Jay Giles

by Blindsided (A Thriller)

  “Bad liver?”

  “You could be borderline transplant. I’ve got a doctor client I bet will help set that up.”

  Our waitress appeared at the table. “Get you anything else?”

  “Just the check,” I said.

  She wrote it out, tore it off her pad, placed it on the table.

  “Should we look at wardrobe for tonight?” Tory asked.

  I slid out of the booth and stood. She followed. “Why don’t we divide and conquer,” I suggested. “You do clothes. I’ll set up the background identity. What time is the meeting?”

  “Eight. In town.”

  “Let’s meet back up at the Pier Grille at six. How’s that?”

  She nodded. “Are you going to change your appearance? You’d better if you want to go to the meeting.”

  She was right. If they recognized me, the whole thing would fall apart. “I’ll do something. See you at six.”

  I watched them leave, paid the bill, and headed back to the office to use the phone. The first call was to my old brokerage in Detroit. When I hung up an hour later, we’d figured out how to set up accounts for Fish without violating any securities laws. I had enough trouble with the N.A.S.D. already. I didn’t need more. Anyone who checked would discover an executive checking account, equities account, bond account, Roth IRA, and R.E.I.T account—all with substantial balances. What they’d actually be accessing were fictional accounts for an upscale investor created for use in a new packet of promotional materials.

  The fictional name on the accounts was Frank Ford. Even the name seemed to suit Fish.

  Now that he had money, I started calling to set up Frank Ford’s medical history. That took longer. Even when you handle a doctor’s investments, it’s hard to get one to call you back. Both the doctors I needed—one in Detroit, one here in Sarasota—eventually called, reluctantly went along with creating a medical record showing chronic liver damage for Frank Ford.

  My next call was to yet another client, this one a real estate owner with properties on Longboat and Siesta Keys. Since it was summer, he had lots of furnished units available for lease. I rented the flashiest one, a penthouse condo at the Sovereign, in Frank Ford’s name for a month with an option to renew for a month.

  I was down to my last call. Edith Hellsberg was an older lady who lived in my building at the Watergate and handled costuming and makeup for the Sarasota Actors Theatre. She thought it would be great fun to help me alter my appearance, said I should come to the theatre where she could work on me.

  I saw her as soon as I entered the theatre lobby. Wearing a white smock, she was a small, gray-haired lady with a big smile. She rushed over, shook my hand, and pulled me along to her work area. “I love makeovers. By the time I’m done with you, your own mother won’t recognize you.”

  We reached her area. “Sit on this stool,” she said. As soon as I was situated, she tied a cape around my neck, spun me around to face a lighted mirror. “How different do you want to look?”

  I had a feeling she was going to pile on the stage makeup. That wasn’t what I wanted. “I need a few tricks, Edith. Simple things I can do and undo to alter my appearance.”

  She frowned. “On-and-off stuff, huh. Let’s think what we can do.” The frown was replaced by a smile. “I know. Hold on. Let me get a few things.” She dashed out of the room.

  I waited, thinking going there might have been a bad idea. There wasn’t any reason I had to be at the A.A. meeting. If I didn’t go, none of this would be necessary.

  Edith returned, arms loaded. “Wait till you see what I’ve got,” she said happily. She dumped it all on the counter. “Let’s start with the shoes. Take yours off. Try these on.

  I put them on and was suddenly three inches taller.

  “Lifts,” she explained. “Are those shoes big enough?”

  “They’re a little tight—”

  “Suck it up,” she said, digging in the pile for something else. “Sit down. Take your shirt off and put this on.”

  I took off the cape, then my shirt. This thing she had me putting on was like a vest, but with padding at the bottom that gave me a huge gut.

  “That’s perfect,” she said more to herself than to me. “You’re taller and we’ve changed your shape. Now we need to work on your face.” She pulled a brown wig out of the pile. “Try this.”

  I tried to put it on. It wouldn’t fit.

  She watched me, shaking her head in amusement. “You’ve got a big head, Matt. Try this.” She handed me a different one.

  This one I could get on. It felt tight, confining.

  “Let’s see what we can do.” She pushed, pulled, snipped, and brushed. Finally, she quit fussing, stood back, and admired her work. She spun the stool so I could look at myself in the mirror, asked, “What do you think?”

  Gone was the salt-and-pepper curly hair. In its place was long brown straight hair. “Edith, it’s great. I look like a different person. It’s perfect.”

  “You’re sure?” Concern showed in her face.

  “Absolutely. Can I hold on to this stuff for a while? I may need it for a couple of weeks.”

  She waved a hand at me. “Keep it as long as you like. The theatre has so much, we never use half of it.”

  I gave her a kiss on the forehead. “Thanks, Edith. I owe you for this.”

  “Yes, you do.” She smiled as she led me back to the lobby. “From now on, when it storms, I know who to call to take my plants in from the porch.”

  The acid test of my new look came an hour and a half later when I walked into the Pier Grille. From the doorway, I saw Tory and Fish sitting in a booth. I slid into the booth next to her.

  Annoyed at the intrusion, Tory glared at me. “Don’t—” she began. Then it dawned on her. “Oh, my God. You look so different.”

  “I know. I looked in the mirror, couldn’t believe it.”

  I was studying Fish. Tory had worked magic on him, too. His hair had been stylishly cut, and he was dolled up in expensive but not pretentious clothes. They had to be new. I was sure Fish had never bought a genuine Polo shirt in his life. The little polo-player emblem made him look a little more upscale.

  I nodded. “You look expensive. Do you feel rich?”

  “What I feel is itchy. Must be the new duds.”

  Not the positive answer I’d hoped for. I smiled anyway. Think of it as homespun character, man of the earth, I told myself. “Well, itchy, let me fill you in on your new life, because the way this is set up, you’ve got some scratch.”

  “For real?” His eyebrows flew up

  “For appearances.”

  “Oh.” They lowered again.

  Over dinner, I filled him in on his new identity as Frank Ford. By the time the check arrived, he seemed comfortable with his new identity. “Think you could get up in front of the group, introduce yourself as Frank Ford, say you’re new in town?”

  “You mean tonight?”

  Our waitress arrived. I dug out my credit card, handed it and the check to her. She left. “Be great if you could. Rather than wait until the next meeting.”

  He gulped. Flushed.

  “You can do it, Frankie. I know you can,” Tory coaxed.

  “I’ll try,” he said without conviction.

  I signed the credit card receipt, left what I was supposed to leave, took what I was supposed to take. We departed.

  We were off to our first A.A. meeting. The thought of it made me want a drink.

  Chapter 23

  The A.A. chapter Janet Wakeman trolled met twice a week in a converted storefront next to St. Mark’s Lutheran Church. The sign next to the door identified it as the St. Mark’s Multi-Purpose Building.

  Inside, it was a single, large, open room. Neat rows of chairs faced a lectern at the far end of the room. A large coffee urn and stack of cups were on a table by the wall to the left. Over the pulsing hum of a stressed air conditioner, I could almost hear piped-in music. Thirty to forty people were already there. Mostly cluste
red in small groups. Several by the coffee urn. A few had already found seats.

  Fish was one of those seated. By design, he was the first of our group to enter. We wanted him up front and visible. Tory had been next. She was standing by the coffee, surveying the room. I went in last, sat in the back row, tried to be invisible.

  From the front of the room near the lectern, a bearded man with a large paunch said loudly, “If you want to go ahead and take seats, we’ll get this evening’s meeting started.”

  The buzz of conversations picked up as people finished their chats then died as they moved to sit down.

  I looked for Janet. She wasn’t difficult to spot. She stood out like Pamela Anderson at an AARP convention. She wore a tight red top that revealed plenty of cleavage, white slacks, a lot of gold jewelry. She had two older men trailing after her as she headed to her seat. I watched carefully. Since I was counting on a quirk of human nature, it was important to know exactly which seat she considered hers. People usually take the same seat time after time. If that was the case with Janet, we could plant Tory in the seat next to her.

  She took the aisle seat, six rows from the front. Tory watched where she landed, too, took a seat several rows in front of her.

  “It’s good to see you all tonight,” the bearded man intoned. “I see some new faces in the group. For you new people, we don’t put on a lot of airs. We just get up and tell our stories. I was talking with Walt earlier—,” he glanced around the room. “Walt, will you start us off?”

  Walt, an older man in an ill-fitting suit, stood and headed to the lectern. He was followed by Grace, Allen, John, Jim, Helen, and Fritz. I kept waiting for Fish. The plan was for him to testify mid-program, introduce himself, say a few words. He didn’t. Fish was still glued to his seat when the bearded man thanked everyone for coming and ended the meeting.

  I left quickly. At the car, I fumed as I waited for Fish to return.

  Tory arrived at the car first; she opened the door, and climbed in the back seat. Fish arrived right after her, settled in the passenger seat and hung his head. “I let you down. Sorry.”

  “Sorry doesn’t cut it,” I said. “Why didn’t you do what you were supposed to?”

  “I froze,” he said slowly, quietly.

  I started the car and pulled away from the curb.

  “You couldn’t even say a few words?” Tory asked.

  He shook his head sadly. “I couldn’t make myself get up there. I was afraid.”

  “We’ve got another chance in two days,” Tory said to smooth things over.

  “Think you can do it then?”

  His head was still down. “I’ll work on it. I’ll be able to do it.”

  We rode the rest of the way to the Pier Grille in silence. If he couldn’t say a couple of lines in front of a group, he wasn’t going to be able to do the rest of what we needed him to do.

  I pulled into the parking lot. Tory’s Jetta was parked in front of the restaurant. I pulled into a space next to it. When I stopped, she said, “Frankie, I’ll call you tomorrow and we’ll work on what you need to do. Okay?”

  He nodded glumly, got out of the Saab, lumbered to his car, an old Ford Monarch.

  “You and I need to talk,” Tory said pointedly as she moved from the back to the front passenger seat. When she was settled, she looked over at me. “Tell me there’s more to this than hooking up Frankie and Janet. You saw him tonight. If he’s our only option, we’re dead meat. I am not feeling good about this.”

  I knew what she meant. I had trouble picturing Janet and Fish together, no matter how much money he supposedly had. “We need him to get better, that’s for sure. Maybe we expected too much from him the first day.”

  That wasn’t what she wanted to talk about. She shook her head. “Do you have a back-up plan if this goes boom?”

  “Not so much a plan, more of a question.”

  “That’s it? A question?”

  I looked over at her. “Yeah. Something has been bothering me for a while now. How much money does D’Onifrio move in a year? Ballpark.”

  “The D.E.A. stuff I saw talked about hundreds of millions of dollars, maybe more. Nobody knows for sure.”

  “Then why is he so intent on getting back the three hundred and fifty thousand Joe took? It’s peanuts to him.”

  “I don’t know about that. Maybe he has to account for every penny.”

  I nodded. “He probably does. But this money was taken two years ago. They’ve closed the books on that fiscal year. So what triggered this? And why now?”

  “Joe’s death. That’s your trigger, your why now.”

  “I don’t think so. The trigger had to be on D’Onifrio’s side. Something in his organization caused this.”

  “And you think this little charade with Frankie is going to help us find out what?”

  “It’s possible. He’s pretty low in their organization to know anything. But by acting out this little charade, as you call it, we’ve at least bought some time to learn more.”

  “You’re going to want me to do some digging?”

  I nodded. “I think we need to work this on two fronts—dig for information, try and arrange this marriage. Either way, it’s going to come down to the same thing.”

  She looked over at me. “What’s that?”

  “We’ve got to get ready to get lucky.”

  Chapter 24

  I wasn’t feeling lucky the following day. What I was feeling was harassed. The Dow was up twenty points, but the Nasdaq had fallen eighty. All the leading tech stocks—Microsoft, Cisco, Intel, IBM, Oracle, Dell—had dropped like stones. Most of my clients had some tech position. My phone rang like a banshee. I fielded one urgent call after another.

  At one-thirty, Rosemary buzzed me. “Don’t forget you’re meeting with Julian at two.”

  I glanced at my planner. Damn. I finished executing a buy, grabbed my car keys, headed out.

  On the drive over, I used the car phone to call Tory. “I’m on my way to meet with Julian,” I said when she answered. “He’s going to ask me if you’ve had any luck finding a connection between Nevitt and anybody at Merrill Lynch”

  “Not yet. I’m working on it, but there are seventeen brokers, ten associates, and twelve clerical in that office. That’s a lot to work through.”

  “Keep looking.”

  “I am. That’s what I’m doing today. While I’ve got you on the phone, what time do you want to meet with Frankie tomorrow?”

  “How much time do you think we need?”

  “A bunch. He’s got questions I can’t answer. Where does he live? What kind of a car does he drive? How does he pay for stuff?”

  “How about one-thirty at my office? We’ll take care of all that stuff before the A.A. meeting.”

  “We’ll be there.”

  I’d reached the parking garage of Julian’s building. “Gotta go,” I told her. I negotiated the turns of the garage, found a spot, parked, and took the elevator up to Julian’s floor.

  Julian was on the phone when his associate showed me into his office. Amy wasn’t there yet. He waved me to a chair, wrote one word on a pad of paper and held it up. Nevitt.

  I nodded, tried to follow the one-sided dialog.

  “Sure, I understand,” Julian said. “And I’m sure you understand that I will make an issue of Mrs. Wakeman’s past marriages as well as your ongoing involvement with her.” There was a long pause. “I think it’s extremely relevant; I think a Judge will, too.” Another long pause.

  Behind me, I heard the door open. Julian waved. Amy took the other visitor’s chair.

  “That’s a chance you’ll have to take, isn’t it?” Another long pause, during which Julian stood and paced behind his desk. “No, that’s not acceptable. We want the suit dropped, the churning charge withdrawn.” As he listened, anger colored Julian’s face. “Don’t get greedy, Nevitt,” he said hotly. “You got what you were after. My client is no longer executor. Stop while you’re ahead.” More listening, and
the pace of his pacing increased. “We’ll come after you, expose this scam the two of you are running. You don’t want your pictures on the front page of the paper. Drop the suits, we’ll back off. Consult your client, counselor.” He rang off, looked over at me, angry. “This guy is slime.”

  “What was that all about?” Amy wanted to know.

  Julian plopped down in his desk chair. “Before you came in, I let him know we knew about their background and would paint her as a black widow. Sometimes that’s enough to make them back off. Didn’t seem to bother him.” On his desk, he found a manila folder, opened it, rifled through the contents, handed Amy several sheets of paper. “He’s filed for damages.” He looked over at me. “Were you served?”

  I nodded.

  Amy looked up from what she was reading. “Big bucks. He’s going for the gold.”

  “I called Tory on my way over here to see if she’d found any connection between Nevitt and those thrown trades from Merrill Lynch. So far she hasn’t.”

  Amy shook her head. “But these peers who’ll evaluate the churning charges against you—they’ll see through the thrown trades, won’t they?”

  I shrugged. “Who knows. I’d like to think they would. I’d like to think Fowler knows they’re trumped up. But the fact that they’re thrown almost makes me look more guilty, like I knew I was going over four hundred percent and tried to hide it.”

  Julian’s face was grim. “Let me call him, sound him out. We might learn something.”

  I gave him Fowler’s number. “Would telling him Nevitt and Wakeman’s backgrounds do any good?”

  He stood, started pacing again. “Absolutely. The question is when we play that card.”

  “I say we play it as quickly as possible. The more people who know about them, the better,” Amy said quickly.

  He quit pacing, looked over at me. “I agree with her. When we finish here, I’ll call Fowler, see if I can get on his calendar for a meeting. I’d rather deliver that kind of information face-to-face than over the phone.”

  We spent the next hour working through organization and details, much of which was Julian and Amy talking case law, precedents, cites. We finished at four. I retrieved my car from the garage, drove back to the office.