The Big Con Read online

“I’d like to ask you some questions about your wife but want to be respectful…”

  “Ex-wife,” he interrupted. “We’ve been separated for years,” he said with a wave of his hand, the sort of response someone gave who had fallen out of love a long time before. It was also the response of someone mortally wounded from loss who didn’t want to admit it. I let silence flush out which one it was.

  “She developed a taste for tuna later in life,” he said, and then I knew my answer and just how painful the event had been to him. He had the bitterness of a spurned man, but it was the particularly acrid kind when that other someone isn’t a man but another woman.

  “I know about the affair,” I said.

  “You know about that old bag?” he said, which I assumed referenced Julie St. Jean.

  “Yes, she’s the source of the potential money. How long had it been going on?”

  “God only knows. A while.”

  “You’ve met her?”

  “I went to a party at her house once. Wasn’t for me—too much cheese and wine and craft-beer bullshit,” he answered. “Maybe Lois fell for the money, the lifestyle.”

  The warm and inviting garage suddenly lost some of its charm.

  “What kind of money did Lois make working for Power of One?”

  “I don’t know what she made,” he said. “Lo handled all the finances…we never talked money.”

  It was the second time he had said that.

  “Did you still live together after you were separated? Establishing cohabitation, even legally separated, will help your cause.”

  “Yeah, she never really left. She’d be gone for days, sometimes weeks. Then show back up. Just something we kind of worked out together.”

  It didn’t sound like Hearns had a say in that agreement. I saw a man accepting of any deal that didn’t involve a clean break. At least that way there was always a chance, however slim, of rekindling what was long past snuffed out.

  “But she lived here, no question about that. I got bills that can prove it,” he said, and made a move to go get them.

  “It’s okay,” I tried, but Hearns ignored me.

  I followed him out of the garage and into the front of his house. The living room was trimly decorated with a certain unclassifiable style. It was part tribal and part Americana.

  “Nice place,” I said.

  “Lo was the decorator,” he said, and shrugged like he didn’t much care for the decorations or decorating in general, but there was a vein of pride in his words.

  Hearns led me into the kitchen, propped a large accordion file on the table, and riffled through the contents. While he searched for the documents, I spotted an unopened phone bill on the table.

  “I got a gas bill with her name on it,” he said, handing me a bill notice. “Here’s water and sanitation,” he added as he shoved another my way.

  “This should be sufficient,” I told him.

  As we made our way to the door, I tucked the documents under my coat to keep them from getting wet. The rain was starting again and I thought about the quick run back to my car.

  “Thanks for the beer,” I said, stepping down into the rain. “I’ll be in touch.”

  “You know the cops thought I killed her,” he proffered. I turned to look back at him. Hearns stared out at the darkness like he had forgotten I was there. “How could they ever think that?” His voice quavered.

  I left him there in the doorway and went back to my car. I drove past several houses, then pulled into an open space and got out in the rain. For a guy who didn’t know anything about the couple’s finances, he certainly kept very thorough records of them. I headed back toward the house.

  I could see his work boots shuffling about through the opening in the garage door. I quietly moved past it toward the front entrance. The screen door was stuck and I had to give a gentle yank. The clatter of the rain masked whatever sounds I made. With one eye on the garage, I stepped into the house and fumbled in the dark toward the kitchen table.

  The accordion file was still there. The unopened phone bill lay next to it on the table. If the couple hadn’t made a clean break, as Hearns had stated, then the phone bill would contain a log of calls made both by him and his ex-wife—very valuable information when trying to piece together the timeline leading up to Lois’s murder.

  I slipped the envelope into my coat and headed back out.

  Passing the garage again, I no longer saw the work boots and my stomach churned at the thought of a confrontation with Hearns. I didn’t think I could outrun him in the rain wearing loafers.

  I stepped over a river of water pouring from a downspout and passed a small window permanently covered by a cheap, plastic blind. Through one of the missing slats I spied Hearns leaning against his workbench, his eyes fixed on the floor, and his hand wrapped around another can of beer. He took a long pull, long enough to finish the entire thing. But whatever he hoped for it to do, it didn’t succeed. He shook his head hopelessly and moved toward the old fridge.

  He had the look of someone determined to get drunk. I felt a pang of guilt for intruding on whatever nightly routine he carried out in the quiet of his sanctuary. I slowly stepped back but kept an eye on the slat just in case he caught the movement outside.

  I stopped.

  Hearns was at the fridge but he didn’t pull out another can of beer. Instead, he opened the freezer, moved aside some blocks of frozen steaks, and pulled a thin package wrapped in plastic from the back. I couldn’t see exactly what it was because he had his back to me. But I watched him unwrap it and discard the plastic.

  Then I watched him shove a sheaf of large bills into his jeans’ back pocket.

  MAP MY CHROMA

  Insightful leaders inspiring change.”

  “What’s that?” I asked as I racked my brain, trying to remember where I had heard that line before.

  “How can I help you reach that next level?” she replied.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, “but which number did I call?”

  “This is ColorNalysis,” she answered.

  I quickly checked the phone records I’d gotten from the murdered woman’s husband. I had assigned various highlighters to the regular numbers on the bill and colored them in. The bill quickly resembled a landscape watercolor. Julie’s baby blue entries were of such large proportion they made the sky seem endless. There was a little green that was as rare as the calls were short—those were to her husband. And then there were these sporadic but lengthy rows of orange that indicated calls to ColorNalysis, Power of One’s rival consulting firm.

  I told the woman on the phone I was interested in coming in and meeting with them to talk about what they had to offer. The bubbly voice confidently announced they had the solution to my problem, even though I never said what the problem was or that I had one in the first place. I was given an appointment for later that morning.

  Their office was a three-room space in the downtown section of Culver City. The small lobby sported a nice view of the old hotel and movie theater. As could be expected with outfits like these, they projected a young, hip image with their interior design of clean lines and almost monastic décor. Consultants were in a relentless pursuit of relevance and nothing undermined that more than that euphemism for old age, stodgy.

  For that reason I was momentarily perplexed by the physical representation of the effervescent voice I’d spoken to that morning. While she was clearly under thirty, there was something slightly anachronistic about her ensemble: a gray suit, conservative black shoes, and dark hair pulled tightly into a barrette. It was overly old-fashioned and didn’t seem to fit, but once I met her boss I fully understood her role at the firm—to contrast with the “youth” of the founder.

  Bronson Thibideux sat somewhere around the half-century mark but did everything he could to defy his age. You could say it was the clothes—jeans and flip-flops—or his casual demeanor—always a “hey man” and often a few curse words—but there was also something deeper inside hi
m that just made you feel old in his presence. As I watched him from across the acrylic conference table, I couldn’t help but think Power of One didn’t stand a chance.

  “What an insane development,” he said, referencing the events of the last week. “Blew our minds when we heard the news.”

  The collective pronoun reflected the firm, not necessarily the old-young woman sitting next to him, although she nodded in agreement.

  “Do you know Julie St. Jean personally?” I asked.

  “We go way back,” he replied. “A good egg if there ever was one.” I reflected that she had to be a little rotten, wanted as she was for two murders. “I don’t even know how we can talk business after all that’s gone down,” he intoned, but then proceeded to do just that. “Thanks for reaching out. You guys have been on our radar for years as a company that could benefit from a partnership with ColorNalysis.”

  At least Bronson had more decorum than some of his counterparts in the industry. He allowed a short grace period before aggressively calling for my business. Others weren’t so respectful; I had gotten three requests to meet from other consultants in the last two days. Blood was in the water surrounding Power of One, and the feeding frenzy to carve up their client base was about to begin. This worked for me, as Bronson believed I was there to learn about his services, when what I really wanted to know was why he had so many conversations with Lois Hearns in the days leading up to her murder.

  Bronson caught me looking at the laminated copies of their Chroma-Maps perched on mini-easels on the table.

  “This is powerful stuff,” he told me, holding the color card. “It saved my marriage.”

  Your third one, I wanted to clarify, but bit my tongue.

  “Chuck, it’s about embracing the individual,” he explained, and I nodded for no real reason. “We tend to put people into categories—the do-gooder, the procrastinator, the hard-charger—but the reality is, and something that has been borne out in science, mind you, is that this is all a human fabrication. We are not just one kind of person. We are many kinds of infinite combinations. And once you acknowledge that, embrace it, even, then you will see the power of mindful interactions. That’s what these are for,” he said, pointing to the card with blobs of colors on it. “It’s about giving full transparency to who we are as individuals so that as a team we can better operate in the collective unit.”

  During his spiel, I realized the woman by his side had another role besides making her boss look younger. It was to listen to Bronson as if he was unveiling some truth that had for centuries been hidden in a shroud of secrecy. She had this annoying habit of periodically pulling her gaze from her boss so she could stare at me with a look that shouted, “Amazing, right?”

  But none of it was amazing. It was the same pablum dished out by all these types of consultants. They latched onto some “fresh” idea and constructed a belief system around it that would somehow elevate team dynamics, collaboration, productivity…whatever was the buzzword of the day.

  I didn’t begrudge them their desire to make a buck—they could spew nonsense to their heart’s content—but that didn’t mean I had to be impressed by it. After the third time the young woman turned to me to confirm my awe, I crossed my arms over my chest and shook my head like a disgruntled Soviet commissar.

  “How does your program differentiate itself from Power of One?” I asked, breaking into the monologue to explore a topic in which I was more interested.

  “Look, they’ve done some amazing things,” he said. The past tense was intentional and didn’t go unnoticed.

  “But they’ve lost a step?” I filled in for him.

  “It’s not for me to comment,” he said, laughing. “Especially given the current circumstances. But you could say they are…entering a necessary period of innovation.”

  It was the most serious of accusations: Power of One had grown stale.

  “They’ve been using a new member, a sort of Visioning Artist who captures the mood of brainstorming sessions,” I said. “It’s highly effective.”

  “I’ve heard of others doing that,” he said dismissively.

  “She’s real good,” I continued. “Lois something. Lois Hearns? You know her?”

  Bronson shook his head, while still appearing to scour his memory for some recollection of the name.

  “Tragically, she was the one murdered in Julie’s home,” I added, trying to help dust off some of those convenient cobwebs.

  “Nope, doesn’t ring a bell.” He turned to his lackey. “Have you…?”

  “No,” she spouted. “I’m not really familiar with that name.”

  “Let me ask you something,” Bronson said to me. “Are you happy with the outcomes you are getting with Power of One?”

  “If I knew what they were actually trying to achieve then maybe I could answer your question.”

  Bronson leaned back in his chair and studied me with a wry look, then turned to the young woman.

  “He’s so cyan,” he said to her.

  “I know, right?” she agreed, all smiles.

  Bronson gave a self-satisfied chuckle and his flunkey laughed a lot harder once she saw the boss had deemed it appropriate. That’s when I noticed they had another set of Chroma-Maps in front of them—an identical pair that I assumed charted my “unique” personality.

  Many years back when their firm was bidding for a contract with mine, they demonstrated their system with live reads on me and a few others who were evaluating their capabilities. Seeing they still had my map was like discovering your Stasi file after the Wall came down. I felt oddly exposed but also angry. And the fact that they were now structuring their discussion with insights from my map only further infuriated me.

  “What exactly does cyan mean?” I asked.

  Having taken the bait, Bronson effortlessly transitioned into the pitch.

  “It’s your dominant color,” he explained. Cyan encompassed the qualities of someone who took a singular focus in life, who got validation from tangible accomplishments, and who grew frustrated with ambiguity. Those who used this quality well were most likely highly effective leaders of diverse groups of individuals. Their value was not always fully recognized but their influence was substantial.

  As he rattled on like this for several minutes, I found myself nodding because I could see myself in his description of cyan. I was a good leader. I was effective. And goddammit, I deserved that recognition! It took another “amazing, right?” look from the acolyte to bring me back to reality. I then rode out the rest of his speech in a slightly sickened state from having temporarily fallen for it. I always took pride in being able to see through the nonsense, but here I had briefly fallen for Bronson’s flavor of it.

  The Chroma-Map was simply a more elaborate version of the cards a fortune teller uses to see into your soul. They worked because you made them work. You filled in the holes, you validated the vague declarations. The “science” of the brain mapping that supposedly led to those discoveries was no different than the incense in the card reader’s room—it was layered on to make it feel legitimate.

  The Chroma-Map’s power was in convincing someone they were unique. And despite Bronson’s claim that we are all individuals, the part he overlooked was that in at least one way we are all very much the same—we all want to believe in something.

  I told Bronson that I was interested in learning more about a potential future partnership. Naturally, I had no interest in his claptrap program but I was interested in why he lied about knowing Lois. I felt I could string him along with the promise of a big payday while I figured it out. I threw him a bone and mentioned that some of our employees were familiar with his work and spoke highly of it, including someone in my HR group.

  “I know Paul well,” he said, smiling. “You’ve got a good one there.” As measured by the amount of money he funneled into ColorNalysis, I assumed. “We pair up well. Very compatible colors. If I may suggest, why don’t Paul and I team up on this? We’ll be able to do s
ome good work together.”

  “I’m sure you would,” I said, “but I’d prefer you and I work on this together as we explore how ‘compatible’ our colors are.”

  That seemed to take a little of the air out of the room.

  “I look forward to it,” Bronson muttered, his own color suddenly turning a little gray.

  POOR FITCHIE

  Sold it to Bronson?” repeated Rebecca. Her tone spoke of admiration for Julie’s ability to pull a fast one on Bronson, on her, or perhaps on both of them.

  “I take it the business isn’t worth much?” I asked.

  “Double whatever number is in your head and that’s how much we owe.” Rebecca caught herself. “I shouldn’t be so dismissive. It was always ‘Julie’s company,’ but I had a certain pride in helping to build it.…”

  “Even if you never got any credit for it,” I finished for her.

  “I had to give up the day-to-day running once I got sick,” she said, then let out a small laugh. “I knew Julie couldn’t handle it on her own, but I never thought she’d run it into the ground!”

  “Lois helped. You know she was a lawyer?”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “And in contact with ColorNalysis.”

  “What else did the phone records say?” She politely waited out my silence and added, “You can tell me.”

  In the hours leading up to her murder, I related, Lois had called Julie many times. The calls rose to a frenzied level, with dozens placed no more than a minute apart, until they abruptly stopped, as it turned out, forever. It confirmed that Julie was in contact with Lois almost to the moment of her death. What else it meant was up to the person receiving this information.

  Rebecca just nodded but withheld comment.

  I pulled my eyes from the road and studied her out of the corner of my eye. We had just come from another treatment and she didn’t look well at all. Her movements were slow and pained. Her breaths were like those of a neglected aquarium fish trying to work a forever-insufficient amount of oxygenated water through its gills.

  I began to regret allowing her to come on the trip to Bakersfield. Badger had gotten me the address for James Fitch, the murdered man in the Sierra Madre house. I thought I might learn a little more about him and his connection to Julie. But it was a ways from Los Angeles, one long rise and fall over a four-thousand-foot hump known as the Tehachapi Mountains, and Rebecca didn’t look up for it.