Identity Crisis

by Debbi Mack

  I nodded. The boxes had the names and logos of various spirits printed on the side. One in particular caught my eye.

  “Lobkowicz,” I read.

  “That’s a Czech brewery. Bruce likes unusual beers.”

  It was the name and a family crest-style logo that had been on the box of files in Melanie’s apartment. I felt my pulse quicken.

  “Something wrong?”

  “Huh?” I shook my head, trying to snap out of it. “No, sorry. I’m trying to think of where I’ve heard that name before.”

  “Really? You don’t see that ale everywhere.”

  I shrugged. “Is that right? Well, thanks again.”

  Out in the hall, someone had propped the emergency exit open, and a warm breeze trickled through the stuffy air. A truck was parked near the door and two guys in T-shirts and jeans were unloading a keg from the back onto a handcart. The storeroom was open. Beyond the truck, a couple of guys leaning against a parked car were having a loud conversation with a third guy, who stood near a line of tall shrubs running along a chain-link fence. He faced away from them with shoulders back, as if at attention. I realized he was taking a whiz into the shrubs and marveled at how the simple act of urination could prompt such good posture.

  The lounge area was looking even more like a smokehouse. It was almost eleven and the place was still hopping. Skip was busy, but he looked up and smiled as I approached the bar.

  “Can I ask you one more thing,” I said. Again, I had to shout over the music.

  “What’s that?” he yelled back.

  “Do you remember ever seeing Tom or Bruce with a woman in her thirties? Wiry with light brown hair? A little shorter than me.”

  Skip looked blank for a moment. “Come to think of it, I might have.”

  “You wouldn’t know who she is, would you?”

  “No, no I don’t.” Skip looked distracted. He looked back and forth between the drinks he was pouring and me.

  “How often did you see her?”

  “I can’t recall offhand. Maybe once or twice.”

  “I’ll let you get back to work,” I said, feeling guilty about interrupting him. “I’d love to talk to that woman, if I can find her, since she’s the closest thing to a friend of either of these guys I’ve found so far.”

  “I don’t remember ever hearing her name. She was just here a couple of times. But if I think of it, I’ll let you know.”

  “Thanks.”

  I went outside. It was relief to get out of the smoke, to enjoy the relative quiet, other than the buzz of bass notes radiating from the building. Route 1 was empty. Far off, I could hear the stuttered tone of a tractor-trailer braking on I-95.

  No one was in the parking lot. Out of idle curiosity, I walked around the building until I found the emergency exit in back. The three men had moved on, but the truck was still there.

  That box was helpful, but it still didn’t prove anything. Maybe there was a link between the identity thefts and Aces High, but that didn’t mean Melanie wasn’t involved.

  The more I thought about it, the more bothered I became about the list of social security numbers. I wished I’d had time to copy them.

  Asking Rhonda probably wasn’t an option. I could try sneaking in for another look. Too risky, especially if Rhonda spent a lot of time in the office.

  Of course, if I came back at closing time, snuck in, and hid until everyone left, I’d have the whole night, not only to look through the stuff on the desk, but to check out some of the boxes. Maybe there were more files hidden in all that mess.

  Sam McRae, attorney at law—specializing in DWIs, bankruptcies, personal injury, and breaking and entering.

  Putting the insane thought from my mind, I drove to the motel. The light was off in Melanie’s room, and I thought about checking in on her. Through a crack in the curtains, I could see her stretched across the bed, fully clothed, but asleep, looking pale in the bluish-white glow of the TV. I went to my room and tuned in one of the classic movie channels. The Best Years of Our Lives was on. I decided to put the in-room coffee maker to good use, although the product would be something less than premium.

  Teresa Wright was making breakfast for a confused and hungover Dana Andrews and I was on my second cup of coffee when I called Aces High to find out what time they closed. 2 a.m.

  I finished my coffee. This is crazy, I thought. But I had to get back into that office.

  I went back and forth on it, considering the pros and cons and ethical problems. In the end, I decided to do it for my own satisfaction, if nothing else. If my social security number was on that list, I had to know.

  At 1:30, the movie ended with Teresa and Dana in each other’s arms. I checked my luggage. Luckily, I’d chosen a dark shirt for my change of clothes—a T-shirt with a pocket, no less. I stuck my small notebook and a pencil in the shirt pocket, my keys and wallet in my pants. I’ve often wondered how men manage with just pockets. At that moment, I realized all you had to do was not carry half your worldly possessions with you. By 1:45, I was out the door and on my way to Aces High.

  I left my car in the lot of the industrial park next door, taking my flashlight from the glove compartment—just in case. I slid through an opening in the chain-link fence between the two properties.

  The building was quiet now. If you concentrated, you could hear the faint sound of interstate traffic, but that was it. Only a few cars were in the parking lot. I crept close to the fence, to avoid the lights, until I reached the shrubbery across from the emergency exit. I stopped behind the tall plants, hoping no one would decide to use them as a bathroom anytime soon.

  About fifteen minutes later, a panel truck lumbered into the lot and pulled up to the open back door. The driver got out and went inside. A few minutes later, Skip came out with the bouncer and the driver. The three of them got to work unloading boxes marked Fragile—Glass.

  I waited, watching them and timing their movements. I didn’t know how many trips they’d have to make, but I assumed not many. At one point, when all three were inside, I ran to the door and looked in. The hall was empty. I could hear voices, but they didn’t sound close.

  Before I could change my mind, I darted down the hall and ducked into the rest room. I got into a stall and sat on the toilet, bringing my legs up so they couldn’t be seen if somebody came in. The door closed on its own, but I flipped the lock anyway. I sat there, waiting and hoping for the best.

  Chapter NINETEEN

  ––––––––

  The first thing I noticed was the smell. Made me wish I could have hidden in a supply closet instead. I considered the pros and cons of squeezing into a closet versus the more spacious, but stench-filled, bathroom stall.

  I thought about a lot of things as I crouched on the toilet, waiting for everyone to leave. In order for this to work, I was assuming that Ash hadn’t bothered to set up an inside alarm system. I hoped his presumed indifference extended to outside door alarms, too. When I was done here, I’d have to get away fast. It could be a silent alarm, so I’d have to move quickly, no matter what. Get to my car. Drive. I’d be the only car on the road, probably. The cops would spot me in a second. I’d need to find a side road, pull over. Then what? Hide in the bushes somewhere for an hour?

  That was assuming I’d be able to get out without a key. Do they still have locks that require a key on the inside?

  Even if the cops pulled me over, what would they find? I didn’t intend to take anything, so there would be nothing in the car to link me to the club. Plus, for good or ill, a white, female in her midthirties didn’t exactly fit the police profile of breaking and entering suspects. Still, I couldn’t help but feel ridiculous. I was taking quite a chance.

  Out in the hall, the sounds of conversation and movement were dying down. A door slammed. I heard footsteps, getting closer. The bathroom door opened. A click and the room went black. The door shut. The footsteps receded.

  In the dark, I strained to listen and could have sworn I
heard someone talking nearby. I thought it was my imagination, until I heard someone say, “Good night.” I waited, I can’t say how long. The room was so dark, I felt like I’d disappeared, become a noncorporeal presence in a black hole. I didn’t like it, but didn’t want to turn on my flashlight until I was sure everyone had left. The hard, but oddly comforting, rim of toilet seat was the only thing keeping me oriented.

  Ever since my parents died, complete darkness has made me anxious. I can’t sleep without a night-light or some small spark of illumination from a window. I think it was the night in the shelter that did it. I remember when the NYPD came to our apartment in Brooklyn. They explained that my parents were not coming home, because the plane they were on had “gone down.” I remember their words. Gone down. I wondered if there was a reason they hadn’t said it crashed. Maybe “gone down” meant it landed in a strange place, and they just couldn’t find it. I asked them about that, several times, until they finally sighed and said “gone down” and “crashed” were the same thing. For a moment, I hated them for giving me that faint hope. Why couldn’t they have just told me it crashed?

  They took me to a shelter somewhere across the river. I slept in a big room full of cots with other children. It was dark, so dark I might as well have been alone, except I could hear the other kids breathing and the occasional squeak of bedsprings as someone turned over. I kept wondering if it was bedsprings or rats. At times, I thought I felt rats or something, crawling over my bed. When I told people about this later, they said I must have been dreaming. They said the health department would never allow children to sleep en masse in a totally dark room full of rats. Maybe I was dreaming, but that’s how I remember it.

  Back in the bathroom of Aces High, minutes ticked by. I guess it was minutes, because the darkness had effectively wiped my watch out of existence. I kept listening. Was that someone moving? Was it one last straggler, left behind to lock up? Or was it rats? I shivered. Anything but rats, I thought.

  It occurred to me that Rhonda might have locked her office. I put my noncorporeal head in my unseeable hands. I wondered if my brain had disappeared into blank space also. OK, it was possible she didn’t feel the need to lock her office. Yes, it would provide an extra level of protection for the computer equipment, but was someone going to break into a strip joint for that? Of course, the office probably had a safe, too. And important files that hadn’t made it to the computer.

  This was a really stupid idea, I thought.

  I heard the rest room door open. Snap. Light washed the room. I blinked and my heart thumped double-time in my chest. The door shut and someone walked my way, coming to a halt outside my stall. Under the door, I saw a pair of worn tennis shoes at the ends of a pair of blue-jeaned legs.

  I hadn’t even dreamed this dump would merit a security guard. Shit.

  Whoever it was tried the door.

  I waited.

  Then there was a knock. The old bump-bah-da-bump-bump followed by, “Come out, come out wherever you are.”

  I knew that voice.

  “Duvall?” I said.

  “Do I have to huff and puff and blow your house in?”

  I unlocked the door and yanked it open. The private investigator stood there, grinning.

  “This reminds me of that thing they used to say about facing intimidating people. You know, about imagining them in a certain, um, position.”

  I unfolded my legs and stood up, trying to compose myself, but feeling the heat of a blush in my face.

  “What the hell are you doing here?”

  Duvall threw back his head and laughed. “Oh, that’s good. What the hell am I doing here? I could ask you the same thing.”

  “You don’t seem surprised to see me.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Well, I’m surprised to see you. Why aren’t you surprised to see me?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe because your car is in the lot next door.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I guess you would know my car.”

  “Somehow, I didn’t think you had business in the industrial park at this hour. So—”

  “So here we are. How’d you get in?”

  He held up a set of lock picks. “Not exactly Fort Knox.”

  “Weren’t you afraid of tripping an alarm?”

  “There’s no alarm. I scoped the place out a while back. I can’t find anything that looks like an alarm system, plus they never registered one with the county. Don’t worry, I think we’re OK.”

  I sighed. “I hope you’re right. I’m putting my license on the line.”

  “Me, too. It’s as illegal for me to be here as it is for you.”

  “So why are we doing this?”

  “I don’t know about you,” he said. “But I think there’s something in that office.”

  “I know.” I stopped, wondering how much more I should say. He noticed my hesitation and smiled.

  “Awkward, isn’t it?” he said. “We’re both ostensibly looking for the truth, but with opposing interests.”

  “Facts are facts.”

  “Sure, but some facts would be more convenient for you than others. Like evidence to exonerate your client.”

  “For all we know,” I said, “there may be evidence in there to implicate her further.”

  “So what do you suppose we’ll find behind that door? The lady or the tiger?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But we’re both here now, and I have a feeling neither of us is leaving until we find out. So let’s just do it.”

  “Spoken like a true pragmatist.”

  We left the bathroom and walked down the dim hall to the office. The door turned out to be locked, and I silently thanked Duvall for being there. He fiddled at it with the picks, making quick work of it. Once inside, he flipped the light switch.

  I went right to the desk. The papers I’d seen were gone, so I checked the drawers, then the in-box. Not there—the bank statements, the piece of paper with the sticky. An almost palpable stab of irritation shot through me. I checked again. Nothing.

  “Dammit,” I said.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Ohhh,” I groaned. “There was some stuff here earlier. Stuff I wanted to get a closer look at. It’s gone now.”

  Duvall’s gaze swept the room like a surveillance camera. “Last time I was here, I think there were more of those boxes,” he said, pointing at the ones piled on the other side of the room.

  “When was that?”

  “About a week ago.”

  “What were you doing here?”

  “Trying to find your client. Apparently, she didn’t have a whole lot to do with this place. Not a big surprise, but I thought maybe that woman manager might know who she was.”

  “You mean Rhonda Jacobi?”

  “Yeah. She couldn’t tell me much, but while I was here I saw something interesting.”

  “A box with the word Lobkowicz on the side?”

  He looked at me. “Right. Same thing that was on the box of files in your client’s apartment.”

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “What are you thinking?”

  “I think Tom Garvey and Bruce Schaeffer were the identity thieves, not Melanie. I think there may be more files in some of these boxes. How about you?”

  “I’ll pass on your first thought, go along with your second.”

  “What’s wrong with the first?”

  “No proof your client wasn’t involved.”

  “I don’t have to prove Melanie wasn’t involved, you have to prove she was.”

  He fixed a level gaze on me. “What makes you so sure she wasn’t?”

  I filled Duvall in on what I knew. I told him about my trips to Melanie’s apartment, and how the box had mysteriously shown up the second time. I told him why she disappeared. And I told him what I’d seen earlier that night. Duvall mulled it over.

  “That’s interesting,” he said. “I can see why you think she was set up. The bank statemen
ts don’t help though. She worked at the bank.”

  “So did Garvey.”

  “True.” His hand swept in an arc, toward the boxes. “Shall we take a look?”

  “Let’s do it.”

  We dug in. Box-by-box, we worked our way through. It went slowly at first, but the pace picked up as we became familiar with what was in them. Many of the boxes clearly hadn’t been touched in years. Opening them sent up a cloud of choking dust. A couple of them were new.

  One box held nothing but tax records and a thick file of correspondence with the IRS. A quick glance through the letters showed Ash’s returns had been questioned on several occasions.

  “Ash seems to have trouble finding good help to handle the books,” I told Duvall. I related Rhonda Jacobi’s comments about Schaeffer.

  “Maybe he doesn’t care,” Duvall said. “These businesses could provide deductible losses.”

  “It would explain his lack of involvement. As I understand it, he never comes here.”

  He shrugged. “In his shoes, I wouldn’t either.”

  We picked up the pace, but the process remained tedious, since we had to view everything together. What if I found something helpful to his case that hurt mine, or vice versa? We also tried to keep track of where the boxes were and put them back as we found them, which took extra time.

  We didn’t talk much—just stuck to the work, determined to get through it. We had three boxes left when Duvall heaved a great sigh.

  “Oh, man,” he said. “We’re so close, but I’ve got to stop—stretch my legs.” He got up and walked around.

  “I know.” I stood up, too, and stretched my arms behind me, then overhead. “God, I’m stiff.”

  From the corner of my eye, I thought I saw Duvall checking me out, but when I looked at him, he’d turned away. I shook my hands out.

  “You know, people think investigative work is so glamorous,” Duvall said, standing on one foot doing quad stretches, his hand on the desk for balance. “They should see me now. I’ve spent the entire night in a dingy strip club looking through boxes and come up with nothing.”

  “Very little, not nothing. We know Ash has tax problems.”