“To the Jessicas!” we say together.
An alert flashes on my screen: Jessica Williams has been added to your contacts.
The speaker booms again. Ten minutes till the doors close.
“I’ve got to go,” I say.
“So, go.”
“Nice to meet you.”
“Yes, it was nice, wasn’t it?”
“Maybe we’ll meet again someday?”
She smiles for an answer. I’m not sure why I’m lingering. I don’t want to miss my flight; this trip was hard-won.
“You’d better run.”
The way she emphasizes the word run snaps me out of my haze.
I turn without another word and start to jog toward my gate. I just make my flight, the gate agent tsk-ing me as I’m the last one to board.
I settle into my first-class seat and fall asleep promptly right after we take off, all thoughts of Jessica Two banished by alcohol and altitude.
But not for long.
Chapter 2
I Got Nothing
I promised myself to cut off all contact for the week I’m in Mexico, and it’s a promise I keep. Holding to it isn’t that hard. Most of my friendships were work related, emphasis on the were, and the others are not people I need to keep in touch with on a regular basis.
So I cut off all ties and I sit in the sun and read books on my Kindle and plan for what’s to come. I eat my meals alone and drink alone and sleep alone. I run six miles on the beach every morning. The first day I puke at the end of it. The last day, I’m laughing even though my body aches all over. It’s beautiful and restorative, a hiatus.
I take the shuttle to the airport.
I avoid the airport bar.
I keep my phone off even as I reenter civilization.
My resolve remains in place up to the moment I’m back in my closet-like room in my Greenwich Village apartment. I sit in the middle of my one luxury—a queen-size bed that touches the walls on either side—plug in my phone, and hold it in my hands like I’m praying.
“Here goes nothing,” I say to precisely no one. The large canvas on the wall that’s the only decoration in the room—a bold watercolor in sea hues that changes with the light—doesn’t answer me. It never does.
I press the power button. My phone takes a moment to react, rebooting, installing some interminable software update.
The home screen loads.
For a blessed moment, my in-box remains empty, and no notifications appear. This feels impossible. At the very least, there should be hundreds of emails from J.Crew and for period-proof underwear. But there’s nothing. I can’t believe it. Keeping my phone was part of my deal when I left my job. Did they cut me off?
After a moment of panic, I realize what the problem is. I put my phone in airplane mode before I switched it off. I toggle the setting and shake my phone for good measure. Emails and texts start to flood in. I scan through them. They’re mostly what I expected: 40 percent off clothing and threats to my life. But then the notifications from my bank start, one by one by one.
I’ve withdrawn money.
I’ve withdrawn money.
I’ve withdrawn all my money.
Your spending is much higher than typical.
That was five days ago.
After I calm down, I spend a bit of time poking around online trying to figure out what happened, and then I go to my bank. I wait in line for twenty minutes, only to be told by the teller that she can’t help me with “my problem” and that I’ll need to wait to speak to a manager. She can’t tell me how long that’s going to be, but if I’ll wait over there, they’ll call me when one’s available. Would I like coffee or tea?
I sit in the waiting room, trying not to seethe at the casual way I’m being treated. Having your bank account drained isn’t something most people would take in stride. It’s even worse when the account in question contains your hard-won six-figure severance package.
Until about a month ago, I was the senior investigative reporter at FeedNews, the second-largest online news source with the number one spot in its sights. I got that position after my series on life inside a cult and the lawsuit that resulted after its leader died helped propel us to that status.
This past winter, I was assigned a piece on life as an intern in the state legislature. When I was doing the background research, I found this great first-person account someone had written years ago that no one had read (based on the number of likes and page views), and—there’s no way to say this that makes me look like anything other than a horrible person—I lifted it and passed it off as my own. There’s no defense to this. I had a lot on my mind at the time, and for good measure, or bad, I added in a few details about an up-and-coming congressman from a famous family that I knew were true but that I didn’t have any double-sourced proof for. It got a lot of attention and, shortly thereafter, led to the end of that congressman’s career.
Then, a couple of weeks later, I got caught. This guy, James, who used to work at FeedNews and who never liked me, published a takedown article exposing what I’d done.
The story about my story blew up.
I got pilloried. I got fired. But I also got a six-figure severance package because the head of the assignment desk is a piece of shit who’d been sending me lewd emails for years. I told his boss about it and blamed my moment of weakness on the stress that he’d caused me. I had #MeToo-type evidence to back it up, years of emails I’d kept in a folder called “asshole” in case I needed them. They “leaked” to the media, and that blew the story up even more. Interestingly, the calls for my death and dismemberment increased when that detail got out. Nothing makes an internet misogynist angrier than a woman making money off the misdeeds of another man.
Twitter was ablaze; the talking heads talked, talked, talked; and I stayed away from the pits of Reddit and 4Chan. In the end, I got them to throw in the vacation to Mexico because of the death threats. At that point, they would’ve bought me a Tesla to get the story to die down, but I don’t have a parking space.
And now, I don’t have the money either.
Somewhere, someone is laughing.
“How did this happen?” I ask the bank manager an hour later when I’m finally brought into her office. She has frizzy brown hair and is wearing glasses that are two sizes too big for her face. She introduces herself as Dolores.
“Most of the money has been removed from your account.”
“I know that part.” Someone had made two $1,000 withdrawals from ATMs, then wired $240,000 out of the account. I can’t tell where to from my online statements. “What I want to know is how they did it.”
Dolores taps at a keyboard that looks like it escaped the 1980s. “Your bank card and PIN were used at the ATMs.”
“They must’ve had a cloned bank card ready to go and then figured out my PIN.”
“They?”
“The person who stole my money.”
She looks at me over the top of her glasses. Her eyes are watery and dark. “You know who stole your money?”
“I have my suspicions.”
“Did you give that person your bank card and tell them your PIN?”
“Of course not. But it’s not that hard to clone a card, from what I understand.”
“Perhaps.” She looks at her screen again, then back at me. “Your PIN could be stronger.”
“Noted. What about the online transfer?”
“You must’ve shared your account numbers and passwords.”
“Again, no.”
“You seem upset, ma’am.”
“Someone drained my bank account and you seem to be blaming me.”
“We have to verify for fraud.”
“So, verify,” I say. “All of the money was withdrawn last week, right?”
“Yes.”
“I was in Mexico then, which I can prove. Did the withdrawals originate at ATMs in Mexico?”
“No.”
“So, it wasn’t me. What about the online tra
nsfer? Where did that come from?”
She blinks, slowly.
“Perhaps the answers are in your computer,” I prompt.
“Oh yes.” Dolores pecks away again. “Ah.”
“Yes?”
“You transferred the cash by wire to another account.”
“Please stop saying that.”
“What’s that, ma’am?”
“That I transferred the money. I already told you I didn’t.”
“Well, all of your security questions were answered on the phone, ma’am.”
“Show me.”
She hesitates, then turns the screen my way. There they are: a long list of questions about my mother’s maiden name and what street I lived on as a child, et cetera.
“What account was the money transferred to?”
“That’s confidential.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“I cannot disclose the banking information of another individual without a court order.”
“How am I supposed to get that?”
“I assume the police could help you with that, ma’am.”
“So, someone takes all my money, and the bank protects their privacy?”
“That’s the law.”
“Is there any other way you can help me?”
“Well, I think it’s important to remind you to keep all of your passwords and account information in a safe place. Never disclose the answers to your security questions to anyone. A bank account is a responsibility—”
I raise my hand to stop her. “A simple no would’ve sufficed.”
I leave the bank with my heart pumping. I stop at the ATM on the way out to get some cash. The thief left me with a few dollars. How nice of them.
I punch in my PIN, and the machine tells me I’ve made a mistake. I try again with the same result. What the—
Jesus. My PIN’s been changed. Or the bank locked me out and Ma’am Dolores didn’t tell me. Goddammit. I stare at my reflection in the glass screen, clenching my fist so I don’t punch it. There’s a pinhole camera above it, filming me trying not to lose my cool.
The camera! I should’ve thought of that before.
I go back into the bank, only this time, I bypass Dolores and go right to the top.
I’m not leaving here until I get what I need.
Chapter 3
Would You Like to File a Report?
It takes me an hour to convince the bank’s branch manager to log into their central monitoring system and pull the ATM footage from the cash withdrawals. But eventually, after I threaten to write an exposé about his branch specifically, and he finds ample information on the internet to become convinced that I’m morally bankrupt enough to write the things I’ve threatened, he leaves his office and comes back half an hour later with two black-and-white photographs.
They’re a bit blurry, but there’s no denying that it’s Jessica Two. In the first one, she’s dressed the same way she was at the airport, only she’s wearing a jaunty cap, almost a beret, that pushes her hair forward over her face and casts shadows where her eyes should be. I look at the time stamp: only an hour after my plane left. She wasted no time taking the first $1,000. She was at another ATM the next morning, on Greenwich and Eighth. She was wearing the same hat, but this time she had on a high-collared sweater. She wired away the rest of my money that afternoon.
I have so many questions. Like why did she risk going to the ATMs instead of simply wiring herself the money and disappearing? She must have needed the cash for some reason, because she was taking a risk even though I was out of the country and unlikely to be checking my account balance. Part of me feels like she did it because she wanted me to know that it was her, because she could’ve taken the cash from whatever account she transferred the money to. She didn’t have to leave a trail and get caught on video.
She didn’t have to come so close to my apartment.
I take out my phone and pull up Jessica Two’s contact information, the one she passed on at the airport with what I assume was an infected tap. It’s only her name and number, an area code I don’t recognize. When I look it up, it says it’s in California, but that doesn’t mean anything. So long as you pay the bill, no one cares if you live where your cell was born. It’s probably a fake number. I try it anyway, but no one picks up. I tap out a text.
Why did you do this?
I’m not expecting an answer, but it feels good to ask.
“You want to report a crime, ma’am?”
Tolanda Brown—the desk officer at the sixth precinct—is the second person to ma’am me today. I might not take that much time with my appearance, but I’m only a month shy of my thirtieth birthday, for fuck’s sake. I’m wearing the pencil skirt and a dressy capped-sleeve shirt I usually reserve for interviews with important persons. I always thought this outfit made me look professional and approachable, not old.
“That’s right.”
“What type of crime?”
“A theft.”
She hands me a form. “Fill in the details here and then take a seat over there.” She points to a row of upholstered gray chairs against the wall. Her phone rings shrilly as she hands me a pen. I take a seat with my form. This room feels like where people go to die by waiting, but what choice do I have? In order to file a claim with the bank for the money Jessica Two stole, I need a police report. The bank manager had made it clear that because she had access to all my security passwords, the only money I was likely to get back was that taken from the ATMs. But I might as well make a claim anyway, he said, handing me the forms, because you never know.
I fill out the form.
Officer Richardson—property crimes—doesn’t call me ma’am when we’re introduced later that day, but he’s not very reassuring either. In his midfifties, with a runner’s build, he has a weariness about him that’s discouraging.
He’s got his suit jacket draped over the back of his chair. His dress shirt is yellowed, and his suit has the shiny look suits get when they’ve been dry-cleaned too many times. There are twenty other cubicles in the room, and it’s loud in here, many people on the phone, being interviewed like myself. Despite the ambient noise, Officer Richardson talks low, almost mumbling, so I have to lean forward to hear him. It creates a sort of intimacy that I suspect is purposeful.
I give him the bare facts. I show him copies of my bank statements and the photographs from the ATM. He raises his eyebrows at the name thing, then chuckles to himself. These criminals and the things they get up to. I don’t find it funny.
“Any chance I’ll get my money back?”
He looks at me for a moment, sizing me up with large brown eyes that I suspect have seen twenty years of people asking him the same question as his hairline slowly receded. “You seem like a reasonable person. Are you a reasonable person?”
“I’d like to think so.”
“Then the short answer is probably not.”
“You should put that in the brochure.”
“You asked.”
“I did.”
He meets my gaze. “I’m speaking of probabilities. I’ve seen a lot of things in my career, so you never know. For instance, way back when I was starting out, there was this gang that ended up doing a B&E on every house on the same block. That was in Brooklyn. Back before it was . . .”
“Brooklyn?”
“Right.”
“Every house?”
“Pretty much.”
“Was there something special about them?”
“Not really, other than the fact that they hit so many houses without getting caught.”
“How is that possible?”
He raises a shoulder. “Low priority, lack of resources. It happened over several years, and most of what was taken was covered by insurance.”
“Not like what happened to me, then.”
“True,” he says. “Anyhoo, about five years later, they caught the guys, and the funny thing was, they had this massive storage locker out in Jersey Ci
ty. They hadn’t gotten rid of most of the stuff they’d stolen.”
“Why not?”
“They hadn’t thought it through. They were good at casing places, getting in and out undetected. But they didn’t have a way to offload what they stole. All the VCRs—this was in the early nineties—and family jewelry and such. I’ll tell you one thing, though.” He leans forward, mimicking me.
“What’s that?”
“I was there when the folks whose stuff was stolen went to the warehouse to identify it.”
“That must’ve been nice.”
“It was a letdown, actually.”
“How come?”
“The family heirlooms, people were happy to get those back. Their charm bracelets and such. Their memories. But the VCRs and other electronics that had been replaced with newer models by the insurance companies? You could see them, one by one, recognizing their things and turning the other way.”
“Isn’t that insurance fraud?”
“Probably. But who was going to do anything about it?”
“You?”
He straightens up. “Like I told you, personal-property crimes are a low priority. But I learned something that day. Even the most honest people, when it’s their interest on the line, well, they’re often willing to look the other way.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Just making conversation.”
“And what about my crime?”
“The other Jessica?”
“I call her Jessica Two.”
He loosens his tie. “Probably not her real name, though. But you never know . . .”
“She showed me her ID.”
“That’s easy enough to fake.”
“But she went through airport security . . .”
He nods. “There is that . . . though she could have used other ID to get through security.”
“She had it planned out,” I say.
“Clearly. How did she know you’d be at the airport, though?”
I explain to him about Twitter. Show him the tweet I’d sent. “She had at least a week to plan. And I was in the news a whole month before that.”
He nods again. “Clever little scheme. You did make it simple for her, being so public and all.”
You Can't Catch Me Page 2
