The Prisoner of Guantanamo (21 page)

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

H
E AWAKENED AT SEVEN,
still on Gitmo time, even if his stale breath and throbbing head reminded him immediately of his poor OPSEC of the night before. He dragged himself to the shower, where a huge brown bug skittered down the drain when he threw back the curtain.

During the night someone had shoved an advertising flyer for another pizza joint beneath the door. Falk was about to throw it away when he saw handwriting at the bottom: “Ditch the phone. Too risky.”

Just as well. Now he wondered if it had been a ruse just to get his location. They'd probably been watching him 'round the clock since. He pulled the curtains tight.

Before breakfast he checked the papers for news of Pam, but there was nothing. He supposed that was a good sign. On the cable news channels they were again buzzing about Boustani. Fox was already referring to him as “the traitor translator.” He wondered what they'd say about an FBI man with long-standing ties to Cuban intelligence.

Badly needing coffee, he walked into Little Havana for a sugary double shot of
café cubano
and a greasy tostada. The place was just waking up, traffic building and the heat still at bay. The music vendors were silent. Without the pulse of salsa, an air of suspended animation prevailed.

He debated the idea of another circuit through the neighborhood, but any nostalgia had dissipated the night before, so he returned to his room. Checkout time was in two hours, and the meeting was another ninety minutes after that. The day seemed destined to move at an agonizingly slow pace, so he might as well do some work.

Opening his briefcase he came across the letters to Ludwig. From here—better still, from a pay phone—he could call the banker and Ludwig's wife. Unless one of them blabbed, no one at Gitmo would be the wiser. If Van Meter and company were going to lock up his friends, then what was the harm in a little retaliatory poaching, especially if it killed time? He walked back to the pay phone up the street.

There was no point in calling Farmers Federal on Saturday, so he got Ed Sample's home number from directory assistance. His wife answered. Falk identified himself as a special agent for the FBI, and she warily told him to call back at eleven.

Doris Ludwig answered on the third ring, and sounded angry from the get-go, although she calmed a little when he told her he was still looking into the matter.

“Well, it's about damn time, but I'm glad they reconsidered.”

“Reconsidered?”

“They told me the case was closed. ‘Drowning by misadventure,' or some crap like that. As if he'd really go for a swim at night.”

“Somebody must have gotten their wires crossed. Who told you that?”

“What was your name again?” Now she, too, was wary.

“Revere Falk. Special agent. I've got about a dozen different numbers you can call, both in Washington and Guantánamo, if you need to verify my credentials.” But please, please don't, he thought.

“Sounds like you fellows don't know what you're doing. One guy calls to say everything's taken care of. Swept under the rug, if you ask me. I guess I'm just glad somebody came to their senses.”

“This earlier call. That was from … ?”

“Captain Van Meter. Officious and rude, under the circumstances. Two kids and a widow and all he wanted to talk about was protocol and due diligence. You name it, he had some official excuse for it.”

“But he said the case was closed?”

“Don't you fellows talk to each other?”

“Not always, dumb as it sounds. He's Army, I'm Department of Justice. Sometimes we get our wires crossed.” Or that's what he'd tell Van Meter if questions arose. He could always finesse the date and time of the call, at least for a while.

“Well, if you knew Earl, you'd know it's crazy for him to be swimming in the middle of the night.”

“He didn't swim?”

“He swam. It wasn't like he was afraid of the water.” A tad defensive now. “Hold on a minute.” Falk heard a squalling child. The receiver drummed on a countertop. She was probably in the kitchen, a summer Saturday morning in the Midwest. She shouted a command to the daughter, the one who had been missing her dad at the time of the letter.

“Misty, put that down before you break it! Now!”

Given that tone of voice, Falk bet, Misty would shape up pronto. It occurred to him that maybe Ludwig hadn't minded his little Cuban vacation all that much. He would have been deployed just as the weather was getting cold, leaving behind a nine-to-five bank job, a new baby, and a wife who sounded like she knew how to keep people in line. Or maybe she was just having a bad day, one of many. There were probably a lot of those when you'd just heard your husband was dead, drowned while guarding locked-up kooks more than a thousand miles from home.

“Where were we?” she said.

“You said he wasn't afraid of the water.”

“Right. He could swim. Usually in a pool. Sometimes in the town lake. It is true that the ocean gave him the creeps. Lake Michigan, too. Any place where he couldn't see the other side. It was the undertow he hated. That's why the idea of him going in at night is crazy.”

Or suicidal. He thought again of the suspicious letter from the bank.

“Who else feels this way? Anybody who knows him pretty well who I should talk to?”

“There's my brother, Bob. Bob Torrance. They've been friends longer than we have. Says he can't believe the Army's not doing more. And I can't either.”

He remembered Bob's name from her letter, the guy who'd asked about the fishing in the Caribbean.

“Got his number?”

She rattled it off, then asked a question.

“The funeral's in two days. Will you be coming?”

“I'm afraid not,” he said, and heard a sigh of exasperation. “Who's the Army sending?”

“A color guard. A few guys to shoot off some rifles. His CO's flying in from Cuba, but everybody else has to stay at Gitmo. I hear they did a little memorial service for him, down on the beach.”

That was the first Falk had heard about it, which made him feel pretty stupid.

“Stay on top of this, please,” she said. “And let me know what you find out.”

“Will do.” Another stretch. “But, look, there's one last question I have to ask.”

“Go ahead.” Terse, as if she had already guessed it.

“Was there anything going on—at home, at the bank, at Gitmo, anywhere—that could have made him feel like he had to do this?”

“My God, you're just like the other one. You're all in this together, aren't you? The goddamn Army and everybody else. Point the finger at anybody but yourselves.”

“No, ma'am. It's not like that at all. We just …”

Click.

He could hardly blame her. Yet another doubter suggesting her husband had wanted to escape this world—and, by implication, her and the children. So of course she'd be grasping at any straw that might suggest otherwise.

Falk got an answering machine at her brother's place. He still had time to kill before calling Ed Sample back, so he went up the street for a second jolt of coffee and then checked out of his room. He was already dressed in the day's mandatory uniform—jeans and white shirt—and had tossed the Dolphins cap on the front seat of the car. He left the cell phone behind.

He began making his way toward downtown, and soon spotted a Walgreens, so he pulled in to pick up the required bag and a bottle of water. Then he waited in the car until the dashboard clock rolled over to 11:00 before he called Ed Sample from a phone outside the store. This time Ed answered.

“Mr. Sample, I assume you've heard about Captain Ludwig's death down in Cuba.”

“Yes, sir. We were all pretty shaken up. Our bank's kind of like family. Not at corporate level, of course, but around here. We were pretty much a mom-and-pop outfit until Farmers Federal bought us out.”

“And when was that?”

“About a year and a half ago. Earl was one of the few local managers they kept and promoted, mostly because there would have been a depositors' revolt if they hadn't.”

Just like the old Building and Loan in
It's a Wonderful Life,
Falk thought, although it was hard imagining George Bailey approving a wire transfer to the Caymans. He wondered if Sample would bring up the subject without prompting.

“Was he staying in pretty close touch with bank business while he was down there?”

“About as much as you'd expect. He always wanted to see the monthly totals, hear about any special problems.”

“Anything else?”

“Oh, I don't know. This and that. I guess you'd have to know the business.”

“Would ‘this and that' include foreign banking transactions? Like wire transfers?”

There was a sigh at the other end.

“Look … What'd you say your name was again?” Falk heard him scribbling on a pad.

“Revere Falk. FBI.” He repeated the song and dance he'd done for Doris Ludwig about numbers and verifications. Hardly anyone ever took him up on the offer, and Sample was no exception.

“I'll cut to the chase,” Falk said. “I read your last piece of mail to him, and I'd wager you were as curious about those transactions as I am.”

Sample paused, perhaps weighing the bank's reputation against his loyalty to his late boss.

“Is this part of some banking investigation?”

“Banking's not my area, Mr. Sample. That would be Treasury, or other people at the Bureau. If you hear from anyone on that matter—and I'm not saying you will—it would most likely be an assistant U.S. attorney. But I won't be in touch with them, if that's what you're wondering.”

Sample exhaled, presumably in relief.

“It's the amount that surprised me most. I mean, two million? Around here that's more than we might turn over for months.”

“Yeah, that's a lot, all right.”

“Especially under those terms.”

“Which were what?”

“I thought you knew all this?”

“Only what I saw in your letter. The one dated last Thursday.”

“That was just my way of registering disapproval, in the mildest possible terms but without being too specific. He'd led me to believe that sometimes people read their mail.”

“So you were covering your ass?”

“I guess that's one way to put it. This thing came out of the blue. No phone call, no letter. Just a transfer form on a fax, followed by a letter he'd signed on bank stationery, giving us the go-ahead.”

“He had stationery with him?”

“Must have, 'cause he sent it. Then three days after the money was to come in he wanted to ship the whole amount back out, to First Bank of Georgetown, down in the Caymans. On his signed approval again.”

Any banker knew that the Caymans were the funny money capital of the world.

“When was that supposed to take place?”

“Friday a week ago, the day after I sent that letter. So you can understand why I was a little upset. Hardly worth our trouble or risk for just three days of short-term interest.”

“Unless he was planning on making this a specialty.”

“Earl Ludwig? You must not have known him.”

“Straight arrow?”

“The last thing you'd ever call Earl was a high roller. He'd lose sleep when our mortgage rates shifted by an eighth of a point. In
either
direction. Anything that looked the least bit risky and he was on the phone to corporate for a second opinion. It's one reason they liked him. Local goodwill was one thing, but they knew he wouldn't play fast and loose with their money, not even for somebody he might have known for years.”

So, a little of the Mr. Potter along with the George Bailey.

“Had you ever done any business with this Peruvian bank? What was it again?”

“Conquistador Nacional. I'd never heard of it. Which is another reason I was kind of anxious for Earl to reply. But of course the next thing I heard he was dead.”

“Any theories on what he was up to?”

“With anybody else I'd guess the usual. A woman. A secret drug habit. With Earl? No idea. And he's been in
Cuba
all this time. Practically the end of the earth, from the things he says—excuse me,
said
—about the place. It sounded like the last kind of place where you would get into this kind of trouble.”

“Exactly what did he tell you about Gitmo?”

“Oh, you know. Hot. Strange. Big lizards. Everybody was lonely. Some of the guys in his unit were drinking too much. Patriotic work, and a lot of school spirit, but after a few weeks everybody thought it sucked. He said the Arabs threw stuff on 'em, but some of 'em weren't too bad. He said it was corporate, too. I think that part surprised him.”

“What do you mean, ‘corporate'?”

“Sort of like when Farmers Federal bought us out. Took a nice little operation and made it bureaucratic as all get-out. Everybody with his own rules and procedures, with five layers above your own breathing down your neck for results. I think the pressures of all that surprised him.”

“Yeah, well, that's the Army. A big corporation, with everybody wanting to cover his ass.”

“Like me, huh? Now I'm wondering if I should have tried to call him. Offered a sympathetic ear.”

“I wouldn't blame myself. The best thing you can do for him now is to pass along anything that might occur to you later, or anything you hear.” He gave the man his e-mail address. “And one other thing. We've had some of our own bureaucratic screwups on this, as you might expect. I need to know if anyone else from Gitmo called you about this.”

“About the transaction, you mean?”

“That, or Sergeant Ludwig's death.”

“No. You're the first. And frankly I figured if anybody called, it would be like you said, some prosecutor checking on the bank. Any advice if they do?”