by Diane Kelly
Lien frowned slightly as she cut her eyes to her mother. “My mother, Suong.”
Suong didn’t bother to extend a hand to us. Rather, she made a shooing motion, herding us up the walk. “This way, this way. Stay off the grass.”
As we reached the front door, Suong darted around the group and turned to face us, spreading her short arms to block entry. “No shoes in the house. Leave them outside.”
We slipped out of our shoes and left them on the mat.
Suong glanced down at my feet, her mouth gaping in horror. “Your socks don’t match!”
True. One was a plain black trouser sock, the other bore stripes. I’d been too lazy to dig through my drawer for a matching set this morning. Of course I hadn’t expected anyone to even notice, much less have a virtual coronary over it.
Once we were all shoeless, Suong stepped aside to let us enter the residence. Why she’d made us remove our footwear I had no idea. Clear rubber runners covered every square inch of carpet in the place.
Though the house contained the normal contents of a family home, it had an artificial feel to it, like a model home. The carved animal figurines on display in a curio cabinet in the front hall were placed precisely the same distance apart, as if the span had been carefully measured with a ruler. All of the blinds in the living room were raised to the same height, the slats turned to exactly the same angle. The place smelled heavily of furniture polish and pine-scented floor cleaner. Not a thing was out of place, not a speck of dust in sight.
Inside, Trang pulled an adorable though fussy toddler from a portable playpen. Lien went to the kitchen, returning with a tray of hot tea and lemon cookies that she placed on the rosewood coffee table.
The couple took places on a plastic-covered love seat while Ackerman, Eddie, and I sat shoulder to shoulder on a sofa that was also covered with plastic. Suong perched on the edge of a Queen Anne chair upholstered in a blue and white print, the only piece of furniture in the room without a protective covering. Her muscles seemed tensed, like those of a cat prepared to pounce on an unsuspecting bug. The woman really needed to learn to relax.
I eyed the lemon cookies. In order to prevent the appearance of bribery, Federal agents weren’t supposed to accept anything of value from those under investigation. But the government and the Nguyens were on the same side in this case, and it would be rude to refuse Lien’s hospitality, wouldn’t it? Of course it would. I’d been taught as much in Miss Cecily’s Charm School. Besides, the stale Fruity Pebbles I’d eaten for breakfast hadn’t exactly hit the spot.
I fished a lemon cookie off the stack and took a quick nibble. Suong sprang from her chair, grabbed a handheld vacuum from its charging stand by a nearby wall outlet, and sucked a microscopic yellow crumb off the knee of my pants. Whirrr.
She hovered over me, wielding the hand vac like a weapon, waiting for me to take another bite. Rather than risk another suction attack, I shoved the rest of the cookie into my mouth. Miss Cecily would not have recommended such an unladylike action, but sometimes a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do. I tried not to gag on the dry cookie. The last thing I needed was to cough out cookie crumbs all over the couch and table. It might send Suong over the edge.
The toddler held his arms out to his mother. Lien took him from her husband and offered the boy a cookie, which he happily gummed. Suong left me to hover over her daughter and grandson, sucking a series of yellow fragments off her grandson’s chubby belly as they fell from his gooey mouth. Whirr. Whirr. Whirr.
Ackerman laid his briefcase on his lap and opened it, pulling out his pen and notepad. He closed the briefcase and used it as a lap desk, placing his notepad on top of it. He addressed Lien and Trang. “How did you get hooked up with Game Set Match?”
Trang replied for the couple. “We got behind on our house payments when I lost my job as an IT specialist with the Dallas school district.”
Whirr. “I told him not to take that job,” Suong said, waving the vacuum over the heads of her daughter and son-in-law.
The couple did their best to ignore her.
“We thought a job with the school district would be safe,” Lien said, bouncing the baby on her knee.
Her mother snorted, rolled her eyes, and sucked another crumb from her grandson’s shirt. Whirr.
“I’d already left my job to stay home with our son,” Lien continued. “With the cost of day care it didn’t make sense for me to continue to work.”
“I told her I’d watch the baby.” Suong scowled. “But she wanted to babysit him herself.”
“Mom, please,” Lien said, looking up at her mother. “It’s not called babysitting when it’s your own child. Sit down and let us talk.”
Suong harrumphed but settled back on the edge of her chair, the vac still held at the ready.
Eddie snagged a cookie from the tray and carefully raised it to his lips, taking a clean, crumb-free bite.
“Show-off,” I whispered.
“We saw an ad in the local paper.” Trang opened a large envelope and pulled out a copy of the Garland Texan, a community newspaper circulated in the northeast Dallas suburb. He handed the newspaper to Ackerman.
Eddie and I read over Ackerman’s shoulders. The back cover featured a full-page ad that read STOP FORECLOSURE NOW! WE’LL SHOW YOU HOW! CALL GSM, INC.—YOUR FRIEND IN DEEDS.
The ad promised desperate homeowners relief from their mortgage debts without loss of equity through what they called a lease-buyback program. Of course the men behind GSM had no intention of keeping their promises. It was all lies, lies, and more lies.
“Did you meet with someone from GSM in person?” Ackerman asked the couple.
“No, they did not,” Suong spat. “Stupid, stupid, stupid! I told them not to buy the house in the first place. Why would they want to live somewhere else when they could live here with me?”
I had a sneaking suspicion why they’d want their own place.
Trang and Lien exchanged glances.
“I saw that!” Suong jabbed the vacuum at her daughter and son-in-law. “Ungrateful! You should thank me! I put a roof over your heads!”
She may have put a roof over their heads, but if the woman kept henpecking the couple they’d probably soon put a gun to those heads.
Eddie took another bite, but wasn’t so lucky this time. A trio of lemon-flavored specks fell to his blue silk tie.
Suong was on them in an instant.
Whirr. Whirr. Whirrup!
The end of Eddie’s tie disappeared into the vacuum.
He looked down. “That can’t be good.”
Suong attempted to turn the vacuum off, but the gadget seemed to be malfunctioning and wouldn’t stop. The suction pulled the vacuum closer and closer to Eddie’s neck, sucking his tie tighter and tighter around his throat. Given that Eddie had dark skin I couldn’t tell if he was turning purple, but judging from his bulging eyes I suspected his air supply was constricted.
“Help!” Eddie gasped, fighting for air, his hands clawing at the tie that had become a noose around his neck.
I grabbed the vacuum from Suong’s hands, pushed her aside, and tried to pull the device away from Eddie. My efforts were futile. The next thing we knew, a burning smell emanated from the device and smoke poured out of the end under Eddie’s face.
Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Flames shot out of the end of the vacuum, licking Eddie’s chin.
Heat seared my hands. “Aah!” Reflexively, I released the hot appliance and covered my mouth and nose in terror.
The blazing vacuum hung like an odd, oversized pendant from Eddie’s neck. He opened his mouth as if to scream, but with no oxygen in his lungs he managed only a choking sound. He slapped at the flames, but couldn’t put them out. Luckily, his tie burned clear through and the vacuum fell to the rubberized flooring, giving off a death rattle before finally falling silent.
Whirr-whirr-whirr … irr … irr … irrrrr.
“You okay, buddy?” I asked Eddie, putting a hand
on his shoulder and waving smoke out of his face.
He gulped air into his lungs, fingering the remains of his charred tie. “I”— gulp—“will be.”
Suong yanked the vac from the ground. “I’m going to call the manufacturer. I want my money back.” She flopped back onto her chair.
The crisis ended, Ackerman got back to business, cracking open his briefcase and sliding the newspaper ad inside. He turned back to Lien and Trang. “If you didn’t meet in person with a representative of GSM, how did you get your contract?”
“I told them not to sign that contract,” Suong interrupted. “I was right. I’m always right!”
Eddie gave the woman a look that read, You’ve gotta be shitting me. You nearly killed me with your vacuum cleaner. What’s right about that? Trang, however, merely hung his head, his jaw flexing with anger.
Lien took a deep breath and avoided looking at her mother. “GSM mailed us the paperwork with a return envelope included. We mailed everything back to them after we had the contract notarized.”
Suong threw her hands in the air again. “Why don’t you listen?”
“Mom!” Lien raised a palm, her patience gone now. “Be quiet!”
“What?” Suong shrieked. “You are telling me to be quiet in my own house? What kind of daughter tells her mother to be quiet in her own house!”
“One who is being interviewed by federal agents on a tight schedule,” Ackerman snapped, his patience gone, too. “Look, lady, the only people I need to hear from are your daughter and son-in-law. Got it?”
Suong jumped from her seat, still shrieking though now it was in Vietnamese. She stormed off down the hall with her dead vacuum in her hand.
Lien’s face relaxed in relief, while a smile played about Trang’s lips. Seemed he liked seeing his overly controlling mother-in-law put in her place.
Ackerman showed the couple the contract he’d obtained from GSM’s files. “Is this a correct and complete copy of your agreement?”
The couple looked it over and nodded.
“Do you have the checks you wrote to GSM?” I asked, knowing they’d be needed as evidence for court later.
Trang reached once again into the envelope, pulled out a small stack of canceled checks made out to GSM, and handed them to me.
“Can you get our money back?” Trang asked as the interview concluded. “We paid GSM several thousand dollars. It was all of the savings we had left. We had at least thirty thousand in equity in the house, too. We’d made a large down payment when we bought it.”
I exhaled sharply. “It doesn’t look good, Mr. Nguyen. The bankruptcy trustee is managing what assets remain, but the owners of GSM have already spent a lot of the money they took in. You’ll likely get only pennies on the dollar.”
“If we could get some of our money back,” Lien whispered, desperation in her eyes, “we could put a deposit down on an apartment.”
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Trang added softly. “As soon as possible.”
“I heard that!” Suong hollered from down the hall.
Sheesh. The woman must have supersonic hearing.
“We’ll do our best,” Ackerman promised as we stood to go.
I could only offer what I hoped was an encouraging smile.
* * *
After we left the Nguyens, Eddie, Ackerman, and I met with two other victims of GSM’s mortgage-relief scam.
One of them was a sixty-year-old woman named Marisol Ortiz, who’d recently been widowed when her husband succumbed to rapidly progressing pancreatic cancer. Between the medical bills, funeral costs, and lost wages, she’d found herself four months behind on her mortgage payments and unable to catch up. Marisol’s small two-bedroom house had been home not only to Marisol, but also to her thirty-two-year-old daughter who had Down syndrome. Like the Nguyens, Marisol and her daughter would make sympathetic witnesses.
The other victim we visited was an absolute jackass, a middle-aged Caucasian man who’d had plenty of money to pay his mortgage but had purposely skipped payments in the hopes of forcing the bank to lower his monthly payments and interest rate. He’d bought his house years ago when rates were much higher and had been unable to refinance the loan at a lower rate due to the fact that he’d since let his credit slide. He’d leased a Jaguar but stopped making payments when he’d tired of the car. The finance company had been forced to repossess the vehicle. He’d ceased making payments on a hot tub he’d purchased for his patio when he’d cooled off on the novelty of soaking in warm, bubbling water. He’d also failed to make payments on a gym membership, a laptop, and a time-share in Galveston. Though he didn’t come right out and say so, it was clear he’d signed up with GSM only in the hopes of getting a better deal for himself. Heck, he wasn’t much better than the Tennis Racketeers.
Back at the FBI office, Eddie and I parted ways with Ackerman, agreeing to meet up again the next day to continue our investigation. After meeting with the Nguyens and Marisol Ortiz, I felt even more motivated to string up the Tennis Racketeers.
chapter seven
Hired
Just after Eddie and I returned to the IRS building I received a call from a man named Merle, the assistant manager of Guys & Dolls, asking me to come in for an interview ASAP.
“Our last bookkeeper flaked on us,” Merle said. “Didn’t even give notice. We need to get this position filled as soon as possible.”
“I’m on my way.”
“Great. Don’t bring any cash into the club, okay?”
I found the request a little odd, but agreed. Heck, it’s not like I had any cash on me anyway. In these days of debit cards, dollar bills were old-school.
I stopped by Lu’s office to let her know my plans.
She had a celery stick in her hands today rather than her usual Slim Jim. Looked like she was serious about her vow to get in shape.
“Celery, huh? That’s a good start.”
Her lips curled back in disgust. “It’s going to be hard to change my eating habits. But if I can quit smoking after forty-five years, I suppose I can change my diet, too.”
I swung an encouraging fist. “That’s the spirit.”
She eyed the briefcase in my hand. “Where are you off to?”
“Guys and Dolls. I’ve got an interview.”
She took a loud, crunchy bite of the celery. “Don’t blow it.”
“Hey, if I convinced you to hire me, this interview will be a piece of cake.”
Twenty minutes later, I pulled my Mini Cooper into the parking lot of Guys & Dolls. The dark gray building that housed the club was windowless, as if trying to keep its dirty secrets hidden inside. A black sign with red neon letters spelling GUYS & DOLLS GENTLEMEN’S CLUB hung over the double front doors.
Gentlemen. As if, huh?
I cut my engine and took a deep breath to ready myself. Sure, I’d seen these types of places portrayed on TV and in movies, but I’d never actually been inside a strip club before. I wasn’t a prude and had no qualms about baring my body back in high school gym class or now at the YMCA, but a ladies’ locker room was a nonsexual environment. None of us had been looking at each other. I wasn’t sure what to expect from a place where women danced topless with the explicit intent of being ogled by men.
I made my way to the front door. A bouncer with biceps the size of bowling balls stood at the entrance. His unkempt shoulder-length locks gave him a Tarzan-like appearance. He wore a black T-shirt stretched tight across his chest. The word SECURITY was printed in white across the front. He opened the door for me, releasing the sound of Christina Aguilera’s hit “Dirrty” and shooting me a lascivious grin. “So you like the ladies, too?”
“Actually I’m here to interview for the bookkeeping job.”
His grin faded. Looked like I’d killed his lesbian sex fantasy.
He stuck out a beefy hand. “I’m Tyson.”
He’d always be Tarzan to me.
“Sara.”
As I shook his hand, I noticed an e
lectronic keypad was mounted on the outside wall next to the doors. I supposed it made sense to have a keypad instead of regular door locks. Given the turnover in the club, it would be much easier and cheaper to change the access code when an employee quit or was terminated than it would be to change locks and distribute new keys.
The bouncer stepped in after me, calling out to a cocktail waitress. “Yo, Tiff. This chick needs to see Merle.”
Chick? What the cluck?
The young blonde waved me in. “This way.”
The inside of the club was decorated in black and gold, with elevated black vinyl booths around the perimeter and black-topped bar tables closer to the stage. The platform was T-shaped, like the runway in a fashion show, with the main part centered along the back wall and an extension jutting out into the room. The effect was phallic. Three poles graced the stage, one at each end of the T.
Only one of the poles was in use at the moment, the one at the tip of the T, closest to the buffet where the late lunch crowd was filling their plates with all-you-can-eat cocktail shrimp for $4.99. A tall Asian woman with black hair that hung well past her tatas gripped the pole with one hand and slowly bent and straightened her knees in a slow-motion repetitive crouch, as if she were riding an invisible carousel horse. She put the “ho” in “Hi-ho, Silver.” Another dancer, this one with shoulder-length brown hair and an athletic build, gyrated at a table for a trio of businessmen peeling shrimp and dipping them in cocktail sauce. The men cast occasional glances at her between bites of seafood and bits of conversation.
The club’s wallpaper featured a ziggurat motif typical of the Art Deco style. A number of wide mirror panels hung behind the stage and along the walls, probably as much to make the place seem bigger as to reflect the dancers, make the patrons believe they were getting more boob for their buck. As if the nearly naked girls onstage and their writhing reflections weren’t enough, an abundance of nude statutes stood around, the subjects shamelessly showing off their bodies. All of the statues were female, not a Penis de Milo in sight. Talk about your sexist work environments.