The Path of Silence (6 page)

“Maybe it took him that long to figure out what was going on.”

“What do you mean?”

“He would have tried to get rid of the device. When he realized he couldn’t, he complied, doing what they needed him to do. It saw him live—and enjoy two months of working with Mr. Ruggiano and probably quite a few others. But if it’s an organization, it has to have goals. This is a forceful operation, slavery. Brick must have finally figured out where it was leading. That’s what made him bolt.”

“Meg, if we’re dealing with an organization, then Brick couldn’t have been their only recruit.”

I turned to stare at him. “You don’t think—”

“There would have to be more operatives, recruited the same way.”

“God Ken, I hope you’re wrong,” I murmured.

“Organization means structure and hierarchy—both need people to populate it.”

“If that’s the case, then the device Brick had in his chest was not a prototype.”

“You’re not suggesting mass production of these?”

“Some products are mass produced without ever making it to the open market.”

“I’d like to see you suggest that to Joe,” he murmured. “Hell, just how aggressively do these people need to launder their money?”

“That’s a good question. Any petty criminal could have served as a messenger and a cash flow set-up man for a place like Guilford. Why send in an economist with a bomb in his chest?”

“Brick was at Guilford eighteen months ago,” Ken said and waited.

“Training,” I said. I knew what was running through his mind.

“For what?” he whispered.

“Bigger and better things. Those that probably made him run, once he had figured out what it was about.”

We drove in silence for a long time then Ken asked, “Do they really make an eighty thousand dollars profit on the sale of one those fancy cars?”

“Yep. Up to twenty percent markup.”

“You didn’t check this out on the side, did you?”

“Nope.”

“Then how did you know?”

“I used to own one.”

He laughed all the way to our office on Fayette, while I chuckled because that’s all I could get out of my tightening throat. I buried my past more than twelve years ago and it still had the power to choke me.

Chapter 5

I
n addition to Twain, Brick had carried eight different IDs. Other than take out ads in all the major newspapers, asking for public assistance, there was no way to track down the places where he might have worked.

His Maryland driver’s license had a Baltimore Highlands address. I checked in five different online databases and couldn’t find Grange Street. Neither could I find the Norwin Peaks co-op. Ken ran it through our database. There was no such address.

The Vehicle Services confirmed that Brick’s Maryland driver’s license and car ownership, with the Grange Street address, were in their database. The other five licenses were for New York State, Virginia and DC.

I started with Washington. I used to live there.

“It’s half right,” the clerk said. “The names are valid. The two applicants were issued driver’s licenses at the addresses you gave me but not with those numbers. These are in our “pool and recycle” database. Both have been cancelled due to permanent license suspension. I will report this to our Fraud Unit.”

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 license 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 run a short program, that would yield the interest that the ten thousand deposit would generate for the bank—in addition to any interest accrued by the credit card’s use 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 online. I slashed and burned my way through three reps and two supervisors.

Finally, I got the manager. He released the e-mail that came with the application. It gave a street address. 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, which 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.”

Chapter 6

B
rick’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 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.