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note; the extra hundred thousand dollars is invisible profit.
    “That’s just one example. There could be any number of others. A man in Platt’s position inevitably handles large sums of hot money that have to be rechanneled into circulation. A bank serves admirably in this respect. No doubt he functions as a broker for other criminals as well. You remember the Ackermann kidnapping, of course. The details slip my mind, but as I recall there was a quarter of a million dollars worth of marked bills involved, and none of that money has yet turned up in circulation. A crook with a bank at his disposal could purchase that ransom money from the kidnappers for thirty or forty cents on the dollar and simply hold it as cash reserves until the heat died down.”
    Giordano asked if there was any connection between Platt and the Ackermann kidnapping. The colonel said there was not. “Just what use Platt has made of his banks is immaterial,” he said.
    Dehn said, “Banks?”
    “Yes. He acquired a second just a little over a year ago. The Commercial Bank of New Cornwall, also in Bergen County. You’ll want to write that down. No, we don’t know just what use Platt has made of these banks, except that he seems to have been an innovator in one respect. He’s found an original way to increase his banks’ profit.”
    “How?”
    “By robbing them.”
    Giordano had to admit it was brilliant. He listened carefully as the colonel went through the whole thing, and his own mind began racing on ahead, playing with the possibilities of the whole thing. He had thought he knew of most of the standard gambits. Fire insurance, for example. There were an incredible number of ways to burn down one’s property for the insurance, and he knew of so many cases that he often wondered if a fire had ever started by accident. From what he knew, you could make out fairly nicely that way. If you had a business that was losing money, you just made sure you were carrying the right type and amount of insurance, and then you crossed two wires and went home. That way you wound up with a little more than the business was conceivably worth, and you avoided the headache of finding somebody who was fool enough to buy it
    It was a great way out of a bad situation, he thought, but not much more than that; there was no way to have both the business and the money. This bank dodge, though—that was something else entirely.
    You started out by setting it up right, finding some excuse to have the maximum amount of cash in the vault. Then you sent your own men in, and they had less trouble knocking the place over than you’d have opening a can of peas. They made it look good, maybe even tossed a few bullets around for added realism. You, in turn, made sure somebody went through the motions of turning in the alarm—but not so quick as to create any hassles. The federal investigators came in and they investigated, and all they found out was that the bank had been robbed. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation made most of the loss good, and whatever they didn’t cover would show on the bank’s books as a loss and would just save you that much more in taxes. So you wound up with the cash you had robbed, plus the cash from the FDIC, plus the loss on the books. And if any of the money from the bank happened to be hot, you just put it back in the vault and let it sit on ice until it cooled off again.
    When the colonel finished, Giordano lifted his hand. “It’s very neat, sir,” he said. “But one thing. It’s sort of one-time-only, isn’t it? Platt can do this once and score for whatever it was, three hundred fifty thou, but he can’t do it again, can he?”
    “No.”
    “Because the feds would have a tip to it. Even now they might have a good idea of what happened, but unless they find the robbers and tie them to Platt, they can’t do a thing about it. But if he tried it again, they could put him in a box.”
    “That’s correct.”
    Simmons said, “Of