419

by Will Ferguson

  It's a pickup line, basically. They just need to park their money in your account for a while. It's a hundred percent safe! No risk! Sure.

  That's what they all say—in the beginning."

  Rhodes gave Laura a wry smile of sisterly camaraderie. Was she talking about criminals? Or men? And why would she think I was with her on that? Because were both women?

  Was this an interview technique? A way of getting around a suspect's defences, to make you think you had some sort of connection? (It was.) Were they taught this in detective school? (They were.) Am I a suspect? (She wasn't.) Not anymore, that is. This was the part Laura didn't know: her father had tried to move his entire insurance payout into Laura's name just before he died, but it had been disallowed by the insurance company. Sergeant Brisebois knew this. The detectives knew this. Laura never would. "No one,"

  Brisebois had said, "is going to be arrested." What Laura didn't realize was that this "no one" included her.

  Warren was shaking his head. "How could Dad fall for this?"

  "It's easier to get caught up in this sort of thing than you think," Saul said. "You're made to believe that you're dealing with people of high stature in important positions—bankers, oil executives, top government officials, ministers, lawyers. All those names you saw forged on these documents. The Office of Attorney General. Economic Adviser to the President. Executive Director of the National Petroleum Corporation. It gives a sense of weight to the offer."

  "There's an overwhelming sense of urgency, " Rhodes explained.

  "You're told you have to act immediately. It's a seduction technique.

  They don't want you to make an informed decision. They want you to be rushed into it."

  "They isolate their victims as well," Saul added. "Usually through some sort of sworn statement—often in the form of a legal-looking non-disclosure document. They always start by stressing the need for absolute confidentiality. They don't want the victim talking to family or friends or even spouses."

  "They want to cut you off from the people around you,"

  Rhodes continued. "It causes incredible strain on a person, carrying this enormous secret, this burden. As you can imagine."

  "I suppose," said Laura.

  "The victims I've interviewed?" said Saul. "They often say that's the worst part of what happened, more than the money they lost: feeling isolated from the people they loved. And when things fall apart, as they always do, it's like a sucker punch to the stomach."

  No, Laura thought. Not the stomach. The heart.

  "It's very easy to spiral into despair. So you have to reach the point where you accept what has happened, and can learn from it."

  There it was. Stage Five in Kiibler-Ross. How very textbook of them. But—what if you don't want to accept what happened?

  What if you want to hold someone accountable?

  "The scammers shift the burden of trust onto the victims, making them feel as though they're the ones who need to prove they're trustworthy." Saul held out one of the emails her father had received. "You can see it here, where they're asking him, 'How do we know you won't abscond with the entire amount?' It changes the power dynamics, makes the victims feel pressure to prove their integrity, puts the onus on them instead. It also deflects suspicion."

  There was a pause. "It's brilliant psychology, actually."

  "At the same time," said Rhodes, "they're feeling you out.

  Assessing your worth, getting a sense of how much they can take you for. That's why one Anti-Terrorist Certificate will cost $700 and another will cost $7,000."

  "It's whatever the market will bear," said the older detective.

  Warren nodded; he could see the economics of it. He did the same thing with his own clients.

  SUBJECT: Transfer of Funds from CBN RECEIVED: September 28, 9:47 PM

  Mr. Curtis, we have hit a small snag. The Central Bank of Nigeria cannot transfer such a LARGE AMOUNT OF MONEY into any overseas account that has less than

  $US 100,000.00 in reserve. Can you confirm that this amount can be covered by you? Understand, this is PURELY FOR SECURITY REASONS. None of your money will or can be accessed by a third party, but I'm afraid that the petty-minded R. Bola Soludo, Director of Operations at the CBN, is being most troublesome. He has demanded I give an exact figure on fear of being considered some common swindler! I tried to make a wild guess at your savings, but the bank manager mocked me and said,

  "We have checked and know that is incorrect!"

  Please help, as l a m i n a pickle.

  With much sincerity,

  Lawrence Atuche, Professor of Commerce, Lagos University

  SUBJECT: Re: Transfer of Funds from CBN SENT: September 28, 9:52 PM

  Hi, 100 is not a problem. We own our own home. Plus we have RRSPs.

  "We," not "I". "Our," not "my."

  Laura noticed her father's choice of possessive pronoun and felt better for it. Whatever that pink-faced boy-man at the bank had said, her father had known it was her mother's house too. Not his home, theirs.

  SUBJECT: Re: re: Transfer of Funds from CBN RECEIVED: September 28, 10:07 PM

  Thank you, my friend. That is excellent news! I shall hurry down to the bank right now. You should have the money in your account by waking hours tomorrow a.m.

  With great appreciation,

  Lawrence Attuche, Professor of Commerce, Lagos University

  Laura looked up from the printouts. "The professor spelled his own name wrong. First with one ‘t' and then here with two." She passed the message to Detective Saul. "See?"

  He chuckled. "You're right. Juggling so many different names and identities, you probably forget who you are at times."

  "You see how they build up anticipation as well," said Detective Rhodes. "The money's coming! It's coming! At any moment! Just a tease, of course. It starts off as sunshine and butterflies, but complications arise. They always do."

  SUBJECT: One final matter RECEIVED: October 1, 9:37 PM

  Dear Mr. Curtis,

  Re: you're transfer of funds

  I'm afraid there is one final, small problem...

  It is a minor issue, fortunately, and one easily resolved, but without putting this trifling matter to rest, we cannot move forward. The Central Bank of Nigeria has indeed confirmed that the funds are being transferred.

  Please see the link to the SECURE WEB PAGE (below) showing the account balance—in your name, to the full amount of $US 35,600,000. The transfer is done! It has only to be signed for and notarized and it will be complete.

  You are, therefore, required to appear at the Main Office of the Central Bank in Lagos within two (2) business days to sign the required documentation. Miss Sandra thanks you for this in advance.

  Toasting our good fortune,

  Lawrence Atuche, Professor of Commerce

  SUBJECT: Re: One final matter SENT: October 1, 9:46 PM

  I can't go to Nigeria on such short notice! I don't even have a passport.

  SUBJECT: Re: re: One final matter RECEIVED: October 1, 10:12 PM

  Oh no! I was looking forward to meeting you in person and taking you for champagne and celebrations after the transfer went through. Fret not! I have just now spoken with the Bank and I am told that if you cannot appear in person, you may appoint an accredited barrister to act as your representative to sign the notarization process on your behalf.

  The Central Bank usually goes through the Law Office of Bello & Usman. Mr. Usman is a fine and upstanding gentleman of whom I can personally vouchsafe as honest and efficient. There is a one-time fee of $US 900 for his services. I have asked Mr. Usman if he can't simply deduct his amount from the funds paid, but that is not possible as once the money is out of the country, he will have no guarantee of payment. I have told him you are a man of honest integrity, but lawyers are lawyers and they always play "by the book."

  With many apologies,

  Lawrence Atuche, Professor of Commerce

  SUBJECT: Re: re: re: One final matter SENT: Octo
ber 1, 10:U PM

  Lawyers, eh? Same everywhere ha ha

  "Your father signed a document granting power of attorney to the law office of Bello & Usman in Lagos."

  "So why aren't you contacting them?" asked Warren.

  "Because ‘they' don't exist," said Laura. "Jesus Christ, Warren, what part of this don't you understand?"

  "Language," said their mother, roused from her indifference.

  "What if someone took them up on their offer?" Laura asked.

  "Flew to Lagos and confronted them face to face?"

  Detective Saul looked at her. "People have tried that. They've gone over there and started poking about in the city's underbelly."

  "And?"

  "Like I said, they usually end up floating in Lagos Lagoon."

  "But what if—what if you made them come to you, pretended to be an investor, say? Turned the tables."

  "That's a dangerous game. You'd be on their turf."

  "But couldn't you meet them on neutral ground? An embassy or something."

  "Odds are, even if you made it out alive, you wouldn't get your money back," said Rhodes.

  "What if," Laura asked, "it wasn't about the money?"

  CHAPTER 44

  An ewe riding a motorcycle.

  Only after the motorbike had passed did the girl in indigo see the driver sitting behind the animal, keeping the sheep propped up on the handlebars, peering over its shoulder at the road ahead.

  She almost laughed, would have if she'd had the strength. Then she realized, He can't be going far, this driver on his sheep-straddled motorcycle. So she pushed herself forward, over the next rise of sandy hill. And there, a more remarkable sight still: a shining city on the plains, glimmering with light even at midday.

  She had reached the end of the Sahel, had reached Kaduna.

  And she might yet survive, Insha Allah.

  Lumbering freight trucks, loaded down like camels, rolled past.

  Men in flowing white robes flew by on motorbikes, ewe-less. And in the distance: the squat cylinders and intestinal tubings of the city's oil refineries, a complex so sprawling she almost mistook it for a city in its own right. She followed the pipelines into Kaduna.

  Any fuel these refineries provided seemed to have bypassed local vendors, though. Long lines of angry vehicles were queued outside petrol stations—or at least those that were still open. She passed several that were boarded up entirely, with hand-painted NO

  FOOEL signs out front.

  The fuel shortage had brought out would-be profiteers, young men selling plastic milk jugs and litre bottles filled with black-market gasoline. At one roadside stall she passed, a police vehicle had pulled over, not to issue a ticket but to haggle with the seller over the cost of a jug.

  Kaduna.

  The city was named for its river, and the river was named for its crocodiles. But the kadunas that had once floated like logs in the muddy waters were long gone, lost like the lions of the Sahel. She had never been to a city so big before, a million souls or more they said. Had never seen boulevards so wide, buildings so blindingly white. Grand architectural gestures loomed on every side: polished hotels and towering banks that proclaimed their wealth through the sheer gleam of their facades. Cinemas and chemists, billboards and barbershop poles that turned. And everywhere: traffic honking like bickering geese.

  Preening, rooster-like buses, painted in flagrant greens and purples, veered past as loud-revving motorcycle taxis wove in and out, passengers clinging to their drivers' backs, bundles tucked tightly under arms. It seemed to be a city of bundles: bundles bulging, swaying, opened, emptied.

  She heard half a dozen dialects and languages on the walk in, words shouted and sung, spoken and sighed; the city rang with their sounds, and even in her weakened state, it was exhilarating.

  In such a place, surely there was space for her.

  But Kaduna was still Kaduna. A river of crocodiles, a city with teeth. The trick was to step as daintily as a bird picking meat from the gum line. Behind the Ostrich Bakery, she rummaged through garbage cans and empty sacks dusted with flour, uncovered a bag filled with sticky buns. The buns were furred with mould, but she carefully scraped them clean, ate the sour bread below.

  Past the central market, she came to the edge of Kaduna's Sabon Gari district. These strangers' quarters, like those in Zaria, weren't marked as such, but were clearly delineated anyway. Muddy accents from the Christian south. Igbo traders and Yoruba. Nupe and Tiv.

  Families that might have lived there for generations but would always be looked upon as interlopers. She was one of them now.

  CHAPTER 45

  What if it wasn't about the money?

  Laura's question had given Detective Rhodes pause. What was she getting at?

  But Warren had cut in before the detective's suspicions could coalesce. "We should sue Dad's bank for letting him send his savings out of the country! We should sue MoneyGram and Western Union. We should sue the goddamn Nigerian government."

  Laura was going through the scanned documents. Her father's signature, granting power of attorney to an imaginary barrister hired to oversee the imaginary transfer of imaginary funds.

  Know all men that I, the undersigned, HENRY CURTIS, do solemnly grant exclusive rights and legal authority to

  DR. THEODORE USMAN, ATTORNEY AT IAW, to act in my place for the purposes of clearance and safekeep of said funds referenced No. 133-42.

  Another one began:

  I, HENRY CURTIS, hereby authorize the Central Bank of Nigeria to remit the sum of $US 35,600,000.00 herewith into the following account...

  The same signature he'd signed her report cards with.

  "The lawyers' fees are usually the first payments the victim makes," said Rhodes. "But once it starts, it never ends. There are always last-minute unexpected delays, while the dream of the big payoff is kept dangling in front of you."

  "This is why it's known as ‘advance fee fraud.' The fees are the con," said Saul. "There are taxes to be paid, and levies, VAT and banking surcharges, then you need to cover demurrage—storage fees on boxes of make-believe money. There are the Anti-Money Laundering Certificates we showed you earlier. Transfer fees, processing fees, insurance registration fees."

  "You're advised to keep track of all your expenses," continued Rhodes, "because supposedly you'll be reimbursed—with interest!—once the transfer goes through. Except, of course, it never does." Then, with an ingratiating smile aimed Laura's way, "It's like waiting for a guy to call the day after the night before."

  "I wouldn't know anything about that," said Laura, a sliver of ice running through her voice.

  "Well, you're luckier than the rest of us," Rhodes said with an easy laugh.

  Detective Saul passed more scanned documents across the table, pages from a ledger, each entry carefully inscribed, down to the penny: her father, keeping a careful and no doubt scrupulously honest record of his expenses. As heartbreaking a sight as any lonely turn on a winter road...

  Although she hadn't paid much attention to the other documents, Laura's mother looked at these, marvelled at the care Henry had taken with them. "He was always the one who balanced our chequebook," she said. "He was always the one who kept track of things."

  "The more a victim puts in, the more they'll continue to put in," said Saul. "Until you end up chasing your own money, throwing good after bad, trying desperately to recoup what you've already lost. It starts a downward spiral that usually ends only once you've been bankrupted. Or worse."

  "And if you start to flag, they push you harder," Rhodes added.

  "You feel like you're caught up in this swirling, clandestine affair.

  The con takes over your entire life. It's secretive and relentless—and all the while you're cut off from those closest to you."

  Why didn't he say something—anything? Even once. Was that why he'd kept calling Laura late at night, hoping she would ask the right questions?

  "The pressure builds," said Rhodes.
"It builds and builds and never lets up."

  They'd now reached the excruciating final spasms. "The scammers turn it around, start to claim that they're the real victims,"

  Saul explained.

  Mr. Curtis, I have bankrupted myself and my family! I have had to sell my house to cover the gap in costs that you refuse to pay. Why do I help you if you can't keep your end of bargain?