CON TEST: Double Life

by Rahiem Brooks

  Jared finally said, “Double Life by William Fortune. Is this his latest novel?”

  “Final draft directly from the agent this morning. Worth its weight in gold,” Bowman said.

  Delia scanned the draft impassively. “Does this contain leads?” she asked getting down to business. She ran her fingers through her hair and then asked, “Why did his case air on AMW?”

  “That’s an easy one. Someone tipped them that he was not dead.”

  “Okay,” Delia said. “Is Fortune’s wife in custody?”

  “There is a lovely array of facts in the manuscript to how Justice escaped arrest. You’re arrested, as you are in the novel. You’re real names and all. And no, the wife is not in custody,” Bowman said, as if he had dropped a bomb.

  Both of the Secret Service agents looked at Bowman perplexed. Why she wasn’t in custody was their number one question. As they deplaned, they were informed that Lundin’s car was bugged to hear a pin drop and a tracking device was on it as well. And she had a tail. She had to be in custody.

  “No need to look crazy pals. There’s a far more intriguing development that has been looming since we last chatted,” Bowman said and then dimmed the room lights. He walked to the head of a long table and reached for a string hanging from the ceiling. He pulled the cord and a white screen appeared. He used the remote to instruct the Power Point to display the first slide on the screen. “That is your man Justice Lorenzo four years ago when he skipped town,” Bowman said, and then pushed a button on the remote. “This is a picture of your man taken recently.” He showed the picture mailed by Jose Velazquez to Lundin.

  “Thanks,” Delia said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “We did not think that he had aged to an unrecognizable state.”

  “Yeah, what’s the goddamn point?” Jared asked, hotly. He was pissed, and then added, “I want the men that lost the wife in here ASAP.”

  “You two can save the sarcasm,” Bowman said to them, and asserted his authority. “Bet you have no idea that the two photos are the same men living a double life, ergo the title of the novel.”

  Delia looked frustrated. She could not take dealing with a detective that was not from her elite pedigree. While she understood Detective Bowman’s stake in the matter, Bowman forced her to not want to work with him. She and Jared had been given carte blanche to reach deep into the prestigious pool of men on their team to track and find their man.

  “Here,” Jared said, sliding glasses to Bowman. “You need these until you get your own.”

  Bowman ignored their wicked stares and slid each of them an enlarged copy of a California driver’s license. “Jared and Delia, I am not as delusional and incompetent as you may think. Photo numeral uno is your guy, Justice Lorenzo, as I’ve previously stated. Photo numeral dos is my guy, William Fortune. They are the same goddamn man!” Bowman let that sink in, and then slid the glasses back to Jared.

  FIFTY-FOUR

  Lundin pulled over at McDonalds and parked in the parking lot. She could see the agents parked about five cars over from her. She grabbed her purse and took out her wallet. She then stuffed the purse under the seat to conceal it from thieves. She opened the door and wiggled through the parking lot as if she had to use the restroom very badly. Her face was strained and sweaty. She looked as if she had to piss right then, or her bladder was bound to explode.

  She emerged into the McDonalds and dipped into the bathroom. She pulled her hair into a pony tail and slipped her white blouse over her head and revealed a red tube top. She topped her head with a Wizards ball cap and pulled her hair through the hole in the back.

  Exiting the bathroom Lundin looked at the agents’ vehicle, which was parked facing away from the restaurant. Rather than exit out the same door that she entered, she walked pass the counter of registers, and ignored their crooked stares. She jogged toward the pavement, her breasts bounced vivaciously as she crossed the drive-thru lane. Her exposed stomach contracted and expanded with each breath that she took, as she made her escape from the agents. She reached the pavement and jogged along the street until she reached the parked Pontiac G6 that William had rented. The passenger door swung open and she hopped in. Her husband was not the driver!

  FIFTY-FIVE

  Secret Service Agent Lewis Horton hopped out of the Taurus and decided to take a piss. Lewis strode into the fast-food joint and went directly to the bathroom. He used the john, washed his hands, and then walked back into the dining area. He called his partner, Secret Service Agent Thomas Blakemore, and asked if Lundin had exited.

  “Fuck no. What, is she shitting?” Thomas joked.

  “Don’t know. Let me check on her,” Lewis replied.

  “You just want a cheap thrill. Pervert!” Thomas said. Lewis heard Thomas chuckling before he hung up.

  Lewis placed his hand on the handle of the ladies room door and yelled, “Man on deck,” before he swung it wide open. No one responded, so he entered and checked all of the stalls. He swallowed hard and sped outta the bathroom.

  Lewis reached the counters and did not see Lundin anywhere in sight. Frustration flashed on his face and he pulled on the little hair that he had left. He called his partner. “Tell me she came out.”

  “No,” Thomas replied. He thought that he heard the beginning of a very bad joke.

  FIFTY-SIX

  Near 10 a.m., William awoke. He found himself naked underneath leather straps binding him to a plywood board. The board was placed neatly on top of a concrete slab. He dreamily peered around the room and found a small window with a curtain over it. The room was small and dank and resembled a garage. His eyes settled on an IV-drip bag that lay next to him. He traced the cords with his eyes to his arm. His hands were covered in black ink and his head was bandaged.

  Sam stood in the corner of the garage next to a pick-up truck. He enjoyed the sight of William awakening. He had prayed that William would not wake up during the time it took to kill Nyoka and fly back to LA. The wait was well worth it. He strolled over to his victim and stared down at him. Sam’s eyes admonished William and William was terrorized. He gathered the mettle to face the torture that he probably faced.

  William watched Sam stick a needle into an exposed vein on his left arm. He had administered sodium thiopental, a fascinating truth serum. William was horrified. He had so much to tell.

  “Are we awake?” Sam asked, looking condescendingly at William. He flashed a wicked smile. Nothing was funny lately, though. Seeing William terror-stricken was.

  The garage door swung open and another man entered. William did not recognize the man. The man carried a black doctor’s bag. Rather than remove a stethoscope, the man pulled out several wires and began attaching them to William.

  “You’re being connected to a lie detector. Considering we have you alive is evidence that our intent is not to murder you. All I want is a piece of the pie. Is that clear?” Sam asked. He then added, “Be careful how you reply. A lie could devastate you.”

  William tried to reply, but his tongue was glued to the roof of his mouth.

  “Ah, you’re thirsty? It has been a week since water has passed through your throat,” Sam said, lying. William had no way of knowing that it had just been a dozen hours.

  Sam offered William a swallow of water. He licked his dry lips and prepared to talk.

  “Better? Are you hungry?” Sam managed to ask politely.

  “I can wait. Why am I here?” William asked weakly.

  “A man that likes to get down to business is my favorite type of man,” Sam replied and then removed his mask. “Is that better? You did not think that you had the last word at the zoo, did you? Now, I am running the show, my boy. I will be asking 100% of the questions. Call me selfish, but you are too. Something that I know all about.”

  William was confused and that was evidenced by the look on his face. His brow furrowed and he had no idea what the man was talking about. But he did not want to ask questions. Sam made it clear that he was asking all questions and that w
as fine for then.

  “Let me be clear. You raped my father’s account and then you know what happened? He died from a heart attack and when my mother found him, he swam in paperwork trying to get his credit restored. I hated him, though, so thanks. But I owe you for the pain my mother endured.” Sam strolled over to his lie detector and asked if he was ready to proceed. He was. Sam asked William, “What’s your name?”

  William hesitated. It was a question to test his truthfulness. “William Fortune,” he answered and stared at his captor like he was a complex puzzle.

  The administrator testified that William was being truthful. Honest. That pissed Sam off! He walked to the bed area of the pick-up and retrieved a tool box. Sam shuffled around in the box until he found what he needed to extract the truth from William. The real truth.

  Sam mumbled to himself. “Think he’s going to play games with me,” he said, powering on the diamond-tipped Dremel drill. The drill whirled to life and Sam hissed, “I’m very aware that you have met with some of the finest lie detectors. Probably you have mastered how to beat the test. If you have that’ll be too bad for you.”

  “My name is William Fortune,” William responded hastily. He wanted no parts of the drill hissing hungrily in Sam’s hand.

  “He continues to tell the truth,” the administrator said.

  He had not expected the results to be going the way they were. He knew the man before him was not William Fortune. They had inked William’s hands and had his prints run through NCIC to get his true identity, but William knew how to beat the test. The administrator was afraid for what was going to happen to William with the drill.

  “You’ll learn not to gamble on my casino floor,” Sam seethed and drilled three minuscule holes into three knuckles of William’s index finger.

  William howled in a falsetto note that he had no idea he could hit. The excruciating glare in William’s eyes brought a joyous sneer across Sam’s face. So much so, he yearned for more.

  Sam whistled as he popped the hood of the pick-up. He pulled a hypodermic needle from his breast pocket and extracted acid from the vehicle battery. He raised the needle into the air and plucked it twice. “Five cc’s should do it.” he said, smirking. He stared into William’s eyes, and said, “No, we better go with 10,” and pulled more acid into the needle.

  William wanted to scream again, but his dry mouth hindered that. He wanted to repent for his lie. He could tell that Sam was pissed and all he wanted was silence.

  “This needle will fit perfectly into the holes that I’ve drilled neatly into the tiny bones in your finger. The acid would really upset your bone marrow to the point that it would refuse to function. Bet you hadn’t thought of having arthritis at such an early age. And fucking up your fingers is just the beginning to assure that you will not write another novel. Not by typing anyway. I can put 10,000 holes in you and pump them with acid until you give me the answers that I want. And that’s just the appetizer. By the sound of your last scream, you want no part of the entrée, and definitely not the dessert. So, again, I ask what your goddamn name is?”

  William did not come right out with an answer. He seemed to contemplate what was the goon looking for him to say. Sam was an impatient man, though. He slid the needle into one of the holes and unloaded the acid. William mustered a scream as steel-gray smoke bellowed from the hole like a freshly stamped out cigarette. Sweat and tears fought for supremacy on William’s face.

  William said, “Please stop.” He preferred to deal with Satan than the man before him.

  “Name and city of birth?”

  “Philadelphia.”

  “And?”

  “My name is Justice Lorenzo.”

  “Now we are getting somewhere.”

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  At 1035 hours in the very room that Delia and Jared had been made aware of the marvelous revelation, several agents filled the room. All of them had a combined grand total of 116 years with the Secret Service and were very prepared to track William/Justice.

  Delia stepped away from the coffee and addressed her colleagues. She put a photo of Justice Lorenzo on the screen and began her speech to introduce the LA boys to her most wanted. “This here is our man, guys and gals. He skipped from Philly four years ago and has re-invented himself into the man we know as William Fortune, famed novelist. Now we know why he has never granted interviews or been seen. He was re-arrested at his P.O.’s office and rather than stand trial on the new charges, he fled to New York where he and two friends went on a vicious crime spree, which included writing phony checks to high end hotels and boutiques. He went into a bank and posed as a Mr. Sandford and raped that account of $3,000. He and his partners, Harry Dijonette and Alimu-Shine Ridley, then opened 40 accounts in various victims’ names and took out personal loans and lines of credit in those names. Total damage is approximated at $5.9 million.” She paused and flashed mug shots of Amir and Alimu-Shine.

  “Later, there was a bank robbery not involving our three musketeers. Two armed men entered a Bank of America and robbed the bank just as Lorenzo had scored another $8,000 from the bank. Lorenzo was kidnapped and later his vehicle was found charred along with a handless, footless, and eyeless corpse.”

  Jared looked dazed and in need of sleep, albeit he took over, “We began looking for Dijonette and Ridley considering he had boarded a flight for LA right after the body was found. LaGuardia experienced surveillance trouble that day, so we had no way of knowing who actually boarded the flight. We caught up with Ridley, who had a dozen parents swear that he was at a football game coaching at the time of the robbery. That cleared him and resulted in us blaming Dijonette for the Lorenzo murder. So much for that idea. The AMW show aired the case looking for Dijonette, but a tipster phoned in and tipped us that they were looking for the wrong guy. The woman claimed to be the mother-in-law of William Fortune and said that the man that aired as dead was not. One of our agents, Nyoka LaCroix looked into the call and treated it as a hoax. We are looking for her now to get her take on all of this. She had not been reached yet.

  “Because of the recent crimes committed by Lorenzo posing as Fortune, LAPD Rocky Bowman also searches for William/Justice. He is currently obtaining a search warrant for Fortune’s home and his office on Wilshire. We need that home thoroughly combed for clues that they are one and the same. Also, anything that says that he is still committing crimes, and we want the money. All of it.”

  “So, whose body was charred in the car?” an agent asked.

  “Good question,” Delia replied. “The working theory is that it belonged to Harry Dijonette and, Justice Lorenzo boarded that flight to LA under his name.”

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  Lundin had shut the door behind her. She was immediately alarmed and screamed as she frantically reached for the door handle. The man had a wicked smile and relished her surprise. He uttered the words, “If you want to see your husband alive, you will not attempt to leave this vehicle. I am a friend. That was me texting you.”

  Her eyes blinked uncontrollably. Nothing was clear. Questions were compounding at a rate that she could not rationally answer. The man had pulled off and drove in the direction of her home.

  With her voice an octave higher than usual, she asked, “Who are you and where are you taking me?”

  The man drove a few feet ignoring her, as if he needed time to think about the answer. He told her, “I’ll tell you upon our arrival of our final destination.”

  “When will that be?”

  “Soon.”

  “I knew that,” she replied sarcastically.

  Lundin sat and contemplated her fate. The car air seemed dense and hot. Just when she believed the ordeal was over, it had just begun. The man had earned a sizable reward for taking Lundin. He pulled onto Robertson Boulevard prepared to work on the bonus.

  FIFTY-NINE

  Painkillers were a necessary thing to keep the kidnapped patient with positive thoughts of the outcome. William lay in the dark when a light came on
in the garage and he was roused with another dose of truth serum. William kept his eyes as open as he could in his drowsy state.

  Sam pulled a chair next to William and stared calmly at the bound man. William made a gesture to speak, but was silenced by a destructive back-hand slap to the mouth. His head spun and he probably had whip lash. To William it was unnecessary. For Sam, though, it was a warning. William’s nerves became antsy. He was reconnected to the lie detector wires.

  The man was not going to kill him, was what William told himself. Somewhere within the belly of his gut, he wanted to be rescued by death. This event had tormented him enough. So had Justice Lorenzo. No matter how desperately he tried to totally rid himself of his former self, he couldn’t. He closed his eyes and tried to keep his composure. He was nauseous and his skin felt like a colony of ants crawled on him. For months, Justice had haunted him relentlessly. He had tried a host of psychotropic medications to prevent Justice from invading his mind, from ruining his day, from telling him to shoot people that he had no desire to. His studies led him to a mental disease psychiatrist called dissociative identity disorder. No matter how hard he tried, Justice would not go away. And now this thug, Sam, was before him to torture him and force him to recall all of the things that he hated and tried to forget.

  SIXTY

  “How much is your total asset?” Sam asked, and caught William off guard.

  “I cannot be certain,” William replied. Suddenly he realized what the kidnapping was all about. The man had already taken his money, but now he would take it all. Not if William could help it, though.

  “Then we have a fucking problem! Your finger is evidence of how I handle problems. You ought to think very fucking hard before you answer any more of my questions, or I will work on every limb in your fucking body.”