Vanishing Act (7 page)

Maggie was the first to hop out of the car when Ted pulled to the curb. She looked down the street and waved airily to Jack and Harry. At the last second she ran the half block to Harry and hugged him. “We’ll get the
SOB
, Harry. Count on it. Now go inside with Jack and get a good night’s sleep. Dream of Yoko.”

Jack stood back, stunned to see that Harry allowed someone to actually touch his person. Not just touched, but
hugged
. He was downright flabbergasted when he saw Harry hug Maggie in return. Harry definitely was not in a good place to allow such shenanigans. There was a lot to be said for touchy-feely where Harry was concerned. Or not said. Jack opted not to comment on his friend’s weird behavior. What he did say was, “Lizzie and Maggie are on it, Harry. If anyone can make it work, they can.”

Harry mumbled something in one of his eight languages, which Jack took to be not good. He clamped his lips shut as he made his way to the front steps. Then he decided some levity was called for. “You aren’t the type that likes to be
tucked in
, are you? I don’t mind sharing the house, the shower, and the kitchen, but there is a line I won’t cross, Harry.”

Harry went off with a string of gibberish, which probably meant that Jack should shut up and open the door. He did, but then he heard the roar of a black
HEMI
that pulled to the curb in front of Maggie’s house. He turned around and walked back down the steps.

Jack made a pretense of fiddling around in the trunk of his car to see if the black
HEMI
belonged to Maggie’s hacker. When he saw a tall, lanky guy with a ponytail hoofing toward Maggie, he sighed in relief. Maggie had it going on. Still he waited, even though Ted was with Maggie, to be sure the lanky guy was Maggie’s hacker.

Jack closed the trunk. He shouted out a second good night before he made his way to his own front door. Maggie and Ted didn’t return the greeting, but both waved airily. The minute Jack saw Ted shake the lanky guy’s hand, Jack unlocked his door. Harry almost killed him getting inside.

Three doors away, Maggie unlocked her own door, pushed it open partway, and turned to Abner. Maggie hated how jittery her voice sounded when she asked him, “Did you get anything?”

Abner Tookus looked at Maggie in stupefied amazement. He slapped at his forehead in mock indignation. “Did I just hear you ask me if I
got anything
? Do birds fly? Does the sun come up every morning? I should leave right now and let you muck around in the mud puddle you seem to be in. Of course I got it. What I should say is I
got
what there was to
get
. Are we going to stand out here so your neighbors can hear this discussion, or do you want to invite me in?” He waved his hand to indicate two late-night dog walkers who were looking at them as they passed the house.

Maggie opened the door the rest of the way. Ted followed her in, and, knowing the drill, disappeared. Tookus was Maggie’s snitch, and the unwritten rule was there should never be an audience when business was discussed.

Abner tossed a thick envelope onto the coffee table. “You want to look through it first, or do you want the summary now?”

Abner Tookus, like Maggie, had a passion for all things sweet. He looked at the array of candies that Maggie liked to munch on, sitting in little bowls on the table. He scooped up a handful of M&Ms and popped them into his mouth. He reached for a second handful, only to find that the dish was empty. He looked accusingly at Maggie. Guests should be catered to. Maggie opened a drawer in the coffee table and dumped a fresh bag of candies into the silver dish. “Talk!” she ordered.

“The bank’s security sucks. Any Tom, Dick, or Harry can access anything if you have a Social Security number. Or if you know how to get in the back door of the program. I know the guy who wrote the bank’s software. I printed everything out for you. My guy closed the door, so nothing leads back to me or him. That’s high-tech talk, Maggie, so don’t worry if you understand it or not. That’s just another way of saying your ass, my ass, and his ass are covered.

“Back in January, a block of mortgages the bank held was sold off to another mortgage company. Since Wong paid a year in advance the way you said he did, he probably never opened the mail informing him that his mortgage had been sold off. It wouldn’t affect him financially one way or the other, as the interest rate stayed the same. Just a different mailing address to mail the checks to.

“Out of that block of mortgages four people that you profiled were on the transfer list. Wong makes five. Wong is the only one who, at that time, had a sterling credit rating. The other four were iffy at best. The mortgage transfer did not affect the other four in any way either. Like I said, just that change of address.

“I hacked into Wong’s credit card company and found out that eight of your profiles have the same credit card company, which is through the originating mortgage bank. Four of your profiles have mortgages that are still at the original bank. So, four stayed, four plus Wong moved. You following me, Maggie?”

“Yeah.”

“Seventeen more of your profiles have either mortgages or credit cards with the new company they were transferred to.

“I then hacked into Human Resources, which is a gold mine, bar none, to see who was hired, fired, etc., and came up with a loan officer who was considered hot spit in her department. She got sick around the beginning of January—mono, she claimed—and took a leave of absence. She never returned. She was married but it appears no one knew. She listed herself as single on her employment application. But…her husband was a loan officer at another bank in town. How do I know this? From the records at the Watergate Apartments, where they are living now. He left around the same time—two weeks later, I think, it’s in the file—and never went back. He told his boss he had to take care of his ailing mother because she was so sick she couldn’t get out of bed. From what I could tell, no one followed up. Neither employee filed for unemployment insurance, and the wife didn’t file for disability. They moved out of their apartment on Connecticut Avenue and didn’t leave a forwarding address. They are paying a boatload of money to live at the Watergate. How am I doing so far?”

“Great,” Maggie said grudgingly. She hated sucking up to Abner, especially when she had to pay him for the privilege.

“Neither the husband or the wife is employed. If I were you, the first thing I would do would be to hire a couple of private dicks to monitor them twenty-four/seven and see what shakes out.”

“And the bank didn’t get suspicious? Didn’t the profiles complain?”

“No, why should they get suspicious? When the wife left, she said she was sick. She didn’t make waves, just left. Nothing was awry at the bank at that time. The dark stuff didn’t hit the fan till around March, at which point the wife had already sent a beautiful letter to HR saying she wouldn’t be back and was returning to her parents’ home in Texas so they could take care of her. She said how she loved everyone, what a wonderful place the bank was to work, and in the years to come she would remember her working experience with fondness. They probably framed the damn letter, and it could be hanging in the president’s office, for all I know.

“If those two are the ringleaders, they had a plan and they stuck to it. They had to have raked in a ton of money to date. Think about it, Maggie. Just take Wong, one guy, and they skinned him out of a quarter of a million bucks. We know of almost thirty others in your profiles. Multiply that by the same number, so they can well afford to live in the Watergate.

“One other thing. What’s to say they don’t do this in other states? They could do it in New York, Los Angeles, Dallas, anywhere. There is a glitch, though, and I’m working on it. I should know something more tomorrow. I don’t know if the husband and wife used their real names when they worked at the banks. They could have been aliases. If they’re as smart as I think they are, they probably created new identities for themselves—because I couldn’t check back more than five years on either one of them. Whenever I tried to go beyond that date, I simply hit a brick wall. You, Maggie, I could trace back to the day you were born, but not these two, which pretty much confirms what I just said. For all intents and purposes, they were born five years ago. That’s when they put the wheels in motion, and this is where we are.

“I have both of their Social Security numbers, and I’m running them. They each have an American Express Black Card, you know, the Centurion. You flash one of those babies and the world is yours. Since January, they have both traveled quite a bit. She goes east and he goes west. Sometimes to Podunk towns, where they probably rent cars and drive to big cities. They’re careful, I’ll give them that. Like I said, hire a couple of dicks and sit back and see what shakes out. I gotta go home now. I have to go to work tomorrow.”

“No you don’t, you skunk. You snookered me.
IBM
never heard of you. I had my secretary call every office in the land. I’m gonna get you for that, Abner.”

“It sounded good, didn’t it?” Abner laughed. “Feel free to lose my number. Feel free to forget about me.”

In spite of herself, Maggie laughed. “Are you really getting married?”

“Hell, no! Do you think I’m a fool? However, I am taking the lady to Hawaii. To make you happy, we’ll pretend we’re on a honeymoon.”

Abner turned serious. “Maggie, be careful, okay? I’m thinking this is a pretty big ring, and people like that play dirty if they feel threatened.”

Tongue in cheek, Maggie said, “Even the vigilantes?”

Still serious, Abner’s response sent a chill down Maggie’s spine. “Yeah, even the vigilantes. I’ll call you when I know more. See ya, Maggie.”

Maggie took a step closer. “Listen, Abby, all the bullshit aside, thanks for coming through for me. I won’t forget it.”

In a rare moment of honesty, Abner cupped Maggie’s face in his two hands. “For you, Maggie, anything. I’m sorry that you and I…never…that we…remember that song Whitney Houston used to sing, ‘I Will Always Love You’? I will, you know. Bye.”

Maggie dabbed at her eyes when she closed and locked the door behind Abner. “I’m really sorry, Abby. Some things are just not meant to be,” she whispered to herself.

Maggie drifted off for a moment as she thought of Abner Tookus. Friends for years, he’d bailed her out many times, just as she’d bailed him out. Their relationship was always professional. Except for that one time when she’d dumped Ted and thought that maybe something would happen with Abner. It had, but then she’d had a meltdown, and Jack Emery rescued her in the nick of time.

It was back in the day when the G-String Girls were in the States to perform, she’d gotten tickets, and Abner was going to be her guest. When she saw him standing in the hall waiting for her, dressed in a suit and with a fresh haircut, her heart had fluttered wildly. This was not the Abner she knew. The Abner she knew was a free spirit, who dressed like a bum and thumbed his nose at the establishment. There was that one moment in time when she had to decide if she wanted to step off the path and cheat on Ted. Not that it was cheating—she and Ted had broken up, and her heart was sore and bruised. Abner had given her one intense look, knew what she was thinking, and that it wasn’t going to work for them.

He was wrong. It would have worked because she would have made it work. Now she would never even know—all because she’d been gutless. Abner had touched something in her that day. She supposed that she would forever wonder about what might have been had she not had her meltdown.

Ted bounded down the steps just as Maggie came out of her semitrance and whipped around, a tired smile on her face. She looked at Ted. He wasn’t much in the looks department, but he was all hers, and she loved him heart and soul.

“You know what I was just thinking, Ted?” she lied. “Let’s turn the thermostat down to zero, build a fire, and have wild sex on that bearskin rug in front of the fireplace.”

Ted was naked before Maggie could turn on the house alarm and turn out the foyer lights. “I guess we’re going to forgo the fire and the zero temperatures, huh?”

“Oh, yeah,” Ted said, smoothing out the pearly white bearskin rug.

“You sure you don’t want to talk about what my guy brought over here?”

“I’m sure. Boy, am I sure.”

“Yeah, me, too.” Maggie giggled. And she couldn’t help but think about Lizzie’s giggling and her comment about reunions with Cosmo.
Well, who needs reunions
, she said to herself.

Maggie rolled over and looked at the red numerals on the digital clock on the nightstand: 3:00. She rolled back over to her other side. Her leg snaked out, and she pushed Ted out of the bed with one mighty shove. “Wake up, Ted! I just remembered something.”

The thump was so loud, Maggie winced.

“What the hell! Is the apartment on fire? You pushed me out of bed! Do you have any idea what time it is? For God’s sake, Maggie, what’s going on?”

“I remembered something, that’s what’s going on. Are you awake, Ted? I need you to listen and be alert.” Maggie inched her way over to Ted’s side of the bed and looked down at her partner. “Do you remember what happened after I ran that first series of articles on all those people whose identities were stolen?”

“Maggie, why can’t this wait till morning? I’m freezing.”

Heartless, Maggie snapped, “If you’d wear flannel pajamas the way other people do in the winter, you wouldn’t be freezing. Just listen and tell me if you remember a conversation we had.”

“All right, all right, but why can’t I get in bed and listen?”

“Because I want you in listening mode, not lovemaking mode. When you’re cold, you always want to have sex. Remember me telling you about that kid who called the paper after the articles ran? I blew him off because he sounded like a kid, his voice changing, you know, from a kid’s voice to a more mature voice. He said someone stole his name, and now he doesn’t have credit. I thought he read the paper and just wanted to make a crank call. I blew him off, Ted, and that doesn’t say much for me. He said he was a mechanic and worked at a garage and he wanted to buy a car, but when he applied for credit he found out he had bad credit and he didn’t know how that could be possible. Do you remember me telling you about it?”