At Wit's End

by Lawrence, A. K.

  Finally he reached Brandt who rose to shake his hand. Wit kept his distance to prevent another one of those man hugs. He’d never cared for those and he definitely did not want to hug the man who had hurt Marie so callously. They sat at the table, Wit across from Brandt with his back to the window. The glare would give him an advantage and he could watch the room. Silly CEO Tricks 101.

  “It’s nice to see you, Witson,” Brandt’s voice was hale, hearty and without a care in the world. Wit disliked him even more for that. He made a mental bet the man would pull out his cell phone within the next five minutes. It was a rude habit and Wit had killed deals over it before however this time he needed it to happen. To encourage it he removed the device that looked like a cell phone and placed it next to his empty plate.

  “It’s interesting to see you, Brandt. I don’t have a lot of time to waste so why don’t you tell me about these projects you think I’d be interested in.” Playing the casual listener Wit paged through the cheesy prospectus on a tech company Wit knew would go bankrupt within the next year that the man laid out before him.

  Wit continued to feign interest until Brandt’s phone finally jangled from his pocket. Wit casually reached out and hit a button on the side of the device and it began the thirty second process of cloning Brandt’s phone. He gave it a full minute before he picked it up and began looking through Brandt’s information while he sat in front of him.

  “I’ll tell you right now what you’re selling is junk,” Wit stopped Brandt in mid-rave about the tech stock and the potential of the company. He looked at the phone in his hand again. “Why don’t we cut through all the BS right now?” Wit asked him.

  Brandt looked at him, dumbstruck. “What are you talking about?”

  “You are in desperate need of money. I haven’t figured out why, yet, though I’ve narrowed it down to gambling or drugs. Gambling is in the lead.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Brandt sniffed and tried to look insulted. “You’ve obviously gone off your rocker.”

  “Have I?” Wit asked him. “Does the name Marie Chase ring any bells?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about. Apparently this meeting is over. I’m sorry you’re not interested in making money.” Brandt rose to leave.

  “Sit down,” Wit commanded. “I know what you did to Marie and if you want your peers to know, too, then by all means go ahead and leave.”

  “No one would believe you. You’re a washed up beach bum wearing last season’s clothes.” But Brandt sat.

  “Is that what you think?” Wit raised his voice, “Hey, Maloney! I’ve got something in the hopper, want in?”

  The middle aged man seated three tables away raised his hand to Wit. “Email my secretary what you need, I’ll send it first thing in the morning.”

  Wit turned back to Brandt. “I’m washed up? Can you do that?” Brandt didn’t answer. “I didn’t think so. You’ll return Marie’s money and you’ll apologize to her with sincerity.”

  “Or?”

  “What do you mean or? That is your only option.”

  Brandt rose again and threw some bills down on the table. “I don’t think so. Do your worst, Witson.”

  “It’s already begun,” Wit muttered as Brandt essentially fled the café. He’d sent his file on Brandt to Hirsch and knew it was only a matter of time until Brandt’s life became very uncomfortable.

  Chapter 7

  The diner wasn’t especially busy and a low thrum of conversation interspersed with the clank of glasses provided a steady backdrop of noise. Waitresses moved fluidly through the small groupings and efficiently placed plates, removed glasses and dropped off change to customers who’d paid their bills.

  Wit sampled his eggs and added hot sauce. Some short order cooks couldn’t master scrambled eggs to his everlasting sorrow. Kevin sat across from him, his plate loaded with biscuits and southern comfort gravy.

  “The rest of the guys wanted to come,” Kevin added pepper to the gravy, “but we didn’t want you to feel like we were ganging up on you.” He ran a piece of bacon across his plate and carefully bit it.

  Wit cocked an eyebrow and stared at his friend. “Is this an intervention?”

  “Christ no!” Kevin laughed. “If we were going to do that it would have been on the islands.” He laced his fingers together and leaned forward, his elbows on the table. “But we do have to talk.”

  “So serious,” Wit shook his head and picked up his toast. “I did what Will wanted. I sent the file to Hirsch so Brandt can be prosecuted for his various crimes. I used my money to repay what she lost. I also sent the file on Ingerhoffe to Hirsch. Now what?”

  Kevin sighed. He relaxed his posture and slouched against the back of the booth. “Do you remember the first bank job we did?”

  Wit snapped his head around and hoped no one had heard his friend. “Keep your voice down,” he hissed.

  “The statute of limitations is surely up by now, assuming what we did was even a crime by the standards of the times.”

  “Discretion was one of the finer points we tried to hammer into you,” Wit reminded Kevin. “It appears we failed.”

  “Do you remember the first bank job we did?” Kevin asked pointedly.

  Wit looked around one more time. “If I say yes will you stop talking about it?”

  “No. It’s good to remember your past. No regrets, man, right?” He didn’t wait for Wit’s response. “See, what happened is, we went in to the bank’s system first to see how easy it would be to borrow the money.”

  “Borrow,” Wit shook his head, “we were such kids.”

  “Indeed. Then Will figured out we could force the paperwork. Instead of full on stealing the money, we granted a loan to someone who would have been declined, someone who would have paid it back.” Kevin drank from his coffee, set the cup down and traced the rim.

  “I was there. I remember what we did. I still think it would have been easier to borrow the full amount at the time. Part of the plan had always been to pay it back.”

  “My mother was able to pay the loan back. I’m not complaining. I got to go to college. Hirsch would have made sure we had planned on reimbursing the bank, even if we hadn’t.”

  “Hirsch.” Wit had to smile. They’d run that man all over the place and he’d still caught up to them each time. He and the others owed a lot to him.

  “Do you remember how Hirsch caught us?”

  “If I remember correctly, Ed left a sloppy piece of code behind. He may as well have left a sign.”

  “And why did Ed, who always wrote elegant code, have to write something that got us caught?”

  Wit shook his head again. “I thought we agreed we didn’t have to talk about this anymore. I apologized.”

  “Normally we wouldn’t have to talk about it but things have changed. Tell me again why Ed etc.?”

  “Because I didn’t plan ahead and when I backed out of the system I triggered a potential alarm.” He said neutrally. “Ed had the fastest fingers at the time and you know the rest.”

  “Correct.” Kevin tapped a finger on the table. “You didn’t plan ahead.”

  “Right. What’s your point?”

  “I’ll get there. What did Hirsch tell us about con men during his Come to Jesus speech that set us on the straight and narrow?”

  He had to think for a moment. “That they generally are peaceful types. Use of guns in the commission adds serious jail time. And most of them are cowards.”

  “What about the extreme cases?” Kevin’s finger tapped again.

  “In extreme cases when the con fails the guy is going to lose more than the mark. Generally there’s something else on the line. The penalty for not getting the money from the mark is worse than the potential jail time.”

  “Correct again. When you were going through Brandt’s phone, what did you figure out?”

  “That he has a gambling problem. He had a text from a number I found out is registered to a bo
okie reminding him that he owes nearly a quarter of a million dollars. He almost had that amount when I went to work on him earlier.”

  “When you met with him did you make it clear that you are now adversaries? Over what he did to Marie, perhaps?”

  Wit’s eyes widened with growing understanding.

  “So when his money disappears and he can’t pay his bookie and then when the Feds show up on his doorstep, who’s he going to want to talk to?” Kevin swept his palm across the table in a there you have it gesture.

  Stomach lurching Wit tried to get away from the table. He fell from the booth to the dirty floor and looked up at Kevin.

  “I can fix this,” he whispered. Over Kevin’s shoulder a digital clock was counting down. When four seconds remained Wit covered his head and began praying. When he woke Wit recognized the all too familiar coppery taste of fear in the back of his throat.

  FBI Special Agent Marlon Hirschenbaum, Cyber Crimes Division, closed the file and blew out an exasperated breath. The pile of crap that had been dropped on his desk that morning was going to give him a migraine and he had no one to blame but himself.

  Perhaps he hadn’t been clear enough when he’d told Brad Witson to stay out of other people’s online affairs. Hirsch clearly remembered telling the young man that he wouldn’t be able to block his superiors from finding out about the young hacker if he kept it up. Witson’s response? Start sending in anonymous tips via private courier.

  The file was beautifully put together, Hirsch couldn’t argue with that. The James Brandt file had been compiled in such a manner that a child could follow the dots connecting Brandt to theft, fraud, and an assorted lot of charges that would put the man behind bars for a couple of decades. Hirsch wondered if he, with the power of the FBI behind him, could have put this together the way Witson had. He had to admit he probably could not. The extra kick in the butt being it had most likely taken the young man all of a week to do it.

  Not that Hirsch could, or would, ask him. No need to stroke his ego. “It would serve him right if I dropped this right into the Recycle Bin,” Hirsch muttered. He ran his hands through dark brown hair quickly going grey and glared at the folder.

  “Something wrong, Agent Hirschenbaum?” His immediate supervisor paused at his desk and looked down at him in concern.

  Hirsch quickly straightened. “Not at all, sir. I was looking something over.”

  “Is that the anonymous tip that was dropped off this morning?”

  “Yes, sir, it is.”

  “An interesting tip. We don’t have many delivered by an expensive courier. We also don’t receive many that are for a specific agent,” the older man commented. “Any ideas on who sent it?”

  Was that a suspicious tone in his supervisor’s voice? “No, sir, not at the moment. I’ve only just begun to look at it.” Hirsch lied easily.

  “It sounds like something that hacker would do,” he stated bluntly. SAC Anderson had wanted a reason to put Zero in an interview room for as long as Hirsch had known him.

  “Do you think so, sir? It seems low tech to me. I will, however, look into that possibility.”

  “You do that. Be sure to copy me on all results.”

  “Yes, sir.” Hirsch watched the man walk away and shook his head. How a man who could barely use email was in charge of this portion of the Cyber Crimes unit confounded him but, being the good agent he was, he’d do his best to follow the exact letter of that request. Later.

  His first order of business, he decided, would be a conversation with the most recent victim listed in the tip: Marie Lee Chase. Fortunately the tipper had included a photo of the young woman along with her address and telephone number. Rather than call ahead he decided he’d go on over and see what she had to say.

  Marie struggled with the heavy bags. The strings were cutting into her fingers and she desperately wanted to drop them on the floor of the elevator. She knew, however, that if she put them down now she would never be able to convince herself to pick them back up.

  It was turning into a test of her willpower and Marie was determined to be stronger than bags filled with decorator’s samples for an office space she hadn’t even selected yet.

  In the two days since Wit had replaced her lost funds she’d been on a spending spree that would rival a kid in a candy store. No, she thought, not specific enough. Like a teenager with an unlimited spending limit at the mall the week before school started. She was drunk on the sound of registers ringing and her hand ached from signing her name.

  The doors eased open and Marie stumbled forward. Her vision locked on her door and she took several determined steps in that direction. She didn’t see the man in the rumpled suit until she nearly stepped into him. “I’m sorry,” she glanced up, startled. Her keys were dangling from a finger and she wasn’t sure how she’d get them into the lock without dropping at least three bags on her foot. She looked blankly at the man in the rumpled suit. “May I help you?”

  He gave her a serious smile. “It looks like I may be able to help you. I’m Special Agent Marlon Hirschenbaum, FBI Cyber Crimes Division.” He watched for a reaction but her face remained blank. “Here, let me take some of those for you.” He took the handles from her right hand and winced at the weight. Her hands had deep indentations quickly colouring red. “You’ve been doing some serious shopping,” he commented.

  When she still didn’t respond Hirsch pointedly looked from her keys to the door. “If you don’t mind? These bags are surprisingly heavy.”

  That got her attention. She quickly stabbed the key into the lock and gave it a twist. “I’m sorry. That was rude of me. Are you looking for me?”

  “Are you Marie Chase?” She had stopped inside the door and turned to look back at him.

  “I think you should show me some identification.” Marie set the rest of the bags down and began rubbing the feeling back into her hands.

  Hirsch nodded and reached into his inside jacket pocket and removed his wallet. He showed her his badge. After she studied it carefully she nodded and stepped back to let him enter. “It’s good you thought to check that. A lot of people don’t.”

  “I’ve learned to be careful over the past few months.” She gestured next to the couch. “If you’d please set those bags over there, I’d appreciate it. The last few blocks were the longest of my life. Can I get you a cup of coffee?” Marie didn’t know what to do with her hands. She was nervous. She’d never talked to an agent of the federal government before and didn’t like the way it felt.

  She realized he could be there to talk about Wit. She couldn’t begin to count the laws he must have broken when he’d helped her. Oh, please, let him want some coffee, she prayed. She could use the time to figure out what to tell him.

  Hirsch could see her brain working and decided to cut her a break. “I’d love a cup, if it’s no trouble. Black would be great.”

  “Fantastic. I could use a cup myself.” Marie could feel her body bouncing from foot to foot. She felt guilty and didn’t know why. “Have a seat. I’ll be right back.” She practically fled to the kitchen and began the calming process of brewing a pot of coffee.

  She kept her back to the living room and took several deep breaths. If he was here about Wit what would she do? She didn’t want to break the law but she honestly didn’t want to tell a stranger about what they’d done. And yes, it was what they’d done. She’d agreed every step of the way and therefore was complicit. Dear Lord, she was an accomplice. Her eyes widened.

  She placed two sturdy mugs and the carafe of coffee on a tray and carried it to the living room. She’d expected the agent to be sitting on the couch and started when she saw him next to the window. With a smile she set the tray on the table and poured coffee.

  She was stunned her hands didn’t shake as she handed him the steaming mug. “Thank you,” Hirsch set the mug back on the tray. “Those are beautiful flowers,” he pointed to the vase sitting next to the couch. He finally sat and Marie felt her shoulders loosen.


  “Thank you. A gift from an appreciative client.”

  “A client with good taste. What is it you do, Miss Chase?” he asked.

  “I’m a caterer,” she answered, “though I see it as more of an event coordinator. I recently began my own business. The bags are filled with samples for office and kitchen space.”

  “Congratulations.”

  She nodded. “What can I help you with, Agent Hirschenbaum?”

  A very careful woman, he noted. And very pretty with that riot of curls and upturned nose. He was beginning to understand why Wit was involved. Hirsch pulled his briefcase closer and flipped the latches. He didn’t open it.

  “I’d like to start out saying this isn’t an interrogation or even an interview,” Hirsch began. He tugged at his tie in an effort to appear less professional. It didn’t work, everything about him said agent with a capital A.

  “Then what would you call it?” Marie asked. She fiddled with her mug and took a sip of the too hot coffee.

  “I’d like to call it a casual conversation. If you disagree with that premise at any point let me know. Does that sound acceptable to you?” Hirsch waited for her to nod. He opened the briefcase and removed a thick folder. “I received this anonymous tip this morning. I’m following it up because after reading the information I believe it to be credible. Do you know a man named Michael Morrison?”

  Hirsch watched the young woman take a deep breath and let it out slowly. Was that a flash of relief he saw cross her face? He wondered what she had been sure he was going to ask her.

  Marie nodded slowly. In a reflexive gesture she took a rubber band from her wrist and tied her hair back. “Yes, I thought I knew Michael Morrison very well.”

  With her hair pulled back and no longer framing her face Hirsch could see that she was quite stunning. Wit hadn’t stood a chance when he’d met this damsel in distress. “You thought you did? Would you please expand on that?”

  Marie did. Hirsch was something of a natural lie detector and her story flowed smoothly. It also followed, nearly step by step, the chain of events laid out in the tip. Some personal details had been excluded. That confirmed to Hirsch that Wit had put the file together. He wouldn’t have known some of these details. Though he hadn’t suspected Marie of being the tipster he had wanted to be sure.