The Identity Thief

by C. Forsyth

  Now the undercover cop - if that was what she was - might feel trapped. To turn down an offer so generous after creating such a flirty, sexy persona could be seen as out of character.

  "Well, okay, sweetie. Let me just powder my nose first."

  The girl turned her back. As she headed toward the bathroom, X silently arose from the bed, tiptoed up behind her and clapped a hand over her mouth.

  "Don't move. I have a gun," he whispered in her ears.

  X was bluffing about the gun; he abhorred firearms and regarded any con man who toted a handgun an amateurish embarrassment to the trade. He was not ordinarily a violent man, but desperate times called for desperate measures.

  He pushed her onto the king-size bed, grabbed an errant sock and stuffed it in her mouth. He quickly whipped the belt out of his silk bathrobe on the bed and used it to hogtie her, face down. His hand slid under her blouse and slid up and down her torso, searching for a wire. Sure enough, there was a tiny microphone and transmitter taped to her creamy brown lower back.

  Stacy, though he doubted that was her name, began to make muffled protests.

  He tried to cover the noise by saying loud enough for any mike to pick up, "That's it. That's it. That feels fantastic. Your mouth feels so good."

  The undercover cop rolled her eyes in fury.

  The good news was there must not be any hidden cameras, otherwise her partners would have burst through the doors and busted him already.

  X crept up to the front door of the suite and peered through the peephole. He was 90 percent sure he would see two or three armed cops outside, backup waiting for a verbal signal from the undercover policewoman to move in. What he saw instead made him gasp. There was not one or two or even six. There had to be 10 FBI agents crowded in the hall, decked out in body armor and "Fritz" helmets, and toting MP5s.

  WTF? Yes, he'd arrived at the hotel with a couple of bodyguards, but the raiding party looked like it was prepared to shoot it out with the private militia of a Colombian drug lord.

  Well, strolling out the front door isn't an option, he thought.

  X quickly hauled on his pants and shirt, and raced to the door to the adjoining suite. He always packed a lock-picking kit with him for just such occasions. But as he knelt he heard shuffling from the other room that told him G-men were on the other side. This was no avenue of escape - more than likely the other suite housed the command post of the FBI team, including their recording equipment.

  The "masseuse" continued to let out muffled protestations, which did sound for all the world as if her mouth was working magic on a male member. But he knew this stalling tactic had only bought him a matter of seconds. Assuming they were listening in, they would not want to burst in on the female agent and humiliate her in the act of fellatio. On the other hand, they wouldn't allow the supposed love act to go on for more than maybe two minutes before some cowboy decided it was time to kick down the door.

  He had to get out of the suite, but how?

  He raced to the slanting window. X had beaten a hasty retreat through more than one window in his day. During his stint pulling the classic Lost Puppy scam door to door, when the deal went sour he'd often used the bathroom window as an egress. But those were the first or second floors of homes. This was the 25th story.

  He futzed around for a moment, trying to recall how the slanted windows slid open, before succeeding. He poked his head out and looked at the wall sloping down 250 feet to the cement.

  I should have booked a lower floor, he thought.

  From the ground, the pyramid walls looked like perfectly smooth black glass, but upon closer inspection, X saw that there were subtle ridges where the giant blocks of glass met. The ridges looked just deep enough to accommodate human fingers and toes - perhaps. About 14 feet away another window was open. Tantalizingly close.

  X, whose mountaineering skills were meager, hesitated. If he slipped he'd go sliding down and slam into the pavement below as surely as if the angle was 90 degrees instead of 39. But X could NOT go to prison. The image of a concrete prison cell was more terrifying at that moment than that of his body as a heap of broken bones at the foot of the pyramid. He could imagine himself as the smallest guy in the cell receiving the unwanted attentions of some tattooed gangbanger.

  That unpleasant image propelled the identity thief into action. He began to climb out the window. He did not, fortunately, have much fear of heights. In fact, in his boyhood, the rooftop of the mansion where his mother worked as a maid had been one of his places of refuge.

  "Stacy" managed another muffled protest - perhaps warning him of his folly.

  "Yes, I'm almost there," he groaned as he slithered out.

  X's fingers and toes fought for purchase on the tiny ridges as he inched his way toward the other window. The ridges were slighter than he'd thought - no more than a few centimeters deep. Another thing he hadn't factored in was how windy it was up here. It felt as if a sudden gust might at any second yank him from his precarious position. Those 14 feet looked awfully far away now. X resisted the temptation to shut his eyes.

  That's it, he thought, that's it. Keep going. Not far now.

  A loud noise from his suite - a door being kicked in - startled X and he lost his grip. Suddenly, he was cascading down the pyramid like a child sledding on ice. He was too scared even to shriek. Now he did shut his eyes, although the image that filled his mind - his body smashing into the pavement and splattering like a tomato - didn't much put his mind at ease. He slid down at least 30 feet - down a full three stories - picking up speed as he descended. Then, miraculously, X skidded across another open window. His hands caught the metal window ledge and he gripped it for dear life.

  X dangled for a couple of seconds, letting out a deep sigh of relief. I can't believe I'm alive, he thought.

  Using all his upper body strength, the identity thief hauled himself up. X clambered in through the window with difficulty and rapidly slid it shut.

  By now the agents had burst into the Pharaoh Suite and were rampaging through it. One peered out the window, scanning for any open ones and spotting a few to the side, above and below. Fortunately for X, he'd closed the one he entered in the nick of time.

  X crawled on his hands and knees through the stranger's room. Damn, the shower is running. Someone is in here. X hopped like a rabbit into the closet and cowered there, peering through the crack between the double doors.

  A middle-aged couple, dressed in Giza bathrobes, emerged from the bathroom. Oh, no, he thought. They'll head straight for the closet for their clothes. X balled his fist, ready to strike. The guy was only a little bigger than X, but had a rugged build that worried him. X was no fighter; hadn't struck a blow since middle school. He tried to concoct a story that would innocently explain his presence, but everything that came to mind seemed ridiculous. A tech checking out a WiFi outage?

  But fortune was on X's side. Instead of approaching the closet, the couple headed for the room door. They were going down to the pool, X realized.

  If he continued to be blessed by such serendipity, he had a good chance of getting out of this in one piece.

  "Jon, your wallet," the wife said.

  "Oh, yeah."

  Through the crevice, X watched as the man turned back and took a bulging wallet from the night table. He strode toward the closet. X glanced down and much to his dismay saw that in the far right of the closet sat a squat little room safe.

  The husband reached the closet 10 seconds later and yanked open the right door. He flicked the light switch and the closet remained dark.

  "Bulb's blown. Can't see a thing. I'll just stuff it under the sofa cushion."

  "You know I hate when you do that."

  "I don't trust these things anyway," the husband said grumpily.

  "Jon ... "

  "Okay, okay! Can barely see the numbers."

  The husband punched in a four-digit code, opened the safe and stuck in his wallet.

  A moment later, the room door sla
mmed shut. X, crouching in the left corner of the closet with the light bulb in his hand, breathed again.

  He exited the closet and headed straight for the bedroom. He hurriedly ripped off the turban and false beard and stuffed them in a night table drawer. The man's black shoes fit fine; the sleeves of the jacket were a bit short. X rolled up them up.

  Learning a hotel safe's code by recognizing the distinct tone of each key as it's punched in was a trick he'd learned ages ago. He popped open the safe and retrieved hubby's wallet from its hiding place. Jon Preston, the Arizona driver's license read. Also in the wallet was an official-looking badge. Tucson Police Department.

  Christ almighty, the guy is a cop!

  There was $400 cash and assorted credit cards. X stuffed the wallet in his pants pocket. There was a holstered .45 in the night table. Even in a state of panic, X was not tempted to take it. He found a cell phone plugged in and hurriedly punched in Samantha's number. On the third ring she answered.

  "Sam, remember to pick up my medicine," he told her.

  "What, why?" she demanded.

  "Can't talk now," he shot back and hung up.

  That was another code phrase. Within 15 minutes, Sam would have vanished from the apartment. The operation had blown up in X's face and it felt as if his world was crashing down on him, but he had an ace in the hole: Steven Holdenbrook.

  Steven Holdenbrook was X's ultimate creation. An identity so perfect, so complete, that X could step into it and disappear forever. In a parking garage of the Trump Casino, walking distance away, was a green Ferrari. In the glove compartment lay stashed $100,000 cash and documents authenticating his identity as Steven Holdenbrook. X thought of that car, always parked near a "jobsite," as his lifeboat. If he could get there he would be safe. Of course, that left the minor task of first getting out of this building.

  He looked out the peephole and, seeing no one in the hall, ventured out.

  X pressed the button for the inclinator, and stood trying not to tremble while he waited. The agents must still be checking out the floors above, he thought. They never could have imagined he made it down three stories. But they'd be down here any second.

  The inclinator arrived and though it was crowded, X pushed his way in - earning him a look of chagrin from a porky occupant in a Michael Moore baseball cap and his equally chunky bride, who couldn't spare much space. He maneuvered to the back. Just as the glass doors whooshed shut, X saw a half dozen agents emerge from a stairwell into the hall.

  X ducked down so that he was concealed behind the obese pair and the inclinator continued its descent. From his vantage point looking down through the glass he could see dozens of agents swarming through the casino.

  What in blue blazes is going on?

  He was a small-time con man. Okay, maybe a big-time one, this was no occasion for false modesty. What could possibly make him so important to the Justice Department? Whatever hopes he had nursed of simply walking out through the front door were dashed.

  X crossed the casino floor, where an unusual number of uniformed security guards as well as men his practiced eye identified as undercover security personnel were also roaming. He approached a beefy, mustachioed security guard.

  "What's going on?" X demanded in as tough a Southwestern voice as he could muster.

  "What do you mean?"

  "Come on, all this heat."

  "I can't tell you anything, sir."

  X flashed the Tucson police badge.

  "Hey, I'm a cop, cut me some slack."

  The guard leaned down and whispered confidentially, "Department of Homeland Security operation. There's some kind of terrorist loose. A high-value target." He didn't look bright enough to know precisely what "high-value target" meant.

  X felt his blood run cold. Some kind of terrorist. So THAT explained the Gestapo-type raid.

  What exactly was going on now came to him in a rush. Ali Nazeer's carefree-playboy persona was merely a ruse. He was actually some jihadist Scarlet Pimpernel. X couldn't believe his ill fortune. What were the odds, of all the thousands of potential marks that came into his sights in a year, that he would have chosen this one!

  "What does he look like?"

  The guard looked around, then showed him a black and white printout of X's bearded face and turbaned head caught earlier that day by a security camera.

  "I'll be on the lookout," X said, trying hard not to stagger as they parted company. "I'll keep it on the down low."

  Chapter 7

  ON THE LAM

  X drifted into the casino, plopped down at a slot machine and started mechanically feeding in dollar bills. If Nazeer was a terror suspect there were agents at every exit. Worse still, he also knew that agents must be glued to monitors in the security station, where images were being beamed back from cameras trained at every foot of the casino floor, offering multiple angles on every gambler. He couldn't sit there indefinitely.

  Suddenly aware that someone had sidled up beside him, X almost jumped out of his skin.

  "Cocktail, sir?" asked a smiling waitress holding a tray of drinks. The strongest drink imaginable would seem in order, under the circumstances.

  He nodded. "Scotch on the rocks."

  In the periphery of his vision, he saw men moving through the casino, methodically checking out aisle after aisle, like a pack of wolves sniffing out prey. It would be only a matter of minutes, or perhaps seconds. The inclinators were frozen, he noted - the lawmen had shut them down.

  The waitress was back with the drink in under a minute. X gulped it down and sadly, it did little to steady his nerves. Even heroin might not.

  A voice came over the loudspeaker, crackling and barely audible over the din of the one-armed bandits: "Tours are beginning of King Tut's tomb in five minutes."

  Hurrying to the lobby, X joined the tour group, which included a couple struggling to ride herd over four excited kids, a trio of middle-aged women and five Japanese tourists. As they entered the dark series of chambers, X felt a momentary relief. The place was as cool, dark and tranquil as, well, a tomb. He felt as if he had magically escaped to another place and time.

  "In November 1922, the British archaeologist Howard Carter discovered beneath the Valley of the Kings the long-lost tomb of King Tutankhamun," the youthful male tour guide intoned in a reedy tenor, as they clattered across the stone floor into the first chamber. Melodramatic prerecorded music accompanied his spiel.

  "He had to break through four doors to get to the burial chamber. In the first was the greatest collection of Egyptian antiquities ever discovered. This is a replica of the first chamber and many of the artifacts."

  As X's eyes grew accustomed to the light, details of the room emerged, including statues of strange animals and gods, many of them painted gold.

  "On your left is a statue of the god Ptah. This golden vase is in the shape of an ibex and beside it is an alabaster jar in the form of a lion," the guide was saying.

  "Beyond this antechamber, breaking through another wall," continued the guide, "the archaeologists found a smaller room filled with equally magnificent treasures.

  "Finally Carter broke through a fourth sealed door into the holiest of holies, the burial chamber of King Tut." With a dramatic gesture, the geeky youth flung open a heavy door.

  In the center of the fourth room, a huge yellow sarcophagus stood on a dais. Inside was a remarkably convincing replica of the anthropoid coffin X had seen a dozen times on covers of magazines like National Geographic.

  "The lid of the coffin itself is carved in high relief with an image of the dead king as the god Osiris," the guide went on. "His arms, crossed on the chest, clutch the twin symbols of kingship, the scepter and the flail. The divine cobra of Lower Egypt and the vulture goddess of Upper Egypt, rise from the king's forehead.

  "Attached to the mummy were more than 100 small items placed in accordance with the famous Book of the Dead to ensure the king's safe passage into the afterlife.

  "In the next room, we'll s
ee replicas of some of those items."

  As they passed through the doorway into the next room, X was almost curious about what they'd see.

  Not a bad tour, really. He'd been very fond of field trips to museums in grade school, with the wondrous though fleeting escape they offered.

  X spied a quartet of agents entering from the far side of the chamber. He ducked behind a column, and then doubled back, making his way quickly to the start of the exhibit.

  Well, hello.

  Two more agents stood guarding the entrance, their backs to him. Just dandy. He turned again, hurried back into the faux tomb - and there he saw his one and only chance.

  With some effort X pushed aside the lid of King Tut's coffin; thankfully, it was made of some kind of Styrofoam, not stone. To his relief, the designers of the exhibit had been insufficiently fixated on authenticity to include a real mummy. He climbed in and gingerly slid the lid back in place.

  As the darkness settled in around him, X's claustrophobia flared up. It felt as if he had been buried alive. Is this thing airtight, he wondered, panic rising. He lay there in silence, listening to the footsteps of the tour group retreat. How long was he going to have to stay here? Hours?

  Perhaps not so long. He heard gruff male voices nearby.

  "Check out everything. Malloy swears he saw him sneak in with a tour group."

  FBI agents might not be rocket scientists, but how long could it be before they thought of looking in the coffin? X had to act and act quickly. The identity thief slipped the purloined cell phone out of his pocket and called the hotel's front desk.

  "Can you transfer me to security?" he whispered. When he got casino security, he asked to speak with the chief.

  "Chief Royton here."

  "This is Agent Malloy," he said in a low voice, trying not to whisper. (He was a gifted mimic, but had only heard Malloy utter one sentence). "We've ascertained that the suspect has some kind of dirty bomb," he said. "We have to get everyone out right now."

  "I can't authorize the evacuation," Chief Royton said, aghast. "I'd need permission from the manager."