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November 12th, 2000
One of
the nice things about having Diane over to my place is the
pool. It's just like the Summer Olympics. In she dives...
splash. Then she's climbing out of the pool, dripping wet,
just like Laura Wilkinson, the American high diver. Except
Diane is even better looking. Yes, I know. Hard to believe,
right?
It was a sunny Sunday in October when it all started. Diane and I were laying around the pool when my cell rang. The woman on the other end was crying in a gentle, sniffling kind of way. Apparently, her husband had invested a lot of their savings into a dot-com investment firm. But it was a scam, and all their money was gone. She asked if I could help.
"You realize my fee is one-third of whatever I recover, " I said as I applied suntan lotion to Diane's very brown back with my free hand.
"A third?" She sniffled some more and coughed.
"Here's the story. Some PI's will piddle around and run up your expenses. Then they say, 'Sorry. Got nowhere.' I don't charge you a penny until I recover your money. And I'm very good at that. I have references."
"I heard about you from a friend. I guess one third is okay. When can you start?"
My plan for the evening was a late afternoon barbecue, then some wine as Diane and I cuddle up on the oversize couch. Then some sweaty rolling around under a strong rush of air from my ceiling fan.
"First thing in the morning okay?"
Rick and Paula Mason's house was a modest one story affair in Mountain View. The suburban neighborhood was typical of the region. Houses that had been built in the 1960s for $30,000 are now worth $300,000. But if you sell the house, the cash you recover, less real estate fees, hardly pays for anything better. Maybe worse. So you stay put or move out of state.
I took Manuel along with me in the Vette. Manuel is the son of Jesus, my former partner. Manuel is about six three and weighs in at something like 215. His hair is short which brings focus to hard but alert brown eyes. He was an Army Ranger for five years before leaving the service last summer. You know about the Army Rangers, right? Those are the ones who think that the Navy Seals are wimps. Army Rangers get on the war paint, slither in the mud at 0300, cut the barbed wire, plant the bombs and cut throats while the rest of the Army waits to go in and clean up the mess. After five years of that, Manuel had no interest in college, so I offered him a job, training with me. It's worked out pretty good.
Mister Mason answered the front door. "Max Hadron?"
"Yep. Carrier of the strong force."
"Huh?"
"Never mind. Mister Mason, this is my colleague, Manuel Martinez. He'll be assisting me on this case."
"Please come in," Mason said as he pushed open the screen door. We sat in a small, dark living room on couches that had seen better days. Presently, Mrs. Mason appeared from the kitchen and offered us some tea. I would have preferred some Glenlivet, but I settled for a cup of apple spice tea. I dug my elbow into Manuel's ribs until he accepted as well.
Rick Mason was a small man, in his late 40s, with black hair graying around the temples and squarish, outdated glasses. His wife Paula hovered around five feet and looked pale, drawn, and fragile.
It took us awhile to coax the story out of them, but basically, mister Mason had come upon an Internet investment firm that offered too-good-to-be-true fees on stock purchases. Mason had sent them a check for $55,000 to set up a money market account and started buying stocks. For awhile, their personal portfolio showed detailed data for the stocks they held and their value. When the value of the whole portfolio got to $81,000, a few months after he opened the account, suddenly everything disappeared. The Website was inaccessible, and phone calls to the "office" in San Francisco were never returned.
I asked if he had contacted the Securities and Exchange Commission. He had, but they couldn't help. The S.E.C. had no idea who this company was or where they had gone. Neither did the police. The Website and his money had vanished.
"Do you have any paperwork? Receipts. Account data? Stuff they mailed you?" I asked.
"Umm. Can't say I do. They claimed their costs were so low because they did everything on the Internet. A 'paperless portfolio,' they called it."
"What's the address... er, the URL? " (Diane is still teaching me all this crazy Internet stuff.)
"www dot paperless portfolio dot com."
"Did you ever print out any of the account data? Perhaps showing a street address in Frisco?"
"I think so. But the only address I ever saw was in an e-mail from them. That's where I sent the money."
"Let's take a look at that. Did your wife tell you my fee?"
"Yes. And we'll be grateful for anything you can recover, mister Hadron." He looked down at the carpet. He knew he had done something really stupid. I didn't particularly feel a need to remind him of that, so I kept my mouth shut. He continued. "I hope there's something you can do."
"I'll get right on it," I said as I smiled my best customer smile. Manuel and I took turns shaking their hands and exchanged a few more pleasantries. On the way out to the Vette, Manual turned to me. "So, Max. This is how you make a living?"
"I know, I know. They're a little on the stupid side. But the fun part's just getting started. By the way, what do you carry these days?"
"A Colt forty-five. Hollow points. Except the first round."
"Huh?"
"Hollow points like a nice warm gun. No jams that way."
"Gee. All I have is a nine millimeter Hechler & Koch."
"Not bad. But I don't mess with sissy guns." He winked at me over the roof as he opened the car door.
I grunted as we climbed into the Vette. I thought to myself... if I can just keep this kid alive long enough to learn this job.
By the time we got home, around Noon, my cell call to Diane had paid off. She'd been on the Internet for almost an hour when we arrived and had lots of stuff for us. We looked at her printouts over hot dogs and a bottle of Samuel Adams. Not only did she track down the office address in Frisco, which I knew would be vacant, but she'd dug around whois until she came up with a name. The first layer was a cover, but Diane knows how to follow a trail. The name she finally came up with was Robert Frabrini, apparently the co-owner of an ISP up in Frisco. Eventually, she dug up an address.
Diane started making phone calls, trying to track down office-place rental records. Manuel and I headed for Frisco to look up mister Frabrini. On the way, we talked.
"I didn't really get to see my dad much these last five years." Manuel had his hand out the car window, rolling his fingers around in the wind.
"He was a fine man. Saved my butt in Iraq. Twice."
"I hope that lawyer, what's his name? Lorensen? I hope he rots in jail for the next thirty years."
"It was supposed to be me that opened the car door you know."
"Yeah, I know. I don't blame you. I blame the bad guys."
"Listen. You follow my lead, right? I know you want to kick some ass, but watch and learn for awhile. No one else is gonna get hurt, okay?"
Manuel let his hand flop around in the breeze and starred straight ahead. He didn't answer. I let him brood.
It turned out that Robert Frabrini had lived in a furnished apartment on Market Street where he'd set up a small ISP service on a business ISDN line and a Linux box. (See? I'm learning.) The Linux PC was still there, but the drive had been removed. The landlord told us Frabrini had moved out last week. No forwarding address, naturally. The guy was very likely in the Cayman Islands by now. I called Bryan Whitcomb at the San Jose police department and asked for a credit card usage dump. Bupkis. Looks like the guy had cashed out and was too smart to let a credit card reveal his whereabouts.
That's where the trail probably ended for the police and the S.E.C. It might have ended there for us as well, but when Manuel and I got back to the house, Diane had dreamed up an idea that was totally brilliant. We were gonna use the Internet itself to catch the slime ball. Unfortunately, it almost got us all killed.
Copyright 2000 by John
Martellaro, All rights reserved. Quantum Threads banner
artwork by Tracy Haynes.
About the Author
John Martellaro lives in Colorado at 2,800 meters above sea level with a Ph.D. wife and two cats, Nikki and Data. He holds a B.S. in Astrophysics and an M.S. in Physics. His hobbies, include amateur astronomy, downhill skiing, bicycling, and listening to piano solos. His personal Macs are a B&W G3/400 with a flat screen Studio Display and a blueberry iBook.
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