The Fraud (30 page)

“Then two months ago, Joseph came to me with this wild scheme. He said if he let someone rob him of his car, he could get us fifteen thousand dollars.”

“How exactly would that work?” I asked.

“Are you familiar with the concept of a replacement automobile policy?” Tujuka asked.

“I think so,” I said. “But maybe not.”

Sweet Thang hopped in: “My dad actually got me one for Walter. It’s something that can be smart to have for more expensive cars.”

“Yeah, that’s not something I’d know about,” I said.

“Okay, so normally when your car is totaled, the insurance company just gives you what the car is worth, right?” Sweet Thang said.

“Right.”

“But in the case of a replacement policy, they give you the amount needed to actually replace the car. It can be a big difference if you’re talking about a new car.”

“Oh, right,” I said. “Because of the whole a-new-car-loses-a-quarter-of-its-value-when-you-drive-it-off-the-lot thing.”

“Exactly,” Sweet Thang said, and now she was looking at Tujuka. “Now, I don’t know about your policy. But with mine, it basically said that if you were driving a car that was six months old or less and it was totaled or stolen, they would pay a claim equal to whatever you paid for the car. Is that what Joseph had?”

“Yes,” Tujuka said.

“I’m still a little confused,” I admitted. “I’m assuming Joseph probably financed the car with very little down, based on what you guys were laying out in tuition. That meant he still owed almost the entire value of the car in a loan he’d have to pay off. How would Joseph make any money out of being carjacked unless…”

And that’s when it clicked in my wee little brain. “Oh, I get it. He was going to use the insurance money to pay off the loan. And the people he had carjack him were going to give him a kickback from their sale of the car. That’s where the fifteen grand came from.”

“That is my understanding, yes,” Tujuka said.

All I did was shake my head. For two days now, I had figured the Okekes’ insurance company was the perpetrator of wrongdoing. It now appeared it was the victim.

“I tried to talk him out of it,” Tujuka said. “I said to him, ‘Joseph, isn’t this illegal?’ And he said, ‘Tujuka, don’t worry about that.’ I begged him not to do it. But my husband could be very stubborn. He said there was no choice. I thought perhaps he had decided not to go forward with it. Then I got that awful visit from the police, saying he had been murdered while his car was being stolen.”

She now had her pants bunched tightly in her fists, like she was just trying to hang on to them. “The police spoke as if it was a random event. But I knew it was not. So you asked me why I did not submit an insurance claim and that is why: because I knew it would be a false claim.”

“Did you tell Obatala Insurance that when they sent a claims adjustor to speak with you?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “I did not want to tell anyone at first. I was worried what it would do to Joseph’s life insurance policy. But I have since spoken with a lawyer, and he assured me the policy would still have to pay out. Regardless of the fraud he was involved in, his death was still a homicide. And that is covered under our policy.”

“And you are the beneficiary of that policy?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. “It will be enough to cover our children’s tuition. I am thankful for that.”

As was Joseph Okeke, if he had managed to find a place where he could still appreciate such things.

*   *   *

We spent a little more time discussing the bucket of financial slop Joseph had left behind. Naturally, the fifteen thousand that was supposed to come from the carjackers had never materialized. Tujuka said she wouldn’t have accepted it if it did. “Blood money,” she called it.

There was also the matter of his car loan and town house mortgage. It was looking like Joseph Okeke had left this life in a hole his estate would never get out of. There would be no inheritance. The life insurance was all he was leaving behind.

As we spoke, I kept my eye on a digital clock that was on one of the devices in her entertainment center. The numbers were creeping closer to eight. I didn’t want to rush things. But, at the same time, Joseph Okeke’s lingering credit card debt was not among my chief concerns.

Finally, I was able to work the conversation back around to what I considered to be the big question.

“From everything I’ve learned about your husband, he wasn’t the sort to go around dreaming up scams to defraud insurance companies. Somebody obviously put him on to this or even recruited him for it. Do you have any idea who?”

Tujuka shook her head. “I’m sorry, I do not.”

“Did he know the people who were going to rob him?”

“I don’t know. All he told me was that he would drive to a certain place at a certain time, and that’s where the robbery would happen. He made it sound like it was a very simple thing.”

I thought back to what Johnny, the convenience store clerk, had told me about Joseph Okeke stopping for a green light. It hadn’t made any sense at the time, but now it did. That was where he was supposed to rendezvous. He would have stopped no matter what color the light was, because it was where he had agreed to get himself carjacked.

He just didn’t plan on some guy with a blue ski mask shooting him in the head. Neither had Kevin Tiemeyer. Yet there they were: bonded in life by their shared round on a golf course, bonded in death by their shared murderer, bonded somewhere in the middle by a shared motivation to commit insurance fraud.

Obviously, Tiemeyer had been lured into the same deal as Okeke and was planning to make the same kind of easy money—or, if anything, more of it, since his car was more valuable. He drove to his own predetermined location thinking he’d be relieved of his car but ultimately got a lot more trouble than he signed up for.

Like Okeke, Tiemeyer had been desperate for money. He had known he was about to lose his job and probably suspected he had a long and arduous search for new employment in front of him. He was already cutting back on expenses in other ways. Getting himself carjacked would have been a great way to not only give himself some padding for the lean months ahead, but also to get rid of a car payment he could no longer afford.

That brought me back to the question I had yet to answer to any satisfaction, and that now loomed with even greater importance: how did Okeke and Tiemeyer know each other? Going back to that electrician’s metaphor: what was their first contact point?

“Did Joseph ever mention knowing a man named Kevin Tiemeyer?” I asked.

“Yes. When he first told me about the scheme, he mentioned he had discussed it with Mr. Tiemeyer. It sounded like they were approached by the same person, whose identity he did not tell me, and now they were both considering taking part. They discussed it over a round of golf, if you can believe that. I think they were working up the courage to participate.”

“So how was it they first met, Joseph and Mr. Tiemeyer?”

“That, I cannot tell you,” Tujuka said.

Sweet Thang immediately perked up. “Oh. I thought they met at Rotary.”

I felt myself swiveling toward Sweet Thang in slow motion. “Wait, Kevin Tiemeyer was in Rotary?” I asked.

“Yeah. It’s in the notes Tommy sent you.”

“Oh. I hadn’t read them yet.”

“Well, it’s in there,” Sweet Thang said. “One of Tiemeyer’s colleagues was talking about what a normal, reliable guy Tiemeyer was, the kind of guy who, quote, never missed a Rotary meeting.”

“I wonder why Zabrina never mentioned that?” I asked.

And then Tujuka Okeke said the two words that changed everything. “Who’s Zabrina?”

CHAPTER 39

Black Mask had done enough of these jobs by now. Ten? Twelve? Enough to establish distinct patterns.

Enough that Black Mask knew there were aspects of this particular job that didn’t feel quite right.

The first thing was the time. Always before, it had been later. Eleven o’clock. Midnight. One in the morning. Times at which carjackers ordinarily operated.

This one was eight o’clock. It was still dark, yes. But it was a time that felt riskier. There might still be a few ordinary citizens out. And while most of them wouldn’t go to the police and say they had witnessed a carjacking—people in Newark knew it wasn’t worth it, for the most part—you never knew if one might decide to get brave.

Another thing was the place. Always before, it was an intersection with a traffic light. The corner of Mulberry and East Kinney. The corner of Bergen and Avon. The corner of Central and 10th.

This one was just an address. The man, Carter Ross, would supposedly drive the Volvo XC60 up to the house and pull into the driveway.

And then—lastly and most significantly—there was the instruction to kill the guy. Yeah, Black Mask wasn’t the one pulling the trigger. Blue Mask would do that.

But still. Even for double the money, Black Mask was feeling uncomfortable with it. It’s not like he was a Quaker or something. Not in this line of work. He had watched two men get killed in the last month.

The difference was, he didn’t know it was coming. This time, he did. And it was making him feel a little queasy.

Nevertheless, there he was, at seven thirty, plenty early. He liked to have time to look around. He had told Blue Mask to be there at seven forty-five. For the kind of money they were making, an extra fifteen minutes didn’t seem like much of a sacrifice.

He surveyed the scene, liking what he saw. The homes were larger and a little more spread out than in other parts of the city. The street was draped in large trees that had obviously been planted a long time ago. They would provide perfect cover for what was about to happen in the driveway.

Despite all the logistical differences in this job, he wanted to get it set up the way they had done all the others. Find two good spots to lay in wait. Then, with one sharp whistle, strike.

It was important to do it real professional like that. Even though the drivers knew what they were getting themselves into—after all, they had signed themselves up for it—he had been told to keep up a good front. If anyone did happen to see it and say something to the cops, it had to look like a real carjacking, every time.

Black Mask had just finished his little tour of the area when Blue Mask walked up. His ski mask was on his head, but not yet pulled down over his face.

“’Sup,” Blue Mask said.

“Hey. Nice place, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m thinking about buying me a place like this someday. But I think you gotta be rich.”

“Yeah,” Blue Mask said. “Wait. You know who lives here, right?”

“No. Why? It matter?”

Blue Mask just stared at him for a moment, then said, “Naw. Guess not.”

“Okay,” Black Mask said, slightly mystified. “You got your piece?”

“’Course.”

“You good with using it?”

Blue Mask acted offended the question even needed to be asked. “Yeah, dawg. You know I’m good.”

“A’ight. ’Cause we’re supposed to kill this one. We’ll get paid twice as much.”

“Yeah?” Blue Mask said. A small smile had come to his cheeks.

“Yeah.”

“A’ight. I’ll do him.”

Just like that. Like he enjoyed the prospect of it. Black Mask felt even more sick.

But there wasn’t time to linger on it. They needed to get settled in their places. Black Mask had decided Blue Mask should hide between two parked cars and approach from the right side of the car, like usual. Black Mask would set up around the side of the house and attack the left. His last instructions to Blue Mask were to wait for the whistle—and roll down his ski mask.

Black Mask donned his, then went around to the side of the house. He stood there, perfectly still, and waited.

It wasn’t long before a car slowed and began turning in to the driveway. The headlights strafed the side of the house.

It was a Volvo. Make that
the
Volvo. Black Mask whistled sharply, then pulled out his gun. He walked up to the Volvo, now idling in the driveway. With his free hand, he banged his palm on the window. “Out of the car,” he ordered. “Out of the—”

And then he actually looked at the driver.

It wasn’t who he was expecting. It was supposed to be a dude, a guy named Carter Ross. This was a woman, with brown curly hair. And she didn’t look scared, like the others did. She looked pissed.

And something else.

Black Mask could see her stomach bulging out so wide she couldn’t really close her legs and so far it was nearly brushing the steering wheel. Yet the rest of her was skinny.

Then Black Mask figured it out. This woman was pregnant.

CHAPTER 40

It says a lot about the speed at which my mental processor works that, at first, I didn’t even realize how much the revelation about Kevin Tiemeyer being in Rotary—along with those two words out of Tujuka’s mouth—really did change things.

Because I answered her “Who’s Zabrina?” with, “You know, Zabrina Coleman-Webster. Joseph’s—”

I nearly said “girlfriend,” then adherence to an ancient male code of honor—Do Not Get Thy Fellow Brethren in Trouble by Saying Too Much—stopped me. Instead I said, “You know, the Rotary Club president.”

Then the significance of those two words started catching up with me.

“Wait,” I said. “You seriously don’t know Zabrina Coleman-Webster?”

Tujuka’s brow had a crinkle that told me she did not. “No,” she said.

“The day after Joseph was killed, you didn’t get a phone call from a woman named Zabrina, asking where Joseph was?”

“Certainly not,” she said.

I pulled my phone out of my pocket and found the photo of Zabrina and Joseph together, the one that had me pondering the vagaries of the universe a little more than twenty-four hours earlier.

“This woman,” I said. “Have you ever seen her before?”

I leaned across the coffee table and held out my phone. Tujuka took it for a moment and tilted it until she hit the sweet spot on the LCD screen. Once she had it right, it didn’t take her long to decide.

“No,” Tujuka said, handing me back my phone.