The Big Scam

by Paul Lindsay

  Vanko had already taken three calls from Howard Snow, each offering what he thought was a good suspect, each “really” fitting the profile. None of them was in the laptop’s file. Kenyon had called once, and the name he provided wasn’t listed either. When Vanko heard Sheila’s voice, he sensed some urgency. “Have you got something?”

  “I’ve got a possible. Al-ex To-len-ka.” She pronounced each of the syllables distinctly. “Right now, we’re heading back.”

  While he searched the name, she told him what she had seen. “Sounds good…but he’s not in the file.”

  “How about the names from Manny?”

  “Hold on.” After a minute, he said, “Jesus, Sheila, there’s a Tolenka family. The property owner is listed as Anya Tolenka.”

  She started to tremble. For the first time she understood just how much she had given up. She had forgone sleep, food, and the reassurance of social convention until only the case existed. They said she had let the case consume her, but it was all about to pay off. She glanced back to make certain Tolenka was still in sight. “That has to be a relative. We’re just starting back. Manny predicted that he wouldn’t live where he left the body. Can you run him through DMV and see if he has a different address?”

  “Sure. Do you need some help keeping an eye on him?”

  “I don’t think so. It looks like he’s staying with the group.”

  “Good. The people at the church are having a potluck dinner for the volunteers. He wouldn’t miss an opportunity like that.”

  “I’ll be there as fast as I can.”

  “As soon as you get close, call. You can hand him off to Brad, and he can watch him inside the school.”

  Vanko radioed Snow and Kenyon to get back to the van. By the time they got there, he had obtained an address for Alex Tolenka in Queens. Vanko filled them in. “Brad, you’ve got to stay on him. Sheila, Howard, and I will head over to his residence. Let us know if it looks like he’s heading home. I don’t know how much time we’ll need, but with any luck he won’t leave before we’re done.”

  “And if he does?”

  “You’ll have to find a way to slow him down.”

  Vanko pulled the van up in front of Tolenka’s house. Sheila said, “I guess the laugh’s on me.”

  “Why?” Vanko asked.

  “I moved so I could be closer to the case, but my old apartment is less than a mile from here.”

  “Okay, Howard, man the radio,” Vanko said. “You’ve got to let me know right away if any cars show up that look like they might belong here.”

  Vanko unlocked a hidden cargo well and took out an oversized pilot’s map case. After checking the street for anyone who might be watching them, they walked up to the front door of the small bungalow. He rang the bell and looked around while discreetly trying the door. It was made of steel and locked tightly. He scanned the neighborhood again. He and Sheila went around back and he knocked on the door. It had a glass window, and he placed both hands and an ear against it and closed his eyes, trying to sense any movement inside. He opened the briefcase and took out a lock-pick gun, inserting its shaft into the keyhole. He clicked the trigger carefully while slowly turning the grip. The lock rotated open.

  He locked the door behind them, and, using a pocket flashlight, they moved through the house quickly. There were two bedrooms and no basement. Once they got through the kitchen, living room, and the first bedroom, Sheila stopped. “Hold it a second,” she whispered. He turned off the light. They stood motionless, listening…nothing. With the light back on, he examined the room more closely. He walked back to the kitchen, and then to the second bedroom, which appeared to be Tolenka’s. Sheila checked the closet and the dresser. Hanging items were all faced the same way, the hangers perfectly spaced. All the shoes were still in their original boxes, stacked on the floor with architectural precision. Socks, underwear, and shirts sat in the drawers with the same pathological alignment. She took Vanko’s flashlight and went back into the living room. A vacuum cleaner leaned against the wall next to the front door. The carpet was marked with the symmetrical patterns of a recent vacuuming. The only other impressions on it were the agents’ footprints. “He vacuums his way out of the house so he won’t leave footprints,” she said almost to herself. She yelled, “Adelina! Where are you? It’s all right, it’s the FBI.” She waited a few seconds. “Adelina! It’s the FBI.” She called out a third time, but there was still no response.

  “If this is the right guy,” Vanko said, “where can she be?”

  “He has to have her somewhere else. That means we’ll have to follow him when he leaves the school. The forty-eight hours are almost up.”

  As they headed out the back door, Vanko said, “Do you want to do anything about those footprints?”

  “No, let’s leave them. If nothing else, they’ll make him paranoid.”

  They relocked the door with the pick. In the backyard was a one-car garage, unusually tall and of noticeably newer construction. Checking the next-door neighbor’s house for signs of anyone watching him, Vanko started toward it. As he did, a motion sensor set off a pair of floodlights. Hurrying into the shadow of the house, he handed Sheila the map case. “Wait here, I’ll be right back.”

  Vanko rushed to the van. Snow asked, “Find anything?”

  “Not yet, let me have the BB gun.” Vanko had equipped each of the surveillance vans with a CO2 pistol for long-range night surveillance. It was not unusual for their targets to be erratic drivers, which made following closely difficult to conceal. At an opportune time, they would discreetly shoot out a taillight, rendering the vehicle more distinguishable at night, the single light easier to track at a distance.

  “Brad just radioed. He followed Tolenka back to the school. First thing he did was go to his car and change his shirt. Brad’s going to set up on the car.”

  “If he starts to leave give me three blasts on the horn. Any other problems out here, give me two.”

  Vanko approached the garage, keeping his distance from the motion detector. He checked the adjacent houses again. Then he quickly fired a quietly hissing shot into each of the floodlights. He tried the overhead door, but it was locked. He told Sheila, “Wait here a minute.” He walked completely around the structure. Even though it was a good six feet longer than a standard garage, there were no windows or walk-in doors.

  He opened the map case and took out a nondescript black metal box about the size of a cordless phone. He flipped a switch on the top, and it emitted a low, steady hum. As he turned a small, ratcheted dial, its pitch rose slightly. After a dozen or so clicks, the motor in the garage kicked on, and the door rose smoothly. They walked in under it and Vanko closed the door behind them.

  The garage was as meticulously ordered as the house. Even the floor had been painted. Then Sheila saw the shelves.

  The entire back wall was filled with floor-to-ceiling shelving. On small wire stands stood dozens of two-foot-high female dolls, each with elaborately painted porcelain faces and hands. The colors were natural and perfectly applied, except for the eyelids, which were completely covered in Wedgwood blue, and the lips, which were coated with a thick Gothic cordovan, giving the faces a vandalized look. A few of them were clad, not in elaborate old-fashioned doll dresses, but modern children’s clothes: jeans, tank tops, short cotton summer skirts, and kneesocks.

  Sheila swept her hand along the floor but couldn’t find any dirt or debris. “He doesn’t park his car in here.”

  Vanko stared at the shelves. The wall behind them was finished with painted plywood where the other walls were bare studs. He went to the corner and paced off the length of the wall. Eight and a half strides, somewhere around nineteen feet to the shelves. He turned toward the door to pace it off outside, but suddenly felt the pull of tacky paint on his right shoe. “This spot has been painted recently.”

  Sheila touched the floor with her fingertips and tested a widening pattern with her toe until she could visualize the shape of the still-wet ar
ea. It was a ninety-degree arc about two feet long. “It’s fan shaped. It looks like the wall in front of it swings open and scraps the old paint. So he repaints it. Just like the carpeting inside, he likes to cover his tracks.”

  Vanko examined a seam in the wall at the pivot point of the freshly painted arc. “If this is a hidden door, its hinges are on the inside so it can’t be detected.” Grabbing the shelves at the end that would have opened, Vanko pulled, at first carefully and then with force. It felt as solid as if it were embedded in concrete. He inspected under the shelving for some type of lock or release.

  The van’s horn sounded three long blasts. Tolenka was moving. Vanko jerked at the wall with his entire weight. Sheila grabbed hold of it next to him. “Adelina!” she started yelling again. “It’s the FBI, are you in here? Adelina!” she screamed. She stopped pulling. “Maybe he has her someplace else.” Vanko opened the garage door, and they ran to the van.

  Snow said, “Brad said he’s coming out to his car.”

  “This is our guy,” Sheila said, “but we’re not sure where the girl is. Get us back over there, we can’t lose him now.” Vanko picked up the mike. “Brad, I don’t care if you have to shoot him, don’t let him get away. We’ll be there in two minutes.”

  “Well, don’t rush.” Kenyon’s voice came back with its patrician calm. “It seems someone has let the air out of one of his tires.”

  30

  GARRETT EGAN DIDN’T LIKE THE SIZE OF THE MAN standing in front of the second-floor door at the After Hours, but he no longer had the luxury of options. “I’m here to see Mike,” he said. Without the slightest change of expression, Angelo swept the agent’s upper body with a small electronic security wand. “I’m not carrying a gun.”

  “I’m not looking for a gun.” Angelo ran the detector along Egan’s legs.

  “Then what do you think I—” Egan realized he was being searched for a transmitter.

  As soon as the door opened, he was surprised to see a third man with Parisi and Baldovino. “Who is this?”

  DeMiglia extended his hand. “We talked on the phone. I’m Danny.” Egan glared at Parisi, who busied himself with a cigarette. “Don’t be upset with Mike, he didn’t have any choice. This little get-together was my idea.”

  Egan shook hands.

  “Things don’t happen in my territory unless I say so. Remember, we brought you in on this.”

  “And don’t forget, without me, you guys would be sitting around the old gangsters’ home playing gin and talking about how nice it would have been to find fifty million dollars.”

  “That’s right, so like it or not, we’re a team. Quit being so pissed off about it. If we’re going to have a shot at finding the Dutchman’s box, we’ve got to work together.”

  Egan took a moment. “Okay, since this can’t be undone, let’s move on.”

  “Good. You want a drink or something?”

  “You got any Drambuie?”

  “I’ve got whatever you need. Manny…” Baldovino went to the bar and poured him a small glass. “So tell me how the search was going before they stopped you.”

  Egan recognized that his credibility was being questioned. “Pretty much according to plan. They ran several charts.”

  “But no sign of the box?”

  “To tell you the truth, I haven’t really looked at them.”

  “How do I know that’s true? How can I be sure you haven’t found the box on the chart and are telling us there’s nothing so you can go back and dig it up?”

  “This is why I’m here?”

  “You have to admit, if you were in my shoes, you’d be asking these questions.”

  “What have I done to make you distrust me?”

  “Let’s not forget why we came to you in the first place: you were arrested for insider trading.”

  “Well, yes—”

  “That’s not petty theft we’re talking about. How much was it?”

  “The indictment said over a quarter of a million.”

  “Which means you’re not only capable of—let’s be nice and say diverting large sums of money, but you need large sums to make problems go away.”

  “Okay, I get it.”

  “I’m curious, how does someone with your education—and background—wind up doing that?”

  “Well, let me see if I can put this in terms you can understand. You’re out in Vegas, and you’re given a job in a casino counting room with so much cash in it that money loses its significance. It’s just green paper or worse, some other form like credit card receipts. Although they tell you what your job is, they don’t really tell you all the rules. You start to notice all the people around you gambling, and some of them are actually winning. So you place a bet, but you lose. But it’s not really losing because you can take some of that money in the counting room, or shift around some numbers, to cover your bet. It’s not stealing because it’s all going back in the system anyway. You’re just moving it around, which is kind of your job anyway. You start gambling more because you like it and because you really can’t lose. Then one day they walk in and put handcuffs on you. And that’s when they explain all the rules. I suppose I did step across some imaginary line, but you tell me, Danny, where was it?”

  “And you lost it all in the market?”

  “That and a couple of hundred thousand more in accounts in my undercover name.” Egan took a healthy swallow of his drink.

  “So we’re back to my original problem. How do you convince me that you don’t know where the box is?”

  “How do you convince someone you don’t know something?”

  “Let’s just say it would be in your best interest if you could think of a way rather than me thinking of a way.” DeMiglia smiled.

  “The charts. I’ve got all the charts they ran. They’re in my car. I’ll go get them.”

  DeMiglia held up a hand. “Angelo’ll go.”

  He handed over the keys. “It’s a brown Chevrolet four-door. They’re in the trunk. There’s also a briefcase with some equipment I ‘borrowed’ from the seismic geeks.” His confession of an additional theft made DeMiglia smile. Egan said, “Since I’m showing you mine, how about you showing me yours? I’d like to see this famous map. I’ve only seen the half I got for Mike, and that was very briefly.”

  “Mike, did you bring it?”

  Parisi picked up a large envelope from the desk. “Here.”

  The two halves were still in the clear plastic envelopes from the document examiner. Egan laid them side by side, matching the edges as closely as the plastic would allow. He tried to visualize the terrain he had tromped across the last two days. “This X, this is where you figure it is?”

  “What else could it be?” Parisi answered.

  “This line drawn across the tear, that starts by the X, the symbol at the end of it, do you know what it is?”

  DeMiglia said, “Yeah, that’s right. The document guy said something about that.”

  Egan pulled out the report from the envelope and read the first two pages. “Here it is. He says that since it’s right where the map was divided, it might be significant.”

  “I remember that, but we could never make anything out of it,” Parisi said.

  “If this is what I think it is…” He opened and closed his eyes several more times trying to link something in his memory to the map. Finally he said matter-of-factly, “I’m fairly certain this marking represents a small but distinctive rock outcropping that’s north of the creek. If I’m right, we’ve been using the equipment in the wrong area.” DeMiglia and Baldovino crowded up to the table.

  “We thought those squiggles was supposed to be trees,” Manny said.

  “Yeah,” DeMiglia said. “How do you figure they’re rocks?”

  “First, remember that sixty years ago, the roads probably weren’t paved, and even if they were, they might have been in slightly different locations, but the creek hasn’t moved. If you look at this map in relation to the creek, and take into consideratio
n where that outcropping is, the X is on the other side of the Woodland Valley Road. See how the creek is drawn here, the way it bows. The actual course of the creek isn’t that pronounced. Now look at the X in relationship to how he drew the creek. See how the outcropping symbol kind of points to it. That’s how you were supposed to locate the X, from its position relative to the creek and the outcropping. He exaggerated it for that purpose and in doing so threw off the rest of the map’s proportions. If you know where that point in the stream is, you’re much closer to where the box is buried. I think all the seismic tests that have been conducted the last day and a half are just off to the east of it.” Angelo brought in the charts and briefcase. “Let me have those.”

  Egan unfolded the charts. He took a moment to orient himself. “See, here’s where the creek cuts through. And this shading here? That indicates a different density—the rock outcropping, or actually the underground base of it. If I’m right,” he consulted the map again, “the X would be over here.” He pointed at an imaginary spot past where the chart ended. “We’ve been testing in the wrong area.” He collapsed into the desk chair. “Goddamnit, I should have seen this map before we started. I should have thought of it. This is my fault.”

  “So you’ll have them look in the right area now. What’s the big deal?” DeMiglia asked.

  Egan laughed sarcastically. “Did you miss part of this conversation? We’re shut down. And it isn’t looking real good to start up again. Maybe we should just cut our losses and forget it.”

  “Cut our losses?” Parisi said. “What losses do you have? You took fifty grand from me. That’s my loss.” He stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray, breaking it in half.

  “Jesus Christ, Mike, we don’t even know if this treasure exists. You want your money back? I’ll give it back. I’m out.”

  “Yeah, I want it back.”

  DeMiglia had heard enough. “You two, shut the fuck up! Nobody’s getting in or out unless I say so. We’ve come this far. The FBI is paying for this, and if nothing else, when that fact comes out, they’re going to be as embarrassed as we were when Manny the Moron here made headlines. Nobody’s giving up, so just shut up. You two sound like my fucking kids. And especially you there, FBI, you’d better figure a way to pull this off or that ledger you stole with the map in it—which I’m sure has your fingerprints all over it—is going to show up at the federal prosecutor’s office with a note explaining where it came from.”