I didn’t worry about Lenny mixing Bushmills and beer and wine with Ecstasy because alcohol and drugs never affected him in the normal way. His loft condo in the Old Market was six blocks from Reliable’s offices. I’d gone home for lunch with him before and seen him swat shots of tequila, do bong blasts of hydro-grown, blue Indica, then go back to the office, where I watched him configure a secure network server, thinking in Free BSD and speaking in VI. I was more worried about the mindless stunt he’d pulled in Norton’s office, because it meant Lenny’s manic cycle could be kicking in. If so and if the past was any guide, Lenny would soon become Napoleonic (except he’d get more done than Napoleon ever did, because Napoleon slept once in a while).
Lenny swallowed the rest of his wheat beer and said, “I feel like harvesting an army of zombie machines and executing a tribal flood into Norton’s network. Send him a Godzillagram thank-you note.”
If Lenny was on his way to manic, he could manage a tribal flood in the space of an evening. During his manic phases, Lenny booked flights to Moscow, Rio, Stockholm, and Hong Kong; he wrote presidents, kings, and dictators via FedEx First Overnight, stamping “PRIVILEGED” and “CONFIDENTIAL” all over the envelopes; he cabled investment brokers who had never heard of him and told them to sell the blue chips in his IRA and buy all the titanium futures they could get their hands on; he’d order a hundred engraved invitations to a wine-tasting party at his place, tomorrow night at six, regrets only, then he’d mix and burn five custom CDs for the occasion. After that, he’d drain off a tumbler of single malt, then wind down with a Whitehall Lane merlot or Stags’ Leap reserve from his Vinotemp, stand-free wine cellar, maybe recite this year’s Darwin Awards while swirling his glass and swigging, tell a few code warrior lies. Later he’d stop by Sushi Ichiban for a dragon roll and saki, then head on across the river to the casinos for a drink. He’d empty his wallet at the blackjack table, make it home by about three A.M., and go on-line, where he’d try to win it all back playing Delta-Strike at a hundred bucks a head shot in real money.
Later, he’d celebrate by hooking up on-line with Tanya, his ex-girlfriend, in California. They’d both been heavy users and geeks at Dis Entertainment, where they would meet in the supply room after hours and go down on each other. Lenny moved to Omaha, and they’d lost touch, so to speak, and Tanya had married a dentist and had two kids. Then the dentist had been paralyzed with a C3 fracture in a freak combination Firestone-tire blowout, cell-phone accident, and SUV rollover. The jury awarded twenty-four million dollars for loss of consortium among many other things, because Tanya’s husband couldn’t move anything south of his lower molars, had some possible brain damage and lots of pneumonia thrown in, so Tanya was getting nothing in the prime of her sex life. She couldn’t leave the poor guy, and the thought of adultery was too much for her. Instead, she and Lenny used to hook up late at night with web cams and stereo headphones and experiment with various new technologies for simulating sex on-line. Him watching her, her watching him. She called it psychological adultery. She wasn’t saying it was right, but it wasn’t as wrong as actual sex with another man while her husband was still alive.
After about a week of being the whirling dervish of on-and off-line Omaha, Lenny would suddenly not show up for work. His sister and his mom would open his condo with their key and take him in for crisis stabilization and partial hospitalization at the Methodist Richard Young Center, where, after a lithium adjustment and some IV Valium, Lenny would take a seventy-two-hour nap. Three or four days later he’d be back at work and worth every penny Reliable paid him. Norton knew Lenny’s bipolar drills, and knew he was getting Lenny at a bargain rate because of it.
Miranda moved away from someone who was smoking, and she seemed distracted and ticked off, probably at Norton. I could tell she thought Lenny was being shot at dawn for not using his napkin, and maybe she and I would be next if we picked up the wrong fork.
We tossed back what was left of round two, and the bartender put a six-pack of Coronas and a lime in a brown bag for us. Lenny and I raced for shotgun in Miranda’s Audi and the proximity it would provide to her in the driver’s seat. Of course we’d be taking her car; she didn’t like riding in other people’s cars or staying in other people’s houses. She never said a word about it, she just always ended up driving, and if we went anywhere for late-night drinks and small talk, it was her place. Every now and again, after three or four drinks, she’d let me touch her; when that happened I had to move fast, because an hour later she’d be in bed. Alone.
I got shotgun, then Miranda missed a turn and went looking for an entrance ramp to 480 East, so she could get over to Iowa and I-29 for the trip north to the reservation. It must have been Indian Night, because when she crested the hill on Dodge Street, there it was: Mutual of Omaha, the biggest insurance company in town, with the biggest skyscraper west of downtown to prove it. And emblazoned on top, a five-story rendition of Mutual’s corporate logo—a stylized profile of a stoic Indian chief wearing a headdress. All we needed now was for “Cherokee Boogie” to come on the radio. Mutual has kept the Indian-head logo for over fifty years despite the recent outrage of the Correctness Crowd against the Washington Redskins, the Atlanta Braves, the Kansas City Chiefs, the St. John’s Redmen, and the San Diego State Aztecs. According to the company’s website, the headdress image honors the “qualities and characteristics of the Plains Indians.” Lenny, who was something of an Indian buff, and, like Norton, an ardent fraud historian, told a different story.
The name Omaha may sound like a calf bawling for its mother, but it’s not a cattle or corn derivative. The city takes its name from a tribe of Indians, the Omahas, who once ruled the Plains, until they were scammed clean by the Washington White-skins. In the padded cell of Lenny’s imagination, Mutual of Omaha’s logo was a portrait of Blackbird, the most powerful chief the Omaha Indians ever had, and revered, by Lenny at least, as the founding father of the life insurance industry. I’d checked Lenny’s historical facts and found them mostly accurate—namely, there was a great chief of the Omahas named Blackbird, and the stories Lenny told about him could be found in history books. But I never heard from anybody else that the Mutual of Omaha insurance logo was a portrait of the great Omaha chief.
Miranda laughed whenever Lenny got to riffing on some left-field theory, like how Dagmar was in Hitler’s inner circle, or how Old Man Norton didn’t really exist because he was made out of microscopic nanobots and computer-generated holographic images propagated by management, or how Blackbird founded the life insurance industry, so we were in for a reprise of the whole story on our way to an alleged rave at the Omaha reservation.
Chief Blackbird had reigned during the golden age of the Omahas at the end of the eighteenth century. According to Lenny and the history books, Blackbird was a mighty, ruthless warrior and a shrewd businessman, who also had a weakness for the ladies. Early on, he made handsome profits fleecing the white French fur traders whenever possible. Somewhere along the line one of the traders told Blackbird about the powers of arsenic, then sold the chief pounds of the stuff on demand. Blackbird ingeniously employed the toxin to work “magic”—meaning, he poisoned any rivals to his power, prophesying their death and graciously accepting the adulation of his tribe when his uncanny predictions came true.
According to the explorers and fur traders, when Blackbird ruled the tribe at its peak, the Omahas considered themselves superior to all other tribes and nations of men, and thought all of nature, including the human race, was created especially for their comfort and aggrandizement. This patrician sensibility meant they saw eye-to-eye with white people, who also thought the rest of the human race was created for their comfort and aggrandizement, the difference being that white people not only considered themselves superior, they acted like it, with a vengeance.
Before long, Blackbird and four fifths of his tribe were wiped out by smallpox, brought west by the white man, who also chased all the buffalo away and made a killing selling firewate
r. What was left of the Omaha tribe were toothless dupes gullible enough to engage in “treaties” with the white man.
Finally, on March 16, 1854, the U.S. government made the Omahas a lucrative offer for their lands and brought the Indian chiefs to Washington for a powwow. Security was foremost in the minds of the Omahas, because their numbers were dwindling and they were now forced to organize longer hunting expeditions, taking them deeper into the territories of their sworn enemies, the Sioux. The new treaty promised the Omahas cash and fringe benefits designed to entice them to move to their new homeland, including the “protection” promised in the now famous Article Seven of the treaty, which Lenny had once printed and read aloud to us:
Article Seven: Should the Omahas determine to make their permanent home north of the due west line named in the first article, the United States agree to protect them from the Sioux and all other hostile tribes, as long as the President may deem such protection necessary; and if other lands be assigned them, the same protection is guaranteed.
Blackbird was long dead and would never have fallen for such an obvious scam from a bunch of transparent fraudsters who were the color of corn silk. Instead, the first chief signing the treaty was Logan Fontenelle, the only chief who could read, write, and speak English. Indians and white men alike admired him, because he was well educated and half French. Once Fontenelle signed, all the other chiefs did, too.
Maybe Logan Fontenelle knew some English and had done some reading, but he should have had his lawyer look the thing over and play with the wording before he signed it. Yes, the agreement promised “protection,” but only for “as long as the President may deem such protection necessary.” The day after signing the treaty, President Franklin D. Pierce must have deemed the promised protection unnecessary, because when it came time for the big move to the reservation, no protection had been provided.
The Omahas were ordered out of town anyway, and the well-spoken Logan Fontenelle gave what can only be called an “I Have a Nightmare” speech at Bellevue (just south of Omaha) before the Omahas set out; the Nebraska State Historical Society has preserved portions of this famous address. Logan said that it was cold-blooded murder to place the unarmed and defenseless Omahas in the path of their ancient foes, the Sioux. He drew his revolver and said, “This is good for six Sioux. We will go and meet our fate.”
Shortly afterward, a mob of Sioux attacked an Omaha hunting party and killed Logan Fontenelle. Three dead Sioux were found near the great chief’s body. Nobody in Omaha ever heard of Blackbird; instead we have Fontenelle Boulevard, Fontenelle Forest Nature Association, the old Fontenelle Hotel, even Fontenelle Hair & Tanning, probably out of gratitude for Logan being good enough to sign his death warrant and get out of town.
They were tales any student of fraud, including me and Miranda, would love, but this was the second time I’d heard them, and it was still like nailing down a drop of mercury getting Lenny to explain just how they proved that the Mutual of Omaha Indian was Chief Blackbird. Right about when Miranda and I could have congratulated ourselves on keeping Lenny’s mind off of his sudden joblessness, he came back around to it and spent a good twenty minutes in the backseat performing verbal rampage on Colonel Klink and Old Man Norton.
“Last Monday a credit card company sent a registered letter to Human Resources and garnished my Reliable wages,” he said. “Norton freaked. I guess he can discriminate against me for being broke, but I can’t discriminate against Nigerians for being scam artists. There’s a garnishment statute says he can’t harass me over bad debts, but so what?”
That gave me the willies, because I had several credit cards near the max myself, even though I always found money for the interest payments before they showed up in my credit rating. That might be hard to do if, like Lenny, I was suddenly missing a salary.
Lenny cursed Norton, Norton’s mother, Norton’s religion, even took Dead Man Norton’s name in vain; then he cussed us because we’d forgotten a bottle opener for the Coronas.
I told Lenny that Norton had given me the Heartland file and asked him about Hector and his brother-in-law.
“Why don’t you ask Miranda,” he said. “She had the Heartland file before me.”
Miranda was busy dialing the Omaha Indian Reservation into the dashboard GPS destination finder. I kept my eyes on her and waited for an explanation, but she just shrugged.
“So,” I said, “this Heartland file is a Black Death ship looking for a port? Norton thinks there’s something there, and he’ll go through two certified fraud examiners and a computer use professional to find it?”
Lenny was unimpressed with my instincts. “Miranda already told Norton that she thought Crogan’s old company had recruited sick people in San Francisco, New York, and Miami to apply for fifty-K jet-issue policies—no blood, urine, or EKG. Paying them to lie like Judas and ‘clean-sheet’ their life applications by answering ‘no’ to the entire list of ‘have you ever had’ questions, specifically the one that says, ‘Have you tested positive, been diagnosed, or treated for acquired immune deficiency syndrome, AIDS-related complex, human immunodeficiency virus, or any other immune system disorder?’ Then, the insurance companies issued the policies, unwittingly insuring the life of AIDS victims, who, in those days, used to die like clockwork within two or three years.
“Hector’s old California company was buying the policies from them before the ink could dry (thus the name ‘wet-ink’ viaticals), and maybe even coaching HIV-positive, proposed insureds about how to fill out the applications to their advantage. Only problem was that once the new protease inhibitors arrived on the scene, the AIDS victims stopped dying on time.”
“We’re partying too far out of bounds,” Miranda said. “The fun is too much. I think we should go back downtown and work for a few more hours.”
She popped open the glove and tried to change the subject by handing Lenny a Swiss Army knife, but he stayed on topic while prying the caps off Coronas and slicing up the lime.
“Norton gave me the Heartland file,” said Lenny, “and I found some evil shit on Hector Crogan in a California Daily Reporter, ethics and disciplinary proceedings. He works cheek by jowl with a doctor, Ray Guttman, and Ray has a history of writing a few too many prescriptions for friends, God love him.
“I gave my machines a good whiff and turned them loose on Hector and Dr. Guttman. I treed Hector’s former law partner at an IP address in L.A., but the guy had well-maintained firewalls, so I had to go other places for the info.”
“Where?” I asked. “Fraud86? ChoicePoint?”
“Some there,” said Lenny, “but mostly from deep inside.”
“Deep inside what?” I asked. “Deep inside Heartland?”
“Deep inside the Tomb of the Unknown I-Told-Ya-But-I-Didn’t-Tell-Ya,” said Lenny, “which means I can’t tell ya. Dead man’s talk. Hector’s new company, Heartland Viatical, doesn’t show up on our programs because he’s using straw owners with different names and addresses to hold the policies for him for two years, until they become incontestable. I told Norton I thought Crogan and his partner were running swoop-and-squats out in Orange County, and representing the capper. Guttman has a history of being disciplined by the Medical Board of California because he helped a terminal cancer patient do the Kevorkian with a big injection of potassium chloride in a California mercy-killing case.
“That was then, and this is now, and maybe things changed. Besides, I can’t prove what went on in California, and apparently neither could the prosecutors, if all Hector and Ray ever got was disciplined by the bar and medical board.”
Without proof, we both knew it was not the kind of thing Lenny could take to Old Man Norton. Norton dealt with senior VPs who wanted beyond-a-reasonable-doubt-type evidence before they’d go public with fraud charges. In the meantime, as I’ve said, if too many bogus claims got paid, the actuaries could adjust the equations to produce a premium increase. And according to the latest e-mail from FDN, fraud caused an estimated $96.2 bill
ion in increased premiums for 1999 alone, stolen by clever vermin who feed on the rest of us. To stop them, somebody like me or Lenny or Miranda not only had to catch the scammers, we then had to sweet-talk management into letting us go to the authorities.
“Hector probably used to be dirty,” said Lenny. “Now he and his brother-in-law, Dr. Ray Guttman, have a new angle, maybe even a semilegitimate angle. If you party with Ray, ask him to bring his black bag.” Lenny sniffled and rubbed his nose suggestively. “They may be scamming somebody, but not us insurance companies. They may try to work a side deal with you. If they do, let us know, and we’ll tell you how to handle them.”
Us? We’ll? As in him and Miranda? But before I could ask him, Lenny’s cell phone rang. It was somebody named Planet, in Sioux City, Iowa, calling to tell us that the tribal police had busted the rave and were searching cars and arresting ravers. We turned around and headed back south, while Lenny pulled out a glass pipe and a bud. Miranda didn’t like that, but I think she cut him slack because of his reduced circumstances. She opened the windows and drove five miles under the speed limit, even though Lenny said that would put her right in the Iowa State Patrol’s profile for somebody with drugs. By the time we’d smoked that, he’d talked Miranda into taking him to the casino for a few hands.
It was Friday night, and the parking lot, which takes up 10 percent of Council Bluffs proper, was jammed with cars and a forced march of gamers, their breath hanging around their heads like fog balloons.
After the long haul over frozen blacktop to the casino, I took Miranda to the bar, where we drank more pinot noirs by the glass. Lenny wandered off to find his fortune.
I didn’t get much more on Heartland, but I could tell she was pissed that Norton had gone behind her and lateraled the file to Lenny, and now to me. Instead, we talked about her dad’s failing organic produce farm back in Ottumwa, Iowa. How her dad had artificial ankles and knees because rheumatoid arthritis had turned his joints to wormwood. How her mom had to take panic-attack and antianxiety drugs because she had agoraphobia and had to live on a farm nine miles outside of Ottumwa and was terrified of the huge blue sky soaring to infinity in all four directions. How her only sister, Annette, needed skin grafts to patch the holes where the giant mole had been. How the insurance company paid for the original lesion removal but—surprise!—wouldn’t pay for the skin graft repairs because they were “cosmetic surgery.”
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