I stop in my tracks. Either Iverson had no idea she put me on a desk next to Weiss, or she did it on purpose, and bigger wheels are in motion.
Delgado looks back at me. “You okay?”
I feel sick. “The future of police work looks bleak.”
Delgado rolls out a chair and offers it to me. When I decline, he sits and makes himself comfortable. “All anybody talks about are the murder numbers in this city. Financial exploitation never makes the paper, let alone the front page. Identity theft, loan fraud, wire fraud, forgery—that’s what they should be talking about. That’s what’s happening. And all in a click, without leaving the comfort of the hacker’s own homepage. Most people don’t know they’ve been cleaned out until their credit card gets denied. So what we do here, basically, is wait.”
“Until it’s too late,” Walter says.
“Isn’t that what police do?” I ask. “Show up after the fact?”
“Not me,” Walter says.
“He’s a digital native,” Delgado says, dismissive.
“There are a few crooks who still do crime the old-fashioned way, Delgado. You can catch them.”
Delgado rolls his chair forward, intentionally blocking Walter from my view. “Don’t listen to him. Right now, we got two guys out on a money-pit scam. They’ve got a line on a not-so-handyman working his way through Grand Crossing. He’s got a good game.”
Walter rolls his chair over, back in the conversation. “I love that guy. He’s still getting referrals. How could anybody be such a sucker? Dude may as well have an infomercial.” He puts on an ad man’s voice to ask me, “Do you need new siding?”
“I don’t,” I say. “What’s the game?”
“Say you’re a homeowner with a small job,” Delgado says. “A leaky window, maybe. You get this guy’s name through a friend of a friend. He’s been in the business a long time, he’s got connections, he gets everything at a discount.”
“Passing the savings to you,” Walter chimes in.
“And the estimate is free—no skin there. So he comes over, takes a look at the job, and then he discovers some other issue. Bad roof flashing, maybe. His estimate winds up twice what you anticipated, but you’re actually relieved because you weren’t going to fix the window yourself and you sure as hell aren’t getting up on the roof and lucky you—he’s willing to take care of both problems and still save you money. So there you are, you have a deal.”
“A cash deal,” says Walter.
“He takes most of the money up front,” Delgado says. “For the materials. Then he starts the work, and that’s when your one little job turns into a giant money pit. Your gutter clogs, your roof leaks, your fence collapses. One thing after another. And you keep paying him. It goes on like that until a hundred-dollar job turns over ten times the cash and you’re still thanking him because gosh, what a mess it turned out to be. You might even tip him when he’s done. And then you’re the friend of the friend.”
“Who would fall for that?” I ask.
“Old people, mostly.”
“He probably breaks most of the stuff he fixes,” Walter says.
“I have to say I appreciate the word of mouth, though,” Delgado says. “At least he works for it. So much of what we investigate is online or on paper. There’s just no heart to hitting Delete.”
Walter says, “There is, however, strategy, efficiency, concealment, artifice, and much, much more money.”
“No balls, either,” Delgado says. I think he’s talking about Walter.
“So what’s the job?” I ask.
Delgado gets up, gives me his chair, and says, “Welter will get you up to speed. Or he’ll be busy gaming, or whatever the fuck. But you? You’ll be answering the phone. Taking calls, logging calls, transferring calls. Or filing your nails. And I mean no disrespect. I spend a lot of time filing my nails.”
“He does,” Walter says.
When I look at Walter’s screen I see he’s writing code, and I’m afraid the learning curve is going to be steep.
“Okay,” Delgado says. He takes out Walter’s earbuds. “Show her the ropes?”
When Delgado splits, I sit down. “Where do I start?”
“You do know how to answer a phone, right?”
“What about the ropes?”
He stops typing and looks at me. “Come on. You were given the desk so you could sit here with your feet up, and you’ll disappear just as soon as your bruises do.”
“Wow: that’s pretty presumptuous. I begged to come back to work. And it’s no favor, me being here.”
“It’s no favor to me,” he says. He spins his chair around to look out the window behind his desk. “I’m not trying to be a noob,” he says, “I’m just saying it’ll take more time trying to show you how to help me than it will for me to do the job myself. So just answer the phone. I’ll handle the rest.” He feels around his chest for his earbuds.
I turn my chair to look out the window, too. We’re on the second floor, so there’s nothing to see but the leaves on the tree that blocks the view. “I don’t know what you think about me, but you’re wrong.”
“It shouldn’t matter what I think about you. Everybody cares what everybody else thinks. It’s nonsense. Like there’s a right way to be a cop. You know that whole ‘Welter’ bit? Delgado thinks he’s making fun of me. Like welterweight, you know, because I’m skinny and I don’t drink cheap beer and talk about stupid shit with the rest of them. But I can guarantee he doesn’t have a clue that welter, as a noun, is defined as a state of disorder. And that’s what this job is: unraveling what hackers do. I’m putting the mess into some kind of order. So what? Delgado doesn’t respect me and he doesn’t have to. He says this job is his two-year breeze toward pension. And he doesn’t believe that this really is the future of police work.” He turns his chair around, finds his keyboard.
“It may be the future,” I say, “but it’s not the only kind of police work. Somebody has to actually catch the bad guy.”
Walter shrugs. “Robots.”
I try not to laugh. “I’m sorry. Robots seem a long way off.”
“So does lunch.”
The phone rings.
“It’s for you.” Walter puts the buds back in his ears and gets to work.
* * *
For the first hour, the phone rings endlessly, though there are only two calls I log for Financial Crimes. I transfer some to Property Crimes and kick most of them back to 311. I’m a switchboard operator. It’s busywork and it is boring as hell.
By the second hour I can’t sit still. My neck is tweaked from cradling the phone, muscles locked up top-down, spine-out. One arm aches, the other burns. I think I’m getting tennis elbow. My left hand is a mitt. The sensations are confounding: pain shoots from my sacrum down my left leg, from the charley horse to my numb-nub toes. The only thing that should feel like it’s falling asleep is my ass, sitting here so long.
I stand up. I take calls that way.
Detectives come and go on the floor; most of them don’t pay me any mind. The third time I see the same guy eyeball me, though, I think he must know something. I assume he’s from Fugitive Apprehension. I assume he knows Weiss. I wonder what he heard. Why I’m here. Who got me this desk. What he wonders.
I sit down again.
I look over at Walter, deep in code. I wonder what he knows about me. And what it’d take someone to get him to tell it.
I don’t know who answered the calls before I got here and I don’t know who will if I’m gone, but I don’t care. I get up again. I go.
I take my own phone with me and pretend I’m on a call. Downstairs, as I pass by processing, I recognize a sergeant and a couple uniforms who assisted me on an arrest some time ago. None of them says hello. Instead I get hooded glances. A single nod. Yes, they’re in the middle of booking a suspect, but still. I shouldn’t feel like one.
I say yes to the phone like there couldn’t be a single thing wrong. My smile is full. I am confident and pol
ite. I am fine.
I am full of shit.
In the basement, the vendeteria is empty, leaving no argument against a stop at the machines. At first I decide to be sensible: I buy grape juice instead of Coke. Then I read the fine print on the label: it’s 10 percent juice; zero of that is actually grape. I crack it open anyway. It tastes like 100 percent sugar. Screw sensible. I drink half of it, one tip to my lips.
I move on to the snacks. I stand before the machine, its bright wrappers and empty calories. Another dose of sugar that would rush happy signals to my brain, if only for a moment. If only to fix one simple problem—my steroid appetite.
I’m about to select M6 for Snickers when I hear someone else come in and pull out a chair behind me. Immediately self-conscious, I press the button for chips—the baked, healthy kind—a good joke for anyone who’s ever been on steroids.
I promise myself all the M&Ms at home later. I do have an image to fake.
I get the chips and I’m ready to make a proud exit when I see it’s Ray Weiss sitting there, shoving a sandwich into his face. He chews, swallows. Smiles.
I get goose bumps. I kinda feel like he followed me.
I don’t know what to do, so I find my phone and answer another imaginary call.
“Hello?” I ask, and I feel as genuine as my juice. “Yes, speaking.” I walk toward Weiss and make sure my expression matches the exclamation, “Oh, yes!” because I should be thrilled to talk to the very nice person who called just now.
I walk by and when we make eye contact I point one numb finger toward the phone to show Weiss I’m on it. As if he couldn’t tell. I mouth sorry. As if I should apologize.
Weiss watches me, his expression unchanged—the same smile I remember from when he brought soup.
I think of Soleil and then I ask the nice person on the phone, “Do you think he’s got an ulterior motive?” On my way out the door I recycle the juice can and then I take myself straight back to my desk.
* * *
When I sit down I say, “Hey,” to Walter, but his ears are bud-plugged. I wonder if he doesn’t hear me, or doesn’t care to.
It shouldn’t matter what I think about you, he said.
I agree. I also just spent the past twenty minutes hoping people were listening to me say things that would make them think great things about me.
And I did a repeat performance for Weiss.
Obviously I’ve gone insane, all in half a day at a desk.
I sit down and plow through the chips. Then I find a stick of cinnamon gum in my bag and chew the flavor right out of it.
I use a headset when I resume answering and transferring calls to free up my hands for a little online research. Before I ran into Weiss, Walter made me wonder what a regular cop could find out about me if he sat down and logged in. I decide to try.
I go to CLEAR and click around until I find the Personnel Concierge tab. There, I can check my status with the medical section. I’ve never done it before—call it willful ignorance—but thankfully, only the basics are posted: my contact information, my case worker Elaine Brille’s information, and my emergency contact information. George. Go figure.
I try to imagine what he looks like today, wearing Tom’s shirt, his curls sticking up funny because he pulls at them when he’s nervous, or when he’s frustrated. I hope he’s on time for his interview. And that he doesn’t say anything stupid. And I hope he gets the job.
Speaking of. I click on Brille’s information and send her an e-mail to let her know I’m feeling fantastic and ready for the Job. It bounces—she’s still out of the office—but the auto-reply feels like she rejected my lie.
And then a thought circles back about CLEAR. I’m using a police computer. Why the hell am I looking for myself when I could be looking for Johnny Marble?
I log out of the Personnel Concierge and while I answer calls, I let myself into LEADS, AFIS, and ICLEAR.
Information is limited; I have the clearance to see whatever I want, but I’d have to identify myself in order to get to the good stuff. I don’t know if Delgado monitors the use of these computers, but I’ll bet whoever’s supposed to be investigating Marble would see my name. I don’t get very far before I quit.
Then I take a call from a woman who wants to press charges against her ex. She says he’s been using her credit card to send her unnecessary, offensive gifts in the mail. Just this week she received a facial hair–removal device, a life-size Sasquatch lawn statue, and a platinum-plated dildo. I tell her to call her credit card company but she says she did, a month before—right after she received a hard-core porn DVD ten-pack called Bushy Girls. She cancelled the card, but says he must have opened another card in her name, with another address. She says he’s ruining her credit. I log the information and assure her a detective will be in touch.
When I hang up, I get to thinking about Johnny Marble. He was getting mail for someone named Nam Pak Cho and someone else named Christina Hardy. I assumed they were former occupants, but they could be current associates.
A quick online search entering the two names together gets me to a site called Intelius that shows a connection between them. It takes a dollar and ninety-nine cents to find out how. I use my phone and pay by credit card to find out Cho is a dead lead—literally dead, at eighty-six—and Hardy, née Christina St. Claire, is Marble’s thirty-five-year-old sister. She has a second address in Berwyn, a nearby suburb. I wonder if Hardy is like Tom, who still gets mail at our place because he hasn’t made permanent plans, or if she’s like me, who helps her brother out because he hasn’t ever had a plan.
I take a few more calls, and as the clock ticks toward noon, I think Delgado is right, Financial Crime is a pretty good breeze; this could be a routine, this could make for a normal life … but it’s temporary, just like my relapse, and I’m going to have to find my own normal again. Besides laundry.
Which is why I’m gone at noon, on my lunch hour, on my way to Christina Hardy’s.
* * *
The drive to Berwyn is bullshit. The map says it’ll take me about twenty minutes, but construction forces a rush-hour grade stop-and-go. I want to kill someone. I chew another piece of cinnamon gum to bits.
I finally exit the expressway and follow brake lights down Ogden Avenue until I turn off the main drag and find the address, a shabby yellow A-frame ranch that stands out for its kid stuff: plasticky push-and-scoots stand sun-warped and faded in the yard. Big Wheels and Little Tikes toys clog the walk, and the driveway is blocked by a kiddie pool. There are no children.
I park on the street and go up to the door. There are still Christmas lights strung around the front bushes. An air-conditioning unit rattles in the window.
I knock and the metal screen door bangs against the frame.
A plump brunette dressed in an extra-large BEARS T-shirt answers the door. Her hair is sweaty. I can’t tell if she’s wearing shorts.
“Christina Hardy?”
“Yes?”
“I’m Gina Simonetti.” I flash my star. “I’m here to talk to you about your mother.”
“She didn’t—she called you?” Christina crosses her arms and looks down at me, both eyes, both chins heavy. I wouldn’t call her real happy about seeing me.
“May I come in?”
“Yeah,” she says, though she doesn’t hold the door.
In the front room, two boys about five years old dance around beanbags as they shoot at each other, their virtual representations chest-clutching on TV.
“Alex, Eric, say hello to the police officer.”
“Hello,” they say in tandem, without looking at me. They are years older than the photo on Kay’s key chain and have sprouted from toddlers into gangly, sharp-elbowed boys.
Christina leads me into the kitchen where the third boy, who is smaller, sleeps in a red wagon. She asks, “Is this about the money?”
“Should we talk here?” I try to whisper, because I don’t want to wake the kid if I just hit the proverbial jackpot. “I don�
��t want to disturb him—”
“No, he’s fine. I mean, he’s not fine; he spent the morning hugging the toilet.” She leans over, strokes the boy’s hair. “Poor little Sammy-Sam. He was born first, but he’s my baby.” She stands up, pulls at the neck of her T-shirt. “Anyway, whatever you want to know about my mother is no secret. We don’t hide crazy around here.”
“You’d mentioned money,” I say. “Maybe we should start there.”
“I had nothing to do with it. I try to be nice and take the boys for a visit and the next thing I know she’s acting like I’m writing myself checks. It’s insulting, is what it is. Especially because all her money? It was my father’s. She got rich leaving him. That’s how you know I’d never ask her for a dime. That and, I mean, look around: does it look like we’re sitting on a fortune, here?”
Interesting that she’s arguing her innocence. I nod my head like I’m sympathetic. I guess I am, a little: “It’s got to be tight, three young ones.”
“And this one, always sick.”
“When did say you visited your mother?”
“I didn’t. But it was yesterday.”
“You’re aware, then, that Johnny Marble—your brother?—is accused—”
“Half brother. Same fruit loop mom. And yes, mother told me about Johnny. But what did she expect? He always had it worse than me. I mean, at least I had a father. I feel bad for Johnny, really. Even if he did it. In fact, I hope he did it. Because she’s goddamned mean.”
“You are aware of her condition.”
“Yes. But trust me. She’s always been this way.”
“Have you spoken to Johnny recently?”
“No.” She looks sorry about it. “I quit paying for his phone, maybe he’s still mad about that. You never know, with him. What sets him off. Who knows.”
I offer her my card. “Will you let me know if he contacts you?”
She looks at the card. “No.”
“You should know he’s a suspect in more than one incident.”
“He’s my brother.” Her brown eyes look black.
The Lies We Tell Page 11