Shell Game (24 page)

Taylor set her empty tea cup on the table and grabbed the sides of her head. “This is hard on the brain. We've got too many things on the go.”

“Never too many,” Kelly said. “It gets bleak when your options are limited. Right now we've got lots of options. That's a good thing.”

She smiled and dropped her hands back on her lap. “Okay, you're the expert. I've never done anything like this before. Checking out federal agents who might be working with the bad guy, looking at phone records, tracking down who owns a luxury yacht—this is all out of a suspense novel.”

“The bad news is I've never done it before either. But I think it's just a matter of logic. We have a few problems, and we need solutions. We deal with each angle individually and then take the results and throw them in the collective pot. If we can find the right information, everything is going to lead back to Edward Brand. And eventually to Alan.”

“Okay, back to my original question—what now?”

“I've got to work this week. I haven't been back long enough to have accrued any holidays. Maybe it's better if you head back to San Francisco.”

“Is that important?”

Kelly shrugged. “We're trying to find out who Brand is, but keep in mind that he knows who you are, where you live and just about every detail in your life. It's easy for him to keep tabs on you. If I were him, that's exactly what I'd be doing. If he does have someone on the inside, every time you use your debit card or one of your credit cards he'll know exactly when and where. Brand can track where you are at any given time and what you're doing. He probably already knows you were in Paris.”

“Then it's already too late. He'll know I was in Paris looking for Alan.”

“But you weren't. You originally went to Paris just to stand on a street corner. You could have been there for any number of reasons. I wouldn't panic about it.”

“I suppose you're right. That's assuming he's watching me.”

“If I were him, I'd watch all my marks for signs that they're getting on with their lives. The best thing you can do is give the appearance that you're resigned to the fact you lost your money. Get back to what he will think is your normal life. That way if he has someone watching you, the red flags don't go up.”

Taylor slowly nodded. She hardly liked being referred to as a mark, but that was exactly how Edward Brand viewed her. She had been chosen because she was a woman with money. No other reason was necessary. Then they had methodically removed the money from her life and discarded her. Kelly's choice of words was accurate. She had been a mark. It wasn't a nice thought. Now she had to go back to San Francisco and try to live a normal life. It wasn't going to be easy, sitting on her butt knowing that Alan was wandering around somewhere with a smug grin and millions of her money. Still, Kelly was right.

“What about the check from the insurance company?” she asked.

“Cash it,” he said without hesitation.

“But I know Alan's alive. That's fraud.”

“Not cashing the check is an absolute giveaway that you suspect something. You have to do it. You can always give the money back later.”

“Okay, but make a note that I'm doing this under duress. I don't like it. The first chance I have, that money goes back to the insurance company.”

He laughed. “You and your morals. They're incorruptible. Most people couldn't cash the check fast enough.” He finished the last of his tea. “I'll do what I can from this end, Taylor. I've got some pretty good resources to draw on. You try to keep it together in San Francisco.”

“Why are you doing this, Kelly?” she asked. “I know you're climbing out on a limb a bit at work. You could lose your job.”

He laughed again and shook his head. “Maybe, but I doubt it. I'm not pushing the limits. Getting the satellite data was tough. Running some personnel checks on a couple of FBI agents isn't going to raise any eyebrows. Checking the registry on the
Mary Dyer
is nothing. I can submit the search at nine and have an answer back by noon. Same thing with the phone logs for that restaurant near San José del Cabo. Buzzards. That's it. Nothing to it, Taylor. Don't worry.”

“Thanks,” she said.

Michael Jones played on, his piano soft and relaxing. Taylor settled back into the cushions, relaxed and warm. The flame in the fireplace was mesmerizing. She watched it for a few minutes, alternating between wondering what had happened to her life and marveling at her own tenacity. It was amazing what the human spirit could endure. Now, instead of just rolling up in a ball and fading away, she and Kelly were going on the offensive. They were looking for Edward Brand, the mastermind of the scam and the key to finding Alan. And through some grace of God, with Kelly working for the NSA, they had connections she would never have thought possible. In that moment, tucked between the cushions watching the fire, she felt for the first time that they might find him.

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY-FIVE

Kelly keyed in the request to pull the personnel files on Brent Hawkins and John Abrams, then studied what he had on Sam Morel. Getting Morel's information was going to be a bit trickier than the two Federal agents. The National Security Agency and the FBI were linked in many ways, one of them being the sharing of information at a nonclassified level. But the agency had no such working relationship with the San Francisco Police Department. That posed a problem.

He pulled the hierarchy for the SFPD, looking for any names he might know from the years he spent in the city working with G-cubed. The best he could do was a lieutenant from the Tenderloin District. A beer-league-baseball and drinking buddy. Not the greatest resource, but it would have to do. He printed the page and set it on the side of his desk. It was still too early on the West Coast to call.

He switched to the registration for the
Mary Dyer
. It took almost an hour, but he found the yacht registered through OCRA worldwide, a yacht and ship registration company out of Mauritius. The ship itself was registered in the Seychelles, a group of forty-one Islands lying a few hundred miles off the east coast of Africa. The owner of the
Mary Dyer
was a corporation called Atolls Are Fun, which had provided the necessary builder's certificate with technical details, proof of ownership and a radio license. The corporation was registered in the Seychelles under the International Corporate Service Providers Act 2003, which granted special offshore regulated privileges. Low tax status was first on that list, followed immediately by treaty access and trustee services for administering the corporation. Through all the smoke and mirrors, Kelly was able to dig deep enough to bypass the trustees, who were just bankers charging a fee to keep Atolls Are Fun in tune with the laws of the country, and find the owner. There was only one name.

Robert Zindler.

He jotted the name on a separate sheet of paper and stared at it for a minute. Was that Brand? It well could be. Edward Brand had no reason to think anyone would ever key in on his yacht. Even if they did, there was nothing to tie Robert Zindler to Edward Brand or to the NewPro scam. The fact that the two men were so distinct in their lives lent Kelly to think he may have found the link. If nothing else, it was one more dot, and every dot counted.

Kelly set Taylor's stuff aside for a couple of hours and concentrated on work the NSA paid him to do. A SEAL unit had intercepted coded communications between two al-Qaeda terrorist cells operating out of remote regions of northern Algeria. The problem with the data was two-fold. Straight off the top it was in Arabic, which was only a minor inconvenience as they had Arabic-speaking persons on staff at both NSA and CIA. But it was the encryption the terrorists had used on the data that was stumping the experts at Langley. When that happened, the first place they turned to was the National Security Agency—the code breakers.

After four hours of uninterrupted work, Kelly set the SEAL data aside and ran his hands through his hair, rubbing his scalp and stimulating his brain. He loved the work, but it was mentally draining. He made a quick trip to the coffee station and returned with a cup of fresh java. The phone number for Buzzards Bar & Grill on the East Cape near San José del Cabo was on a slip of paper on the side of his desk and he keyed it into his computer. He then ran a global search program to find the service provider for that phone number. It was a medium-size Mexican company, and Kelly had little trouble bringing up a screen with the phone logs. The calls were sorted daily, then by increasing time during each twenty-four-hour period. He found the calls for November 3.

Kelly did the math in his head. Taylor said Alan had gone over the cliff around ten after five in the evening. The section of cliff where the accident had occurred was four miles north of Buzzards, and on rugged potholed roads that distance would take about fifteen minutes. He calculated sometime between four-fifty and five o'clock. There was one outgoing call inside the ten-minute time span—at 4:53. It was the only call for fifteen minutes either side. Whoever owned that number had spoken with Edward Brand just before Alan went over the cliff.

He typed in the phone number listed and hit Enter. The response was back in less than six seconds. Carlos Valendez. Address was noted as 417 Matamoros Street, Cabo San Lucas. It meant nothing to him, but somehow Senor Valendez was tied in with Edward Brand, and it was another dot that needed connecting. If there were enough dots, the trail would eventually lead back to Brand. Then to Alan. But Kelly was smart enough to know that Brand was the target. Alan Bestwick was simply another cog in the very efficient wheel Edward Brand had assembled to pull off the con. Find Brand and the wheel would crumble. In the rubble would be Alan Bestwick.

It was time to call his contact in the SFPD. He placed the call and waited for someone to pick up. When they did he asked for Lieutenant Barry Gilmore. The line rang again, and a man answered. His voice was a deep baritone.

“Barry, it's Kelly Kramer.”

“Kelly.” Gilmore's voice changed slightly—took on a friendly tone. “Where the hell are you? I tried your number last week. It's disconnected.”

“I'm in D.C.” Kelly said. “Took a job out here a while back. Had enough of your crazy up-and-down streets. My brakes kept wearing out.”

“You're really in Washington?”

“Yup.”

“Holy shit. We sure don't miss you on the diamond, but we do miss you down at the bar. You bought a lot of rounds to make up for all your errors in the field and strikeouts at the plate. You ever coming back for a visit?”

“Maybe. But right now I've got something else on my mind.”

“What's that?”

“Do you know a guy named Sam Morel?”

“Yeah, of course. I know Sam real well. He's over at Central Station. He's good people. What do you need to know?”

“Everything.” Kelly said. “I need his personnel file.”

There was a small silence, then, “What for, Kelly? Why would an advertising guy need a file on a police inspector?”

Kelly had a choice. He could try to bullshit his way around Gilmore, or he could give him the goods and hope for some level of cooperation. It was actually a pretty easy decision. Straight off the top, he told the lieutenant what agency he worked for. That in itself lent some credibility to his request. After he had filled Gilmore in with what had happened to Taylor Simons, with the exception of knowing her husband was alive, he shut his mouth and waited.

“You think Sam might be in bed with this Edward Brand guy?” he asked.

“Don't know. Personally, I think it's one of the FBI guys. But you never know. I'm just covering all the bases.”

“So what are you looking for?”

“Somewhere along the line, Brand has got his hooks into one of these three guys. And whoever it is, is feeding him information. I've run the personnel records on both Abrams and Hawkins, and I'm waiting for the results. Somewhere in all this there is an arrest that went sideways, or something like that. Somewhere that Brand began his relationship with the dirty cop. I just need to find it.”

“What if Sam's the guilty one? What then? I can't be giving up one of my own guys.”

“This is just for me, Barry. I'm trying to figure out who Brand really is and how to find him. This has nothing to do with taking down a dirty cop.”

Again, the silence. “All right, Kelly. I'll do this for you. I'll pull Sam's file and look at it myself. If I see any sign he might have linked up with someone in return for cash, I'll give it to you. But it's my call. My decision as to what I release. His file is confidential.”

“Not a problem, Barry. That works for me. Thanks.”

“Okay. Hey, how did you ever get a job at the National Security Agency? That's spy shit, right?”

Kelly laughed. “Sort of. I'm just a computer geek.”

“You said it, not me.”

They said good-bye, and both men hung up. Kelly returned to his work on the Algerian communiqué, spending almost three hours working on the coded transmission before finally shutting down the file and securing it in his computer. He opened his e-mail server and checked to see if there was any information back on Hawkins and Abrams. There was a return e-mail from the search engine. Inside were two separate files—one for each agent. He was just starting on John Abrams's file when his phone rang. He checked the caller ID. It was Barry Gilmore in San Francisco.

“Hey, Barry,” he said.

“Jesus, you weren't kidding. You really do work for NSA. I called the main switchboard and they put me through.”

Kelly laughed. “I told you, I just work on computer stuff. I'm a cubicle rat.”

“Okay, cubicle rat, I've got something for you.”

“What?” Kelly replied, leaning forward with his pen poised over a pad on his desk.