Chapter 183: Meanwhile, a Few Loose Ends

Saturday, May 7, 2005

By this time I'd told them my story too, which had mostly been a matter of me saying, "While you were doing that, I was driving to X," where "X" was about the only part of my story that changed from day to day.

There'd been a few interruptions to the smooth flow of story telling. The first occurring early when Prof remembered to ask me where my fake ID and disguise was. I told him I'd hidden them in the car, and he made us go out and get them immediately, "In case the other side searches your car and finds them."

Once we were back inside, Prof said, "I'm tempted to destroy this, but there's probably no need to be so paranoid anymore. It might be useful one day, so I'll hide it away again."

The second interruption was when I'd remembered to offer Prof the balance of his $2,000 back. He said, "Keep it. I wouldn't like to empty your wallet until we're sure everything is back to normal. Besides, we're earning interest on the money at a fairly impressive rate. I don't think a grand or two either way is of much importance."

The third was when I described how I hadn't thrown my cellphone away the way I'd been told to, but had left it turned on and had hidden it in a guy's truck.

That got some laughs, and a comment from Julia, "It's a pity we'll never know how much trouble that caused them." [[I've just finished describing exactly that a few paragraphs above, so obviously I did find out how much trouble it caused them. But not until I researched it for this autobiography.]]

Vanessa said, "Now that you're back, you can report your phone lost. Who's your carrier?"

I told her.

"Same as mine. I've got their number in my phone, let's call them now." Vanessa was doing it as she was talking, so she wasn't really asking a question. A few minutes later my phone was ancient history, thereby saving me from having to listen to all the messages from my LA bank, offering their new, highly valued customer all sorts of wonderful offers on essential services like life insurance, money management, and my "very own customized, personal banking team", who were, I would've been told, "dedicated to serving me." It was sad to think that because I'd canceled my phone, my dedicated team was left languishing in LA, with no contact with the person they'd dedicated their lives to.

"Good," said Julia, "now we can buy you a decent phone."

"You may not want to do that," said Prof. "My Vegas PI told me some horror stories about mobile phones. For the last year or two some of the phones, especially the top-end ones, have had a feature which allows them to load software updates automatically, like Windows does, except the phone's owner doesn't know it's happened. If you've got one of those phones, the phone companies can install software in a specific person's phone whenever they want.

^-- "One of the things they frequently do for the FBI, is install software in a target's phone which makes his phone look normal, including looking turned off when he thinks he has turned it off, but it's really still turned on. It's set up to make calls whenever the phone company tells it to, with nothing showing on the phone's display. If the guy walks into a meeting the FBI wants to listen in to, they tell the phone company to get his phone to call their number, and they record every word heard through the phone, which is usually everything because they've got great microphones on them. The FBI doesn't even need a warrant, because they're not planting a bug or doing a phone tap. The guy's phone actually calls the FBI, and they're allowed to record what they hear! I don't think it'd be a good idea for us to carry around microphones that the phone company can turn on whenever they want, do you?"

"Good God, NO!" Was pretty much everyone's opinion.

"What about our phones?" asked Vanessa.

"Ours are all too old to have that so-called feature. Mark and I are both going to need a new phone shortly, so I'll get my advisor to email me a list of the phone models not to buy. He said he had such a list."

Julia told me, "I'll quickly tell you what's been happening at school. We had the big lunch on Wednesday and got a good turnout. We easily got the first two pipeline groups picked already, and there are others waiting. I did that earlier today - 'earlier yesterday', I mean, as it's past midnight now. I only picked two groups - not the three I originally intended for the first intake - because Carol, Ava and I selfishly want more time with you, to make up for all the time you've spent avoiding us over the last few days."

There was a little joking and some mutual hugging for a few seconds, then Julia continued, "The first pipeline dates with each group are next Friday night and Sunday daytime, to give them time to prepare."

I said, "The Sunday date will have to be changed to after that weekend. I won't be available. I'm going to be busy celebrating my wedding anniversary."

"That's on Saturday."

"I'm planning to do a LOT of celebrating! We won't be back until Sunday night, or maybe Monday morning. I haven't had a chance to research the details yet."

"Where are we going?"

"Away," I said, with an, I'm-not-telling-you smile.

"Oh, goody! I don't have a thing to wear either! I'm REALLY looking forward to going shopping. Your bank account is burning a hole in my pocket, haha."

"No shopping."

"Excuse me?"

"No clothes shopping. Not until I give you permission, which certainly won't be before our anniversary."

"What! But that's a WHOLE week away! Carol and I are going to lose two whole weekends; those are prime shopping days!"

"Who's the Lord?"

"I said I'd die to protect you, but I never said anything about giving up shopping! That's asking too much, haha. Seriously? No shopping AT ALL, not even for clothes suitable for a wedding anniversary night out?"

"Not even for a new handkerchief. I'm being fair though; the same restriction is going to apply to Carol too, haha. To be totally fair, I'll even apply it to myself. How's that?"

"Cruel and unusual. We've got $11 million in the bank, and we can't go shopping! That's unnatural."

"I'm just trying to make sure there's some money left over to buy a mansion with..."

"That reminds me," interrupted Vanessa, "we can start contacting realtors again..."

"Not now, Mom," interrupted Julia back. "Mark's talking about something more serious! Do you really mean NO shopping. As in 'None'?"

"Yes, as in none, zero, zilch and nada. I have my reasons. I'm pretty sure you'll be happy once you understand." I did have my reasons. I'd spent part of my very boring driving time thinking about how to celebrate our wedding anniversary, and I'd come up with something I was pretty sure Julia and Carol would like.

"You're taking a big risk, coming between two females and their shopping. Are you sure you know what you're doing? Okay, I'll restrain myself for a week. It's going to hurt though."

"I'll kiss it better."

"I don't think your lips can reach where it's already starting to hurt: in my soul! Sorry Mom, now we can go back to your less important question about where we'll be living."

Vanessa said, "Which I believe was the reason why we wanted the money in the first place. I was thinking that Felicity and I should start looking at houses again this weekend. There's no reason to hold off, is there?"

"Not that I can think of," agreed Prof.

"Sooner the better," from me. "In fact, even sooner than sooner would be even more better. I'm very eager."

"Good. Tell your mother to give me a call to discuss it in the morning, please."

"Will do."

Julia said, "Let me finish the school things while I remember, if only to distract me from the anguish I am feeling because of your cruelty. The second pipeline group's date has to be after the weekend of the 14th, right?"

"Yeah, but not Aikido night. Any evening after Monday is fine."

"Okay, I'll tell them. Speaking of dates, we changed dinner with Ava's parents to Sunday night. Ava doesn't know you've been having trouble. She thinks that you've been working hard in LA. She's been encouraging Carol to do you know what, but there's been no progress on that front. As far as I can tell, I don't think any of the investigators discovered Ava was one of your girlfriends, so I don't think she got involved in any of that. I've talked to her every day, and she never said anything. I think it's just been life as usual for her.

^-- "The dinner with Lily's family is still on for tonight. I invited Chloe for you, mainly because there was no reason not to. I've talked with her a little, trying to get her head straightened out about that silly, wanting-to-be-forced thing, but I doubt I've achieved anything. I've been too worried about you to worry about her. That's about it for school, I guess."

"What about all the schoolwork I've missed? Did you get copies of everything?"

"Sure. It's all in your study, both the 10th and 11th grade stuff. I didn't bother mentioning it because it's not an important part of school, haha."

Prof said, "We should let you get back to your family shortly, but we need to agree on what you're going to tell them, and everyone else too. So far no one has connected us to Binion's. Simplest would be to keep the existing story going: that we went to LA and carried out a very clever financial coup down there, with me fronting you because you're a mathematical genius. Some unnamed big LA money men hired investigators to find you to pick your brain, or to find your notes.

^-- "It's reasonable for us not to provide any more detail than that, but there are two ways the true story could get out. First, someone in Vegas leaks my name. Not many people down there know my real name: Patrick does, some bank people, and some of Binion's people. I'd be astonished if Patrick leaked it. I've had very stern words with the bank managers, which I followed up in writing, threatening them with dire penalties if there's a leak. Screams from customers with $11 million and a lawyer carry a lot of weight, so they should be scared enough. Binion's is the most likely source of a leak. Patrick has put a lot of pressure on Ted Binion not to let any of his people leak my name. He's been told that if his company makes anything public, then I'll make everything public, and he's got a great deal more to lose than I have. He should lean on his people very heavily to keep their mouths shut.

^-- "The second way our cover story could be busted would be if we transferred $11.1 or $11.2 million into Corvallis - people in the bank here would make the connection. So I'm going to circle the money a bit - into Corvallis, out to another account I'll open somewhere other than Vegas, back to LA, then the same money back to Corvallis again. I'll make it look as if about $15 to $18 million came from LA into your Corvallis account."

I asked, "I'm not going to have to pay tax on $15 to $18 million am I? Obviously not, or you wouldn't be doing it, would you?"

"No, I certainly would not! You pay tax on profits, and there's no profit involved in circling the same money around so it arrives in the same account more than once. The accountant who will be doing the tax returns for us will know the original source of the money, and he'll have the bank statements and wire transfer receipts for all the transactions, so he'll easily be able to see what we've done. In any event, if we circled $18 million through your account, and $6 million remains at the end, you could tell any casual inquirer that you had $12 million worth of expenses. Businesses have expenses, so that'd be credible.

"To make the circling work we have to transfer the money to Corvallis in several lumps, spread over a week or so. The way the cover story has unfolded implies that we've already made the money, but there's no reason we couldn't explain the money's arriving daily by saying that some of the contracts are only just coming due.

^-- "In summary, I don't see any reason why we can't stick to the 'LA Financial Coup' story. If anybody searches for it, they won't find anything, but that's no problem because the public don't get to see what happens inside that industry anyway. It does billions of dollars of transactions a day, so our little coup going unnoticed would be believable."

Julia added, "The teachers and most of the kids at school think you've been at OSU, although stories of strange people looking for you have spread, so there's a fair amount of curiosity. You should start by trying to stick to the OSU story. When the kids at school press you about the strange people looking for you, you could crumble and admit you skipped school to do a week's work in LA. They'd fall for that easily."

"You must be looking forward to telling the girls at school that I'm rich now?" I asked politely. I was positive Julia would be busting a gut to spill the beans (I hope the image that mixed metaphor creates isn't too graphic for you).