Operator - 01

by David Vinjamuri

  “Should I leave the balloons here or do you want me to put them over there?” I ask, pointing to the credenza on the interior wall. As Dolores looks to where I am pointing to consider, I reach my hand back without looking and thumb open the lock to the window next to Vanderhook’s conference table. My eyes quickly confirm that there’s no jamb or key lock on the frame.

  “I wonder who these are from?” Dolores muses, almost to herself.

  “You’d be surprised by some of the people who send flowers,” I say and before she can thank me, I’m gone.

  * * *

  “So this is your idea of a first date? Breaking and entering?” Veronica asks, leaning over me to peer up at the Vanderhook building. It is just after eight and there is still enough traffic around to provide some background noise. A miasma of clouds hovering over the town covers the moon, which should be nearly full tonight. Good luck.

  “Do you have addresses for me?” I ask, ignoring the joke. I’ve slipped on a pair of black Chuck Taylors to complement dark jeans and a black fleece over a grey t-shirt.

  “I found five residential houses in Conestoga that were listed on the cached version of the Vanderhook website from last week that weren’t listed this week, but two of them were also in the “new sales” column and had the sale price listed. So here are the addresses of the other three – the ones that just disappeared this week, as well as Mel’s address if you don’t remember it,” Veronica hands me a Post-It. I glance at the yellow square, memorizing the addresses, and hand it back.

  “Okay, got it. Dial me if anyone pulls into the lot and just drive away. My phone is on vibrate,” I say as I slip from the passenger’s side of the Mercedes. I don’t like using her car. It’s too flashy for Conestoga and too easy to remember, but we can’t use the GTO because Veronica doesn’t drive stick. I’m not thrilled to be breaking into the realtor’s office even after my reconnaissance. This would have been a ridiculously easy job in my old life, but things can always go wrong, and the stakes are very high. If someone calls the cops, I’m going to be sitting in Buddy Peterson’s lockup for a long time to come.

  I take a careful look around. The veterinarian and hairdresser are closed for the evening and the lot is vacant except for Veronica’s Mercedes. The parking area is sunken a few feet below the level of the street and shielded by trees, only visible to a single window of an end unit in the neighboring condo complex, which is dark. I don’t see or even feel anyone else within sight. I turn back to Vanderhook’s office and the row house resolves itself into a series of geometric shapes and vectors. It only takes me a couple of seconds to pick my route. There are two windows on the lower floor, spaced about five feet apart. Each window has a side sill protruding from the building by a good three inches.

  I step a few paces to the left of the office and give myself a ten-foot runway. I take a deep breath before sprinting towards the structure, angling my approach so that I am nearly parallel to the wall before I jump. I take two steps on the side of the brick building between the two windows, moving myself laterally but also nearly six feet up the side of the building in the process. I hit the side sill of the window on the right with the ball of my left foot and then spring backwards towards the left window, pushing myself up at the same time. In parkour, which has become part of my exercise routine since I started school at Georgetown, the move is called a tic-tac. Pushing back the opposite direction, I hit the side sill of the left window with the ball of my right foot, then use the momentum I generate to spring back to the right window frame, executing another tic-tac that hits just below the top of the frame. One final spring off of my left foot lands me on the top sill of the left frame. I scramble with both feet to find purchase, then flatten my body and hands against the white siding of the house until my momentum diminishes. Finally, I raise my hands and jump three feet up, grabbing the ledge of the upper windowsill, and hoist myself up as quietly as possible. I slip a small can of lubricant from my pocket and squirt the track of the window frame to help the old window move without squealing. Then I raise it slowly. It moves without hesitation. I slide through the open window. It has taken me less than thirty seconds to break into Charles Vanderhook’s office.

  Inside the dark room, I stand stock-still, listening attentively. When I hear nothing, I slide the old pane window closed behind me, then lower the blinds and twist them shut. I pull a small headlamp from my jacket pocket and turn it onto the lowest setting as I move to the filing cabinet. It is locked. I briefly considered tipping the entire cabinet up to slip the locking rod by using a hole in the bottom of the metal casing, but the unit is four feet long and looks heavy. I don’t know what kind of noise it might make if I lift it. Instead I carefully slide the improvised lock-pick set I’ve brought along from an inner pocket in my fleece. I’ve cut up a soda can and folded a section over several times to create a shim that I slide into the lock, almost immediately feeling the five pins that are preventing the lock from turning. Then I insert a flattened metal dental pick I’ve picked up for two dollars at Walgreens into the lock below the shim to create tension. With two rakes of the shim, the pins click into place and I am able to twist the lock open.

  Breaking into a filing cabinet is never as difficult as making sense of what you find inside, and Vanderhook’s private files are no different. There are tax files, a folder of ancient student loan documents, instructions for every appliance that the man has ever bought and the lease agreement for his Lincoln Navigator in the bottom lateral drawer. The top two drawers all contain real estate files. They seem to be deals that Vanderhook has closed himself, all of them more than half a decade old. None of the folders correspond to the addresses I’ve memorized. After a half hour, I decide I’m not going to have any luck with the files inside the cabinet and I move on. The credenza has more of the same old jumble, as do the filing drawers in the desk. I find an appointment book in the main sliding drawer of Vanderhook’s desk, but it is untouched. I’ve almost given up hope when I noticed the conspicuous absence of dust on the lower right corner of the framed picture of what looks to be the first house Vanderhook ever sold, circa 1960. Sliding my fingers beneath the frame, I feel a latch. Pulling it allows the picture frame to swing out, revealing a wall safe.

  The safe is a Secure Logic model with a biometric scanner, making it the newest piece of equipment in the entire office. The lock is keyed to the fingerprints of the owner, and placing a finger into the scanner will open it. Only Vanderhook can open the safe because fingerprints are unique.

  That’s the theory, anyway.

  I take a careful look at the safe and the fingerprint scanner and then, flicking off my headlamp, leave the office. I descend the darkened staircase and make my way to the receptionist’s desk, careful not to let my silhouette fall into the pool of light from a streetlamp shining through the front door of the office. I pull two pencils and a manual sharpener from a jar on Dolores’ desk and remove the spool of tape from her tape dispenser. Then I slide open her desk drawer and locate the last item I need – an emery board. Moving back to the staircase, I pull a clean sheet of paper from the copier at the bottom of the stairs. Then I return to the office, seat myself at Vanderhook’s desk and begin methodically scrubbing graphite from the tip of each pencil, sharpening repeatedly to get rid of the wood. When I have a fine pile of graphite dust on the center of the clean piece of paper, I look around. Vanderhook has a Dell computer in the corner of his desk, a small concession to modernity. I carefully pick up the ends of the copier paper so the sheet forms a tunnel. Then I tap graphite dust over the left mouse button. When enough has accumulated, I blow lightly on the graphite. A fingerprint appears. Grabbing the cellophane tape, I carefully put a piece over the print and peel it off. The print transfers. It’s not ideal, but it’s clean enough for the scanner on the Secure Logic. I seal the print with another piece of tape. I walk the tape over to the biometric safe, activate the scanner and slip in my finger with the tape where my fingerprint would go. The lock slides op
en.

  I take a step back when the beam of my Tikka headlamp hits the interior of the safe. It is divided horizontally into two compartments. The bottom area is stacked with cash; at least a hundred thousand dollars. A pile of documents teeters precariously in the top compartment. Vanderhook’s personal records include his passport, savings account, house titles and birth certificate. Then I spot a black leather-bound notebook tucked in to the side of the stack, looking as if it’s been used frequently.

  It is a book of green-ruled accountant’s paper. I sit down at Vanderhook’s desk to examine it. Two thirds of the pages are full of inked entries. Each page has dates at the top and a set of addresses down the left side. I assume the entries are dollar figures. The numbers make me catch my breath. There are at least twenty properties on each page. The total monthly take for each property is many times more than any house in Conestoga could command in rent. This volume has two years of records. On the second-to-last used page of the book I find the address of the yellow colonial that stands next to Mel’s apartment as well as two of the three addresses that Veronica has given me from the website. The last inscribed page is filled with addresses but has no payments recorded and it includes a line for another of the addresses Veronica showed me.

  I consider my options for a moment and decide to risk making a copy of the book. I don’t want Vanderhook to know that anyone has been in his office, but I need some proof of what I’ve seen. Using my fleece to block the light escaping from the Xerox machine, I photocopy the entire volume. Then I replace it carefully in the safe before re-locking it. I methodically clean up the traces of my visit, returning the emery board, tape and sharpener to Dolores’ desk drawer. I lock Vanderhook’s office from the inside and carefully wipe down everything I’ve touched. Then I scan the parking lot through a slit in the blinds, only opening the window after I see that Veronica is still in her car and still alone in the lot. She is idling her Mercedes nose outwards with the lights off. I step onto the windowsill and carefully close the window behind me. Then I turn and drop, catching the second story window frame before I drop the remaining eight feet.

  * * *

  We sit in my car, underneath the grasping branches of a hundred-year oak on Sycamore Street, some forty yards away from one of the Vanderhook houses. It’s raining the fat cold drops of autumn and the air is heavy with moisture. I slowly work my way through the copied pages of the ledger book by penlight, committing them to memory. Veronica is reading them at the same time, leaning across the padded armrest covering the driveshaft of the GTO. Just as a forced smile releases real endorphins that can trigger authentic joy, our proximity as we lean together over the small document kindles a sense of intimacy. As we talk in muted tones, Veronica’s hand brushes mine on the armrest. She doesn’t withdraw it.

  We’ve spent nearly five hours taking a tour of four of the addresses from the Vanderhook ledger. As we observe these dilapidated houses from a distance, a pattern soon emerges. All of the houses have Vanderhook “For Sale” signs up, but they’re all occupied. Despite being past the hour of the evening when most Conestoga families have long since settled in, the Vanderhook properties seem busier than Chuck’s Diner after church on Sunday. Cars arrive at regular intervals. The routine is identical at each property. A car pulls into the driveway, rolling to a stop a few feet short of the garage door. The car hovers there for a moment, then the garage door opens. The delay is longer than you’d expect for someone fumbling for a remote, and the garage doors glide open without the usual clatter. There is invariably a second car in the garage with a cover thrown over it. The pattern proceeds with military precision. Twenty minutes later, the garage door opens again; this time the other car leaves. Exactly twenty minutes after that, another car arrives to fill the open slot, and so on. We’ve only seen two departures from this pattern. On Van Buren Street at a rose-colored ranch house, a black Lincoln MKZ pulls up to the dark house late, having missed the expected interval by ten minutes. The garage door never opens and the car drives away after a moment. On the street we’re observing, a shiny black Mercedes slides into the garage just after we start observing. It’s a new S550, easily a hundred-grand car. In Conestoga, not even the meth dealers can afford a ride like that. We’ve been sitting for more than an hour, and the car hasn’t emerged yet, nor has anyone else entered.

  “This isn’t just some unauthorized subletting to illegal immigrants,” I murmur as I flip back through the copied pages of the Vanderhook ledger.

  Veronica arches an eyebrow in an expressive way that says “no shit.”

  “Yeah, yeah – obviously,” I mutter.

  “Prostitution?”

  “Probably,” I reply and stop for a second, replaying our tour of the yellow colonial next to Mel’s apartment in my head. “But more than that, I think. I think we’re looking at a sex trafficking operation.”

  “You mean white slavery? That kind of thing?”

  “It’s the only reason you’d put deadbolts on the bedroom doors and bars on the windows. You’re trying to keep someone in, not out. Gangs out of Eastern Europe run most of the sex trafficking trade. They lure girls in with advertising for good paying jobs like modeling, then addict them to drugs and force them into prostitution.”

  “Why go to all that trouble? Aren’t there plenty of prostitutes in the U.S. already?”

  “They make more money because they don’t pay the girls. Plus they get a steady supply of new blood.”

  “It’s disgusting,” Veronica says acidly and I nod. “And this real estate agent is part of this?”

  “It’s actually a pretty clever scheme. I bet all of these houses are foreclosures. That means they’re vacant and banks don’t keep tabs on them as well as homeowners would. If the neighbors get suspicious, these people can just disappear and pop up in another house in another neighborhood the next day. That could be what happened with the house next to Mel.”

  “And you think the Sheriff’s part of this?”

  “It makes sense. If the neighbors notice something unusual, they’d call the police. All the Sheriff has to do is make sure the operation moves immediately and everyone stays happy.”

  “Unless someone gets a glimpse of what’s really going on,” Veronica says, catching the disturbing implication of this line of thinking.

  “Right. If someone actually figured this out, they’d threaten the entire operation. That’s a lot of cash. So there would be a big incentive to get rid of anyone who got too nosy.”

  “What could Mel have seen?”

  “I don’t know. But she speaks Russian, right? What if she somehow talked to one of the girls? Or just saw enough of what we saw to figure things out? If Russians or Ukrainians are running this ring, they don’t fool around.” As I say this, I remember a particular trip to Sevastpol, the transshipment point for many bad things on the Black Sea.

  “So what do we do? Confront the Sheriff?”

  “No, definitely not. I have a friend at the FBI. I think if I tell him what we saw and give him a copy of this ledger, it’ll be enough for him to wind this up pretty quickly.”

  “What about Mel? How will we find out who killed her?”

  I think about this for a moment. The hardest thing for me to know is my own feelings. What we’ve seen convinces me that the killer will be sent to jail with all of the other felons running this racket. Is that enough? Then I realize that we have another possible approach. “Buddy Peterson must have been tipped off by whoever killed Mel, or he wouldn’t have beat EMS to her place. I bet he’d cut a deal to save himself and give up the murderer. We can talk to the FBI about that.”

  It doesn’t feel satisfying to either of us. But I’m not planning to try to twist Buddy Peterson’s arm to figure out what he knows. Those days are over.

  * * *

  I’m lying on a bed in my motel room in Conestoga when I hear the door to the bathroom squeak open. By the time we finished our surveillance it was nearly two a.m. and Veronica asked if she could crash i
n my motel room. I didn’t know exactly how to interpret the request, but I said yes. My room comes equipped with two beds and I feel a combination of relief and disappointment when she drops a small overnight bag on the second bed, the one that my duffel is not sitting on. She offers me the bathroom first and I take it, cleaning up and changing into sweats. Then she disappears into the bathroom for a half-hour. As the door finally opens, I catch sight of her framed by the light of the forty-watt bulb that hangs naked over the sink mirror. She is wearing a blue college sweatshirt over gray sweatpants.

  I put my book, a Civil War history by James McPherson, down as she slides under the covers of the twin bed next to mine. She starts talking randomly, which seems to be her habit when she’s nervous. But after a few moments we both relax and the talk drifts off. I’ve just turned off the light when another idea comes into my head. It’s not a good thought.

  “Something has been bothering me about that yellow house, the one next to Mel’s place,” I say, flicking the light back on. Veronica lifts herself up on her elbows and squints at me. “This whole business could be something worse than we were thinking.”

  She looks at me with those green eyes. I don’t think I’ve quite noticed the color before.

  “White slavery rings usually control the girls with drugs and with money – piling big bills up on them and making them earn it back. But the window bars and deadbolts we saw in that yellow house don’t exactly fit with that scenario. A twenty-year-old Czech or Romanian girl in a small town in upstate New York would already be pretty well isolated. She’d be here illegally and wouldn’t speak the language. So I doubt they’d need the bars to control the girls, unless…unless possibly we’re talking about underage girls. Young girls. That would also make the numbers in the Vanderhook ledger make more sense. Given what he’s making for just supplying the houses, these Russians are sitting on a goldmine. One that they would kill to protect.”