Tangier Bank Heist

by Sean McLachlan

  Melanie’s is a French cafe just off the Grand Socco, Tangier’s big plaza. If the Petit Socco is the heart of Tangier’s socializing and scheming, the Grand Socco is the heart of the city’s native business.

  It’s a vast, triangular field taken up by Moorish stalls selling produce, meat, and crafts of all types. At the far end, in front of the grand mosque with its square minaret of green and red tiles, the wood gatherers and charcoal sellers have their stock, bringing it down from the hills in long lines of heavily laden donkeys. Near these squat a row of Moorish women cooking meat on open grills. At another corner, the one closest to the Place de France and its consulate and rich cafes, is a line of little wooden tables for the money exchangers. Each table has a chalkboard with the day’s exchange rates written on it. You can change any currency you like here, and in the shops spend any currency, although the Spanish peseta and the French franc are the most popular. The sound from the Grand Socco is deafening with the shouts of its vendors, the braying of the donkeys, and the honking of the few vehicles that dare to try to make their way around the edges of this mess. A haze of dust hovers over everything, mixing with the smell of cooking meat, burning wood and coal, fresh animal droppings, and human bodies.

  Melanie’s was a sanctuary from all that, tucked away a few steps off the Grand Socco in a little courtyard made shady by a spreading fig tree and beautiful by a lush bougainvillea. Little circular glass-topped tables, ironwork chairs, the latest issues of Le Monde and Le Figaro on the newspaper rack, inefficient French waiters who spoke to you only in French and sneered at your accent no matter how good it was—it was a little bit of Paris.

  I took a seat and the waiter leaning against the doorway turned his face toward the inside of the cafe and gave a little nod.

  “Madame. Le Petit.”

  Yeah, even the Frogs got in on it.

  “Madame” was Mademoiselle Melanie Durand, owner of the cafe, a large portion of my heart, and everything south of it. Starting a thing with Melanie had been the first stroke of luck I’d had in a decade.

  And what luck it was. She came out of that door looking like a million bucks—six feet tall, slim, with golden curls falling over smooth, bare shoulders. She wore a tight dress of some dark blue material that shimmered as she came into the light, making her look like a walking waterfall. The dress clung to her every curve, and only came down to halfway to the knee to show off those long, slim legs.

  Damn, she could walk. When we went out on the town I always had to fight the urge to walk behind her just to see those legs move. But then I’d have to jockey for position with all the guys already doing the same thing.

  “Bonjour, Kent,” she said, planting a warm kiss on my lips.

  “The day’s certainly better now,” I said, thanking my lucky stars for the thousandth time.

  Short guys usually end up with short women. It’s only natural. Most women prefer men who are taller than they are. Not Melanie. I was never sure why she’d step out with a guy who her waiters had every reason to call “Le Petit”, but I wasn’t going to question my luck.

  We took a seat inside, in a corner made dim in contrast to the glaring sunlight of the courtyard. As she poured us both a glass of wine, I noticed her perfect brow furrowed with concern.

  “What’s the matter, baby? Something eating you?”

  “You heard about the South Continental Bank?”

  “I’ve heard about nothing else. Why, you had money in it?”

  Melanie slumped. Nodded.

  “Damn, that’s tough. You lose a lot?”

  “Enough. I might have to sell the cafe.”

  “Sell the cafe? But what would you do?”

  She shrugged—a small, helpless gesture I’d never seen from her before. She was plenty tough, but I could tell this had really knocked her around.

  “Go back to France, I guess,” she said in a quiet voice.

  This was serious, and I don’t mean from a selfish standpoint. If Melanie was talking about going back to her country, she had to be pretty desperate. There was nothing for her back there. She had been an anti-fascist fighter during the war, but the wrong kind like I was. People like us stopped being welcome in Europe right after VE Day. What we saw as a struggle between socialism and fascism, the governments saw as a struggle between two opposing factions of capitalism. Our victory had been taken over and made into their victory, and they made sure we knew it. Now Communist parties all over Europe were being persecuted. In France they still hung on, but for how long? If Melanie went back to France she might eventually find herself in a jail cell.

  She shook her head slowly. “I was a fool to put money in a new bank. But I knew the man opening it. I trusted him. He had a certificate from the bank president on company letterhead.”

  “You know how many documents are forged around here.”

  She looked at me suddenly. “Don’t blame me for this, Kent. I already blame myself too much.”

  I put an arm around her. “I’m not blaming you, baby. Whoever heard of a fake bank? Sounds like a lot of people got conned.”

  “It seemed like a solid bank. It had advertisements in the Times and Le Monde. They offered a very good rate. They said it was to break into the market. Instead it was to break their customers.”

  “Laszlo wanted to hire me to get his money back.”

  “Laszlo is more crooked than that bank.”

  “Don’t I know it. Anyone else get it on the chin?”

  “One-eyed Pierre. Mr. and Mrs. Dawkins. Ricardo.”

  Damn. All good people. The Dawkins even had a kid on the way.

  Melanie looked at me suddenly. “Did you say yes to Laszlo?”

  “Of course not. I only work for clients who plan to pay.”

  “I can pay.”

  “Honey, I’m not going to take money from you.”

  “The others. They’ll pay. Oh, please say yes.”

  I put my hand on hers. “Of course I’ll help you.”

  She smiled. Her relief was so total it wasn’t until that moment that I realized just how torn up she was about all this. “I’ll call the others. They have already asked me to ask you. They can pay your fee between them, even with this loss. And you can eat and drink at the cafe for free anytime you like.”

  I laughed. “I already do.”

  “Dessert included.”

  I cocked an eyebrow.

  “You serve dessert now?”

  She gave me a warm smile and put a hand on mine. “Do you have a cigarette? I forgot to send Mohammed for some.”

  Oh, that kind of dessert. I already got that for free too.

  I pulled a pack out of my pocket and gave it a little jerk so one stood out. She looked me in the eye as she took it and put it to her lips.

  Fast draw. We both pull out our lighters and lit them. I beat her by half a second. This time. At least that broke her three-in-a-row streak. Can’t let those things build.

  We paused. Smiled. Put the flames together. Melanie lit.

  Leaning back, she took a long drag, let the smoke waft out her nostrils, then put the cigarette to my lips.

  I breathed it in, filled my lungs. Next thing I knew her lips were to mine, and I let out a slow exhalation into her mouth. We eased into a long, languishing, deep kiss as the cigarette smoke shrouded us in haze.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The only thing better than what we just did was sitting back and watching her put on those nylons.

  It was a drawn-out process that got more beautiful with every passing second, like watching a sunrise.

  Sitting on the end of her bed, Melanie put one of those long lines of loveliness up on the other. She poked her dainty toes into the rolled up nylon, and then slowly unrolled the sheer fabric over the foot, the thin ankle, then up the gently swelling flesh of the calf. Once she got to the knee she straitened out her leg to its full glory. That part always made me go all trembly inside. Then slowly, slowly, slowly, knowing she had an appreciative audience, she unrolle
d the nylon all the way up that full thigh.

  I sat smoking in a chair nearby. “The worst thing about the war, baby, was that you didn’t get to wear nylons for five whole years. It’s like hiding the Mona Lisa in a broom closet.”

  She smiled at me.

  “I was too busy with Resistance work to wear nylons, even if I could have found any.”

  “Pity we didn’t meet back then. Me in my tank, you in your cute little beret with a bomb in your overcoat pocket. What a couple! Nothing could have stopped us.”

  “Those days are over, thank goodness,” she said, starting on the other nylon. I sat back and watched the show.

  “Oh, it’s never over. Look at what they’re doing to progressive parties all over Europe. The center and right are uniting to crush any sort of workers’ movement, and the Americans are bankrolling it. Why, just last week in Italy the Communist Party—”

  Melanie shook her head, those lovely blonde curls falling over her face.

  “Why do men always talk about politics? Look where politics has got us.”

  “Politics affect us whether we want them to or not. It’s better to be prepared.”

  “I got enough of politics in the war.”

  It was the old debate. Melanie was still sympathetic to the cause, but the long years of occupation, followed by the bitter disappointment of there not being a workers’ revolution after liberation, had made her give it all up. Now all she wanted to do was to live a quiet life running her cafe. Instead she’d been swindled out of her savings by some shark.

  “So tell me about this bank,” I said to change the subject.

  “It was opened about ten months ago by Pieter Vlamin.”

  “The photographer?” I asked with surprise. He’d taken our photo a year before. Nice shot too.

  “Yes.”

  “What’s he doing opening a bank?”

  “Didn’t you ever talk to him? He was always saying he was a bank representative but had to wait for approval from the head office before he could open a branch here. I never paid it much attention, so much talk in this town, but then he really did open the bank.”

  “What can you tell me about him? Anything that might help. What are his vices? Who does he spend time with?”

  “His only vice is women. He never went for prostitutes as far as I know. He didn’t need to. He’s quite handsome.”

  “Oh, noticing other guys now, are you?”

  “Don’t be silly. But he is handsome, and quite stylish. He had a number of girlfriends, none whom he kept very long.”

  “Do you know their names?”

  “No. As I said, I never knew him very well. I’ll ask around.”

  “Anything else?”

  “One strange thing was that he met with Ronnie the Pusher.”

  That took me by surprise. “Vlamin is into dope? He doesn’t seem the type.”

  “They met here twice last month. Sat in the corner, kept their voices low.”

  “Do you think he was buying?”

  “I’m not sure. I didn’t see anything change hands. They talked for quite a long time both times.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “Maybe you could ask Morphine Minnie,” she suggested, taking the brush to her hair.

  Morphine Minnie was Bill Burroughs, an American queer in his thirties who had moved here some time ago. Generally I avoid junkies. Bill was a friend, though.

  It was too early to catch Bill awake so my next stop was Gerald Richardson, what passed for Tangier’s chief of police. Official title: Commissaire, Chef de la Súreté, Police Générale. Despite the French title, the Treaty of Algeciras dictated that the post be taken by someone from the United Kingdom, and the fancy title was a big name for a rather weak position. Not that Gerald was bad at his job, but the law was so loose in this town he didn’t really have that much of a job.

  That’s why I liked him. I usually don’t like flatfoots. They’re the tools the bosses use to keep the working man down. As good as they might be on a personal level (and they’re usually not), what they do for a living damns them. It’s hard to be friends with a truncheon when you keep getting hit by it.

  But Gerald was good people. Although he’d been a cop in London busting the usual heads, when he came here and his predecessor told him what’s what, he shrugged his shoulders and adapted. Strange to think that a man who was arresting queers and hookers and drug fiends for a living could switch so easily and now ignore all that while going for the smugglers and con men. Made me wonder if he could switch in the other direction too.

  Somehow I didn’t think so. The man had no vices, not even a thirst for power like most police officers. Oh, he liked his Scotch and I’d heard whispers of a mistress or two, but in Tangier that’s so mild he was liable to be nominated for sainthood.

  I found him in his office at police headquarters just off the Place de France. The building was a whitewashed three-story affair with battlements on top and an arched doorway out front. But that’s where the Arab influence stopped. While the officers were all Moroccan, the captains and detectives were all European. Its location right next to the French consulate made an obvious point to the natives.

  Gerald was a soft spoken but forceful Englishman with thinning blond hair, a prominent forehead, and a compact and athletic body that had only just begun to go a bit soft with middle age. He had a public schoolboy’s calm demeanor. The English set among the Cafe Central snobs sneered that it wasn’t a very good public school, definitely upper middle class, or even (horrors!) middle middle class. I guess that’s why he had to work for a living. A cigarette dangled perpetually from his lips. One dangled there as I walked into his office.

  “Hello there, Kent,” he said, pulling a bottle of single malt and a pair of glasses from his desk drawer. “You here on the bank case?”

  “Some of the customers hired me to get their money back.”

  “I heard they were talking of hiring you. Good show.” There was little that Gerald didn’t hear about, but much he chose not to see. Gerald poured the two of us a healthy slug. “I must say I’ve never had a case like this. It’s one for the memoirs.”

  “If they ever publish your memoirs, they’ll label it science fiction.”

  “Indeed. So what do you know about Pieter Vlamin?”

  “Damn little. I’d heard when South Continental Bank opened a few months ago. Didn’t pay much attention. My clients tell me Pieter was a smooth operator. Gained the confidence of a lot of cynical people, people I never thought would fall for a con like this.”

  “He is indeed a smooth operator, as you say. He came here on a Dutch passport, which we since have discovered to be a fake. We’re not sure where’s he’s gone to. All the ports and roadblocks have been informed, of course.”

  “It’s too late for that. He’ll have bolted.”

  “Perhaps. Most likely using a different passport than the one he came in with. A visa stamp is easy enough to forge.”

  I nodded. Yes, it was. I’d forged it for a couple of operatives just last month. Tunisian comrades who could speak to the locals in their own language. It was rare to find Arabs who could shift from the Koran to Das Kapital. It made them all the more valuable to the struggle.

  “So you don’t know his name and maybe not even his nationality. What do you know about him?” I asked.

  “We are assuming he is Dutch. Some of his fellow Dutchmen have vouched for that. Speaks Arabic passably well so perhaps he had spent some time Tunis or Algiers or down south. Also speaks English and French fluently. He came to Tangier a couple of years ago. Flashed a lot of money at Dean’s and Cafe Paris and the other usual spots. His story was that he was the representative of the South Continental Bank and had come to open a branch in Tangier. In the meantime, he worked as a studio photographer, claiming that he was merely indulging his hobby until he set up the bank. After ingratiating himself into the moneyed set, he was able to get a business loan for a lease on a spot on Rue Goya.”

  “Didn
’t anyone wonder why a bank needed a loan?”

  “Oh, he told a long tale of international currency regulations and tariffs. He made it sound quite convincing that it was more profitable for the bank to take loans than to send the money. Those who gave the loan got it back at a high interest rate and got a special status for their savings accounts, also with a higher interest rate.”

  “But of course they never got the loan back and their savings disappeared.”

  Gerald raised his glass. “Only half right, my good fellow. He did pay back the loans, no doubt with the money the investors and others deposited in the bank. This increased confidence in the new bank as the investors let it be known that the loan and interest were repaid promptly and in full.”

  “Playing the long game, eh?”

  “Not so long as all that,” Gerald said. He took a sip of his Scotch and continued. “He waited until he had just enough in the bank. After the initial rush of deposits, the opening of new accounts slowed. Most people already have bank accounts, after all, and newcomers usually live off traveler’s checks for a time. Once he realized he wasn’t going to get much more money than he already had, at least not in the short term, he disappeared.”

  “No doubt before the South Continental Bank found out they had a fake office in Tangier.”

  “There is no such bank. He made a very good show of making it look like there was by taking out advertisements in international newspapers.”

  “Clever, but why take the furnishings? I heard he even took the safe. That can’t be easy to lug around. You think he’s going to try the same con somewhere else?”

  “Almost certainly. And such a load of material would require a ship or a train. Unless he bought or stole a couple of lorries. We’ve been asking customs at every port, station, and overland checkpoint, but no one has seen anyone matching Pieter’s description, or indeed anyone bringing that much baggage with them.”