Scout’s Honor: Chapter 25

The House that Crime Built

The duffel bags lay undisturbed in the abandoned bomb shelter, but seeping moisture had rotted their canvas. He’d carried the first bag no more than five steps before its contents burst through the bottom. But the kilos, waterproof in their shells, were intact. Telling himself to stay calm, he picked up an armful, climbed out of the shelter, climbed the pink block wall, and dropped his first load in the trunk. A half dozen trips later, he checked his count. Forty-eight. Breathing deep, he threaded his way back and forth across the yard, scuffling, kicking the purple bougainvillea, hand-checking the backside of the wall, hunting for two kilos he had long since forgotten had been seized by the police. 

 Austen drove cross-country in his Marine uniform, sporting a fresh crew cut, having decided an annual stint with the reserves was a good story for any cop who happened to pull him over. He argued with the cocaine, but drove on, insisting his cargo was little more than a day’s worth for the moneyed elite who saw through him and his preposterous ambitions. He drove on, coffee for sleep, resting a few hours in the back seat when his neck snapped from dozing.

“It’s mine,” he said aloud to Denver. “They ruined my life. I would have gone to the Academy, been a pilot. I could have become an admiral. I’m owed—a lot more than this.” At length, he realized he would never convince himself, that his rationalizations were no more than that, and forced himself to stop thinking about the trunk’s contents. 

Upon his return to the Swiss Bank Corporation, Austen found everything as it had been on his last visit, save Ann Koch’s nameplate. It now read Ann Sampson. He waved an unimpressive cashier’s check before her and asked for that letter of introduction she’d mentioned the prior year. Amused, Ann said it would be ready forthwith, congratulating herself for predicting his success. Austen flew to Switzerland three days later. Herr Hans Peter was most cordial in his willingness to bank Mr. Austen. Over excellent coffee, Peter chuckled at the romantic notion Americans had of cloak-and-dagger Swiss accounts. 

“What do you say in New York? No big deal?” He asked, pleased to display his fluency to the young American in the rumpled suit.

“Yes, sir. No big deal. That’s it.”

Back in New York, Austen sawed a kilo in two, sealed both halves and paid a kid five bucks to hand-deliver one to the Upper East Side brownstone the New York Post dubbed “The House That Crime Built”. It was home to the offices of Louis La Fortune, a mob lawyer in the papers as frequently as his favorite client, Jimmy “The Bone” Carbone. Austen had addressed a respectful letter to Mr. Carbone—care of his attorney—suggesting that he could either view the pound of pure cocaine as a gift or, should he wish to do business, he could wire-transfer its wholesale value to an account in Switzerland. And should he wish to continue doing business, Mr. Carbone need only place an ad in the Post seeking his lost corgi. A Grand Central Station locker key would then be delivered to his lawyer, La Fortune. He wrote that as long as Mr. Carbone’s wire transfer arrived in Switzerland within seventy-two hours of key delivery, he could be assured of a limitless supply. Austen politely blamed their lack of acquaintanceship for his inability to advance more than two kilograms at a time. 

Almost overnight, he had difficulty keeping up with the gangster’s demand. 

In a series of phone conversations that began when his deposits reached a million dollars, Herr Peter suggested his bank’s investment group might manage Austen’s money for him in a prudent manner. Peter boasted how his managers distrusted spectacular results, how they viewed extraordinary returns with a suspicion inbred over hundreds of years. Their mission, as he described it, was to preserve capital and only secondarily to achieve a solid, consistent return. The next day Austen executed the documentation providing the bank authority to invest his funds as it deemed appropriate. 

Later, when the last kilogram had been sold and his account substantial even by Swiss reckoning, Austen told Peter he was thinking of buying more New York real estate and asked whether the bank’s Manhattan branch could provide him with a line of credit equal to, say, eighty percent of his Swiss holdings. 

“Certainly, Mr. Austen.”

Austen hung up, tried to rejoice in the fortune that was now his, but felt neither elation nor relief.

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