Blown

by Mark Haskell Smith

  When the market was hot, no one cared; on paper it looked as if investors were making money. LeBlanc’s scheme was discovered only when the British pound devalued overnight, the market adjusted, and one of his institutional clients did an audit.

  By then, LeBlanc and $17 million had Houdinied to parts unknown.

  That was another thing that puzzled Neal. Why didn’t LeBlanc take more? He had access to it. Bernie Madoff had pocketed billions. Why so little?

  As the cab lurched up to his office he caught a glimpse of himself in the taxi’s rearview mirror. LeBlanc’s girlfriend had called him a nerd. It was true that his skin was pale and, even though he had turned thirty-three, he still suffered from occasional breakouts of ragged pink acne. In his mind, nerds were smart people who lacked style. But he had style. He had cool glasses. His hair was pushed into a shapeless ridge in the middle of his head, something his stylist called a faux hawk. And he didn’t wear the typical navy pin-striped uniform of his fellow investment bankers. He wasn’t a nerd; he was a rebel in chukka boots.

  Neal strolled into InterFund’s office—all steel and glass and security cameras—and nodded to the guards. He swiped his ID card to access the elevator, punched the button for the eleventh floor, and watched the LED stock ticker read out prices in real time as he ascended.

  He walked through the open office plan, past the dozens of traders staring intently at monitors, and unlocked his door and entered his office. Neal felt fortunate that he wasn’t stuck in some cubicle, but then he was afforded privacy because he dealt with sensitive issues and information, things that the company did not want showing up in the Wall Street Journal or, worse, on a gossipy website.

  He stuck the postcard—GREETINGS FROM PUNTA CANA!—on the corkboard above his desk. He had slipped it into his pocket and, honestly, he didn’t feel bad about stealing it from LeBlanc’s smoky girlfriend. If he’d asked to keep it she would’ve said no just to be an asshole. Neal sat down at his computer, entered his password, and began googling. He didn’t know what he was looking for, but sift through enough raw data—someone’s credit card statement, for example—and you usually find a pattern.

  When a margin is called, the bank seizes the account to cover the losses. This is legal. It’s in the fine print at the bottom of your account agreement. Neal thought more people should read that before they began speculating. However, if the client loses more than what’s in the account—not uncommon with people engaged in commodities speculation—the bank will put a lien on any real estate the client might own or force the sale of art collections, automobiles, and boats. Basically anything the client had of value would be seized. Of course, not all clients feel like paying up; sometimes they go on the run, and that’s where Neal came in. Special collections was like a cross between a private detective and repo man, and Neal enjoyed the work. The human stories were interesting—there was always an explanation for not paying the bank—and he liked the challenge of tracking people down. In typical cases, he could find people quickly. Even if they’d sold their house and abandoned their car and were living with an old college chum, he could track them down. There were the obvious, sloppy mistakes. It could be a Facebook page or a Twitter account, a Tinder profile or an Instagram feed. Sometimes they’d skip town and leave a forwarding address with the post office. A large percentage moved back to their parents’ house. More often than not they stayed home and kept going to their jobs like nothing was unusual, as if they hadn’t lost a gamble on the stock market and seen their nest egg vanish; they just didn’t answer the phone calls, emails, and certified letters the collections department sent. Ostriches, he called them. These types of cases usually took only a couple of hours to close. He’d find them, get an arrest warrant or a court order seizing their property, and have the local sheriff pick them up. Once these ostriches were in police custody they were surprisingly eager to reach a settlement. Most of the time people seemed relieved to be found. They wouldn’t have to hide forever; they could face the consequences and get their life back. Neal didn’t have a degree in psychology, nor had he ever studied criminal pathology, but in his experience he’d learned that the human brain craves order, and the guilty seek justice even if it’s not in their best interest. It’s just the way people are wired.

  But if they actively went underground, well, that was different. That required some legwork. He’d get a court order and freeze their accounts. That usually did the trick. When someone no longer has access to his bank accounts, credit cards, cell phones, etc., he gets a lawyer and starts trying to make a deal pretty quickly. Not a lot of people store cash under their mattress. Although, given how unstable the markets were, it didn’t seem like the worst place to park some assets.

  But this case was different. This guy knew how the system worked, and he had a head start and $17 million.

  Neal hoped LeBlanc had some kind of kink. In a perfect world, Neal would find LeBlanc bound and ball-gagged by a dominatrix in a luxury hotel suite somewhere in the Dominican Republic. All he had to do was contact the fancy hotels and resorts in the area and inquire about big cash transactions. That might take him a week, maybe two. If he was lucky, he’d have to expend a little shoe leather on the case, maybe even catch a few hours in a hammock on the beach. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d taken a vacation.

  Neal liked to work in a methodical way. He didn’t want to waste time chasing shadows or hunches, so he decided to start at the last known location of Mr. Bryan LeBlanc. Punta Cana was, according to Wikipedia, a resort city on the easternmost tip of the Dominican Republic with “one of the busiest and best connected airports in the Caribbean.” He was about to call the Punta Cana Airport’s security office when his in-house messenger and his iPhone beeped simultaneously. Both messages were marked “Urgent.” He was needed in the CEO’s office immediately.

  As he got off the elevator, Neal popped two curiously strong peppermints into his mouth and considered what he should and shouldn’t tell his superiors. There wasn’t a lot to go on, but it wasn’t what he would call a dead end. Unless the person commits suicide or dies in an accident, there is no such thing as a dead end, and even then he’d heard rumors that Kenneth Lay, the pirate captain who scuttled Enron, had faked his death and was living on an island somewhere.

  The CEO’s executive assistant pointed to the door. “They’re expecting you.”

  Neal pushed through the door and felt the unmistakable embrace of wealth and power wrap around him. It was like entering another world. The air smelled different, as if it had been filtered through the Swiss Alps. Even the light was different; it was soft, luxurious even, designed to make clients feel like the millions of bucks they were entrusting to the bank.

  The CEO stood and reached toward him. “Good to see you, Cornelius; thanks for coming on such short notice.”

  The CEO was the only person, besides his parents, who called him by his legal name. When Neal asked his parents why they gave him that name, they just laughed and told him they liked watching Soul Train. As if it were a hilarious joke to name your son after an emcee—a side effect, he realized, of his parents’ deep fondness for marijuana. He’d gone by Neal since high school.

  Neal felt the well-practiced handshake the CEO proffered. The chief executive looked older than when he’d seen him a few months ago; the steel-blue eyes still coordinated with his tie, but they were behind thick glasses now, and the butter-rich lunches at four-star restaurants had finally caught up with him. According to the office grapevine, the CEO had developed a nasty case of gout and was no longer able to play tennis on the weekends, so his tan had faded and he’d developed a paunch and a rubbery double chin. He looked like just another overeducated, underexercised white-collar worker.

  Neal turned and saw Seo-yun Kim, the managing director on the foreign exchange desk. She sat on the edge of the sofa looking nervous.

  The CEO pointed at the couch, indicating he should sit. Neal sat down next to her.

  “How’s the LeB
lanc case coming?”

  Neal had expected a bit of small talk, maybe an introduction. But the CEO didn’t seem to be in the mood to waste any time. Neal decided to do the same. “I think we should get the FBI involved. We’ve got a clear-cut case of embezzlement. This is what the FBI does best.”

  The CEO took off his glasses and cleaned them with a tissue. It reminded Neal of an actor doing something to appear thoughtful. Neal watched Seo-yun watching the CEO. She sat very still, her eyes focused. Neal sniffed the air. She was wearing a musky perfume. Neal leaned closer and inhaled deeply, trying to place the scent radiating from her body. She turned her head and gave him a strange look.

  The CEO put his glasses back on and cleared his throat. “It would cause irreparable harm to the firm if this went public. I’ve already spoken to the board, and we all agree that we deal with this in-house. Are you up to it?”

  Neal leaned forward. “Two weeks ago he left the country. No one’s seen him since.”

  The CEO made a sour face. “So he could be anywhere?”

  Neal nodded. “Apparently he bought one of those prepaid, all-inclusive trips to a resort.”

  “Where is this resort?”

  “The Dominican Republic.”

  The CEO was silent for a moment, and then he spoke. He said the word slowly. “Mo-ther-fucker.”

  Neal continued. “He left the resort and from there he could jump to all kinds of safe havens: Brazil, the Caymans, Venezuela. He could be anywhere.”

  Seo-yun broke her silence. “He created a very complex string of transactions to hide the money. We’re trying to unravel it.” The CEO rubbed his face with his hands. “I hired him. I promoted him. I championed that shithead. You understand what I’m saying?”

  “I’ll need to hire some outside consultants.” Neal then pointed at Seo-yun. “And I’ll need her. I don’t really understand how forex works.”

  “Nobody does. That’s why we make so much money from it.”

  Seo-yun looked at Neal. “I’ll help in any way I can.”

  The CEO cleared his throat. “Good. Both of you do whatever it is you do. He ripped off some important clients, people who could make this a very public scandal. If you need to hire some foot soldiers, some mercenaries, do it. I don’t care what it costs. Find this asshole, I don’t want him to get a penny of the money he stole. Find him and bring his ass back in a sling. Just don’t let anyone know what you’re doing and for fuck’s sake don’t bring law enforcement into it.”

  They left the CEO’s office, the plush carpet giving way to shiny faux terrazzo. A soft robotic chime announced the arrival of the lift, and when the doors opened, they entered. They stood in the elevator side by side, watching the numbers count down.

  Seo-yun handed Neal her business card. “Anything you want me to do, let me know. I feel terrible about what happened.”

  He took the card. “It’s not your fault.”

  “That’s not the perception.”

  Neal leaned close to her and inhaled. She turned her head.

  “Do you have allergies or something?”

  Neal blushed. “I’m just trying to figure out what kind of perfume you’re wearing.”

  Seo-yun smiled. “It’s come.”

  The elevator doors opened and Seo-yun walked off. As they closed Neal wondered if she meant come like semen or Cum like some brand of perfume he’d never heard of.

  The farther they got from shore, the stronger the fishing boat’s cargo began to smell; the salty tang of freshly caught sea creatures mixed with the scent of burning cannabis. Bryan turned and saw the captain—his rank signified by a weather-beaten captain’s hat perched on top of a pile of dreadlocks—sitting in the cockpit with one hand on the wheel, steering the little fishing boat across the open water. The copilot, a strikingly handsome young man, sat next to the captain, a burning spliff dangling from his lips. He leaned his head back and exhaled, the smoke drifting past Bryan and out over the open water.

  Bryan blinked. It was a cliché, right? Like in that movie, The Harder They Come.

  The boat wasn’t big, maybe a twenty-five-footer, and while the captain and his copilot enjoyed the shade of the cockpit, Bryan sat on a large cooler, broiling in the afternoon sun. There were nine, maybe ten coolers, the biggest he’d ever seen, filled with queen conch, a giant sea snail that you could harvest only with a special government-sanctioned permit. Naturally the captain didn’t have a special permit and so was taking his bootleg haul two hundred miles across the water to the Cayman Islands.

  The copilot took a long inhale of the spliff and then glanced back at Bryan. “You want a taste?”

  Bryan nodded and walked up to the cockpit. He wasn’t much of a stoner, having smoked only occasionally with some of the people at the sailing club, but it was an excuse to get out of the sun. He took a hit and tasted an earthy, sweet flavor in the back of his throat. Bryan coughed. He looked at the captain. “You don’t smoke?”

  The captain shook his head, and the copilot laughed. “He don’t do nothing. No ganja, no alcohol. He’s a vegan.”

  The captain scowled. “I’m straightedge, is what I am. I like to be healthy.”

  The copilot laughed again. “I like to be healthy too. That’s why I wear a condom when I’m selling sugarcane to the tourists.”

  The captain turned to Bryan and said, “He sapps.”

  “What’s that?”

  “He’s a gigolo. A man prostitute.”

  The copilot flicked the end of the spliff out into the water. “I work in the hospitality and tourism sector of the Jamaican economy, and I am not happy sitting out here with a load of ass-reeking conch.”

  Bryan smiled. “A gigolo? What’s that like?”

  The copilot leaned in close to Bryan. “Single women come to the island looking for some sun, some fun, and some cockie. Am I right?”

  Bryan nodded. “I suppose so.”

  “Everybody wants to have sex with a Jamaican. You probably paid for a little duggu-duggu while you were here.” The copilot chuckled.

  Bryan felt his face flush. It was true, he had paid for sex, although it was an inadvertent after-the-fact kind of sex-for-hire. He wouldn’t have slept with Grace if he’d known she was going to ask for money. Although he didn’t regret paying. Maybe he was just doing his part for the Jamaican economy.

  “Being an escort is a good gig, man. I look right in their eyes, give ’em some of that ‘Hakuna Matata’ stuff they like, maybe smoke a little with them, and the next thing they are paying to suck my dick.”

  The captain shook his head. “That ain’t what I heard.”

  The copilot told Bryan, “He’s just jealous ’cause he’s driving this tub of conch ’stead of drinking Chardonnay with a white girl.”

  The captain laughed. “The conch will be here longer than your good looks.”

  “What about you?” the copilot asked Bryan. “Why are you skulking about on a rickety old tub?”

  “My ex got everything in the divorce. So I took off. Trying to find myself or something like that.”

  “Any luck?” the captain asked.

  “I’m feeling better.”

  The copilot burst out howling. “Maybe you can learn to dive for conch. Get a whole new career.”

  The captain shook his head. “Better you keep runnin’ from your wife.”

  Bryan thought it was strange that these two men were so eager to share their criminal occupations. Was this what criminals did when they got together? Was he supposed to tell them what he’d done? He was relieved when the conversation turned to a spirited debate on the skills of a snooker player named Rory McLeod. The captain was a fan; the copilot was not.

  Bryan wondered how he got himself into a life of crime. He’d only pulled off his scheme because crime was scalable. Criminals stole what they had access to. The captain had access to conch. The copilot—and Bryan recognized that prostitution wasn’t technically stealing—had access to horny women. Because he was a white man with a coll
ege degree, Bryan had been put in a position of trust that gave him access to millions of dollars. Given the same opportunities, would the captain or the copilot do what he’d done? Somehow he doubted it. They were criminals out of necessity, while he was more of a philosophical criminal. He wanted to give the system a taste of its own medicine. But now he wondered if it even noticed.

  Bryan closed his eyes and let the ganja and the boat rock him to sleep. As he drifted off he wondered if this was going to be his life now: moving in the criminal underworld, sleeping with one eye open, never sure whom he could trust, always looking over his shoulder. For the first time it occurred to him that maybe he wasn’t cut out to spend his life riding around in rickety fishing boats laden with contraband gastropods.

  Seo-yun stood behind the breakfast bar in her open-plan kitchen and stared at the microwave.

  Her fiancé sat at the dining room table holding two different wedding invitations side by side. He seemed to be thinking awfully hard about it.

  The microwave beeped and she took her frozen dinner out. She stirred the noodles in her vegan pad Thai and tasted it. No spice hit her tongue, no bright flavor exploded in her mouth. It was a kind of tomatoey mush, low cal and convenient, another bland cop-out. The story of her life. Like this wedding.

  Seo-yun thought about LeBlanc. In some ways she envied him. She wished she could say fuck it and go off and create a whole new life. Not that she would steal from the company to do it—she wasn’t a crook. In fact she was the opposite of a crook. Crooks were daring. Then, on second thought, she’d been daring with a young lacrosse player that afternoon, so maybe she did have a taste for a little transgression. Was it a crime to rebel? Did it hurt anyone for her to let some spontaneity into her life? She thought she would feel guilty, but instead she felt disconnected, as if she was having an out-of-body experience. Not during the sex part. That part was an in-the-body experience, but it was her reaction in the aftermath that felt so strange.