The Bubble Gum Thief

by Jeff Miller

  During the two years before the fraud was exposed, Noel Draker threw lavish parties. He established foundations and endowed libraries and schools, splashing the Draker name on every invitation, sign, and plaque along the way. He was revered around town for his civic philanthropy and envied for his private wealth. But after he was accused of fraud, Draker was reviled and despised. His personal holdings no longer inspired people, they just made them angry. His charitable work, once admired, now engendered disgust. The Draker name, plastered on so many things throughout the city, became a badge of shame.

  After the civil suit was filed, Draker held a press conference and promised that there had been no fraud. Three months later, he held another press conference and admitted fraud had occurred, but claimed he didn’t know about it. He said nothing more on the subject for nine more months, and then he said only one word. The word was “Guilty”—it was his plea in Judge Nagel’s courtroom.

  The nine months between his proclamations of innocence and guilt must have been difficult for Draker. His employees caved, copping pleas and pushing the fraud higher and higher up the corporate ladder. Twice he was assaulted while walking to his car. The first time was at night, with no witnesses around. The second time was in the afternoon. A crowd watched Draker’s assailant beat him until he bled. His first attacker was never caught; the second was sentenced to thirty days in jail. When reporters asked him why he beat Draker, the man said only, “He had it coming.” Around the water coolers in Cincinnati, people agreed.

  Though the fraud had been designed to obscure small financial problems, its discovery created big ones. Customers canceled orders, unsure whether Drakersoft would be able to provide customer support. Banks withdrew letters of credit. Creditors foreclosed on secured property.

  Throughout the investigation, one group stood behind Noel Draker—his loyal cadre of gifted programmers. They wrote letters to the paper and spoke to television reporters, defending the honor and integrity of their boss. But even their support flagged when an FBI agent, Jim Murgentroy, found a smoking-gun memorandum to Noel Draker from his CFO outlining the plan to hide investment losses. Draker denied knowledge of the memorandum, but several distinct fingerprints on the paper suggested otherwise. The government offered the CFO, Max Silvers, a deal; and Silvers corroborated the memorandum.

  “Murgentroy and Silvers are dead. Ryder’s daughter was raped. Waxton’s bank was robbed and his prize baseball stolen,” Dagny said.

  “He’s settling scores,” the Professor said. And there would be no bigger score to settle than one with the man who sent him away for ten years. They decided to visit Judge Edward Nagel.

  CHAPTER 40

  April 25—Cincinnati, Ohio

  Judge Edward Nagel was eighty-eight years old but didn’t look a day under a hundred. Aside from a few random patches of white hair and the whiskers sticking out from his ears, he was entirely bald. His forehead was covered in dark spots and sloped down to a long, thin nose that supported round wire-rimmed glasses. He wore a maroon, pin-striped vest that clung tightly to his chest; a gold chain dangled from his vest pocket. He smelled like old cologne.

  “Please, please, have a seat,” Nagel insisted, gesturing to the chairs in front of his desk. His amiable, gracious nature surprised Dagny. In her experience, federal judges were rude, insufferable egomaniacs, though still preferable to state judges, who were rude, insufferable buffoons.

  First appointed to the bench by President Johnson (Lyndon, Dagny assumed, but it could have been Andrew), Nagel was the longest-serving judge in the Southern District of Ohio, and as such, had the largest courtroom and nicest chambers. The dark mahogany shelves behind Nagel’s desk held ancient law treatises, long obsolete. His walls were covered with awards and commendations issued by lawyers hoping to curry favor. Nagel’s portrait hung high on his wall and stared eerily down upon them.

  “I’m sorry, but who are you two?” Nagel asked with a big smile and a befuddled air.

  Was he senile? They’d just introduced themselves less than a minute before. “I’m Special Agent Dagny Gray, and this is Timothy McDougal, also with the Bureau.” Because the Professor had no formal title, she’d been introducing him by name only. It made introductions a bit awkward. “We’d like to talk to you about Noel Draker.”

  Nagel leaned back in his monstrous chair. “I’ve read in the papers that Noel Draker is suspected of being this Bubble Gum Thief,” Nagel said. “Is this true?”

  “It is, Your Honor,” the Professor replied. “If you wouldn’t mind, we’d like to ask you some questions.”

  “I am but a public servant, so of course I will oblige. But I should warn you that elements of professional responsibility may require me to defer comment on a case.”

  “I understand completely,” the Professor said, though Dagny knew of no professional limitations on the judge’s candor. “You met Noel Draker during the case, I presume. He appeared in your courtroom?”

  “Yes, and here in chambers several times as well. I saw the devil in that man, you know. That’s why he went away for ten years. Would have been more if I could have managed it, but my hands were tied. Sentencing guidelines. Gave him the most I could. Good Lord, I wish it could have been more. Wouldn’t be doing all this nonsense if he were still in jail.”

  “What do you mean when you say you ‘saw the devil in that man,’ Your Honor?” the Professor asked.

  “I’ve been on the bench for a long time.” Nagel looked over to Dagny. “Longer than you’ve been alive, sweetheart.” The befuddled old man seemed to disappear as Nagel’s tone became serious and angry. “And I’ve seen many guilty men. Some thieves, some murderers, and some monsters. When you see enough of them, you learn. Now me, I don’t begrudge a man his wealth, if it’s earned. But it has to be earned. The rich are not devils, per se, but you’ll find devils amongst them. And Noel Draker was the devil. I said it in chambers to his face once. I told him he was the devil. And now he’s proved me right.”

  “You called him the devil?” Dagny asked. “Had he said something to upset you, Your Honor?”

  “The opposite. The man didn’t talk. Just stood there. The prosecutor would say the most awful things about him, but Draker just stood there. I would say awful things about him, and Draker just stood there. When they found that smoking gun—his own fingerprints on that document, for Christ’s sake—they brought it to chambers. Draker was right there,” he said, pointing to Dagny, “right where the young lady is sitting, and he just smiled. Smug little bastard just smiled. His fancy-pants lawyer starts yelling and screaming about an ambush, finding this memo so late in the game, but Draker just smiled. Smug little bastard. The devil, you see.”

  Edward Nagel wasn’t senile at all, Dagny thought. He remembered small details from the case—the memorandum, the defense attorney, even Draker’s smile. “So Mr. Draker never said anything to you?” Dagny asked.

  “No. But the smug bastard smiled. I’d have given him twenty if I could’ve, just for that smile.”

  As the crime beat reporter for The Cincinnati Enquirer, Bill Lusenhop had spent the better part of two years tracing the trials and tribulations of the Draker case. Dagny guessed that Lusenhop was in his mid-thirties now, which would have made him just a kid when he covered the Draker case the first time. The reporter rolled a couple of extra office chairs into his cubicle for his guests.

  Lusenhop was so excited by their visit that he was rocking in his chair. “Editor wants the whole front page, now that they’re saying he’s the Bubble Gum Thief. I get a leg up since I wrote about him before. Can you confirm that he’s the primary suspect? You’re the one he kidnapped, right? I mean—”

  “I’m afraid we need to ask our questions first,” the Professor interrupted.

  “Fair enough. Ask away.” Lusenhop kicked his feet up on his desk and leaned back, resting his hands behind his head.

  “Did you ever talk to Draker?” the Professor asked.

  “Not on the record. But he cal
led once in the middle of the frenzy, all hot under the collar about something I wrote. Wanting a correction.”

  “About what?”

  “Chickenshit. We ran a picture of him at a party, dressed to the nines, living it up even though his company was under investigation. Ran it with the headline ‘The Party Goes On.’ He called me, indignant, insisting that the photograph was three years old, that he wasn’t partying. Said we were defaming him.”

  “Were you?” Dagny asked.

  “Defaming him?” Lusenhop laughed. “The man was a thief. How can you defame a thief? But he was right about the picture. Who knew? People send you things, you take their word. It was chickenshit. On the big stuff, though, we were right all along. When he pled guilty, it was vindication.”

  “How did you get assigned to the case?” the Professor asked.

  “First the business page had it, and then the legal beat, but within a couple of weeks they realized it was going criminal, so they gave it to me. I’d just started and didn’t have a lot on my plate. It was all I did for two years.”

  “How do you sustain a story like that for two years?”

  “You cover every angle. Tell the stories of the investors. Track down his failed investments and show what went wrong. One day, you give voice to the employees who lost their jobs. The next day, you get one of his teachers to talk about what he was like in high school, and it turns out that his shop teacher knew all along that the kid was no good. They even sent me up to MIT, and I talked to people there. Spent a few weeks working the angle that he might have defrauded the DOD. There were a couple of congressional hearings—one led by former representative Alden Brownman, another by Senator Henry Watkins. They didn’t go anywhere, but looked promising at the time. Found a girl who claimed to have slept with him, talked about the secret life of Noel Draker. She failed a lie detector, so who knows. And then there was the stuff from the investigation. A little more would leak out each day. One of your guys used to call me all the time. I’d give him stuff and he’d give back. So I always had something.”

  “Who was feeding you information?” Dagny asked.

  “I don’t give up sources.” Lusenhop plopped his feet back onto the floor and picked up a pad of paper and a pen. “Not for free anyway. If you’ve got some good information for me, then maybe—”

  “Just one more question from us, and then we can get to yours,” the Professor said.

  “Shoot.” Lusenhop was drawing a circle over and over again at the top of his pad, trying unsuccessfully to contain his glee.

  “Was there anyone he loved?”

  “Loved? I don’t think so. If you want to know about his sex life, you’ll have to ask Knippinger—he wallows down in that gossipy stuff. I report on real news.”

  “Who is Knippinger?” Dagny asked.

  “He’s our society man. Now it’s my turn to ask the questions.”

  “It will have to wait for another time,” the Professor said. “We’ve got to go.”

  Charles Knippinger was waiting at the bar in the Hilton Netherland Plaza hotel, an elegant art deco shrine clad in marble, velvet, and rosewood. It was a massive space—the ceilings were at least thirty feet high, adorned with giant murals framed in gold. It was the kind of place where you expected to see Cary Grant or the Thin Man.

  Knippinger was a slight man, however, with a round face and thick eyebrows, probably in his late fifties, Dagny guessed. He wore a light-blue suit with a white handkerchief peeking up from the monogrammed pocket and a mischievous smile. Spotting Dagny and the Professor, he set aside his martini and tapped the seats of the nearest barstools.

  “Nothing could delight me more than talking about the curious case of Noel Draker,” he said.

  They took the offered seats, and the Professor began the interview. “I assume you’ve read that Noel Draker is suspected of being—”

  “The deliciously named Bubble Gum Thief? How tacky is that? You’d think they’d drop it now that he’s killing children, but no, they keep using it. Once a name grabs hold, I guess it won’t let go.”

  “What was your impression of the man?” the Professor continued. “You wrote about him often.”

  “Well, this isn’t Tinseltown. You write about what you have. And in Cincinnati, that’s always been Pete Rose, Marge Schott, Jerry Springer, and the occasional Noel Draker. Oh, and Draker was a particularly wonderful case. It sums up what Cincinnati is all about, if you ask me.”

  “How so?”

  “It’s all about forgiveness in the end. In Cincinnati, there are some things we can forgive and some we can’t. If you’re Pete Rose and you bet on baseball, you’re forgiven. If you’re Marge Schott and you say some ugly, racist things, you’re forgiven. As mayor of this town, Jerry Springer visited a prostitute—paid her with a check!—and he was still reelected, still forgiven. But stealing? This city doesn’t forgive that. Anything but that.”

  “Are you surprised that he could be responsible for the recent violence?” the Professor asked.

  “It’s funny, but I visited him in prison once. I had an idea for an article, a bit of satire, really. I was going to compare Cincinnati’s upper-crust society with prison life—the idea being that they were not that different. So I visited Draker, thinking that could be the lead for my article. He’d been locked up for five years by then. I was surprised by our encounter. Physically, of course, he’d changed—the fat was gone—he was trim, even gaunt. His hair was turning grey. His forehead, wrinkled. But the biggest difference was in his eyes. They were hollow, lifeless. This was a man who threw giant galas, who used to laugh at his own jokes, who—for all of his faults—had been vibrant and full of life. But the man who sat across from me didn’t answer my questions or even seem to acknowledge my existence. He wasn’t rude. It just felt like he was a dead man. I don’t know what happens in prisons, but I know that whatever happened killed Noel Draker.” Knippinger paused. “So I never wrote the column, because, as it turns out, Cincinnati high society is not very much like prison at all.”

  “Did you like Noel Draker?” Dagny asked.

  “I don’t like or dislike anyone, really. It’s an impediment to my job. But I suppose I had a certain fondness for him. I often wonder whether things would have worked out differently if he had listened to a bit of advice I gave him at our first meeting.

  “It was at one of his early charity events, a black-tie affair right here, at this hotel, in the Hall of Mirrors—the nicest room in the city. Everyone who was anyone was here—the blue-chip suits from Fourth Street and a lot of the politicians—judges, councilmen, commissioners, congressmen. I was chatting with Draker at the bar. It was rather endearing really, he simply didn’t have a clue how things worked. It was all well and good to throw charitable functions, but no one in that room really cared about the Children’s Defense League or building a new wing at The Christ Hospital. I pointed out the politicians and told him, ‘That’s where you need to start sending your money.’ But Draker was a stubborn man. He found these people so odious, so distasteful, that for all the money he gave away, not a cent went to anyone that really mattered.”

  “Anyone ever love him?”

  “There was often a beautiful woman on his arm. It was never the same woman twice. I don’t think he was ever in love. Yet he always seemed like he was nursing a broken heart.”

  “Who really knew him? His software developers?”

  “His programmers loved him, but they didn’t know him. And that love faded once he pled guilty. Percy Reynolds liked him. Probably knew him as well as anyone. But when they found that memo, it must have broken Percy’s heart. He had actually believed his client. I think that’s why he gave up law and moved away.”

  “Draker’s defense attorney?” Dagny had seen his name in the pleadings and newspaper articles about the case.

  “He was the city’s best trial attorney, one of the few in town with a national reputation. Bit of an iconoclast. Highest-paid attorney at Dresser and Edmunds, the top
firm in the city. Quit the firm the day after Draker was sentenced. Disillusioned, I suppose. He’d put his credibility on the line for Draker. The whole thing made Reynolds nearly as hated as his client. Poor guy had to leave town.”

  “Where’d he go?”

  “New Mexico, I heard. Truth or Consequences.”

  CHAPTER 41

  April 26—Truth or Consequences, New Mexico

  Under better circumstances, Dagny might have followed the sign to Trinity Crater, the hole in the ground created by the first nuclear bomb test in 1945. Instead, she kept driving south on I-25, past Polvadera and Socorro and a dozen other little towns full of busted barns and burned-out churches. New Mexico was beautiful and brown and broad and bare. A cool, dry desert breeze blew through the window, so clean and fresh and rich that one breath did the work of two.

  The Professor had stayed in Cincinnati to follow other leads, so Dagny was traveling alone. Fumbling with the XM radio, Dagny settled on CNN and its nonstop coverage of Noel Draker, aka the Bubble Gum Thief, hoping she might learn something new, and relieved when she didn’t. When a talking head mentioned her by name and referenced “her lover, Michael Brodsky,” she changed the station.

  Her lover. It sounded so illicit. But what then? “Boyfriend” sounded like an infatuation. “Partner” sounded like a business arrangement. There wasn’t a word to accurately describe what Michael Brodsky had meant to her, just as there wasn’t a word to describe the pain she felt hearing his name.

  Percy Reynolds lived in the bulbous hills between downtown Truth or Consequences and Elephant Butte Lake, a forty-mile-long reservoir created by a concrete dam on the Rio Grande. It wasn’t exactly lush, but it was green, and there weren’t any tumbleweeds blowing around. It seemed like as good a place as any to run away to.