He tensed again. He got up and refreshed their drinks as Hammer told him about Blair Mauney III and what had happened this night. She told him about the paperwork in Mauney’s rental car. Cahoon listened, shocked, the blood draining from his face. He could not believe that Mauney was dead, murdered, his body spray-painted and dumped amid trash and brambles. It wasn’t that Cahoon had ever particularly liked the man. Mauney, in Cahoon’s experienced opinion, was a weak weasel with an entitlement attitude and the suggestion of dishonesty did not surprise Cahoon in the least, the more it sank in. He was chagrined about USChoice cigarettes with their alchemy and little crowns. How could he have trusted any of it?

“Now it’s my turn to ask,” Hammer finally said. “What do you want me to do?”

“Jesus,” he said, his tireless brain racing through possibilities, liabilities, capabilities, impossibilities, and sensibilities. “I’m not entirely sure. But I know I need time.”

“How much?” She swirled her drink.

“Three or four days,” he replied. “My guess is most of the money is still in Grand Cayman in numerous accounts with numbers that aren’t linked. If this hits the news, I can guarantee that we’ll never recover the cash, and no matter what anybody says, a loss like that hurts everybody, every kid with a savings account, every couple needing a loan, every retired citizen with a nest egg.”

“Of course it does,” said Hammer, who also was a faithful client of Cahoon’s bank. “My eternal point, Sol. Everybody gets hurt. A crime victimizes all of us. Not to mention what it will do to your bank’s image.”

Cahoon looked pained. “That’s always the biggest loss. Reputation and whatever charges and fines the federal regulators will decide.”

“This isn’t your fault.”

“Dominion Tobacco and its secret Nobel-potential research always bothered me. I guess I just wanted to believe it was true,” he reflected. “But banks have a responsibility not to let something like this happen.”

“Then how did it?” she asked.

“You have a senior vice president with access to all commercial loan activities, and trust him. So you don’t always follow your own policies and procedures. You make exceptions, circumvent. And then you have trouble.” He was getting more depressed. “I should have watched the son of a bitch more closely, damn it.”

“Could he have gotten away with it, had he lived?” Hammer asked.

“Sure,” Cahoon said. “All he had to do was make sure the loan was repaid. Of course, that would have been from drug money, unbeknownst to us. Meanwhile, he would have been getting maybe ten percent of all money laundered through the hotels, through the bank. And my guess is we would have become more and more of a major cash interstate for whoever these bad people are. Eventually, the truth would have come out. USBank would have been ruined.”

Hammer watched him thoughtfully, a new respect forming for this man who, prior to this early morning, she had not understood, and in truth had unfairly judged.