“Special Agent Jeffries will see you now, Mr. Lewis.” Carol Taylor looked up at the heavy-set man who had been standing in front of her desk for the past ten minutes pacing in a circle. She nodded to the office door.
Bertrand Lewis swallowed hard and felt his Adam’s apple twitch. He took two steps toward the door then turned back and picked up a large briefcase he had left next to Carol’s desk. He turned to the door again but suddenly froze.
“Where’s the men’s room?” he timidly asked.
“Just go out the door and make two rights.”
Carol walked into Maureen’s office and said, “There goes a ball of sweat. Take it easy on this guy. He looks like he’s about to pass a kidney stone.”
“Such a lovely image you just put in my head,” Maureen said. “If he’s not back in five minutes, I nominate you to go knock on the bathroom door.”
Five minutes later. “Here he comes.” Carol headed back to the front desk. “Please go right in, Mr. Lewis.”
IRS Special Agent Maureen Jeffries stood and extended her hand to the nervous man. After feeling his damp palm, she immediately regretted being civil. She had done hundreds of these interviews, and yet the routine never got old.
“Ma’am, I know there’re some issues with my prior tax returns…but…you see I…” Bertrand stopped in mid-sentence as he switched his oversized briefcase from one hand to the other.
He really does look like he’s about to pass a kidney stone, Maureen thought.
A brown-skinned man with a head full of disheveled, white hair, Bertrand also looked like he had slept in his suit.
Maureen directed him to a chair opposite her side of the desk. She remained standing. It was an old tactic the veteran agent liked to use with hard cases. She would slowly walk to the other side of her large office, retrieve big bound copies of the tax code, and place them on her desk next to a folder conspicuously labeled with the taxpayer’s name. This move usually got her guest to understand that this was not going to be a brief meeting. To her surprise, Bertrand Lewis came without legal counsel. He was either totally cocky or totally clueless.
Maureen took her seat, opened the folder, and said in a very serious tone, “Mr. Lewis, you’ve had a string of bad luck recently, and I’m not referring to your unfiled personal returns.” She stared at her guest as he took a deep breath and cleared his throat.
“What can I say, ma’am? Either somebody hates me, or I’m cursed.” Bertrand tried to laugh but hiccupped instead.
“All three of your tax refund locations were burglarized last month. I would say there’s definitely something working against you.”
Bertrand seemed confused by the agent’s comment. “Uh…Ms. Jeffries…I have cooperated with local authorities, and I have directed my employees to do the same.”
“Have you notified your customers of their personal information being stolen and offered them any credit protection services?”
The rotund man twisted his lips and seemed offended by the question. “Yes, Ms. Jeffries, my company’s general counsel has notified all concerned parties.” He briefly returned her stare.
A recent investigation aired by 60 Minutes had embarrassed the IRS and made several of Maureen’s colleagues look lazy if not incompetent. Apparently, identity thieves were raking in huge amounts of money by filing fraudulent tax returns and receiving refunds. Bertrand Lewis’ sloppy handling of client data, a barely trained staff, and a cheap security system had only made the fraud much easier.
Despite the bad publicity, Special Agent Jeffries was still proud of her nearly twenty years of service with the Agency. Straight out of high school, she worked in an admin support position for two years with Richmond PD. She then obtained an accounting degree and became an entry-level agent with the IRS. Four years later, she entered her current position in the criminal investigations unit. Some weight lifting and a steady four-mile run every evening helped her maintain her five-nine athletic build, and a good pick-up game of basketball didn’t hurt either.
“And ma’am, I’m part of this community too,” Bertrand went on, “and I’m stunned by what happened.”
Maureen caught Bertrand eyeing the picture she proudly hung on the wall directly behind her. It was a photo of her accepting a community service award from a local LGBT organization. She noted the slight sneer on his face as he pulled out a handkerchief and wiped the sweat from his hairline.
“Mr. Lewis, you were asked to come in today because dozens of your company’s recent customers had tax returns fraudulently filed under their names and social security numbers.” She waited for a response.
Bertrand tucked the soiled handkerchief back into a wrinkled pocket and said, “Believe me, ma’am, if I had any information about who broke into my locations, I would gladly tell you. But like I told the police, I don’t have a clue.”
Special Agent Jeffries didn’t believe a word he was saying. But as long as he was in the mood to talk without a lawyer, she intended to squeeze as much out of him as possible.
***
Maureen rubbed the back of her neck and sat on the edge of Carol’s desk. She was finally done with her guest who made a beeline for the men’s room the second he left her office. “Why do I feel like I need a shower?” she said.
“Because you spent the whole morning talking to a man who was feeding you crap and sweating all over your desk.”
“You paint such lovely images, Carol.”
“Thanks. It comes naturally.”
Maureen looked at the clock on Carol’s desk. “It’s almost one thirty. Have you had lunch yet?” “Not yet. Jackie’s running a little late, but she’ll be here soon to cover for me.”
The phone rang which seemed to give Maureen an instant boost.
“Special Agent Jeffries’ office. How may I help you?” Carol listened for a moment and said into the receiver, “Hello again, Detective Winston.”
Maureen was up and back at her desk before Carol could finish.
Carol placed the call on hold and poked her head into Maureen’s office. “Well, shut the front door! If you had jumped any higher, you would’ve hit the ceiling.”
“Back to work, you slacker,” Maureen joked. She picked up the receiver, pushed the line button, and leaned back in her chair. “Hello, Detective Winston. How are you?”
Olivia thought, I just got better. Aloud, she said, “Not bad. How are you?”
“I had an interesting morning with Bertrand Lewis,” the agent said as she slipped off her loafers under her desk.
“That’s why I’m calling. Did he have any leads on who might’ve done the burglaries?”
Maureen thought, You mean you’re not calling just to talk to me? “He pleaded total ignorance. But I suspect it’s money related.”
“How so?”
Maureen flipped through her Lewis file. “His profit and loss statements for the last three years show declining but still okay revenue streams. However, the bank statements for the same time period don’t show any substantial deposits other than enough to cover payroll. But even that dropped off. So I’m thinking he was burning through cash as soon as it came in the door--probably on gambling.”
Why do you think it’s gambling?”
“I could pretend it was a good guess on my part, but it was all the poker chips that fell out of his briefcase he knocked over when he ran to the bathroom for the third time.” Maureen stood up and stretched.
“So maybe we’re looking at a gambling debt gone bad?” Olivia asked.
“Maybe. There was a large deposit of a hundred twenty thousand dollars about ten months ago. About half of that was eaten up by payroll while he sent the rest to us to apply toward back taxes. So--”
“So where does a man with a failing business and a bad gambling habit get a lump sum of a hundred twenty grand?”
“The answer may break both our cases.” Maureen brushed her hand across her dark-brown cheek and ran her fingers through her short, curly fade. “Of course, Mr. Lewis claims the money was earned by hard work and dedicated employees.”
“You got more than I did,” Olivia said. “When I talked to him, all I got was something about him being cursed and his insurance company dropping him. The employees at each location seemed up-front. But they didn’t know much about Lewis’ financial situation. As long as their paychecks cleared, everything was fine.”
Maureen heard several beeps and what sounded like a microwave starting.
Olivia continued, “We got nothing on the security video either--images were too grainy. But we’re still running all fingerprints through our system.”
“Those fraudulent refunds were routed to untraceable bank accounts in Atlanta,” Maureen said as she slipped her shoes back on. “I’ve got calls in to our office there. Also, Atlanta PD told our guys that some local thugs were making noise about free tax money. I think I may need to take a quick trip down there this week.”
“Now there’s an Atlanta connection?” Olivia asked.
“Could be, Olivia.” Both were silent for a moment. “Sorry, I get a little slow when I’m hungry.”
“No problem, Maureen,” Olivia said. “Your cyber guys working the Internet angle?”
“Yeah, but they say it’s like searching for a dime in the ocean.”
“We may get lucky on our end. I’ve got a friend who’s very good at hunting for info on the Net. So go get some lunch, and I’ll be in touch again.
***
Olivia waited for the microwave to count down. As she leaned back against the counter and read the latest postings on the break room bulletin board, she wondered what Special Agent Jeffries was having for lunch and if she had a favorite dish. “I’ve got a silly crush,” she mumbled and laughed at herself.
The microwave beeped, and the smell of roasted turkey filled the room when Olivia popped open the microwave door. She blew on the hot string beans and sprinkled them with black pepper.
Lunch in hand, she went back to the squad room where she found her partner at his desk. Marcus Rowland sat opposite her and was about to dig into veggie lasagna his wife made once a week at his request.
“Boy, that smells good,” Olivia said as she sat down. “When is Phyllis going to give that recipe to my grandma?”
“Never, my friend. She guards it like she guards her checkbook.”
“Can you blame the woman? You buy enough tools to open your own car repair shop.”
“A man’s gotta have a hobby,” Marcus said before cramming a fork full into his mouth. “Mmm, now I remember why I love that woman.” A bite of garlic bread was next.
Marcus Rowland, in law enforcement for nearly thirty years, had been Olivia’s partner for the last seven after transplanting from D.C. Besides a known obsession with drill bits and overpriced pliers, Marcus was also obsessed with 1970s “shoot first then take names” blacksploitation films. And Olivia loved to kid him about how he worked to look like Shaft--with a tightly trimmed afro and a matching mustache, minus the bellbottoms and turtleneck. Thankfully, Detective Rowland’s work as a cop was better than his taste in movies.
“You’re humming,” he said.
“What?”
“You were humming. Either Mrs. Jones put something extra in that bird, or you just talked to a certain somebody.”
Olivia tried to give Marcus a fake mean stare but was too busy enjoying the bacon bits on her string beans.
“Have you asked her out yet?”
Olivia choked. She grabbed a napkin before green stuff flew everywhere.
Marcus snickered. “I guess that’s a no.”
Olivia wiped her mouth and took a sip of water. “You did that on purpose, you tool freak.”
“I’m just very observant, Detective.”
“There’s nothing to observe. We’re just keeping each other updated.”
“Right. Does she have a girlfriend?”
“What?! How would I know that? Just eat your lunch.”
“Okay, okay.” But Marcus wasn’t done. “What kind of gun does she carry?”
Olivia threw her hands up in frustration. They both started laughing so loud that it caught the attention of everyone in the squad room.
“You guys are having too much fun,” a uniformed officer said on her way to the copy room.
“Can we please get through lunch?” Olivia asked.
Marcus pulled out the Lewis burglary file and logged into his computer. “Quick update?” he asked after another bite of bread.
“Sure,” Olivia said before a scoop of coleslaw.
Marcus thumbed through the file. “So far, all fingerprints belong to employees, and no one has a criminal record other than a few misdemeanors--none involving theft.” Marcus pulled up more information on his computer screen. “Bertrand Lewis appears to be clean--no criminal record, no outstanding warrants. But there was an incident some time ago. Looks like Mr. Lewis gave an eyewitness statement in a fight that broke out at a private poker game.”
“No surprise there,” Olivia said. “According to Special Agent Jeffries, he may have a bad gambling habit but made a six figure deposit almost a year ago.”
“Then we should have a chat with Vice,” Marcus said, “to see if their contacts know anything about this guy and his gambling buddies.”
“Good idea.” Olivia cleared her screen saver and made a note in the system.
Marcus also made a note in the paper file. “What else?”
“Maureen, I mean, Special Agent Jeffries,” Olivia ignored the smirk from her partner, “said there may be an Atlanta connection because some of the tax refunds were deposited down there.”
Marcus leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head, a position Olivia called his “thinking pose.”
“What?” Olivia asked.
“Does it make sense for a thief to break into a business to get identity info that he could’ve stolen in seconds by just hacking into Lewis’ electronic filing system?”
“What makes you think our bad guy knows how to hack?”
“I don’t. But that info got on the Atlanta streets really quick. So I’m thinking there’s at least one pro involved, at least on the Atlanta end. And any pro these days wouldn’t be relying on break-ins to get info. He’d just tap right into a company’s system by using the Net.”
“I follow you. Pat’s checking with some of her sources to see if there’s any noise about the break-ins.”
Marcus, who trusted his teenage sons with his car more than he trusted the world-wide-web, grunted and made more notes.
***
Olivia rubbed her eyes and logged off her computer. “It’s almost five o’clock,” she said. “I need to swing by my place and pick up my workout clothes. You coming down to the gym after work?” Olivia always asked and always got the same answer.
“I’ll be there in spirit,” Marcus said. The closest Marcus ever got to the Department’s gym was when he passed it on his way to the Department’s shooting range.
“What do you have against working up a good sweat?” Olivia asked.
“I prefer to do my sweating in a sauna instead of on a gym floor,” Marcus said, “and hit a bulls-eye instead of a punching bag.” He patted his gun holster.
Olivia laughed. “See you later, ‘Shaft’.”