by Diane Kelly
“Why her?” I asked as the elevator doors slid open and we stepped, and/or rolled, inside. If they wanted me to shoot someone for them, they were out of luck. I was a federal agent, not a mercenary for hire.
“’Cause we need her to find a con artist who took us for a ride,” Hear No told me, “and she obviously doesn’t take any crap.”
My lips curled up in a smile. Okay, so I was flattered by that particular comment.
The doors slid shut and the car began to ascend.
“You know her?” See No asked.
Very well. “I am her.”
The standing men’s mouths gaped along with their sitting friend’s.
“No kidding?” See No said.
“No kidding.”
He looked me up and down. “But you’re just an itty-bitty thing.”
“I’m taller than you.” I put a flat hand on top of my head and moved it out in a simulated salute to show that he didn’t quite reach it. “See?”
“That’s only ’cause I can’t stand up straight anymore,” he said. “I used to be six feet two.”
Yikes. Better add more calcium-rich kale and broccoli to my diet.
The elevator bell dinged as it stopped on my floor.
“Come with me.” I motioned for them to follow me as the doors opened. “We can talk in my office.”
We stepped off the elevator and started down the hall, the tennis balls on the feet of the walker giving off a soft thump with each step. As we approached my boss’s office, she looked up from her desk. Lu’s strawberry-blond beehive was coiffed to perfection today, standing tall and proud atop her head, shellacked with her contraband hairspray. Her thick false eyelashes and bright orange lipstick gave her an almost doll-like appearance, despite the fact that she was over sixty. She wore a lemon-yellow dress that, over her full, round figure, made her look like an oversized Peep.
Hear No Evil stopped mid-thump and let loose with a wolf whistle. “Who is that beauty?”
See No squinted behind his lenses. “Is she pretty? I can’t tell.”
From his wheelchair, Speak No issued a moan that said he agreed with his hearing-challenged friend. He offered Lu his best half-grin.
It was clear the men meant no harm and Lu looked more pleased than offended, her face blushing as pink as her cotton-candy-colored hair.
“She’s my boss,” I said. “Luella Lobozinski.”
Lu stood from her chair and came out of her office. She smiled at the men and turned to me. “Who do we have here?”
“Um…” I realized I had no idea of these men’s names.
The man with the hearing aids and walker released the bar and held out his hand. “Jeb Proctor,” he said. “Mighty pleased to meet you, young lady.”
Lu took his hand and gave him a coy smile. “I’m hardly a young lady. And I’m old enough to know better than to fall for some pickup line.”
“You’re young to me,” he said. “I’ll be eighty-nine in two months’ time.”
I chimed in now. “They told me someone ripped them off. I’m taking them down to my office to get the details.”
“I’ll come, too,” Lu said, “see if I can be of any help.” She eyed my flame-colored hair. “Love the new look, by the way.”
Of course she would. The crazy color was on par with her own pinkish-orange locks.
“Thanks,” I replied. “I’m still getting used to it.”
We led the men down the hall to my office. When Nick looked up from his desk and realized I had several people who needed seating, he brought his two wing chairs from his space to mine.
My eyes went to his hair. Though his spiky style today wasn’t quite as well coiffed as Alicia had managed to accomplish last night, he’d done a respectable job.
His eyes went to my hair, too, and a sexy grin played about his mouth. “I knew Burning Embers would be a good choice.”
“I got two thumbs-up from security,” I told him, “and compliments from Lu.”
Our new hairstyles addressed, he moved on to more pressing matters. “I’m heading out in a few minutes to meet with the leasing agent.”
Good. We needed to move the mobster case along as quickly as possible.
“How ’bout I pick up pizzas for lunch?” he offered.
The team of agents who’d be working the Fabrizio case planned to gather at noon in my office to get started. Surely they’d appreciate being fed. “That would be great, Nick. Thanks.”
Once Nick had gone and the three men and Lu were seated, I plopped down in my desk chair.
The man with the glasses introduced himself as Harold Brinkley. “This is our buddy Isaiah.” He hiked a thumb at their friend who was listing in the wheelchair. “We’re all residents in the Whispering Pines retirement community.” He straightened his buddy and went on to tell me and Lu that not long ago, all of the residents had received a postcard mailer advertising charter van trips to various vacation spots. He reached into the pocket on the back of Isaiah’s wheelchair, pulled out a postcard, and held it out to me.
I took the postcard from him. It featured a photo image of a slot machine with a red number seven in each of the three windows and silver quarters streaming from the coin dispenser. The text read:
TAKE YOUR NEXT GROUP TRIP WITH TRIPLE 7 ADVENTURES!
TRAVEL IN LUXURY TO CASINOS IN OKLAHOMA AND LOUISIANA
CALL (214) 555–5729 FOR DETAILS
www.777Adventures.com
“None of us can drive anymore,” Harold said, “and we don’t get out much, so we thought it would be fun for a bunch of us to get together and go on a gambling junket. One last hurrah, you know?”
Jeb waved a hand. “Pshaw. We’ve got lots more hurrahs.”
I suspected Jeb was right. Despite his age, he seemed to have a lot of life left in him.
Harold went on. “We called the number on the card and the man who answered said he could come by and show us the van and make arrangements for us to take a trip. He said we’d need to pay him half down in cash to reserve the van, but that he’d provide us with a receipt.”
Harold reached into the wheelchair’s back pocket again and pulled out three pages folded in half. He handed those to me also. I opened them to find three handwritten receipts on preprinted paper with the same image from the postcard and the Triple 7 Adventures logo. According to the information written on the page, each of the men had paid $250 down for a package that was supposed to include transportation to and from the Choctaw Casino Resort in Durant, Oklahoma, as well as two nights’ stay in the resort’s Grand Tower, a daily buffet, and the guest’s choice of spa service. The receipt was dated two months ago, in early March. The purported travel date was to occur in late April.
“I was looking forward to that massage,” Harold said. “I’ve got a hitch in my giddyup.” He put a hand on his hip to show us where the problem lay.
Jeb wagged his eyebrows at Lu. “I was going for the full-body sea salt scrub.”
She wagged a finger right back at him. “You’re a naughty boy, Jeb.”
“When the man came to Whispering Pines,” Harold continued, “he brought the van with him, even let us climb inside and see how nice and comfortable it was. It had comfy seats and a DVD player and everything. He said he’d even throw in a bottle of champagne for free.”
I jotted a few notes on my pad.
Lu cocked her head, her beehive now leaning precariously to the left. “When did things go south?”
“When he didn’t show up on the date of the trip,” Harold said. “All fifteen of us were standing out front waiting with our luggage but he never showed. We called the phone number but it had been disconnected. Tried the Web site, too, and it was down. We phoned the Choctaw Casino. They said they’d never heard of Triple 7 Adventures and had nothing to do with the man who’d come to Whispering Pines.”
Fifteen victims at $250 apiece meant the con artist had pocketed nearly four grand in a matter of minutes. The fact that he’d preyed on elderly victims,
who generally tended to be more trusting, was especially egregious.
Jeb banged a fist on the arm of his walker. “We’re not going to take this lying down.” He glanced over at his friend in the wheelchair. “Sitting down, maybe. But not lying.”
Nearly ninety and he hadn’t lost his wit. I hope I could say the same someday.
“Any chance one of you got the van’s license plate number when he came to Whispering Pines?” I asked.
“We didn’t think to look,” Jeb said.
“How about security?” Lu asked. “Does your community have video cameras?”
Harold’s eyes narrowed in thought behind his thick lenses. “I believe there might be one over the front door. Is that right, Jeb?”
Jeb raised a shoulder. “Could be. Can’t say for sure.”
“What did the man look like?” I asked.
The men exchanged glances. Jeb shrugged.
“All I remember,” Harold said, “was that he was wearing a cowboy hat and sunglasses.”
I mulled things over for a moment. “I might be able to track the guy down through the phone number or Web site, but there are no guarantees. I’ll do my best, though.”
“That’s all we ask,” Harold said.
While Lu chatted with the men in my office, I trotted down the hall to the copy machine and made copies of the receipts and postcards.
When I returned to my digs, I handed the original paperwork back to Harold and obtained contact information for both him and Jeb. Isaiah was asleep so I didn’t bother getting his phone number. “Lu and I will walk y’all back to the elevator.”
My boss and I escorted the men back to the elevator bank and pushed the down-arrow button for them.
As the car arrived, Jeb reached out and took Lu’s hand, raising it to his lips for a kiss. “I’ll be looking forward to seeing you again, Miss Luella.”
He gave me only a “Good-bye,” no hand kiss.
“I’ll be in touch as soon as I know something,” I told the men.
When the doors slid closed, Lu turned to me and sighed. “Harold’s white bucks remind me of Carl.”
Carl was a man Lu had met a few months ago via an online dating service. He not only wore outdated leisure suits and shiny white patent leather bucks, but he sported the world’s worst comb-over, which lay in an intricate basket-weave pattern across his scalp. But what he lacked in fashion sense he more than made up for in personality. He’d been sweet and doting, catering to Lu’s every whim. But when he’d begun to talk marriage, it scared Lu off and she’d broken up with him. Looked like maybe she was regretting her decision to call it quits.
“You miss Carl?” I asked.
“Horribly,” she admitted. “But I heard he’s dating some young floozy now. She’s only fifty-eight. That’s practically robbing the cradle!”
“Have you told him how you feel?”
“No. I’ve got too much pride to go crawling back to him.”
“There’s no shame in admitting you made a mistake, Lu.”
She sighed. “Maybe not. But if he’s happier with the floozy and didn’t take me back, I…” She paused as if collecting both her thoughts and her emotions. “I just don’t think I could handle it.”
“Come on.” I waved a dismissive hand. “You’re Lu Lobozinski. The Lobo. You can handle anything.” After all, the woman had run herd over a dozen or more federal agents for years now and overseen the collection of hundreds of millions of tax dollars. She’d also battled lung cancer and won. And not just anyone could pull off a pink beehive. A minor setback in the romance department couldn’t derail her, could it? I told her as much.
She sighed again. “Tax collection is a cinch compared to matters of the heart.” With that, Lu turned and headed back to her office.
As I watched her walk off, I realized I had three missions now. One, take Tino Fabrizio and his violent empire down. Two, do what I could to track down the scammer who’d ripped off the residents of Whispering Pines. And three, reunite Lu and Carl.
chapter eight
Team Tara
I spent the rest of the morning snooping on my computer for information about Tino Fabrizio and Cyber-Shield.
According to the IRS records, Cyber-Shield Security Systems, Inc., had brought in a little over two million in gross billings last year. Tino had been paid $200,000 in salary. Respectable, but not excessive given that he owned the business and oversaw its operations. A look at the W-2 filings told me that twenty-two men, presumably salesmen, installers, and security patrolmen, had been paid amounts ranging from forty to seventy grand each. The only woman on his payroll earned a relatively modest $35,000. My assumption was she worked as Tino’s administrative assistant. I wondered if she also handled his bookkeeping, and if she did, whether she was involved in laundering money for him. Eric Echols, the tech expert Agent Hohenwald had referenced, had earned a cool $150K.
I spent some time looking further into each of Cyber-Shield’s employees, snooping online to determine whether any of them owned unusually expensive cars, boats, or homes relative to the income they’d reported on their individual returns. When people lived beyond their visible means, it often meant they had received unreported cash income. If one of Tino’s staff owned assets that were out of line with his reported earnings, it could mean Tino was paying the employee cash under the table to coerce and threaten his clients, or maybe splitting the protection payments the employee collected on Tino’s behalf. If I could find such telltale information, it would help us to know which Cyber-Shield employee we should focus our surveillance on.
A preliminary search indicated that one of Tino’s installers owned a suspiciously pricey home in the Lake Highlands area. A little further digging revealed that he’d inherited the place from his deceased grandmother, and that he owned only a one-third share, with his two siblings owning equivalent shares. No other immediate red flags caught my eye. Either the men doing Tino’s dirty work weren’t officially on his payroll, or they weren’t spending their dirty money conspicuously. Perhaps they were using the cash to pay for everyday things like groceries and clothing and entertainment, or maybe they were stockpiling it, saving it up for something special.
I turned my attention back to Cyber-Shield’s return. After salaries, much of the company’s remaining income was paid out for auto maintenance, utilities, supplies, and other standard office expenses, leaving a small net corporate income. Nothing about the return raised any immediate questions in my mind.
I took a second look at the restaurant’s tax returns next, willing the numbers to talk to me. Alas, they were silent. Did the return include only the restaurant’s earnings? Or was Tino’s dirty money being funneled through the bistro? I hoped to figure things out soon so we could quickly nail the guy. Nail. Ugh. There was that word again. The thought of that nail-gun incident had me cringing with phantom pain.
I took a look at the Fabrizios’ personal tax returns, too. Interestingly, Benedetta and Tino filed separate tax returns. Because spouses filing separate returns were denied a multitude of tax benefits, most married couples filed a joint return. Those who didn’t were generally couples who were having marital problems or who’d married later in life and kept their finances separate. On occasion, a taxpayer who suspected his or her spouse of financial shenanigans would file a separate return so as not to be implicated in any tax fraud that might be committed by the spouse.
Did the separate returns in this case mean that Benedetta suspected Tino was up to no good? Or had Tino insisted on separate returns to distance himself from his wife and her bistro so that there’d be one less connection between him and laundered funds?
Of course some couples could benefit from separate returns because splitting their income would allow them to avoid the so-called marriage penalty that applied at the higher income levels. Perhaps their reason for filing separate returns was as simple and benign as that.
I stared at the information on my screen. “If only you numbers could talk.�
�
I looked over both of the personal returns. Other than the fact that the two had filed separately, nothing seemed out of the ordinary or raised any immediate suspicions. Perhaps Tino Fabrizio had properly reported all of his income, even the dirty funds generated through threats and shakedowns. Still, I had my doubts. People who were shady in one area were often shady in another. And if he had reported the extorted funds, he hadn’t identified them as such. There was no entry on the “other income” line of his tax return identifying “extortion earnings.”
Though my role in this joint investigation was to search for evidence of Tino’s financial crimes rather than his violent ones, the two were inextricably linked. I decided to do a little more digging into Eric Echols. If someone had truly doctored the video footage recorded at the bar owned by Alex Harris and his wife, it could have been Echols. While Tino himself might have the tech skills to tamper with the video, I suspected he had someone else do his technical dirty work just as he had someone else do his physical dirty work, at least where his clients were concerned. That way he could maintain plausible deniability if law enforcement came sniffing around.
I logged into the Texas DMV site and pulled up Echols’s driver’s license. According to the data, Echols was twenty-six years old. Given that four years of W-2s had been filed by Cyber-Shield, reporting wages paid to Echols, Tino must have hired him right out of college. The address on the license told me Echols lived in an apartment a few miles north of Cyber-Shield.
I clicked the mouse to enlarge his photo. Staring back at me from the screen was the king of all nerds. Echols had messy hair in a bland color akin to Parmesan cheese. He could really use a trim. His skin was pale, too, his eyes were bulbous and buggy, and his chin was so weak it appeared as if his mouth were simply part of his neck. He wore a wrinkled shirt, one side of his collar bent at an odd angle.
Though Echols appeared to be a classic computer geek, he did own that nice car. A search of the vehicle registrations confirmed that the ’65 Mustang Fastback was listed in his name. Looked like the nerd had an inner bad boy.