The Fraud

by Brad Parks

  It wouldn’t take him more than five seconds to do it. Then he could go about his business, smiling his haughty smile, knowing his future victims were completely unaware he had just set them up.

  Hell, they probably even tipped him for it.

  * * *

  How I would prove this, I didn’t know. Again, it might be another one of things that would be left to the authorities. When they carried out their well-planned raid on Fanwood Country Club, they would discover a bag filled with tiny GPS chips in Mr. Haughty’s locker.

  In the end, the kid would probably flip on Earl Karlinsky faster than a champion gymnast. But that was as it should be: as I had the scheme figured out, Karlinsky was the mastermind. He deserved to take the hardest fall. Or maybe Karlinsky was just another minion and the real boss was somewhere else.

  And it all started in the parking lot.

  From a storytelling standpoint, I could place Kevin Tiemeyer and Joseph Okeke in that parking lot, in preparation for their seemingly innocent round of golf together. Within a month, I had them both dying in violent carjackings. Then I could list the other Fanwood-connected victims, interview a few of them, and package the whole thing quite neatly. Then, there would be the matter of follow-ups for the arrest, the inevitable indictment, and so on.

  And in each story, I’d get to write that glorious sentence, “Authorities learned of the carjacking ring after a report in The Eagle-Examiner…” Because, yes, sometimes newspapers like reminding you of just how damn important we still are.

  I brought up my phone to check my e-mail. There was one from Buster Hays. The subject header was now “Re: Dear Ivy,” and the body was brief: “I’ve got some information for you but I’m too thirsty to tell you over e-mail. Maybe if I had seen any evidence you were going to do something about that thirst, I’d feel differently. Buster.”

  In other words, I was going to have to pay my scotch bounty before he gave up anything. Typical Buster.

  There was also an e-mail from Kira O’Brien. She had found David Isaac Gilbert, associated with several addresses in and around Newark. But what I found infinitely of more interest was where he had lived previously: a federal penitentiary.

  Kira had enclosed a link to an article from a newspaper in Massachusetts. Federal prosecutors were announcing that an investigation into billing irregularities at a not-for-profit assisted-living facility in Swampscott had resulted in a plea bargain wherein David I. Gilbert, fifty-eight, of Saugus, the former director of the facility, admitted to Medicare fraud and misappropriation of patient funds. In exchange for an admission of guilt, he would be given an eighteen-month sentence in federal prison, which he would begin serving immediately.

  About midway down in the article, there was Dave Gilbert’s mug shot. Being as this was before his incarceration, he was a few pounds heavier. The pointy handlebar mustache looked like it weighed the same.

  Phrases like “Medicare fraud” and “misappropriation of patient funds” were too vague to know exactly what he had done. The article didn’t go into detail, probably because the prosecutors hadn’t given any. But it sounded to me a lot like Dave Gilbert was bilking the federal government out of taxpayer funds and a bunch of unwitting senior citizens out of their hard-earned retirement savings. Nice. I wonder if he kicked his residents on their way to church, too.

  The article was three years old. So it was easy enough to assemble a time line: he served his eighteen months, got released, then settled in New Jersey, far enough away from Massachusetts that no one would have heard about his old scam. Then he quickly began constructing a new scam.

  As a convicted felon, there was a huge swath of employers who wouldn’t even consider hiring him. But that still left the Greater Newark Children’s Fund, where they were all as naïve and trusting as Sweet Thang and didn’t bother with background checks. Once installed as the director of the Chariots for Children program—where he could masquerade as one of the good guys—he could find a way to twist it for his own profit.

  Had he then hooked up with the Karlinsky crew? Or was he a separate cell in a criminal syndicate that kept its parts ignorant of each other? Or was he, in fact, completely independent and just happened to be running what appeared to be a chop shop?

  I didn’t know at this point. All I knew is that Gilbert had been a crook and, for as much as I wished I could believe in rehabilitation, my experience—to say nothing of the stubbornly high rates of recidivism in this country—told me how unlikely that was.

  Once a crook, always a crook. Even Sweet Thang would have to concede that. I forwarded her a link to the article, just barely resisting the urge to add an “I told you so.”

  Instead, I just wrote, “Call me when you have a moment.” I would need her help to unravel Gilbert’s role in whatever was going on.

  Finally, I looked up from my phone. Little had changed in the Fanwood Country Club parking lot. Mr. Haughty was still there, waiting in his golf cart, poised to swoop down on whatever unsuspecting pigeon came in next.

  CHAPTER 25

  Scarface Sammy picked his way slowly down the hill, one deliberate movement at a time, his eyes fixed on Volvo man the entire time.

  Stalking people was something of an art form and he had made a study of it through the years: what worked, what didn’t.

  Ultimately, he felt his best teachers were the great cats of his native Africa. He loved watching animal documentaries just so he could watch them do their work. They would lie there, almost entirely obscured in the long grasses of the savannah. They would take one step, then wait. Smell the air. Let the grasses sway. Watch the gazelles graze. Only then did they take another step.

  Patience was absolutely critical. The great cats didn’t leap out and begin sprinting toward their prey until they were certain of success.

  The fact was, if you just ran up to people, they would see you coming easily and make a decision about whether they were going to stick around. And many of his targets, particularly the ones who knew Sammy and what his job entailed, chose not to.

  Sammy understood the impact his face made on strangers, particularly white strangers. His skin was not like the black people they knew. It was much darker. His scars, which were given to him in childhood to ensure his good health, only added to the effect. They made him that much more foreign—and, yes, scary. They were not the kind of tiny lines favored by modern Yoruba, if they even practiced scarification at all. No, Sammy’s scars were the old-school kind: deep and, for those from cultures unaccustomed to them, shocking.

  If Sammy just walked up to the man in the Volvo—or ran up to him, for that matter—all he would get in return was a face full of mud, sticks, and leaves that the Volvo’s tires spun up as it fled. Especially if Volvo man noticed that the bulge in Sammy’s jacket was the size and shape of a shoulder-holstered Beretta.

  So Sammy kept himself hidden, carefully gliding from one tree to the next, never exposing himself for more than a fleeting instant or two. The closer he got, the slower he went. When he got within two hundred feet, he would count to ten before he let himself move again. At a hundred feet, he started counting to twenty.

  It certainly helped that Volvo man wasn’t paying any attention to his surroundings. His entire focus seemed to be on the parking lot of the country club. When a car passed by on the road, Volvo man didn’t even swivel his head to watch it.

  The first time he even looked down—to look at his phone, perhaps?—Sammy had just closed the gap to about eighty feet. Sammy didn’t dare go faster. But he was getting more confident.

  He was maybe fifty feet away, still neatly hidden, when he suddenly realized he wasn’t the only person interested in the man in a Volvo.

  Another car was pulling up. A big SUV. Sammy stopped his counting, checked to make sure his hiding place was adequate, and watched for what came next.

  CHAPTER 26

  Mr. Haughty had disappeared to who-knows-where, leaving the parking lot devoid of activity for the moment. I was essentially jus
t staring off into the distance—to the point where I was probably less aware of my surroundings than I ordinarily would be.

  So I didn’t pay particular attention that a large SUV had left the parking lot and was cruising up Fanwood Country Club’s long driveway; or that it turned left out of the pillars, in my direction; or that its driver and passenger were giving me the evil eye as they passed.

  I only really started noticing it when it turned around—in the driveway of the cactus house, just like I had done—and was coming back in my direction, pulling over to the side of the road as it did so.

  And then, in very short order, it became something I couldn’t have ignored if I wanted to. It was rolling up like it didn’t even see me, accelerating at a time when it should have been easing to a stop. That’s when it occurred to me: the SUV was going to ram me.

  My hand went for the Volvo’s ignition. The gesture was as automatic as it was futile. Even if I could get the car started in time, there was no chance I’d be able to get it in gear and on the move. The roar of the SUV’s engine was coming at me too quickly.

  I made a sound that was some undignified mix of a squeal and a shriek. It wasn’t my well-being I was worried about. It was the car’s. Tina’s only instruction when I asked to borrow her Volvo was for me to “try not to get any bullet holes in it.” I doubted she would consider having her entire back bumper crumpled much of an improvement on that.

  There just wasn’t anything I could do to avoid it. My hand was moving too slowly toward the ignition. The SUV was moving too fast.

  Then it braked, sliding to a stop on the soft ground just inches short. The only thing filling my rearview mirror was an oversized, polished chrome grille plate.

  In my rearview mirror, meanwhile, I could see two people get out. From the passenger side came Mr. Haughty, wearing a Fanwood Country Club polo shirt. From the driver’s side, there was Earl Karlinsky, dressed in the same logo jacket as the day before, although his gray hair struck me as being extra bristly on this day.

  Mr. Haughty was hanging back, somewhere around my bumper, doing I-don’t-know-what. Karlinsky stormed up to my window. I composed myself for the coming confrontation. Bullies like Karlinsky love it when they make you nervous, and I wasn’t going to give him that pleasure.

  He glared at me through the closed window. I waited a beat before lowering it.

  “Mr. Ross,” he said, his face pinched and firm behind his wire-rimmed glasses. “You are currently on Fanwood Country Club property without an invitation and are therefore trespassing. If you do not leave immediately, I will call the police.”

  I would have yawned—to signify how worried I was about his threats—except his musk had crawled into my car. I feared that if I inhaled too deeply it would make me gag.

  Instead, I realized this might be my best opportunity to interview Karlinsky before my story ran. Unlike cops, who can get search warrants and ask questions later, reporters had to ask questions first. We don’t get to surprise anyone with what we put in the newspaper if it’s a story that accuses them of wrongdoing. If I was going to intimate that Earl Karlinsky was involved in a carjacking ring, I was going to have to ask him about it. That’s another way in which journalists are unlike law enforcement: we have to give the criminals equal time.

  With this in mind, I said, “Hang on, Mr. Karlinsky. I want to make sure I get this on tape.”

  I reached into my briefcase and pulled out my digital recorder, which I kept well-charged for occasions like this.

  “This is … this is outrageous!” he sputtered. “This is harassment!”

  I thumbed the record button before I spoke.

  “No, trust me, I know harassment laws very well, Mr. Karlinsky, and this doesn’t even come close. If anything, you’re harassing me. I had a perfectly legitimate reasons for being at your club twice yesterday, including once when I was explicitly invited by one of your members. Yet you tried to chase me away both times. The second time, you grabbed my wrist, which I did not want you to do and which made me frightened. That’s assault and battery right there, and I have a bar full of witnesses. So if you want to get into a legal pissing match with me, by all means, let’s do it.”

  Since he wasn’t a cartoon with a thought bubble over his head, I didn’t know for sure; but I was reasonably certain he was thinking, “Oops.”

  Meanwhile, Mr. Haughty was still near the back of my car. It was a strange place to be. And I couldn’t very well pay attention to whatever he was doing while simultaneously fighting a verbal battle with Karlinsky.

  “Now,” I continued, “the reason I’m watching your country club is because I believe you are part of a criminal enterprise that is identifying high-worth vehicles and planting tracking devices on them so that your Newark-based associates can then carjack them. Would you care to comment on that?”

  His face pinched some more. “That’s … that absurd. That is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. And if you print that—”

  “Then you’re denying it.”

  “Damn right I’m denying it. Are you out of your mind?”

  “So it’s just a coincidence that Kevin Tiemeyer and Joseph Okeke played a round of golf together at your club about a month ago, and both of them are now dead after carjackings that turned violent.”

  He stomped his foot—to what end, I’m not sure—and pointed at me as he spoke. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. And I don’t know what would possibly make you think I have anything to do with that. That’s the most absurd and unbelievable and outrageous and—” He stopped there, apparently out of words to express his incredulity.

  “If it’s so unbelievable, then when I check your club roster against recent carjackings in and around Newark, I’m not going to find an inordinate number of your members having recently been victimized by that crime?”

  “Are you insane? You’re absolutely out of your mind. This is outr”—he stopped himself, perhaps aware he had already used the word “outrageous” twice already—“I have no idea what you’re talking about. And I’m not going to listen to any more of this. You have to leave. Now.”

  He removed his phone from his pocket. His hand was shaking as he jabbed at it with his finger.

  “So, again, you deny any knowledge of or involvement in a carjacking ring operating out of your club?”

  By that point, he was either pretending not to hear me or actually not hearing me. Mr. Haughty was still behind me somewhere, though I couldn’t see him unless I looked in my rearview mirror.

  “Yes, this is Earl Karlinsky, the general manager at Fanwood Country Club. There is a man named Carter Ross who is sitting alongside Fanwood Road on the edge of club property in a gray Volvo. I have asked him to leave and he has refused. Could you please send a car out here and—”

  I had already seen what I needed to see. I had also heard enough of Earl Karlinsky’s blather for the time being. I rolled my window up and drove off, leaving Karlinsky and his cabana boy behind.

  Frankly, Karlinsky’s presence had vexed me a lot less than Haughty’s. Why had he come? To provide his boss some backup? To intimidate me?

  Or to put a tracking device on my car?

  Just in case, I went about a mile down and then pulled over to the side of the road to give the Volvo’s back bumper and rear tire well a thorough inspection. I hunched under the car and looked for something that didn’t seem right. Then I used my hands to feel for it.

  I found nothing. I was probably just being paranoid, sure. But there were at least two recent visitors to Fanwood who would have been well-served by a little more paranoia in their lives.

  * * *

  My first priority, as I finally got heading back toward Newark, was Buster Hays and his apparently ferocious thirst. He had information I now needed more than ever and, knowing Buster as I did, he was not going to give it up until I paid my ransom.

  Not being much of a scotch man, I wasn’t sure if Ballantine’s—Buster’s scotch of choice—was a co
mmon brand or if it was considered more exotic. But, again, I knew Buster. He took pride in his Bronx roots, public school education, and common man’s sensibilities. When he called me “Ivy,” he didn’t mean it as a compliment. I suspected that just about any dispenser of intoxicating liquids would carry it.

  My trip to the newsroom involved passing at least one such store along Broad Street. Or, maybe, more like three of them. I opted for the second.

  If you are seeking a cure for depression—or want to feel uplifted about your fellow man—stopping at a Newark liquor store is not something I’d recommend. The one I chose was an excellent example of its type. It was housed in a building that exuded ugliness from a chipped, sooty, tile exterior that may have once been yellow but had since faded into something less than that.

  Its defensive structures were depressingly impressive. The top of the walls were protected by sharp, outward-curling metal ramparts whose purpose was to prevent would-be thieves from scaling up to the roof. The windows—or the portals where there perhaps had once been windows—were covered over in concrete. All other conceivable points of access, everything from the door to the heating and cooling vents, had bars on them. There were fifteenth-century Moorish fortresses that were easier to penetrate.

  Populating the sidewalk were three professional drunks who looked like they had scraped up just enough money to buy their poison of choice, then hadn’t bothered to stumble more than a few feet outside the door before they began administering it.

  The insides were dim and musty, and most of the decoration—if you could call it that—had been provided by the producers of the beverages being sold. The motif, if it could be summed up in two words, was garish neon. The floor had a pervasive sag to it; as if it, too, had simply given up.

  I am no one to lecture on the evils of alcohol. I have certainly been known to enjoy its pleasures from time to time. But I’m also mindful of not becoming one of those journalists who regularly chases his sorrows with booze. I’ve heard stories about how that method of self-soothing eventually turns out. Most of the time, it’s not with the protagonist turning into one of the skid row professionals I had just passed outside. Instead, they end up as guys who somehow hold on to their jobs and houses, but who can’t get out of bed in the morning without a shot of vodka. Frankly, I’m not entirely sure which is worse.