Shell Game

by Jeff Buick

  Taylor returned to the street and glanced up and down the narrow roadway, concentrating on the parked cars. She couldn’t see the sedan with the tinted windows. Probably just a local trying to find a parking space close to home. She tucked a handful of red hair up in her tam and snugged it down over her ears. God, it was cold. Mid-December and no sign of spring. It was depressing outside. Low cloud cover and a very real threat of rain. Cold rain. Not like the warm rains that fall in the Caribbean—short cloudbursts that replenish the air with ozone and green up the vegetation, then pass on to the next Island.

  As she walked down the sidewalk in that gray world, she wondered which route her life was destined to travel. Was she on an Island in the midst of a short-lived squall? Or was she trapped in a world of depressing gray, with a constant drizzle that sucked the spirit from the soul?

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Foot traffic on the Malecon was normal for a Thursday. In fact, it was normal for any day in December in Puerto Vallarta. The popular walkway, paralleling the beach and just on the fringe of the city center, was a curious mix of already-brown and still-browning tourists. The only Mexicans on the stroll were the timeshare sales people, a dwindling breed in a resort town where fractional ownership had peaked years back, and street vendors hawking beads and blankets. Edward Brand, dressed in khaki shorts and a loose-fitting white shirt, blended right in.

  He passed the scuba shop just as a group of divers exited, heading across the beach to a waiting skiff. A dive boat was anchored a few hundred feet offshore. Brand sat on the bench overlooking the still waters of the Pacific and lit a cigarette. He sucked in the smoke and exhaled, watching the divers board the small craft. He thought it was funny that they would try to get in the boat without getting their feet wet. A dark-skinned Mestizo pulled the string on the motor, and it coughed to life, spewing blue smoke into the fresh ocean air. The motor revved, and then the craft was on its way, a small wake spreading through the gentle surf. Brand finished his cigarette and stepped on the embers. A moment later, his cell phone rang. He checked the caller ID and answered.

  “Yes?” was all he said.

  “Just calling in to report on the woman in San Francisco,” the voice said. It belonged to Brent Hawkins, and he was referring to Taylor Simons.

  “And . . .”

  “Her trip to Paris seems to be coincidental. She toured about a bit, some of the time in the Latin Quarter, but that’s normal. It’s a popular part of town for tourists.”

  “It’s also a dangerous part of town for her to be wandering around in.”

  “I know. But I don’t think she was there to look for our guy. I had a careful look at her credit card authorizations, and most were for meals and taxis. Some of the meals were close to his apartment, but probably more coincidental than anything else.”

  Brand weighed his response, then said, “All right, so much for Paris. What is she up to now?”

  “She was in Washington for a bit, but she’s back at home now. I’m keeping an eye on her the best I can. After she got back to San Francisco, she took a call from the friend she visited when she was in D.C., but it was a bad connection and they ended up talking on a pay phone. I had a directional mike in the car and made a couple of sweeps by the building she was in when she made the call, but there was too much ambient noise. I had no way to record the conversation. I’m not sure what they talked about.”

  “Is this a problem?” Brand asked, watching the divers climb from the smaller craft onto the dive boat. One of the women slipped and would have tumbled into the water if a crew member hadn’t caught her.

  “No, I don’t think so. But Kelly Kramer, her friend, works at the National Security Agency.”

  Brand sucked in a sharp breath. The odor from a nearby sewage outlet stung his nose and lungs. “What did you say?”

  “NSA. Kelly Kramer works for the National Security Agency.”

  “Jesus Christ. You call to tell me Taylor Simons is talking with a guy who works for NSA and you don’t think this is a problem. Are you fucking nuts?”

  “It’s okay, Edward. Her relationship with Kramer goes back to G-cubed. He worked there as her Web-design expert. He just took the NSA job and moved to Washington. Kramer’s a newbie at the agency. He’s no threat.”

  “Don’t tell me that someone working inside an agency like the NSA isn’t a threat,” Brand shot back. “These guys have access to information no one else does.”

  “That’s crap,” Hawkins said crisply. “They’re not any better connected than we are. I checked out his application and his work history. He’s simply a computer forensics expert they’ve hired to work on information they get from the field operatives. On a scale of one to ten in the agency’s hierarchy, he’s belly-button lint. Nothing.”

  “Christ, you had better be right. That kind of shit scares me.”

  “Don’t let it. From what I can see, Kramer and Simons were pretty tight at G-cubed. They were more like friends than employer-employee. It fits that she’d visit him, given what happened. He’s out of San Fran, and he’s safe. She’s still grieving. She hops a plane and visits a friend in a different city where she isn’t reminded of her husband every time she turns around. It makes sense.”

  “I want you to watch him. Watch him closely.”

  “He’s NSA, Edward. You don’t watch these guys too closely without getting caught. I’ll keep tabs on Taylor. She’s the easy one to watch. I’ve got a bug on her home phone. I can try to track her cell phone, but that’s much more difficult, especially without the office sanctioning it.”

  “Okay,” Brand said. There was a brief silence where neither man spoke. The deep throaty sound of diesel engines skimmed over the water as the dive boat weighed anchor and turned toward the open ocean. It quickly diminished in size as it left the protected area near the beach and headed for Los Arcos, the local dive site near Mismaloya Beach.

  “How are things going with the money?” Hawkins asked.

  “I’ll transfer the funds this afternoon. The money should be in your account by six o’clock tonight.”

  “That’s fast for a Mexican bank.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s no secret that you’ve been using Mexican banks, out of Mexico City. And they’re notoriously slow. I’m impressed they can get the money across so fast.”

  “I don’t use Mexican banks,” Brand said. “Seven of our marks were given scraps of information so they could find the antique shop in Mexico City. That’s why those accounts were set up. I transferred a bit of money to them, but nothing substantial. Your money will be coming from a Caribbean account. That’s all you need to know.”

  “I don’t care if a stork drops it, so long as I get it.”

  “It’s coming. This afternoon. Including the fifty large for checking out the woman’s trip to Paris.”

  “Good. I’ll be waiting.” Hawkins hung up.

  Edward Brand lit another cigarette and watched the smoke curl up and slowly dissipate into the warm Mexican air. He stared out at the ocean, the water’s surface a series of gentle sine waves as the surf touched the shore. There was no sign that a boat had just passed that way. If he hadn’t been sitting in that chair, watching the dive boat leave the harbor, he would never have known. It struck him that the world was filled with two kinds of people. There were those who blazed trails across the landscape leaving indelible marks on the terrain of their lives. Others floated on water leaving no trail to show where they had been or what they had done.

  And for the first time in his life, he felt a tinge of sadness. Perhaps that he was wasting his life, leaving no mark. He had no children, no career that he could point to and say, This is what I did with my life. Not unless he wanted to highlight the trail of misery and anger he left in his wake. But they were choices made many years ago and those choices had led him to where he was now. And that included being very wealthy. That it was other people’s money was merely a technicality. Money didn’t care who owned it
.

  He smiled and crushed out the cigarette. An inkling of a conscience. Now that was a first.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Taylor glanced at the phone and saw Kelly’s ID. She ignored it, slipped into a heavy coat and drove her Audi to the local grocery store. Inside, she wheeled her cart to the rear of the store and dialed his direct line from the pay phone. He answered immediately.

  “Where are you?” he asked.

  “Grocery store. Pay phone. What’s up?”

  “I found the Mary Dyer.”

  Taylor felt her pulse surge. Edward Brand, within their grasp. “Where?”

  “It’s docked in the marina at Puerto Vallarta.”

  “I know Puerto Vallarta. I’ve been there three or four times. So he’s still in Mexico.”

  “He is—and that’s unfortunate for us. It’s tough to get any sort of police force or government agency to try to extradite a criminal unless it’s been proven beyond the wildest glimmer of doubt that he’s guilty. Guilty of something pretty substantial. I’m not sure the scam he pulled with NewPro would fall inside those guidelines. Two hundred million dollars is a lot of money, but it’s probably too complicated to find him, drag him back to the States and convict him in a court of law. So my guess is that he’s safe—for now at least. No wonder he likes it down there so much.”

  “Yeah, that and the weather,” Taylor said cynically. She didn’t want to dwell on the thought that they may know where Brand was but that there would be no help forthcoming from the cops. “So what can we do? I mean, we know who he is and where he is. There must be something we can do with what we know.”

  “Maybe. I’m not sure what.”

  There was a long, silent pause. Taylor had been toying with something, and she figured this was as good a time as ever to mention it. “Listen, Kelly, Brand being in Mexico might not be a bad thing.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ve got an idea. It’s kind of been banging around in my head the last couple of weeks, and I’ve done a lot of poking around on the Internet and in a few research books. I think I might have something.”

  “I don’t understand. What are you talking about?”

  It was complicated and she decided that face-to-face would be the best way to let Kelly know what she was thinking about. “Not on the phone. Let’s get together.”

  “Where?”

  “Is it okay if I come back to your place?”

  “Of course. I’d like that.”

  “Thanks, Kelly,” she said. The sincerity in his voice wasn’t lost on her. “I don’t think it’s a good idea if I fly direct to Washington. I might be getting paranoid, but I think I’m being followed.”

  “Dark four-door cars? Tinted windows?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Could be our friend at the FBI. What are you thinking?”

  “I’ve got a friend in Houston. I fly down to see her, then continue on to Washington. But I leave her my credit card, and she goes out every day or two and buys dinner or a piece of clothing. That way, if they’re watching me electronically, like you think they might be, they’ll think I’m still in Houston.”

  “You’re starting to think like a spook. That’s kind of scary.”

  “What do you think?”

  “It’s a good idea. Will your friend go for it?”

  “Sure. She’ll just buy the clothes to fit her, not me.”

  “Okay. How do you plan on getting to D.C. from Houston.”

  “I’ll probably have to take the bus. You need ID to fly.”

  There was a silence, then Kelly said, “I doubt if Hawkins would risk tracking your passport. That requires an entirely different level of clearance than just watching your credit cards. You’re probably fine to fly from Houston to Washington. Just make sure you pay cash for your flight.”

  “You can do that?” she asked.

  “Sure. Just go to a travel agent in Houston and pay cash. So long as you have ID, they’ll sell you a ticket.

  “Okay, I’ll get to Houston and link up with my friend. Once I know when the flight arrives in D.C. I’ll call you at the office.”

  “That’ll work fine.”

  Taylor hung up and left the grocery store. She went back home, called her travel agent and had her book a flight from San Francisco to Houston, returning in twenty days. She had no intention of using the return portion of the ticket, but if Brent Hawkins was watching her he would think she was planted in Texas for a while and maybe get lazy. If her friend didn’t mind signing her Visa card and picking up some free clothes, Taylor had the perfect cover. Hawkins would think she was in Houston, and that worked for her. Because she had an idea that might relieve Edward Brand of some of the money he had stolen.

  Taylor had always been fascinated by tales of treasure. Treasure of any sort—buried, entombed, plundered—it didn’t matter. The thought that great wealth was just sitting there, ready for the taking, was powerful. She had read Treasure Island three times, always wondering why Robert Louis Stevenson never let his infamous Captain Silver find at least a taste of what lay buried under the sand. The National Geographic channel was one of her favorites, and she never missed a special on the Egyptian tombs or any archeological dig that may unearth objects of value. She read extensively on the subject, and that’s how she first heard of the treasure of Oaxaca.

  The state of Oaxaca, which she learned was pronounced wa-HA-ka, was a perfect setting for lost treasure. Over a seven hundred-year period, no fewer than fifteen different Indian tribes had settled in the fertile valleys nestled between the mountain ranges of the Sierra Madre del Sur and the Sierra Madre de Oaxaca. Their level of advancement rivaled or exceeded that of twelfth-century Europe, with intricate pyramids and temples rising above the virgin cloud forests that blanketed the region. The Zapotec people devised a primitive alphabet and began using the 365-day calendar. They also built a city they called Monte Alban.

  As Taylor dug into the history of the area, she found that throughout the rule of the Zapotec tribe, the city grew in wealth and prosperity. When the Aztecs finally arrived in the 1400s, there was already an incredible base of wealth, measured in gold and jewels. The Aztecs simply added to that trove. The result was one of the most substantial treasures ever amassed.

  But what intrigued Taylor was that the treasure the Spaniards looted when they overthrew the Aztecs was not even close to what had been recorded by the Zapotec tribes. Something was missing. That fact had not gone unnoticed. In the last two decades, a couple of top-level treasure hunters had put together expeditions and tried to find the remaining cache of gold and precious stones. Despite a logical and exacting approach to the problem, the undiscovered treasure had eluded them. Then, in 1999, there was a major earthquake that had essentially sealed the abandoned city of Monte Alban. The Mexican government put a moratorium on hunting for treasure anywhere in the region, and that meant the treasure was still there. Sitting, waiting to be found.

  That treasure, buried somewhere in the ancient city of Monte Alban, was her bait.

  Edward Brand was a cautious man who dotted every i and crossed every t. He was also a greedy man who liked wealth and what it could buy. She knew a bit about Edward Brand, having met him and having seen the scope of his con. This was not a man who thought small. If she and Kelly could somehow get Brand to believe they had the key to the Monte Alban treasure, maybe they could retrieve some of the money he had stolen.

  Maybe. It was a long shot.

  She packed and headed to bed early, her flight leaving at just after ten in the morning. Sleep didn’t come for a while, and she lay in bed staring around her bedroom thinking of what Alan was doing that very moment. Paris was six hours ahead of the West Coast of the United States, which meant it was almost six in the morning in the Latin Quarter. Was he waking up next to another woman? Did she know who he was? Did she care? Alan was wealthy, having taken her for millions of dollars. There were a lot of women in the world who didn’t care where the money came from—so
long as it was there. Somehow she doubted he was sleeping alone. Her mind finally slowed, and she drifted off. But just before darkness slipped over her, she had one last vision.

  Alan and Edward Brand, on the street and penniless.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Flying into Houston on Saturday, just nine days before Christmas, was crazy. The airport was packed with holiday travelers, and it took Taylor a few minutes to find Linda Frederick, one of her closest and longest friends. They hugged, oblivious to the mayhem around them, then went in search of Taylor’s bags. Once they had her suitcase, they pushed their way through to the parking lot. The quiet inside Linda’s car was a welcome break.

  “What the heck is going on?” Linda asked as she drove. She was a natural blonde with widely spaced eyes, high cheekbones and a quick smile. She had a habit of going google-eyed whenever someone made a comment she considered interesting. She was five-ten and medium-boned, but in excellent shape and wore stylish clothes that accented her figure. Linda Frederick was a woman who turned heads.

  “Oh, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Taylor said, cracking the window and enjoying the warm Texas air. It was a pleasant change from the cold winds coming in off the bay.

  “Try me.” Linda grinned, and her face lit up. Always happened. You just couldn’t dislike someone who glowed every time she smiled.

  Taylor spent the entire drive to Linda’s house recounting what had happened. Her friend simply drove and kept her mouth shut, listening. When Taylor finished, the car was completely silent for a minute. Linda pulled into her driveway and switched off the ignition. She unclipped her seatbelt and shifted in her seat so she was facing Taylor.

  “You’re heading for Mexico to try to find this Edward Brand guy who stole thirteen million dollars from you?”

  “You got it.”

  “And Alan is in on this?”

  “Yes.” Taylor could feel her eyes start to tear, but as quickly as it started, it stopped. “There’s no doubt about it. Everything pointed to him being part of the scam, but when I saw the divers pull him out of the car, I knew for sure.”