel them—forensic attorneys working alongside forensic accountants.

  Such an exchange used to take place with the blindfolded girl on one side, the paper bag or briefcase on the other, where all interested parties had an unobstructed view and a clear shot. Now the trigger is the “Send” key—though a finger still hovers and rests on it, just as itchy, just as decisive, just as lethal, just as final.

  Stewartson stares at my laptop’s screen in the dark, merrily hitting the return to scan down, smiling dumbly like a kid, nodding, smiling . . . and then tossing the laptop against the wall.

  “What?!” says Sandi.

  “Christ!”

  “Didn’t Wallace do what we said?” she asks.

  “Yes”—sarcastically—“exactly.”

  “So what’s the prob—”

  “Exactly what we said, yes. And then some. Added a little rider to the agreement.” He looks ready to throw my laptop again.

  There was the transfer agreement. But there was something about Amanda . . .

  Stewartson explains evenly, trying to hold his temper. “When the money hits the account, it goes in trust to the benefit of Amanda Wallace, a minor—with her signature and identity required to release the funds. If her signature and identity are required, and confirmed, then he knows she is alive, and he knows she is in a bank, in plain view, in a public place with other employees around, and will presumably remain there until he comes to pick her up.” Stewartson looks at us. “And since she’s a minor, of course there has to be a guardian.”

  And he’s appointing me the guardian. It’s my first thought. Which would be logical, of course, if Wallace knew exactly where I stood. But he is shrewd enough to know that even with my sacrificial finger, my loyalties aren’t necessarily clear. A finger might be worth a few million to me.

  “And here’s the interesting part,” says Stewartson. “He’s letting us pick the guardian.”

  Stewartson looks at Sandi, at me. “Maybe this is only to create a little dissent in our ranks. Since access to the money will only be in one of our names. It’s like, who takes the suitcase when everyone scatters after the robbery. Goddamn him.”

  Sandi squints her eyes. “Whoever we pick and inform him of to put on the account, that guardian will ultimately have to show valid ID. Driver’s license. Passport. On a transfer like that, the bank will check. If it’s you or me, they’ll have our name. A way to start tracing our identities . . .” Admitting in front of me for the first time, the winding path to who they truly are.

  Stewartson sits, frowns, looks at me. “It could be you. In which case, we won’t let you stay there with her like a guardian assuring her safe pickup, after the wire transfer. You’ll leave with us, so we can keep an eye on you, make sure you complete the transaction, transfer the money over to us. We can make you an officer of the trust this afternoon so you can do that.” He looks from me to Sandi. “But I don’t like it.”

  Sandi doesn’t seem as bothered by it. “Amanda signs, and we simply leave her in the lobby of the bank branch, a branch Wallace won’t know until he’s called and told. By which time we’re long gone.” She looks at Stewartson. “He did it this way to protect her. He did it to make sure he gets her back in one piece. He’s a father. You can’t blame him. By that point, we know we have the money. We have the evidence of it. By then, nothing can happen. He’s building in a little insurance for his daughter, that’s all.”

  “He’s trying to change the rules at the last second . . .”

  “He’s trying to get his daughter back,” says Sandi. “And the point is, he’s obviously willing to pay.” She smiles. “This is okay. It tells us he’s past the hurdle of paying. Now he just wants to get his daughter back. I say we go with it.”

  “That’s what he knew we would say,” says Stewartson, resentfully. “He knew we’d accept it . . .”

  “So what? So what if he knows we’ll go for his change in the rules. We’re still getting the money.”

  And I know Wallace, pushing the deal as far as he can, to give him as much leverage, as much opportunity as he can get, and still get his daughter back. Calculating the degree to which the Stewartsons will bend—and if they will bend this much, preparing to bend them next just a little bit more. Master of motivation, of the behavioral arts.

  “What do you say?” Asking me.

  They are looking at me as if they truly value what I have to say. I take a breath. I look at them. “Putting the guy’s arrogance aside,” I say. “It’s choosing between splitting ten million bucks, or killing a fifteen-year-old.” I look at them, shrug. “I’d go with the ten mil.”

  They smile. Toothy, fake, criminal smiles, both of them.

  SEVENTEEN

  We drive to the bank, First Desert—gleami
ng nondescriptly in the Vegas way, beneath the Vegas sun, a branch office in a strip mall in a residential section of greater Vegas out past Henderson and Silverado. Dry cleaner. Deli. Dentist. Eyeglass store. Ice cream shop. H&R Block outlet. The bank branch’s sun-blackened plate-glass windows are covered by huge orange-and-green signs proclaiming attractive CD rates and streamlined loan processing. In the parking lot, the white parking-space lines glint as if painted yesterday. The sun bouncing off the bright angles of surrounding white and silver Toyotas and Nissans and Ford pickups burns your corneas as you get out of the car. The shimmering heat of the macadam rises up to you like it’s been waiting for you. Waiting to engulf you in its thin air, to let you fight a little for your oxygen. An oxygen-depriving welcome to the real Vegas.

  The permutations of approaching events are dancing in my head, a titillating, overstimulating, harlequin Vegas stage show in my brain.

  By now, presumably, Wallace knows that, whether fellow victim or perpetrator, I am with Amanda. (And is he more comfortable now knowing I’m with her, or is he more nervous?) By now, presumably, the police have processed the fingertip’s DNA against a control sample of Amanda’s DNA. It’s not an exact match, of course, because it’s not her fingertip—but the issue for the police is, it’s not not a match either. Closely correlated. Closely related. An adult’s last finger, and yet all ten digits are on Wallace’s hands. Some other unknown relative? Why hasn’t Wallace informed them of that possibility? Is he cooperating, or isn’t he? Perhaps the police have withdrawn entirely for the moment, amid their own confusion about the DNA results. Is it some kind of trick or stunt of Wallace the Amazing, are they being duped, is there some shenanigan, some act, some magic that they don’t yet follow, that he has been conducting from the stage? So perhaps they don’t tell him that the DNA is a confusingly partial match, or they say outright that it’s not. Or they say there was an irregularity, they have to run more tests, either to stall for time or because they actually believe it. But whatever they are saying, or not saying, Wallace knows the reality of the DNA. In fact, only Wallace knows. And maybe that is why he is proceeding now without them—without their help, or knowledge, or backup.

  So here we are at the bank. At this sleepy, slow-moving branch, far from downtown, tucked unobtrusively into Vegas’s distant outskirts. And this is a Las Vegas bank, which means, at this financial moment, it is reeling from a mortgage crisis, its attention is on onerous and complex new government regulations, on its precarious finances, perhaps to the neglect of its other two main lines of business: millions in savings, from thousands of retirees, and the movements of mob money, parked here. We duck out of the parking lot sunshine into the cool, simple lobby furnished with beige couches and low white marble tables—relax, take a load off, feel at home. The tellers sport Hawaiian shirts and American flatland accents, and it is all so obviously and transparently white-bread, smiley, and innocuous, in the blandly designed interior, that it is clearly not. This is a bank if not itself steeped in the illicit then a smiling crossroads, a happy upbeat crucible, of such. I can see the red-tied, white-shirted bank officers, in their offices, in front of their screens. Watching over, intent on preserving, the façade.

  Amanda is our star.

  The air-conditioning hums, a relentless droning, chilly with waste, creating another environment, another planet, here in a hot Vegas strip mall.

  “Amanda Charitable Children’s Trust?” Stewartson inquires at the door of the on-duty Vice President, Specialty Client Services. Reason enough for this motley group—a child, a guardian, a lawyer or two apparently—to be here at the bank. For signatures. For formalities. For paperwork.

  “Ah, yes,” the VP smiles in recognition. “Come in. Paperwork, transfer documentation is all here, ready for signatures.” As in—we do this all the time, it’s pro forma, hardly worth our attention.

  We follow him into a simple conference room. With a genial smile, he gestures Amanda to the seat of honor at the head of the conference table, then motions the rest of us to be seated all around.

  “Oh dear, what happened to your finger, young lady?” he says, on seeing the bandage.

  Amanda shrugs and smiles shyly.

  “I hope you can still sign the papers,” the bank officer says with a smile.

  She nods earnestly—not knowing that he is merely making pleasantries.

  “And who is the guardian as witness?”

  “That’s me,” I say, producing the ID I knew he would ask for in a moment.

  He looks at it. “Very good. So we should be all set,” he says, “let me just go get the representative the trust sent over. Their trust officer got here early, thought the appointment was at nine, so their officer’s been waiting in an empty office down the hall for you.” Explaining as he strode out, so the Stewartsons could not ask him anything, did not quite follow, faces scowling in incomprehension, until he came back in with the trust officer, dressed in a dark stylish legal suit, battered leather attaché in hand, nodding, smiling professionally, taking a seat next to all of us. Stewartson’s look lingered on her, a little more than appropriate or polite, for her unexpected attractiveness.

  Mine lingered because (as you probably guessed) I already knew her. Dominique.

  The trust officer. Perfect—the only person that Wallace the Amazing can trust. The only person he can send to represent his interests, who is unrecognized, who is unknown by anyone. Except by me, which Wallace doesn’t know, if Dominique hasn’t said anything. How has she found her way here? Not tailing us, but getting here before us? But I can think of a number of ways—hacking into online bank appointment calendars; keeping an electronic eye on the Stewartsons since their “maid” meeting—she is expert in just the kind of detective work I am, maybe even more so. And her presence here? It’s like Wallace saying to the Stewartsons, I’m following your every move.

  Dave Stewartson looks again at her. Is he remembering the deaf, babbling, Eastern European maid? He only half looks at her, dismissive—but on the other hand, he hasn’t seen many people in the past twenty-four hours, and these two happen to look somewhat similar.

  I can’t tell if the Stewartsons are silently assessing, debating saying something, considering stopping everything, taking prisoners, pulling guns (guns they don’t have for once, metal detector, bank rent-a-guards, etc.), but by all indications the transaction is proceeding. By all indications the money will be theirs soon. So they say nothing.

  Sandi looks at me. A look that is unreadable, that tamps down and disguises any panicky suspicion on her part. Any suspicion is cloaked in silent inquiry: What the fuck? If that is even what her eyes are asking.

  In measured response, I shake my head, perhaps imperceptibly. I don’t know . . . let’s just proceed . . .

  Dominique. My mirror. We have lived the same life, of the same blind loyalty, for years. Alongside each other, unknown to each other, prisoners in adjoining cells, discovering each other’s existence as if when the prison guard makes a small but consequential procedural error. And now she is here, across the table. Only I know who she is, of course—and she knows that only I know.

  She is here, presumably, as Wallace’s emissary, his representative. Since the Las Vegas police are now watching Wallace the Amazing and the case (his own fault for bringing them in) and since Wallace is so recognizable to begin with, there is no way that Wallace himself or his wife can come personally to the transaction. Clearly they are going through with it, paying the ransom, behind the back of, without the authority of, the police. Which they are uniquely able to do, because Wallace can send a proxy that no one knows. A loyal cipher.

  And presumably this is also obvious to the Stewartsons—why it is this woman they’ve never seen, and not the parents. Because this is unapproved by the police. In fact, Wallace and his wife, Sasha, not being here is the best evidence that they are actually going through with the deal.

  As she sits
, I see Dominique look at Amanda’s hand, and frown, stiffen a little. And then she looks, briefly, only a blink, at my own curled fists. I can’t tell of course what she’s thinking, what she knows, or whether it is the innocent brief glancing look that anyone would make in assessment. I expect her to look up, briefly, at me, but she doesn’t.

  Amanda, understandably, looks confused. Papers, officials, what kind of a release, what kind of ending, is this?

  “Where are my parents?”

  “This lady is taking care of it,” I assure her. “She works for them. It’ll be fine.” I try to soothe her. She looks suspiciously at Dominique. Works for my parents? I’ve never seen her before in my life.

  The atmosphere around the conference room table feels charged; the Stewartsons are narrow-eyed, alert, as if sitting down to a poker game in a saloon, ready to rise and start shooting at any under-the-breath comment or sidelong glance. But the bank VP is oblivious to it. He is here to set up a charitable trust. How come he hasn’t heard of Amanda, how come he hasn’t read her last name on the documents, hasn’t put two and two together? Probably because the documents are assembled by an underling, automatically, unthinking, and his or her boss here with us now has barely even looked at said documents, full of names and terms, all pro forma, and it would never occur to anyone that a transaction such as this has anything to do with a kidnapping or a Vegas stage show.

  As soon as I saw Dominique, the questions began to spin, to dance above the documentation.

  She has all the computer ability that I have, maybe more for all I know, so is she rigging something online to foil this, to fool the Stewartsons?

  And does she think I’m allied with the enemy? Or simply, cleverly, helping to keep Amanda from harm?

  “So once all the papers are signed and the funds are transferred, we just need to confirm that said funds have cleared,” Dave Stewartson says pleasantly, nonchalantly, lawyerly—his first spoken professional advice as a counselor in the State of Nevada.