Vanished

by Joseph Finder

  “There’s a seal on it,” he said. “They’re going to know I opened it.”

  “I’ll take care of Customs.”

  “I’m not talking about Customs.”

  “Who are you worried about?”

  He shook his head, then shook his right hand, moaned. “You broke my finger.”

  “Awful sorry,” I said, not sounding very sorry.

  Groaning the whole time, he walked around to the back of the igloo and inserted one of his keys in a padlock, then rolled up a panel.

  “You got a box cutter?” I said.

  He pulled one out of a holster on his belt and handed it to me. I tucked his gun into the waistband of my pants, sliced open one of the cardboard cartons, and pried the flaps apart.

  When I realized what was inside, I smiled. “No wonder my client was a little antsy about it.”

  “Good God Almighty,” Woody said.

  The box was tightly packed with shrink-wrapped packages of brand-new United States currency.

  Hundred-dollar bills: the new ones, of course, with the off-center engraving of Ben Franklin looking constipated. Each oblong bundle-“bricks,” they’re officially called-was stamped in black letters REPORT ANY DISCREPANCIES TO YOUR LOCAL FEDERAL RESERVE OFFICE and had a bar code printed at one end.

  These were fresh, unopened packs of money from the U.S. Bureau of Engraving that somehow had ended up in Bahrain, in the hands of some company in Arlington, Virginia, I’d never heard of before that morning.

  “I had no idea,” Woody said. “I swear.”

  “What’s the volume of this thing?” I thumped the side of the igloo.

  “I don’t know, like around five hundred cubic feet, maybe? Just shy of that.”

  I thought for a moment. I’m pretty good at math-one of the few remaining legacies of my father, who was not only a math whiz but an immensely rich man before he went to prison.

  I unwrapped one brick and counted forty packets of bills. Each packet contained a hundred bills; they always do. That meant that each brick was worth four hundred thousand dollars. One cubic foot, I figured, was a bit less than three million dollars.

  Assuming that each box was packed with bricks of hundred-dollar bills, just like this one, the container held almost a billion dollars. Maybe more.

  A billion dollars.

  I’d never seen a billion dollars up close and personal. I was impressed by how much space it took up, even in hundred-dollar bills.

  “A little spending money, Woody?”

  He’d stopped nursing his broken index finger. He was gaping. “My God… My God… I had no idea.”

  “What did you think was in here?”

  “I… I had no idea. Honestly, I didn’t! I’m telling you, I had no idea-they didn’t…”

  “No idea at all, Woody?”

  He didn’t look up. “They didn’t give me details.”

  “But someone knew. A lot of time and money and thought went into this. And the risk of hiring you and a couple other guys in your company.”

  “I just did my part.”

  “Which was to make sure the switch went through no problem.”

  He nodded.

  “I’ll bet they gave you an emergency contact number. In case something got screwed up.”

  He nodded.

  “I want that number, Woody.”

  He glanced up at me, then down.

  “See, Woody,” I said, “this is where the road forks. You can either cooperate with me and make things better. Or not, and make things even worse. A whole lot worse.”

  He said nothing.

  My cell phone started ringing. There was no one I needed to talk to. I let it go to voice mail.

  “Woody, you sure as hell didn’t pull this off by yourself. No offense. So why don’t you give me a phone number?”

  “I thought you didn’t care who did it,” Woody said once again.

  “I do now,” I said.

  EVERYONE WHO served in the Iraq war knew the stories about the missing American cash. Not long after the U.S. invaded Iraq, the U.S. government secretly flew twelve billion dollars in cash to Baghdad. I know it’s hard to believe, and it sounds like it was made up by one of those wacko left-wing conspiracy-obsessed blogs on the Internet. But it’s a matter of documented fact. Twelve billion dollars in U.S. banknotes was trucked from the Federal Reserve Bank in East Rutherford, New Jersey, to Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington, where it was put on pallets and loaded on C-130 military transport planes and flown to Baghdad.

  The idea, I guess, was that this was the only way to pay our contractors working in Iraq and run the puppet government: in stacks of Benjamins. Baghdad was awash in crisp new American banknotes. Gunnysacks full of cash sat around, unguarded, in Iraqi ministry offices. Bureaucrats and soldiers played football with bricks of hundred-dollar bills.

  And here’s the best part: Somehow, nine billion dollars just disappeared. Vanished. Without a trace.

  I had an idea where some of it might have gone.

  My cell phone started ringing again. Annoyed, I fished it out of my pocket, glanced at the caller ID. It said Lauren Heller-my brother’s wife. In Washington, D.C., it was around one in the morning. She wasn’t calling to chat.

  I answered, “Lauren, what’s up?”

  “It’s me.”

  Not Lauren. The voice of an adolescent boy. Lauren’s fourteen-year-old son, Gabe.

  I hadn’t spoken to my obnoxious brother in months, but I liked his wife a lot, and her son-Roger’s stepson-was a great kid. Gabe and I talked on the phone at least once a week, and I did stuff with him as often as I could. He was the son I didn’t have, might not ever have; and I was, I guess, the father he lacked. Having ended up with Roger as his stepfather instead.

  “Hey, bud, I’m sorry. I can’t really talk now. I’m with a client.” I glanced at Woody, pulled his SIG-Sauer from my waistband, and wagged it at the guy. Like some overworked customer-service representative, I said apologetically: “I’ll be right with you.”

  “Uncle Nick,” Gabe said. “You need to get over here.”

  “I’m not in D.C., Gabe. What’s wrong?”

  “It’s Mom. She’s in the hospital.”

  “What happened? Is she okay?”

  “I think she’s in a coma.”

  “A coma? How-”

  “No one’s telling me anything. She got mugged or something, but-”

  “Where’s your dad? Is he out of town on business?”

  “I don’t know where he is. No one does. Please, Uncle Nick. Can you get back here now?”

  “Gabe,” I said, “I’m in the middle of something, but as soon as I can-”

  “Uncle Nick,” he said, “I need you.”

  5.

  WASHINGTON

  She must have fallen asleep again-a fitful, distressed sleep, troubled by dreams that were far too real. Gabe visiting her in the hospital, his curly hair a mess, crying when he saw her. A doctor with a long chin and a high-domed forehead peering into her eyes with a bright light. She awoke, slowly this time, unsure which if any of these things had actually happened.

  When she opened her eyes again, she could tell right away she’d been moved. None of that frantic intensive-care cacophony, the jumbled voices and quick footsteps or the dissonant symphony of electronic beeping. One machine beeping quietly, but not much else. Quiet whispers.

  The quality of light was different somehow. Daylight, maybe. There had to be a window somewhere nearby. She’d slept through the night. Another night, come to think of it.

  Two men in jackets and ties stood at the foot of her bed. One a lot older than the other. Cops, she thought.

  For a moment she thought she might still be dreaming. She closed her eyes and went away for a while, but when she opened them again, they were still there, talking quietly to each other. One of them glanced at her, approached.

  He was around sixty, with thinning white hair and a scraggly white beard that she guessed had been grow
n to conceal a weak chin. “Mrs. Heller, I’m Detective Garvin from the D.C. police department.” He was holding a giant Dunkin’ Donuts cup. “And this is Detective Scarpino.”

  The guy standing behind him-cute, dark-haired, the innocent face of a boy and the body of a linebacker-looked barely thirty. “How’s it going?” he said, smiling, and she couldn’t help smiling back.

  They each took out leather badge holders and flipped them open. She saw only a flash of gold, a glint of silver.

  The older one sat slowly, gingerly, on the only chair, as if he had a bad back. “How are you feeling, Mrs. Heller?” His partner went scrounging for another chair from somewhere beyond the blue curtains, the boundaries of her world.

  “Where’s my husband?” she said.

  Garvin went on as if he hadn’t heard her. “One of the nurses gave us the heads-up that you were okay to talk, but if you don’t feel up to it, we can come back.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Around nine. In the morning.”

  “Are you here about my husband?”

  Garvin wore steel aviator rim glasses with thick lenses that grotesquely magnified his bleary pale eyes-gray? blue? Hard to say. “Mrs. Heller, we’d like to ask you some questions about what happened.”

  The throbbing behind her eyes was back with a vengeance. “Are you… homicide detectives?” she asked in a choked voice.

  He shook his head, gave a prim smile. “We’re from the Violent Crime Branch.”

  The words made her stomach flip over. “Detective, where’s my husband?” she said, heart thudding. “Have you found him or not?”

  “No, ma’am. Nothing.”

  “What do you mean, ‘nothing’?”

  “Every hospital in the city and the surrounding area has been called. Medical examiners’ offices, even the central cellblock.”

  “Cellblock?”

  “We don’t want to rule anything out. A notice went out on WALES-the Washington area law-enforcement network.”

  “And…?”

  “Nothing, ma’am. I’m sorry. At this point, we’re treating this as a missing-persons case.”

  “How do you know he wasn’t-harmed? Or worse?”

  “Our crime scene squad didn’t find any cartridge casings or bloodstains or anything else that would indicate bodily harm.”

  “ ‘Missing persons’…?”

  He hesitated. “Missing Person Critical, actually.”

  Scarpino returned with a molded plastic chair and scraped it into place behind his partner’s.

  “Why ‘critical’?”

  “Suspicion of foul play.”

  “But you just said you didn’t find anything.”

  “Because of what happened to you.”

  “How do you know I wasn’t just mugged or something?”

  “Because, ma’am, you were identified by the contents of your purse. Someone saw you lying in the street and called nine-one-one, and because you still had your wallet, we knew who you were and who to call.”

  His stare was penetrating, downright unnerving.

  “So?”

  “Tells us you probably weren’t mugged, right? So maybe you could tell us as much about the incident as you remember.”

  She told them everything she could. Garvin asked all the questions; Scarpino, clearly the recessive gene, said nothing, took notes.

  “The attacker-was there only one of them?” Garvin asked.

  “As far as I know. I mean, some guy grabbed me from behind, and I guess he hit me on the head with something, though I don’t remember that part. And… yes, I think he put a gun to my head.”

  “Where?”

  “Right here.” She pointed to her temple.

  “Before or after you were hit in the head?”

  “Before.”

  “What makes you so sure it was a gun?”

  “I-I don’t know, it was hard and round and it felt like metal and-I mean, I suppose it could have been anything, but-”

  “You didn’t see it, though.”

  “No, but-actually, come to think of it, I remember hearing a click. Like a revolver being cocked.”

  “You know what that sounds like?”

  “My dad kept one in the house. I don’t think he ever fired it, but he showed me and my sister how to use it.”

  “Did the attacker try to get your clothes off?”

  “No. But he might have been scared off when Roger showed up.”

  “Let’s back up a little. You and your husband went out to dinner, just the two of you, right?”

  “Right.”

  “A special occasion?”

  Date night, she wanted to say, but instead she replied, “Just dinner.”

  “Whose idea was it to go out to dinner?”

  “What difference does it make?”

  “We’re just trying to get the big picture here.”

  “It was Roger’s.”

  “Did you go out for dinner often, just the two of you?”

  “Not often enough. We used to go out every week, but recently that’s sort of… Well, it’s been months, probably.”

  “Did your husband have any enemies that you know of?”

  “Enemies? He’s a businessman.”

  “Mrs. Heller, are you and your husband wealthy?”

  Lauren hesitated. What a question. She didn’t know how to begin to answer that. Wealthy compared to whom? To a police detective? She made a good salary, but it was still a secretary’s salary. Roger made a lot more than she, as a senior vice president, but in the six figures. Not the million-plus that the top corporate officers earned. They lived in a nice house in Chevy Chase. Compared to the house where she and Maura had grown up in Charlottesville-a tiny split-level ranch-it was Versailles.

  On the other hand, compared to the kind of money Roger’s family once had, they were paupers.

  “We’re well-off,” she finally said. She hesitated. “My husband’s family used to be quite rich, but not anymore.”

  Garvin blinked. “Oh?”

  “You might have heard of his father, Victor Heller.”

  A pause. “Sure.” A blank look clouded his eyes. Not an uncommon reaction, she’d found. Victor Heller was famous, and not in a good way. “You think people might assume the family still has money?”

  “How would I know? Anyway, if someone thought he was rich, wouldn’t there be a ransom demand? Wouldn’t they kidnap me instead of him? Or my son?”

  “Just exploring every possibility, that’s all. Did you notice any change in your husband’s behavior recently? Did he start to act differently toward you?”

  “I’m not sure I understand what you’re getting at.”

  “Let me ask you something, and please don’t take this the wrong way: You and your husband-how was your relationship?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Was there any talk of divorce? Do you think he might have been having an affair?”

  “You’re really clutching at straws, Detective.”

  “Not at all. It’s standard procedure-we never want to leave any stone unturned.”

  “Our relationship was-fine.”

  “Not great? Just fine?”

  “We had our ups and down like any married couple. But no, he wasn’t cheating on me. And we never talked about divorce.”

  “Did he ever threaten you, Mrs. Heller?”

  “Oh, this is ridiculous.”

  “Look, Mrs. Heller, we all want to find out what happened to him, too, but we can’t do that without your help. We really can’t. I know this is a stressful time for you, and I know you’re in a lot of pain, but time is really crucial here. The faster we move, the more likely we are to solve this thing.”

  “Isn’t it possible that my husband was attacked, too, and he’s wandering around in a state of amnesia or something? Or maybe he’s been badly hurt. Or… or worse. And meanwhile you two are sitting here spinning out all sorts of wacky scenarios. You’re guessing, that’s all. Guess
ing.”

  “Yeah, well, guessing is a lot of what we do. I get good at guessing. And yeah, maybe we’re clutching at straws. But that’s all we got at this point, Mrs. Heller. All we know is that you were the victim of a random-seeming attack in a part of the city where that doesn’t happen very often. You weren’t mugged, and apparently they didn’t try to rape you. We have no reason to believe your husband was killed. He’s gone, and we don’t know more than that. Without evidence, without a motive, we’re not going to get anywhere, do you understand?”

  “You don’t sound very optimistic.”

  “I don’t want to give you false hope, is all.”

  Someone made a throat-clearing sound, and they all turned around.

  Gabe was standing there. His dark ringlets wild and scraggly. He was staring at her, an expression of grave concern in his liquid brown eyes. Black jeans and a black hoodie sweatshirt with a weird cartoon character on the front: Invader Zim, she remembered. He looked even scrawnier than usual.

  “Gabe,” she called out.

  “Excuse me, Officers,” he said sternly. “My mother needs to rest. You need to leave now.”

  The younger cop grinned until he caught the sharp edge of Gabe’s adolescent glower, then the two detectives began to gather their things.

  6.

  Hey,” she said hoarsely, when the cops had left.

  “Hey.”

  Tears in his eyes, she saw. In the last year her sweet boy had become a remote and often surly teenager. But once in a while there were flashes of the adoring son he’d once been and would, she hoped, be again. Her love for him swelled in her chest, like a physical object, expanding her ribs, her collarbones.

  “Thanks.”

  “I’m serious. They shouldn’t be here.”

  She noticed the dark circles under his eyes. They appeared whenever he was sick or overtired or just worried. Which was often. More than a few pimples on his cheeks, which hadn’t been there two months ago.

  In his right hand he was clutching his beat-up school notebook, spiral-bound, ST. GREGORY’S on the cover. The notebook had nothing to do with school, though. She wasn’t allowed to look at it, which made it all the more tempting, though she never had. All she knew was that it contained some epic-length comic book he’d been working on for a year or more. She’d caught a glimpse once before he snatched it away and was astonished at the quality of the drawings.