Shell Game

by Jeff Buick

  After four hours of uninterrupted work, Kelly set the SEAL data aside and ran his hands through his hair, rubbing his scalp and stimulating his brain. He loved the work, but it was mentally draining. He made a quick trip to the coffee station and returned with a cup of fresh java. The phone number for Buzzards Bar & Grill on the East Cape near San José del Cabo was on a slip of paper on the side of his desk and he keyed it into his computer. He then ran a global search program to find the service provider for that phone number. It was a medium-size Mexican company, and Kelly had little trouble bringing up a screen with the phone logs. The calls were sorted daily, then by increasing time during each twenty-four-hour period. He found the calls for November 3.

  Kelly did the math in his head. Taylor said Alan had gone over the cliff around ten after five in the evening. The section of cliff where the accident had occurred was four miles north of Buzzards, and on rugged potholed roads that distance would take about fifteen minutes. He calculated sometime between four-fifty and five o’clock. There was one outgoing call inside the ten-minute time span—at 4:53. It was the only call for fifteen minutes either side. Whoever owned that number had spoken with Edward Brand just before Alan went over the cliff.

  He typed in the phone number listed and hit Enter. The response was back in less than six seconds. Carlos Valendez. Address was noted as 417 Matamoros Street, Cabo San Lucas. It meant nothing to him, but somehow Senor Valendez was tied in with Edward Brand, and it was another dot that needed connecting. If there were enough dots, the trail would eventually lead back to Brand. Then to Alan. But Kelly was smart enough to know that Brand was the target. Alan Bestwick was simply another cog in the very efficient wheel Edward Brand had assembled to pull off the con. Find Brand and the wheel would crumble. In the rubble would be Alan Bestwick.

  It was time to call his contact in the SFPD. He placed the call and waited for someone to pick up. When they did he asked for Lieutenant Barry Gilmore. The line rang again, and a man answered. His voice was a deep baritone.

  “Barry, it’s Kelly Kramer.”

  “Kelly.” Gilmore’s voice changed slightly—took on a friendly tone. “Where the hell are you? I tried your number last week. It’s disconnected.”

  “I’m in D.C.” Kelly said. “Took a job out here a while back. Had enough of your crazy up-and-down streets. My brakes kept wearing out.”

  “You’re really in Washington?”

  “Yup.”

  “Holy shit. We sure don’t miss you on the diamond, but we do miss you down at the bar. You bought a lot of rounds to make up for all your errors in the field and strikeouts at the plate. You ever coming back for a visit?”

  “Maybe. But right now I’ve got something else on my mind.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Do you know a guy named Sam Morel?”

  “Yeah, of course. I know Sam real well. He’s over at Central Station. He’s good people. What do you need to know?”

  “Everything.” Kelly said. “I need his personnel file.”

  There was a small silence, then, “What for, Kelly? Why would an advertising guy need a file on a police inspector?”

  Kelly had a choice. He could try to bullshit his way around Gilmore, or he could give him the goods and hope for some level of cooperation. It was actually a pretty easy decision. Straight off the top, he told the lieutenant what agency he worked for. That in itself lent some credibility to his request. After he had filled Gilmore in with what had happened to Taylor Simons, with the exception of knowing her husband was alive, he shut his mouth and waited.

  “You think Sam might be in bed with this Edward Brand guy?” he asked.

  “Don’t know. Personally, I think it’s one of the FBI guys. But you never know. I’m just covering all the bases.”

  “So what are you looking for?”

  “Somewhere along the line, Brand has got his hooks into one of these three guys. And whoever it is, is feeding him information. I’ve run the personnel records on both Abrams and Hawkins, and I’m waiting for the results. Somewhere in all this there is an arrest that went sideways, or something like that. Somewhere that Brand began his relationship with the dirty cop. I just need to find it.”

  “What if Sam’s the guilty one? What then? I can’t be giving up one of my own guys.”

  “This is just for me, Barry. I’m trying to figure out who Brand really is and how to find him. This has nothing to do with taking down a dirty cop.”

  Again, the silence. “All right, Kelly. I’ll do this for you. I’ll pull Sam’s file and look at it myself. If I see any sign he might have linked up with someone in return for cash, I’ll give it to you. But it’s my call. My decision as to what I release. His file is confidential.”

  “Not a problem, Barry. That works for me. Thanks.”

  “Okay. Hey, how did you ever get a job at the National Security Agency? That’s spy shit, right?”

  Kelly laughed. “Sort of. I’m just a computer geek.”

  “You said it, not me.”

  They said good-bye, and both men hung up. Kelly returned to his work on the Algerian communiqué, spending almost three hours working on the coded transmission before finally shutting down the file and securing it in his computer. He opened his e-mail server and checked to see if there was any information back on Hawkins and Abrams. There was a return e-mail from the search engine. Inside were two separate files—one for each agent. He was just starting on John Abrams’s file when his phone rang. He checked the caller ID. It was Barry Gilmore in San Francisco.

  “Hey, Barry,” he said.

  “Jesus, you weren’t kidding. You really do work for NSA. I called the main switchboard and they put me through.”

  Kelly laughed. “I told you, I just work on computer stuff. I’m a cubicle rat.”

  “Okay, cubicle rat, I’ve got something for you.”

  “What?” Kelly replied, leaning forward with his pen poised over a pad on his desk.

  “There was one glitch in Sam’s file. I had to look long and hard to find it. He had a run-in with senior brass on a file about six years ago. He was working a major-crimes case with ties to organized crime. It started when an upscale drug dealer got shot execution style in his mansion. Looked to be a turf war between two rival dealers, but then it took some interesting twists.”

  “How so?”

  “There was a lot of money laundering going on. The guy who was murdered had a bank manager on his payroll, and he was pumping a lot of dirty money through the Bahamas—tens of millions of dollars a year. So there was tons of money at stake when the dealer got popped. Everyone wanted in. According to Sam Morel, the guy the police had fingered for the murder wasn’t the shooter. He was being framed, and the real killers were part of the dead guy’s staff and had worked the deal from the inside.”

  “So what’s wrong with that? Maybe Sam was right. How did he piss off the senior guys in the force?”

  “They wanted the collar to stick. It was an easy sell to the DA. One drug dealer killing another one. Nobody gives a shit, even if the dead guy is rich. Because of Sam, the case fell apart. They never got the shooters. He got his transfer out of major crimes about two months later.”

  “The guy he got off, what was his name?” Kelly asked, holding his breath. Maybe Morel was the one.

  “Armand DeGaussier. Why?”

  “Just wondering. You think that’s his real name?”

  “That’s what’s in the file.”

  “You have a picture of this DeGaussier fellow?”

  There was the sound of Gilmore striking keys on his computer; then he said, “Yeah, I’ve got a picture. You want me to e-mail it to you?”

  “Sure,” Kelly said, giving Barry Gilmore his e-mail address. “Nothing else on Morel?”

  “That’s it. He’s a straight shooter, Kelly. A good cop.”

  “Okay, thanks.”

  Kelly hung up and watched his computer screen. A couple of minutes later the machine beeped, and a new e-ma
il with an attachment appeared. He opened the e-mail and read the quick message from Gilmore. Then he opened the attachment and took a deep breath. Was it Edward Brand? Nothing happened for a few seconds; then a photo of a man appeared on the screen. He was olive-skinned with jet-black hair and piercing gray eyes. He had gaunt cheeks and a full forehead, out of proportion with the rest of his face. One thing was quickly certain. It wasn’t Edward Brand.

  Kelly closed the attachment and the e-mail. He reopened the file on John Abrams and printed it. Then he did the same with Brent Hawkins. His briefcase was on the floor by his desk, and he deposited the two personnel files in one of the compartments and zipped it. Then he shut down his computer, hoisted the briefcase and turned out the lights. It was almost eight o’clock and he’d been in since seven-thirty that morning. That made for a long day. Taylor had booked a flight back to San Francisco and had departed Washington at eleven in the morning. She would be safely back in her house by now, probably staring at the million-dollar check and hating that she had to deposit it.

  He slid his security pass through the reader and the doors to the parking area opened automatically. He trudged to his car, feeling a little depressed. It had been nice when Taylor was visiting, but now the condo was empty. Friends like Taylor Simons didn’t come around every day. A sadness settled over him as he started his car. He was going to miss her.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  The clock had just ticked past ten on Wednesday morning when the phone rang. Taylor left the Internet page on her computer screen and checked her call display. It was Kelly.

  “Hi,” she said. “How are things?”

  “Pretty good, but your voice is all muffled. You having a problem with your home phone?”

  “No, why?”

  “I can hardly hear you. Could you do me a favor and find a pay phone and call me back? You’ve got the number.”

  “I’ll try my cell phone. That might be better.”

  “No. Try a pay phone. You can find one if you drive a mile or so.”

  Taylor was silent, thinking about what Kelly was saying. There was nothing wrong with her home phone, she could hear him fine, and he didn’t want her on a cell. At least, not on a cell phone that might be being monitored. She understood. Someone could be listening.

  “Sure. I need to go out for groceries anyway. I’ll call you.” She hung up and headed for the front door. Then she paused for a second, returned to the computer, printed the page and left the house with it folded in her pocket. The December winds off the bay were cold and she was shivering by the time she got to her car. She started the Audi and pulled into traffic. Kelly Kramer was not a man who spooked easily. She had seen him rock solid in the boardroom, unflinching when millions of dollars were resting on a single word. He worked for the NSA and the CIA as well. The man was intelligent and focused. If he thought it was a good idea for her to call from an untraceable phone, then she agreed. She pulled up around the corner from a coffee shop that she knew had a pay phone hanging on the wall just inside the front door. The clerk smiled when she entered, and she ordered a small medium roast before making her way to the phone and swiping her calling card. She dialed Kelly’s direct line. He answered on the second ring.

  “You’re on a safe phone?” he asked.

  “Yes. I’m in a coffee shop near where Alan and I used to live. I wanted to go someplace indoors. It’s cold outside.”

  “Here too. And snowing.” He took a breath. “I’ve got something for you.”

  “What?”

  “The good news is that Sam Morel isn’t our guy. Aside from a run-in with some piece-of-shit drug dealer that looked like it might go sideways, he’s clean. In fact, from what I heard from a buddy who works in the Tenderloin District, Sam’s a good guy to have on our side. He’s honest and ethical.”

  “That’s good news. I like Sam. But what else did you find?”

  “I pulled the personnel records for Brent Hawkins and John Abrams, right back to when they were students at Quantico. John Abrams is squeaky clean. He’s probably never gone to the bathroom without disinfecting his hands after. But Hawkins is a little different. He looks good on the surface, but when I started digging I found some interesting stuff.”

  “Like what?” Taylor asked, sipping the coffee and watching the street for suspicious-looking vehicles. She wasn’t sure whether she was getting paranoid or cautious. The two were delineated by a very fine line.

  “Hawkins was running a sting operation in New Orleans about six years ago. They were trying to entrap a man they suspected was running a series of cons on elderly people who had recently lost their spouses. They were looking seriously at one person. Robert Zindler. Mere hours before they were ready to move in, the case fell apart. Zindler disappeared, almost as if he had been warned. They wrapped things up, assuming that Zindler had gotten wise or scared, and went on to their next case. But that wasn’t what happened.”

  “Zindler was warned.”

  “I’m pretty sure he was. Because after digging through all the smoke and mirrors, guess who owns the Mary Dyer?”

  “Robert Zindler.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Edward Brand is really Robert Zindler.”

  “Yes. So I stuck Robert Zindler in the computer and guess what I got?”

  “Very little,” Taylor said.

  “Try nothing. He’s American, born in Chicago. Both parents deceased for over a decade. The man has never been convicted of any offense. Last known address was San Diego, eighteen years ago. He dropped off the face of the earth since then. Probably using different aliases for each of his scams and never went back to using his real name.”

  “Smart guy. I’m sure he’s pissed off a lot of people over the years.”

  “Take someone’s money and they’re going to be mad all right. Since he seems to take on the new identity for whatever con he’s running, I think we should still refer to him as Edward Brand. Less confusing.”

  “Sure. It’s all semantics. Edward Brand it is.” Taylor watched a dark four-door sedan cruise past. The windows were tinted. She turned away from the road and spoke softly. “Well, the man has a bit of a sense of humor.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Taylor pulled the sheet of paper she had printed from her pocket. “I checked the name Mary Dyer on the Internet. It was a sailing ship back in the early 1800s. In fact, it was the ship that transported the Treasure of Lima from the Peruvian capitol when it appeared the city was going to fall to invaders. One small problem. The captain of the ship absconded with the treasure. It’s never been found.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Nope. Edward Brand has a rather dry sense of humor.”

  “He does. Listen, I’ve got something else as well.”

  “What?

  “The phone number Brand dialed when he used the house phone at Buzzards belongs to some guy named Carlos Valendez. He’s tied in with Brand somehow. Probably who we figured—the contact man for the scuba divers who pulled Alan out of the car.”

  “What can we do with that information?”

  “No idea. Maybe it’ll come in handy at some point. It’s better to have more info than less.”

  “I suppose so.” Taylor watched as the same car with the tinted windows drove by for a second time. Were they watching her, or was it someone trolling for a parking spot? “You know what bugs me, Kelly?”

  “What?”

  “If we can find out who Brand is, why can’t the FBI? They’ve got pretty much the same resources you have.”

  “They don’t have the tie to the Mary Dyer. It was getting the name off Brand’s yacht that started the process. Without a starting point, you’re often dead in the water. That, and the fact that Brent Hawkins isn’t going to be pointing the investigation in the right direction.”

  “What do we do with this? We know who he is, but have no idea where he is.”

  “The Mary Dyer will have to dock somewhere eventually, unless he owns waterfront pr
operty with a large enough berth for a seventy-two-foot yacht. When he does, I’ll see him. I’ve got a search engine up and running, scanning all the marinas where yachts that size can be moored. He’ll show up at some point.”

  “Okay, then we know who he is and where he is. That still doesn’t get me what I want.”

  “Your money?”

  “That and Alan.”

  “Don’t worry about Alan right now. We concentrate on Edward Brand. We get him, we’ll get Alan.”

  “Okay. Still, it pisses me off that Alan’s out there somewhere.”

  “I understand. Hey, one more thing. Watch where you use your credit cards. Hawkins is probably watching you electronically. Try to keep your purchases mainstream. Don’t go running ownership profiles on yachts and stuff like that. We need Hawkins reporting back to Brand that you’re settling in to your new life without your husband.”

  “All right.”

  “Did you deposit the check?”

  “This morning, about an hour before you called. Boy, did that raise a couple of eyebrows at the bank.”

  Kelly laughed. “I would think so.” There was a short break, and then he said, “I’ll call you when I’ve got a hit on the yacht. You’ll have to go to a pay phone. Don’t ever use the same one twice.”

  “Tell you what, I’ll check my caller ID. If I see your name come up I’ll just head for a phone and call you. I won’t even pick up.”

  “Okay, but I’ll only call you from the office. They could tap my home phone, but there’s absolutely no chance they can put any sort of listening device on this one. Security’s too tight here. So if you return my call, always use my office number.”

  “Okay. And thanks again, Kelly.”

  “My pleasure.”