and shady connections, because he had never been arrested before and had other friends besides the Castigliones. But the Castigliones were curious about the same thing that had attracted the IRS—the BMW that wasn’t attributable to any of Danny Catanno’s personal bank accounts. Danny was a thief.
A contract had been offered for Danny Catanno as soon as he had disappeared, but it had produced no satisfaction. After he had been spotted, the Castigliones had decided to hire a specialist.
Schaeffer had known that the Justice Department had some kind of agreement with Castoria College, which granted degrees to people on the basis of oral examinations given in courtrooms thousands of miles from its campus in New Hampshire. The government lawyers also gave their graduates false birth certificates and driver’s licenses and social security numbers, and then they said, “Good-bye and good luck.” All he had to do was to keep checking Danny’s mother’s mailbox for a month to see that Danny was beginning to forget his troubles. About once a week there was an envelope from a brokerage in New York with a check in it. When he had gotten to New York, all he’d had to do was to pick up a little brochure the company put out advertising the qualifications of its brokers. Among the dozens of brokers who had gone to places that meant nothing to him, he had found David Cutter, an honor graduate of Castoria.
He had looked around the apartment a bit while he waited for David Cutter to come home. It was the sort of place that cost a million or more up front, and another half-million that had to be paid to decorators, furniture dealers and art galleries. In the antique writing desk he had found a pile of credit-card receipts for expensive restaurants. He had been astounded. The man had even gone on a trip to the Bahamas a month before. People had a way of pushing things out of their minds, like the ones who built fancy houses in the floodplain of the Platte River, or on top of fault lines in California. It was a miracle that a man like David Cutter had lived as long as he had. He had gone to restaurants where he couldn’t help but sit next to people who would do anything to gain favor with the Castiglione family. He had spent his days betting large sums of money for people, a lot of whom had gotten it in ways that must have brought them into contact with acquaintances of the Castigliones. What did this man think? When he had made his reservations for the Caribbean, didn’t he Wonder who might be sitting next to him on the plane?
Schaeffer had looked in drawers and closets, bookcases and backlit cabinets, thinking about human folly. All the time he was planning. If ever in his life he had to disappear, he would submerge without a ripple and never come up again. He would never allow himself to become so comfortable and mentally lazy that he forgot he wasn’t the man he was pretending to be. That night he had made the decision to begin the preparations for his own disappearance. He would put money in safe-deposit boxes in towns he never visited. Often in his career he had found it prudent to use false names on credit cards and licenses. But now he would do it in earnest, start to build up a few identities and never use them, so that they would be old enough and deep enough on the day when somebody began to look for him the way he had looked for Danny Catanno.
Eddie Mastrewski had raised him to abhor mistakes. It was better to stay home than to make a mistake, better to pass up the money than to take a chance. The police could be as stupid as cattle, spend the day stumbling over their own feet, but in the evening they could go home, pop open a beer and sleep like stones. But people like Eddie and the boy got to make only one mistake. That was true of people like Danny Catanno too, only Danny didn’t seem to know it. He had accepted an identity as Cutter the stockbroker, and somehow he had forgotten that he wasn’t Cutter the
A contract had been offered for Danny Catanno as soon as he had disappeared, but it had produced no satisfaction. After he had been spotted, the Castigliones had decided to hire a specialist.
Schaeffer had known that the Justice Department had some kind of agreement with Castoria College, which granted degrees to people on the basis of oral examinations given in courtrooms thousands of miles from its campus in New Hampshire. The government lawyers also gave their graduates false birth certificates and driver’s licenses and social security numbers, and then they said, “Good-bye and good luck.” All he had to do was to keep checking Danny’s mother’s mailbox for a month to see that Danny was beginning to forget his troubles. About once a week there was an envelope from a brokerage in New York with a check in it. When he had gotten to New York, all he’d had to do was to pick up a little brochure the company put out advertising the qualifications of its brokers. Among the dozens of brokers who had gone to places that meant nothing to him, he had found David Cutter, an honor graduate of Castoria.
He had looked around the apartment a bit while he waited for David Cutter to come home. It was the sort of place that cost a million or more up front, and another half-million that had to be paid to decorators, furniture dealers and art galleries. In the antique writing desk he had found a pile of credit-card receipts for expensive restaurants. He had been astounded. The man had even gone on a trip to the Bahamas a month before. People had a way of pushing things out of their minds, like the ones who built fancy houses in the floodplain of the Platte River, or on top of fault lines in California. It was a miracle that a man like David Cutter had lived as long as he had. He had gone to restaurants where he couldn’t help but sit next to people who would do anything to gain favor with the Castiglione family. He had spent his days betting large sums of money for people, a lot of whom had gotten it in ways that must have brought them into contact with acquaintances of the Castigliones. What did this man think? When he had made his reservations for the Caribbean, didn’t he Wonder who might be sitting next to him on the plane?
Schaeffer had looked in drawers and closets, bookcases and backlit cabinets, thinking about human folly. All the time he was planning. If ever in his life he had to disappear, he would submerge without a ripple and never come up again. He would never allow himself to become so comfortable and mentally lazy that he forgot he wasn’t the man he was pretending to be. That night he had made the decision to begin the preparations for his own disappearance. He would put money in safe-deposit boxes in towns he never visited. Often in his career he had found it prudent to use false names on credit cards and licenses. But now he would do it in earnest, start to build up a few identities and never use them, so that they would be old enough and deep enough on the day when somebody began to look for him the way he had looked for Danny Catanno.
Eddie Mastrewski had raised him to abhor mistakes. It was better to stay home than to make a mistake, better to pass up the money than to take a chance. The police could be as stupid as cattle, spend the day stumbling over their own feet, but in the evening they could go home, pop open a beer and sleep like stones. But people like Eddie and the boy got to make only one mistake. That was true of people like Danny Catanno too, only Danny didn’t seem to know it. He had accepted an identity as Cutter the stockbroker, and somehow he had forgotten that he wasn’t Cutter the
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