“So one of the digits must be bogus,” Lucy put in. “And the most likely one is that zero on the end.”
“Which,” Ma said, “would mean the key is 916382475. Now, how do we use it?”
“It has to unscramble the routing numbers,” I said. “Maybe it means, take the ninth digit, then the first digit, then the sixth digit, and so on. Which means Lucy’s idea that that final zero is bogus makes sense because there is no zeroth digit.”
“Try it on Arnold Anderson’s number,” Lucy suggested. “Leave off that three on the end.”
“Dropping the three gives us 115242180,” Ma said. She wrote it on a paper napkin, and the possible key: 916382475. “Okay, the ninth number is zero, the first number is a one …” She went through it, came up with 012581214. She got out her iPad and put the number into a website that identified routing numbers. “No such routing number, no such bank,” she said.
She deleted the first digit in Anderson’s first number, tried again. Still no such bank.
We thought a while longer. Finally, Lucy said, “Maybe that leading nine in the key means something else. Maybe the first number of that coded routing number goes into the ninth place. The second number of the key means the second number of the routing number goes into the first place, and so on.”
It took longer to get that straight, but we finally came up with 122105841 for a routing number. Ma put it into her iPad and … it came up Parkway Bank of Arizona.
“Son of a gun,” Ma said. “Arizona. I think we got him.”
“Do I get a bonus for that?” I asked.
* * *
Twenty minutes later, we had four more banks, all with offices or branches within ten miles of downtown Phoenix: Mutual of Omaha, Torrey Pines Bank, Metro Phoenix Bank, Parkway Bank of Arizona, and Sunwest Federal Credit Union.
“The guy likes Arizona,” Ma said.
“Probably because of those ants,” I said. “I hear they clear the mind.”
“Ohmigod,” Lucy said. “You are terrible. But,” she added, “I would still marry you in a heartbeat. Well … in two hours or less after you ask as long as there’s a chapel nearby. Which there is in Reno. Just sayin’.”
“Glad we got that cleared up,” Ma said. “Not that I haven’t heard it before. But we just made a huge leap forward, so, let’s think about our next step.”
“On hot toddies and beer?” I said. “No telling what we’ll come up with.”
“What I’m coming up with,” Lucy said, “is that Volker and his brood were in Arizona this summer. And all those banks are in Arizona. And those ants came from Arizona.”
Ma said, “I wonder if Volker was dumb enough to open a bunch of bogus accounts with his kids in tow.”
“Might be too much booze in that hot toddy, Ma,” I said. “If the accounts were opened by our two favorite Sorandens, not only does that leave Volker entirely out of it, it puts Esther in Arizona at some point, going around with fake IDs. Or Ronald Soranden in drag. We found those banks using his address sheet, which isn’t an address sheet but a way to hide account numbers. It has nothing to do with Volker—if his story is true, which I think it is because I believe his sister, Marta.”
“Well, shit.” Ma gave an accusing look at the drink in front of her. “I got those two mixed up. I need sleep. But what’s with all this Arizona stuff if there’s no connection between Volker and Soranden? Volker’s not gonna give Soranden a hundred Gs then get involved in Soranden’s accounts in Arizona.”
“It might just be coincidence,” I said.
“I hate coincidences.”
“Which doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Both Kennedy and Lincoln were shot in the head on a Friday and their successors were both named Johnson. Unless, of course, that was the plan.”
Ma stared at me.
“How about we puzzle it out in the morning?” Lucy said. “I don’t think this hot toddy is helping me much. And Mort’s beer has him totally loopy, talkin’ about assassinations.”
So we rolled up the day and got out of there.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
SOMETIMES WHEN I’M asleep, this happens to me:
Jeri is in dire trouble and it’s up to me to save her. I have to get to her. I’m beyond desperate. She’s a quarter mile away and I’m running but not getting there. Things get in the way. I run into dead ends and have to backtrack. I lose my way. Paths circle around and force me to go in the wrong direction. I run for half an hour and she’s still a quarter mile away. Time is running out. I yell for her to hang on, I’m coming, Jeri, I’m trying, I’m trying, hang on—
“It’s okay,” Lucy said. “It’s okay, Mort, it’s okay, it’s okay, I’m here.”
I woke up in a sweat. Lucy was half on top of me, holding my face, trying to use her elbows to pin my arms down. “It was just a dream, Mort. Just a dream.”
I sank back in the bed. It wasn’t just a dream. It was me, once again unable to save Jeri from Julia Reinhart, unable to save the person I’d loved so much. Every three or four weeks I had a dream like this, running futilely, getting nowhere while Jeri cries out for me to save her.
“Just a dream,” Lucy whispered. “That’s all. Hold me.”
I did. I clung to her and she held me, warming me from head to toe. It wasn’t sex, it was pure connection, contact, telling me I wasn’t alone in the world. Everyone needs that.
Everyone. Including Lucy.
She needed me. I hugged her closer. Her breath came in a gentle warm rhythm against my neck.
“I love you,” I whispered. First time ever. It tumbled out of me because it had to. At last.
She snuggled closer, as if that were possible. “Ohmigod, I have waited so long to hear that. I love you so, so much, Mort.” She gave that a moment, then said, “But please sleep now. Just sleep, darling. I don’t want this to get tangled up with words. I just want to be with you, like this.”
Darling.
I was forty-two. She was thirty-one but looked eighteen. Maybe it was genetics and maybe it was because she was born when four planets were lined up and none of them was Mars. How would I know, since I know so little?
But, no words. For a few minutes I ran my fingers over her body, hands gliding slowly from her rear to her shoulders, back and forth, aware of the vast improbability of her being here with me, a crusty old IRS agent—okay, ex—who’d left Uncle Sam’s thuggery and struck gold.
I was in love. Again.
We were in love.
We slept.
* * *
“Where’re you going?” Lucy asked.
I was dressed, seven twenty in the morning, not my usual time to head out and conquer the world.
“Gotta go talk to a couple of people, kiddo.”
“Alone?”
“Yeah, sorry. Don’t worry, though.”
“Is it about last night?”
“Yes. But not to worry, okay?”
She looked into my eyes. “Okay. See you.”
That kind of trust doesn’t grow on trees. You can spend your whole life with someone and not find it.
I drove over to Holiday’s apartment. She was finishing up her final year as a civil engineering student. I knocked on her door and a moment later she opened it and greeted me with a smile that illuminated the world.
“Mort!”
She gave me a hug, unaware or unconcerned that she was in a T-shirt and panties, that the T-shirt was stretched as tight as a slingshot about to take down a charging rhino. I’d forgotten how those hugs felt, but I was also immune. Sort of.
She drew me inside, then told me to wait while she put on a robe and did something with her hair.
I looked around the apartment. I’d been there a few times since the time she and I had concocted an alibi for me for that night last October when Jeri was murdered north of Gerlach. It looked the same. Still tidy, still … familiar.
Holiday came out, smiling. “So, what brings you by?”
“Got a request.”
“L
ucky you. I’m honoring all requests this morning.”
Nothing to do but dive into it. “I need to tell Lucy about that night, that alibi. And about Paris, but I can keep you out of the Paris part of it.”
She sat on the edge of a chair. “You two are getting serious then, aren’t you?”
“Very.”
“Good for you. You need that.” She looked at me for a moment. “But I get it. You can’t get more serious until you tell her about Julia and Paris, right?”
“Right.”
“You trust her?”
“With my life, Sarah.” Her real name was Sarah. Holiday was her name when she was feeling frisky, which she wasn’t at the moment, and never would again with me.
“I trust you,” she said. “So I trust her too.”
“I’ve also got to get Ma’s okay.”
“Go ahead and tell Lucy, Mort. It was rough, but I think she’ll be okay with it.” Holiday and Lucy had met earlier that summer, after that Jonnie Xenon thing down south.
“Thank you.”
She stood up and gave me a kiss. A goodbye kiss. It lasted a while, ten seconds, fifteen. It brought back memories I found I was reluctant to let go. But let go I did.
“Goodbye, Sarah,” I said.
“Friends forever, Mort. I’ll never forget you.”
Then I went out the door, not sure that I would ever see her again.
* * *
Seven fifty-five a.m. Ma was in her office when I went in.
“Early bird,” she said. “You come up with something on Volker or Soranden? Or this Arizona thing?” She looked past me. “Where’s Lucy?”
“At home. Gotta ask you something, Ma.”
Her eyes flattened. “Sounds serious.”
“It is.” I looked into her eyes. “I have to tell Lucy about Paris. What we did.”
She was silent for a moment. “That is serious.”
“Yes, it is.”
“But I’m not an idiot, so you don’t have to tell me why.” Her eyes bored into mine. “Tell her. All of it.”
“You sure?”
“I don’t sound sure?”
“Well, you do, in fact.”
“Because I am. Lucy is tough as an anvil. You’re sandstone but she’s pure diamond. Now get out of here. I don’t want to see your face again until she knows.”
So I got out of there and went back home to Lucy.
* * *
“Well, look at you two,” Ma said when Lucy and I walked into her office. “You’re glowing. Is it that hot out? It’s October and only nine forty in the morning.”
Lucy held up a piece of paper.
“What’ve you got there, hon?” Ma asked.
“Marriage license. Turns out I gotta have it before anyone asks me to marry him. It’s good for a year. I need it so we can get hitched in two hours if he asks. I thought we could just go in and, pow, done, but we had to have this first.”
Ma beamed. “Good for you.” She looked at me, then stood up and gave me a hug—first time ever. “You’ve got a brain in there. I might have to keep you around a while longer.”
“A ringing endorsement for sure, Ma.”
“This mean you two’re officially engaged?”
I said, “It’s possible that we were engaged thirty minutes after she took my order for fried chicken in McGinty’s Diner. In Tonopah. That’s when she first said she’d marry me if I asked.”
“At McGinty’s I only said probably,” Lucy said. “But forty minutes after that in your car I would have. If you’d asked.”
Maude looked at Lucy. “Marriage license. Which means he told you. All the way up to and including Paris?”
“All of it.” A tear rolled down Lucy’s cheek. She swiped at it. “I didn’t know. Really, I never dreamed …”
“It’s over and done, Lucy,” Ma said.
“Over and done is redundant, Ma,” Lucy said in a voice that had gone liquid with tears.
Ma gave her a hug. “We had to do it.”
“I know. Mort explained it. He wouldn’t be the man I love if he’d let Julia get away with it. I know that means down deep I’m a really bad person, but I don’t care. If he loves me like he loved Jeri, then I am so, so lucky.”
I turned away and looked out a window before they saw the shine in my eyes. Too late. Lucy spun me around and kissed a salty tear off my cheek before I could get to it. “You can cry. Means you’re my kinda guy.”
“Destroys my Mike Hammer image though.”
“Which you never had, in case you didn’t know.”
Ma gave us a syrupy smile.
“How ’bout you jump in here and break up this maudlin stuff, Ma,” I said.
“Why? I’m a sucker for this kinda thing.”
Well, shit. If I didn’t do something quick, this was going to turn into a Fred Astaire–Audrey Hepburn moment and someone was going to break into song. In this situation Sam Spade would pull a gun, but I didn’t think that would fly. Mike Hammer would say something crude and maybe throw someone out a window.
“Where are we with Soranden?” I asked. Gruffly.
Lucy kissed me. “Who, sweetheart?”
Well, shit again.
“Soranden. Volker. Harvester ants. Skulls. Commissioner Munson of the IRS. Warley, also of the IRS. FBI. Blackmail. Arizona. Any of that ring a bell?”
Lucy grinned at Ma. “He’s like really something when he gets like totally wound up, isn’t he?” She kissed me again, then said, “Okay, Soranden. Where were we with that last night?”
Ma said, “We were thinking about doing some surveillance. But now I’m not so sure about that. Now that we’ve got banks and account numbers to work with.”
“Remember how we got Julia and Leland Bye to panic and scurry around, Ma?” I said. “It broke that case wide open. How about we do something like that?”
She gave that some thought. “If we give Esther a jolt, she might unload those accounts, take off with the money, end up in Argentina. So, no jolting Esther. We need to keep that quiet until we move on it, if we move on it.”
“How about giving Volker a poke?”
“Him, maybe. Not about money, but we might hit him with an anonymous hint that suggests he did away with Soranden. If he did, that could get us twenty-five grand—if we found proof, none of which is very likely.”
“So … stir up Volker?”
“I think so. But not yet. Let’s work on those accounts we came up with. Which I’ve been doing this morning while you two were off getting licensed and whatnot.”
“Whatnot, Ma,” Lucy said. “I like that.”
“What’d you find?” I asked Ma.
“All five of those accounts are active. Here’s the rundown on each one, just the totals as of this morning.” She picked up a sheet of paper and read it off to us.
“Arnold Anderson, Parkway Bank, $149,883.
“Ian Danlord, Metro Phoenix Bank, $208,455.
“Darren Sandolon, Sunwest Credit Union, $167,917.
“Donna Sarron, Mutual of Omaha branch on Forty-Eighth Street in Phoenix, $158,209.
“And Lara Rose Donndin, Torrey Pines Bank, $186,122.”
I took the sheet from her. “Pretty good chunks of change, but none of these amounts are obviously criminal.”
“Except for the phony names,” Lucy said.
“Okay, that. Those two were hiding this plunder under false names, which, according to the IRS, is illegal.”
“Plunder,” Lucy said. “That’s good.”
“There’s more,” Ma said. “I just gave you the totals. If you look at how the money went in, it looks even more sneaky. None of the deposits were greater than eight thousand dollars.”
“Ten thousand and above gets reported to the IRS,” I said.
Ma nodded. “They were keeping it under the radar. And it’s been going on since about a year after Soranden became head of the IRS in Reno. It’s been coming in sporadically, a few times a year, probably soon after each blackmail pay
off.”
“Was there a flurry of new deposits after Soranden took Volker for that hundred grand?” I asked.
Ma picked up a wad of papers and thumbed through them. “Volker said Soranden blackmailed him around the second week of June. He rounded up the money and gave it to Soranden a few weeks later. June twenty-ninth, Esther flew off to Phoenix on Southwest. She flew using her own name. I got into the flight manifests. It usually takes quite a while to go through hundreds of flights, but it didn’t take long since those accounts had me zeroed in on flights to Phoenix.
“The next day, thirtieth of June, Lara Rose went into each of the banks where Arnold, Darren, and Ian had accounts and deposited $7,500 into each of them. She’s listed as the secondary on those accounts. She also put $7,500 into her own account at Torrey Pines. Switching to Donna Del Sarron, she put $7,500 into that account. All deposits were in cash and the time stamps are about half an hour to an hour apart, give or take, as she drove around Phoenix. And I got this: the Lara Rose ID is an Arizona driver’s license with an address the same as the business address of one Nathan R. Frasier, attorney at law. I checked him out. He exists. He’s got an office in Sun City, about fifteen miles from the middle of Phoenix. Odds are he gets Lara Rose’s mail and forwards it as needed. Which, by the way, isn’t against the law.”
“Wow,” Lucy said. “You’re good.”
Ma smiled. “None of this is admissible in a court of law. It was completely illegal to get some of this information, and I had nothing to do with it.”
“Understood,” I said. “We’ve been there before. So where do we go from here?”
“Hold on. I ain’t done yet. Esther stayed at a Travelodge in Phoenix for three days, probably to let things cool down, then she went around to all those banks and deposited another $7,500 into each one. In cash again.”
“Under the radar,” I said. “She packed away $75,000.”
“And that’s all,” Ma said. “She flew back the next day, so there’s $25,000 unaccounted for.”
“She might’ve put it in a safe deposit box,” Lucy said.
“Possible,” Ma replied. “Even likely, but we’ll never know unless …”
“Unless, what, Ma?” I asked, but I had an idea what she would say, and I had a bad feeling about it.
Gumshoe Rock Page 23