"And that's when you got these?" Higgins said pointing at the stack of computer printouts in front of Mason. "How were they delivered?" "By messenger. No receipt, nothing. Just my name and the pa- per's." Mason showed Higgins the envelop in which the files came. "Then you read them?" "Well not all of them, but enough." Scott glanced at his editor. "That's when I let Doug know what I had." "And what did he say?" Higgins was keeping furious notes to back up the tape recording. "'Holy shit', as I remember." Everyone laughed. Ice breakers, good for the soul, thought Mason. People are too uptight. Higgins indicated that Scott should continue. "Then he said 'we gotta go slow on this one,' then he whistled and Holy Shat some more." Once the giggles died down, Mason got serious. "I borrowed a bean counter from the basement, told him I'd put his name in the paper if anything came of it, and I picked his brain. Ran through the numbers on the printouts, and ran through them again. I really worked that poor guy, but that's the price of fame. By the next morning we knew that there were two sets of books on First State." Mason turned a couple pages in his files. "It appears," Scott said remembering that he was selling the importance of the story to legal and the publisher, "that a substantial portion of the bank's assets are located in numbered bank accounts all over the world." Scott said with finality. Higgins interrupted here. "So what's wrong with that?" he chal- lenged. "They've effectively stolen a sandbagged and inflated reserve ac- count with over $750 Million it. Almost 10% of stated assets. It appears from these papers," Scott waved his hand over them, "that the total of the reserve accounts will be taken, as a loss, in their next SEC reporting." Mason stopped and looked at Hig- gins as though Higgins would understand everything. Higgins snorted as he made more notes. "That next morning," Mason politely ignored Higgins, "I got a call again, from what sounded like the same guy." "Why do you say that? How did you know?" Higgins inquired. Mason sighed. "Cause he said, 'it's me remember?' and spoke like Archie Bunker. Good enough for you?" Mason grinned wide. Mason had the accent down to a tee. Higgins gave in to another round of snickers. "He said, 'you like, eh?'" Mason spoke with an exaggerated New York accent and used the appropriate Italian hand gesture for 'eh!'. "I said, 'I like, but so what?' I still wasn't sure what he wanted. He said, 'they never took a loss, yet. Look for Friday. This Friday. They're gonna lose a bunch.' I said, 'how much' and he said, 'youse already know.'" Mason's imitation of a Brooklyn accent was good enough for a laugh.