Dead Drop (eBook)

2

The conference room had plenty of chairs, plenty of framed military aircraft photos, and a conference table slightly too small for launching and recovering navy jets. A notebook computer sat near one end, connected to a video projector aimed at a white screen on the wall. I took a chair directly across from the projector, but it wasn’t the technology that pulled me in.

The only other person in the room was a young Asian woman leaning over the table and fiddling with a cable connection. Dark eyes lifted, swept over me, then went back to work.

In her twenties, she had black hair pulled back in a ponytail and wore a black long-sleeved blouse that could have been a half-size smaller and a maroon knit skirt that could have been a little shorter. No wedding ring.

She sat down. Now I could see her employee badge, which said Lilith Lin.

I said, “Hello, Lilith. I’m Jack Salvo. What kind of work do you do here?”

“Information security.” She had a pretty voice, almost musical.

“Have you worked on many cybercrimes?”

“No.” She typed in staccato bursts until she seemed satisfied with the results. She looked around at everything in the room except me. 

I said, “Are you giving the presentation?”

“Yes.”

“How do you think they laundered the money?”

“That will be in my presentation.”

“How do you think they got the password?”

“That will be in my presentation.”

“What’s your sign?”

“What kind of sign?”

“Your astrological sign.”

Now her voice had a fist in it. “What kind of education do you have?”

“I came close to a PhD.”

“They probably kicked you out because you believed in astrology.”

“They kicked me out for being an insensitive brute.”

She nodded thoughtfully. “That was probably a sound decision by the college faculty. How long ago was that?”

“A few years ago.”

“How many years?”

“Not too many.”

“How many in numerical terms?”

“Have you ever considered the advantages of a dignified older man?”

“How old are you?”

“Thirty-seven.”

“I am twenty-four. Pick on someone your own age.”

“When do you get off work? Maybe we could go somewhere, and I could buy you an ice cream cone.”

The corners of her mouth rose against her wishes. She got her mouth straight. “I suppose you are the hotshot private detective who came to save the day.”

“What else do you suppose?”

“That you are overconfident.”

“I have other qualities.”

“Such as?”

“Toughness, chivalry, and dedication to justice.”

She leaned forward and gaped in mock admiration. “Sir Galahad! I am so glad you finally arrived. I was beginning to think you would never get here.”

People were starting to drift into the room, so I shut up. There were four I had never seen, two men and two women. Darcey Mathis and Del Hoffman came in behind them. Hoffman shut the door and took a seat, moving with the starched swagger that usually turns out to be driven by insecurity.

Darcey remained standing and took charge of the meeting. “I don’t need to remind you that everything said in this room today stays in this room. This unfortunate event is not yet known by the rank and file employees, and we need to keep it that way.” She took a chair next to Hoffman.

Darcey introduced me to the group. I produced a stack of business cards and dealt them out. Everyone except Darcey and Del pushed their card toward me. I organized the cards in an array reflecting the seating positions. The man from HR had a neatly-trimmed gray beard and a friendly, avuncular manner. The attorney from the legal department was a husky woman whose default facial expression was a tired frown. The auditor was a pear-shaped young fellow who was in a state of continuous eagerness. The public relations rep was a tall thirty-something brunette wearing black designer jeans and a black-and-white Louis Vuitton blouse. Lilith introduced herself to me as though she were meeting me for the first time.

A tall guy in his fifties came in, shut the door softly, and took a seat. He carried a little extra weight, and he looked like he knew how to throw it around. He had a large head, salt-and-pepper flattop, and a well-tailored light gray suit. Everyone in the room sat up a little straighter.

The newcomer said to Hoffman, “I’m going to watch and listen. I’ll chime in when I need to.”

Hoffman gestured toward him. “For those of you who haven’t met him, this is my boss and our CEO Barney Xavier. He’s taking a special interest in this matter.”

Darcey dimmed the lights. “Okay, let’s get going. Lilith Lin knows more about the details of this case than anyone else, and she has put together a presentation for us.”

Lilith had already projected an image onto the screen: accounts payable incident—culver confidential. She ran her PowerPoint presentation, the main points of which had been covered for me by Del and Darcey, but there were other pieces of information that I found interesting:

• Four bogus checks totaling $86,600 were mailed from Culver Aerospace to a private PO box in the City of Commerce.
• The checks were deposited at a Southland National Bank branch in the city of Hawthorne, near Culver Aerospace. The account had been opened in the name of David Lopez, no doubt a false identity. The money launderer withdrew cash from the bank in amounts ranging from three thousand to forty-five hundred dollars and from ATMs in three-hundred-dollar increments. None of the amounts deposited or withdrawn would raise any eyebrows.
• The two previous embezzlements, in 2009 and 2011, were in the same modus operandi, using different private PO boxes and different banks.

Lilith did not list the names of the four suspects, but the team members knew who they were, and there was a spirited discussion regarding whodunit and how they did it. When Mrs. Ito was mentioned as a possible suspect, everyone laughed. The consensus was that Oswald Pace, Joy Bodie, or Derrick Jenkinson shoulder-surfed Mrs. Ito’s password.

During the discussion I pulled out my iPad, accessed a subscription data service, and learned a few things. Lucille Ito and her husband were pillars of the community. Joy Bodie had a messy divorce in which she briefly lost custody of an infant son; she was solid since that time. Derrick Jenkinson ran a consulting business on the side and had no significant blemishes in his background; he had speeding tickets, but he would have to speed up to match my record.

Oswald Pace’s background was more entertaining. He had fifteen different addresses in the past fourteen years, going back to an apartment in Orange County. In 2003 he was suspected of insurance fraud in a burglary claim and skated on a technicality. In 2005 he was evicted from an apartment after not paying rent for five months. One month prior to his eviction, he pulled a slip-and-fall in the carport and received a ten-thousand-dollar nuisance settlement. He had been sued in small claims court for unpaid bills on two occasions; he prevailed in one case and lost the other.

Lilith turned off the projector and handed out hard copies of her presentation. Darcey turned the lights back up.

Barney Xavier had shot some annoyed glances my way as I worked on my iPad and kept one ear on the meeting. His prominent jaw squirmed like a bulldog chewing tobacco when he spoke. “Mr. Salvo, if we decide to involve law enforcement in this matter, which agency would you recommend we contact first?” He seemed to think I hadn’t been paying attention.

I said, “You start with your local police, then there are complications. The fraudulent data entry was committed here in El Segundo. The checks were mailed to a postal drop in the city of Commerce, where the fake invoices also came from. The checks were cashed in Hawthorne. That gives us a total of three cities and three different police departments, not to mention federal agencies for the mail and bank frauds. Also, I’m just talking about the most recent fraud. The previous scams probably involve other cities’ law enforcement agencies.”

Xavier kept going. “Twenty thousand dollars is a lot of money for background checks on four people and a brief investigation. Do you have any law enforcement experience?”

“No.”

“Military intelligence?”

“No.”

“What about your educational and professional background?”

“I’ve been a licensed private investigator with my own company for ten years. Previously, I worked for others, including Western Investigative Services, one of the larger agencies on the West Coast. I have a bachelor’s degree in philosophy with a heavy minor in criminal justice and a master’s plus more graduate work in philosophy. I teach a class at Coast College on Wednesday nights.”

Xavier squinted and cocked his head. “Philosophy?”

I let the word hover over the table while I gave him my learned professor look. “It’s a great discipline for people who want to learn how to form a complete sentence.”

Everyone in the room froze except Lilith. She rested her fist against her mouth, the corners of which were again curved...