Shell Game

by Jeff Buick

  “Whistler,” Abrams said, jotting the name in his notebook.

  They talked for another hour but nothing of any substance came to light. Brent Hawkins thanked Taylor and Alan for coming in and Hawkins himself walked them to the door and shook their hands. He assured them the Bureau was working overtime on the case. But Edward Brand was a careful man, covering every step he took with lies and deception. He was like an onion—peel the skin back and you were faced with multiple layers, the man himself hidden beneath the multitude of lies. Faceless, nameless, a ghost who appeared from nowhere and returned there when the con had run its course.

  But something had happened, and Brand had pushed things too far. An FBI agent was dead and the Bureau was in a rage, like an anthill after an errant footstep. The scale of the investigation had just moved up a number of notches.

  Edward Brand had made his first mistake.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The news of what had happened in New York on Monday evening was relayed to Edward Brand first thing Tuesday morning. Brand listened as his contact inside the FBI gave him the crime scene details. Tony Stevens had taken one bullet in the center of his chest, and death was instantaneous. Alicia Walker was hit in the neck, but her cause of death was asphyxiation. She had drowned after severe blood loss had rendered her incapable of hauling herself out of the bathtub. Death was inevitable, as the bullet had pierced her carotid artery and without immediate medical attention, she would have bled to death. Best guess from the CSI crew was that Stevens and Walker had fired at exactly the same time. Brand thanked his contact and hung up.

  Tony Stevens had fucked up. He’d fucked up big time. First off he’d allowed an FBI agent to get inside the scam. Then he’d gotten himself killed while taking her out. Edward Brand heard a cracking noise and glanced down at his hand. His cell phone had snapped in half at the hinge. He relaxed his grip on the phone. It was ruined. He dumped it in a garbage can and headed for the bedroom. Time to pack and get out of Vancouver. He’d planned on staying another day or two, but the FBI was going to ratchet up the NewPro investigation now, and he’d have to move faster than he had expected. The borders would get tighter. And quickly.

  He called Air Canada and booked a flight to Hong Kong, departing Vancouver International at one-forty. Four hours. Plenty of time to pack and get to the airport. Brand didn’t care where the flight went, he just needed to get out of Canada. He opened the door to the walk-in bedroom closet and knelt in front of a line of shoes neatly tucked in a line of small wooden niches. He pushed a piece of wood and a section of the compartmentalized shelving popped out an inch. He gripped it and pulled. It slid out, shoes still intact. Behind the false front was a wall safe. Brand spun the dial three times and pushed the handle down. The safe opened. Inside were a number of Canadian passports bundled together with an elastic. He rifed through them until he found one he liked. Reginald Brewer. A native of Vancouver who traveled extensively on business. Half the passport pages were filled with stamps from various countries. They were as false as the passport itself. He withdrew a few thousand dollars in American twenties and fifties then closed the safe and replaced the shoes.

  The picture inside the passport was his face, but with a mustache and glasses. The same fake mustache and glasses he had worn for the picture were in a drawer in the bathroom. He affixed the mustache with spirit gum and donned the glasses. A small toiletry bag sat on the vanity, and he filled it with the necessities, then returned to the bedroom and packed a suitcase. A quick call to a cab company and he was on his way to the airport.

  Edward Brand was a chameleon. He could change his face in minutes and had a complete set of identification for each person he could become. It had been years since he had used his real name. Robert Zindler. Jesus, the name sounded foreign even to him. That was probably a good thing. He wondered if the FBI would manage to tie him back to his origins on this one. They would be looking really hard now that Alicia Walker was dead. He knew that would happen when he sent Tony Stevens to kill her. But risks were all to be measured and then taken if the upside outweighed the downside. Locking Tony Stevens in for life by having him kill Alicia Walker had been worth the price. He liked Tony and respected the man’s abilities as a con artist. But that whole end of things was gone. Tony was dead.

  That was where things got dicey. Tony’s body gave the FBI some tangible evidence to work with. They had his fingerprints, his DNA, his clothes and his gun. When you give an organization like the FBI that much to work with, they’re going to come up with something. Still, tying Tony back to him was impossible. Every precaution had been taken to keep their lives completely separate. On this scam, Tony was New York. He was San Francisco. Brand was the man behind the entire operation, but once the con was under way, the cities were individual entities. No overlap. That way, if one operation went down, the others would still be viable long enough for them to get out before the cops came down on them. The only common factor was the name NewPro, and that was a necessity. Since NewPro wasn’t a public company, the different centers were all functioning below the radar. Anything less than a simultaneous raid on all cities would be fruitless. Well thought out. Well executed.

  Two hundred and twelve million dollars worth of well executed.

  His taxi arrived, and he watched Vancouver slip past his window on his trip to the airport. North of the Fraser River, where the mountains touched down to the water, the land was heavily wooded with estate homes tucked into quiet cul-de-sacs. West, across Georgia Strait and Vancouver Island, was the Pacific Ocean. The water this far north was cold, not good for swimming, but perfect for fishing. He liked Vancouver. It was one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Too bad he wouldn’t be back for a while. Maybe never. But that was the price you had to pay. Nothing without a price.

  Despite the glitch caused by Tony’s incompetence at such a simple thing as killing one person, everything was fine. In fact, it was perfect. Everything moving along as it should.

  Because the con was never over until it was over.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Sam Morel ran his hands through his hair and sighed. It had been one very long day. Brent Hawkins had called at ten in the morning and filled him in on the death of Alicia Walker in New York and the possible Canadian connection to Edward Brand. Sam didn’t know Alicia Walker from Adam, but any time a law enforcement person died it was a black day. With one of their agents on a slab in a morgue, the FBI was going to be taking a much more proactive approach to the NewPro case. That was probably a good thing.

  He wondered about the Canadian angle. It seemed strange that Edward Brand would be so careful about every detail, then let something like that slip. Canadians were known for adding ‘eh’ on the end of sentences, turning a comment into a rhetorical question, but someone wishing to remain an unknown would be careful of slips like that. No, something didn’t sit right with him on that one.

  The Mexican angle was equally as confusing. The Mexican government didn’t play ball with fraud artists. They kicked them out of the country. There had been an Internet fraud run out of Costa Rica from 1999 to 2001 under the name Tri-West that had defrauded investors of about ninety million dollars. When the pyramid scheme had collapsed, the two key players had fled to Mexico and set up new lives in Puerto Vallarta. Both men had been expelled from Mexico and sent back to the United States, where they had received jail sentences for their complicity in the scam. Mexico was not the place to hide. Something wasn’t right, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.

  He dialed Alan and Taylor’s number from memory. Alan answered. “I heard you were visiting with Hawkins and Abrams today,” he said after they had exchanged hellos.

  “They called this morning. Wanted us to come down right away. One of their New York agents was killed last night. They were pretty hot.”

  “I can imagine. But getting a body along with hers gives them something to work with.”

  “What?” Alan asked. “What are you talking about?”
r />   “They never told you that Walker managed to kill the guy who shot her?”

  “No,” Alan said. “They didn’t say a word about that.”

  “Doesn’t surprise me,” Sam said. “I think it makes the feds feel smug when they know something you don’t.”

  “Who was the guy? Was he involved in stealing our money?”

  “They’re not sure. He had no identification on him, and they didn’t get a match on his fingerprints. They’re submitting a DNA sample, but don’t hold your breath on that. The DNA database in the States is nothing compared to the one in the UK. We’re a little behind the times over here.”

  “Was this Alicia Walker woman working on the NewPro case?” Alan asked.

  “From what I understand—yes. She had met a guy about six weeks ago who called himself Tony Stevens, and she suspected he was planning some sort of scam with NewPro. The district office in New York didn’t have any undercover work for her at that time and gave her the okay to follow up on it. And it was Tony Stevens who killed her. The connection’s there all right.”

  “It’s not good news that an agent is dead, but maybe this is a bit of a break.” Alan heard a clicking sound as Taylor picked up the extension.

  “Let’s keep our fingers crossed,” Sam said. He ran his fingers across the glass that covered a picture of him posing with his family. All four of them were smiling. Days long gone. “Hey, Hawkins told me you and Taylor may have given them something to work with.”

  “The Canadian thing?”

  “Yeah. They’re expanding the search to include Canada. Personally, I think they should be looking internationally on this one, but they seem convinced Brand and his accomplices are American.”

  “What about the tie to Mexico you found on the computers?” Alan asked.

  “In their minds that’s even more evidence pointing to them being from the States. They’re definitely not Mexican or South American, so that just leaves the United States and Canada in close proximity to Mexico. None of them spoke with any kind of an accent, so they’ve mostly ruled out Europe as well. I think the real reason they’re not looking outside the States or Canada is that once they do, they lose control. The FBI doesn’t have jurisdiction outside the country’s borders. They don’t in Canada either, but our country and theirs are so tightly linked, the Bureau can operate there and get away with it. In a clandestine manner, of course.”

  “Maybe they’re right about Brand and his guys being American. None of them had accents.”

  “You mean Brand and his two VPs here in San Francisco?” Morel asked.

  “Yes. Roger Tate and Ben Wright. I don’t imagine anything came up when they ran those names?” Alan asked.

  Morel shook his head. “Nothing. Names mean nothing to these guys. They pick a name, use it for the duration of the con, then chuck it. Investigators refer to the name they were using just so we can keep track of who we’re talking about.”

  Taylor nodded. “We understand. We discussed that.” She was quiet for a minute, then asked, “What now? Where does it go from here?”

  “There are a lot of people at the Bureau mighty pissed off right now, and that could help us. There’s the possible Canadian connection, and we can always hope they match the DNA on the body they found in the bathroom with Alicia Walker. Other than that, we don’t have a lot.”

  “Ghosts,” Alan said. “These guys are ghosts. How is that possible with today’s technology?”

  “Sometimes I think technology makes things easier for the bad guys,” Morel said. “If someone’s got money and a bit of savvy, they can disappear quite easily. If you keep yourself clean and never get fingerprinted or have your DNA stored on a police database, you can just blend into the crowd. There are a lot of crowds out there these days.”

  “Six billion people on the planet. That’s a pretty big haystack,” Taylor said.

  Alan’s voice was grim. “And we need to find one.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Three weeks.

  Twenty-one days had passed since they had first learned of Alicia Walker’s death. Alan and Taylor had fielded nine calls from Sam Morel telling them that neither the San Francisco police nor the FBI had anything new. Trying to dredge up Tony Stevens’s real identity had slowly drawn to a dead end. The Bureau had circulated his picture across the United States and to Interpol. No hits. There were no boats registered to a Tony Stevens anywhere in the Bahamas. DNA profiling had come up empty. Nothing on the cadaver’s fingerprints either. Tony Stevens was a John Doe.

  The Canadian angle had died a slow death as well. Edward Brand may have injected Canadian expressions in his speech, but the man wasn’t on the Canadian radar. Hawkins and Abrams had linked up with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and ran searches through their extensive database. Not even the slightest glitch. The entire investigation was slowly grinding to a halt.

  Taylor glanced up from her desk at the sound of a quiet knock on her door. Kelly Kramer was leaning against the door jamb. She jumped up, rounded the desk and gave him a hug. Both wore smiles.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked as they sat on the couch against one of the walls without windows. Taylor’s corner office at Ad-dicted, her new employer, was spacious and tastefully furnished. Dry-mounted posters of previous ad campaigns hung on the walls, and soft music played through the ceiling-mounted speakers. Her view was north to the bay, where a gentle October mist trailed across the water.

  “I missed you,” Kelly said, his handsome face still smiling. “Wanted to make sure they were treating you okay over here.”

  She let her eyes drift around the room. “I don’t mind it as much as I thought I would. Nick’s got a great team in place. No wonder we were always fighting with him for the best clients. He runs Addicted much like G-cubed.” She grinned. “And he’s paying me very well. I’m already on track for a most generous bonus.”

  “We miss you,” Kelly said. “Everyone at G-cubed misses you a lot.”

  “How is it over there?” she asked, not really wanting him to answer.

  “It’s good. Pretty much business as usual. The new owners were smart enough to realize they didn’t need to reinvent the wheel. The groups are intact, and we’ve managed to retain all our clients. But we’ve noticed your boss is spending time on the golf course with some of those clients.”

  “Yeah, I noticed as well. But that’s business, Kelly. If the tables were reversed I’d be all over them.”

  “I suppose.” There was a short silence, and he thoughtfully stroked his goatee. “I’m quitting.”

  Taylor didn’t show surprise. “What are you going to do?”

  “I figure it’s time to use that Master’s degree in Crime Investigation I spent five years getting. I threw my résumé out on the market and had three offers. Two in Washington and one in Dallas.”

  “Washington? D.C. or state?”

  “D.C.”

  “You going to be a spy?” Taylor asked. Again the grin.

  He returned the smile but shook his head. “Can’t talk about it. But it’s with the government.”

  “Ooh, it’s true. I’m going to know a spy,” Taylor said.

  “That’s a good line. If it helps to pick up women, I’ll go with it.” Kelly grinned. The last thing he needed was help picking up women.

  “Be careful,” she said.

  He nodded. “Anything new on what happened?”

  She shook her head. “Sam Morel over at Central District still keeps Alan and me in the loop, but there’s not much new to report. We thought they had something a couple of times, but none of the leads worked out. One of them was kind of up your alley.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Sam managed to track down six of the computers NewPro used while their San Francisco office was up and running. He had some computer whiz scan the drives, and even though they’d been wiped clean, he still got some data off them. It pointed to Mexico, but the trail just dried up.”

  “Where are the co
mputers now?”

  “The FBI had them for a week, but they had trouble even duplicating what Sam’s guy got off them. I think they sent the computers back to Sam’s office. Why?”

  He shrugged. “I could take a look. You never know.”

  “Sure. I’ll call Sam and see if he could arrange it. You don’t mind?”

  “Mind?” He reached out and took her hand. “Taylor, there’s not a day goes by when I don’t think about what happened to you and Alan. If there’s any way I can help, I want to.”

  “Okay. That’s really sweet of you.” She squeezed his hand. “I’ll call Sam.”

  “Thanks.”

  They slowly unhooked hands. “Have you made a decision on which offer you’ll take?”

  “I have. Washington. It’s closer to Baltimore, actually.”

  She smiled. “National Security Agency? Their main complex is somewhere between Baltimore and D.C.”

  He didn’t nod or shake his head, just sat impassively. It confirmed her guess. “I’ve got to be going,” he said, standing. She stood, and they hugged again. “Call me when you get the okay on the computers from your cop buddy.”

  “Will do,” she said.

  Kelly rounded the corner and disappeared from sight. Taylor returned to her desk and dropped into her chair. She swiveled about and stared out over the bay. The view was stunning. She loved San Francisco and the eclectic intensity that made the city so different from anywhere else she had visited or lived. It pulsed with originality and energy. The good news was that she didn’t have to leave the city. They had found a rental not far from their current house, and although the monthly lease was steep, it allowed them to stay in the city itself and not have to venture into the surrounding communities. It was strange to think of renting after owning houses for so many years, but going that route allowed them to bank the proceeds from the sale and wait until they were in a position to buy something they really wanted, not just an interim house. Alan was at home packing up the last few things. The moving truck was coming tomorrow. Their possession date wasn’t for another two weeks, but the movers had given them a huge break on the price for moving on a Wednesday in the middle of the month rather than waiting until the end of October when they were swamped.