by Bill Bernico
Yeah, that’s going to work out just fine. How stupid did these people think we Americans were? I was almost tempted to fill his request with bogus numbers and other information just to see what he’d do next, but it would be a total waste of my time. I shook my head and mumbled something about how much simpler life was before the World Wide Web. When I looked at my watch again, I realized that I was now running five minutes behind schedule. I closed the cover on my laptop and hurried out to my car.
I rode the elevator to the third floor and walked to the end of the hall. I tried the doorknob to my office and it was locked. Good, I had still managed to beat Gloria to work and wouldn’t have to sit through a lecture on promptness from her this morning.
I slipped my key in the lock and twisted the doorknob. I stepped inside and turned around to find Gloria sitting on the leather sofa against the wall. She had her bare left wrist raised to eye level, pretending to look at her imaginary wrist watch. She tapped the top of her wrist and held it to her ear. She lowered it again and repeated the tapping motion.
“My watch must have stopped,” she said in mock sincerity. “What time do you have, Elliott?”
“What did you do?” I said. “Lock the door behind you when you came in this morning?”
Gloria didn’t answer. Instead she just smiled. “And now you can see firsthand that try as you may and with all the best of intentions, sometimes you just can’t get to work on time. Know what I mean?”
I rolled my eyes and sighed. “I won’t even waste your time with a story about being stuck in traffic,” I said. “Truth of the matter is that my laptop dinged and a new email came in for me this morning. It said it was from Mr. Jordan. You remember Bentley Jordan? He’s the guy who wanted to hire us to find his missing uncle.”
“That reminds me,” Gloria said.
I held up one finger. “Hold that thought until I finish my story,” I said. “Anyway, the email was from some other Mr. Jordan.” I explained the content of the email I had received.
“Are those things still circulating?” Gloria said. “I get two or three of those a week. How stupid do these people think we Americans are?”
“My thoughts exactly,” I said. “But that’s what delayed me this morning. I thought I was dealing with a work-related email and it just didn’t turn out to be the case. So, now what was it you were trying to tell me a minute ago?”
“You mean when you told me to hold my thought until you finished your story?” Gloria said. “Oh yeah, Bentley Jordan called to say that he’s sorry, but he went with another private investigation company to look into his uncle’s disappearance. You just missed the call.” Gloria snapped her fingers. “Hey, you might have been able to talk to him if you hadn’t been busy with that other Mr. Jordan. Ironic, isn’t it?”
I ignored her sarcasm and took a seat behind my desk. The morning’s mail was sitting in a pile on the corner of my desk. Gloria had that morning’s paper on her desk, obviously open to the comics. I gestured toward the paper. “Are you about finished with Beetle Bailey?” I said. “Can I have my paper now?”
Gloria hastily folded the paper up again and dropped it on my desk. She knew how it bothered me when the paper wasn’t folded up the way it was when it had first arrived here. She purposely liked to fold it messy like this just to get a rise out of me. I wasn’t about to give her that satisfaction.
“Thank you,” I said politely. “Do we have any other work prospects on the horizon this morning, Miss Campbell?” Gloria knew that when I referred to her as Miss Campbell, that I was not totally happy with her, so she would always respond in kind.
“No sir, Mr. Cooper,” she said, in a businesslike tone. She locked eyes with me and held them like that.
I held my eyes on her as well, and now it was a game to see who blinked first. We were forty seconds into the contest when the inner office door opened behind Gloria and she blinked. I snapped my fingers and pointed at her. “You blinked,” I said, smiling. Score one for me, I thought.
As the office door closed again I could see the woman who’d come into our office. Gloria was the first to greet her.
“Good morning,” Gloria said. “Welcome to Cooper Investigations. How may we assist you?” Gloria gestured to the client chair across from her desk and the woman sat.
I watched from my desk but said nothing, staying out of the transaction until I was needed.
Gloria extended her hand and said, “My name is Gloria Campbell and my partner there is Elliott Cooper.” She gestured toward me and the woman turned in her seat to wave. I waved back but remained silent.
“Doreen Shacklock,” the woman said in a heavy British accent. She shook Gloria’s hand briefly. “I need a private detective.”
“Well,” Gloria said. “That’s certainly to the point, isn’t it? What is it you need a detective to do for you, Miss Shacklock?”
“Please,” she said. “Call me Doreen.”
“And you can call me Gloria,” Gloria told her. “Now suppose you tell me all about what brought you to us, Doreen.”
Doreen sighed. “I was fleeced out of three thousand dollars and I’d like you to help me recover it. Is that something you do here?”
“That would depend,” Gloria said. “Just how were you fleeced?”
Doreen hesitated for a moment and then said, “I answered one of those ads on the web that offered work at home jobs. We emailed back and forth several times and they assured me that they could hook me up with a reputable company that was looking for people to process invoices from their home. They said I could expect to make somewhere between twenty-eight and thirty-two thousand dollars a year, part time.”
“Sounds too good to be true,” Gloria said, writing down Doreen’s name and a brief outline of her problem.
“It was,” Doreen said. “They had me so convinced that I could make that kind of fantastic money from home. The person I was corresponding with said he could guarantee me a solid three year contract at that salary and all I had to do was pay their one-time registration fee for finding the job for me.”
“Three thousand dollars,” Gloria said.
“Yes,” Doreen said. “Everything looked legitimate and I figured I’d make that back within the first five weeks so I gave them what they asked for.”
“Let me guess,” I said from over the woman’s shoulder. “You sent them the money in the mail and the next time you tried to contact them, your email bounced back undeliverable. Am I even close?” I walked over to the woman and sat on the edge of Gloria’s desk.
Doreen turned in her seat to face me. “Exactly,” she said. “How did you know?”
“You’re not the first person to be scammed by that come-on,” I said. “Ever since computers became a household gadget, crooks have been coming up with more ways to take people’s money than there are to spend it.”
Doreen turned back to Gloria. “Isn’t there something you can do for me?” she said, almost pleading.
Gloria looked at me and I shook my head ever so slightly. She looked back at Doreen. “I’m afraid these kinds of people don’t leave a trail once they pull up stakes and move on. I’m sorry.”
Doreen turned to look at me, hoping I’d have better news for her. I shook my head and said, “Gloria’s right, Doreen. It’s not like the old days when crooks placed these kinds of ads in the newspaper. At least then there was some physical evidence to follow. With computers, there’s nothing left to follow. Even the ISP could be a phony.”
“ISP?” Doreen said. “What’s that?”
“The Internet Service Provider,” I said. “The company who furnishes the internet service to the people who originally placed the ad. They could have bounced that between several different sites before it got to the ISP of record. Those guys are clever. It’s just too bad that they couldn’t focus their criminal effort toward something good.”
Doreen’s face fell apart. “So I’m just out the three thousand dollars?” she said.
Gloria looked a
t Doreen and said, “Maybe if you just think of it as a three thousand dollar lesson. You know, something you’ll never do again.”
“So that’s it?” Doreen said.
I placed my hand on Doreen’s shoulder. “It could have been worse,” I said. “You could have gone to a disreputable detective agency who might have promised you they could recover your money. You’d have paid their retainer and gotten nothing for it in return. At least you came to us first and this little session we’re having with you isn’t going to cost you a dime.”
Doreen must have thought about my statements and realized I was right. She softened a bit and said, “Well, thank you for at least hearing me out. And thank you for your advice. I guess I’ll just have to take the tax write-off.”
“See?” I said. “There is a bit of a silver lining in your dark cloud. Thanks for stopping in, Doreen.”
Doreen rose from the client’s chair and slowly walked toward the door again. Before she left, she turned back and said, “I don’t suppose either of you knows where I can find a decent job.”
Gloria and I both shook our heads. Doreen walked out and closed the door.
“Poor kid,” Gloria said. “She’s out all that money and doesn’t have a thing to show for it.”
“Women,” I said, walking back to my desk.
“What about women?” Gloria said.
I waved her off. “Nothing,” I said. “You just wouldn’t see men falling for a scam like that.”
“I beg your pardon,” Gloria said.
“Women are just more gullible,” I said. “It’s just a fact of nature, like the male of the species being the dominant one. Males are typically, bigger, stronger, faster and smarter.”
Gloria rolled up her sleeves and stepped toward me. “Stronger?” she said, with an overtone of anger in her voice.
I held up one palm. “But,” I said, “As with everything else in life, there are exceptions to every rule. You don’t have to prove anything to me. I am aware that you could probably kick my ass here and now, but you’re that exception I was just talking about.”
Gloria stopped advancing toward me. “And I could outshoot you, as well, Mr. Cooper. And if you want to have a footrace, I can humiliate you that way, too. You’d be huffing and puffing on the first park bench you come across and I’d be two miles closer to the finish line. And lastly, Mr. Big Mouth, anytime you want to go toe to toe with me on an I.Q. test, just say the word and we’ll go downtown and take one together.”
“But I’m taller,” I said in my defense. “Look, suppose you just take a few deep breaths and go sit down on the sofa until you calm down.”
“And?” Gloria said.
“And what?” I said.
“And do I hear an apology?” she said.
I thought about debating the whole male-female thing with her, but decided it would be counterproductive. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t realize you were so sensitive about that whole subject.”
Gloria turned and retreated to the leather sofa, rolling down her sleeves on the way. We both sat there in silence when the office door opened again and Dad walked in. He looked at the two of us and noted the tense, silent atmosphere.
“Okay,” he said. “What’s the argument about this time?”
I waved him off. “Let’s not go there, Dad,” I said. “I can fill you in later.”
That sparked Gloria to action. “Clay,” she said. “Were you aware that your son is a big boob?”
Dad looked at me. “I had my suspicions,” Dad said, “But thanks for confirming it for me. What dumb thing did he say this time?”
Gloria gave Dad her version of the encounter.
Dad looked at me. “You didn’t really say those things to her, did you, son?” he said.
“I clarified it by saying that there were exceptions to the rule and that Gloria was one of the exceptions,” I said. “What more can I say?”
“Actually,” Dad said, “It’s how much less you should have said.”
“Yeah yeah,” I said, dismissively. “Can we get back to work now?”
“On what?” Gloria said. “The one client we might have had just walked out the door.”
“Yes,” Dad said. “I met her in the lobby just before I got onto the elevator. She was coming off and we bumped into each other. I told her who I was and we got to talking. I think we can help her.”
“Dad,” I reminded him, “You know even less than I do about the Internet and email and ISPs and whatever else is involved in her case. Just how did you plan on helping her?”
“You’re right,” Dad said. “I, personally, don’t know that much about today’s computer technology, but that’s why we have so many experts each in their own fields. It just so happens that I know someone who’s a real computer geek and he’d be more than happy to help us out on this one.”
“Oh really?” I said. “And just who is this boy genius that you have in your hip pocket?”
“His name is Terry Belmont,” Dad said.
“Who?” I said.
“Terry Belmont,” Dad repeated.
“Never heard of him,” I said.
“Neither had I until yesterday,” Dad said.
“Where’d you meet this computer guru?” Gloria said.
“Where else?” Dad said. “At the computer store. I was in there yesterday during lunch. I figured I’d look around to see what new gadgets were out there. You know, things that we could use in our business to make life easier for us. Well, all the clerks were busy with other customers, and I was about to leave when I spotted this kid in one of the aisles typing away on one of the floor model computers they had on display. I asked him how he knew so much about computers and he said he just picked it up naturally on his own.”
“And how old is Terry?” I said.
“He just turned eighteen,” Dad said. “He graduated from high school a couple of weeks ago and he has the whole summer to do whatever he wants. We talked some more and he said he was looking for a summer job to help with some of his college expenses, so I suggested that he come and spend this summer working with us.”
“You what?” I said. “We hardly have enough work to keep the three of us busy. How are we supposed to find something for this kid to do, and how are we supposed to pay him?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Dad said. “If he can do everything he says he can, he’ll pay for himself the first time at bat. For instance, he can help with Doreen Shacklock’s case. I’ve already told him that if he and his expertise don’t get results for us, we won’t be able to keep him on so he agreed to work for a percentage of our fees, providing his efforts result in our success on that case. We can’t lose.”
Gloria and I exchanged looks and I shrugged. “All right,” I said. “What’s he going to do for Doreen?”
“Suppose you ask him yourself,” Dad said. “He’s going to be up here in just a few minutes.”
“And what about Doreen?” Gloria said. “Doesn’t Terry have to talk to her to get the facts?”
“I got the facts from Doreen,” Dad said. “I’ll tell Terry what we need and he should be able to jump right in and get started tracking down that scam artist who took Doreen’s money.”
Dad slipped out of his coat and hung it on the coat rack before taking a seat behind his desk. Several minutes later I heard a weak knock on our office door. “It’s open,” Dad said.
The door opened and a young, skinny kid stepped in. He had a laptop folded shut under his arm. He scanned the room and rested his eyes on Dad. “Hello, Mr. Cooper,” the kid said, walking over to Dad’s desk.
Dad stood up and introduced me and Gloria to the kid. “Terry Belmont,” Dad said, gesturing toward each of us in turn, “This is my son, Elliott and that lovely young lady over there is Gloria Campbell.”
Terry nodded shyly and shifted his feet uneasily. Dad invited him to sit at his desk. “Over here, Terry,” he said, rising from his chair. “You can work from here for now.” Dad explained Doreen S
hacklock’s predicament to Terry and gave him a few of the facts in the case.
Terry held up one finger to silence Dad while he typed away at the keyboard on his laptop. In less than two minutes, he had a name and address up on his computer screen. “Is this the guy you’re looking for?” he said.
Gloria and I both got up and stood behind Terry, looking over his shoulder at the laptop screen. It looked like some government site with personal information arranged neatly on the page.
“Who’s that?” I said.
Terry beamed with pride at his accomplishments. “That is the guy who fleeced Miss Shacklock out of her money. Would you like to know where you can find him?”
Dad looked at me and smiled a smile that had more to do with ‘I told you so’ than it did with smiling. He gestured toward Terry with an upturned palm. Well?” he said, waiting for some sort of response.
“I think we can find a use for him,” I said.
Dad contacted Doreen Shacklock and got her signature on a contract, giving us fifteen percent of her recovered three thousand dollars. The authorities were notified. The scammer was apprehended and Doreen’s money was recovered, all in the space of three days. Dad collected four hundred fifty dollars from Doreen and gave Terry forty-five dollars as his ten percent of the fee he had helped collect.
“You can’t make it any easier than that,” Dad told Terry.
Terry folded the two twenties and the five and stuffed them in his jeans. “I guess not,” he said. “What else do you have for me to do?”
Dad looked at me and Gloria and we just shrugged. “Nothing at the moment, Terry,” I said. “But just hang in there. Dad convinced Doreen to give us a good recommendation, since she wasn’t the only victim to this kind of scam.”
A week and a half had passed and during that time two other work-at-home scam victims came to see us about recovering their hard-earned money. Once Terry started looking into this whole Internet scam, he found out that there were at least seventeen such companies operating in Southern California. Nine of those closed up shop and moved on when they got wind that some of the others were being investigated and arrested. Our two clients had been fleeced by one or more of the remaining eight fraudulent companies that offered work-at-home opportunities.
