An Absence of Light

Chapter 47

“I met Don C. about three years ago,” she said, cradling the coffee in her cuffed hands as she sat at the foot of the bed with her legs crossed yoga-style. Her white blouse was unbuttoned low enough to reveal the long cleavage of her weighted breasts. “Met him in a bar. I was coming off a bad marriage, a bad marriage, and I was depressed and broke. Don struck up a conversation with me, heard my story, and said he could use a kind of gofer girl to help him do his little stuff. That’s what he called it, his ‘little stuff.’ It didn’t take any convincing, that’s for damn sure. Shit, I jumped at it.”

She shook her head, remembering. “Truth is, I would’ve worked for that guy for nothing.” She looked at Lara who was sitting in a chair across from her as if she thought Lara would understand. “Guy’s”-she nodded and lifted an eyebrow wryly-”a stud. A real one. Not some Happy Hour Yuppie, but a guy who’s got muscles and never went to a gym an hour in his life.” She shook her head. “Anyway,” she said, glancing around at Graver who was sitting at the head of the bed with a tape recorder, “all I did was, I went to parking garages and malls and places like that and took manila envelopes from people-it was usually women but sometimes guys-and gave them envelopes of cash in return. I knew it was cash. Don told me. And I knew it wasn’t drugs… I mean, flat manila envelopes? Besides, I opened the ones that weren’t sealed good and looked. Sometimes it was microfiche or computer printouts or just photocopies of documents.”

“What kind of documents?” Neuman asked. He was sitting on the floor leaning back against the wail, his legs straight out on the carpeted floor. He was taking notes on a steno pad.

“Lots of time they were bank records. Sometimes it was corporate information, uh, market research, product development research, sales figures, financial reports, billing records. Anything, everything.”

“Did you always give the money to individuals?”

“Oh, no. Most of the time not. At first I did because Don wanted me to get familiar with them, but not later. Don would give me a key and the money. If the key was to a car trunk in a parking garage, he’d give me the license plate number too. I’d find the car, open the trunk, leave the money, and take the envelope that would be there. Sometimes the key was to a locker at an airport or a mailbox at the post office. A few times even a safety deposit box. The drops could be anywhere. Whatever you could think of.”

“How much money were you paying out?” Paula asked. She was sitting in a chair too, near Lara, her crossed leg swinging nervously.

“Sometimes hundreds sometimes thousands… per person. As much as thirty thousand, as little as a couple of hundred. But I was picking up from the same group of people all this time, same five or six people, so they were turning some serious cash.

“This was kind of my training. I did this for maybe six months before Don got around to talking to me about it, telling me what he was doing and how he was doing it He said he had a client who gave him a shopping list of information he wanted. It was this guy who furnished the money to buy the stuff. Don found the people who could get the information, and then he started running them.

“Anyway, eventually Don turned these people over to me, and I’m still doing it. He passes me information lists, and I pass them on to the right people, make all the buys. It’s so damn easy. The amount of money I get out of it goes up and down sometimes because I get a percentage of what my sources get and what they get depends on the kind of information Don is asking them to come up with. I can’t always count on a certain amount every month, but it’s always cash, for me, for them, all around, and there is so damn much of it it doesn’t matter. I never had so much money.”

“Do you put it all in one account?”

“Oh, hell no. Don taught me how to set up bank accounts all around, spread the money, never deposit more than eight thousand at a time in any one place. That’s his personal, rule-of-thumb cutoff, eight thousand. The thing is, he didn’t want to get the banks suspicious, thinking we were selling drugs, and report us to the cops.”

“He got you the forged driver’s licenses?” Graver asked.

“Yeah. His client can give us any kind of thing we want like that.”

“But you don’t have any idea who the client is.”

Valerie Heath shook her head. “Naw. Nobody knows anybody. I don’t even know Don, for Christ’s sake. I always meet him wherever he says to meet, and he’s always there ahead of me and makes me leave first so I can’t see what kind of car he drives.”

“You’ve never tried to hide and catch him leaving after you?” Paula asked.

Heath waited a beat or two before answering. “Yeah”-she nodded-”once. He caught me. That’s when I found out he knew exactly what I drove. He knows a lot about me. He said if he ever caught me doing that again it was over.” She paused and sipped her coffee. “I was already pulling down almost ninety thousand a year. Cash. I figured knowing more about him wasn’t worth losing that Hell, if he wants to be the mystery man, let him. I’ll take the cash.”

“What about the people you’re buying from? Do they know you?”

“No way. I do just like Don. I use a different first name and last initial with each of them. Debbie E. Linda M. Whatever. Every one of them knows me as somebody different.”

“Do you know any of them?”

“Nope. If one of them drops out for some reason-and I never know why they do, it doesn’t happen very often-Don gives me a new one. First name only. New contact routines. I don’t know them. They don’t know me. I don’t know Don.”

“But he knows you.”

“Yeah.” She nodded. She put her coffee cup between her thighs and raised her hands to fluff her hair. “He does.”

“What kind of business are your people working in?” Neuman asked.

“I got people in two banks, a few law offices, a maintenance service, and an executive secretarial service. The maintenance service guy is the biggest moneymaker.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because this guy isn’t really a janitor. He’s a computer freak, a hacker. The business he works for has the janitorial contract for one of the biggest buildings downtown. There are oil company offices in there, law offices, stockbrokers, real estate people, international businesses. This guy has access to all these offices all night, every night. Don has more laundry lists for this guy than anyone.”

“Do all of your people have the same expertise?” Neuman was making notes frantically, not even looking up to ask the question. “I mean, are they all employed in the same kind of job?”

“No. That’s the thing about this,” Heath said, looking at Lara again. “All of them are fairly low-level. Secretaries, data input clerks. Desk types. That’s why it works. Everybody’s in low-paying jobs and always need the money, but they have access to records. Computers. They can get whatever it is you want on those damn computers. They have all this access, but they aren’t getting paid shit Everybody like that’s strapped for money. It’s easy to buy them. Cash. That’s the thing. I mean, they don’t have any loyalty to those companies. They know damn well if things get tight they’re going to be the first ones to go. They’re not kidding themselves. Big shots-they always think, you know, the average person is dim-witted. Those big companies. It’s like the government Average person gets a chance, they’re going to screw them ’cause they know the company would do the same to them if their profits started suffering. That’s what this shitty economy has taught a lot of people, if nothing else. Cover your ass.”

Valerie polished off her coffee and looked around, waiting for the next question.

Graver asked, “Have you ever heard of a company called DataPrint?”

Valerie Heath pursed her mouth a second and then shook her head. “No.”

“Have you ever heard of a guy named Bruce Sheck?”

Again she gave it a little thought and shook her head. “No.”

“What was the deal with Colleen Synar?” Graver asked.

“That, Jesus. It wasn’t anything. One day Don tells me, Look, if anyone calls you and asks for a Colleen Synar, tell them she moved away a long time ago. I said, What? He said, somebody might call you about her, just tell them she moved away and that’s all you know. That pissed me a little. I didn’t say he could do that, give my number to somebody. He didn’t explain any more than that. I was pissed, but I didn’t say anything else. I was afraid of losing my situation. At that time the money was already coming in big-time. I’d never had anything like that before. I didn’t want to lose it. I worried about it a long time, was scared every time the phone rang. But when nobody ever called I forgot about it… until she called,” she said, nodding at Paula.

“When you want to get in touch with Don, how do you do it?” Graver was leaning back against the headboard of the bed. His tie was undone.

“Telephone number. I call it, leave a message, he calls me back. The number changes every four or five weeks.”

“What’s the number?” Neuman asked.

“Forget it,” she said. “I called him yesterday and the thing’s dead. And I haven’t heard from him.”

“Do you think Don has other people like you, buying information from several sources?”

“Oh, sure he does. He told me. In so many words, anyway.”

“How many other people do you think there are?”

“No idea. He just said this was a big operation. And he had this system down pretty good. Rules. Sometimes when we meet he says something like, well, he’d better get going and run his ‘other’ traps. Gives me the impression I’m not the only one he’s feeding money to and collecting information from.” She thought a moment “To tell you the truth, sometimes I think there might be other people like Don, too. You know, working for this ‘client’”

“Have you ever heard of the name Panos Kalatis?” Graver asked.

She shook her head. “No, I think I’d remember that one.”

“Have you ever heard Don speak of a Greek guy?”

“Greek?” She frowned then shook her head again. “No Greek.”

They talked to Valerie Heath for more than an hour. Twice Lara went downstairs to get her more coffee and once Heath had to stop to go to the bathroom. Though Lara said nothing during all this, Paula, Neuman, and Graver went over and over the information, approaching it from different angles, rephrasing her answers into new questions that put a slightly different perspective on the subject Heath’s responses never wavered, and she responded as candidly as she had thrown off the sheets in front of Neuman and Graver. It seemed that having once decided to give it all up, she did so without reservation. At times it even seemed to Graver that she was oddly relieved to do it. And he noticed, too, that she was responding to the very human emotion of being flattered to be the center of attention.

“If we needed to talk to Don,” Graver said, “how would we get in touch with him?” As he asked this, he took Bruce Sheck’s contributor ID record out of a manila folder and held his picture up in front of her.

“Damned if I know,” she said. “Just that phone number.” Her eyes went to the photograph. She stared at it Slowly her expression changed. “Well, I’ll be damned.” She started nodding slowly, a smile almost forming on her mouth. “That’s him. That’s ol’ Don C. himself.”