A Cadgers Curse Read online

  The four trainees nervously drank their sodas and their waters while I told them that having their personnel files would make doing their background checks a breeze. With their vital stats at my fingertips, all I had to prove was that something wasn't kosher, and they'd be in deep trouble at HI-Data. Each of them was more computer literate than I, so I didn't have to explain further. They listened attentively though as I reminded them how easy it was to zero in on hundreds of national databases through IQUEST, such as ORBIT and NEXIS and LEXIS. What I didn't tell them was that I'd recently downloaded the newest version of "Online Detective" onto my computer. With its ninety-five thousand databases, I was now privy to what brand of underwear each of them preferred.

  Despite the fact the trainees had already signed a consent form for HI-Data agreeing to have their records searched, I always followed Phil's advice to get a release of my own signed.

  "The best way to check information, though," I informed them as I handed out my form, "isn't through any database. It's through the people trail, the live bodies you've all come in contact with since you were born. It's my favorite part of this job. You might not think so, but people love to talk to me."

  As I collected their signed forms, I hoped they were feeling naked, unable to hide as much as a birthmark. They were all eyeing me with contempt and disgust, convinced I was totally obnoxious. Well, I hadn't been hired to be Mother Theresa. Their discomfort meant I was doing everything right so far.

  "And last but not least, let's not forget routine credit reporting, and parallel, indirect and operative backgrounding, where we check out everything you've ever been involved in, including your alumni associations, magazine subscriptions and religious affiliations."

  Although it was cool in the conference room, my four trainees were sweating. Everybody has something to hide, even if it's something stupid rather than illegal.

  "Now I'm going to pass your personnel files out to you."

  I handed the Marcie Ann Kent file to the only girl in the group. She reminded me of Mariska Hargitay on Law & Order SVU. She had shiny chestnut hair cut very straight and chic, a great figure and a soft voice. She was like one of my girlfriends in high schoolalso smart in math and really attractive. All the guys were after her. I used to think she had it all. I tried not to be envious.

  And you are Mr. Joe Tanaka?" I asked, handing a file to the very handsome Japanese man in his mid-20s.

  "Thanks, I think," he said with a wink and a grin. His dark eyes, dark hair, and white button-down shirt open at the neck accentuated his good looks.

  "And who is Mr. John Olson?" I held up his file. It was taken by the trainee who'd complained about missing the remainder of Ken's video. He was in his thirties, with thinning brown hair and tinted, wire-rimmed glasses. His tailored sport jacket and pants were right out of an Eddie Bauer catalog. I noticed he was wearing a Rolex and wondered if it was a knock-off.

  The last file I handed to a smiling, black-haired man with a trim beard. "Mr. Ron Rivers, I presume?" I smiled. He, like Joe Tanaka, was in his late twenties. He wore a light blue suit and red tie. Behind his glasses, his eyes seemed wary.

  "We'll be meeting individually in the adjoining office," I announced. "In the meantime, why don't you all take a minute to decide if there's anything you want to change or add to your files."

  John Olson asked to be excused to use the facilities. He ducked into the corridor so fast, I wondered if he was going to make it in time.

  The room was silent as the others reviewed their files. I decided to interview Olson first and made a note to check the e-chat on HI-Data's computer system. E-chat tells you what's really going on in a company. Nine out of ten employees don't realize it can be read by others. If they did, I guarantee they wouldn't write what they do.

  I was ready to begin, but Olson still hadn't returned. I checked my watch. He'd been gone for ten minutes. I remembered with a jolt that he'd run out with his file.

  I rushed down the corridor and burst into the men's room. A young guy was at a sink washing his hands.

  "Hey, lady, this isn't unisex."

  I ignored him and shouted, "Olson, come out right now if you're in here."

  There was only silence. A sign on the wall next to the mirrors read "At the feast of ego, everyone leaves hungry." The young guy eyed me with amusement. His lashes were so long, if I wasn't angry I would have been jealous.

  I pushed open all the stall doors asking, "Anybody else in here?" Nothing and no one. I headed for the door.

  "See you tomorrow, same time?" the kid cracked as I left in a huff.

  I immediately phoned Sparky and informed her Mr. John Olson had failed the first phase of the comprehensive check. "You might want to have him debriefed and recover his Smart card and personnel file," I advised.

  "Debriefed;' Sparky chuckled. "I like that. I'll see to it right away, assuming he's still in the building. Confidentially, Olson's been a pain in the ass from day one of his arrival. Have you got some special shit detector or something? Anyway, good luck with the rest of them" She rang off, and I faced the remaining trainees.

  ELEVEN

  ONLY THREE TRAINEES WERE left. Technically my job at this point was done concerning John Olson. But that curious gene most Scots have was acting up like a bad tooth. I couldn't stop wondering what Olson was hiding and whether it had anything to do with Ken Gordon's death.

  As I walked into the adjoining office where I'd be conducting the interviews, I casually picked up the Diet Coke can Mr. Olson had left on the table. I had a plan, and I'd have to ask for Phil's help.

  By now, the trainees' looks of loathing had been replaced by ones of unease. Joe Tanaka, Ron Rivers, and Marcie Ann Kent all had one thing in common. They were smart cookies. Smart in the ways of thermonuclear dynamics, quantum calculus, advanced engineering this and advanced engineering that. Especially Ms. Kent. Looking at her academic performance at MIT made me feel like my own cerebral cortex was a mere speck of dirt in the universe. Here she was at the tender age of twenty-two garnering all sorts of honors and awards for Expanding Boolean Search Paradigms. In this lifetime I was never going to understand Expanding Boolean Search Paradigms. Don't get me wrong. I wasn't jealous of Marcie Ann's theoretical and technical abilities. Instead, deep in my bones, I was proud and impressed by a woman who could beat the boys at what once had been considered their own game.

  I switched on my trusty little Sony 256 MB digital voice recorder with up to ninety hours of recording time. I often wonder how Sam Spade and Mike Hammer did it-they never even wrote anything down.

  I called in Joe Tanaka first, then Marcie Ann Kent and lastly Ron Rivers. The interviews extended late into the day. It was a Christmas Eve they'd all remember. I asked a lot of questions for clarification and amplification. My subjects flesh out and take on dimension during these interviews. That's why I do them. I make it a rule to try not to like or dislike a subject. That gets in the way of objectivity. But you can't completely avoid first impressions.

  I liked Ron Rivers. He joked throughout the interview, which is what I might have done if our roles were reversed. Marcie was extremely bright, but wound very tight and not very forthcoming. She was a bundle of brains and breeding tied up with a red ribbon of ambition. She knew how smart she was, and I wasn't sure how ruthless she was or to what extent she might go to succeed. Joe was one of those naturally math-smart kids. He'd gone through life without working very hard and was now a twenty-seven-year-old conman. He even tried to con me during our interview by spouting technological double-speak. Then he tried to date me.

  I would have liked to know more about the scope of each of their jobs at HI-Data, but frankly the complexity was beyond my understanding, and anyway that wasn't what I was getting paid for. I carefully placed John Olson's Coke can into one of the paper bags I always carry, picked up the Sony and my notes, and went to Sparky's office. It was six o'clock on Christmas Eve, and I could see why nobody wanted her job. She dialed security and notified the guar
d I was ready to leave.

  "That was some job you did on Mister Olson," Sparky said as we waited. "I'm impressed. Did you get what you needed from the other recruits?"

  "You never know from the first session," I said.

  "Did Marcie tell you how Ken was hitting on her? Because if she didn't, somebody should."

  "How do you know about that?" I asked in my best investigator's voice, as if I already knew. The only fact Marcie had given me was that she'd met Ken once since she started her training.

  "Hey, my office is Gossip Central. I usually get to know everything. I'm telling you so that uppity bitch doesn't pull the wool over your eyes. When these new trainees started, I warned them they'd be living their lives in a petri dish. But do they listen? No. The little snots always think they know everything."

  I couldn't tell if she was lying, so I stayed quiet. Sometimes that's the best response of all.

  "I'm not saying Ken was an angel. He wasn't. Ken was like that with every skirt at HI-Data. He was our resident Don Juan. But I don't want Miss-High-and-Mighty Marcie thinking she can lie about it. Frankly, I'd like to see her squirm"

  Sparky took a key from her center drawer and unlocked a beige filing cabinet against the far wall. She extracted a file from the bottom drawer and returned to her desk.

  "Let me guess. You don't like Marcie," I said.

  Sparky tossed the manila file she'd taken from the cabinet onto her desk with a flourish. "She could at least be civil. I'm not just some secretary. I happen to know a lot of things." She opened the file and pointed at a page. "For instance-"

  The office door banged open, and the young guard burst in.

  "Let's go," he said, hiking up his shoulders. He looked ready to handcuff and drag me out by my hair. Norman had probably told him to be sure to personally escort me out or he'd lose his job. I didn't want another scene, so I thanked Sparky and left quietly. I'd have to come back another time to find out what was in that file.

  The guard escorted me all the way to my car and didn't re-enter HI-Data until I'd cleared the farthest perimeter of the property. I drove slowly, hoping he'd freeze.

  TWELVE

  HEADING BACK TO THE city, I thought about what Sparky had said. Computers don't just zap you to death. Somebody with special knowledge had gone through a lot of trouble to rig that computer and had counted on Ken using it, assuming Ken was the intended victim. That somebody was undoubtedly from HI-Data, no matter what the CEO might think. But who? And I was determined to find out why John Olson had walked out of HI-Data before the interview even started. Was he involved somehow in Ken's death? Was he an industrial spy for a company competing with HI-Data?

  Suddenly I was snapped brutally back to the present. I'd sped up on the entrance ramp to merge into the heavy traffic on the tollway. I was now traveling faster than the traffic. I hit the brakes. Nothing happened.

  There was no way I could merge at this speed. I braked again. The pedal sank to the floor, but the car didn't slow down.

  My heart raced, but everything else went into slow motion. To my left was a stream of unfriendly, fast-moving vehicles. To my right was a three-foot wall of ice, the built-up residue of snow plows. My only choice was to go straight ahead down the shoulder, which was rutted with ice and looked as inhospitable as the Antarctic.

  I braked again, this time very gently. The Miata's rear end started to fishtail into the moving traffic. I was trapped. I drove straight ahead along the shoulder. It was as bad as it looked. The Miata twitched left toward the streaming cars, then right toward the ice wall. With each lurch, I held my breath, expecting to crash. The car and I were both taking a pounding.

  The steering wheel suddenly spun in my hands and the right front tire blew. Traffic to my left was now going faster than I was. The car was slowing, but I had no control over it. I prayed I wasn't going to veer into the now faster-moving traffic or hit the wall.

  Miraculously, the car came to a stop along the shoulder. A wall of ice hugged her right fender and a steady stream of traffic whizzed past on her left. I sat still, too drained to even have the shakes. My fingers still clutched the steering wheel and both feet were still pushing down the brake pedal. Another five feet and the car and I would have smashed against the ice wall. A statistic from a recent insurance seminar flashed into my consciousness. There had been over thirtyseven thousand vehicle-related fatalities last year, and twenty-five thousand of those were the drivers. My heart rate slowed down just a little as I realized I wasn't squashed to death and I wasn't going to become one of this year's traffic statistics. At least not today.

  The flashing red lights on the Illinois State Trooper's car behind me got my attention. I shut off the engine and waited, knowing he'd first check my license plate for wanteds or stolens and get all the information from my registration. I'd recently seen a video on the Automated License Plate Recognition program that could tell a cop everything in the universe about you and your car faster than it would take Superman to beat a speeding bullet. It was an expensive new toy, so I wasn't sure if the state troopers had it installed yet.

  "What's the matter with you?" the trooper scolded as I rolled down my window. "You could have caused a hell of a pile-up. Let's see your license. I'm going to have to give you a ticket for reckless driving."

  He didn't even get my story before he decided to peg me as the villain. I hate that, even though statistically they're right 99 percent of the time. I was trying to feel good about still being alive, so as he took my license, I calmly explained how my brakes had given out without warning and how I'd been trapped between Scylla and Charybdis.

  "You mean there's other cars involved?" He stomped his feet to shake off the snow and scanned the horizon.

  "No. No other cars were involved. I meant like Ulysses in The Odyssey."

  "Oh," he grunted and reached for his ticket book.

  I capitulated to the reality that most cops don't read Homer and tried a cogent explanation, still hoping to avoid being ticketed. "You see, Officer, I just missed being either squashed like a bug by the flow of traffic or slammed into smithereens by the ice wall."

  "Have you been drinking?" the trooper asked, sniffing my breath.

  "No. I haven't, Officer. I've had no alcohol. Nothing."

  "I should be giving you a sobriety test, but I'm gonna believe you about that. But you shouldn't be driving a sports car like this in the middle of a Chicago winter," he advised. "Little foreign jobs like this just aren't reliable. Go get yourself something bigger. While you're at it, get something American."

  Why bother to explain that my Miata was cherry and this was the first time anything like this had happened? I couldn't believe my brakes failed. They'd been checked last week when Dieter, my mechanic, put on the new Michelin tires. I felt sick and wondered if this was a new pattern I'd be having to cope with. I wasn't happy, but for once, I kept my mouth shut. Especially since he still had my license.

  No sooner had he left than a tow truck appeared. Two young black guys jumped out, put on heavy gloves, and efficiently hooked up the car. They offered me a ride to the tow company, and I readily agreed, grabbing my purse, the Sony, my notes, and the can of Coke.

  Once there, I called Dieter, my German mechanic. I squeezed the receiver as I told him the brakes had failed. I was ready for a lecture about not taking care of my car. Instead, Dieter confirmed my own fears.

  "Dose brakes couldn't fail, Shatzy. Dey were in perfect order. Last week I went over dem when I installed the new tires. Something is definitely nicht right."

  THIRTEEN

  I WRAPPED PRESENTS, GRABBED the cat, and left for Mother's. The Rent-A-Wreck I'd gotten didn't want to start, and the heater didn't work. Cavvy meowled the entire way, making it crystal clear he hated the loaner. Running late as usual, I braced for the consequences.

  My mother lives in Andersonville, on the city's north side. It used to be a Swedish neighborhood; now the only vestige left is Ann Sather Restaurant, no longer owned by its names
ake, but still serving Swedish meatballs and fresh cinnamon buns to die for. The area has remained vibrant and is now home to every imaginable ethnic and racial group. Mother still lives in the same neat bungalow she and my father had been happy in for so many years. I was glad she stayed on after his death-the house keeps him close for us both.

  Cavalier's little cat breaths puffed into the night air as I carted him and the presents from the car. The shrubs around the front porch were nestled in snow, but the walkway was completely clear. Mr. Poulakas, one of Mother's neighbors, likes driving his snowplow and always clears the whole block.

  Aunt Elizabeth met us at the door, the big diamonds in her Scottish thistle broach winking in the gloaming.

  "Can you never be on time, even on Christmas Eve?" She pointed at the Rent-A-Wreck. "And whose car is that?"

  Aside from La Dragon at the gate, the house was warm and welcoming with colored Christmas lights and smells of baked goodies. All the presents went under the little Scotch pine decorated with ornaments I remembered from childhood. Then Auntie Elizabeth kissed and fussed over Cavalier while I explained what had happened to me and the Miata.

  "Honestly, it's amazing you're alive," my mother scolded, as if it had been my fault. Cavalier meowed in apparent agreement. He was enjoying Auntie's attentions, but still sulking about the RentA-Wreck.

  "Time for the holiday toast," Auntie said, her bright eyes twinkling. I knew how she liked her toasts at Christmastime to the Stuarts and to Scotland. She brought out the bottle of Glenlivet pure Scotch malt Whisky she never travels anywhere without and splashed some into three of mother's crystal tumblers.