Operator - 01 (12 page)

Veronica is about to make an angry retort but I squeeze her hand and she bites her lip. It’s a fair enough reaction, because Veronica’s stomach – or at least her sweater – is washboard-flat. I interject, “We’re not quite ready to talk about that if you know what I mean,” I wink at Edwards, “but we’d like to be in a nice neighborhood. How’s the school system?” I ask, instantly regretting the question. I do want to get inside the house, after all.

“Well, there aren’t many top-rated schools in this area, but Conestoga High School has its advantages,” Edwards says brightly. An emergency room within two miles is all I can come up with.

“So we heard this house just opened up,” Veronica comments, eager to move the conversation away from her reproductive health.

“Let’s see,” Edwards says as she consults her clipboard. “No, you must be wrong, this house has been listed for seven months. I can’t tell you much more because I didn’t rep this property personally. Let’s see who did…hmm, that’s odd. The listing agent is Charles Vanderhook, but I didn’t think he handled any properties personally any more – he’s the founder of our firm.” Edwards looks momentarily puzzled but then shakes it off like a Labrador after a bath and moves purposefully towards the house. She uses a small key to open the lockbox on the door and withdraws the house key. It clicks neatly into the front door lock, which I notice is a new deadbolt in better condition than the rest of the place. Edwards strides purposefully into the house and Veronica and I step in behind her.

The air in the house has a peculiar smell, and Edwards immediately pulls out an embroidered handkerchief and starts waving it around. “I’m so sorry – they really should have aired this place out,” she says as she struggles to open a window. “It’s a bank-owned property,” she adds by way of explanation or apology.

“It’s okay. Why don’t you just give us a moment to take a look around on our own? If we have questions, we’ll ask you,” Veronica says smiling, and pecks me on the cheek. Edwards hesitates for a second, conflicted because she knows she’s not supposed to let us wander unsupervised. Then she sneezes, which makes the decision for her, and she shrugs and steps onto the front stoop as we walk up the half-flight of stairs separating the sunken living room from the bedrooms on the upper level.

I whistle before we even reach the first bedroom. “They really cleaned the place out,” I remark. Veronica looks at me questioningly.

“Look at the door,” I say. I pull the open door towards us until it closes. There is a hole just below eye-level. Then I examine the hole closely. “There was a deadbolt here,” I explain. I move through the room, the bare pine floors creaking. I see holes drilled in the window frame. As we move from bedroom to bedroom, we see identical holes on each door, and the windows in each of the four bedrooms have all been drilled. The rooms are otherwise immaculate, devoid of any sign that a family has lived here just days before. There is a strong smell of disinfectant, as if the house has been scrubbed clean. It isn’t any more pleasant than the sour smell in the living room.

* * *

I lean against the door of the black GTO, my arms crossed in front of me. I flick Mary Edwards’s business card between my fingers like a poker chip, giving the illusion that it is tumbling downhill.

“So what do you think?” Veronica asks me.

“There’s definitely something odd about that house. It wasn’t just deadbolts on the bedroom doors – there were bars on the windows. Whoever lived there was trying to keep someone in, not out.”

“It smelled really odd in there, too. I feel like I know that odor, but I just can’t put my finger on what exactly it was,” Veronica adds, gathering her thoughts for a moment. “Did it sound to you like the owner of that real estate firm was illegally subletting a foreclosed house to that family?”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I was thinking. It sounds like a pretty good sideline for a realtor these days,” I reply, wondering how any real estate agent in this area managed to survive the recession.

“So if these people got scared off and left, doesn’t it make sense that they’d go somewhere else – maybe another house that’s been empty for awhile?” I nod. “So how do we find them? It seems like half this town is vacant.”

“Oh, I don’t think that will be very difficult at all,” I answer, and the ghost of a smile passes my lips.

* * *

“That’ll be $96.35,” the man behind the register tells me, and I wince as I hand over five twenties. I take possession of a handful of helium balloons from the florist along with a hefty vase of flowers. I pause before leaving the shop.

“Listen, I’m going to surprise my girlfriend at work. Is there any chance I could borrow a hat and apron from your shop?”

The florist, an angular man with thinning white hair and a pair of reading glasses perched near the tip of his nose considers the question for a moment. “Can I trust you with the responsibility that goes along with wearing the Phil’s Florist hat?” he asks seriously. I stare at him blankly for a second. Then he smiles. “I’ve got an extra set from my assistant who just quit, but you’ll need to promise to bring them back or give me an extra $20 so I can replace them. I nod and hand the man another twenty.

* * *

Vanderhook Realty is based in a converted row house just off Main Street in Conestoga. Main Street itself shows few signs of life on a cloudy Tuesday afternoon, and the block Vanderhook sits on is positively moribund. The row house at least has a fresh coat of paint in that jaunty yellow that only a real estate agency or an ice cream shop can pull off. As I approach the building, I pull the Phil’s florist cap down low over my eyes.

Any good performer knows that magic is about directing the audience’s eyes to where you want them to be. As I push through the door to Vanderhook Realty, a brace of Mylar helium balloons and a dozen yellow roses almost ensures that nobody is looking at my face. There are six desks on the main floor, but only a couple of agents are here as it’s nearing the end of the day. Veronica has called ahead to ensure that Mary Edwards is not about. I walk over to the receptionist. A plaque tells me that her name is Dolores Ledbetter. She is a middle-aged redhead with long, fake, elaborately lacquered nails and a pen stuck behind her ear that she’s forgotten about. As I approach her I can see that she’s on the real-diets.com website, calculating points for her meals. She looks hopeful as she catches sight of the roses.

“I have a delivery for Mr. Vanderhook,” I say politely but not too warmly. Dolores looks skeptical.

“This is Vanderhook Realty, are you sure those aren’t someone for else here?”

“Uh, it says Charles Vanderhook. Is there someone by that name here?”

“Well, he won’t be here until Thursday,” Dolores looks both cross and uninterested, as the flowers clearly aren’t for her. I can see her reappraising the value of the yellow roses downwards. “Could’ja come back then?”

“Uh, I’m sorry, I kind of have to delivery them now. Umm, I can put them on Mr. Vanderhook’s desk if you want. They’ll keep for a few days if you water them. But they’re pretty heavy so I’d appreciate it if you could point his desk out to me.” Dolores gets up from her station, leaning forward to grab a set of keys. She tries to catch me taking a peek down her sweater but I’m not looking at anything in that vicinity. She sighs and steps around in front of me.

“Okay, I hope you don’t mind a set of stairs,” she says and leads me up to the upper level. Vanderhook’s office is the large one at the end of the hallway. Dolores uses her key to open a deadbolt lock. It’s a large room with a traditional walnut desk with a wingback leather chair between the desk and a matching credenza. A lateral steel filing cabinet sits just inside the door to the right and a small round conference table with two chairs is to my left. I put the vase down on the table, taking a good look out the rear window to the office as I do. There isn’t much of a view through the old paned window. The townhouse shares walls with a hairdresser and a veterinary clinic. Vanderhook’s office looks out back to the small employee parking area shared with the other businesses. There are a few trees between it and the residential buildings behind.

“Should I leave the balloons here or do you want me to put them over there?” I ask, pointing to the credenza on the interior wall. As Dolores looks to where I am pointing to consider, I reach my hand back without looking and thumb open the lock to the window next to Vanderhook’s conference table. My eyes quickly confirm that there’s no jamb or key lock on the frame.

“I wonder who these are from?” Dolores muses, almost to herself.

“You’d be surprised by some of the people who send flowers,” I say and before she can thank me, I’m gone.

* * *

“So this is your idea of a first date? Breaking and entering?” Veronica asks, leaning over me to peer up at the Vanderhook building. It is just after eight and there is still enough traffic around to provide some background noise. A miasma of clouds hovering over the town covers the moon, which should be nearly full tonight. Good luck.

“Do you have addresses for me?” I ask, ignoring the joke. I’ve slipped on a pair of black Chuck Taylors to complement dark jeans and a black fleece over a grey t-shirt.

“I found five residential houses in Conestoga that were listed on the cached version of the Vanderhook website from last week that weren’t listed this week, but two of them were also in the “new sales” column and had the sale price listed. So here are the addresses of the other three – the ones that just disappeared this week, as well as Mel’s address if you don’t remember it,” Veronica hands me a Post-It. I glance at the yellow square, memorizing the addresses, and hand it back.

“Okay, got it. Dial me if anyone pulls into the lot and just drive away. My phone is on vibrate,” I say as I slip from the passenger’s side of the Mercedes. I don’t like using her car. It’s too flashy for Conestoga and too easy to remember, but we can’t use the GTO because Veronica doesn’t drive stick. I’m not thrilled to be breaking into the realtor’s office even after my reconnaissance. This would have been a ridiculously easy job in my old life, but things can always go wrong, and the stakes are very high. If someone calls the cops, I’m going to be sitting in Buddy Peterson’s lockup for a long time to come.

I take a careful look around. The veterinarian and hairdresser are closed for the evening and the lot is vacant except for Veronica’s Mercedes. The parking area is sunken a few feet below the level of the street and shielded by trees, only visible to a single window of an end unit in the neighboring condo complex, which is dark. I don’t see or even feel anyone else within sight. I turn back to Vanderhook’s office and the row house resolves itself into a series of geometric shapes and vectors. It only takes me a couple of seconds to pick my route. There are two windows on the lower floor, spaced about five feet apart. Each window has a side sill protruding from the building by a good three inches.

I step a few paces to the left of the office and give myself a ten-foot runway. I take a deep breath before sprinting towards the structure, angling my approach so that I am nearly parallel to the wall before I jump. I take two steps on the side of the brick building between the two windows, moving myself laterally but also nearly six feet up the side of the building in the process. I hit the side sill of the window on the right with the ball of my left foot and then spring backwards towards the left window, pushing myself up at the same time. In parkour, which has become part of my exercise routine since I started school at Georgetown, the move is called a tic-tac. Pushing back the opposite direction, I hit the side sill of the left window with the ball of my right foot, then use the momentum I generate to spring back to the right window frame, executing another tic-tac that hits just below the top of the frame. One final spring off of my left foot lands me on the top sill of the left frame. I scramble with both feet to find purchase, then flatten my body and hands against the white siding of the house until my momentum diminishes. Finally, I raise my hands and jump three feet up, grabbing the ledge of the upper windowsill, and hoist myself up as quietly as possible. I slip a small can of lubricant from my pocket and squirt the track of the window frame to help the old window move without squealing. Then I raise it slowly. It moves without hesitation. I slide through the open window. It has taken me less than thirty seconds to break into Charles Vanderhook’s office.

Inside the dark room, I stand stock-still, listening attentively. When I hear nothing, I slide the old pane window closed behind me, then lower the blinds and twist them shut. I pull a small headlamp from my jacket pocket and turn it onto the lowest setting as I move to the filing cabinet. It is locked. I briefly considered tipping the entire cabinet up to slip the locking rod by using a hole in the bottom of the metal casing, but the unit is four feet long and looks heavy. I don’t know what kind of noise it might make if I lift it. Instead I carefully slide the improvised lock-pick set I’ve brought along from an inner pocket in my fleece. I’ve cut up a soda can and folded a section over several times to create a shim that I slide into the lock, almost immediately feeling the five pins that are preventing the lock from turning. Then I insert a flattened metal dental pick I’ve picked up for two dollars at Walgreens into the lock below the shim to create tension. With two rakes of the shim, the pins click into place and I am able to twist the lock open.

Breaking into a filing cabinet is never as difficult as making sense of what you find inside, and Vanderhook’s private files are no different. There are tax files, a folder of ancient student loan documents, instructions for every appliance that the man has ever bought and the lease agreement for his Lincoln Navigator in the bottom lateral drawer. The top two drawers all contain real estate files. They seem to be deals that Vanderhook has closed himself, all of them more than half a decade old. None of the folders correspond to the addresses I’ve memorized. After a half hour, I decide I’m not going to have any luck with the files inside the cabinet and I move on. The credenza has more of the same old jumble, as do the filing drawers in the desk. I find an appointment book in the main sliding drawer of Vanderhook’s desk, but it is untouched. I’ve almost given up hope when I noticed the conspicuous absence of dust on the lower right corner of the framed picture of what looks to be the first house Vanderhook ever sold, circa 1960. Sliding my fingers beneath the frame, I feel a latch. Pulling it allows the picture frame to swing out, revealing a wall safe.