The Identity Thief (7 page)

The monorail station was just 50 feet away now.

Yes, yes,
he thought. It was beginning to look as if he might actually make it out of this colossal shit storm. But just outside the station, he spied two dark-suited men talking discreetly into their lapels.

"Oh, no," X moaned. He hadn't meant to say it aloud; a fellow beside him gave a funny look.

He plucked the cell phone out of his jacket pocket, "accidentally" dropped it, then knelt to pick it up, obscuring his face. As fellow pedestrians jostled by him, he stood, pivoted and, stepping off the moving sidewalk, began walking back in the direction from which he'd come.

"Hey!" The voice behind him was deep and authoritative.

X turned, beginning to raise his hands.
Huh?
There was no one there. Then he looked down to see a dwarf with enormous heart-shaped spectacles and an Uncle Sam top hat. The wee fellow handed him a flyer.

"Come check out the Pink Panther," the
Lord of the Rings
escapee said cheerfully, in that incongruously deep voice. "Two for one drink specials."

The flyer bore the image of a curvaceous cartoon blonde bending to smooch the famed celluloid feline. X glanced around surreptitiously.
Well, any port in a storm.

* * *

Along the sidewalk an FBI van crept, equipped with two portable millimeter wave scanners similar to the kind used at airports to screen passengers. The machines afforded the viewer of the subject fully nude, leaving nothing to the imagination.

The two agents inside the unmarked white van ignored passing women, children and old folks, concentrating on males with Al Nazeer's reported height of 5-foot-8.

The younger agent drew his partner's attention to the glowing image on his screen.

"Look at what that guy with all the dreadlocks is packing."

"A weapon?"

"Yeah, a Magnum. His johnson's got to be nine inches soft."

The older agent sighed. "I'd sell my soul to be Jamaican for just one
day
."

The other agent tilted his head. "Isn't it a little crooked, though?"

* * *

At the temporary command center Mark Normand Jr., agent in charge of the manhunt, was fuming. Though just a hair over 5-foot-6, the Chicago native had a booming voice that would put Nick Fury to shame.

"How did we lose control of the subject in the first place?" he demanded. "Having to rely on a girl with a wire? Are we living in 1985?"

"We don't know, sir," said Agent Malloy, who sported a high red pompadour (yes, he's the fellow from the casino bank). "We had enough cameras planted in that suite to cover the Super Bowl - including a pinhole over the bed. And 11 microphones."

"And he dry-cleaned the place - managed to find them all?"

"No, the signal was jammed. We still don't know how."

"You had no backup?"

"Across the street, on the 24
^th
floor in the Bloomberg Building, we had a laser microphone directed at his window."

This nifty surveillance device works by picking up sound vibrations at a distance. The mike beams an invisible infrared laser at the windowpane while a photo transistor picks up the reflection. The vibrations from the speaker's voice create tiny differences in the distance traveled by the light from second to second as it bounces back. These fluctuations are detected by an interferometer, and electronic hardware linked to an audio amplifier converts the signal back into sound.

That sound, Normand knew from experience, would probably stink.

"We got a conversation between Nazeer and his bodyguards," Malloy was saying as he held up a digital player.

"The idiots killed in the car chase?"

"Yes, sir. We're still trying to ID them."

"Well, get a translator in here."

"It's in English."

"So they knew that we were listening in."

Malloy nodded and flipped a switch.

Although the recording had been digitally enhanced by computer whizzes, it was difficult to make out the words, just as Normand anticipated. The voices were so distorted and synthetic, it might have been three Stephen Hawkings talking.

"Where are you two spending your night off?" the first voice said.

"We want to see Wayne Newton," replied a second voice.

"Don't you know he's retired?"

"That's so disappointing. The man is such a big legend. Maybe Celine Dion?"

"Yes, yes. That
Titanic
song still makes me sad," a third voice chimed in.

"Leonardo DiCaprio is such a good actor," the second voice said. "I'm glad he's making a comeback."

Normand and Malloy looked at each other for a moment.

"They're talking in code obviously," said Normand.

Agent Malloy nodded. "Wayne Newton, that must be The Chief, Abdul Gamel. "

"Retired, that's dead."

"The Chief is dead?"

Normand shook his head. "No way. They must be using elliptical communication. Everything mean's the opposite. He's telling them that The Chief is alive."

"And who is Celine Dion?"

"Dr. Zawari, maybe, his second in command."

"The
Titanic
could mean a big catastrophe, major loss of life. "

Norman nodded grimly. "A WMD."

"Or if it's the opposite, maybe it means something wonderful is going to happen."

Normand frowned at this attempt at humor.

A knock came at the office door.

"It's Agent Kingsmith."

"Come in."

Agent Traci Kingsmith, whose foray into undercover work as Stacy the masseuse had been less than a smashing success, came into the office bearing a printout. She now wore a gray pantsuit and had scrubbed off the makeup; she looked a paragon of professionalism.

"You didn't have to change right away," Malloy said with a mischievous grin that made his freckled face resemble Howdy Doody's.

Traci gave him a "We are not amused" glare that wiped the smile off his face.

"We have the facial recognition analysis," she said, handing Normand the printout.

As soon as Ali Nazeer had escaped the Pharaoh Suite, the surveillance team had commandeered the hotel's cameras and the incoming signal was processed live by facial recognition software. Such software, which organizes digital video footage into a searchable database, had been around for more than 10 years. As far back as 2001, police had used a program called FaceIt to scan the Super Bowl XXXV crowd for known terrorists. It hadn't turned up any, but identified 19 poor saps with pending warrants who, sadly, didn't get to see the halftime show.

"He shaved the beard," Traci told her boss, pointing to the close-up of X at the slot machine. "That's why the program didn't identify him immediately. He would never have gotten out of the building otherwise."

"That was some fast work - not a nick on him," marveled Agent Malloy. "He ought to be doing Gillette commercials."

Normand shoved the printout back into Traci's hand. "Distribute the picture, get it to everyone."

"Not the media?"

"Including the media," Normand snapped. "Maybe Geraldo will have better luck than our people."

* * *

The Pink Panther was the biggest gentleman's club on the strip, boasting 50 topless dancers. From the exterior, it looked as huge as a Wal-Mart. Inside, marble stairs led to a semicircular front desk where X paid the $25 cover charge and ducked into the inner sanctum through an ornate metal door.

His nostrils were immediately assaulted by the dueling aromas of cigarettes and perfume. X hadn't set foot in a strip club in years. He did not frequent such establishments, where women used their charms to empty the wallets of suckers with flattery and unspoken promises of intimacy. Strippers were con artists, to his way of thinking, and he considered himself a purveyor, not a consumer of flimflammery.

However, for someone attempting to pull a disappearing act, The Pink Panther was all you could hope for. The establishment was jam-packed, dark and noisy, with rock music alternating with hip-hop blasting over man-size speakers. On six stages curvaceous cuties swung on poles and enthusiastically shook their tails. These were Venuses of all ethnicities, heights, sizes, natural boobs or synthetic - a beauty to suit whatever one's favorite flavor.

Flashing neon lights poured down on the stages, three bars and scores of tiny drink tables covered with dainty pink tablecloths. X gazed out across over an ocean of bare-breasted temptresses writhing in the laps of patrons, while dozens of other vixens, clad in lingerie, roamed like famished sharks in search of cash-laden prey.

As he entered the club, he passed a drunken man being led out by three buddies, in what X immediately recognized as the aftermath of a raucous bachelor party. X deliberately bumped into the foursome and slipped the Tucson cop's cell phone into the besotted bridegroom's pocket. It was only a matter of time before the identity thief's pursuers used it to track him down. X was by no means an expert on police manhunts, but he knew that much from the movies.

He sank onto a stool at the bar and ordered an $8 Heineken. Like his alter ego, the notorious Al Nazeer, X was a teetotaler. Not for religious reasons; although raised a Catholic, X hadn't seen the inside of a church in more than a decade. It was simply that he preferred to be in control at all times. So he nursed his "greenie" - as beer connoisseurs call the brand - and consumed a modest sip every few moments. On a TV over the nearest bar, CNN was reporting a late-breaking story. The sound was either muted or completely overwhelmed by the eardrum-busting music, but the words were close-captioned at the bottom of the screen.

"A spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security has announced that it is close to capturing Ali Nazeer, described as the No. 2 man in the Jihadist Brotherhood, one of the world's most dangerous terrorist organizations."

His own face, apparently lifted from a casino surveillance camera, filled the screen, and X winced. Fortunately, none of his fellow patrons were paying attention to the TV. All eyes were fixed on a comely dancer on stage, as she spun around a pole upside down with the grace of an Olympic gymnast.

He read on.

"For years the Kuwaiti national posed as an international playboy, authorities allege, while secretly pursuing a double life as a terrorist leader.

"He allegedly funded a string of audacious attacks such as the raid on the Afghan army barracks in Kandahar as well as last year's bombing of Mount Rushmore, which as we all know, resulted in the destruction of Teddy Roosevelt's nose. A reward of $5 million is being offered for information leading to his capture."

This just gets better and better,
X thought grimly.

Onto the stage strutted a pale dancer with silicone breasts and a waist-long head of curly red hair that looked suspiciously like a wig. Nature had endowed her with the most perfect ass X had ever beheld, a pair of succulent ripe melons. It appeared to have a life of its own from the way it moved left, right, up and down to the thumping beat. The redhead planted her legs wide apart, bent over at the waist and stuck her magnificent, milk-white rear end in the air, then gleefully smacked it. Looking backward between her legs, she caught him gawking and winked.

X turned away in embarrassment. On CNN, the anchor continued: "In a related story, Abdul Gamel, leader of the Warriors of Allah terror network and known as The Chief - identified by the Director of the CIA as Osama Bin Laden's 'puppeteer' - has released a new video. In it he defends his declaration of a
fatwa
- a death warrant against all Americans."

A bearded man - who surprisingly resembled an older version of Sean Connery in his dubious performance as an Arab desert warrior (Scottish brogue and all) in
The Wind and the Lion
- appeared on the screen. Beneath his stern visage words crawled, translating his Arabic:

"America makes no distinction between soldiers and civilians. The only nation to use an atomic bomb was the U.S., which inflicted a holocaust on the innocent people of Hiroshima. They are the true terrorists. So, no, we will not limit our targets. The
fatwa
includes all those who help the Jewish occupiers of Palestine and the killers of Muslims."

X shook his head.
You belong in a loony bin, old fellow,
he thought.

As the song ended, X turned to watch the red-haired dancer put her top back on, then gingerly walk down from the stage in precariously high heels. As he spun on the barstool, he spotted three agents entering the club. They attempted to look casual, but their stern demeanor and the fact that they were peering into the dark recesses of the bar instead of the stages where half-naked girls were strutting their stuff made it easy for X to peg them as law enforcement.

And of course he couldn't help noticing that all three were sporting sunglasses - rather peculiar, given the darkness of the establishment. They were oddly thick, like goggles, and it occurred to X that they could be some kind of new streamlined night-vision lenses. He had to hide - fast.