ColdScheme Page 5

  I phoned the Virginia Vehicle Services and got an identical story. Mr. Peter Bolt and Mr. Collin Hawley, residents of Ashland and Richmond, Virginia, owned driver’s licenses that corresponded to the addresses I gave but the registry numbers were wrong. They were retired when their owners went to prison for a roadkill orgy of pedestrians. I hung up before the clerk mentioned a Fraud Unit.

  I dialed New York.

  The trip through the electronic screens was exhausting. One message away from being sanded down to screaming frenzy, I got a break. I was invited to try the internet. I could pass this delightful duty to Ken.

  “David Luxman lives in Brooklyn and holds a valid driver’s license but not with the numbers I entered,” he reported when his query came back.

  “Get out of the Vehicle Services site before they start asking questions,” I warned him.

  He wasn’t fast enough. He had to enter his phone number or the query would have been rejected.

  Half an hour later, he was still on the phone, trying to convince New York that he was a Maryland police officer.

  “The number I gave them apparently belonged to a serial killer. He’s locked up in the Great Meadow penitentiary,” he explained gloomily when he hung up.

  He went to get coffee, while I checked a credit card.

  The Gold Visa had been issued to Martin Svenson, a DC license holder. I asked the Cross National Bank and Trust how the credit card was delivered to the recipient. Brick’s Cross Visa had Martin Svenson but no address. I was curious whether the real Svenson had ever applied for a credit card and whether the bank didn’t find it strange that someone would want to duplicate this expensive service.

  I spent five minutes battling electronic screens and prompters and five more holding, while the bank checked my credentials.

  “You issued a Gold Visa, with a twenty thousand dollar credit line, insurance coverage, a medical and a frequent flier plan to a customer who didn’t have a bank account at your bank?” I raised my voice.

  “The customer applied for a business card that would be used for business purposes, office supplies and equipment, travel and related expenses.”

  “Did he have a business account at your bank?”

  “The applicant posted a ten thousand dollar cash security.”

  “And that was sufficient for the bank to issue a Gold Visa with double the limit?”

  “The client’s credit rating was excellent. The bank had no reason to refuse credit to this customer.”

  “But you just said he wasn’t your customer. He was an applicant who posted a ten thousand dollar bond against the card.”

  I knew the bank wouldn’t have done a detailed background check on someone who had posted cash. “Know your customer” business practice would have been waived. The bank would have quickly reviewed all the advantages of cash deposit and credit card interest, and approved a credit card for a ghost.

  “We had no reason to believe that the credit card would be used for fraudulent purposes.” The bank manager was annoyed.

  “Did I say I was checking fraud, Mr. Giraud?”

  He cleared his throat. I continued, “Was there ever a dispute over charges made to that credit card?”

  “No.”

  “Were monthly payments maintained?”

  “The card balance was paid off monthly, in full.” He sounded unhappy. I smirked. Of course his banking establishment wouldn’t be pleased with such customer diligence. There was no outrageous interest to collect.

  “Where was the original card mailed?”

  “To the business address, as per instructions.”

  “Skip the instructions and give me the business address.” He complied.

  I knew Washington. A mailbox service sprang in my mind.

  “When the card was renewed, was it mailed to the same address?”

  He gave me a new “business” address, another mailbox haven.

  “Did Mr. Svenson ever visit your bank?”

  “I have never met this customer.”

  “He was never the bank’s customer, merely a card holder—at an arm’s length. Did the bank ever check out the address and the phone numbers Mr. Svenson provided with his application?”

  “I believe everything was in proper order.”

  I knew what it meant. He had no record of such information. Since the card was three years old, the staff responsible for its issue was no longer with the bank.

  “Has the bank ever received an application for a credit card from Mr. Martin Svenson at the following address and phone number.” I dictated the real Svenson’s residential address and phone number. I heard the clicking of keys as he entered the information into the computer.

  “No.”

  “It saved you a lot of headaches and embarrassment, had the real Mr. Martin Svenson of 24 Kirk Drive in Washington ever applied for a credit card,” I said and hung up.

  I wasn’t going to bother checking the birth certificates. Any teenager could buy one on the street. Brick’s alternate identities were not going to give us clues.

  I phoned the Aetna Assurance, Brick’s insurance company. The application for coverage was made over the internet. I slashed and burned my way through three reps and two supervisors.

  Finally, I got the manager. He released the email that came with the application. I handed it to Ken. The insurance documents were mailed to a business address on Pratt Street. It was a private outfit, renting out mailboxes.

  “Why is it so easy these days to obtain documents with false information?” Ken wondered.

  “Probably because the FBI decided to supplement their operating budget by offering courses to the public on forging documents and obtaining replacements for valid originals with fraudulent information,” I said.

  “You’re kidding? When did they start doing that?” He believed me.

  I shook my head and wondered whether I shouldn’t advise Brenda to tell her beau that she had a month to live and would like to say, “I do,” before the “Death do us part.”

  “Brick’s car insurance was paid up until the end of the year but other than his name and the policy number, nothing else is valid,” I told him. “The car is a last year’s model. It was bought for cash, in Catonsville. It was a demo, with ten thousand miles on the odometer. The dealership was happy to get rid of it. In one year, Brick put forty thousand miles on it. He must have lived in motels and efficiency units, all cash transactions.”

  We agreed to tackle the obvious leads first. The obscure ones would not see us back from the quest until Brenda was in a retirement community and my child in college.

  We went to see Milton Ostrander, our in-house forgery expert.

  “All of these pieces of plastic are real,” Milton said. We had already told him that every number stamped into them was fake or obtained with fraudulent information.

  “What does it mean?” I asked.

  “Contacts,” he replied.

  “I would have said lack of due diligence process and lackadaisical attitude in the Vehicle Services, insurance companies, the birth registry office, the banking circles—right. Thanks, Milton.”

  “I didn’t mean the level of service,” he laughed. “I meant contacts—with outsourcing, contractors. It would take you years to check them out. I called the Vehicle Services. Their blank plastic comes from a new outfit practically every six months—whoever bids the lowest. There are outfits, paying taxes for all I know, that specialize in providing blank templates for all types of IDs to anyone who pays cash. Hell, they will soon compete with the government agencies who issue these cards.”

  We left.

  “It’s beginning to sound like a big organization,” Ken murmured, as we headed for the elevator.

  “Maybe just clever.”

  “Why would Brick use his name at all?” he asked. It had been bothering me too.

  “You need a car ownership and insurance in the same name. The Aetna would have balked at giving documents in different names.”


  “If a cop stops you, those documents better agree.”

  “A cop would also check out those documents and alarming information would pop on his screen—missing, cold case,” I pointed out.

  “In Maryland but not in New York or DC,” Ken made a stronger point.

  Brick was a cold case but he was not on the FBI’s ten most wanted list. He was a missing person case we were trying to solve.

  “So you think he traveled, using documents in his own name?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “He might have felt safe to do that, outside of Maryland. He put forty thousand miles on that car in one year.”

  “Traveled a lot…” I trailed off.

  “You check out DC, I’ll do New York State,” Ken said.

  “Check out what, for God’s sake?”

  “Exotic car dealerships. He set up Guilford. That took two months. He lived four more years post his disappearance. His masters had to keep him busy. He traveled, doing other jobs for them. That’s the only way he could have learned, figured out what it was about.”

  * * * * *

  Brick’s death—or execution—didn’t just toss us into a blender. A perverse hand from beyond reached to stab a button and increase speed.

  I made it home by six. The house was clean. Mrs. Tavalho avoided my eyes when she went to pick up her purse. It made me suspicious. I was about to ask whether my daughter was expelled from school for skipping classes, when I heard a soft murmur.

  “Don’t get too upset. She’s just spirited—and frustrated,” the housekeeper said. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

  When I walked into the kitchen, I found a visitor—busily filling out forms spread all over the table. Jazz sat across from the young man, elbows propped on the table, head in her hands—giving information.

  He smiled when he saw me but didn’t bother to rise. He introduced himself, sitting down. Two minutes later, he was backing down the corridor, a mess of forms squished against his chest, staring at my gun.

  “That’s a minor in there,” I motioned with the gun at the kitchen. “I’m her mother and the only one who has the say in this matter. Now get the hell out of here and don’t come back unless I invite you.”

  He fell out the door. I returned to the kitchen, gun still in hand.

  “Are you going to shoot me too?” Jazz asked, slouching down in the chair.

  “Did you hear shots? No? Then he must have left alive. No sleepovers for the rest of the summer. No parties, no movies and above all—no idiots from People Finders!” I shouted the last words.

  “I have the right to know,” she murmured, shaken.

  “Not for another eight years. When that time comes and if we survive each other, then you are welcome to resume your quest with People Finders or any other fucking agency you damn well wish!” I lost it. She jumped up and ran away to her room.

  I put the gun on the table and sat down. I had spent ten years running away—from everything and everyone.

  Jazz would be crying in her room. But I couldn’t go in and comfort her. Not because I feared that I would lose control again. I knew that once her tears dried, she would try to get me to explain…hint…confess.

  * * * * *

  The first thing I did, when Nellie had come to pick me up in Transgrove, was to ask her help me legally change my name. I was twenty-one. It wasn’t a breakaway. It was a safety measure. It would let me live, like any other average citizen.

  I had spent eighteen years living a privileged, difficult and bizarre life. It was destructive. I had brought hardships upon myself but there was a cause, a root to every vile act, every punishment I had inflicted upon myself.

  When, at twenty-two, I went to see Blackwell Harris, our Police Commissioner, I faced him as Meaghan Stanton—and only then did I tell him my life story. He had listened without interrupting. He had to know. Without a detailed background check, I wouldn’t have been allowed into the police academy.

  No one else knew. That’s the way I wanted it. I wouldn’t compromise it, not even for my daughter’s sake.

  I took a shower and went to work on the alternate DC car services.

  There were twenty-seven auto retailers in the greater Washington area. Four carried, in addition to the domestic product, exotic imports.

  I had already phoned these places from work. No one had employed Brick.

  When the fourth irate dealership owner had asked the name of my superior officer and my badge number, I had cut him off. “We’re investigating Mr. Brick’s murder. Would you like to be subpoenaed to provide whatever information we deem is relevant?”

  It had shut him up. I’d dropped the phone into the cradle. The Washington exotic connection was cold. Brick may have traveled but if he had set up a money laundering operation in Washington, it couldn’t have been another Guilford scheme.

  Ken had believed otherwise.

  “If he was one of the foot soldiers with a bomb in his chest, then he would have been given a specific assignment,” he had said.

  “Exotic car dealerships—exclusively?” I had been skeptical.

  “That’s the way I would run it.”

  I had disagreed. “I would recruit someone I could use as a generalist, not a specialized agent, with limited use.”

  “He wasn’t an operative. He was a walking ghost. He had to do as he was told to stay alive. This organization doesn’t recruit. It targets those it needs to do one type of job and then takes them—for implantation. Brick must have been kidnapped before—according to Patricia four other times, when she had filed reports. She shouldn’t be in Mongrove. She should be an outpatient, under a doctor’s care. She’s not crazy. We should try and help her.”

  “I’m not without compassion, Ken but we have more work than we can handle, without her case. If it’s as you say, then Brick probably didn’t want to cooperate.”

  “Would you?”

  He’d had a point. “So you figure that they had kidnapped him when he resisted, implanted that shit into his chest and then released him? Why?”

  He had shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe to think things over, live under such a threat for a while—reconsider.”

  “He was reconsidering for a long time. Patricia filed four missing persons reports. Why would you leave such a reluctant recruit alive? Why not blow up his chest when it looked like he wasn’t coming around to their way of thinking? Why keep on enticing him to visit 7-Elevens farther from his neighborhood?”

  “That may have been his own initiative.”

  “Initiative for what, Ken?”

  “To find out whether the device had a range.”

  “Not bad. I’d go along with that. I would call that kind of initiative suicidal but it sounds plausible. Brick didn’t want to embrace this organization. He kept pushing the limits, testing the range, visiting 7-Elevens farther and lingering longer…”

  “Until they finally had enough and snatched him from the one in Dundalk,” Ken finished.

  “They must have really wanted him badly.”

  “That’s pretty strange,” he had nodded. I thought so too.

  “Why would they need an economist that badly?”

  “Maybe we ought to visit the place where he worked,” he had suggested. “It’s been four years but someone might still remember him—his work.”

  I had thought that was a good idea too.

  “But why continue with the exotic car dealerships?” I had motioned at the Washington paperwork on my desk.

  “There has to be more to it than just laundering money through five hundred thousand dollar sets of wheels but exotics is all we’ve got for now,” Ken had said. His own pile was high, the New York part of grand touring exotics.

  “Did you get anywhere?”

  “No.”

  “But you still think it’s got to be exotic car dealerships.”

  “Training—”

  “That usually means a variety,” I interrupted.

  “With focus.”

  “Brick�
�s focus was car places?”

  “Had to be.”

  Something had occurred to me. “Why don’t we look through those four missing persons reports Patricia filed? We’ve skimmed through them and have Brick’s bare-bones bio but maybe we ought to take a closer look at what Patti knew about him, the background information.”

  I had taken Brick’s file and Patricia’s reports home. Now I had to clear my mind of parent-child power struggles and survival issues because I had to examine them in detail.

  Slowly, not feeling motherly, I headed for my daughter’s bedroom.

  Tonight, for the first time in ten years, she had reminded me of her father. He too was a man of action and didn’t ask me whether I wanted to be a part of it. When I had told him I was pregnant, he’d pursed his mouth, reflected on the “joyous” news and thirty minutes later he had dragged me into the Moultrie Courthouse, the Marriage Bureau office, to take out a license. My blood-work was five hours fresh—from a clinic in Georgetown that had shocked me with the news. His was handy too. It should have raised questions but my head was throbbing from the nasty discovery.

  He had spent the five-day waiting period musing, in a fragmented way, about our future—and our child’s. I had listened to his grand plans. These always started on a strong note but faded when they reached his next career step, family roots, residence, friends, associations, organizations—social benefits and entitlements. I knew nothing about him but what I saw. A six-foot-five muscular Smithsonian security guard, in snappy uniform, with a well-shaped head, shaved bald. He had mellow green eyes. The light shone through and made them sparkle even on the dullest Washington day. It must have blinded me.

  I was in my fourth year of law at the George Washington University. I had completed the undergraduate curriculum in three years, in residence as per requirement, with the extra help of summer clinics and seminars. I was in my first year of advanced studies, heading for Juris Doctor Degree. I was toiling through the Criminal Law and Procedure. My grade average was a notch below excellence. I wanted it to stay that way. I finally believed that the world was round and there were fragrant green meadows and spirited brooks, not tar pits and quicksand.