The Fraud

by Brad Parks

“Excuse me?”

  “Her cervix. Has it started dilating? It takes a long time for it to soften up enough to allow a baby to pass through, you know.”

  “No, Mom, I haven’t asked Tina about her cervix lately.”

  “I was walking around three inches dilated for weeks before I had your brother.”

  “That’s … very informational, Mother. But she’s not due for two weeks yet.”

  “I know, I know. It’s just with the baby being a breach, and all. You have to get her to the hospital, or she could end up being like Patsy.”

  Mom had a sorority sister from a thousand years ago named Patsy who allegedly “nearly died” after complications from a breach pregnancy. Patsy was now quite healthy, as was the thirtysomething-year-old “baby” in question. But every time I reminded my mother of this, she accused me of being excessively cavalier with the health of her unborn grandson.

  “Okay, Trish, that’s enough, let him get back to work,” my father said.

  “Hush, Bill.”

  “You’re driving everyone crazy,” he said again.

  And, again, my mother seemed not to hear him. “You’ll call me the moment you hear something, right?”

  “Yes, Mom.”

  “You won’t wait.”

  “No, Mom.”

  “Because we might hit traffic on the way to the hospital.”

  Tina’s C-section was scheduled to happen at Saint Barnabas Medical Center, the same hospital where I had been born thirty-three years earlier. It was no more than a ten-minute drive along secondary roads from my parents’ house.

  “I think you’ll be okay, Mom.”

  “I just don’t want to miss it. Your father’s not getting any younger, you know.”

  “Jesus Christ, Trish, I’m not dying,” my father interjected.

  “I’m just saying,” my mother said.

  “Goodbye, Carter,” my father said. “We love you and we’re proud of you and now we’re hanging up, right, dear?”

  “Don’t wait,” my mother said one last time.

  “I won’t,” I promised.

  I placed the phone handle back on the cradle. From a few desks over Buster Hays rose and began walking in my direction.

  He reached my desk, leaned over, and in a low voice said, “Ivy, if I have to hear you talk about someone’s cervix again in this newsroom, I’m going to take one of those bottles of scotch and break it over your head.”

  * * *

  I had returned to my keyboard for perhaps ten minutes when my phone rang.

  “Carter, it’s Armando Fierro,” he said tersely.

  “Hey,” I said, suddenly on edge. Doc never called himself Armando. At least not around me. Then again, I’m not sure I had ever talked to him when he was pissed off, which it sounded like he was.

  “I have to ask you something, and I had better get a straight answer,” he said.

  “Go ahead.”

  “Did you break into our pro shop last night?”

  Uh-oh.

  I knew I needed to say something. Unfortunately, the only things going through my head was “uh-oh,” and its close cousins, “hoo-boy” and “oh, crap.”

  “Actually, let me just save you the trouble of answering that,” he continued. “I’m going to share with you a little-known fact about our pro shop. We had trouble with some minor thefts a few years back—people going in after hours and helping themselves to shirts and balls and that sort of thing—so we installed security cameras that activate when the automatic lights go on. Earl Karlinsky tells me he has footage of you in the pro shop last night, well after its five o’clock closing time.”

  The name Earl Karlinsky made my jaw clench. My head now had several more interjections going through it, none of which I would be comfortable saying in church.

  Doc went on, making an effort to keep his tone even: “Now, I haven’t been by the club to see the tape yet, but I will later this afternoon. For right now I’d really like to know: why were you breaking into our pro shop last night?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t say I broke in,” I said. “The door was—”

  “Don’t screw with me,” he spat. “I invite you into our club as a guest, then I stick my neck out for you when Earl tries to run you out, then I introduce you to a bunch of our members—I vouched for you, I vouched for you. And this is how you act? Like some goddamn criminal? Sneaking around in a place where you clearly don’t belong? What the hell, Carter?”

  Again, there were no especially useful responses on my tongue.

  “Earl said the tape shows you messing around on the starter’s computer. You know, when I was in government, I was a big defender of freedom of the press, and I think I’ve established myself as being pretty friendly to you guys since then. But I have to tell you, it’s none of your damn business when someone is playing a round of golf at a private club or with whom. And if you try to put anything you got from your little bit of spy craft in the paper, you better have your lawyers damn close.

  “Actually, no. I think I’m going to make sure they’re close. I believe you guys use McWhorter and French as outside counsel, do you not? How about I call up their libel person and tell her exactly what’s going on? Ordinarily I’d just call Brodie and count on him to be reasonable, but with Brodie on the shelf for a little while I think I’ve got to bring out the big guns. Maybe I’ll just remind them I could use that surveillance footage to get an injunction slapped against the Eagle-Examiner printing its next edition. I bet that would get their attention.”

  He was just fuming now. If he calmed down for a moment, he’d realize no judge would stop the state’s largest newspaper from printing on such flimsy evidence. Still, the last thing I needed was for Doc Fierro—a man who had connections at every level of the public and private sector—going all jihad on me.

  I hadn’t wanted to tell him anything about what Karlinsky and his haughty sidekick were doing. Not until I had it better substantiated. But he was giving me little choice. I had to give him something to justify what otherwise looked like absurd behavior.

  “Doc,” I said softly, too softly to really interrupt him.

  “And then,” he railed, “Karlinsky tells me you were spying on the club earlier this afternoon. He said you were just parked alongside the road, doing God knows what; and that when he pointed out you were trespassing—which you were—you threatened him with some kind of ridiculous assault and battery charges from when he grabbed your wrist? Seriously, Carter, is that really how you want to play things? Because I guarantee you there will be a room full of guys with amnesia if you even try to—”

  “Doc,” I said, loudly enough that he stopped. “Stop ranting and give me a chance to talk. Karlinsky is bad news, okay? I’ll admit I don’t have this completely nailed down, but I think he’s part of a major carjacking ring in Newark. My theory is that he and another club employee are tagging high-end luxury cars with tracking devices, and that when those cars go into Newark, they get nailed. Tiemeyer was one of their victims. So was a guy named Joseph Okeke, who was killed two weeks ago, about a week after he played a round as a guest at Fanwood. That’s what I was on the computer checking. I got another source telling me Karlinsky even asked Okeke details about his car during his visit, like he was casing the thing to steal it.”

  Now it was Doc’s turn not to respond.

  I pressed ahead: “The reason why I asked you for that membership list is that I wanted the Essex County Auto Theft Task Force to be able to look it over. I haven’t heard back from them yet, but my guess is they’ll find several more of your members own cars that have been jacked. Karlinsky is a pestilence, Doc. I might not have been totally forthright with you about what I was up to and I’m sorry for that. But I had a good reason.”

  Doc stewed on this for another moment. During his many years in and around state government, he had been confronted with the greed and stupidity of humanity many times. They were the cause of at least three-quarters of the problems he had fixed, including the o
ne that had first earned him his nickname. He knew that, at least in New Jersey, it usually made sense to assume people were being driven by their demons and not their angels—and then be pleasantly surprised when you turned out to be wrong.

  I thought for sure Doc was going to recognize the higher purpose behind my low actions and give me a full pardon.

  But it was not to be. “Look, Karlinsky is a bit of a prick, I’ll give you that,” he said. “And God knows his cologne could choke a horse. But he’s not a car thief. He’s just not. To be honest, I don’t think he’s smart enough to come up with a scheme like that.”

  “Doc—”

  “Look, I can’t have you chasing wild theories that cast our club into a bad light. And you have to stop harassing Earl. I can only stick up for you so much before I start losing credibility. And the moment you entered a part of the club where you clearly weren’t supposed to be, whether the door was open or not, you crossed a line. You’re really giving me no choice. I’m putting the word out among the members that you are no longer welcome as a guest at Fanwood Country Club. If you try to show up there again, Earl will call the cops. And from this point on, you can consider me as serving in the role of the club’s official spokesman. If you so much as think of typing the word ‘Fanwood’ with the expectation that it’s going in the newspaper, I better have a chance to comment on it. Are we clear?”

  “Doc,” I said again.

  “Are we clear?”

  “Yeah,” I said finally. “I guess.”

  With that, he hung up on me.

  CHAPTER 30

  Black Mask bounded down the steps of his apartment, hoodie pulled over his head.

  He looked both ways when he hit the sidewalk—a well-ingrained ’hood habit—then turned right. He kept his hands shoved in his pockets and felt for his gun, which was shoved in his waistband.

  As a convicted felon, Black Mask wasn’t supposed to have one. On top of that, it was stolen. If a cop found it on him, Black Mask would have some serious weight over his head.

  But there was a saying among thugs in Newark: better to be caught with a gun than without one.

  Black Mask hopped in his truck, of which he was the lawful owner. He wanted to spend as little time driving stolen vehicles as possible.

  His destination was the Newark Public Library. It was, perhaps, a strange place for a man of his vocation to be going. But the NPL had public computers with those IP addresses that no one would be able to trace back to him.

  It was a safe place to check the anonymous e-mail account for the details about the latest job he and Blue Mask had been given. A few clicks and a few keystrokes, and he’d know everything he needed about his next victim, right down to the name of driver and the model of the car.

  Black Mask made sure to switch up which branches he used. It didn’t help that NPL had been closing branches lately. Damn budget cuts in this city just never seemed to end.

  This time, Black Mask went with the main branch downtown. He hadn’t been there in a while, but it was perfect. Lots of computers there. No one would notice him or remember another young black man walking in there to spend a little time online.

  His drive from the Weequahic section of town got bogged down in traffic as he neared center city. He waited it out—what choice did he have?—and eventually found parking on a side street. With small regret, he stowed his gun in the glove box. The library had this thing that looked like a metal detector at the front entrance. He didn’t need to attract that kind of attention.

  No matter. He was downtown now. It was safer there.

  Five minutes later, he was seated in front of a computer, having signed in under someone else’s name. He smiled every time he did it: other criminals had fake passports, fake driver’s licenses, whatever; he had a fake library card.

  He brought up the Internet, accessed the Web mail site, typed the e-mail and password, being careful to shift the number and letter as needed.

  Sure enough, a new unread e-mail was waiting. He clicked on it. His eyes scanned the screen. He frowned at a few of the details. Then he got to the good part.

  The car would be a Volvo XC60, for which he and Blue Mask would be paid $3,000.

  Then he got to the end. The e-mail always said the name of the driver. Most of the time, Black Mask didn’t care so much. It was just another name.

  This time it felt a little different. This time, he was going to have to tell Blue Mask to kill the guy, a guy he had never met before, a guy he didn’t particularly have anything against.

  A guy named Carter Ross.

  CHAPTER 31

  For the next two hours, I tried to ignore the teeth marks that Doc had just left on my head and hoped none of the threats he made about calling our lawyers would be carried out. I worked diligently on Jawan and his fast shoes, trying to keep to my self-inflicted five o’clock deadline, realizing I wasn’t going to quite make it but trying to stay close to it.

  I kept my e-mail off and my concentration on. My only interruptions came in the form of texts from Tommy. The first said: “Got some good stuff. Back in a bit to share.”

  The next arrived perhaps twenty minutes after that: “He is soooo tasty!”

  I cackled, if a bit mordantly. Poor Tommy. As if it wasn’t bad enough he had to be dumped by my commit-o-phobic cousin Glenn, he was now trying for a rebound that was completely out of reach. I tapped out, “You realize you’re crushing on the straightest guy this side of a Heritage Foundation candidates forum, right?”

  He soon fired back. “I hope so! You realize they’re all a bunch of closet cases, right? Get them in the men’s room and it’s like a Turkish bathhouse.”

  All I could do was snort, glad that no one knew why. It was around five thirty when I completed the story. I shipped it over to Brodie’s folder, where it would molder for some time before being discovered. Then I turned my attention to my e-mail.

  Justin Waters had come through for me, forwarding a message from his firm’s secretary with the VIN number for the Cadillac, which I copied into my notebook.

  Then there was one from Tina: “Pop your head in when you have a second?”

  Ever the dutiful almost-fiancé, I stood up and followed her instruction to the letter.

  “Do you want just my head or do you want the rest of me, too?” I asked when I reached her door.

  She looked up from whatever she had been staring at on her screen, momentarily bewildered, having evidently forgotten the exact language of her e-mail.

  I helped her: “You said to pop my head in and—”

  “Yeah, yeah, sorry,” she said. “Come on in.”

  I sat in my usual chair. “My mother was just asking about you,” I said, neglecting to add which part she was asking about.

  “Oh, really? That’s sweet of her.”

  Tina stared off into the distance for a moment, almost like she was looking at a piece of her window that was somewhere above my right shoulder. Her hand was resting on her belly. Tina’s focus was typically sharp enough to cut glass. It was unusual to see her so distracted.

  I decided to prompt some words from her. “Did you want to talk to me or did you just want me to soak in your aura?”

  “Yeah, yeah, sorry,” she said again. “I’m … a little out of it.”

  “You’re not having a contraction, are you?”

  “No,” she said quickly. “Why would you ask that?”

  “My mother was having a premonition you had gone into labor.”

  I thought that would earn me a laugh. Instead she said, “No, no.”

  “You would tell me though, right?”

  “Of course.”

  “Because, you know, all those lectures from Dr. Marston about ‘negative outcomes’ and all that…”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. I just … I wanted to ask you if you were busy tonight.”

  “I have to pick up some documents at a source’s house at eight, but after that I’m free. Why?”

  “There’s something I w
ant to talk to you about. But it has to be total cone of silence.”

  “Uh, all right. Is it work-related cone of silence or home-related cone of silence?” I asked.

  “A bit of both. How about we do Indian take-out like you wanted last night? I should be able to clear out of here by eight. I’ll see you at your place at eight thirty.”

  “You’re being kind of mysterious,” I said.

  “When you hear what it is, you’ll understand why I have to be,” she said.

  “Now you’re being even more mysterious.”

  “Yeah, I know,” she said.

  I stopped myself from asking more. As I may have mentioned, Tina was a challenging woman. Lately, as she slowly—very slowly—let me into her life, I felt like she had been giving me a series of tests. She probably didn’t realize she was doing it. And I’m not sure I fully understood how the tests worked. But they seemed to involve trust: whether I had it in her, whether she could have it in me.

  It was important to let her tell me whatever she felt like sharing in her own due time. So I just said, “Okay. Indian take-out at eighty thirty it is.”

  “Thanks,” she said.

  “And now, let me guess, you want me to pop my head back out of your office.”

  “That would be great,” she said. “Do me a favor and close the door behind you.”

  I did as she asked, never realizing such a simple act could feel like a metaphor.

  * * *

  As I returned my body to my desk, I similarly returned my brain to work. Now that I was armed with the VIN number from Justin Waters, it was time to figure out what was happening behind the happy facade of the Greater Newark Children’s Fund.

  This made me realize I had never heard back from Sweet Thang, which was odd. I had sent her the story about Dave Gilbert hours earlier. I knew her duties at the nonprofit, varied as they were, kept her busy. But one of the reasons Sweet Thang could kill the batteries on two smartphones in a day is that she was never out of touch for very long.

  I pulled up “Thang, Sweet” in my contact list and hit the send button. It rang, then rang some more, then sent me to voice mail. I shifted over to “Thang, Sweet 2,” but got the same result. So I texted her: “Hey, what’s up? Did you see the Gilbert thing? Call me.”