15. Vanishing Act

by Fern Michaels

  “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?”

  “No, I don’t! I’m cold, Maggie.”

  “All right, you can get back in bed, but don’t go to sleep. I have to talk this out. We have to find that kid. I remember he said he was in Silver Spring, Maryland. I want you to go there and take Espinosa with you and check out every garage and gas station.”

  “Are you crazy? Why? That could take days.”

  Ted punched his pillow with such force that the pillow split and a feather sailed upward, then another. Maggie reached up and caught them. She tickled Ted’s ear, and he groaned.

  “That kid said he was a foster kid. A foster kid, Ted! He said his friend was in the same boat. The friend wanted to buy a scooter of some kind, and they wouldn’t give him credit even though he had a job. God! I can’t believe I was so stupid I blew him off. But in my own defense, the calls were coming in so quick and fast, legitimate calls, the switchboard blew out. You remember that, don’t you?” Maggie snapped.

  Ted knew it was worth his life to remember, so he said, “Yeah. Well, we all screw up at one point or another. So what is your point here?”

  “My point is this: Let’s just say for the sake of argument the guy or the kid that called is eighteen years old. Let’s say he was a foster kid living with some family, and now he’s out on his own. He gets a job of some kind, and at eighteen, he’s looking for some wheels. He applies for a credit card, and suddenly he finds out he can’t get one because someone stole his identity when he was younger and ruined his credit. How many foster kids are in the system, Ted? Thousands, that’s how many.

  “What I want you to do is go to Child Placement, or whatever department handles foster children, and talk to them. If I’m right, and you know I’m always right, there has to be someone on the inside passing information to those cruds who are stealing those identities. Think about it, Ted! If they start stealing these kids’ identities when they’re young, they have a four-or five-year head start before the kid finds out. My God! What a perfect scam!

  “Why aren’t you getting dressed, Ted? You need to get on this right away. Call Espinosa and hit the ground running. Find that kid who called in. Use Dawson if you need extra help. Silver Spring isn’t that big.”

  Ted groaned. He knew there was no point in arguing, but he tried. “What are you going to be doing while I’m doing all that?”

  “I’m going back to sleep. Good luck.”

  By the time Ted was dressed, Maggie was snoring lightly. He let himself out of the house, his cell in his hand as he called Espinosa and Dawson. His watch told him it was 4:20 as he slammed his way out to the street just in time to see a Post truck roll by with the Sunday papers for the citizens’ early perusal.

  Now that he was wide awake and freezing his balls off as he jogged his way to the paper, he had to admit that everything Maggie had just said made sense. He wished he had half her instincts.

  Chapter 8

  Charles found himself slipping into what he called a “neutral zone” as he waited for his bank of computers to boot up and the faxes that he expected to spew forth. Outside, he could hear a savage summer rain pound at the windows. When he was in the war room in the underground tunnels at Myra’s farmhouse back in McLean, he never knew what the weather was unless he ventured up to the main part of the house. Here, in their mountain fortress, the elements were front and center all day long every day of the year. He wasn’t sure if he liked it or not. Not that he had a choice.

  His eyes felt like they were full of grit, and they probably were. He’d been in the war room for the past two days, venturing forth only to cook meals and listen to his chicks—that was how he thought of the Sisters, his chicks—berate him, ignore him. They were now making demands on him, impossible demands no human could keep up with. He was trying to placate everyone, especially Myra, but it didn’t seem to be working. Yoko was demanding immediate help for Harry Wong and accepting no excuses. Gradually, the Sisters were creeping to her side and voicing questions he didn’t have answers for. It was a sad state of affairs.

  In a little over an hour they would all meet to discuss, one more time, what they could do to make Harry Wong’s life whole again.

  Once upon a time, the Sisters had had patience and deferred to him one hundred percent. Since his return to the mountain, they’d treated him like an alien visitor. What Isabelle had said to him, words that wounded him to the core, ricocheted inside his mind. “We found out the hard way that we don’t need you. Back in the day, we may have wanted you…”

  It was true that his chicks had bumbled their way through two missions, but when he read the final reports they’d drawn up, he had cringed at how close they had all come to getting caught. What bothered him more than anything was how cocky they had become. He could feel beads of sweat form on his brow when he remembered how they’d gone back to Paula Woodley’s house, then been brazen enough to drive the residents of Evergreen Terrace from the White House back to their homes.

  As if that weren’t bad enough, they’d…what they’d done was…piss off the Secret Service, the FBI, and local law enforcement. Now they expected him to pull a rabbit out of a hat and get them all back into the nation’s capital to help Harry Wong.

  Charles shook his head to clear his thoughts when a streak of lightning zipped past the window of the war room. Seconds later, a loud crack shook the building he was standing in. No one needed to tell him the lightning had felled one of the tall pines. From past experience, he knew that more trees would fall before the storm was over. It was inevitable.

  The bank of clocks on the wall told him, at a glance, the time all over the world. At the moment, though, he was concerned only with local time and what it meant as far as his culinary duties were concerned. He still had an hour till lunch. At four o’clock in the morning he’d found himself in the kitchen preparing a delectable shrim
p and crab casserole and cutting up greens for a salad. He’d also prepared a delicious pink ham and some honeyed yams for dinner. He’d showered and consumed a gallon of coffee that was now having its effect on his nerves. Once, a lifetime ago, he’d been nerveless.

  Charles realized suddenly that the war room was quiet. All the faxes he had been waiting for had arrived, his e-mails were all downloaded. He was good to go. He looked down on the right side of his computer terminal to see the thick report that had come in from Maggie Spritzer early yesterday. Whoever her source was, he or she was good, just as good as his own hacker. He felt the nerves in his stomach jump. Maybe the girls were right, with contacts like Maggie had, did they really need him?

  A blue folder with a gold star in the middle set his teeth on edge. Annie had gone ahead and purchased the Babylon casino with Lizzie Fox’s help. A done deal, and he’d had no input. Lizzie had made sure everything was buried deep. He had to be honest: it was possible Lizzie had outshone his own people. And now she was married to Cosmo Cricket, and he hadn’t even been in the country for them.

  His eyes started to burn. Would Lizzie take the job Martine Connor offered as chief White House counsel? He should know the answer to that question, but he didn’t. He didn’t know the answer because until three days ago he had been out of the loop, an outsider. There was so much he didn’t know about the Sisters anymore, and there had been no time to be fully briefed, to read all the reports and notes the girls had kept in his absence. He needed more hours in the day, less sleep. What bothered him the most was where his old pal Avery Snowden had deviated from the plan and taken Myra and Annie somewhere at the end of the last mission. In the report he’d read it simply said, “NTK.” Need to know. It was obvious even the girls didn’t know where Annie and Myra had gone on their detour. Snowden, when questioned, had simply refused to answer the question. And that had been the end of that.