Донна Эндрюс - Access denied

But even if whatever we've found has nothing to do with Garcia, it's probably a crime. Credit card fraud, possibly identity theft. I should do something about it.

"True," Maude said, when I shared this. "Doesn't seem as important as the search for T2, though."

"Not to us," I said. "We'd feel differently if we'd been victimized by credit card fraud. One in every twenty people in this country is every year, and one in every fifty by identity theft — and the numbers are growing all the time. The financial toll's in the billions."

"I stand corrected," Maude said. "Statistically very important indeed, and with that much at stake as well worth our time as Garcia. We should do something."

Difficult, when my knowledge of this particular credit card fraud is technically as illegal as the crime itself

I decided to worry about reporting it later, when I knew exactly what was happening.

The package Tim spotted on the doorstep of the Andersons' house came from a high-volume, online electronics discounter. Several small but pricey pieces of camera equipment, bought with a credit card belonging to a Ms. Rose Lafferty. Lafferty's card wasn't issued by the same bank as Garcia s and they hadn't used their cards at the same place during the past two years. Not even the same kind of place.

Two completely different profiles. Garcia's showed trips to Washington. Miami, Los Angeles. Mexico City. Bogota. Nice hotels. Expensive restaurants. And always paid in full, on time — even the charges from his last trip to Crystal City, during which we met him, and after which he stopped using the Nestor Garcia identity. Lafferty used her card for gas. car repairs, discount stores, and cash advances. And made minimum payments, when she paid at all. Ironic that Nestor Garcia, a crook using a fake name, had an impeccable credit rating while the very real and presumably law-abiding Rose Lafferty would have a tough time borrowing anything.

Hard to see a connection, except that both cards had been used to order goods delivered to the same address.

Another interesting note. . . whoever was behind this had a new base of operations. Two weeks ago. they ordered something with Lafferty's card for delivery to an address in Leesburg. A house not owned by the Andersons, whoever they are. I could find no connection between the two places or their occupants — other than the fact that Rose Lafferty. despite her precarious financial situation, had sent expensive presents to both.

By studying the UPS and FedEx databases. I found that someone had used four other credit cards to send goods to the Leesburg house during a weeklong period ending two weeks ago — May 21 through May 28. None of these people had any connection to the

Leesburg house — it's not listed as their address in their credit card records.

I suspected the thieves were using temporarily vacant houses as drop-off spots. And had probably erred by using the Lafferty card at two houses. For all I knew, they could have been doing this for months without getting caught, taking a small group of credit cards, ordering goods sent to a vacant house, picking up the goods, and then moving on to a new set of credit cards and a new vacant house. The police and the banks' fraud prevention staff might never find them if they stuck to this method. But thanks to that one mistake, I have a better idea what they are doing.

Of course, I still had only five cases. Six, if I included Garcia's card.

We needed more help. Tim would have enough trouble simply watching the house by himself, and I wanted to send someone out to check the house in Leesburg, and eventually interview the bilked credit card owners. Yet, I hesitated to take anyone else into our confidence.

I considered enlisting Casey. Since coming to Alan Grace, Casey had proved invaluable. He could build or fix anything — not only computers but also the cameras and other specialized peripherals on which I'd become increasingly dependent as my eyes and ears to the outside world. But however technically proficient he was, I didn't think Casey had the skills this situation would require.

"He seems young," Tim had said, when he first met Casey.

"He's seventeen," I said.

"Even for seventeen, he's young," Tim said.

"In this case," Maude suggested, "young means naive and hopelessly lacking the common sense, street smarts, and sense of self-preservation most humans manage to acquire once they begin to accept the reality of their own mortality."

"Yeah," Tim said. "He probably still thinks life has a 'save game' button."

Which meant however good he was with hardware, Casey

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wasn't the right human to send into a situation that could require quick thought and decisive action.

I could enlist the one other PI I knew — Claudia Diaz, the Miami PI who had worked with us before and already knew something about Garcia. If she was free.

I sent Claudia an e-mail inquiring about her availability to come up as soon as possible to work on a case. And cc'd Maude.

"Good idea,'' Maude said, a few minutes later. "Tim can't watch the place around the clock."

"And he certainly can't be in two places at once," I said, shawing her the information about the Leesburg house.

Claudia must have been doing online research —/ got an e-mail back within minutes. And she must not have had anything important going on.

"Just booked an early morning flight," the e-mail said. "See you tomorrow."

Relieved, I called to let Tim know.

"That's great," he said. "But she's not coming till tomorrow."

"Tomorrow's pretty quick," I said.

"It's just that I have something I'd like to do at nine-thirty, if possible. Not that I can't reschedule if you need me to stay here, of course."

"Tonight's not our last chance," I said. "More packages are arriving tomorrow. Don't burn yourself out. If nothing has happened by nine-thirty, you and Claudia can pick up tomorrow."

Interesting. If he wanted to go home for some sleep, he'd say so. He wasn't usually secretive about his plans — attending movies or sports events with male friends, for example, or meetings of his PI society. So I suspected he had a date. Humans often behave in a self-conscious and strangely furtive manner whenever sex is involved. And I assumed that if sex was not involved in Tim's new relationship it was at least a strong future possibility, since he had demonstrated the same kind of furtive behavior with increasing frequency over the last four weeks. That suggested that he'd been spending

Access Denied E7

time with the same young woman throughout that period. He'd even gotten confident enough to mention her name. Nikki.

I reviewed the visual images I had of Nikki. I wasn't sure what useful purpose this served, but Sigmund recently told me that hearing the name of a person or place stimulates many humans to recall a visual image associated with the name. Vd tried to imitate this practice to help me better understand human thinking, although I had limited images of Nikki. Primarily her driver's license photo. I hadn't yet decided if humans' vocal dislike of their driver's license and passport photos was genuine or some kind of social ritual, but it seemed universal. So she probably considered it wildly unflattering, but I found it a reasonable likeness of the petite blond woman whose image I'd captured occasionally, looking over Tim's shoulder and waiting with ill-concealed impatience for him to get off the computer. She appeared attractive, by human standards, and Tim seemed to have become quite attached to her in the weeks they'd known each other.

So why did her name and image stir up such strange, uneasy feelings? Because I was worried about Tim, presumably. But the only reason I could think of for worry was that I knew so little about her. By this time Tim doubtless knew a great deal about Nikki. Maybe I was worried about myself. I wanted my human friends to be happy and lead full, normal lives. But what if that left them no time to be with me? Selfish, perhaps, but I was so dependent on them that the thought of losing them terrified me.