Amy and I went right from school to my house, she apparently didn't mind consistently skipping all her classes after lunch.
"All my important classes are in the morning anyway," she'd say.
We decided to stop thinking about all of my "problems" for a while and have some time off. If my school administrator was pulling a paycheck from the government to keep me out of trouble, he still would be after the weekend so there was no need to go nuts trying to figure everything out at once. Since my mom was gone we could hang out for a while at my house.
It took 'til about the time I'd ordered a pizza and paid for it myself that I realized I had a girl over to my house. That is, I knew Amy was there, but it didn't set in after all this time that I had no idea what was going on with Amy and I. We were spending a lot of time together, but it all seemed to be focused on figuring out my life. We never talked about anything else, and she seemed oddly interested in the whole thing.
And now there was a girl in my house, eating pizza I paid for.
Since she hadn't seen it, and it was one of my favorite movies, I elected to watch The Bourne Identity. I put the DVD in the player and turned on the TV while Amy curled herself into my living room couch. The TV was on the wrong input so I went through the settings to change that, then went through the DVD player settings to make sure all the display and sound settings were right.
"Geez, did you memorize the instruction manuals for this stuff?" Amy said between bites of supreme hand-tossed while I futzed with the menus.
"Eh.. no. I'm just good with interfaces," I said.
"Good with interfaces? Can you put that on a resume?" behind me, I could hear the grin in her voice.
I looked over my shoulder. "I dunno, I've always been able to figure these kind of things out. Setting watches, setting up electronics.. I can just do these things."
"That's got to be one of your least interesting super powers."
I started the movie and thought about how I could afford a TV about 10 times nicer than this one. I could afford a lot of things now, but somehow I couldn't bring myself to spend any of the insurance money. All the food and stuff I'd bought lately I'd done so with money I already had. As long as the money stayed in the bank, maybe everything could stay the same. Plus it was earning about 6% in a money market savings account. Just the interest on that is more than I could make in a real job straight from high school. But then, I'm supposed to be watching the movie and not thinking about these things for now.
Amy pointed out some of the similarities that I'd referenced, like the surprise ability to beat people up and the weird amounts of money coming from nowhere. There was scene I was dreading, though. Matt Damon and Franke Potente in a hotel room in Zurich or Paris or somewhere. They're on the run from the CIA people hunting them down, he dyes and cuts her hair, it's romantic, and they start making out. As aware as I was about Amy being there, for that scene I was very aware that she was sitting right next to me. Nobody said anything for a while, a tension seemed to hang in the air.
Teen drama!
It was dark when the movie ended. I got up and threw the paper plates away and stuck the leftover pizza in the fridge. Neither of us had said anything yet.
"Well that was good. I'll have to see the second one soon," she said at last. I just looked at her for a moment over the kitchen counter, thinking about what happens to Franke's character in an early scene. I for once worried that I might be going about everything completely wrong.
"So I guess I'll get going home now," Amy started, "my dad doesn't like me out late without reasons."
She got her coat and walked toward the door, which I was holding open. "Ok, bye then," I said as nonchalantly as possible. As she stepped through the door she stopped and turned around.
"Oh, I almost forgot," she started, "I had an idea for something we can do tomorrow. I'll walk here in the morning, we can take your car." She smiled and walked away.
I closed the door slowly, and looked back at my empty house. It smelled like oregano.
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
White Rabbit
Nathan Comstock was showing an account balance of $8,876 in checking, $43,605 in savings. That seemed a bit high for a school administrator, but then what do I know about grownups and realistic amounts of money? That was also as far as I probably had time to check while crouched in front of Nathan Comstock's desk in his office in what could be described as a bubbling cauldron of law-breaking.
What I was after was his entire banking history, and fortunately modern banking websites make this easy by allowing you to download your transaction history log files to use in Quicken or Microsoft Money or whatever. I navigated to the Export option, selected an ambiguous filetype that wouldn't be restricted to some financial application, and downloaded it to the desktop.
So.. now what? Shoot, I probably should have thought ahead about these kind of things. I had to get the file out of there without leaving evidence. I could email it to myself but that would leave traces (you don't want to leave traces when you're infiltrating bank records), and I didn't bring a USB drive or a blank CD with me. Could this PC even burn CDs?
I moved some papers out of the way of the desktop's tower and examined the cover of the CD drive, squinting to make out the small little emblems. DVD, Compact Disc, CD-R/RW.
"Bingo," I said again to myself, soon thereafter realizing I need to stop saying bingo.
After some searching I found a blank CD in a desk drawer and stuck it in the CD drive. I started burning the file onto the disk, it seemed to be taking forbloodyever. I cracked my knuckles as I watched the progress bar drag across the screen. Amy was still standing outside the door, blocking the window. I saw her bobbing back and forth slightly, probably more nervous than I as she was on the front line.
While I waited I started fixing the items on the desk that I'd disturbed; I was wiping the keyboard keys off with the sleeve of my shirt when I heard a light tap on the door. I stopped moving entirely for a moment, then inched toward the door. Some lady was talking to Amy, I couldn't make out her voice. I heard Amy say "was supposed to talk to him about" something, her back still covering the narrow window, she began tapping furiously on the door with a knuckle. This lady must want in.
Nowhere to go, the window going outside didn't open and there were no closets to hide in. My heart began racing as I darted around the small office. I heard the doorknob jiggle, so the only thing I could do was turn off the computer's monitor and dash to the opposite end of the room, tuck myself against the wall that the door was now opening against.
The door opened swiftly, catching me off guard and pinning me against the wall. I grabbed the doorknob on my side and held the door open, if it closed I'd be standing there pressed against the wall of my principal's office for no good reason. I heard rustling papers around the desk. I peeked through the door's window and saw an office assistant hovering over Mr. Comstock's desk, lifting documents and folders as if searching for something. I ducked away from the window, and noticed that to my right, through the gap between the inside end of the door and the door frame I could see out into the hall, Amy was standing right there looking both confused and very nervous. I waved my free hand, as much as I could wave it in the few inches I had between the door and the wall, to get her attention. Her eyes, darting around, finally met mine. Her eyebrows shot up and she covered her mouth quickly to mask a gasp. I tried my best to mouth "hold the door open" but she couldn't read it.
I slid closer to the door frame and waved her toward me. She stepped across the few feet between us and I whispered, "hold the door open". The recognition came over her face, and she stepped forward and leaned in the office and extended an arm to hold to door. I slowly released the handle and felt her take the weight of it.
After a few moments, Amy said aloud, "Is there something I can help with?" Her voice trailed off as she seemed to realize she might have made a mistake, if she stepped away from the door and it stayed open it might look suspicious.
"Not really," the woman said, "just looking for Mr. Comstock's wallet. He needs his ID for a police report."
Behind the door, I was smiling but I knew Amy wouldn't be. Her voice shaking slightly, she asked "did something happen?"
Papers stopped rustling for a moment. "Oh, nothing serious. Just his car was vandalized. Oh, here it is!"
A few seconds later, she was out of the room and the door swung shut, and I uncompressed from the wall and finally began breathing regularly. Just then, the computer speakers made a slight jingle noise and the CD tray ejected from the computer. I grabbed the disk, returned to computer to where it was when I found it, and slipped out the door and fell into step behind Amy who was walking as casually as possible out of the office suite.
Returned semi-safely to the school's main hallways, I was about to laugh when Amy turned on her heel and hit my shoulder with her open palm.
"Ow," I said despite a general lack of pain.
"What the hell was that?" she grunted under her breath. "I thought she was going to go in there and catch you with your hand in the cookie jar."
I rubbed my shoulder, as society seemed to demand, and said, "That's not my fault. You did great, though. There and on the phone. That was really great."
She stood there a moment, looking cross. "I thought the call about his car being vandalized was just a distraction," said Amy.
I smiled again, "It was a distraction. But if it turned out to be a phony call it might have been suspicious coming just moments after a call luring him into logging into his bank account."
Amy sighed, and started walking again. "So how did you know about his car?" she asked.
"That it was vandalized? It became quite clear to me after I threw a hammer through the rear windshield."
Back in the library, where none of the librarians seemed to care that we weren't in class (so long as we weren't eating or shooting up the place), we headed to the computer lab and sat down at one of the open computers far enough away that the screen wouldn't be clear to passers by. I logged into a guest account inserted the disk I burned, noting that the CD was covered with my fingerprints, and navigated to the bank transaction history file. The file opened in Excel, and described every transaction in both accounts from now dating back as far as I could go (two years).
After some inspecting, I'd located his paycheck direct deposits from the school. They were clearly labeled as deposits from the Fredericksburg School District and were consistantly a $2200 deposit every two weeks.
"Almost $53 grand a year," Amy said, "that's.. I don't know. That's more than a teacher makes."
"Yeah, but it's not unusual for a principal I think. But he's almost got that much in his accounts right now. Between the $8,876 in checking and the $43,605 in savings that's almost exactly a year's wages. That's a lot to have accessible, and not in a retirement account or something." I'd done a bit of research into finances when I'd gotten a $500,000 check hand delivered to me by a bonded currier with an off-duty cop.
I kept looking through the transactions, sorting them by deposit amounts.
"Woah," I said.
"What?" Amy said, leaning closer to the screen.
"Look at this. Besides the direct deposits from the school, every month there's three other direct deposits in a row. Every month they're for different amounts each, but look if you add them up..."
I selected the three deposits from this month ($1301, $2134, and $2565), and and added them together (with a sum() formula in Excel), together they equaled $6,000 exactly. I did the same with the three deposits the previous months, all different amounts but totaling $6,000 together.
"So he's making an extra..$72,000 a year on top of his school salary?" Amy asked.
"That's what it looks like. These deposits go back as far as the transaction history." I said.
"Does it say who the deposits are from?"
"No. That's the weird thing. Direct deposits have to list the issuing bank's account holder. It's the law. All these have is an account number. The only people who could issue deposits without disclosure would be..." I paused when I realized what I was about to say. The weight of it bounded against my mind and pulled my jaw down.
Amy spoke up, "What, Chris?"
I closed my mouth and bit my lip. Finally, giving into the conclusion and seeing no alternatives, I said it.
"The government."
What I was after was his entire banking history, and fortunately modern banking websites make this easy by allowing you to download your transaction history log files to use in Quicken or Microsoft Money or whatever. I navigated to the Export option, selected an ambiguous filetype that wouldn't be restricted to some financial application, and downloaded it to the desktop.
So.. now what? Shoot, I probably should have thought ahead about these kind of things. I had to get the file out of there without leaving evidence. I could email it to myself but that would leave traces (you don't want to leave traces when you're infiltrating bank records), and I didn't bring a USB drive or a blank CD with me. Could this PC even burn CDs?
I moved some papers out of the way of the desktop's tower and examined the cover of the CD drive, squinting to make out the small little emblems. DVD, Compact Disc, CD-R/RW.
"Bingo," I said again to myself, soon thereafter realizing I need to stop saying bingo.
After some searching I found a blank CD in a desk drawer and stuck it in the CD drive. I started burning the file onto the disk, it seemed to be taking forbloodyever. I cracked my knuckles as I watched the progress bar drag across the screen. Amy was still standing outside the door, blocking the window. I saw her bobbing back and forth slightly, probably more nervous than I as she was on the front line.
While I waited I started fixing the items on the desk that I'd disturbed; I was wiping the keyboard keys off with the sleeve of my shirt when I heard a light tap on the door. I stopped moving entirely for a moment, then inched toward the door. Some lady was talking to Amy, I couldn't make out her voice. I heard Amy say "was supposed to talk to him about" something, her back still covering the narrow window, she began tapping furiously on the door with a knuckle. This lady must want in.
Nowhere to go, the window going outside didn't open and there were no closets to hide in. My heart began racing as I darted around the small office. I heard the doorknob jiggle, so the only thing I could do was turn off the computer's monitor and dash to the opposite end of the room, tuck myself against the wall that the door was now opening against.
The door opened swiftly, catching me off guard and pinning me against the wall. I grabbed the doorknob on my side and held the door open, if it closed I'd be standing there pressed against the wall of my principal's office for no good reason. I heard rustling papers around the desk. I peeked through the door's window and saw an office assistant hovering over Mr. Comstock's desk, lifting documents and folders as if searching for something. I ducked away from the window, and noticed that to my right, through the gap between the inside end of the door and the door frame I could see out into the hall, Amy was standing right there looking both confused and very nervous. I waved my free hand, as much as I could wave it in the few inches I had between the door and the wall, to get her attention. Her eyes, darting around, finally met mine. Her eyebrows shot up and she covered her mouth quickly to mask a gasp. I tried my best to mouth "hold the door open" but she couldn't read it.
I slid closer to the door frame and waved her toward me. She stepped across the few feet between us and I whispered, "hold the door open". The recognition came over her face, and she stepped forward and leaned in the office and extended an arm to hold to door. I slowly released the handle and felt her take the weight of it.
After a few moments, Amy said aloud, "Is there something I can help with?" Her voice trailed off as she seemed to realize she might have made a mistake, if she stepped away from the door and it stayed open it might look suspicious.
"Not really," the woman said, "just looking for Mr. Comstock's wallet. He needs his ID for a police report."
Behind the door, I was smiling but I knew Amy wouldn't be. Her voice shaking slightly, she asked "did something happen?"
Papers stopped rustling for a moment. "Oh, nothing serious. Just his car was vandalized. Oh, here it is!"
A few seconds later, she was out of the room and the door swung shut, and I uncompressed from the wall and finally began breathing regularly. Just then, the computer speakers made a slight jingle noise and the CD tray ejected from the computer. I grabbed the disk, returned to computer to where it was when I found it, and slipped out the door and fell into step behind Amy who was walking as casually as possible out of the office suite.
Returned semi-safely to the school's main hallways, I was about to laugh when Amy turned on her heel and hit my shoulder with her open palm.
"Ow," I said despite a general lack of pain.
"What the hell was that?" she grunted under her breath. "I thought she was going to go in there and catch you with your hand in the cookie jar."
I rubbed my shoulder, as society seemed to demand, and said, "That's not my fault. You did great, though. There and on the phone. That was really great."
She stood there a moment, looking cross. "I thought the call about his car being vandalized was just a distraction," said Amy.
I smiled again, "It was a distraction. But if it turned out to be a phony call it might have been suspicious coming just moments after a call luring him into logging into his bank account."
Amy sighed, and started walking again. "So how did you know about his car?" she asked.
"That it was vandalized? It became quite clear to me after I threw a hammer through the rear windshield."
Back in the library, where none of the librarians seemed to care that we weren't in class (so long as we weren't eating or shooting up the place), we headed to the computer lab and sat down at one of the open computers far enough away that the screen wouldn't be clear to passers by. I logged into a guest account inserted the disk I burned, noting that the CD was covered with my fingerprints, and navigated to the bank transaction history file. The file opened in Excel, and described every transaction in both accounts from now dating back as far as I could go (two years).
After some inspecting, I'd located his paycheck direct deposits from the school. They were clearly labeled as deposits from the Fredericksburg School District and were consistantly a $2200 deposit every two weeks.
"Almost $53 grand a year," Amy said, "that's.. I don't know. That's more than a teacher makes."
"Yeah, but it's not unusual for a principal I think. But he's almost got that much in his accounts right now. Between the $8,876 in checking and the $43,605 in savings that's almost exactly a year's wages. That's a lot to have accessible, and not in a retirement account or something." I'd done a bit of research into finances when I'd gotten a $500,000 check hand delivered to me by a bonded currier with an off-duty cop.
I kept looking through the transactions, sorting them by deposit amounts.
"Woah," I said.
"What?" Amy said, leaning closer to the screen.
"Look at this. Besides the direct deposits from the school, every month there's three other direct deposits in a row. Every month they're for different amounts each, but look if you add them up..."
I selected the three deposits from this month ($1301, $2134, and $2565), and and added them together (with a sum() formula in Excel), together they equaled $6,000 exactly. I did the same with the three deposits the previous months, all different amounts but totaling $6,000 together.
"So he's making an extra..$72,000 a year on top of his school salary?" Amy asked.
"That's what it looks like. These deposits go back as far as the transaction history." I said.
"Does it say who the deposits are from?"
"No. That's the weird thing. Direct deposits have to list the issuing bank's account holder. It's the law. All these have is an account number. The only people who could issue deposits without disclosure would be..." I paused when I realized what I was about to say. The weight of it bounded against my mind and pulled my jaw down.
Amy spoke up, "What, Chris?"
I closed my mouth and bit my lip. Finally, giving into the conclusion and seeing no alternatives, I said it.
"The government."
Wednesday, November 08, 2006
Sneakers
The biggest thorn in the paw of my grand plan to stop going to school was that my mom would probably notice that I wasn't going to school. I'd either have to explain all the weird things going on with me, pretend to go to school every day and find something else to do, or play it like I couldn't focus because of my dad and if I failed classes I'd make up the credits in the summer and get my diploma in the mail. That one seemed like the easiest.
It wasn't an issue, however. When I got home my mom was running around the house packing suitcases.
"Are we going somewhere?" I asked, setting my car keys on the kitchen table.
She stopped in place and stood up, looking at me for a moment.
"I am," she started. "I've been talking to Aunt Cathy on the phone and I don't think she's doing very well, with the divorce and then your father. I'm going to spend a few days out there with her until she's feeling better."
Cathy's my dad's sister and I suspected always a bit batty. She didn't come from Delaware for my dad, her brother' funeral; said she wouldn't be able to drive herself, and nobody could go pick her up.
My mom continued, "Would that be ok? I mean will you be ok by yourself for a while?"
She must have noticed that I was doing alright with everything. My dad died in January, it was now March. Seems like enough time to me.
"I'll be fine," I said. "Nothing major going on, just school. Are you leaving tonight or tomorrow?"
Nothing major going on. Nothing major! I was almost surprised at what I was saying, it seems like I should be more obviously concerned about mysterious money and a weird conspiracy to get me off the hook for knocking four guys into the hospital. Perhaps I was hesitant to trust anybody, even my mom.
She left early the next morning, before I would normally had left for school. Before she left she told me not to throw any wild teenage drug parties. I told her I wouldn't know how if I wanted to. She left, I went back to bed.
It's a marvelous feeling to sleep right through the opening bell for school. Skipping school is one thing, playing sick is one thing, but just not going to school is another feeling entirely. It felt like freedom, like taking charge of my life.
I woke up again around 10, and sent Amy a text message saying I'd meet her in the school library during lunch. I spent a while not thinking about my problems, just sitting around the house. I longed for my innocence again, when I had two parents and my biggest concern was -- hell, I had no biggest concern.
I marched from the school parking lot into the building and straight into the library. I'd missed three classes already, freedom bells were still ringing in my head. Classes were out for lunch and teenagers loitered around the building dealing with their own fragile little lives. I didn't pay attention to whether anybody was noticing me as I walked through the school.
The library was big. Not Breakfast Club big, but one of the largest rooms in the building nonetheless. Fear of school shootings had changed the standard library design from halls of tall bookshelves to long hedgerows of waist-high shelves bisecting the room at angles. Tables were spread wherever there was room, and librarians stood vigilant behind the front desk making sure nobody was talking too loudly or eating any food.
Amy was at a table in the back of the library, sneaking chips from her backpack in defiance of the no-food rule. I pulled up a chair across from her.
"You just get here?" she asked.
"Yeah. Someone took my parking spot." I said. I hadn't had time to eat, but her chips weren't too enticing. I hate Fritos. Curly little disasters.
"I thought you said you'd be coming to school," she was splitting her focus between me, her Fritos, and the Newsweek in her hand.
"I said I'd be coming to school, not going to classes." She rolled her eyes.
"So," she said after a minute, closing the magazine, "what's your plan for snooping Comstock's bank records? Should I be wearing a repel harness and kevlar?"
"Shoot," I said, "I forgot to plan that." I thought for a second. "How's your phone voice? Can you sound like a grownup?"
"I can," she said, her voice a bit thicker and sounding like a WASP.
"Good," I said, "now give me a notebook and a pen."
After lunch was fourth hour. Amy and I were in the same study hall, a class typically spent sitting in silence or doing homework due that day in hours five or six.
People tell me that in the West coast they're called periods. When I say fourth hour, I mean fourth period. Follow?
Anyway, it was fourth hour but Amy and I weren't in class. We were in the administrative office, suspiciously hiding in an empty office down the hall from Mr Comstock's. Nobody was currently using the office, in it were only a built-in desk and a telephone. The lights were off, only a small amount of light filtered in through the rectangular window in the door.
Having finished writing, I slid the notebook over to Amy, sitting behind the desk. She read through it briefly. "Can you do it?" I asked.
She nodded, then asked, "How do you know what bank he uses?"
"New England Federated? He has a mug from there on his desk."
She smiled and shook her head, picking up the handset and dialing the school's primary phone number. As it started ringing she handed the handset to me and said, "You should ask for him."
I could hear the phone ringing in the main office just a few feet away. I took it and asked why.
"They might notice if I call twice as two people."
"Huh. Smart," I said, putting the handset to my ear just as an office worker answered it.
"May I speak to Mr. Comstock, please?" I said, trying to sound nonchalant.
"Just a moment," the voice on the phone said. I handed the phone back to Amy and said, "connecting."
Amy took the phone and nestled it to her ear with her shoulder and picked up the notebook and pen.
"Hello, is this Mr. Nathan Comstock?" Amy said after a moment in the slightly modified voice we'd worked on. She crossed a line off of the notebook.
"Hi, this is Sarah from New England Federated Bank's fraud monitoring department. I'm calling today because our computer has flagged some suspicious-looking activity on your account and I'd like to verify with you whether they were authorized charges or not."
I swallowed hard. I really hoped he had an account at that bank and didn't just collect free mugs. Amy's eyes darted back and forth for a moment, then crossed a line off of the page.
"Ok", she said into the phone. "First I'll just need to verify your identity. Could you confirm your home address, please?" she wrote something down, "and could you verify the last four digits of your social security number?" she wrote some more.
She continued reading, "Thank you very much Mr. Comstock. Now regarding the suspicious activity on your account I'm seeing two separate charges this morning at a Citgo station in Bowling Green totaling $53.49 together and then shortly after a charge of $478.88 at a Circuit City store in the same town. Can you verify whether you authorized those purchases or not."
She smiled, "You didn't? Ok, sir, I'm going to mark this account for fraud investigation and for the time being we will remove these charges and restore the balance to your account. Are you around a computer right now? Ok, can you log into your account right now and verify these charges no longer appear?"
She nodded to me, it was working. I peeked out the window for a minute.
"Uh huh," Amy said into the phone. "Great. So I'm going to get started on processing the investigation request for your account and we'll cancel your current debit card and mail you a new one, but if you could go through your account history online for a few minutes, just looking for charges you don't authorize, that would be good. If you see any other unauthorized charges you can call me directly by dialing New England Federated's toll free number and pressing extension 7129."
She read him the 800 number I'd gotten from the phone book, reminded him to look right now for unauthorized charges, said goodbye, and hung up. She leaned back in her chair and sighed like she'd just given birth. "That's not easy!" she said.
"You did great," I said, "Now just one more call to make."
"And why can't you make this one?" she asked, hand on the handset.
"Because I sound like a 17 year old boy. It's much harder to tell female ages based on voice, and you need to be a parent for this one."
She sighed again, picked up the phone and pressed redial. This time she was in full WASPy mother voice.
When someone in the office picked up, Amy spoke into the phone, "Hi there, I was just at the school picking up my daughter for a doctor's appointment and in the front parking lot, that's the staff parking lot, isn't it? Yes, mm hmm, well when I was driving by it looked like I saw a group of young men wearing football jerseys apparently vandalizing one of the cars. One of them had a hammer I think, they ran away when I drove by but it looked like they were doing something to a grayish tan Sebring. I hope they weren't---" and she trailed off, pulling the phone away from her mouth. Then she blew into the microphone, and then hung up.
"Damn dropped calls," she said to me with a grin.
"Ok, I said. "It's on. Just have to wait for the call and hope it comes soon enough."
We both pressed against the door. A few minutes passed, but just down the hall a phone rang. A few seconds later, Comstock's door swung open and he ran down the hall past us.
"Amazing," I said.
"I'll watch the door," she said, "one knock means danger and two knocks means mega danger."
We crossed the hall, I slipped into Comstock's office and Amy stood in front of the door, blocking the window with her body. I stepped behind the desk and my heart sank when I saw a blank monitor screen. I sat down at the desk, and pressed the power button on the monitor.
The screen took a few seconds to cycle back to power, but the black screen soon quickly snapped to full color. Internet Explorer was open, and I was looking at New England Federated's website. Comstock was still logged in.
"Bingo," I said to myself.
It wasn't an issue, however. When I got home my mom was running around the house packing suitcases.
"Are we going somewhere?" I asked, setting my car keys on the kitchen table.
She stopped in place and stood up, looking at me for a moment.
"I am," she started. "I've been talking to Aunt Cathy on the phone and I don't think she's doing very well, with the divorce and then your father. I'm going to spend a few days out there with her until she's feeling better."
Cathy's my dad's sister and I suspected always a bit batty. She didn't come from Delaware for my dad, her brother' funeral; said she wouldn't be able to drive herself, and nobody could go pick her up.
My mom continued, "Would that be ok? I mean will you be ok by yourself for a while?"
She must have noticed that I was doing alright with everything. My dad died in January, it was now March. Seems like enough time to me.
"I'll be fine," I said. "Nothing major going on, just school. Are you leaving tonight or tomorrow?"
Nothing major going on. Nothing major! I was almost surprised at what I was saying, it seems like I should be more obviously concerned about mysterious money and a weird conspiracy to get me off the hook for knocking four guys into the hospital. Perhaps I was hesitant to trust anybody, even my mom.
She left early the next morning, before I would normally had left for school. Before she left she told me not to throw any wild teenage drug parties. I told her I wouldn't know how if I wanted to. She left, I went back to bed.
It's a marvelous feeling to sleep right through the opening bell for school. Skipping school is one thing, playing sick is one thing, but just not going to school is another feeling entirely. It felt like freedom, like taking charge of my life.
I woke up again around 10, and sent Amy a text message saying I'd meet her in the school library during lunch. I spent a while not thinking about my problems, just sitting around the house. I longed for my innocence again, when I had two parents and my biggest concern was -- hell, I had no biggest concern.
I marched from the school parking lot into the building and straight into the library. I'd missed three classes already, freedom bells were still ringing in my head. Classes were out for lunch and teenagers loitered around the building dealing with their own fragile little lives. I didn't pay attention to whether anybody was noticing me as I walked through the school.
The library was big. Not Breakfast Club big, but one of the largest rooms in the building nonetheless. Fear of school shootings had changed the standard library design from halls of tall bookshelves to long hedgerows of waist-high shelves bisecting the room at angles. Tables were spread wherever there was room, and librarians stood vigilant behind the front desk making sure nobody was talking too loudly or eating any food.
Amy was at a table in the back of the library, sneaking chips from her backpack in defiance of the no-food rule. I pulled up a chair across from her.
"You just get here?" she asked.
"Yeah. Someone took my parking spot." I said. I hadn't had time to eat, but her chips weren't too enticing. I hate Fritos. Curly little disasters.
"I thought you said you'd be coming to school," she was splitting her focus between me, her Fritos, and the Newsweek in her hand.
"I said I'd be coming to school, not going to classes." She rolled her eyes.
"So," she said after a minute, closing the magazine, "what's your plan for snooping Comstock's bank records? Should I be wearing a repel harness and kevlar?"
"Shoot," I said, "I forgot to plan that." I thought for a second. "How's your phone voice? Can you sound like a grownup?"
"I can," she said, her voice a bit thicker and sounding like a WASP.
"Good," I said, "now give me a notebook and a pen."
After lunch was fourth hour. Amy and I were in the same study hall, a class typically spent sitting in silence or doing homework due that day in hours five or six.
People tell me that in the West coast they're called periods. When I say fourth hour, I mean fourth period. Follow?
Anyway, it was fourth hour but Amy and I weren't in class. We were in the administrative office, suspiciously hiding in an empty office down the hall from Mr Comstock's. Nobody was currently using the office, in it were only a built-in desk and a telephone. The lights were off, only a small amount of light filtered in through the rectangular window in the door.
Having finished writing, I slid the notebook over to Amy, sitting behind the desk. She read through it briefly. "Can you do it?" I asked.
She nodded, then asked, "How do you know what bank he uses?"
"New England Federated? He has a mug from there on his desk."
She smiled and shook her head, picking up the handset and dialing the school's primary phone number. As it started ringing she handed the handset to me and said, "You should ask for him."
I could hear the phone ringing in the main office just a few feet away. I took it and asked why.
"They might notice if I call twice as two people."
"Huh. Smart," I said, putting the handset to my ear just as an office worker answered it.
"May I speak to Mr. Comstock, please?" I said, trying to sound nonchalant.
"Just a moment," the voice on the phone said. I handed the phone back to Amy and said, "connecting."
Amy took the phone and nestled it to her ear with her shoulder and picked up the notebook and pen.
"Hello, is this Mr. Nathan Comstock?" Amy said after a moment in the slightly modified voice we'd worked on. She crossed a line off of the notebook.
"Hi, this is Sarah from New England Federated Bank's fraud monitoring department. I'm calling today because our computer has flagged some suspicious-looking activity on your account and I'd like to verify with you whether they were authorized charges or not."
I swallowed hard. I really hoped he had an account at that bank and didn't just collect free mugs. Amy's eyes darted back and forth for a moment, then crossed a line off of the page.
"Ok", she said into the phone. "First I'll just need to verify your identity. Could you confirm your home address, please?" she wrote something down, "and could you verify the last four digits of your social security number?" she wrote some more.
She continued reading, "Thank you very much Mr. Comstock. Now regarding the suspicious activity on your account I'm seeing two separate charges this morning at a Citgo station in Bowling Green totaling $53.49 together and then shortly after a charge of $478.88 at a Circuit City store in the same town. Can you verify whether you authorized those purchases or not."
She smiled, "You didn't? Ok, sir, I'm going to mark this account for fraud investigation and for the time being we will remove these charges and restore the balance to your account. Are you around a computer right now? Ok, can you log into your account right now and verify these charges no longer appear?"
She nodded to me, it was working. I peeked out the window for a minute.
"Uh huh," Amy said into the phone. "Great. So I'm going to get started on processing the investigation request for your account and we'll cancel your current debit card and mail you a new one, but if you could go through your account history online for a few minutes, just looking for charges you don't authorize, that would be good. If you see any other unauthorized charges you can call me directly by dialing New England Federated's toll free number and pressing extension 7129."
She read him the 800 number I'd gotten from the phone book, reminded him to look right now for unauthorized charges, said goodbye, and hung up. She leaned back in her chair and sighed like she'd just given birth. "That's not easy!" she said.
"You did great," I said, "Now just one more call to make."
"And why can't you make this one?" she asked, hand on the handset.
"Because I sound like a 17 year old boy. It's much harder to tell female ages based on voice, and you need to be a parent for this one."
She sighed again, picked up the phone and pressed redial. This time she was in full WASPy mother voice.
When someone in the office picked up, Amy spoke into the phone, "Hi there, I was just at the school picking up my daughter for a doctor's appointment and in the front parking lot, that's the staff parking lot, isn't it? Yes, mm hmm, well when I was driving by it looked like I saw a group of young men wearing football jerseys apparently vandalizing one of the cars. One of them had a hammer I think, they ran away when I drove by but it looked like they were doing something to a grayish tan Sebring. I hope they weren't---" and she trailed off, pulling the phone away from her mouth. Then she blew into the microphone, and then hung up.
"Damn dropped calls," she said to me with a grin.
"Ok, I said. "It's on. Just have to wait for the call and hope it comes soon enough."
We both pressed against the door. A few minutes passed, but just down the hall a phone rang. A few seconds later, Comstock's door swung open and he ran down the hall past us.
"Amazing," I said.
"I'll watch the door," she said, "one knock means danger and two knocks means mega danger."
We crossed the hall, I slipped into Comstock's office and Amy stood in front of the door, blocking the window with her body. I stepped behind the desk and my heart sank when I saw a blank monitor screen. I sat down at the desk, and pressed the power button on the monitor.
The screen took a few seconds to cycle back to power, but the black screen soon quickly snapped to full color. Internet Explorer was open, and I was looking at New England Federated's website. Comstock was still logged in.
"Bingo," I said to myself.
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
Leads
It was only 1:30 or so, but I went right from school to the nearest Starbucks. I would have gone home, but my mom could have been there and I didn't know how to explain that I was done with highschool and that nothing in my life was making any sense at the moment. I sat in a hard wooden chair in the back of the shop with my back to the wall, my hands spinning a warm cup of coffee, milk, and sugar, and my brain running in circles.
I kept telling myself that I must be overreacting, that I must just be manifesting some weird emotions over my dad's death. I never seemed to show any emotion over his death, never screamed at the sky and asked God why or broke furniture in my basement. I just, I suppose, dealt with it. People around me were probably wondering why I was so passive about it, afraid I was internalizing it and was going to explode someday. Explode like, collapse a larynx and break a nose.
Maybe that was it. I was just holding it all in, the massive weirdness of the life insurance money had distracted me from my grief and I never noticed it until it broke free and broke the nose of whoever was closest to me. Maybe.
Amy got there around 3:20, maybe she got out of her last class early. When she walked in the door she smiled at me, held up her index finger and got in line at the counter. I whistled, and pointed at the iced passion tea lemonade sitting across the tiny round table from me. She held in a laugh and walked over, sitting across from me.
"How gentlemanly," she said.
"That's what you got last time, so it's 'your drink', right?" I asked.
"I guess. I also like the gingerbread latte, but they've probably stopped doing those now that Christmas is just a memory."
"Probably," I said, sipping my gingerbread latte.
She was going to try to talk me out of leaving school, say I'm overreacting, echo the voice in my head.
"So," she started. I gulped. "This makes four things now," she finished.
I sighed in relief and said, "yeah."
"Well, your dad's strange passing and the insane amount of money; and now you wailed on those guys like you're a samurai and Comstock let you off without even a call home? That's four." she thoughtfully chewed on the end of her straw.
"I said 'yeah', not 'yeah?'."
"Oh."
"Yeah."
I thought a minute, about what I'd realized before she got here, but she cut me off, "You don't think this is like, repressed angst for your father or something? I mean all these weird things, they're not like a coincidence y'know? There's some... thing going on."
I looked at her. "Totally," I said.
"And actually," I continued, "there's five things. I also, since the 'fight' have felt.. different."
"Different how?"
"I don't know, it seems like I'm seeing things different; thinking differently. In Mr. Comstock's office, I was paying attention to everything, making assumptions about him and his life based on tiny things like eyeglass pad imprints on his nose and that all the fancy books on his shelf had never been opened. I usually don't know what color people's eyes are if I've known them for years. Now I'm remembering eyeglass pad imprints? Who notices those things?"
Amy thought for a moment, then she smiled and covered her eyes with her right hand. "What color are mine?" she asked.
I sighed and said, "Green. And your ears are pierced twice but you only wear one pair now so the upper piercings are going to close soon. Your shoes are Vans, gray and blue, with the laces tied at the top and the ends tucked in. Your keys are in the left outer pocket of your jacket and there are two keys on the fob besides your car and house key."
She looked at me silently, probably trying to figure me out.
"The guy to my right," I continued, "two tables over, is a smoker and either cheats on his wife or recently lost a lot of weight. He's about 38, 188 pounds, and works in an office within a quarter mile of here. The lady behind you is either married to or the mother of someone who recently became blind. There are nine people total in this place, two exits (one with an alarm) and unless the Brinks truck pulling into the parking lot is for the place next door, there's between three and five thousand dollars in the safe right now."
I drank the last of my coffee.
"Umm," Amy started, "so, yeah, five." She bit her bottom lip for a moment, and looked around the room. "Cheats on his wife?" she asked at last.
"Yeah, or lost weight. Actually, yeah, cheats on his wife. His wedding ring is loose, it moved a bit when he moves his hand, he probably takes it off a lot. He also keeps eyeing the brunette behind the counter and gave you two glances when you came in. He might have just lost weight since he had his ring sized, but that suit is tailored nicely but is at least two years old. Cheats on his wife."
"This seems familiar somehow," Amy said, looking back to me.
"Well," I said, "it's kind of exactly like a scene in The Bourne Identity."
"Never saw that," she said.
"Really? It's the best movie ever. This guy is pulled from the Mediterranean with no memory and two bullets in his back, later finds out he was a CIA hitman but botched a job and got shot. Before he figures that out, he wonders why he knows all of the license plate numbers on the cars outside a diner he's in and all that. You'd be Franke Potente."
"Ok," she said, "is it possible that you're a CIA hitman and don't remember it?"
"Not likely," I said.
"So you're serious about leaving school?" she asked.
"Yes."
"So we should put together these mysteries and try to figure them out. Maybe get some leads."
Ok...
So we put everything on the table, started jotting things down on paper napkins. There were five points of weirdness but only two of them had workable leads. My dad dying, the only connection could be that it had something to do with the Corps. The money, there's nothing to follow up on. Whether or not I demonstrated an abnormal physical proficiency with that fight, there's no loose ends. Same story with my suddenly acute attention span. The only thing with a lead was Comstock's abnormal behavior.
"There is something," I said.
"What?" Amy asked.
"When I was in Comstock's office, he got a call from someone. I could almost swear they were talking about me. It was right before he told me I was in no trouble, but it almost seemed like he didn't want to. On the phone he said 'I don't know if I can make that float,' and 'it's going to be expensive'."
"As if someone was paying him to get you off the hook?"
"And he was ever-so-subtly trying to ask for more money because he went totally off the book and could get in trouble." I said, circling "Comstock" on the list of leads.
"So who would pay to keep you out of trouble?" Amy asked.
"My guardian angel," I said. "Someone who either really likes me, or doesn't want a lot of attention on me or the fight."
"And how do we figure out who that is?" she asked.
I crossed my arms and thought for a minute. "Bank records," I said, "I'll need to see his bank account."
"Aaaaand, how do we do that?" Amy asked, "Hack the bank database with our magical CTU computers?"
"Looks like I lied," I said, "looks like I will be going back to school."
I kept telling myself that I must be overreacting, that I must just be manifesting some weird emotions over my dad's death. I never seemed to show any emotion over his death, never screamed at the sky and asked God why or broke furniture in my basement. I just, I suppose, dealt with it. People around me were probably wondering why I was so passive about it, afraid I was internalizing it and was going to explode someday. Explode like, collapse a larynx and break a nose.
Maybe that was it. I was just holding it all in, the massive weirdness of the life insurance money had distracted me from my grief and I never noticed it until it broke free and broke the nose of whoever was closest to me. Maybe.
Amy got there around 3:20, maybe she got out of her last class early. When she walked in the door she smiled at me, held up her index finger and got in line at the counter. I whistled, and pointed at the iced passion tea lemonade sitting across the tiny round table from me. She held in a laugh and walked over, sitting across from me.
"How gentlemanly," she said.
"That's what you got last time, so it's 'your drink', right?" I asked.
"I guess. I also like the gingerbread latte, but they've probably stopped doing those now that Christmas is just a memory."
"Probably," I said, sipping my gingerbread latte.
She was going to try to talk me out of leaving school, say I'm overreacting, echo the voice in my head.
"So," she started. I gulped. "This makes four things now," she finished.
I sighed in relief and said, "yeah."
"Well, your dad's strange passing and the insane amount of money; and now you wailed on those guys like you're a samurai and Comstock let you off without even a call home? That's four." she thoughtfully chewed on the end of her straw.
"I said 'yeah', not 'yeah?'."
"Oh."
"Yeah."
I thought a minute, about what I'd realized before she got here, but she cut me off, "You don't think this is like, repressed angst for your father or something? I mean all these weird things, they're not like a coincidence y'know? There's some... thing going on."
I looked at her. "Totally," I said.
"And actually," I continued, "there's five things. I also, since the 'fight' have felt.. different."
"Different how?"
"I don't know, it seems like I'm seeing things different; thinking differently. In Mr. Comstock's office, I was paying attention to everything, making assumptions about him and his life based on tiny things like eyeglass pad imprints on his nose and that all the fancy books on his shelf had never been opened. I usually don't know what color people's eyes are if I've known them for years. Now I'm remembering eyeglass pad imprints? Who notices those things?"
Amy thought for a moment, then she smiled and covered her eyes with her right hand. "What color are mine?" she asked.
I sighed and said, "Green. And your ears are pierced twice but you only wear one pair now so the upper piercings are going to close soon. Your shoes are Vans, gray and blue, with the laces tied at the top and the ends tucked in. Your keys are in the left outer pocket of your jacket and there are two keys on the fob besides your car and house key."
She looked at me silently, probably trying to figure me out.
"The guy to my right," I continued, "two tables over, is a smoker and either cheats on his wife or recently lost a lot of weight. He's about 38, 188 pounds, and works in an office within a quarter mile of here. The lady behind you is either married to or the mother of someone who recently became blind. There are nine people total in this place, two exits (one with an alarm) and unless the Brinks truck pulling into the parking lot is for the place next door, there's between three and five thousand dollars in the safe right now."
I drank the last of my coffee.
"Umm," Amy started, "so, yeah, five." She bit her bottom lip for a moment, and looked around the room. "Cheats on his wife?" she asked at last.
"Yeah, or lost weight. Actually, yeah, cheats on his wife. His wedding ring is loose, it moved a bit when he moves his hand, he probably takes it off a lot. He also keeps eyeing the brunette behind the counter and gave you two glances when you came in. He might have just lost weight since he had his ring sized, but that suit is tailored nicely but is at least two years old. Cheats on his wife."
"This seems familiar somehow," Amy said, looking back to me.
"Well," I said, "it's kind of exactly like a scene in The Bourne Identity."
"Never saw that," she said.
"Really? It's the best movie ever. This guy is pulled from the Mediterranean with no memory and two bullets in his back, later finds out he was a CIA hitman but botched a job and got shot. Before he figures that out, he wonders why he knows all of the license plate numbers on the cars outside a diner he's in and all that. You'd be Franke Potente."
"Ok," she said, "is it possible that you're a CIA hitman and don't remember it?"
"Not likely," I said.
"So you're serious about leaving school?" she asked.
"Yes."
"So we should put together these mysteries and try to figure them out. Maybe get some leads."
Ok...
So we put everything on the table, started jotting things down on paper napkins. There were five points of weirdness but only two of them had workable leads. My dad dying, the only connection could be that it had something to do with the Corps. The money, there's nothing to follow up on. Whether or not I demonstrated an abnormal physical proficiency with that fight, there's no loose ends. Same story with my suddenly acute attention span. The only thing with a lead was Comstock's abnormal behavior.
"There is something," I said.
"What?" Amy asked.
"When I was in Comstock's office, he got a call from someone. I could almost swear they were talking about me. It was right before he told me I was in no trouble, but it almost seemed like he didn't want to. On the phone he said 'I don't know if I can make that float,' and 'it's going to be expensive'."
"As if someone was paying him to get you off the hook?"
"And he was ever-so-subtly trying to ask for more money because he went totally off the book and could get in trouble." I said, circling "Comstock" on the list of leads.
"So who would pay to keep you out of trouble?" Amy asked.
"My guardian angel," I said. "Someone who either really likes me, or doesn't want a lot of attention on me or the fight."
"And how do we figure out who that is?" she asked.
I crossed my arms and thought for a minute. "Bank records," I said, "I'll need to see his bank account."
"Aaaaand, how do we do that?" Amy asked, "Hack the bank database with our magical CTU computers?"
"Looks like I lied," I said, "looks like I will be going back to school."
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