The Matter of the Dematerializing Armored Car

by Steve Levi

  “That’s all true,” Harold cut in. “We’re on a frontier. We have to blaze trails.”

  Harold shook his head, and Jerome tapped him on the shoulder. “Harold, look at this from the point of view of the feds. What we cannot do is take money from the marijuana people. We cannot take money that has been washed, laundered, or whatever other term you want to use. The money must come from an untainted third source. It has to be an arm’s length transaction. What Curtis is doing is establishing the third party. The marijuana money is going to buy out the four land collectives on the Outer Banks. It’s nothing more than a paper transfer. The collectives are going to sell out for ten million dollars. We are going to negotiate the deal. We get our cut for standing in the middle and doing nothing more than transferring paper. After all is said and done, we’re in the cat bird seat for construction loans, operation loans, whatever, the whole nine yards. There’s a century of good money in this for us.”

  “You make it sound so simple. But if the feds—or the IRS—sniff so much as a whiff of any deal with marijuana money, they are going to look under every rock. Once they see a marijuana dollar bill, the money goes bye-bye, the deal goes bye-bye, and we are on the hook for laundering money.”

  “Exactly the point. This transaction would be illegal if it were less than an arm’s length transaction. We can’t take money directly, and we cannot take it indirectly. So we must come up with a better way. We let someone reputable, someone beyond repute, legally wash the money here in the United States and then use the clean government-approved money to consummate the deal.”

  “Great,” Harold said. “How do we go about finding an uninterested third party?”

  “As a matter of fact,” Curtis said, looking over his shoulder, “I’ve already found one, and you will love how this is going to play out.”

  TUESDAY

  Chapter 19

  When the Cookie-Cutters came back on Tuesday, it was with a warrant.

  Sort of.

  But it was an odd warrant, even for the feds.

  They walked right into President Swensen’s office and dropped the sheet of paper on his desk. Swensen was on the phone at the time, but when he saw that the paper on his desk was a court order, he told the person on the other end of the line he had to go. He hung up the phone and read the court order.

  “You have a warrant?” Swensen looked perplexed. “Let me get this right. You are bringing a financial crimes warrant to an armoredcar business? Why? We move packages of money we do not see for clients. We hold cash for clients, but they have the paperwork—we don’t. We just store the money, the cash. We don’t own it. We get audited once a year for the cash, but all the other audits are for our client’s records, and they do their own audit. You people are after big-time bad guys. Big-time financials, right?” Then he took a close look at the warrant. “You’ve got to be kidding me, right? This warrant is garbage. Even I know it’s garbage, and I’ve never spent a day in court.”

  Cookie-Cutter one was unimpressed. “You can read the warrant. We want to see the financials for these three companies. We also want to see all the paperwork for RMD, LLC.”

  Swensen tried to ameliorate the situation. “Guys, you have come at a very bad time. We are missing an armored car, there is a captain of the Sandersonville Police Department working the case here in the building, we are loaded with men and women in blue wandering the premises, I’ve got annual cash auditors from the Treasury coming next week, and I’m up to my ears in clients who want to know if any of their money was on the truck that went missing.”

  Cookie-Cutter two was just as unimpressed as Cookie-Cutter one. “Well, if you do not want us to look at the records, we can just close you down until you change your mind.”

  Swensen gave the Cookie-Cutters a sour look. “You feds are all the same. Were you born jackasses, or did working for the feds make you that way?”

  Neither of the Cookie-Cutter said anything.

  Swensen pointed to a bank of filing cabinets along one wall of his office. “OK, these three companies,” he said, pointing at the warrant, “have their paperwork there. Everything is alphabetic, so you should have no trouble finding what you need. If you have trouble with the alphabet, I’ll get you a copy. But you are not going to find anything of interest there. Those companies regularly audit their own holdings and then turn the paperwork into state and fed regulators. So you’ll be looking at paperwork you already have.”

  He paused for a moment. “RMD, LLC is not included in that filing system because it is not a long-term storage customer. We could be holding cash for RMD, LLC in the vault—and I am not saying we have any RMD, LLC money in the vault. But if we were holding RMD, LLC money in the vault, it would be in bulk. For a bulk customer, we count the money as it comes in to make sure what the client says is being deposited matches what is actually in the box or bag, for instance. Then we would put the money in a location in the vault. We would not mix it with money from banks, businesses, or other clients. When it comes to cash, the paperwork we have from a bulk customer is an amount matching the amount in the box. The bulk customer gets a receipt, but since the bulk customer is not a regular client, their paperwork would not be in those files.” He pointed to the bank of file cabinets.

  Swensen tapped the warrant with the index finger of his right hand. “But this warrant does not allow you to see any cash from any client in the vault. It just lets you see records. The RMD, LLC has no records in those file cabinets. All we have on paper for RMD, LLC are receipts. Those are not records.” He pointed at the bank of files. “RMD, LLC is not a regular customer. As far as records for RMD, LLC goes, we get shipments from them every three or four weeks, and we carry those shipments through our region and hand them off to another armored-car operation. We don’t open up the packages.”

  “We do,” snapped Cookie-Cutter one. “We want to see the most recent package.”

  Swensen picked up the warrant and reread it. “There is nothing in here about opening up a package. It just says records.”

  “The records are inside the delivery.” Cookie-Cutter one gave an hyena-like smile.

  “I don’t know that,” snapped Swensen. He thought about it for a moment. Slowly he looked at the Cookie-Cutters and then the bank of file cabinets. “You guys don’t give a rat’s patootie about those records.” He pointed at the filing cabinet. “That’s just a red herring. All you really want is the RMD, LLC delivery.”

  Neither of the Cookie-Cutters said anything. For a moment one of them made a slight motion as if he was going to look sideways. But he never finished the motion.

  “What is it with you people? The Swensen Armored Car Company is up to its ears in cash we’re holding for banks. We’ve got an army of auditors through here every three or four months to audit the paperwork the companies submitted themselves—and I don’t know why. And you want to see what’s in a delivery package we never opened?”

  “The warrant says records, and we believe records are in the delivery owned by RMD, LLC.”

  “You guys are putting me in a real awkward position.” Swensen shook his head. “If I say no, you close me down for a week. If I say yes, I lose a long-time customer.”

  “You have a copy of the warrant,” Cookie-Cutter one said, pointing at the piece of paper on the desk.

  “Oh, that will do wonders,” snapped Swensen with a false sense of confidence. “Let’s get this charade over.” He stood up and then said, “Let me make the position of the Swensen Armored Car Company clear. If we open the shipment and find just records, you are authorized to examine those records.” He pointed to the warrant on his desk. “But if you find any cash in any form—checks, credit-card slips, certificates of deposit, whatever—it stays here in our vault. Those items are not records; they are personal property. Your warrant only authorizes you to examine records, not cash in any form.”

  Neither of the Cookie-Cutters said anything.

  Swensen rose from his desk and headed for the door, the C
ookie-Cutters close behind him. As soon as he exited the room, he turned suddenly and pointed at the file cabinets. “Next time you try to fool an old man, do a better job of it, OK?”

  Chapter 20

  Noonan put down the personnel files of John Sanders and Ramon Delgado when they came into the room.

  “Thanks for coming in on your day off,” Noonan said. “I know you were grilled up one side and down the other yesterday. I’ll try to be as quick as possible.”

  Neither man did more than grunt.

  “I’m not going to lie to you. This is a very serious situation. So let’s get right down to brass tacks.” Noonan waved the two into a pair of chairs on the other side of the desk where he had now set up his investigative office. “Right now, all we have is a missing armored car. No crime has been committed, so, at this moment, there is no official investigation as far as the police are concerned. But . . .” He let the sentence hang.

  Delgado snapped at him. “We had nothing to do with any disappearance. We were following procedures to the letter. We assisted the state troopers in the search for the armored car. We reported—”

  Noonan held up a hand to cut Delgado off. “We are a long way from any reporting records. Now, I want to know what happened on the exit side of the Pamlico Tunnel.”

  “The armored car never came out of the tunnel,” John Swensen said flatly. “That’s all we know for sure.”

  “So I’ve heard.” Noonan smiled. “Now, when the armored didn’t come out the other side, you chased down all the vehicles that came through with the last convoy.”

  “That’s right. Here’s the list of vehicles.” John Swensen handed him a list. “You will notice the signature of the state trooper on the bottom of the page. We worked with the state troopers. They verified there was no armored car in the last convoy and . . .” he kept talking even when Noonan tried to cut him off, “and . . . and after we checked every vehicle with the state troopers, we went back with the state troopers to the Pamlico Tunnel, and it was empty.”

  Noonan let him finish. Then Noonan looked over the list carefully. “Now you looked inside these two container trucks and the bus, right?” He tapped two names on the list.

  “With the local police and the state troopers. The container trucks were full of boxes,” Delgado cut in, “which we unloaded to make sure the boxes weren’t hiding anything. The bus was full of people.”

  Noonan continued as if nothing was wrong. “Well, what we have left are three or four compact cars, a pickup truck, a milk delivery vehicle—I didn’t know they had those anymore—and a Mercedes. You checked out the milk truck to make sure it wasn’t the armored car in disguise, right?”

  “We checked everyone out,” John Swensen snapped.

  “No other vehicles raced away?”

  “The minute we knew the armored car was missing, we called the cops.” Delgado’s tone was professional.

  John Swensen cut in quickly thereafter. “By cell phone and radio. They had a roadblock at the first intersection within a few minutes. That’s where we caught up with all the cars from the convoy. There are no turnouts or side roads between the tunnel and the crossroads where the cops had the roadblock. The roadway was pretty torn up on the far side of the tunnel, so traffic was moving at a crawl. I know personally because we covered every inch of the road. On motorcycle and on foot. There is a mountainside along one curb and a two-hundred-foot drop to the river on the other.”

  “Then you walked the tunnel?”

  “Both of us,” said Delgado. “We went through the tunnel with a fine-tooth comb. We blocked both entrances and rode it. Then we walked it. Then we walked it with the police. We checked the walls, turnouts, and those side alleys. We tapped the walls and poked under the fresh pavement. The armored car wasn’t there; period.”

  “Tell me about those alleys.”

  John Swensen let Delgado take the lead. “Well, when it rains, like it has been for the last few days, water rushes into the tunnel. It’s been doing it for years. The pavement is put at an angle, so any water in the tunnel runs to the riverside. From there the water is funneled toward these alleys set every fifty or sixty feet along the wall. The water is then channeled back into a large aqueduct in a hallway that runs the length of the tunnel. Then there are three outlets where the water rushes out of the aqueduct and falls about two hundred feet to the river below.”

  “How wide are the alleys leading off the main tunnel?”

  “Not wide enough to admit an armored car,” John Swensen added. “I’d say they were four or five feet wide.”

  “The back hallway?”

  “Eight or ten feet but the armored car could get there down the four-foot alleyway.”

  “How about the aqueduct in the back tunnel? How wide is it, and how deep do you think the water was?”

  “Judging by the grates, I’d say it is four feet wide. I . . . we could see water rushing when I flashed my light down, but I couldn’t tell how deep it was.”

  Noonan stood up and paced back and forth across the room. The two young men sat in the military-style metal chair without making a sound. When the silence became oppressive, the two men looked at each other. Delgado was about to say something when Noonan continued the conversation.

  “Guys, when you went over the tunnel with the flash lights, did you check out the alleys carefully?”

  “Absolutely,” they both agreed. “We didn’t think the armored could drive down there, but we knew we could be wrong. We examined each of the alleys carefully, checking for scrapes along the walls.”

  “Did you find any?”

  “We found some fresh scrapes on the walls of one alley, but it was only in one spot.” Delgado indicted a scrape about four feet long with his hands.

  “Where?”

  “On the leading edge of one of the alleys, where it joined the tunnel.”

  “Describe the scratches to me, precisely.”

  “There were four of them. We counted them and took pictures—on my phone.” Delgado held up his phone. He paused for a moment while he found the photos he wanted and showed them to Noonan. “Two of them on each side of the alley. All of them were on both the alley side and the tunnel side of the brick wall like something had been braced there. They were parallel, with the top two being about six feet off the ground and the bottom two about three feet off the ground. Here’s a picture of me standing next to the scrapes to show how high off the ground the scrapes were.”

  “Send those shots to me,” Noonan said as he tapped the cursed satanic electronic beast of the devil incarnate in his vest pocket and gave Delgado the number to the Mephistophelian gadget.

  “Did any of the other alleys have those marks?” Noonan tilted the phone sideways to get a long view.

  “No. I checked,” said Delgado.

  Noonan looked and spoke to the young Swensen. “When the water leaves the back of this hallway,” Noonan tapped the phone, “is it a straight drop to the river?”

  “Pretty much so,” the young Swensen replied. “It’s a long way down.”

  “There’s no mountainside directly below where the water exits the aqueduct?”

  “Well, further down, yes. But it’s a straight drop to the water below. I don’t think the water hits the side of the mountain. The water arches out and falls directly into the river. Actually, I’m not sure. We weren’t looking at the waterfall, just the alley where the scrapes were.”

  Noonan leaned over the personnel files on the desk, lost in thought. Then he looked from the young Swensen to Delgado. “Where was the armored car when it went into its convoy?”

  Delgado responded. “At the very back. The last vehicle. By the book, sir. We operated right out of the book. If it’s the last vehicle in and is going to be robbed, it gets civilians out of the line of fire. It’s standard procedure. The traffic person was told that.”

  “Who talked to the traffic person?” Noonan asked.

  “Well,” the young Swensen cut in, “we didn’t. We w
ere on the other side of the Pamlico Tunnel. Charlie or George did. The drivers don’t talk to anyone while they are en route. They keep their windows up. So, no, neither of us,” he indicated himself and Delgado, “talked with the traffic guy, woman actually, on the other side of the tunnel. We went through with the convoy ahead of the one the armored car took. There we sat on the other side of the tunnel and waited for the armored car.”

  “And it never came,” finished Delgado.

  “Right. Right,” said Noonan absentmindedly. “How many minutes were there between the time the armored left the other side of the tunnel and the first car from the oncoming convoy came out of the tunnel?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said the young Swensen. “We weren’t keeping track. We just assumed the armored car entered the Pamlico Tunnel on the far side. Then we waited. I’d say five or seven minutes. Not ten.”

  “When the armored car did not come through, one of you went back to check to see why?”

  “Yeah, that was me,” said the young Swensen.

  “And you saw nothing in the tunnel?”

  “No armored car, that’s for sure.”

  “See anything unusual at all? People? Equipment?”

  “Some highway equipment, but that’s it.”

  “How many more minutes before you realized the armored car was missing?”

  “About the same as the convoy coming through. Six minutes. No more.”

  Noonan was silent for a moment. Then he looked at the young Swensen. “Do you know what the configuration of the convoy was when it went into the tunnel?”

  “Absolutely. I had to write it down for the troopers. The list is in the file there.” He pointed to a file on Noonan’s work desk.

  “Did the convoy stop in the tunnel?”

  “No one said it did. We talked to every one of the drivers of the vehicles who came out of the tunnel.”

  “Was there a truck in the original convoy?”

  Delgado cut in. “When it came out of tunnel, yes. I wrote up all the information on vehicles for the troopers.