Shell Game (10 page)

Brent Hawkins and two other men dressed in dark suits sat at a long table ringed with leather chairs. Hawkins didn't rise when they entered, just said, “Please have a seat.” When they were sitting he said, “This is Special Agent Smith and Special Agent Hobson.” The two men nodded but didn't say a word.

“What's going on?” Alan asked Hawkins, who seemed to be the most senior agent in the room.

“Something has happened in New York,” Hawkins replied. “One of our agents who was involved with the NewPro scam has been killed.”

Taylor sucked in a breath. “That's terrible.”

“We need to go back over your entire involvement with Edward Brand,” the agent named Hobson said. He purposely neglected to mention that Alicia Walker had killed the man who shot her. Simply a need-to-know issue. Taylor Simons didn't need to know.

“We've already told the FBI and the San Francisco police everything we know,” Alan said. “I don't see how we can help any further.”

“We're looking for idiosyncrasies that might give us an idea who Brand really is and where he's from. Inflections in his speech, certain words he may have used that might give a clue to his background.”

Both Alan and Taylor shrugged. Taylor said, “He talked about falling when he was skiing once and hurting his back. Said it bothered him when the weather changed.”

Smith made a note on his pad. “Lots of cold-weather climates around,” he said.

“It doesn't narrow things down much,” Hawkins agreed. “Did he ever mention which sports teams he followed, a street name, a neighborhood, a time zone, anything like that?”

“He said he liked football, but never talked about one specific team,” Alan said.

Taylor said, “The football thing. I remember that conversation. He said Joe Montana was the best quarterback to ever play. Maybe he was a Forty-niners fan.”

“That's right,” Alan concurred. “He knew a lot of Montana's stats. Loved the guy.”

“Maybe,” Hawkins said. “But he was handling the con in San Francisco. He may have wanted to come off like he was a local guy.”

“Hey,” Alan said, leaning into the table. “That thing about speech you mentioned. Inflections. He did have a habit of saying ‘eh' after some of his sentences.”

“Give us an example,” Abrams said.

“Looks like it's going to rain, eh,” Alan said. “Simple sentences. He added it mostly when he was talking casually. When he was pitching us on the investment end of NewPro, his words were always very carefully chosen. He never did it then.”

“That's right,” Taylor said.

Hobson glanced around the table. “Only in casual speech. When his guard's down. A little bit of the real person coming out?”

“Canadian,” Hawkins said. “Cold weather. Mountains. Skiing.” He turned to Abrams. “John, get a list of ski resorts in Canada. The middle section of the country is pretty flat, but the Rocky Mountains are to the west side, and there are a few smaller ranges in the East.” He turned back to Taylor and Alan. “Did you ever detect a hint of a French accent?”

Both were thoughtful. “No, I don't think so,” Taylor said.

“Let's look at everything, but concentrate more on the west coast. Alberta and British Columbia both have ski resorts. Vancouver has a huge resort just north of the city where the 2010 Olympics are slated for.”

“Whistler,” Abrams said, jotting the name in his notebook.

They talked for another hour but nothing of any substance came to light. Brent Hawkins thanked Taylor and Alan for coming in and Hawkins himself walked them to the door and shook their hands. He assured them the Bureau was working overtime on the case. But Edward Brand was a careful man, covering every step he took with lies and deception. He was like an onion—peel the skin back and you were faced with multiple layers, the man himself hidden beneath the multitude of lies. Faceless, nameless, a ghost who appeared from nowhere and returned there when the con had run its course.

But something had happened, and Brand had pushed things too far. An FBI agent was dead and the Bureau was in a rage, like an anthill after an errant footstep. The scale of the investigation had just moved up a number of notches.

Edward Brand had made his first mistake.

C
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F
OURTEEN

The news of what had happened in New York on Monday evening was relayed to Edward Brand first thing Tuesday morning. Brand listened as his contact inside the FBI gave him the crime scene details. Tony Stevens had taken one bullet in the center of his chest, and death was instantaneous. Alicia Walker was hit in the neck, but her cause of death was asphyxiation. She had drowned after severe blood loss had rendered her incapable of hauling herself out of the bathtub. Death was inevitable, as the bullet had pierced her carotid artery and without immediate medical attention, she would have bled to death. Best guess from the CSI crew was that Stevens and Walker had fired at exactly the same time. Brand thanked his contact and hung up.

Tony Stevens had fucked up. He'd fucked up big time. First off he'd allowed an FBI agent to get inside the scam. Then he'd gotten himself killed while taking her out. Edward Brand heard a cracking noise and glanced down at his hand. His cell phone had snapped in half at the hinge. He relaxed his grip on the phone. It was ruined. He dumped it in a garbage can and headed for the bedroom. Time to pack and get out of Vancouver. He'd planned on staying another day or two, but the FBI was going to ratchet up the NewPro investigation now, and he'd have to move faster than he had expected. The borders would get tighter. And quickly.

He called Air Canada and booked a flight to Hong Kong, departing Vancouver International at one-forty. Four hours. Plenty of time to pack and get to the airport. Brand didn't care where the flight went, he just needed to get out of Canada. He opened the door to the walk-in bedroom closet and knelt in front of a line of shoes neatly tucked in a line of small wooden niches. He pushed a piece of wood and a section of the compartmentalized shelving popped out an inch. He gripped it and pulled. It slid out, shoes still intact. Behind the false front was a wall safe. Brand spun the dial three times and pushed the handle down. The safe opened. Inside were a number of Canadian passports bundled together with an elastic. He rifed through them until he found one he liked. Reginald Brewer. A native of Vancouver who traveled extensively on business. Half the passport pages were filled with stamps from various countries. They were as false as the passport itself. He withdrew a few thousand dollars in American twenties and fifties then closed the safe and replaced the shoes.

The picture inside the passport was his face, but with a mustache and glasses. The same fake mustache and glasses he had worn for the picture were in a drawer in the bathroom. He affixed the mustache with spirit gum and donned the glasses. A small toiletry bag sat on the vanity, and he filled it with the necessities, then returned to the bedroom and packed a suitcase. A quick call to a cab company and he was on his way to the airport.

Edward Brand was a chameleon. He could change his face in minutes and had a complete set of identification for each person he could become. It had been years since he had used his real name. Robert Zindler. Jesus, the name sounded foreign even to him. That was probably a good thing. He wondered if the FBI would manage to tie him back to his origins on this one. They would be looking really hard now that Alicia Walker was dead. He knew that would happen when he sent Tony Stevens to kill her. But risks were all to be measured and then taken if the upside outweighed the downside. Locking Tony Stevens in for life by having him kill Alicia Walker had been worth the price. He liked Tony and respected the man's abilities as a con artist. But that whole end of things was gone. Tony was dead.

That was where things got dicey. Tony's body gave the FBI some tangible evidence to work with. They had his fingerprints, his DNA, his clothes and his gun. When you give an organization like the FBI that much to work with, they're going to come up with something. Still, tying Tony back to him was impossible. Every precaution had been taken to keep their lives completely separate. On this scam, Tony was New York. He was San Francisco. Brand was the man behind the entire operation, but once the con was under way, the cities were individual entities. No overlap. That way, if one operation went down, the others would still be viable long enough for them to get out before the cops came down on them. The only common factor was the name NewPro, and that was a necessity. Since NewPro wasn't a public company, the different centers were all functioning below the radar. Anything less than a simultaneous raid on all cities would be fruitless. Well thought out. Well executed.

Two hundred and twelve million dollars worth of well executed.

His taxi arrived, and he watched Vancouver slip past his window on his trip to the airport. North of the Fraser River, where the mountains touched down to the water, the land was heavily wooded with estate homes tucked into quiet cul-de-sacs. West, across Georgia Strait and Vancouver Island, was the Pacific Ocean. The water this far north was cold, not good for swimming, but perfect for fishing. He liked Vancouver. It was one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Too bad he wouldn't be back for a while. Maybe never. But that was the price you had to pay. Nothing without a price.

Despite the glitch caused by Tony's incompetence at such a simple thing as killing one person, everything was fine. In fact, it was perfect. Everything moving along as it should.

Because the con was never over until it was over.

C
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F
IFTEEN

Sam Morel ran his hands through his hair and sighed. It had been one very long day. Brent Hawkins had called at ten in the morning and filled him in on the death of Alicia Walker in New York and the possible Canadian connection to Edward Brand. Sam didn't know Alicia Walker from Adam, but any time a law enforcement person died it was a black day. With one of their agents on a slab in a morgue, the FBI was going to be taking a much more proactive approach to the NewPro case. That was probably a good thing.

He wondered about the Canadian angle. It seemed strange that Edward Brand would be so careful about every detail, then let something like that slip. Canadians were known for adding ‘eh' on the end of sentences, turning a comment into a rhetorical question, but someone wishing to remain an unknown would be careful of slips like that. No, something didn't sit right with him on that one.

The Mexican angle was equally as confusing. The Mexican government didn't play ball with fraud artists. They kicked them out of the country. There had been an Internet fraud run out of Costa Rica from 1999 to 2001 under the name Tri-West that had defrauded investors of about ninety million dollars. When the pyramid scheme had collapsed, the two key players had fled to Mexico and set up new lives in Puerto Vallarta. Both men had been expelled from Mexico and sent back to the United States, where they had received jail sentences for their complicity in the scam. Mexico was not the place to hide. Something wasn't right, but he couldn't put his finger on it.

He dialed Alan and Taylor's number from memory. Alan answered. “I heard you were visiting with Hawkins and Abrams today,” he said after they had exchanged hellos.

“They called this morning. Wanted us to come down right away. One of their New York agents was killed last night. They were pretty hot.”

“I can imagine. But getting a body along with hers gives them something to work with.”

“What?” Alan asked. “What are you talking about?”

“They never told you that Walker managed to kill the guy who shot her?”

“No,” Alan said. “They didn't say a word about that.”

“Doesn't surprise me,” Sam said. “I think it makes the feds feel smug when they know something you don't.”

“Who was the guy? Was he involved in stealing our money?”

“They're not sure. He had no identification on him, and they didn't get a match on his fingerprints. They're submitting a DNA sample, but don't hold your breath on that. The DNA database in the States is nothing compared to the one in the UK. We're a little behind the times over here.”

“Was this Alicia Walker woman working on the NewPro case?” Alan asked.

“From what I understand—yes. She had met a guy about six weeks ago who called himself Tony Stevens, and she suspected he was planning some sort of scam with NewPro. The district office in New York didn't have any undercover work for her at that time and gave her the okay to follow up on it. And it was Tony Stevens who killed her. The connection's there all right.”

“It's not good news that an agent is dead, but maybe this is a bit of a break.” Alan heard a clicking sound as Taylor picked up the extension.

“Let's keep our fingers crossed,” Sam said. He ran his fingers across the glass that covered a picture of him posing with his family. All four of them were smiling. Days long gone. “Hey, Hawkins told me you and Taylor may have given them something to work with.”

“The Canadian thing?”

“Yeah. They're expanding the search to include Canada. Personally, I think they should be looking internationally on this one, but they seem convinced Brand and his accomplices are American.”

“What about the tie to Mexico you found on the computers?” Alan asked.

“In their minds that's even more evidence pointing to them being from the States. They're definitely not Mexican or South American, so that just leaves the United States and Canada in close proximity to Mexico. None of them spoke with any kind of an accent, so they've mostly ruled out Europe as well. I think the real reason they're not looking outside the States or Canada is that once they do, they lose control. The FBI doesn't have jurisdiction outside the country's borders. They don't in Canada either, but our country and theirs are so tightly linked, the Bureau can operate there and get away with it. In a clandestine manner, of course.”