Nguyen chuckled. “This Jenkins woman should be in my business.”
She searched Casale’s name on the net and came up with mundane stuff about his P.I. license, his membership in the Knights of Columbus, and his claim to fame: he was once an all-state high school football player. Nguyen found an obituary on the guy and read through it until she came to the section about his family. A bell rang in her head when she saw that Casale had a sister whose married name was Trujillo.
“Curiouser and curiouser,” she said. She did a little forensic thinking and concluded that Sy Rosen might have hired Casale to kill Bruno Pedace. Casale had failed. Now, Rosen wanted her to eliminate Pedace, along with Casale’s brother-in-law, who must have some connection to what Casale was hired to do. None of that made one bit of difference to Nguyen. It was just that background information often helped her accomplish her mission. The insight sometimes helped her avoid traps along the way.
DAY 4
CHAPTER 7
Bruno woke at 6 a.m., rested but groggy. He quickly showered and dressed and then put on a pot of coffee. While the coffee brewed, he warmed in the oven the other half of the pizza from the night before. Glad I’ve got a cast iron stomach, he thought.
After breakfast, he opened the spiral notebook in which he’d outlined his plan, and scanned the second phase. He knew this would be one of the most difficult parts of his strategy, and the one that would take the most time. He hoped to accomplish it in no more than one week.
He opened the first property file—a thirty-story office building in San Francisco. It took him an hour to hack into the San Francisco County Courthouse and, from there, to access the recorded documents on the Polk Office Tower. They included the title policy on the property, the ownership entity’s incorporation papers, the borrower’s loan application, the lender’s note and mortgage, the survey, an appraisal, and a myriad of other documents. He created an Excel spreadsheet with column headings that read: Property Address, Age, Appraised Value, Square Feet, Occupancy Rate, Net Income, and Loan/Value. Then he entered “Polk Office Tower” on the first line of the form and scrutinized the documents for the data he needed to fill in the blanks. He finished inputting the data for the property a few minutes before 9 a.m.
The loan documents filed in the courthouse on the property were dated five years earlier. Bruno researched the commercial real estate appreciation rate in San Francisco over the last five years and estimated that the Polk Office Tower’s market value today should be approximately twenty-seven million dollars, which meant that the owners had fifteen million dollars in equity in the property, after subtracting out the twelve-million-dollar mortgage loan balance. Assuming a loan to value ratio of 70% against the twenty-seven-million-dollar value, the owners should be able to refinance the building for eighteen point nine million dollars. That would be the amount of the loan that Bruno’s report would show on the property.
He downloaded a copy of the appraisal, loan application, note, mortgage, survey, and title insurance policy and then changed the dates on all the documents to dates no older than three months. He also changed the property valuation and loan amount on all documents. These changes took him another two plus hours.
At 11:10 a.m., he reviewed his work, corrected a couple of minor data points, and then stood and stretched. He felt a small amount of exhilaration having finished with one property, but also was frustrated about having twenty-three more to go, and only ten days in which to finish.
Before he went back to building his files, he called Louis Massarino.
“What can I do for you, Bruno?”
“You remember during our walk that I mentioned I would need the help of someone who’s an officer at a financial institution? You know, a bank or an insurance company.”
“Yeah, I remember. I think I have just the man for you. How soon do you need him?”
“Right away, Louis. I’ll also need a security hacker, someone who can help me breach the defenses of a computer network.”
“I thought that was your area of expertise.”
“You only gave me ten days, Louis. I need help.”
“I know just the guy.”
Victoria Nguyen had scripted how she hoped her conversation would go with Janet Jenkins, the only connection she’d been able to come up with to Bruno Pedace. She researched the names of staff writers with The New York Times, picked a female name, called St. Anne’s Shelter, and asked for Jenkins.
“Janet Jenkins.”
“Ms. Jenkins, this is Romy Klein with The New York Times. I appreciate you taking my call.”
“What can I do for you, Ms. Klein? I have to go into a meeting in a few minutes.”
“I’ve been assigned to write an article about people who’ve survived violent encounters. Your name came up.”
“I’m sure there are plenty of other people you can interview, Ms. Klein. I’d rather not rehash my experiences, and sure don’t want to be the subject of an article in a national publication.”
“I can understand you feeling that way, Ms. Jenkins, but you’d be an inspiration to other women. I think—”
“Not interested, Ms. Klein. Sorry I can’t help you.”
“Listen, maybe you can help. I would love to talk with Mr. Pedace. You know, get his take on what happened. Would you be able to put me in touch with him?”
“I can’t speak for Mr. Pedace, but I suspect he’ll be even less likely to want to talk with you. Besides, I have no idea where he is or how to get in touch with him.”
“You don’t have an email address or telephone number?”
Jenkins hesitated for a beat, which set Nguyen’s antennae on edge.
“No, Ms. Klein, I have no way to get in touch with Mr. Pedace. Good luck with your article. I’m sorry I can’t be of help.”
Nguyen’s internal radar was now on alert. She felt that Jenkins had lied to her about not having any way to contact Pedace. Now, what to do about it?
On reflection, Janet thought there was something off about Romy Klein. The reporter gave in too easily when Janet rejected an interview with her. She sat behind her desk, stared at the opposite wall for a minute, while wondering if there was a Romy Klein at the Times. She pulled up the newspaper’s website and went to the link headed Staff Writers. There was a Romy Klein on the roster. When Janet clicked on Klein’s picture, she discovered the woman was now eighty years old and on Emeritus status. Janet’s heart rate jumped. The woman she’d just talked with was a great deal younger than eighty. Something was up and she had a sudden pang of worry. She took her purse from a desk drawer and removed the slip of paper Bruno had given her before he’d left St. Anne’s. She looked at the telephone number on the slip. Should I call Bruno and warn him? She wondered. But warn him about what? I can’t even give him the real name of the woman who called. Then another thought came to her. When I took the call, my phone screen read: Unknown Number. She dialed #69 to see if she could get the caller’s number, but got a recording that said, “This caller’s number is blocked.”
Janet checked the time on her desk clock and saw she only had a minute to make her meeting on time. She returned the slip of paper to her purse and placed the purse in the desk drawer. I’ll think about what to do later.