His attitude during thirty minutes of probing was one of polite skepticism. In the end, he dismissed us, still dissatisfied. I knew that within the hour he would have a crew on the job, scouring Oster’s neighborhood, displaying pictures of the shapely Mrs. Bolt. I put her into a cab.
Theories need a maturation period, time to ripen; so I eschewed taxis and walked, pondering all the way. Destination: main branch of the public library, second floor, a room devoted exclusively to finance and economics. Most of the room’s inhabitants were bent over long tables, intently studying stock market reports, seeking that elusive opportunity to corral the easy buck with neither sweat nor toil.
I checked out a fat manual on foreign banks and offshore tax shelters. I dug deep and long, straining my eyesight, flipping pages, and eventually felt a stir of excitement. Something had caught my attention. I ran it down, checking and cross-checking until one logical assumption followed another.
Lt. Nola and I had been hasty and arbitrary in drawing conclusions. We had been dead wrong on two counts: 896 B.C. was not a date; and C H George was not a man.
My initial lead came from Mr. Harry Prime himself, informing us that Floyd Oster had queried Internal Revenue about an informer’s fee. Why would Oster do that? Simple. He knew that someone had perpetrated a tax fraud. Who? Who else but Ira Madden, suspected of squirreling away embezzled union funds in Switzerland? Oster had been close to Madden, a loyal lackey; but Madden had died, and there is no profit in being loyal to a corpse. Such niceties would have been alien to Floyd Oster.
Now he was dead, and the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York probably felt no pain. He had enough current cases to keep him occupied well into the next millennium. Consequently, he was not sorry to wipe the slate clean on the indictments of Ira Madden for embezzlement and Floyd Oster for bribing a federal judge, consigning his files to dead storage.
Not so, Lt. John Nola; a homicide had been committed in his bailiwick. Murder is murder, even the liquidation of so rank a specimen as Floyd Oster.
The files also remained open for Mr. Harry Prime of Internal Revenue. So long as he could see any possibility for nourishing the government’s exchequer, he intended to hang right in there, proceeding against Madden’s estate, if necessary. He’d learned that Ed Colson had been named in Madden’s will as executor.
After leaving the library, I tried a form of mental isometrics, drawing on random fragments of memory, and I now felt that certain conclusions should be passed along to the authorities. Nola was not available, and when I called Harry Prime, he asked me to attend a conference at his office the next morning with Ed Colson and the lieutenant.
The Manhattan District Office of the IRS on Church Street is a building that never failed to make me uncomfortable. Prime sat behind his desk and fixed us each in turn with his vigilant tax-collector’s eyes. “A preliminary statement,” he said, “just to get the record straight. There are four men in this room. Each of us has a different goal. Lt. Nola wants to catch a murderer. I want the government to collect every penny that’s coming to us from Ira Madden’s estate. You, Mr. Colson, as Madden’s executor, would like to preserve that estate intact. And Mr. Jordan is after a piece of the action.”
“Correction,” I said. “The money would be a peripheral bonus, welcome but not essential. My chief goal is to clear Laura Bolt of any suspicion of homicide.”
Prime was skeptical. “But you would not refuse an informer’s fee.”
“Would you?”
He looked startled and changed the subject. “Mr. Colson, you were Madden’s defense attorney. You were also Floyd Oster’s lawyer. Did you know that Floyd Oster had been in touch with my office before he died, informing us that he had information about a tax fraud involving over one million dollars?”
Colson shook his head. “I had no knowledge of that, Mr. Prime. Floyd Oster was into many things of which I was not aware.”
“Well, sir, if a tax fraud had indeed been committed, and Oster was aware of it, can you guess the perpetrator’s identity?”
“I am a lawyer. I prefer facts to guesses.”
“Isn’t it a fact that Ira Madden had been charged with embezzling funds from the Amalgamated pension fund?”
“He had been charged, yes. An indictment is not proof. He was a far distance from being convicted.”
“Only his death prevented that.”
“No, sir. A lack of evidence would have accomplished the same purpose.”
“Well, Mr. Colson, we at Internal Revenue are convinced that Oster was referring to Ira Madden. Would you care to comment?”
“Not especially, Mr. Prime, but I will. Supposing for the sake of argument that Ira Madden had lived, that he’d been tried and convicted, that embezzled money was located, just where would Internal Revenue fit into the picture?”
“Madden failed to pay taxes on that money.”
“You’re way off base, Mr. Prime. Again, conceding nothing, what taxes are you talking about? That money, if stolen from the pension fund, belongs to the union, and as general counsel for Amalgamated Mechanics, I intend to see that any recovery goes right back into the union treasury. Internal Revenue is not entitled to one red cent.”
Prime sat blinking, his jaw slack. Generally, in the presence of tax officials, most citizens are apprehensive, humble, apologetic, so any change in the pattern comes as a jolt. Harry Prime was suddenly at a loss for words, but Lt. Nola had a few.
“As Floyd Oster’s attorney, Mr. Colson, you must have spoken to him on numerous occasions.”
“In preparation for his bribery trial, yes. I’d like to make one thing clear, Lieutenant: I think Floyd Oster was a moral leper. Ordinarily I wouldn’t permit an insect like Oster through the door of my office. The only reason I took his case was because he was employed by the union and Ira Madden requested it.”
“We found a slip of paper on Oster’s corpse, bearing the name C. H. George. Did he ever mention anyone by that name to you?”
Colson frowned. “I have no such recollection.”
“The name was written in Ira Madden’s hand. Did Madden ever mention a C. H. George?”
“No, sir. Who is he?”
“We don’t know. It had the letters NAS after it.”
“C. H. George is not the name of a man,” I said.
Sudden silence; all eyes swiveling and focusing. Nola dipped his chin and said in a very soft voice, “Would you fill that in, if you please, Counselor.”
“It’s an address in the Bahamas, Lieutenant. Specifically on New Providence Island.”
“Keep talking.”
“As written, ‘C H George’ is a form of speedwriting. It means Caribe House, George Street, and the NAS stands for Nassau.”
“Who lives there?”
“Nobody. It’s the branch office of a Swiss bank with headquarters in Zurich.”
“Now how in hell did you find that out?”
“You remember you also found a number in Floyd Oster’s pocket: 896 B.C. At first we thought it was a date. Then, in the light of Mr. Prime’s information about Oster’s inquiry, it occurred to me that it might refer to a secret numbered account in a Swiss bank. So I checked a source book at the library, and among the banks listed was one with headquarters in Zurich — Banque Credit.”
Nola caught it instantly. “Banque Credit. Initials, B.C.”
“Precisely. 896 B.C. The number of an account at the Banque Credit. I chased it down and discovered that the bank had a branch office in Caribe House on George Street in Nassau. That tied it. The connection was too obvious to be considered a coincidence.”
“And the number one before the 896, where does that fit?”
“It fits the number-one man at Amalgamated Mechanics, Ira Madden.”