by Wally Duff
“No. Why?”
I recounted the details about planting the GPS device on the Mercedes and my close call with the passenger.
“Al-Turk is the only person listed on the application,” she said. “I didn’t find a second man’s name.”
“But thanks to Howard, I have one.”
“What about using two GPS trackers?”
“I don’t want to spend money on a second device until I see if I need it. It depends on what I discover about al-Turk.”
“Sound financial thinking, but if we proceed with the story, a second device will be mandatory.”
“You might be right. We can talk about this after class.”
Our friend Molly Cutchall walked into the class. She has straight, waist-length blond hair and a flawless face. Her to-die-for long legs make her nearly four inches taller than me. She usually isn’t interested in any exercise more strenuous than carrying shopping bags full of designer clothes to her new silver Mercedes GL 550. Even though she has an aversion to working out and has given birth to four babies, she still has a fabulous figure.
She had arrived late, and there were no seats available except those being saved by riders already on their bikes. Sitting at the far end of the middle row was the surfer dude I’d seen talking to Corky and Sammy the last time I was in spinning class. He waved at Molly and pointed to a seat next to him he’d apparently been saving.
Giving up his buddy’s bike.
Leave it to Molly to entice the buffed young man to do that. He leaped off his bike to help her adjust her handlebar and seat height. Once she sat down, he made sure her shoes were properly clipped in. The whole display was nauseating, but Molly had that effect on men, and this guy was no exception.
“Who’s your new friend, Molly?” I asked.
She turned to him. “Jamie, say ‘hi’ to Tina and Linda.”
He flashed a five-star smile at us. “What up?”
Cas cranked up the music and class began.
38
After class, Linda and I walked to the locker room. The cloying odor from hair sprays, colognes, and deodorants hung in the steamy air. Molly came in behind us. Cas remained in the spinning room to make sure all the bikes had been disinfected to her satisfaction. I sat down in front of my locker. Linda groaned her way down next to me.
“Thanks to your husband, we have one name and possible access to the man’s fingerprints making our research easier,” I said.
“And quicker,” she added, as she wiped her face with a towel. “I’ll go online and try to find the bank al-Turk uses. If it’s also the First Caribbean, I might be able to use his account as a platform to uncover who is sending the money to him from that bank.”
“If we have that, we might be on our way to figuring out what my neighbor is doing and if it’s illegal.”
I glanced at Molly, who stood with Sammy and Donna at the other end of the locker room. I couldn’t hear what they were talking about, but what Molly did grabbed my attention.
“Check that out,” I said, nodding toward Molly and the two younger girls.
We watched as Molly squeezed Sammy and Donna’s breasts, and they did the same thing to her.
“I’ve never seen that in here,” Linda said
“Maybe it’s the millennial replacement for mammograms.”
“If it is, I think I’ll pass.” She threw her towel in the bin. “But breast implants would be, pardon the pun, a titillating story for your column. This proves it.”
“And you wouldn’t have to bill me for the research,” I said. “I could do most of it sitting right here.”
39
Molly joined us. “What are you guys talking about?”
“Linda’s helping me with a story,” I said. “So is Cas.”
Linda’s head snapped up. “She is? You didn’t mention it in your text last night.”
“Sorry. Cas went to the Twenties with me. I needed her to cover my back in case there was a problem.”
“What’s the Twenties?” Molly asked.
“A strip club,” I said.
“Sounds like fun. Can I go with next time and help out too?”
“I didn’t think you’d be interested in doing a story with me.”
“Oh, I’m way interested. When I traveled around the world modeling, I used to do things like that for extra money.”
“Things?” Linda asked.
“Greg was in the Marines and attached to our embassy in Rome. We met in a bar, and I, of course, looked hot. He hit on me, and we hooked up.”
Silence.
“And...?” I prompted.
“Oh, and he saw how men were attracted to me and would talk to me,” Molly said. “He contacted a couple of guys at the embassy, and they hired me to help them out. They had friends in other countries where I modeled. I helped them too. The extra money was great.”
“Who were these men?” Linda asked.
“They said they were agricultural attachés, but they weren’t.”
“CIA?” I asked.
“Yep.”
“You never mentioned you worked for them,” I said.
“You never asked.”
Got me there.
“Can you get information out of people?” Linda asked.
“I’m good at it. Men think I’m an airhead, so they tell me all kinds of secret stuff.”
“What about women?” I asked, thinking about my problem with Hannah.
“Pretty much the same thing.”
Molly retired from modeling when she was thirty. Her husband, Greg, is twelve years older than she is. She wanted to get pregnant as speedily as she could because she’d read in a fashion magazine his sperm might be getting too old to produce normal children.
They had trouble getting the job done, an issue that wasn’t a problem for Carter and me. All he had to do was walk through the bedroom and I got pregnant with Kerry.
They sought medical help from a fertility specialist and selected in vitro fertilization. The result was Chase, who is five. Before she could resume IVF to try for a second child, her own reproductive apparatus shifted into high gear, and she had three more male babies, each one year apart.
Given her experience with IVF, she would be perfect to help me with Hannah’s story. “I might have an assignment for you on another story I’m considering writing,” I said. “Give me a couple of days to work it out.”
“Sure, fine,” Molly said.
Finally, I had a plan in motion to further flesh out Hannah and Micah’s story. Molly could help me with it, and Cas and Linda could continue investigating Mr. al-Turk.
40
Okay, dude, who are you?
I stared at Mr. Mohammad al-Turk’s face looking back at me on my computer screen. Friday night, I’d finally found the time to sit down in front of my computer to meet my neighbor. Carter was upstairs putting our daughter to bed.
Linda had emailed me the liquor license research, so I had a definable starting point. To operate a club in Chicago where alcohol would be served, a new owner like al-Turk had to obtain a tavern license. He’d needed to provide his personal history, a photo ID, a driver’s license or passport, documentation of ownership of the Twenties, a financial disclosure form, and confirmation he had the necessary funds to acquire the business.
I called Linda with what was on the computer screen in front of me.
“Al-Turk is forty-two years old and unmarried,” I said. “He was born in New York City where he graduated from NYU with a business degree. His credit rating is perfect. He has no lawsuits or complaints against him, and no skirmishes with law enforcement agencies in Chicago, New York, or anywhere else in the country.”
“Sounds squeaky clean,” Linda said. “I hope you found more than that.”
“Oh, I did. Twelve years ago, he and two other men founded an import/export business specializing in products made in the Middle East. It’s called Business Ventures.”
“Bingo. That’s the company we need to resea
rch.”
“I tried, but I can’t hack into any of the financial details.”
“To use your baseball term, I’m in the batter’s box,” she said.
“I can’t do much without that information.”
“We need to know where he lived before he moved into your neighborhood.”
“From my research on liquor licenses, I know it takes about forty days to obtain one. Al-Turk has to have been in Chicago at least that long.”
“You work on that, and I’ll tackle his businesses.”
“Great.”
She didn’t respond.
“Linda?”
“There’s a lot going on here. Do you want to continue working on it?”
“You mean the possibility of it being dangerous?”
“I do,” she said.
“My gut tells me there’s a story here, and I want to do it.”
“What did your gut tell you about the abortion clinic bomber story?”
I fingered the scar on the side of my head. “That got me blown up, but this is different.”
“Are you sure?”
A good question.
Am I?
41
Saturday morning, Carter prepared breakfast for Kerry while I went out for my run. Each morning since I met Hannah, I looked for new “Sold” signs, hoping one of them might be her recently purchased home. I searched the neighborhood and found six homes that had recently been purchased. The Hannah Eisenberg Trust didn’t own any of them.
Twenty minutes into my run, I discovered a “Sold” sign in the front yard of an antique-red brick home on West Henderson Street, two blocks north of my front door. Stopping in the middle of the block, I jogged in place about twenty-five yards from the house. Attached to the eaves of the structure were rotating security cameras, scanning the street and the neighbors’ homes on each side. I’d never seen equipment like that in our neighborhood.
Interesting. Anyone hungry for cookies?
I would bake a batch of cookies and welcome the owners of that house to the neighborhood. If Hannah answered the door, I’d accomplished my goal. If not, maybe I discovered a story about the new owners who needed security cameras to record continuous pictures of the neighborhood.
That meant they recorded me standing on the street spying on the house.
Uh-oh.
Turning around, I ran toward North Ravenswood. The only person on the street with me was a fellow runner who ran in the opposite direction, east on West Henderson toward the house with the security cameras. He slowed down and glanced at the home but then moved on.
I saw his pale face and red hair. He looked like a leprechaun.
Lyndell’s leprechaun!
She had seen him. I needed a story, but her idea was about as exciting as folding laundry, and if I didn’t like it, Gayle probably wouldn’t, either. To keep my job, I needed an interesting and entertaining story for my readers. Not one about a leprechaun living in Lakeview.
Reinserting my ear buds, I ran home listening to Wilco’s songs. If I did have Hannah’s actual address, I had to do my research quickly to write a story for the August issue.
42
Saturday night, after Carter read two books to Kerry, he walked down to the family room. I went into her room and finished tucking her in for the night.
“Honey, I’m going downstairs to work on my story,” I said when I joined him. “We can watch a DVD when I finish, okay?”
Carter sat on the couch, typing on his office laptop. “Great. How about North by Northwest?”
No. Not again.
We’d watched it way too many times, but I needed to get on my computer. “I’ll get it out.”
He went back to his laptop. I found the DVD and put it next to the machine before I hurried down to the lower level and threw in a load of laundry. While it ran, I went into the office to use my computer.
I had the address of the house on West Henderson Street I thought might belong to Hannah and Micah. Using that information and their individual names, I began an online search for the documents of the sale of the home.
After fifteen minutes, I found them. Employing the same technique I had used in an attempt to identify the new neighbor across the street, I tracked the real estate money backwards through the banking system. I discovered the Hannah Eisenberg Trust at the Wells Fargo Bank in New York City owned the home on West Henderson.
I needed help and texted Linda about our other project. She called me two minutes later.
“Is this about those two doctors?” Linda asked.
“It is,” I said.
“Isn’t one story enough?”
“It’s taking forever. This is a fluff piece I can write quickly after I pull together all of their background information.”
“Why not just interview them and be done with it?”
“Hannah’s a little standoffish. She left the park before she would answer any of my questions.”
“Strange.”
“She told me her husband won’t allow a story to be written about them.”
“Allow?” she asked. “That’s beyond strange.”
“Her words, not mine,” I said.
“Which is why you’re now using the Internet.”
“Trying to, but I have a problem. I’ll email what I have.”
I forwarded to her what little concrete information I had on Hannah and Micah’s house and waited on the phone while she read it.
“It’s the Wells Fargo trust fund again,” she said when she finished.
“Can you do your magic and find out more?” I asked.
“I’ll get right on it.”
“And I’ll chase down the personal side,” I said.
I hung up and went back to my computer. I began an online search for Chicago’s most expensive interior designers and added Hannah and Micah’s names as possible clients. I didn’t have to search for long. Leslie Berry, ASID, was a regular on Facebook, Twitter, his blog, and TV publicizing his decorating ideas for the homes and condos of Chicago’s rich and famous.
My computer skills were competent enough that I could hack into Hannah’s account at Berry’s firm.
“Oh. My. God!” I whispered to myself when the numbers flashed on the screen.
The cost of decorating their house exceeded the purchase price of our home.
43
I called Linda and told her what I’d discovered.
“It’s not surprising with what I have on the screen in front of me,” she said. “To say her trust is filled to overflowing is an understatement. Her grandparents were among the original investors with Warren Buffett. The Berkshire Hathaway stock was passed on to her parents, and they subsequently bequeathed all of the remaining stock to her. It’s in her trust account at Wells Fargo in New York City.”
“What’s the account worth?” I asked.
“At the market’s closing yesterday, the value of her trust is a little over four hundred forty million dollars.”
“Wow.”
“The trust not only paid for all the interior decorating, it bought their home and two new vehicles, an Escalade and a Mercedes GLS. The trustee closed on their home on West Henderson Street in April.”
“Hannah said they’d moved in about two weeks ago. I assume that time interval was necessary to furnish their home.”
“That fits the timeline of their move,” she said. “They came here on the first of April but apparently lived in Micah’s luxury high-rise condo until the decorating was completed.”
“What about Micah? Does he pay for any of this?”
“Nothing big. He moved to Chicago sixteen months ago and rented the condo near Northwestern Medical Center. The monthly rent came out of the trust.”
“In that neighborhood, it had to be a big number.”
“It was, but at the same time, twenty-five million dollars was wired from her trust fund to the Wells Fargo Bank here in Chicago. The account is separate from their joint account. The only signature on
this new account is Micah’s.”
“What did he do with the money?”
“A portion of those funds went toward the purchase of an empty warehouse on the North Side. The rest went to an Illinois construction company which specializes in medical buildings. I found multiple local and state permits to build out the warehouse into a laboratory.”
“Send me the address of that lab,” I said.
She did. I checked my files. The address of the warehouse was the same as the ones listed on Micah’s driver and medical licenses.
“What about the money to equip and run the lab and pay the staff?” I asked. “Where is that coming from?”
“I have no idea. If there’s another account at Wells Fargo, I can’t find it because I don’t know the name of the lab. Do you know who the lab director is?”
“Why?”
“He might be signing the business checks out of a different account. If I have his name, I can find the account.”
“Hold on a second. I have an idea.”
I put Micah’s file up on the screen. I found his scientific papers I’d put off reading.
“I’m sending you the names of three doctors Micah has written papers with,” I said. “All are now at Northwestern. It’s possible one or more of them are working with Micah at his lab and maybe one of them is the director.”
“I’ll chase them down,” she said. “And I have a suggestion. Neither of us know squat about a medical lab. With her master’s degree in nursing, Cas might be able to help us decipher this.”
“Good idea. I already talked to Molly about Hannah. Adding Cas to research Micah’s side of this might help me with my time-management problems.”
“What about delivering her your welcome-to-the-neighborhood cookies?”
“That’s my next move. I’ll drop by their home with cookies and act like I didn’t know she and her family lived there. If she invites Kerry and me in, great. If not, I’ll at least have established contact with her.”