Littell sifted through them. The blast destroyed at least a hundred thousand dollars.
Undamaged:
Three large ledger books wrapped in plastic.
Littell buried the scraps of money and dumped the safe sections in a sewage stream adjoining the clearing. He drove to his new motel and obeyed all speed limits en route.
o o o
Three ledgers. Two hundred pages per unit. Cross-column notations on each page, squared off in a standard bookkeeping style.
Huge figures listed left to right.
Littell laid the books out on the bed. His first instinct:
The amounts exceeded all possible compilations of monthly or yearly Pension Fund dues.
The two brown leather ledgers were coded. The number/letter listings in the far left-hand column roughly corresponded in digit length to names.
Thus:
One five-letter first name and one seven-letter last name.
The black leather ledger was uncoded. It contained similarly large financial tallies-and two- and three-letter listings in the far left-hand column.
The listings might be: lender or lendee initials.
The black book was subdivided into vertical columns. They were real-word designated: “Loan %” and “Transfer #.”
Littell put the black book aside. His second instinct: code breaking would not be easy.
He went back to the brown books.
He followed symbol names and figures and watched money accrue horizontally. Neatly doubled sums told him the Pension Fund repayment rate: a usurious 50%.
He spotted letter repetitions-in four-to-six-letter increments- most likely a simple date code. A for 1, B for 2-something told him it was just that simple.
He matched letters to numbers and EXTRAPOLATED:
Fund loan profiteering went back thirty years. The letters and numbers ascended left to right-straight up to early 1960.
The average amount lent was $1.6 million. With repayment fees: $2.4 million.
The smallest loan was $425,000. The largest was $8.6 million.
Numbers growing left to right. Multiplications and divisions in the far right-hand columns-odd percentage calculations.
He EXTRAPOLATED:
The odd numbers were loan investment profits, tallied in over and above payback interest.
Eyestrain made him stop. Three quick shots of scotch refueled him.
He got a brainstorm:
Look for Hoffa’s Sun Valley skim money.
He scanned columns with a pencil. He linked the dots: mid ‘56 to mid ‘57 and ten symbols to spell “Jimmy Hoffa.”
He found 1.2 and 1.8-hypothetically Bobby Kennedy’s “spooky” three million. He found five symbols, six, and five in a perfectly intersecting column.
5, 6, 5 = James Riddle Hoffa.
Hoffa laughed off the Sun Valley charges. With valid assurance: his chicanery was very well cloaked.
Littell skimmed the books and picked out odd totals. Tiny zeros extended-the Fund was billionaire rich.
Double vision set in. He corrected it with a magnifying glass.
He quick-scanned the books again. Identical numbers kept recurring-in four-figure brackets.
[1408]-over and over.
Littell went through the brown books page by page. He found twenty-one 1408s-including two next to the Spooky Three Million. Quick addition gave him a total: forty-nine million dollars lent out or borrowed. Mr. 1408 was well-heeled either way.
He checked the black book initial column. It was alphabetically arranged and entered in Jules Schiffrin’s neat block printing.
It was 9:00 a.m. He had five hours of study in.
The “Loan %” subhead tweaked him. He saw “B-E” straight down the graph-the- number/letter code decoded to 25%.
He EXTRAPOLATED:
The initials tagged Pension Fund lenders-repaid at a fat but not brutal rate.
He checked the “Transfer #” column. The listings were strictly uniform: initials and six digits, no more.
He EXTRAPOLATED:
The initials were bank account numbers-repaid mobster money laundered clean. Said initials all ended in B-most likely short for the word “branch.”
Littell copied over letters on a scratch pad.
BOABHB = Bank of America, Beverly Hills branch. HSALMBB = Home Savings amp; Loan, Miami Beach branch.
It worked.
He was able to form known bank names out of every set of letters.
He jumped columns tracing 1408. Right there on the money: JPK, SRJSFNBB/81 1512404.
SFN meant Security-First National. BB could mean Buffalo branch, Boston branch, or other B-city branches.
The SR probably denoted a “Senior.” Why the added designation?
Just above JPK, SR: JPK [1693] BOADB. The man was a piker compared to 1408: he lent the Fund a paltry $6.4 million.
The added SR was simply to distinguish the lender from someone with the same initials.
JPK, SR [1408] SFNBB/811512404. One filthy-rich moneylending-
Stop.
Stop right there.
JPK, SR.
Joseph P. Kennedy, Senior.
BB for Boston branch.
August ‘59-Sid Kabikoff talking to Mad Sal:
“I knew Jules way back when”/”when he was SELLING DOPE and USING THE PROFITS to finance movies with RKO back when JOE KENNEDY owned it.”
Stop. Make the call. Impersonate a Bureau hard-on and confirm it or refute it.
Littell dialed 0. He dripped sweat all over the telephone.
An operator came on. “What number, please?”
“I want the Security-First National Bank, in Boston, Massachusetts.”
“One moment, sir. I’ll look the number up and connect you.”
Littell held the line. Adrenaline hit: he went dizzy and parched.
A man answered. “Security-First National.”
“This is Special Agent Johnson, FBI. Let me speak to the manager, please.”
“Please hold. I’ll transfer you.”
Littell heard connection clicks. A man said, “This is Mr. Carmody. May I help you?”
“Th-this is Special Agent Johnson, FBI. I have an account number at your bank here, and I need to know who it belongs to.”
“Is this an official request? It’s a Sunday, and I’m here overseeing our monthly inventory-”
“This is an official request. I can get a bank writ, but I’d rather not put you to the trouble of an in-person visit.”
“I see. Well… I guess…”
Littell came on firm. “The number is 811512404.”
The man sighed. “Well, uh, the 404 listings denote safedeposit-box storage accounts, so if you’re interested in balance figures, I’m afraid-”
“How many storage boxes are rented out to that account number?”
“Well, that account is quite familiar to me, because of its size. You see-”
“How many boxes?”
“An entire vault now of ninety.”
“Can valuables be transferred directly into that vault from outside sources?”
“Certainly. They could be placed in the boxes sight unseen, by second parties with access to the account holder’s password.”
Ninety stash boxes. Millions in Mob-laundered CASH-
“Who does that account number belong to?”
“Well…”
“Shall I get a writ?”
“Well, I…”
Littell almost shouted it. “Is the account holder Joseph P. Kennedy Sr.?”
“Well… uh… yes.”
“The senator’s father?”
“Yes, the senator’s-”
The phone slipped out of his hand. Littell kicked it across the room.
The black book. Mr. 1408, millionaire loan shark.
He went back over the numbers and confirmed it. He triplechecked every digit until his vision blurred.
Yes: Joe Kennedy lent the Fund Sun Valley seed money. Yes: The Fund lent the money out to James Riddle Hoffa.
Sun Valley constituted felony land fraud. Sun Valley spawned two Pete Bondurant killings: Anton Gretzler and Roland Kirpaski.