Windfall

by Byron TD Smith

  “I don’t know him. He knocked and he had the wrong house, so he left. He had nothing to do with my heart attack. I’m old. It happens.” He wagged the nitroglycerin spray bottle that Henry had given him. “This stuff is a lifesaver.”

  “Do you have a lot of those?” Henry asked, pointing at the spray in Benham’s hand.

  “These? No. The pharmacy never lets you fill more than one at a time. Cheap buggers.”

  “And you’ve told the police that you just had a heart attack.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Care to tell us what really happened?”

  “You’ve got a hell of a nerve.”

  Henry held up his hand. “Before you say anything more, here’s where I’m coming from.” He walked back to the door to the hallway, glanced outside, and closed it. He came back and stood over Benham.

  “Your oxygen is next to your chair, so you were sitting there when you had your so-called heart attack. You knocked over your coffee, so you could reach your table. But someone stopped you from getting to your nitro spray. Isn’t that right?”

  “What makes you think—”

  “The cap. You wouldn’t have replaced the cap.”

  Benham turned the spray over in his hand.

  “But the cap was open on this one.” Henry held the orange pill bottle out at arm’s length and watched as the light of recognition flickered in the old man’s eyes.

  “Let me see that,” he said. “Is there a name on there?”

  “No, just a prescription number.” Having got Benham’s attention, Henry returned the bottle to his pocket. “Why is this guy interested in you?”

  Benham leaned back into his pillow. “You’re making something out of nothing. Just a random kook.”

  “Did he say anything?”

  “Yeah, sure. I don’t remember a lot. But it was just a bunch of garbage.” He rubbed the stubble on his chin with the back of his hand. “He thought I was someone else.”

  “That’s it? Did he use a name?”

  “Sure. K-something. I don’t remember.”

  “Cooper?” Tess suggested.

  Again, Benham’s eyes failed to hide surprise. “No. He kept saying nonsense, like it was safe to come home. Gobbledygook. High as a kite, I’ll bet. That’s all.”

  Tess nodded. “The man from your apartment dropped a bunch of papers on the lawn. We read them and did a bit of digging on our own, to figure out what he was looking for. Well, it turns out that he’s some kind of treasure hunter.”

  Henry watched Benham for a reaction: confusion, denial, bewilderment. Nothing. Stone.

  “Is that it?” the old man said in a low, steady tone.

  “This guy,” Henry said, “is looking for DB Cooper.”

  Benham locked eyes with Henry; a wall of resolve had gone up. “I don’t know any Cooper.”

  “But you’re familiar with the story?” Tess asked.

  “Young lady, everybody alive heard about that when it happened. But there were a lot of hijackings in those days. That was before airport security figured itself out. Now the pendulum’s swung the other way and you can’t even bring a sneeze on board without them searching through your tissue.”

  Tess produced her phone and brought up the old military picture. “Can we ask you about this?”

  “He had it?” Benham asked. His right hand held the phone awkwardly, a monitor clipped to his index finger. With his free hand, he tapped the young airman’s face. He scrolled from side to side to his old compatriots’ faces.

  “Oh no,” Tess said. “I just took a picture of this when I popped in to pick up your things.”

  Benham stopped scrolling. “Why?”

  Henry tried not to sound absurd. “The guy who attacked you followed a trail to Richardson Street, looking for Cooper and the ransom money. He found you.” Henry pointed at the phone. “You’ve jumped from planes before. Where were you in November 1971?”

  Benham’s mouth cracked. He handed the phone back to Tess.

  “You think I’m Cooper?”

  Tess shrugged.

  “What will you do if I am?”

  Henry looked to Tess for the answer to Benham’s question, only to find her returning his lost expression.

  “Well, don’t get your knickers in a twist,” Benham said. “I’m not. Help me sit up.”

  Tess shifted pillows behind the old man’s head, as Henry adjusted the tilt of the bed.

  “I’ll tell you,” Benham continued. “In 1971, my life was the pits, sure. The economy was in the tank. My wife chucked me out of the house, and I had to move into the Cambie Hotel for a time. But I sure as hell never got so desperate that I hijacked a plane. I still had plenty to lose. My two young girls, Jane and Bonnie.”

  Tess rested her hands on the bed next to Benham’s hip as he spoke. “You think Cooper was desperate?”

  “Yeah, I do. Lots of people were being put out of work, losing homes. Lots of young men from the States were moving up here to get away from the draft. It didn’t help that those young men who survived their tours in Vietnam weren’t coming back to parades. Just the opposite. The Cold War was at its peak. I’m telling you those were crazy times. And, while I never got as close to the edge as that myself, can I imagine a man getting pushed so far that he’s got a grudge to settle no matter what? You bet I can. The ‘peace-love-dove’ of the 1960s was over and for many people it was every man for himself, unfortunately. Crazy times.”

  He patted Tess’s hand.

  “You’ve seen my place. I’m not Cooper. If I had that kind of money, I’d have a bigger TV.”

  The mood lightened, Tess and Henry laughed along with Benham, although not quite as hard.

  “I’d love to see these papers that this guy dropped, though,” Benham said. “Do you have those on you as well?”

  “Henry gave them to the police,” Tess said.

  “The police?” Benham’s raised voice lifted Tess to her feet. Even Henry straightened. “Why would you do that?”

  “Well, he dropped them,” Tess said.

  “They’ve got nothing to do with me.”

  “You said you couldn’t remember much,” Henry said. “Is there more?”

  “You can’t involve the police.”

  “You just told us yourself that they attacked you. If there’s an intruder around the house, then we have every right to know.”

  “It’ll be your word against mine and you weren’t even there.” Benham looked quite satisfied with this logic.

  On cue, the machine next to Henry gave a small beep.

  “What’s the problem?” Henry asked. “He should be caught.”

  “I’m telling you he came looking for someone and he didn’t find them. So he’s gone and he’s out of our hair.”

  “And what if he’s not? What if he comes back?”

  “If he comes back…” Benham winced and looked at Bernadette’s purse on the chair with a melancholic affection. “Then he’s trouble, isn’t he?”

  “So, let’s involve the police.”

  “I can’t”

  “Why not?”

  “That’s not for you to know. Find out who he is.”

  “What are you thinking? This isn’t a game. I have a thirteen-year-old girl staying with me.”

  “Get rid of her. She must have other relatives.”

  “No,” Henry said, aware of how defensive he sounded.

  “Why not?”

  “That’s my business.”

  “Quite a standoff,” Benham concluded. He looked out of the window, appearing to ponder the gray, heavy clouds that were advancing over downtown in the distance. “I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that Bernadette is sick. It would be too much for her to have the police crawling all over the house.”

  He turned to Henry. “I’m sure you wouldn’t like it either.”

  “I’ve not done anything wrong.”

  “None of us have, Henry. Tess . . .” This was a plea now. “The police are a system to enfo
rce rules. And a system has no conscience; it shouldn’t go digging into the past. You see?”

  The puzzled silence was interrupted by a nurse tapping on the door as she entered. This one had no glasses but wore a navy smock covered with rocking horses and teddy bears; a fashion choice that Henry presumed was meant to amuse children.

  She strode with authority to the machine that had pinged and began pressing buttons. “We’re getting you ready for your tests now.”

  Tess circled the bed and took Henry’s wrist. “We were heading out anyhow.”

  Benham grabbed Henry’s other wrist and tugged. Unsatisfied with Benham’s final, enigmatic note, Henry eagerly bent down.

  “You get it, right?” Benham whispered. “This is why Bernadette chose you.”

  The nurse interrupted by tapping Henry on his shoulder.

  Mr. Benham thanked them for coming as they left.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Henry’s mind was distracted by Tess’s hand as they returned to Richardson Street. Her fingers lightly clinging to his arm above his elbow.

  “I said, do you think they’ll catch him?” Frieda asked in a loud voice. She looked back at them over her shoulder as she walked.

  “Sure,” Henry said, unconvinced. “You gave a good description, and they’ll get more details from the café. If the guy is dropping papers behind on the lawn, then who knows what else he left.”

  Would they, though? Unless Benham confirmed the attack, there was little likelihood of the police digging deeper. Henry repeated to himself Benham’s enigmatic words.

  A system has no conscience.

  Birds chirped and dove recklessly between the trees lining the sidewalk. The trio walked through back lanes and quiet residential streets, coming across little traffic.

  Tess broke the silence. “What did he say to you in there?”

  “When?”

  “You know when.”

  “Besides telling us we shouldn’t go to the police? He said Bernadette chose me. Whatever that means.”

  “That’s what I told you last night, isn’t it? She chose you. Why, do you think?”

  Henry only shrugged. It was a hell of a guilt trip. And he was fearful of sounding paranoid.

  “The police won’t look into this,” Tess said quietly, so that Frieda, kicking leaves behind them, wouldn’t overhear.

  He nodded at the painfully obvious.

  “What do you know about the management company, Hen?”

  Henry understood each of the words she had used, but he only registered the use of his nickname. “Pardon me?”

  “The page that Bernadette kept.” She let go of his elbow to produce the paper from her back pocket. “It wasn’t just Mr. Benham’s name that’s circled on here. Who is 121702 BC Ltd.?”

  “Where did you get that?” Henry asked, coming to a halt.

  “It was sticking out of Bernadette’s purse, along with the card with all the numbers. Between her reaction, and Mr. Benham’s . . . Looking into them ourselves just felt like the right thing to do.”

  “You talked to him about DB Cooper?” Frieda held her arms high over her head, her eyes wide. “Without me?”

  Henry remained fixated on Tess’s light-fingered success.

  “It’s an index card of some sort. It’s got our address on it, but I can’t imagine what it means. And, as for the list, there’s something interesting.” Tess pointed at her own entry.

  Unit 3 Tess Honma (& daughter?)

  “You have a kid?” Frieda asked.

  “No, Fred,” Henry said. “I think that’s you. I think he’s been watching the house, learning about us. And when you ran upstairs, he assumed that you were with Tess.”

  “How many papers are you missing, Hen?” Tess asked.

  Crosswords, he managed to not speak aloud. “Three.”

  “So, he’s been watching since Sunday.”

  “Which makes sense if he’s the treasure hunter who came into town on Saturday.”

  “So, he’s DB Cooper?” Frieda asked, excited.

  “Not sure how you got there, Fred, but no,” Henry said. “In fact, I’ve been thinking about the ransom since Tess mentioned the money found in the 1980s.”

  “Me too.”

  “Not like that. I mean that it’s impossible that any of Cooper’s ransom money could have entered into circulation without kicking off alarm bells. I don’t see how it could be spent.”

  “Isn’t that what money laundering is for?” Tess asked.

  “Normally, the bottleneck with money laundering is the layering stage, where it gets disassociated with the illegal activity. It gets funneled through a legitimate business or something. In this case though, because of the tracking of the bills, you wouldn’t even be able to get it placed in the system to start.”

  “You know how to launder money?” Frieda asked. Henry couldn’t tell whether she was impressed by her uncle’s criminal wherewithal, or disappointed that he had been holding out on her.

  “Kind of. No. More how to track it down. It’s the sort of thing I had to look out for at the bank.”

  “What if he deposited it?” Frieda asked.

  “The bills would have turned up. The FBI would have traced them. Badda bing, badda bang, he’s caught.”

  “What if he bought diamonds?”

  “Same.”

  “What if he just put it in a safe?”

  “That’s what I’m saying. In a safe, you can’t spend it. You can’t grow it. You can’t do anything with it. He might as well never have got on the plane. And I can’t believe that someone would just sit on a pile of cash like that. I’m saying that if Cooper survived with the cash, he’d have been caught by now.”

  “What if he has been caught, but the government is hiding him?”

  “Creative, Fred.”

  Tess started walking again, her pace slow and deliberate. The others followed. “Have you ever met anyone from the company, Hen?”

  “No,” Henry said, drawing out the word and ending it with the inflection of a question. “Bernadette showed me around when I came to look at the place. She met me with the contracts when I signed the lease. And I slip checks through the mail slot.” Henry made clicking sounds as he thought. “What about you?”

  “Exactly the same. So, what is Bernadette hiding? She knows what connects this company to Mr. Benham. There could even be a link to what happened.”

  Frieda climbed on board with Tess’s suspicion. “We should find out who’s behind the company.”

  “Whoa,” Henry said, loud enough to scare a few birds out of the hedge next to them. “‘Behind the company’? This isn’t a movie. We aren’t detectives.”

  “Henry,” Tess said. Already he had gotten used to her using his nickname, and the sound of his full name was jarring. “The police are not investigating the company. Bernadette took this because she doesn’t want them to investigate it. But what’s the harm in finding out for ourselves?”

  “Harm? Plenty. Look at Benham in a hospital bed. And I’m looking after Fred.”

  “Maybe she stays—”

  “Don’t even,” Henry interrupted.

  “Look,” Tess said, her tone stern now. “Someone broke into my home and hurt my neighbor, who may or may not be DB Cooper.”

  “Isn’t,” Henry said.

  “May or not be. And if he isn’t, then it’s all a bunch of harmless dead ends anyhow, right? In the meantime, two neighbors want to keep information from the police, and another neighbor is a strange, anonymous corporation. You want to take care of Fred? Then let’s figure out what’s going on. How do we feel safe unless we understand what this person was after? What if it wasn’t Mr. Benham they were looking for? Doesn’t that mean that this could happen to any one of us?”

  Tess froze with her arms wide, her raised eyebrows challenging Henry for a more reasonable answer. Frieda mimicked her expression.

  Henry felt the silence heating the surrounding air. He swallowed and breathed through his mouth.<
br />
  “I need to know,” Tess said, her hand on her chest.

  “Okay. Let’s see what we can find out about the numbered company.”

  Frieda and Tess cheered. Their enthusiasm seemed undiminished by their poorly connecting high five.

  “Here’s the catch,” Henry said. “I’m ninety-nine percent certain we’re not going to find anything on the internet. There’s only going to be information online if that company has ever issued securities under a prospectus or has made the news for some reason.”

  “English please,” Frieda said.

  “Okay, if our company had shares on a stock exchange, there would be publicly available documents. Financial statements, information about directors, etc. Chances are that this ‘121702 BC Ltd.’ is a private company. It doesn’t need to disclose its information publicly.”

  Frieda shook her head. “That’s how corporations steal and don’t pay taxes.”

  “No, not at all.” Henry counted out on his fingers. “Private companies still have shareholders that own the shares. They still have directors who run the company. They still have to pay tax. They still have to make annual filings—”

  “Can we get those?” Tess asked.

  “Hen can,” Frieda said. “Right?”

  He looked at the pair of them: their similar expressions, their eyebrows raised in hope.

  “Bits of it. There is a registry for BC companies.”

  “Let’s do it,” Tess said.

  “We can’t just open an account. It takes days. I used to have access through the bank.”

  “Use your old one,” Frieda said.

  Henry squinted hard. The sooner this is cleared up, the better, right?

  “Alright. Tess, are you up for a low-level misdemeanor?”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Henry watched Tess dodge between traffic as she jaywalked across the street and into the coffee shop where they waited. She hadn’t been gone twenty minutes.

  “How’d it go?” he asked.

  She dropped into her seat and laid several printed pages on the table.

  “Piece of cake,” she said. “The guy at the internet café register barely looked up to sign me in. The username and password you gave me are still active and the site was pretty intuitive. The toughest part was that I had no idea what I was looking at. So I printed out everything.”