The door pushed open and the man stepped in.
"Please shut the door," Jeremy said quickly. "I do not like the help overhearing what is not their business."
The man obliged. That was a good sign. He shut the door, kicking Rawlings's flapping arm out just ahead of the closing panel. He was possessed of a wiry musculature that made the freakish thickness of his wrists all the more arresting, yet had the deadest-looking eyes Jeremy had ever seen. They held a positively merciless light.
Jeremy Lippincott drew himself up to his full imposing height as the man crossed the room. A pinklined ear drooped, slapping his nose lightly. He flung it back with a jaunty toss of his fuzzy head, and squared his lantern jaw.
"I am Jeremy Lippincott, president of Lippincott Savings Bank. How many I help you?"
"You can start by telling me why you're wearing a pink bunny suit."
"Because they do not come in blue. And I consider that an extremely impertinent question, coming as it does from a man in a T-shirt and jeans."
"These are chinos."
"I stand corrected. Will you sit?"
"I'm just here for some answers."
"Then I will sit as I entertain your questions."
"A week back twelve million bucks was wire transferred into the Folcroft Sanitarium account. Who did it?"
"I have no idea. The funds simply appeared in the computers one morning."
"You tell the IRS that?"
"Of course not."
"Why not?"
"They would not believe so unlikely a tale, however true."
"How do you know till you try?"
"Because to admit to these facts is to incur the wrath of various meddlesome governmental agencies.
"As opposed to whose wrath?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"I told you I was worse than the IRS."
"I do not believe that is possible."
"All the IRS come after is your money and property. I usually don't stop at anything. Ask Rawlings."
Jeremy swallowed hard, absently wiping his moist brow with a convenient ear.
"No need. Actually you should be speaking to Rawlings. Commercial accounts are his responsibility."
"I'm speaking to you." And the man reached over and took Jeremy Lippincotes long fuzzy pink ears and used them to drag him unceremoniously across his own desk. Pens, papers and other items tumbled and spilled over the imported rug.
"Oof!" said Jeremy, crushing the nap with his spun-glass whiskers. He rolled over, throwing up his poufy pink paws.
"What do you mean to do?" he demanded of the looming brute.
"You look to me like the ticklish sort."
"I am nothing of the sort."
"I have an eye for these things." And the man planted a foot that had actually touched dirty sidewalk on Jeremy's fuzzy pink stomach. The air whoosed out of his lungs. Then the toe of the shoe began to insinuate itself into some of the most sensitive portions of Jeremy Lippincott's anatomy. Such as the inner arms, the belly button and that gooshy spot under the floating rib.
"Hah hah hah haha... Stop it! This instant!"
"Not till you promise to call the IRS."
"What . . . hah! . . . do I call them?"
"Place the call and repeat after me."
"Never. I will. .. hah! ... not... hah! ...incriminate myself. Heeee."
"People have been known to die laughing"
"Hah hah. You would not dare."
"There's nothing I wouldn't dare do to a snotty banker in a rabbit suit."
After five minutes of unbridled hilarity, the tears streaming out of his eyes, Jeremy Lippincott saw the supreme expediency of calling the IRS about the Folcroft account.
At first they would not take him seriously because he was tittering so, but eventually Jeremy calmed down and was connected to the proper person.
"That is correct," he told the official on the other end of the line. "The auditor was misinformed. No currency-transaction report was filed because we were completely unaware of the transfer. We thought it was a computer twitch and were awaiting the customer's response to the unexpected twelve-million-dollar credit on his next statement. Well, yes, we did invest the money. Purely as a good-faith gesture. Just in case the transfer was legitimate. No, we do not normally conduct our interbank transactions in so loose a manner. And I must say, I take exception to the term loose. It is inappropriate. The Lippincott family has been in the banking business since before there was such an entity as the Infernal Revenue Service-"
Jeremy winced painfully.
"I stand corrected. Internal. Yes, it was a slip of the tongue. No, I was not making light of the agency that is solely responsible for keeping the wheels of our great nation greased, as you so aptly put it. Yes, I will remember that in the future. Yes, I will expect your auditors to come round next week." Jeremy's voice turned wheedling. "Please, don't hurt us. We're only a savings bank, trying to make our way through these very trying times."
The line went click in Jeremy Lippincott's ear, and the receiver was taken from his hand and replaced on its cradle.
"That wasn't so bad, was it?" the thin brute with the thick wrists asked airily.
"We are to be audited, and that means the Federal Banking Commission will be poking their nasty little noses into our books. Not to mention the State Banking Commission."
"They'll stand up to scrutiny, won't they?" the intruder asked with entirely appropriate solicitousness.
"How am I to know? I only come in three days a week and leave the fine details to my incompetent staff. I never wanted to be a banker, but I only managed Cs at Yale. Although they were excellent Cs. Poppy positively beamed when he saw them. Oh, what shall I do?"
"If I were you," said Remo Williams, exiting the office, "I'd find a cleaner suit to wear."
Jeremy Lippincott put his head down on the desk and sobbed into it. Twenty minutes passed before he came up snuffling and noticed the door to his office had been left open and he had been exposed in all his poufy glory for the underlings to behold.
Mustering his strength, he got up and slammed the door shut. But not before calling out his righteous indignation, "I will have you all know that I am correctly attired for morning. My evening ensemble is an elegant sable, with silver accents on the paw pads and ear linings! "
EVEN AFTER the miracle, Basil Hume wasn't taking any chances.
Barely a week ago, he'd spent his days cowering in fear for his life. That had been a new experience for Basil Hume, director of the Grand Cayman Trust, situated in the colonial city of Georgetown on the balmy Caribbean island of Grand Cayman.
It was true that he did business with the scum of the earth. Drug barons, mafiosi and even lower forms of life such as US. senators. It was true also that these people were dangerous in the extreme. They were even more dangerous in the extreme where their money was concerned, and Basil Hume's bank had undertaken the very grave responsiblity of safeguarding their money. That was why it was called the Grand Cayman Trust.
In reality, its sole function was to be the bank of last resort for ill-gotten gains. There was no dollar or franc or kroner too soiled to be shoveled into the Grand Cayman Trust's bulging vaults.
In fact, most of the money that came to Grand Cayman Trust arrived by telephone, not delivered in satchels by armored car. That was the old-fashioned way. In the computer age, money moved as electrical impulses through the sophisticated medium of the international wire transfer of funds.
It was a very elegant way of shuffling large blocks of currencies of all nations. If francs were sent, they arrived as dollars. If yen, dollars also. Credited as dollars in the computer system of the Grand Cayman Trust. No client need ever set foot on Grand Cayman Island. He needn't leave a paper trail of any kind. His money was as good as the next rogue's. And when he had need of it, whether it be drachmas, lira or pounds sterling, it was wired back to him in the currency of his preference.