| 33 |

The first-class passengers streamed off the plane and out of the gate, as though there was a prize for beating everyone else through customs. I hung back just a step or two on the off-chance that there was an inspector who wanted to take down the rich folks. By the time I had my passport stamped and was heading for customs, they were waving everyone through. What contraband were they going to find coming in first class from Switzerland?

But I must have had some scent of guilt around me.

“Passport.”

I stopped and handed the officer my customs form and passport. During my ten years running the trading desk, I had traveled to fifty different countries on six continents. Never once had I been stopped by customs on my return. And it had never mattered before.

“Carrying anything of interest there?” he said.

“Just documents.”

“Documents?”

“Yes. Legal files.” My lips had gone so dry they almost smacked when I opened my mouth.

“Open the bag, please.”

The file folders looked up at him, trying to look innocuous. They looked guilty as hell to me.

He moved the top folder aside and took the one directly beneath it. I couldn’t read the label; I had no idea what was in it.

The officer opened the folder and pulled out a file of densely worded, very official-looking papers.

“Do you know what these are?” He held them out to me.

I did know what they were. I scanned the first page. I couldn’t read it—it was all in German—but I knew exactly what it was. I had five million dollars’ worth of them myself.

“It’s an annuity,” I said. “A Swiss insurance company annuity. They are all cut from the same template. Standard Swiss boilerplate.”

Worthless to anyone but the beneficiary, whose name was prominently displayed numerous times on the first page.

“Then I doubt they fall under the definition of subversive materials, eh?”

He was making a joke. A customs joke.

I smiled. It felt like my cheeks cracked.

He dropped the folder back in the bag and reached in again. This time he pulled out the box with the toy police car.

“This yours?” he said, smiling.

One of us was having a good time.

“It’s for my son. The Kid loves cars.”

“How old?”

“Six.”

“Nice.” He looked at the car again. “Nice car, too.” He put it back in the bag and zippered it up. “He’ll love it.”

“I hope so.”

He nodded and handed me my passport. “Welcome home.”

I was through, having smuggled more than a billion dollars’ worth of various bearer bonds into the country. And a slim folder of Swiss annuities made out to Mistletoe Evans.

•   •   •

THE CROWD OF LIMO chauffeurs, most looking like hearse drivers in black suits, white shirts, and black ties, were pairing off with their rides as I came out. I spied the one with the sign for JASON STAFFORD, a tired-looking, bandy-legged, very short older man who looked like a retired jockey.

“I’m your fare. Can you get me to the Upper West Side in an hour?”

He tipped his head to the side, a tic I sometimes employed when about to deliver bad news.

“The Van Wyck is not looking good. I can do an hour and a half maybe.”

That still left me a half-hour of cushion before the Kid’s school got out—it was tight. I had wanted to shower and shave and change into clean clothes—and stash the bonds in my apartment—but that could all wait.

“I’ll follow you.” I gestured to the outer doors.

“May I?” He reached out to take the tote bag. He had a luggage cart waiting. I hesitated for just a second. There was no sane reason not to relinquish the bag, but about a billion paranoid ones. If he tried to run away with it, I was sure I could overtake him—unless he had his horse out front. I reluctantly handed over the canvas tote, and in a spirit of “all or nothing,” let him place my briefcase on the cart, too. He led the way.

When he reached the revolving door, I hustled in behind him, earning an exasperated look from the little man. We shuffled our way around and out onto the street.

The cars, SUVs, and limos were three deep at the curb, all with engines running so the drivers could argue with the attendants that they were not actually “parked,” producing a carbon-rich heat haze that just about pummeled my jet-lagged brain into a state of semiconsciousness. I kept my focus on the cart and my bags.

The driver stopped at the curb and paused. It occurred to me that the light was with us. Why didn’t he go? I looked at him questioningly and he turned his head away. Then he lurched forward—just as the light turned.

An oversized white SUV jumped forward and clipped the front of the cart, spilling both bags and tossing my driver to the ground. I leaped over him and ran for the tote bag.

I grabbed it and turned around. The driver had picked himself up and was screaming, making sure the world knew that, despite his fall, there had been no damage to his lungs or vocal cords. He invoked saints and demons as he described the succession of animals that were most likely responsible for siring the driver of the vehicle—and which orifices had been penetrated at his conception.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the SUV screech to a stop, and the little man jumped in sudden fright, covering his mouth in a burlesque parody of contrition. I almost laughed. Instead I turned just in time to see a hand reach down from the SUV’s passenger door and grab my briefcase from off the ground. Then the big vehicle sped off.

People were yelling and one of the traffic wardens blew a whistle. I almost yelled myself, but the words died in my throat. I was stunned, not by the assault or the theft as much as by the intricacy of the play. Someone wanted my briefcase. But they could have had it any number of ways. Simpler, less aggressive, less dramatic. It was a feint. I thought of the driver waiting at the curb, not stepping out until after the traffic began to move. Someone had just stolen forty dollars’ worth of chocolate and a five-thousand-dollar memento of my years on Wall Street, and when they discovered that they did not have a hundred million—or a billion—in bearer bonds, they would be back.

“You all right, there?” the driver yelled at me. “Got your bag? That’s good.” The cart was wrecked and he hauled it back onto the curb. “Here, let me take that for you,” he said advancing on me. “Crazy son of a bitch, eh?”

They would want me where they could easily find me again. They would want me under surveillance. I remembered the commotion the driver had made—the screaming and cursing—distracting me at just the moment that they had grabbed my briefcase. That may have been a paranoid’s deduction, but it fit all the known facts.

I grabbed him by the shirtfront and shook him hard. “Who were they?”

“Christ! I don’t know!” He brushed feebly at my hand and I shook him again.

“Who are you working for? Those fucking Latinos? The Hondurans? Tell me!”

“Whaddayou, nuts? Let me go.”

He sounded sincere, but I thought I could see just the flicker of something else in his eyes. “Who, goddamnit?”

But he had already recovered and began to play to the audience around us. “Get your hands off me, ya nutter.”

The crowd was beginning to make noises that they were taking his side—he was the one who had been knocked to the ground.

“They took my goddamn briefcase!” I yelled into his face.

“So, whaddya want me to do? I didn’t take it.”

The traffic warden was headed our way. With a billion dollars in my hand, I could not afford to attract the attention of any official authority, no matter how far down the totem pole. I released the limo driver with a small push, swung the tote bag handles over my shoulder, and marched into the crowd. No one tried to stop me.

I dodged back into the terminal, wove through the milling crowds, and came out another revolving door next to the cab stand. There was no line—if there had I would have been forced to jump it.

“Ninety-sixth and Columbus,” I said, settling in and hugging the canvas bag to my side. “Or anywhere around there. Whatever is quickest.”