Part 12 (2/2)
”Of course,” Mason said ”He's the squeaky clean bank President froets lots of air ti time political auess they listen to hireed ”Andthen?”
Mason sped through a couple of pages of scribbled notes from his pad ”My notes start here 'Who I aotta say does You interested' Heavy Brooklyn accent, docks, Italian, who knows I said so' and he says that McMillan is the dirtiest of theit real so, 'so?' and he says he can prove it and I say 'how' and he says 'read your gins asked
”He hung up So I forgot about it till the next ins said pointing at the stack of computer printouts in front of Mason ”Hoere they delivered?”
”ByJust ins the envelop in which the files came
”Then you read thelanced at his editor
”That's when I let Doug knohat I had”
”And what did he say?” Higgins was keeping furious notes to back up the tape recording
”'Holy shi+t', as I reood for the soul, thought Mason People are too uptight
Higgins indicated that Scott should continue
”Then he said 'we gotta go slow on this one,' then he whistled and Holy Shat soot serious ”I borrowed a bean counter from the base cah the nuain I really worked that poor guy, but that's the price of fa we knew that there were two sets of books on First State” Mason turned a couple pages in his files
”It appears,” Scott said re the ial and the publisher, ”that a substantial portion of the bank's assets are located in numbered bank accounts all over the world” Scott said with finality
Higgins interrupted here ”So what's wrong with that?” he chal- lenged
”They've effectively stolen a sandbagged and inflated reserve ac- count with over 750 Million it Almost 10 of stated assets
It appears from these papers,” Scott waved his hand over them, ”that the total of the reserve accounts will be taken, as a loss, in their next SEC reporting” Mason stopped and looked at Hig- gins as though Higgins would understand everything
Higgins snorted as he nored Higgins, ”I got a call again, frouy”
”Why do you say that? How did you know?” Higgins inquired
Mason sighed ”Cause he said, 'it's h for you?” Mason grinned wide Mason had the accent down to a tee Higgins gave in to another round of snickers
”He said, 'you like, eh?'” Mason spoke with an exaggerated New York accent and used the appropriate Italian hand gesture for 'eh!' ”I said, 'I like, but so what?' I still wasn't sure what he wanted He said, 'they never took a loss, yet Look for Friday This Friday They're gonna lose a bunch' I said, 'how much' and he said, 'youse already know'” Mason's ih
”He then said, 'enjoy the next installment', and that was the last tie con- tained a history of financial transactions, pri, Lietchenstein, Switzerland, Austria, Hong Kong, Sidney, Macao, Caymans and such They show a history of bad loans and write downs on First State revenues