Tod Goldberg - The Bad Beat

And very smart, Sam realized. He could have purchased the gift card at any time and loaded the money on it over the course of a very long time, which would essentially render it traceless in the event he needed to use it to disappear. No usable trail of the money transfer if he did it early, no usable trail of the credit card purchase if he did it early, either. And if he’s smart, he called using Skype and thus no way to triangulate his location until long after he was gone, not that the insurance company would have been looking to do that. But if you’re angry enough, Sam knew, any information could be bought. And it seemed like these bookies were angry.

“Tell me something, Concerto-boy, before this month, was Grayson regular on his payments?”

“He’d usually pay a year in advance. Sometimes in cash. Come by our office on Grand Street and hand over an envelope. We don’t encourage that, but some people in Miami are… eccentric.”

“What’s his full loss payout?”

Handel flipped through his pages. “Not a lot,” he said. “Just the base minimums. A notary, all he really needs is his satchel of stamps, plus the books he has to keep for the state; that’s why most of them are mobile now. No sense keeping an office unless you got something else going on. Most of our clients in this business are pretty lucrative, really, because they’ve got PO boxes or UPS operating out of the shop, or maybe they’re also a greeting card place or, we’ve got this one in Doral that’s a soft-serve joint, really strange.”

Handel went on then, at length, about other odd notary businesses, which was fine. It gave Sam a moment to gather his thoughts. First, he decided that if he ever had the choice between going into the insurance industry or being eaten alive by fire ants, he’d look long into the fire ant angle. Second, he saw how odd it was that all Grayson did was run a notarizing service out of his office. Rents were high in the neighborhood and Sam had a hard time believing the notarization business could sustain the roof, even with his gambling. No, Sam thought, there was probably something more. Something Henry Grayson’s son, Brent, didn’t, and probably shouldn’t, know about.

“That’s all fascinating, Handel,” Sam said.

“See a lot of crazy things in this business,” he said.

“One last thing,” Sam said. “Was there anything on his policy that was unusual?”

“Here? No. But on his home policy, yeah.”

“You cover his house, too?”

“Yeah, didn’t I mention that?”

“No,” Sam said. “Anything else you’re holding out on me? Or should I just call the IRS right now and have them start your audit while we chat?”

Mention the IRS to anyone, even the guy in charge of the IRS, and immediately people get that look on their face like someone just unscrewed something in their bowels.

“He had an unusual amount of televisions in his house,” Handel said.

“What’s unusual?”

“Ten.”

That was unusual and it dovetailed into what the detective had said about Grayson possibly, at least at one point, running his own book. It didn’t make him any easier to find, but it gave Sam a few ideas about what his next step might be after he and Michael met with Big Lumpy.

“All right, Handel,” Sam said. “I’m going to do some checking into things on my end, both on Mr. Grayson and on you. I like what I see, I lose your Social Security number. I have concerns, you’ll be hearing from someone. You understand?”

Handel looked grave, so Sam gave him a wink… which was probably hard for Handel to see since Sam still had on his sunglasses, but karmically Sam felt closer to even.

Taking on a disguise is not about changing the way you look. It’s about changing the way you think. Someone who has never met you before and doesn’t have access to DNA technology is going to have a difficult time identifying you as anyone other than who you say you are, so when you take on a new identity, you have to make sure you know all the possible angles of inquiry. If, for instance, you say you’re from the South, you should have more than a passing knowledge of grits, college football and sweet tea and you should probably still have a strong opinion about the Civil War… or the War of Northern Aggression, as it were.

You also need to be aware of the knowledge base of the person you’re hoping to deceive. If he’s also a spy, your cover needs to be more than rock solid-you need a fake mother, a fake sister, a fake wife and two fake dogs, one dead, one still alive. Fiona was going to get as close to Drubich’s local operation as possible using whatever cover she deemed best. Being an attractive woman often requires only that a very short skirt be utilized in the building of a backstory, so she had it easier than I did, though I assumed dealing with someone named Big Lumpy wouldn’t require much in the way of world building, either.

Or at least I assumed that until Sam got to my loft that next morning.

First, he filled me in on everything that he’d learned about Brent’s father-most of which was a surprise to Brent, particularly the $2.5 million he stood to earn upon his father’s death-and the more upsetting news that the Russians hadn’t just casually destroyed his office but had actually brought a rocket launcher with them. Not exactly the kind of thing you pack as an afterthought.

“Brent,” I said, “did these guys give you any indication that they’d be coming to see you with weapons of mass destruction?”

“No,” he said. He was curled up on the floor in front of one of his laptops downloading all of the information I’d asked for from him: the voice mail and e-mail from Drubich’s people, Brent’s correspondence, a trail of every dollar he’d spent (I had a feeling this would be difficult, but I wanted to make sure he wasn’t omitting anything that might cause all of us trouble down the line) and the text of all of his Web pages. “They just said either they’d get what they paid for or they’d kill me.”

“And so you thought Sugar could fix that?” I said.

“Sugar and Sam,” he said. “But I didn’t think they were serious. I mean, you know, we’re businessmen.”

“Really?” I said.

“Well, sort of.”

“Neither you nor the Russians are businessmen. You’re both fakes. You just happened to piss off a fake named Yuri Drubich who typically does business with Chech-nyans and the odd Afghan warlord moving poppy seeds.”

“Cool,” Brent said.

“No,” I said. “Not cool. Not cool at all.”

“I didn’t mean it was cool literally. I just, I guess, think it’s kinda crazy that I’m involved with people like that. It was just a Web site.”

It was just a Web site, true, but it was also a fantastic idea for a new way to move information, even if it was one born out of total fantasy. That someone like Drubich found it and wanted a piece of it said a lot about Brent’s idea and about his actual smarts. Even if his smarts didn’t exactly pop up on display in casual conversation.

It occurred to me that I’d failed to ask him perhaps the most important question. “How did Drubich know to send his men to your father’s office?”

Brent stopped typing for a moment, but didn’t look up from his computer. “I made another mistake,” he said quietly.

“Let’s just settle on the fact that this is all one huge mistake and be honest with each other, okay?” I said. “I need you to be a man, Brent. And that means owning up to your mistakes. Don’t be your father.”

I couldn’t believe the words coming out of my mouth. I sounded.. . parental. And certainly nothing like my own father.

“All right,” he said.

I walked over and closed his laptop. “Now,” I said, “look me in the eye and speak.”