THIRTY-SIX

 

ANIJ STARTS TO VISIT DOWNTOWN MORE OFTEN, now that Wesley has told him about the big office near the bank building. An investigation starts. Sometimes Anij parks his car outside the bank and smokes for hours as if he’d had a fight with his wife. But his curiosity can’t be contained in his brain. He wants to see some faces from that building, but those guys keep very tight. He can’t recognize any new faces coming in and out of that building other than the usual bankers. A lot of hours have been spent on just watching faces with no progress at all for days and weeks. To disguise himself every time he comes around the bank, he shops and walks around like many other people; but neither a simple disguise nor any other plan has worked so far. He will just have to visit the bank on some pretext. But he has never been to a bank before; his old metal money case that was buried underground was about the only financial institution he knew.

So he decides to open a bank account, to get familiarized with the bankers’ faces first. He puts some money into his account and visits the bank very often. After a few weeks of visiting the bank so often, all the employees at the bank are like his friends now. Now, all he has to do is find out who, of those coming in and out of the building, are not bankers. But any good plan takes a lot of work, and Anij deliberately takes some time off every now and then, so no one will ever suspect that he is up to no good.

After settling in this town for a few months now, it has become safe to talk to Mario on the phone much more often. So Anij started to report all this to Mario. But this is very tricky to report, since there isn’t really any substantial proof — no names, or anything. But recently Anij noticed one pattern. There are always more people going in on Tuesdays, biweekly. And those people who went in never seem to leave the building. There must be some kind of a secret exit somewhere else. He tries to find the secret exit. But there is only one other exit from that building other than the front door — the back door for bank trucks. This rear door is always shut tight except for when the money truck comes.

Anij has to find the way to the secret exit. Otherwise he will go crazy. He hates it when curiosity creeps up his mind. He has to be the unveiler. It becomes mandatory to memorize all the faces on Tuesday. He sees the bankers, the usual employees, and customers. Finally, the moment of discovery comes: He notices that there are always two groups of men going in that do not emerge from the building even after the bank closes. But the secret exit is still a mystery. He decides to use his old pickpocket trick to get a wallet from one of the guys. It has been a very long time since he picked someone’s pocket. But there isn’t any other option.

One day, he drinks quite a bit of whisky and dresses in dirty clothes before he visits the bank, so he can disguise himself as a homeless person. This way, it is not too obvious. A moment of truth is about to come. He stands right in front of the bank and pretends to be wasted and drunk to get closer to those guys. He deliberately bumps into one of those guys and acts just like any other bums on streets.

“What!”

“Hey, watch out!”

“Oh . . . well . . . You got a problem? Look at me — I am drunk . . .”

“Hey, I said, watch out!”

“Sorry, man. Geez . . . What a big deal . . .”

“Get out of the way.”

“Oh, sorrrry, fancy businessmen . . . You . . . ain’t . . . nothing but . . . Wow!”

“Crazy asshole . . .”

“What?”

“Just get out of my face!”

“What? You . . . You . . .”

He deliberately falls down on the ground hard. Those guys brush off their clothes and head to the bank. After they go into the bank, Anij slowly gets up and walks away. His good old skill has saved his ass again. He goes into a park washroom and changes his clothes. His hands are still shaking. It has been just too long since he has done that stuff. But it worked just fine. That is all that matters. He takes the wallet from his pocket and quickly runs to his car. As soon as he gets home, he opens the wallet. It is quite thick. He is going through it carefully.

“Let’s see who this guy is . . . One identification. One receipt from a store. One dollar. Two dollars. Three dollars. Ten dollars . . . Twenty dollars . . . Wow . . . A few more receipts from stores . . . A few paper notes with a bunch of numbers . . . Hm . . . That is it? Let me see what the name is . . . Vladimir Kavnatza. What a name . . . Must be Russian, then . . . Russian in Hawaii? Anyway . . . Oh, credit card . . . And . . . What? One more identification card? Hm . . . James Cunningham. This is interesting . . .”

He puts them all back into the wallet and hides it safely in the garden. Finally, there is some good news to tell. He makes a phone call to Mario.

“Hello, Mario?”

“Yeah. What is going on?”

“I got something interesting.”

“What is it?”

“Do you know anyone named Vladimir Kavnatza?”

“Let me see . . . Mmm . . . I don’t think so. Russian?”

“Yeah. Well. I mean, it sounds Russian, right?”

“Yeah. I don’t know anyone by that name. That is it?”

“No. I got one more. Then what about . . . James Cunningham?”

“How do you know him?”

“Bingo!”

“What? How do you know him?”

“Well, I don’t know him. But I found him.”

“How?”

“Remember that I told you that I am doing some research on people? He is one of the key people.”

“What does that mean?”

“Oh, the thing is that, at the bank building, James and a few more guys always go in and they never come out. They must be doing something big there.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. So if you know James, that means he is doing something big here. And not a lot of people know about this. But I used my old skill to get his wallet, and here we go.”

“Hm . . . That is really something . . . Ha . . . Nice job, Anij. Anything more?”

“Well, as far as I know, James Cunningham is Vladimir Kavnatza and he is dealing drugs here, big time.”

“Maybe we should contact him later, then do some business together. I know he is big on the mainland, but I never heard that he was doing anything in Hawaii.”

“So, I did good?”

“Hell, yeah. A very nice one. That is really good.”

“Thanks.”

“Keep it up. Call me if you find anything more about that guy. And maybe some other guys, too.”

“I will try.”

“Okay, thanks. Call me soon with good news. Okay?”

“What did I tell you? Okay. ’Bye.”

After he hangs up the phone, he looks at Samantha. “Hey, baby. We just have to celebrate now.”

“So Mario is happy?”

“Oh, yes. Come here and kiss me.”

“I knew you would do something big.”

Their celebration starts with drugs.

Anij tries to come up with a plan to find the secret exit in the building. For several days, it has been no good. One day, it hits him that he can get a job at the bank and be an insider. That will make this job so much easier, being inside the bank and watching everything all the time. So he goes to the bank and asks the bank manager to hire him as a janitor. After a few days, he gets the job. All the keys to all doors are in his hand. Every morning, he gets up very early, around five a.m., and starts to work before the bank opens. Since he keeps everything absolutely spotless, the manager likes him very much. But even working there every day, he hasn’t found a thing about the secret exit. It is supposed to be secret, so it would take long for anyone, but this is just going nowhere. So as he mops the floor, he is thinking of other ways to find out where it is.

There is a customer from an architectural firm. He comes in and talks to the manager about the new vault design. They look at the blueprint. The guy from the firm talks about it for quite some time. Anij peeks at the manager’s room and gets closer to the door. Since the manager’s office is on the underground floor, there is no one walking by except Anij. Through the crack of the door, Anij takes a glance at the blueprint. Then it hits him hard. Another eureka moment. He realizes that he needs to measure the interior and exterior of the bank, so he can figure out where the missing space exists. He quietly goes upstairs and starts to measure the floor, step by step. Every step is carefully measured and stored in his brain. Right after he goes home, he writes down all the numbers and starts to draw the blueprint by himself. With many adjustments, it is almost there. After several days of measuring the bank in and out, he finally realizes that there is only one place left, which is the safety deposit box vault. He can never get any access to that area. So here is another predicament. There just has to be some other way that he can get into the vault and measure the area. So he decides to deposit something in the vault.

Anij tells the manager that he has very important family traditional stuff to deposit in the vault. Since he is the number one employee, the manager lets him use the deposit box without any suspicions. It is a pretty simple logic. Anyone can have important stuff and it would be safer in a bank, especially when it comes to family tradition. Anij wraps a stone with newspapers and brings it to the bank on his off-duty day. As soon as the manager opens the vault gates, Anij pretends to be amazed by the security features, and so on . . . But while he is talking to the manager, he is measuring the vault with his feet, covering every corner or the room. Soon the manager leaves Anij to put his stuff into the box privately. The stone goes into the box as planned, and he measures the whole vault once more. After this is done, he heads straight back home. He writes down all the numbers on his blueprint.

“Okay . . . seven feet from the vault gates . . . and another six feet to the deposit boxes. From there . . . the vault itself is . . . thirteen by fifteen feet . . . and an additional two feet for each deposit box . . . and maybe another three feet of steel and brick layers of walls . . . and it is heading to the south side of the building . . . Mmm . . . That comes to . . . What the . . .? Oh, here we go! I got it . . . six feet or a little less is missing from the exterior wall . . . that must be where the secret doors are. Gotcha! God, I am so good.”

With this enormous discovery, the magic dragon puff cannot be excluded. He sure knows how to treat himself when it comes to a celebration. Tomorrow seems to be too long to wait. So he does some heavy doses with Samantha to celebrate on his discovery.

Today is The Tuesday. He goes to work as usual. James and his crew should come today like clockwork. Anij deliberately doesn’t mop the floor till those guys come. So when the guys come, he can mop the floor and no one will question him why he is doing it at that time.

Just as he expects, here they come. They talk to the manager for a little while and enter the vault. Anij starts to mop the floor. He casually looks at those guys while the manager is opening the vault gates. Anij’s eyes are getting bigger and his heart is pounding louder. The ultimate conundrum is about to let its beauty shine. It is still a big mystery where the secret door is and why they have to go through the bank. The manager is walking out of the vault and is closing the doors. Anij gets closer to the manager to distract him. A little glimpse inside the door would help a lot.

Luckily, the manager takes his time to close the doors while he is talking to Anij. There is not much time left for Anij to peek inside. There it is. It is happening right now right before his eyes between the crack of the doors. They open one of the safety deposit boxes. Then just a few moments later, they open the whole cover of the boxes. It seems like on that one side, there are no actual boxes. It looks the same on all four sides of the room, but on one side, it is just a cover, working as a door, and the rest of the boxes are real. It is simple but cunning. And there is a doorknob inside after they open the cover. One of the guys takes out a key and opens the door.

While watching all this, Anij tries to talk to the manager as usual with a calm manner. But it is quite hard to erase his feeling from his face. So he simply excuses himself to the bathroom and the manager finally and securely closes the doors without any doubts in his mind.