Bayou Brigade by Buck Sanders

his freight company. They couldn’t amass enough evidence to convince
     the Federal prosecutor to suspend him.”
    They decided Wilma should continue pressing Parfrey’s relatives and business associates by phone.
    “Hallo?” The voice was faint and fading over the long-distance connection. The woman repeated, “Hallo?”
    “Yes, yes,” Wilma said, searching her mind for the correct phrase.
“Buenos dias, se habla Ingles?”
    “Si,
ah, yes,” came the reply.
    “Is this Dartmouth Internationale?”
    “Yes, for whom do you wish to speak?”
    “I realize it’s Saturday, but are any of the corporate officers there, please?”
    “For who do you wish to talk to, miss?”
    “Willard Parfrey.”
    The line fell silent. “Hold please,” she said.
    A man came on the line. “This is Jaime Sanchez. May I help you?”
    “Hello, my name is Wilma Christian from the
Washington Post
— I’d like to ask a few questions about Willard Parfrey?”
    “What sort of questions?”
    “I understand he was part owner of your company, and that he was authorizing shipments of explosives for delivery in New Orleans.”
    “From where does this information come?” The Spanish accent was thick but intelligible.
    “His name was connected with some explosives found in a Washington, D.C., warehouse,” she bluffed. “Would you care to comment?”
    “I do not know what you’re talking about.”
    “Mr. Sanchez, the evidence is sitting in downtown Washington, waiting for the FBI to examine.”
    “Okay, Miss… ah… Christian, did you say? We were aware that Willard handled a few personal accounts which did not pass through
     the usual clearance channels.”
    “What accounts were these?”
    “I’m not sure I should be telling you all this, but now that he is dead, I suppose it will come out eventually. You understand
     Dartmouth Internationale cannot be held responsible. Mr. Parfrey was a co-owner—you don’t tell him not to meddle in such dangerous
     affairs.”
    “What affairs are these, Mr. Sanchez?”
    “We don’t exactly know what the shipments contained. He frequently sent through bills of lading which had been processed through
     a subsidiary office in Hong Kong.”
    “How many bills of lading were authorized?”
    “We don’t know. There was no indication that Mr. Parfrey was sending these fakes through our accounting department until our
     Hong Kong office found several other bills with identical numbers that didn’t match up to our copies.”
    “Two
different copies of each bill?”
    “For example, we have a bill of lading for nine cases of electronic equipment. We found the same bill number in Hong Kong
     listing twenty-five cases of explosive detonators and fuses. When several other bills came through our accounting office in
     a similar condition, we conducted an internal investigation and traced the authorization to Mr. Parfrey.”
    “Why didn’t you notify the FBI in our country?”
    “The investigation is not yet complete. Besides, the way these bills were forged, it is difficult to ascertain exactly what
     he had shipped.”
    “I’m working to find out what was shipped, but there’s very little to follow at this end.”
    “Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.”
    “I am grateful to you, Mr. Sanchez, for this information. Have you talked to any other American newspapers?”
    “Yours is the first.”
    “Can you withhold the story from other papers until we run this in tomorrow’s edition?”
    “Yes. Our inquiries will be complete by Tuesday or Wednesday. After that, if there is reason to suspect Parfrey was shipping
     arms illegally, we will notify the authorities, the
policia
here, and your Treasury Department.”
    “Highly advisable.”
    “Now I may ask for your help and information?”
    “What can I do?”
    Sanchez wanted a list of Parfrey’s investments in America, to determine if Dartmouth could be implicated in a scheme to move
     weapons, using the services of a Chicago-based