"Now, there's this." I handed her the plastic bag containing the trackers.
DuBois lifted a thick, dark eyebrow. "Two. Okay. You were telling me they do that sometimes. Sometimes three. In your car at the flytrap?"
I nodded. "Loving's partner did it. I need prints. And source of origin."
"I'll track them down," she said, without any irony at her choice of verb.
I asked, "Now, Ryan's cases?"
DuBois didn't need to glance at her notes. "First, the forgery. Graham, Eric. Forty-nine. Civilian employee of the DoD. Here's the background. They call it the Inner Circle, where he works. I think it's Ring E or something like that. Inside the center of the Pentagon. I couldn't find out exactly what he does, even with my ID and pulling strings, but we can go with it's classified and it involves weapons development."
"How'd you find that?" Weapons developers are very careful to make sure they never say they develop weapons.
"Checked his resume, his clearances, correlated some times and places of meeting with a defense contractor or two. You know, sometimes you can tell more about somebody from what he doesn't tell you than what he does. I put it all together."
DuBois was really a gem.
She tucked away strands of hair, and the charms on her bracelet jingled. I saw a sterling silver dog, an armadillo, a baguette and a tiny silver King Wenceslas, which she'd bought in Prague when we'd been on assignment there. She continued, "No security incidents involving Graham. But something's come up, something odd. I don't know what to make of it." She was looking at my sandwich. "Is that dinner?"
I looked at my watch. It was a little after 4:30 p.m. I said, "It's more lunch. Go on. What else did you find, you were saying?"
"I went back to the Detective Bureau at the Metropolitan Police--to find out more--and it seems Graham's decided to drop the case."
"Dropping it?"
"He called the chief of detectives, Lewis, on Friday and told them he's not going to pursue it. He wants it dropped."
"Any reason?"
"Because of his job is what he's saying. Security issues. He doesn't want to be public."
"Seems odd. What does getting robbed have to do with national security? Ryan told me the perp didn't get anything sensitive, no computers or files from work."
DuBois agreed, "That's right."
"Why now?" I wondered. "Wouldn't he have been worried about that from the beginning and not even reported the theft in the first place?"
"You'd think. And there's something else. I checked the law. He's to blame. It seems if you're careless with your checkbook or your signature, if you're negligent, then the bank doesn't have to cover a forged check. It's your own insurance company that has to pay. Which isn't going to happen unless there's a police report."
I tried to understand this. "So essentially, he's taking a forty-thousand-dollar hit. Walking away."
"Is the government going to reimburse him? Now, that's not likely. I've been trying to get to talk to him. Which is not easy, I'll tell you. Go ahead. Eat. I saw you looking at the sandwich. You ever notice in restaurants if people are with somebody, they look at their food more than at the other person? If they're not with somebody, they watch people more than the food."
I said, "But Ryan didn't say anything about the case being dropped. I just talked to him about it at the Hillside."
"He probably didn't know. His assistant told me he was working out of the office all Thursday and Friday on some administrative thing. There's some big meeting next week about revamping accounting procedures in the department."
I recalled that Ryan had mentioned an internal assignment of some sort.
She asked, "So does that cross the Graham case off our primary list?"
"No. Just the opposite. Nobody ignores forty thousand dollars, unless they're being forced to." I ate some more of my sandwich.
"Dunch or linner," duBois was saying. "There's no meal in the afternoon corresponding to brunch." She wasn't making a joke.
I asked, "Your impressions of him, of Graham?"
DuBois considered. "Upset, evasive."
"Somebody's leveraging him to drop the case?"
"Possible. They don't make a lot of money, the Graham family. Without the forty K, his kid's not going back to Princeton. If that was me, I'd go allout to nail the perp."
Some scenarios unfolded in my mind. "Okay, the primary forges the check, buys the gold and launders himself some cash. He spends it on something compromising--donation to a radical mosque, a big coke buy, prostitution, who knows? Maybe fronts that he's Graham. The money can be traced back. The primary says, Give me access to secure files or sabotage the system you're working on, or I ruin your life forever and get you arrested. Graham agrees. Only Ryan's still on the case. The primary hires Henry Loving to find out what he knows."
"Plausible," duBois said.
"Now the other case. The Ponzi scheme."
Her azure eyes, framed by shiny dark hair, now dipped to her notes.
I'd Googled "Ponzi." I knew a bit about the scams from the Madoff thing, of course, you couldn't watch the news without learning something. The theory was that a scam artist would pose as an investment advisor and take people's money, which he would claim to invest. He'd keep the money for himself but would send out statements reporting that the fund had increased in value. If the early investors wanted to cash out, the thief would pay them off with more recent investment money--a scam that works fine as long as not all the investors want their money at the same time. They were usually discovered when customers got nervous and there was a run on the fund. In the Prisoners' Dilemma analysis of the depositors: acting with rational irrationality.
DuBois explained, "Now, the suspect, Clarence Brown--"
"The mail-order reverend."
"Not exactly. I checked his online church and--"
"Online?" That was a new one.
"Yep. Mail's not involved at all. You can download and print out your divinity degree. New Zion Church of the Brethren dot com. Anybody can do it. You could, I could. I wanted to see if it was as much of a scam as it seemed, and I got halfway to being a priest. Well, priestess, I guess. They wanted big money, though, and I logged off." On her bracelet were cross, Star of David and Islamic crescent charms. A cat with an excessively arched back and a witch's hat too. DuBois was not easy to define.
"Go on, Claire."
"He's a fake reverend but that's not the most interesting part. What I found out is that 'Clarence Brown' is an alias. He's really Ali Pamuk."
"He have a record?"
"Don't think so. Nothing in the standard databases. But I've got some friends looking into his history a little more closely. I'm particularly interested in doing-business-as records. I've got to correlate social security number, address, phone records, accounting statements, SEC filings."
I'd noted the reference to "friends," hardly an official U.S. government designation for an investigator. But, however duBois was doing this, it would be by the book. You could break all the rules you wanted in bodyguarding your principals--my job. But the task of finding the primary required us to be cops like any other, marshalling evidence and not giving the defense attorneys any windows through which the bird could escape.
"Any more details?"
"Turkish father, mother from Nigeria. Both naturalized. A few years ago he seems to have converted to Christianity, before he became a reverend. But he contributed a lot of money to a mosque in Virginia last year and the year before. Not on any watchlists. He's kind of a player," duBois said. "Has that small place in the South East tenement, sure. But he also lives in the Watergate. Which he doesn't talk about much. State tells me he's been to Dubai, Jeddah and Jordan in the past two years."
This was a portrait very different from the one Ryan Kessler had uncovered.
"That's helpful." It was my highest compliment. "What about those smaller cases Ryan was running?" The cop had dismissed these but I'd asked her to talk to Chief of Detectives Lewis and check them out anyway.
"Oh, the stolen credit cards?" duBois continued. "They were all pretty small. Most of them got pled out. The identity thefts were bigger, low-class felonies. Most were pled. The big one was some kids ordering electronics online. They picked the wrong vic--a computer security expert with Advanced Circuit Design."
One of Intel's big competitors.
"The victim traced the perp and turned them in. But they got off with probation and fines. That's pretty neat. Somebody who got hacked got revenge by hacking in after the hackers. Rough justice."
I finished my sandwich, reflecting: some leads, yes, but nothing golden. I was frustrated. "Keep digging."
"Got my shovel."
"Both cases."
"Got my Indian clubs."
I gave her a smile. I hoped Cat Man treated her right.
Flipping through my phone, I jotted some information. "A few more things to look into." I slipped the note to her and gave her some more instructions. "A priority," I added.
"Sure."
"I've got to get the Kesslers to the safe house."
She rose. Hesitating.
I glanced at her, a gaze of curiosity.
"I heard, at the flytrap . . . Loving got pretty close."
She fell into a rare bout of silence.
But there was nothing to talk about regarding the topic of my brush with mortality. It was in the past, and what might have happened--Loving's death or mine--hadn't. There were no lessons to be learned from it, nothing for me to file away for future strategies, nothing to impart to her.
Speculation about the past is inefficient. And therefore irrelevant to achieving your goal.
So I simply regarded her with a neutral gaze.
"I'll get right on these, Corte," she said, using my name for what I believed was the first time in all the years we'd worked together.
Chapter 15
I COLLECTED GARCIA'S car, to which Billy had given a clean bill of surveillance health, and I piloted it back onto the highway. I made several bizarre but legal route changes and, when I was convinced nobody was following me, returned to the highway and drove toward the Hillside Inn.
At a little after 7:00 p.m. I arrived at the motel and parked behind it once more, in about the same spot as when I'd left, several spaces down from the Yukon.
I looked to the north and saw in the haze the distant hints of housing developments. I was probably looking at two or three thousand people . . . such a tiny sliver of the population in the county, and a smaller portion yet of the region. I couldn't help but think, as I often did on a job, that the lifter was out there somewhere. But where?
How close?
Thirty miles away, lost in the same speculation about where the principals and I were?
Or was he very close, a mile or less, with knowledge of our whereabouts and a clear strategy for killing the shepherds and kidnapping Ryan Kessler?
I returned to the room, calling Ahmad on the phone to announce my arrival. We don't use secret knocks, though it probably wouldn't be a bad idea. He let me in and I got a cup of black coffee from the kitchenette. The smell of room-service food--onions and garlic mostly--permeated the air. Two plates, one clean, one picked over, sat on a tray near the sink.
"We're going to be leaving soon, for the safe house."
Everyone was looking at me in anticipation and I realized that I'd left under mysterious circumstances. But keeping with need-to-know, I didn't explain about where I'd been, just told them they should pack up anything they'd unpacked when we arrived.
While Maree and Joanne were doing this, I pulled Ryan aside. He'd had more liquor, I could tell, but he didn't seem any more inebriated than when I'd left. "We've found out something about the Graham case. He dropped the charges."
"He did what?" The cop was surprised. "That doesn't make sense. Are you sure?"
I told him I was.
He continued, "When I first interviewed Graham he was furious about the forgery. . . . Man has a temper, I'll tell you. How was he going to pay for his kid's tuition? The boy'd have to drop out. All his dreams for his son were ruined. He was practically bullying me to nail the perp. And now this?"
"When did you talk to him last?"
"Probably Tuesday."
"So something significant happened between then and yesterday."
"That's when he dropped the charges?"
"Right."
Ryan said, "I was in meetings all day. That accounting crap." He thought for a moment. "So it's looking like that could be the relevant case."
"That's what I'm thinking. Something you found during the investigation could be a key to whoever's targeted him."
He sighed and said defensively, "It's tough to get information about people like that, the DoD, I mean. They don't talk to us little guys."
I had an idea he wouldn't like what I was about to tell him next--a significant fact about his other investigation that he hadn't uncovered. "And the Ponzi scheme?"
"Yeah?"
"Clarence Brown is a fake name. He's really Ali Pamuk." I explained what Claire duBois had found, then added that she was continuing to look into his background. But if Ryan was upset that a federal government sleuth had uncovered more information than he'd been able to find, he didn't show it. He was mostly confused by the turn the case had taken, it seemed.
"Legal name change?"
"We don't know yet. Now, is there anything that suggests you've uncovered facts in the investigation that somebody would want to have?"
He lowered his head and looked over my shoulder. I wondered at what. His wife, his sister-in-law, the armed guards? His hidden bottle of Wild Turkey or Maker's Mark? "I'm sorry, Corte. No, I can't think of anything. I'll keep looking. I'll keep thinking."
I glanced at my watch. I wanted to get everyone up to the safe house. I stepped outside and walked to the front desk, recalling again who I was.
I'm Frank Roberts. My company is Artesian. We do kick-ass computer software designing.
I smiled at the man behind the desk and said, "We're going to be heading off. I'd like to settle up."
"Sure thing, Mr. Roberts," the man said. He was fidgeting, acting the way a clerk sometimes does when things weren't going quite by procedure. "Everything okay?"
Meaning, why would you check out after just three or four hours?
"Oh, it's great, as always. We just needed the rooms for a sales meeting. We finished up early and I'm taking the gang to a play downtown."
"Sure, sure. Tough, you gotta work on Saturday."
"Well, the company's paying for a night out, so there you go."
I looked over the bill and noted that someone had ordered a bottle of wine with the food they got from room service. Ryan, of course; no one else seemed to be drinking. I was a little irritated. It was always a pain to get liquor expenses approved. And didn't he have an entire bar in that backpack of his?
I thanked the clerk and I returned to the room.
When Rudy Garcia opened the door I glanced inside and saw Maree, laughing as she spoke to her sister. I frowned as I examined the scene. The women weren't in the common living area; they were in a bedroom to the side and I was watching them in the mirror.
I asked him, "Did you get the Kesslers and Maree into the bedroom when the room service got here?"
"Oh, sure."
"Was the door open? To the bedroom there?"
He was looking back. "Well, I don't know. I made sure they were out of sight."
I was grimacing. "From the reflection too?"
The agent studied the mirror. "I . . . oh, shit."
"Did the bellboy act odd?"
"He was pretty nervous, now that you ask."
I closed the door behind me and pointed Ahmad to the back windows and Garcia to the front. Without a word, they drew their side arms and moved fast into defensive positions. I swept the lights out throughout the room.
I called to Joanne and Maree, "Bedroom lights out. Now."
A pause and then that room went dark t
oo.
"What's going on?" Joanne asked, alarmed, stepping into the doorway.
"I think Loving's found us and's on his way."
Or more likely, I reflected, he was already here.
Chapter 16
MY MIND HAD done something that occasionally happens when I'm playing certain types of games against a skilled opponent.
Via instinct, I understand exactly what their strategies are. This usually occurs in games with what's called perfect information, like chess or tic-tac-toe. Perfect information means that all of a player's past moves--his strategies--are accessible to his opponent. Both see every move made from the beginning of the game. (Unlike the Prisoners' Dilemma, say, which is a game of imperfect information, since Prisoner One doesn't know what Prisoner Two's choice will be.) For some reason, at times, all the past moves the opponent has made coalesce in my mind into a clear understanding--for me it's almost a graphic or picture--and I know what his next strategy will be.
Now, the pieces falling into place were the clear view of my principals in the mirror, the manager's uneasiness in the front lobby a few minutes earlier, the bellboy's nervousness.
Though I didn't know all the details, I believed almost to a certainty that Loving had posed as a law enforcement officer and sent faxes or emails to dozens of hotels and motels in the area--maybe the ones he felt might be good safe houses. He'd included a picture of Ryan Kessler, claiming perhaps that he was a fugitive. Loving would have given a phone number and instructions to call but warned the managers not to take any action on their own in the event the suspect was spotted. The manager would have shown the picture to the wait staff. When the food was delivered to our room, the employee would have gotten a glance in the mirror at Ryan and probably seen the man's damn Colt on his hip.
The manager wasn't fidgety because I was unhappy with the service and checking out early; it was that two women and I were hostages of Ryan Kessler and the men with him--tough, unsmiling and dangerous-looking.
The big question as far as I was concerned was when exactly the manager had called Loving. Ten minutes earlier, we probably would be fine. An hour, Loving was already nearby.
"Clear," each of my colleagues reported in his own accent.
I called Freddy. He picked up at once. "Corte."
"We have a situation."
"You just had one, at the flytrap."
"Loving's on his way here. The Hillside Inn." I rattled off the address.