"Exactly. So why? Oh. Oops." Dina scooted lower in the seat. "Jeez, I thought I was brilliant getting her to say it happened Monday afternoon. Great assistant, I am."
A better one than you realize, Jack thought. The immediate, relaxed rapport with Mrs. Blankenship and natural ability to steer a conversation were impressive. Her body language jibed with every remark and comment, the unifying "men are negative" feint, in particular. A close second was deferring to him on their names and not batting a lash at Herman friggin' Melville.
"You're taking me back home, aren't you." Dina's fingers tapped a riff on her thighs. "Firing me on my first try must be a record."
"I'd demote you to pencil sharpener before I'd do that. And I never use pencils."
He wheeled into the parking lot of what once was Gavin & Giffen, Park City's premier department store. The five-story redbrick jewel of the downtown shopping area had lost her luster before malls were built on the town's south and west sides.
Urban renewal fever had demolished a dozen other landmarks before rock-bottom property values turned the survivors into gold mines in the rough. Gavin & Giffen's conversion to prime office space and loft-style condos made living and working downtown cool again.
"Last stop on the scenic route," Jack said. "Gotta pick up Yancy Nilsson, my IT guy."
Dina looked at the dashboard clock. "Wouldn't it have been quicker for him to meet us at the office?"
"Yancy doesn't have a car." Jack flashed her a grin. "And won't for about a year. He'll get his learner's permit around Christmas, though."
"Yeah, right." Dina's expression progressed from amusement to disbelief to unwilling acceptance. "You aren't joking, are you?"
"Nope." He pointed. "See for yourself."
The string bean exiting G&G's revolving lobby door inherited his mother's Asian bone structure and father's Nordic coloring. When Yancy grew into the best of both worlds, he'd be a babe magnet without even trying. At the moment, he'd give a hundred IQ points to look like every other kid in school.
The Taurus's backseat was heaped with the rest of Jack's wardrobe and his extra pillow. Dina scooted closer to Jack to make room for Yancy in the front. While they got acquainted, Jack rubbed hips and thighs with the world's shortest burglar and tried not to forget where his office was located.
The place wasn't as tidy as he'd left it, but McGuire and Company hadn't trashed it, either. Contrary to popular assumption, the tornado-aftermath simulation wasn't standard procedure for off-scene evidence collection in homicide investigations.
"Okay, troops." Jack took a twenty from his wallet. "First order of business is you two going to the diner. Buy the boss a jumbo black coffee and whatever you want."
They looked at each other, as if mentally flipping for carhop duty. "Age before beauty, Munchkin," Yancy said.
Dina inhaled through her nose. "Not funny, Willy Wonk. Neither is Elf, Dwarf, Leprechaun, Shrimp, Shorty or Ewok. Got it?"
"Both of you, scram," Jack ordered. "Then scram back."
The door hadn't shut behind them when he punched the speakerphone to play back his messages. He'd accessed by cell phone and erased earlier ones from Ms. Pearl, Cherise, McGuire, his attorney, prospective and peeved current clients and robot telemarketers. The digital scorekeeper said four newbies were in the batter's circle.
"Jack, it's Cherise. I'm really worried about you"
Delete.
"So am I."
The next two didn't require the temporary privacy he'd bought, either. The last message sat Jack down in the desk chair. "As of now," Gerry Abramson began, "3:12 p.m. Wednesday, your services are no longer required. Your performance was subpar before your arrest for homicide. I expect the presentation of a written report, invoice and balance of the retainer on or before 5:00 p.m. Friday."
An "or else" kicker was implied.
The basis for the firing was ninety percent justifiable. Keeping clients informed, even if oral progress reports were of the "same shit, different day" persuasion lent assurance you weren't sitting at home in your underpants watching a Cardinals doubleheader.
Instead Jack had adopted a dog, the Calendar Burglar, her mother, evicted himself from his apartment and played cat and mouse with Lt. Andy McGuire.
If not for those derelictions, the pink slip's nonjustifiable reason would irk him a little. Abramson must have an unreliable informant at the police department. Jack had been picked up and held for questioning, not charged with homicide. Absent that, the media couldn't legally name him as a suspect.
"Well, if you can't fix it, fuck it." He yanked his laptop from its carrying case. The meter was ticking. Twenty bucks in a perpetually starving teenager's hand converted to cheeseburgers, fries, onion rings, cheese sticks and the time needed to cook them. With Dina's supervision, Jack stood a fair chance of getting the coffee he'd ordered. If not, he'd brew his own.
From his pocket he took out a list of Harriet Wexler's prescriptions. A proper houseguest didn't snoop through medical paperwork when his hosts were occupied with nebulizer treatments. The corollary was that expecting a private investigator to keep his mitts to himself was akin to expecting Phil not to fart in the house.
Price comparisons at major Internet pharmacies didn't have Jack shouting hosannas. Too easy, he supposed, for one source to be the cheapest on everything
and
not ding customers for shipping and handling. By his rough calculations, Chinese-menu shoppingthis from Column A, that from Bcould shrink the remaining doughnut hole by three to four hundred out-of-pocket dollars.
The printer was spitting out Jack's pharmaceutical survey, when Willy Wonk and the Munchkin breezed in trailing a slipstream of deep-fryer grease. "Here's your coffee." Dina handed him a tall, lidded foam cup. "And here's your change." Three quarters, a nickel and four pennies pattered the desktop.
"Change?" Jack looked at Yancy, already chowing down on a deluxe tenderloin sandwich. "What a concept."
"She made me put back my candy bar."
While Yancy clogged his arteries, Jack showed Dina the printouts. "This isn't comprehensive, but I bookmarked all the Web sites I browsed. Not bad, though, for a start."
"You did all this while we were at the diner?"
He waved a dismissal. "Just killing time, after I had the laptop up and running for Yancy."
Eyes downcast, Dina scanned each page as if it were a collection notice. "This would help so much." She folded the sheets lengthwise and dropped them in the trash can. "It means the world to me that you care enough to do that."
Of course he cared. Too damn much. "Then why'd you round-file it?"
"Because buying Mom's medications anywhere other than the approved, in-network pharmacy doesn't apply to the coverage gap."
Jack wasn't sure he understood. A surge of anger said he did. "Lemme get this straight. All of Harriet's prescriptions are filled at the same drugstore because you
have
to?"
"Rules are rules. A 'preferred pharmacy,' it's called."
"Even if you could buy some, or all of them, cheaper at a different store, online, wherever?"
She nodded.
"The same rule applies when
you're
making up that three-thousand dollar gap? You still can't buy them somewhere else? Somewhere less expensive for you?"
"I can," Dina said. "The money spent anywhere but the preferred pharmacy just won't count toward the doughnut hole. And until it's filled, none of Mom's prescriptionsold, new, dosage changesare covered at all."
Jack spread his hands, his head shaking in disbelief. "I'm not arguing with you. I swear, I'm not. But that's the craziest racket I've ever heard of. It's not"
"Fair," she finished. "Life isn't. That, McPhee, is rule number one." She looked at her watch. "Rule number two is, I have to go home and give Mom an injection pretty soon."
Yancy wadded the food sacks and directed a hook shot at the trash can. "You promised Dad I'd be back before dinner."
Oh, to be young again, Jack thought. With a cast-iron blast furnace for a stomach and a twenty-eight-inch waist.
"Then let's get after it."
While Dina fetched a fifty-foot phone line from the supply cabinet, Jack instructed Yancy to prepay two spoof-service sites, each for 120 minutes' usage. Yancy pointed out that twice the talk time from one provider would shave a few dollars off Jack's credit card bill.
True, but until now, Jack had worked the phones solo. Whether he and Dina could tap in two different phones off one account simultaneously, he didn't know.
"I can't risk the system allowing one of our spoofs to slide by unaltered." To an obviously perplexed Dina, he said, "What we're doing is controlling the display on outbound caller ID. Most people assume if, for instance, Dina Wexler and her home number come up, then Dina Wexler's calling them."
Jack jotted an 800-number, a PIN access number and the outbound identifier for Yancy to program in. "We'll do practice runs, but once it's set up, the outbound ID on your line will read '
Forbes
magazine' with a bogus phone number."
If a person could look both appalled and excited, Dina did.
"Like they say, kid. You can't believe everything you read. Law enforcement has spoofed bad guys for years. Now anybody with a credit card and phone can do it."
"Legally?"
"So far. Some politicians want it outlawed, because their opponents' campaigners spoofed voters. Identity thieves also used it to make it appear legit credit card holders were activating accounts from their home phones. Card issuers caught on and installed filters to recognize a proxy caller ID."
The bathroom would be Dina's private phone boothhence the longer phone line. With her pretext as a magazine staff writer, she'd extract information from Carleton deHaven's public-relations manager and other sources regarding last weekend's seminar in Little Rock, Arkansas.
A timeline of deHaven's whereabouts on Sunday was crucial. If Belle's husband was glad-handing the minions all day, then his alibi
was
airtight. If God was on Jack's side, the same hotel desk clerk and concierge were on duty this afternoon.
"For your pretext," Jack said, "your name is Mary Jaymes. Common, but spelling out a minor discrepancy makes it sound a lot more legitimate."
On the off chance someone balked, Dina would dictate the spoofed number for a callback. The secret was to not hang up. She'd then signal an SOS to Jack. After the callback's supposed dialing sequence ended, he'd answer the still open line, "Forbes, Editorial Department," as though it had just connected. A second of dead air would infer the call was being transferred, then Dina would answer, "Mary Jaymes speaking."
In the past, Jack had modified his voice to pull off the flimflam. Not once had a callee noticed the dial-back number didn't ring.
His own pretext was Jim Mathews, a security specialist contracted by each respective airlinecommuter and nationalthat serviced Park City and Little Rock. If the party who answered the call was female, Jim Mathews would have a charming Texas twang. If male, Mathews was a curt, "don't tell me what you can't do, buddy" kind of a guy.
The prickly Mathews was entertaining, but his "aw shucks" persona was a lot more fun.
While they worked the phones, Yancy Nilsson racked up an extra zero, probably two, on Jack's Visa card. Internet data mining had become pricier since a legislative crackdown in January 2007. Cell-phone and landline calling records, credit reports, real-name information on e-mail accountsvirtually any personal infostill orbited cyberspace. Obtaining it from brokers was just more expensive and time-consuming.
Jack's initial prospecting on Monday night had been cursory. A reluctance to tie up the Wexlers' single phone line and resorting to Model-T dial-up access was frustrating as hell.
Putting Yancy at the helm freed up Jack to make his phone calls and paid bonus dividends. For one, the boy typed about a million strokes a minute. Brokers' required prompts and general Web searching brinked on light-speed, and Yancy had a gift for what Jack termed, "Looking on a mountaintop to find a submarine."
More often than not, the teen eked out a whole fleet of them.
The reception area distanced Jack from the keyboard's ticky-ticky rhythm, the droning printer and fax machine's end-of-transmission beeps. Whether posing as good ol' boy Jim Mathews, or his coldly intimidating counterpart, the bathroom door was monitored for Dina's distress signal.
With Jack's back to the parking lot, McGuire's entrance caught him flat-footed. "My other line's ringing," he said, into the cell phone. Realizing his accent had evaporated, he added, "Thanks for yer hep, ma'am, and y'all have a nice day."
McGuire chuckled, quickly surveying the office. "Howdy, pardner. What kinda rodeo you having here?"
