Death, Taxes, and a Skinny No-Whip Latte

by Diane Kelly

Never, ever ignore instinct.

  I watched his reflection in the glass. He wore baggy jeans, the crotch nearly reaching his knees and his plaid boxers sticking up above the waistband, along with a KORN T-shirt, complete with the band’s trademark backward R. The guy’s right arm bore a colorful sleeve tattoo. A dragon or a lizard. Hard to tell for sure from this angle.

  He walked slowly past the sleeping man, his head angling first left, then right as he appeared to weigh whether he could shake down a man that size. He must have decided that, even with the advantage of surprise on the dozing man, it wasn’t worth the risk. His head lifted and turned my way.

  A conversation balloon reading “Bingo!” might as well have appeared above his head.

  He’d chosen his victim.

  And it was me.

  Female, petite, cast on my arm, looking in the other direction, I probably seemed like an easy target. But looks can be deceiving, can’t they?

  As he circled behind the row of washers, trying to creep up slowly so as not to alert me, I, too, played nonchalant, easing my hand into my purse. My fingers crept over my Glock. Nah. When the cops arrived, they’d recognize the gun for what it was, federal agent standard issue. I didn’t want to explain who I was or why I was here, what with this case being hush-hush and all.

  After my earlier run-in with the pervert, I’d decided it couldn’t hurt to have a personal weapon at my disposal, too. Good thing I had a concealed-handgun license and could carry a backup weapon from my personal collection. Some women accessorize with twenty-four-carat gold. Today I’d accessorized with a thirty-eight-caliber pearl-handled revolver. The perfect accompaniment to a Hooters T-shirt, don’t ya think?

  Moisture seeped from my pores onto my forehead and upper lip as I sat, muscles tensed, ready to spring into action. The guy crept around the corner, tiptoed up to me, and tapped me on the shoulder.

  I turned and looked up at him. “Yes?”

  He stuck out his hand and waggled his fingers. “Give me your wallet,” he demanded, keeping his voice low lest he wake the sleeping man and roust a potential rescuer. “Now.”

  “My wallet?” I slowly rose from my seat, clutching my purse in front of me. “Now?”

  “That’s what I fucking said!” he spat in a whisper, glancing down at my purse. “Do it.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “Are you trying to rob me?” I made no attempt to keep my voice low.

  “Fuck, lady!” He flapped his arms, looking like a frustrated ostrich. “Do I have to spell it out for you? Give me your wallet or I’ll just take it from you.”

  “Yeaaah-no.” I cocked my head. “That’s not going to happen.”

  A flicker of confusion crossed his face. Obviously, he hadn’t anticipated resistance.

  I yanked my gun from my purse and shoved it up under his chin, forcing him backward until he was pinned against a whirling machine.

  “I’ll spell it out for you, doofus. You’re going to sit down on this floor like a good little boy or I’m going to bust a cap in you.” I’d always wanted to say that. “Got it?”

  The sleeping man woke with a start, looked our way, and shrieked. He bolted from his chair, tripping over his own feet, and stumbled out the door.

  With a look of disgust, my captive slumped to the floor and crossed his arms over his chest. “Shit. If I’d known he was such a pussy I would’ve robbed him instead of you.”

  Neener-neener. “Perhaps next time you’ll choose your victim more wisely.”

  Headlights flashed across the street, a rusty pickup truck pulling into the post office. “Don’t move,” I admonished the twerp.

  I stepped to the glass doors of the Laundromat and pushed one open, propping it ajar with my foot. With one hand, I held my gun aimed at the would-be robber. With the other I wrestled my binoculars from my purse and held them to my eyes. A man in a cowboy hat climbed from the truck and went inside. He stopped at box 1322, removing this month’s copies of Field & Stream and Guns & Ammo. Also what appeared to be a past-due notice from a collection agency.

  From his place on the floor, the thief snorted. “Spying on your boyfriend? What’d he do, cheat on you?”

  I gave him a shut-the-fuck-up look. But he didn’t shut the fuck up.

  “It’s no wonder he’s cheating.” He spewed a nasty chuckle, as he eyed my chest. “Hooters, my ass. You got no tits.”

  “Keep this talk up and you’ll have no balls.” I shoved the binoculars back in my purse. “And by the way, Korn sucks. They don’t sing. They scream. And they stole the idea for the backwards R from Toys ‘R’ Us.” Okay, so maybe insulting his taste in music was making this too personal. But he’d started it by insulting my breasts. They might be small, but they get the job done.

  Pulling my cell phone from the pocket of my shorts, I dialed 911 and requested an officer. Déjà vu. At least this criminal had kept his pants on. Well, halfway on anyway.

  Minutes later, a cruiser pulled up. The cop who climbed out was a young, nicely built Latino. He came inside and read the word on my T-shirt, eyeing my 32As in puzzlement before looking up at my face. “What’s going on here?”

  I explained what happened.

  Still sitting on the floor, my robber shook his head. “She’s crazy!” he shouted. “All I did was ask if she had change for the machine and she freaked out.”

  “Change, huh?” The cop hooked his thumbs in his belt and looked at me, raising one dark brow.

  “He’s full of crap.” I rolled my eyes. “He doesn’t have any laundry.”

  The cop looked back to the guy. “Where’s your laundry?”

  The guy gestured to the machine I was using. “In there.”

  “That’s my laundry,” I told the cop.

  The officer stepped over to the machine. He raised the lid, peeked inside, and fished out a soggy pair of white nylon undies. His eyes went from the panties to my face. “Not getting any, huh?”

  I sighed. “Not lately.”

  He held the dripping panties in front of the tattooed guy’s face. “Still want to claim these as yours?”

  The guy didn’t respond, just glared at me.

  I shook my head. “Didn’t really think this through, did ya?”

  The guy turned to the cop, jabbing an angry finger in my direction. “That bitch pulled a gun on me. Isn’t that against the law?”

  “That depends.” The cop cut his eyes back to me. “You licensed to carry?”

  I nodded and pulled both my license and my thirty-eight from my purse.

  The cop took a quick look at my permit, then admired my gun, taking it from me and turning it back and forth in his hand. “Nice piece.”

  “Thanks.”

  “So, what?” the kid yelled from the floor. “It’s legal to threaten someone with a gun now?”

  “No,” the cop said as he jerked the guy to his feet. “But it’s legal to defend yourself.”

  Especially in the Lone Star State.

  God bless Texas.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Where Do We Go from Here?

  The next week passed without incident. I suppose I should’ve been grateful, but at least the pervert and the mugger had added some excitement to my watch duty. Now two full weeks into this stakeout with no luck, my patience had run out. For all we knew, Mendoza was plotting to kill another of his minions right now. What’s more, the date of my trip to Florida was growing near.

  We needed to get this show on the road.

  When I showed up at the post office for my noontime shift on Monday, I phoned Eddie from my cell. “This is getting us nowhere.” The drizzle was back, the mist accumulating into droplets of water that slid down the windshield of my plastic-mobile.

  Sitting in his own cheap rental car across the parking lot, Eddie scrubbed a frustrated hand over his head. “Let’s talk to the manager again. Maybe we missed something.”

  We met on the sidewalk and went inside together, approaching the manager of the post office again. This time, the man
ager pulled all of the original records on the box and took us back to his stuffy, windowless office. He plunked himself down in his chair, stroking his finger and thumb over his chin as he looked through the paperwork. “Here’s your problem.” He handed us a piece of paper.

  The paper was a completed forwarding request form, dated the day before Andrew Sheffield’s disappearance. The order directed that all mail sent to box 1216 be forwarded on to another post office box, also rented in the name of ARS Financial Corporation, but located several hundred miles south in the border town of Laredo, Texas.

  Shit.

  Shit. Shit! SHIT!

  Eddie and I exchanged exasperated glances. We’d sat there for two weeks, testing the limits of our determination and bladder control, for nothing. Nothing! To make matters worse, I’d gained six pounds sitting on my ass, drinking all those extra-large, extra-whip caramel lattes. I’d been unable to button my pants that morning, even when I sucked in my gut and held my breath. Thank goodness for the stretchy maternity pants I’d picked up at the thrift shop.

  It would have to be skinny lattes only from now on.

  No drizzle.

  No whip.

  I sighed. Was there any reason to continue living?

  The manager made us a copy of the forwarding order. The two of us thanked him and stepped back outside.

  Eddie let out a long, loud breath as we walked to our cars. He flicked the paper with his index finger. “This explains why the Pokornys’ money orders were cashed in South Texas.”

  We’d assumed, wrongly, that the payments were being picked up here by someone who then transported them and cashed them in south Texas.

  “The Lobo won’t be a happy camper when she realizes we’ve wasted all this time.” She wanted Mendoza nailed. Yesterday. Whoever broke the news to her was in for a thorough ass-chewing. I looked up at my partner. “How ’bout you tell her, big guy?”

  “No way,” Eddie said. “For better or worse, you and I are in this together.”

  * * *

  Desperate now, Eddie and I returned to the office. Viola looked up as we approached her desk, which sat crossways a few feet in front of the Lobo’s door, enabling Vi to serve as Lu’s secretary, gatekeeper, and unofficial guard dog.

  “Hi, Viola,” I said. “Is Lu available?”

  She punched the intercom button on her phone. “You up for visitors, boss? Got Agents Bardin and Holloway out here.”

  “Send ’em in,” Lu’s voice barked through the speaker.

  Viola waved us through.

  “Thanks, Vi.”

  Eddie closed the door behind us as we entered Lu’s office. Today, a thick green scarf cut a path across Lu’s pinkish-orange beehive, the loose ends tied behind her neck. She sported a tight polyester dress with a wide collar and belt, the bright gold-on-green checkerboard pattern playing tricks on our eyes, the fabric seeming to quiver on her body.

  We took seats in her wing chairs. Lu took one look at our faces and reached for the pack of cigarettes she always kept handy. After shaking one loose, she lit up. She took a deep drag, held it for a moment, then shot a stream of smoke out the side of her mouth, defying both the federal building’s no-smoking policy and the rules of workplace decorum. “I take it you don’t have good news.”

  Her gaze was on Eddie but, when the rat bastard hiked his thumb at me, she turned her focus my way.

  “Hate to disappoint you, Lu,” I said, giving Eddie a sideways kick in the ankle. “But we’ve got squat.” I explained how the post office box had been a dead end, how any checks addressed to the box had been forwarded to the post office down south.

  She raised a brightly colored brow and looked back and forth between Eddie and me. “You mean to tell me you sat on your damn asses in front of that damn post office for two damn weeks for nothing?”

  She took another drag so deep her right and left cheeks nearly met in the middle. It was a wonder her head didn’t implode. She flicked the ashes into a plastic ashtray on her desk and propelled the smoke out her nose. “This is one case where time is not on our side. We need to keep this investigation moving.”

  “We understand that, Lu,” Eddie said. “Problem is, we’re not sure where to go from here.”

  The only idea we’d come up with on the drive over was to have someone from the Laredo office monitor the post office box where the mail had been forwarded.

  Lu chewed the inside of her cheek. Clearly, she didn’t like the idea. The fewer people involved in this investigation, the better. But without any more leads, what choice did we have?

  Lu finally agreed on the condition the agent in Laredo be given no details on the case, as well as strict instructions not to confront the person picking up the mail. He was only to attempt to identify the person from a license plate or to discreetly follow the person and obtain an address. And the agent was not to be informed that Mendoza was the target of the investigation. The last thing any of us wanted was for Mendoza to be tipped off that we were on his trail again. If he knew, he’d keep even tighter controls on his organization, making it all that much harder for us to obtain information and bring him down.

  Eddie and I slunk out of Lu’s office with our tails between our legs.

  As we made our way to my digs, we passed Josh standing at the copier. His eyes took in my loose polka-dotted outfit.

  “Nice circus tent you’re wearing,” he said with a smirk.

  Jerk. I didn’t dignify his insult with a response. Well, not a visible response, anyway. I mentally willed his head to explode into a ball of confetti. No such luck.

  When we reached my office, I plopped down in my seat and pulled Nick Pratt’s stress ball out of my drawer, squeezing it over and over in a vain attempt to work off my frustration. “What now?”

  Eddie perched on the edge of my desk. “Hell, I don’t know.”

  The light on my phone flashed, indicating a voice mail message waiting for me. I picked up the phone, dialed into the system, and listened. There was one message. That same deep male voice. Despite my earlier instructions to leave his name if he called back, the mystery man once again failed to identify himself.

  Once again, music played in the background. And, once again, his message was short. “Check last week’s referrals from the Trade Commission.”

  Huh?

  Whoever this guy was, he had to be an IRS insider, right? How else could he know both my office and cell numbers and have access to the Treasury’s computer files?

  But who the heck was it? And why did he suggest I look at the referrals?

  I looked up at Eddie. “Have you received any unusual calls?”

  “Unusual?” Eddie’s brows drew together. “What do you mean?”

  To tell or not to tell. Hmm. As Eddie had said, he and I were in this together. He was my partner, after all. Still, the caller had apparently chosen to call me and only me. Maybe there was a reason for that. Maybe I should keep the details to myself, at least for now.

  I shrugged. “Cryptic messages. Loud music in the background.”

  “Didn’t you call several deejays to get price quotes for Lu’s party?” Eddie waved a hand dismissively. “It’s probably one of them.”

  “You’re right,” I said, though I didn’t buy that explanation for a second. “You think maybe we should check the files again? See if there’s anything new?”

  When Eddie and I had begun our investigation, we’d painstakingly combed through every file that had even a remote connection to Mendoza and the companies with which he was involved. None of them had yielded a lead. But new information flowed into the department constantly. It was possible my mystery caller was on to something.

  “It’s doubtful,” Eddie said, sliding into one of my wing chairs. “But it can’t hurt to check again.”

  We unpacked our laptops and booted them up.

  “I’ll check the recent payroll tax filings,” Eddie said. “Where do you want to start?”

  “Hmm.” I looked up, feigning a mental
debate even though I knew exactly which files I’d search first. “How about the referrals?”

  Occasionally, something that seemed like a tiny detail in one case would lead to a smoking gun in another. For instance, an odd deduction on one taxpayer’s return could lead us to an abusive preparer who’d cranked out fraudulent returns on a wide-scale basis. We’d hoped the Pokornys’ interest deduction would be just this type of clue, but until we learned more from the agent in Laredo, we had no idea if anything would pan out.

  While Eddie typed away on his laptop, I turned my computer where he wouldn’t be able to see my screen and logged on to the Internet. Although the office phone didn’t have caller ID, I assumed today’s call came from the same number as the call I’d received earlier on my cell. I checked the call history on my mobile phone and typed the number into the browser to see what might show up.

  I pressed enter.

  Bingo!

  The number showed up on a roster for the Alpha Chi Omega sorority at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. According to the list, the phone number belonged to a sophomore art history major named Lindsay McFarland.

  What the heck?

  I was stumped. The person who called me was definitely not sorority girl Lindsay McFarland. Not unless Lindsay was a drag queen. Despite the advances in gay rights, I doubted the organization would allow a transvestite into its folds.

  I sat back in my chair, trying to figure things out.

  Eddie glanced over at me. “Got something?”

  “Uh … no.” I reached for my mouse and quickly exited the screen. “Nothing yet.”

  Later, when I was alone, I’d give Lindsay a call.

  I punched some more keys and accessed the recent referrals from the Federal Trade Commission. Within minutes I hit potential pay dirt.

  Florida, here I come!

  “Check this out.” I swiveled my laptop so Eddie could read the information.

  In the Treasury files were three credit card fraud cases referred by the Federal Trade Commission. The FTC had sent the cases over only the preceding week, which explained why neither we nor George Burton had discovered them earlier.

  Credit card fraud could be accomplished in various ways. In the simplest cases, the thief simply lifts a charge card from the victim’s purse, wallet, or mailbox. In other cases, an identity thief applies for a new credit card account using the victim’s name and Social Security number, but providing an alternate address to which the card is mailed. In the most sophisticated cases, the criminal actually manufactures a bogus duplicate card using the information from an existing charge card account. These three cases were all of the latter variety.