Before the Fall(41)
“So, okay with the small talk,” he said. “We all know what we’re doing here. The same thing cavemen did in the age of the dinosaur, sizing each other up, seeing who you can trust. What’s a handshake, after all, except a socially acceptable way to make sure the other guy doesn’t have a knife behind his back.”
He smiled at them. They looked back, unsmiling, but engaged. This was the moment they cared about—if they were who they said they were. The deal. The waiter brought Kipling his scotch, put it on the table. By habit, Ben moved it deeper toward the center of the table. He was a hand talker and had spilled his fair share of cocktails in the middle of a good monologue.
“You have a problem,” he said. “You’ve got foreign currency you need to invest in the open market, but our government won’t let you. Why? Because at some point that money found its way to a region they keep on a list in some federal building in DC. As if the money itself had a point of view. But you and me, we know that money is money. The dollar a black guy in Harlem uses to buy crack with today is the same dollar a suburban housewife uses to buy Hamburger Helper tomorrow. Or that Uncle Sam uses to buy weapons systems from McDonnell Douglas on Thursday.”
Ben watched plays of the day on the television —a string of towering home runs, shoestring catches, and baseline rundowns. It was more than a passing interest. Ben was an encyclopedia of arcane baseball figures. It was a lifelong passion, one that had taught him (coincidentally) the value of a dollar. Ten-year-old Bennie Kipling had the premier bubble-gum card collection in all of Sheepshead Bay. He dreamed one day of playing center field for the Mets and every year tried out for Little League, but he was small for his age and slow on the base path and couldn’t hit the ball out of the infield, so he collected baseball cards instead, studying the market closely, exploiting the amateur mind-set of schoolmates—who focused only on players they liked—tracking rare cards and playing the rise and fall of each player. Every morning Bennie would read the obituaries, looking for signs that the recently deceased were baseball fans, and then he’d call the widows, saying he knew their husbands (or fathers) from the trading card circuit and how so-and-so had been a mentor to him. He never asked for the decedent’s collection outright, just played up his saddest little-boy voice. It worked every time. On more than one occasion he took the subway into the city to collect a once prized box of baseball nostalgia.
“We come to you, Mr. Kipling,” said Jorgen, the dark-haired Aryan in the cotton-weight suit, “because we hear good things. Obviously these are sensitive subjects, but my colleagues agree you are a straight man. That complications do not arrive. Additional expenses. The clients we represent, well, these are not people who appreciate complications or attempts to take advantage.”
“And who is that again?” said Hoover, sweating at the brows. “Say without saying, if you can. Just so we’re all clear.”
The Swiss said nothing. They too feared a trap.
“The deal we make is the deal we keep,” said Kipling. “Doesn’t matter who’s on the other side. I can’t tell you exactly how we do what we do. That’s our proprietary advantage, right? But what I will say is, accounts are opened. Accounts that cannot be connected back to you. After that, the money you invest with my firm gets a new pedigree and is treated like any other money. It goes in dirty and comes out clean. Simple.”
“And how does it—”
“Work? Well, if we agree now, in principle, to move forward with this thing, then colleagues of mine will come to Geneva and help you set up the systems you’ll need using a proprietary software package. My operative will then stay on site to monitor your investments and navigate the daily password and IP address changes. He doesn’t need a fancy office. In fact, the less attention he draws the better. Put him in a men’s room stall or in the basement next to the boiler.”
The men thought about this. While they did, Kipling grabbed a passing waiter and handed him his black Amex card.
“Look,” he said, “pirates used to bury treasure in the sand and then row away. And the minute they left, in my opinion, they were broke, because money in a box—”
Outside the window, he watched a group of men in dark suits approach the front door. In an instant Ben saw the whole thing unravel: They would come in fast, guns out, wallets high, a sting operation, like a tiger trap in the jungle. Ben saw himself flipped on his belly, cuffed, his summer suit stained beyond repair, dirty footprints on his back. But the men kept walking. The moment passed. Kipling breathed again, finished his scotch in a single draft.
“—money you can’t use has no value.”
He sized them up, the men from Geneva—no bigger or smaller than a dozen other men he had sat across from, making this same pitch. They were fish to be caught on a hook, women to be flattered and seduced. FBI or no FBI, Ben Kipling was a money magnet. He had a quality that couldn’t be put in writing. Rich people looked at him and saw a vault with two doors. They visualized their money going in one door, and coming out the other multiplied. A sure thing.
He slid his chair back, buttoning his jacket.
“I like you guys,” he said. “I trust you, and I don’t say that to just anyone. My feeling is, we should do this, but in the end it’s up to you.”
He stood.
“Tabitha and Greg are gonna stay behind, get your details. It was a pleasure.”