Part I provided the background of a unique bank fraud investigation.
No one had any notion of the unreal turn negotiations would take.
Centuries from now,
post-civilization archeologists will discover deep, mystifying gouges in the
concrete walls of a skating rink in Greensboro, North Carolina. Those ragged
furrows came about this way…
The Queen Unseen
Previously I’d
uncovered an unusual fraud perpetrated upon a Virginia bank. The bankshares
officials sent me to Greensboro to negotiate with the unlikely scammer.
I was willing to bet
the miserly VP had booked the motel. It smelled like cheap motels everywhere, a
musty mix of stale food, sex, and disinfectant. It featured two beds, a TV
remote control bolted to the nightstand, and lots of cardboard stand-ups
advertising the dining room, deals for my next visit, Dillard’s Rent-a-Car, and
dial 6 for room service. The cardboard junk I swept into a drawer so I could
open up my suitcase. Tomorrow, the maid would redecorate the room with new
cardboard stand-ups.
I hung shirts on
stupid hangers that featured nubbins instead of hooks. Someone had left two
wire coat hangers behind. Thanks to cable television, frequent travelers no
longer needed to use one as a TV antenna, but having one to keep the toilet
from running helped in the middle of the night.
I sat on the bed and
dialed Sandman’s number. Another cardboard stand-up informed me local calls cost
75¢. That would bring a frown to the face of Data Corp’s very tight vice
president.
“Yo, this is Dan Sandman.
We’re ready. Be there in fifteen minutes. Oh, I forgot– I’m bringing my
girlfriend, Justine.”
Before my speaking
with Sandman, Chase had filled me in about Justine, and Sandman revealed more
in our conversation not long ago. Some years older than Danny, his girlfriend
was married to an oblivious husband.
She certainly
annoyed the hell out of Chase and not because of morals. Chase intimated she
involved herself as more than a mistress. She interfered with the business he
and Sandman put together. She interjected herself in the middle of discussions.
Chase also thought she was a little too flirtatious.
Another hypothesis was
developing.
A knock rapped on
the door.
Sandman stood nearly
a foot shorter than me with an average build, neither athletic nor chubby, barely
a slight pudginess around the edges from Moon Pies. His sandy hair was short,
but he kept brushing an invisible lock away from his eyes. He bore a pale
complexion not from sun screens, but computer screens.
His girlfriend constituted
another matter altogether, a dishwater blonde with blonder streaks, slender, pneumatic
push-up cleavage, and skirt by Saran-wrap. In heels, she stood a couple of
inches taller than Sandman. A lupine awareness hovered about her, a feral
aura of a Jerry Springer guest loose on the veldt. She looked pretty in a tough,
Tonya Harding way.
I found it difficult
to picture her with a didactic like Sandman, a guy who listened to
Shostakovich and read whenever he wasn’t writing. Well, maybe not so difficult
to figure out– she insistently molded bulging parts against him.
From under her
lashes she locked her gaze on me. My hypothesis was becoming a theory. They’d
brought a shopping bag heavy enough that Sandman carried it in his arms rather
than by its handles.
He said, “We were
supposed to go out to dinner, but maybe we could order in pizza. Eat it here
and talk.”
“Sure. What do you
like on yours?”
We ordered a large artery-clogger
with extra cholesterol, bound to be tasty. Recalling Sandman’s preference, I
added two litres of Pepsi.
I got down to
business. “The bank authorized me to verify the source code– no more tricks–
and pay you a final fee.”
“I brought a
listing.” He patted the shopping bag like a baby’s tummy. “Let me show you the
program.” From the bag, he reverently pulled a binder of old-school perforated
green-bar, 14×11, six inches thick. Definitely large enough.
Sandman held it in
his lap for a moment longer, a young mother not wanting to put her baby in
someone else’s hands. He said, “Let me show you the code now, so we don’t pizza smear it later.”
Involved with his
own self-centered agenda, Chase had come off insensitive to this guy’s inner needs,
missing the essential clues.
Danny opened the
listing on the motel coffee table and gently smoothed a page with evident pride.
Few people could appreciate his accomplishment and he desperately needed a
professional and, better yet, a cognoscente to validate his work.
I scanned it.
Titles, section headings, comments, labels now made sense. It stopped short of my
persnickety
standard of documentation, but the code was excellent, even brilliant. I told
him so.
He hovered over me,
pointing out snippets he was particularly proud of. Perhaps a hundred people in
the world could appreciate his creation and he was not wasting this opportunity.
A willing audience, I effusively praised his masterpiece.
Justine hovered by
his side, watchful. Like hearing foreigners speak, she followed the buzz if not
the intricacies. Throughout, she kept some part of her body touching his, not
so much affectionate as proprietary. When her eyes turned on me, they gave the
feeling of being x-rayed.
Tap on the door.
Pizza man. Sandman carefully closed the listing and, with unconscious
veneration, placed it back in the shopping bag. I noticed external drives, mag
tapes, and a second, thin listing. “My encryption program,” he said.
The pizza was a
social convention, a bonding device for minds and ribs. When Sandman and
Justine turned to their shared enthusiasm for roller skating, she grew
animated. “I love skating,” she said. “It’s where we met. My, ah, husband
doesn’t skate. Do you like skating?”
“I like the Dire Straits song.”
“Have you ever tried
it?” Danny asked.
“Me? Never. I’m a
klutz and a menace. Klutzes that value their skin and bones don’t skate.”
 |
Oh hush! Anyway, it has 4 feet.
© Inside Edition |
“You never learned?”
“I suffered a
deprived childhood. It happens when you’re raised by wolves.”
She sniggered.
“Competition we like best, skate dancing. You’d have fun chasing a girl in a very
short skirt, wouldn’t you?”
“I’d need to master
the art of standing up.”
Sandman finished his
pizza. He dabbed his mouth with a paper serviette. His eyes flicked to the
shopping bag with the goodies.
He said, “About the
fee, you know we want serious money.”
We. He kept using plural pronouns.
I said, “Don’t get
too ambitious. The company isn’t in a mood to be trifled with.”
“You know the
software is worth at least a couple hundred thousand, probably two-fifty, maybe
more. They could make millions off this.”
“What I know is that
they feel hijacked, Dan. You put their investors and customers at risk. They’re
upset. You have their attention, but don’t overplay your hand.”
“The obfuscation was
just a joke on Chase,” he said petulantly. “Why else would I sell it so cheap?”
“Their contract
doesn’t have the word ‘joke’ in it. They’re not laughing. Chase was acting for
the bank. Sending me here is an expediency. They figure you owe them, but
they’re willing to pay a ransom if they can put this mess behind them.”
“I owe them?”
“Dan, you
miscalculated. Sure, Chase might lose his job, but involving bank investors,
you lost hearts and minds. You viewed it as getting a bonus $5000 to screw Chase, but you put Data Corp at risk with bank customers. At worst, they perceive Chase as naïve, trusting a
deceiver, a fraudster who lies, cheats, and steals.”
He turned paler.
“Jesus, I never looked at it that way.”
“They don’t like negotiating
with a gun to their head, but they’ll ransom the package if they can.”
“How much?”
“How much are you
asking?”
Sandman glanced at
Justine. Some silent communication transpired.
“Listen,” he said,
“let’s go our own way this evening. We’ll reconvene tomorrow. We want to invite
you skating. Let’s get to know each other better and then we’ll talk. OK? It’ll
be fun. OK?”
It wasn’t okay, but options
were limited. I nodded. “Sure.”
Sandman put his hand
on the shopping bag. “We’ll, ah…” He seemed strangely uncertain. “We’ll take
the program with us for now.”
I looked at them– Sandman
timid, she suddenly tense. I realized each person in that room thought the same
thing. I was considerably taller, broader, with more muscle mass. I could
physically seize the listings and tapes from them, heave their asses out the
door and leave them nothing.
For a moment they
feared they’d misjudged, but the instance passed. They got me right the first
time. Not an enforcer, never a bully, that’s not my style. I wouldn’t thump
someone over computer code no matter how justified it might be. Doing the wrong
thing wouldn’t accomplish the right thing. He’d placed himself and others in a
precarious legal and ethical situation, but he nevertheless deserved
compensation for his product.
Relieved, clutching
their package, they backed out of the room, waving and saying, “Tomorrow, lunch
time, we’ll pick you up.”
Reporting 1
I phoned the vice
president at home and filled him in. He was a man of rectitude. He didn’t
approve of a Sunday spent in a roller rink negotiating a shady deal with, in
his view, a whoring shyster, but he understood the necessity.
“What’s your take on
the situation?” he asked.
“Not positive. This
girlfriend of his, she’s the wild card, the real problem. What do you know
about her?”
“Almost nothing.
Just that she’s, ah, a married woman of doubtful moral character. Why?”
“I think she’s
running him. Behind the scenes, she calls the shots.”
“Like he’s the
mistress? How do you make that out?”
“My theory, she fancies
he’s Bill Gates and she’s Melinda without that pesky desire to rescue starving
people on the other side of the world. Maybe it’s the skating thing, but I keep
thinking Tonya Harding. Together, they’re a salad of Bud and Lou.”
“So?”
“It wasn’t strictly Sandman’s
idea to scam us. She figured they could wring out more money this way. If
Sandman has ceded the decision-making to her, I doubt we can reach a deal.”
“Much as it goes
against my grain, this one time we’re offering him a chance to do right.”
“She thinks everyone
is unscrupulous like she is. Her idea of business conduct entails screwing the
other guy first. Given a path of crooked or straight, her twisted instincts
choose crooked. Then after driving the bus off a cliff, she blames others.
Sandman realizes they screwed up. She doesn’t.”
“I’m not sure I
follow.”
“They assume their goals
are the same, but I don’t think she cares all that much about him, just the
money he represents. Sandman lashed out at Chase, but he’d prefer to
settle this with minimal fuss. The woman seeks to screw as much money as
possible out of the bank, and that’s still her goal. Making more money playing
it straight wouldn’t occur to her.”
“If they’d been truly
smart, he would have negotiated an optimum price, not a token amount. Then
charged us again for continued maintenance and development, which we probably
would have agreed to do.”
I said, “Instead of
giving value and getting rewarded for it, petty spite and greed guides them.”
“Hmmm. Ever skated
before?”
“No. The thought of
me skating represents a danger to society.”
He surprised me by
chuckling.
“Good luck. The
person most agile remains standing at the end of the day.”
The Great Roller Skating Caper
They dropped in at
noon on the dot. Her skating skirt covered most of both cheeks. She twitched her
bottom against him as we walked to their car. On the ride over, she tucked a
hand high inside his thigh.
The front third of
the skating complex sported a store and rental shop, plus a snack bar on the
left. The rest of the building encompassed a low-walled oval– the rink. Rock
music and kiddie shrieks and squeals echoed off the concrete walls.
Sandman helped me
pick out skates. Justine knelt to lace them on me, her breasts nearly tumbling
out of her top. She momentarily rested my socked foot against her bare thigh
before giving my sole a covert caress and slipping it into the boot. Truly a
woman of subtlety and international distinction.
One at each of my
elbows, they led me like a doomed gladiator into the arena. If given roller
skates, many more Romans would have fallen on their swords.
They left me
standing and backed away, leaving me on my own. Standing was the key word,
because I didn’t know how to move. I shuffled my feet. Zoop. Zoop. Nothing,
nothing happened.
I moved one foot,
then the other, only to find I was still standing in the same place. Wait. I’d
studied physics, mechanics, the science of momentum. I should be able to figure
this out. Balance on one wobbly leg and cautiously push away with the side of
my other skate.
Oops.
Twelve-year-olds
hoisted me off the floor. They knew naught about physics, but they’d cultivated
a sense of their bodies on wheels that had escaped my edification.
Clinging to the low
wall, I tugged myself along by my fingernails. The waist-high barrier circled
only half way around. The rest of the rink was enclosed by the building’s cinder
block walls, walls I hugged with intimacy.
I clawed my way
around the perimeter. I dared not venture more than two feet from the wall so I
could pull myself up. My fingers left gouges in concrete blocks still embedded
today. A thousand years hence, archeologists will conclude the scarred
oval housed a circus of unmanicured Jurassic Park III raptors.
For some reason,
girls helped me to my feet but not guys. Possibly it was a center of gravity
thing, or maybe if guys stopped to help, they couldn’t get going again. Or
perhaps I’d proved an embarrassment to the male population.
Meanwhile, Sandman
and Justine whirled and twirled, skating away to the music. Legs outstretched,
his fingertips lightly on her waist, hands clasped, they gazed blissfully
toward the stars. On skates, he appeared a whole lot taller. Not taller than
her, just taller than me struggling to rise from the floor.
Every time I face
planted, this toddler on skates and sucking a knuckle stared eye-level at me.
Why was a munchkin two Lego bricks tall judging me? I had a lot farther to fall
than he.
A charming skater,
the kind that prompts males to upshift mass from their abdomen to their chest,
hovered over me. With gorgeous padding in all the right places, she offered
advice. “Lean forward and stick your bottom out.” Easy for her to say, she was
beautifully counterbalanced.
I made one and a
half circuits to my hosts’ twenty-three thousand or so, when I realized I needed
to visit the restroom. “Behind the food court,” the charming advice chick said.
 |
| Typical roller rink after too many tumbles. Note slight incline of floor. © Huffington Post |
I worked my way to
the gate and pulled myself hand-over-hand along the rail toward the snack bar.
There I encountered an insurmountable problem. The floor suffered a sight
incline, imperceptible to anyone but a novice on skates. To me, it sloped 160° uphill,
and I didn’t have ropes and pitons to master it. I churned skates, but stayed
right where I was.
Spotting the
problem, two teenage girls took pity on me. Still on skates themselves, they
towed me upslope to the restroom door. O sweet rescuing girls; had they been
older, I might have proposed out of sheer gratitude.
The men’s room was
laid out with ‘the facilities’ on one side, sinks on the other. I clomped over
to the porcelain and discovered another problem. Curse the contractor, the
floor’s slope continued in the loo. I found myself rolling away from the
urinals. Damn. For a meticulous guy, this wouldn’t do; no one was going to mop
up after me.
I angled the skates and
locked my heels together, but the muscle tension discouraged kidney
participation. Finally, I did the obvious and grabbed the pipe like a carousel
horse and held on. That allowed me to ‘complete my business’ as my grandmother
might have said. Someone more sensible would have simply entered the toilet
stall.
I turned my
attention to the sinks. There I encountered the opposite problem where the
floor sloped toward the basins. Angling toes trying as I might, I kept rolling
into them. I’d soap my hands, push off, lather, push off, rinse, push off… at
least in theory. The front of my pants looked like the accident I was trying to
avoid.
For once those warm
air hand dryers proved useful. I aimed their nozzles at the front of my jeans
and held the buttons on. A couple of locals wandered in, eyed the disheveled madman,
the blow dryers, and the saturated floor, shot each other looks and backed out
again.
Outside, the two
girls smiled at me, waving me over. “How did you make out?”
“Trust me, you don’t
want to know. I looked like a poster child for poster children.”
That brought more
giggles. They steered me toward a food court plastic chair where I collapsed.
Sandman and his
woman had just finished their final pirouette et pad-á-deux of the
entire Swan Lake ballet. They glided out of the enclosure and up to my table.
Unlike me, they barely broke a sweat.
He affectionately
brushed a strand of hair out of her eyes. She glanced sharply around. “Not
here,” she hissed, but she covered her rebuke by surreptitiously squeezing his thigh.
Sandman pulled out a chair for her and she sank gracefully into it. I was envious of their ease
on wheels, but if my awkwardness charmed teenage girls, maybe there was still
hope for me.
Sandman laughed. “We’ll
say one thing for you. You’ve got guts.”
We sipped coffee and
Cokes for a few minutes.
“Tell me,” Sandman
said, “what the numbers are.”
“Pardon?”
“The numbers… how
much they’re offering. A quarter million?”
I had a horrible
feeling the bank radically underestimated these two. Or overestimated,
depending on how one looked at it. No number was going to satisfy them.
“They authorized
much, much less. I’m talking what you can walk away with this weekend, no
questions asked. Name high numbers like that, I have to call in and they debate
whether or not to accept. Good chance you could get half your quarter mil,
perhaps a little more if you’re willing to wait through the week, but odds drop
if you try to wring out much more.”
Justine’s face
clouded. Sandman flicked a glance at her but all he said was, “Let’s drive back
and change. We’ll pick you up for dinner.”
I looked forward to
famed North Carolina slaw and barbecue, but their palates weren’t adventurous.
Instead, we visited a family restaurant. Sandman and I chatted technical
trivia, operating system internals, stuff of interest only to computer geeks.
Were the circumstances different, I might have hired him to work for me.
Justine crushed her
breast against his arm while shooting me feral looks. Her leg brushed mine
twice, hard to say if it signified more than accidental contact. My instinct
suggested it did.
“One twenty?” said Sandman.
“Yes, can do.”
“One twenty-five?”
“Quite likely.”
“It’s worth more
than that.”
“It was worth
more than that, but they’re wounded, embarrassed, made fools of. Your shot
across the bow at Chase injured them and damaged your credibility. You placed
their bank and reputation at risk.”
Justine placed her
lips against his ear and whispered something.
“So they should be
willing to pay more, shouldn’t they?”
“They’re willing to
pay less. Don’t get greedy, Dan. Pigs go to slaughter. I can’t impress
upon you enough you’re not dealing from a position of strength. Mess around further
and you’ll blow the deal. Be timely about it. I can’t advise you any more
seriously.”
“You have his
interests at heart?” Justine asked me, but the message was for him.
I said, “I have our
interests at heart. The company has a limit how much they’re willing to deal,
how much they’re willing to risk, and how much they’re willing to tolerate before
cutting their losses.”
“That would leave
the product up in the air.”
“No, that would
leave the product dead and buried. You sold it to them; they own it.”
Wheels turned,
though I couldn’t track where they headed. These two lived in a land of
make-believe with no notion how the business world operated.
As I left the tip,
they ambled out with their heads together. In the car, they pointed out
features of Greensboro as he drove toward the motel. They stayed in the vehicle
as I walked around to his window.
“Dan, what do I tell
the executives in the morning?”
He waited an uncomfortable
half minute before answering. “Tell them we’re in no hurry to accept.”
Did my not-to-tarry warning
trigger a contrary response? Trying to keep exasperation out of my voice, I
said, “What does that imply? How close or far apart are we?”
“It means… It means
go home and think about it and we’ll go home and think about it. Then perhaps
we’ll talk again. Perhaps not.”
“Don’t try their
patience, Dan. They’re already put out.”
He shrugged, smiled,
and offered his hand. I shook it. Pressed tightly against him, she reached out
and shook mine too. I turned and strolled back to my room.
Report 2
Despite the late
hour, back in Virginia folks waited to hear from me. The vice president asked
if I thought I could resolve this impasse in the next day or so. I had to say
no.
“Go home, man. We’ll
be in touch. Thank for trying.”
Over the next two
and a half weeks, I spoke with Chase every few days. He’d ask clarification of
some detail; I enquired about the situation’s progress. Twice I casually
reached out to Sandman. He enjoyed talking tech, but steered away from closing
a deal.
The notice came unexpectedly,
a call from the bankshares president himself. He instructed me to fly once
again to Greensboro. No one expected we would witness an entirely different
battle of wits in Part III.
