Disappearance (34 page)

As for the Americans, the plan was a bit more risky for it relied on the success of the initial part that assumed no cooperation between the parties.  Had the Israelis decided to balk and take their chances dealing straight and level with the US Government, the entire operation would have been jeopardized.  But the plan correctly assumed that the life of a mere  person  did  not  measure  up  to  bigger  and  more important agendas and that had left the Americans in the dark. Their only recourse was a "conventiona
l‟
terrorist type investigation which was doomed from the start not only due to it being carried out on foreign grounds and with an uncooperative government, but primarily because of the ingenious original presumption that no one would ever suspect a father of setting up his own daughter.  Mikki was certain the deception caused a lack of concern to be conveyed by the family, allowing the State Department to drop matters so willfully.

The only mistake made was withholding certain payments owed to their Arab operatives.  Someone in the organization had gotten greedy and it had backfired.   Now he and his mates had discovered the dreadful truth and were stirring the pot.  They were in a position to do some damage thus becoming a target themselves.  However,
they were still missing vital information that would lead them to Karen and maybe bring to trial those who abducted her and were holding her hostage.  Nevertheless, they now had an additional lead. Sarah had reported that they had located Dan Hasson's place of residence in Israel.

Mikki parked his car on level three of the Flamingo Hilton garage and made his way through glittering arcades to the main lobby.  The ambience hit him like thunder.  The dense atmosphere seemed electrified.  He looked around at the people engrossed in a flurry of gambling activities and felt a rush of excitement charge his body as the sound of money engulfed his senses.

He paused briefly in his room, which had been billed to an open account kept there by George Eckert, a common custom in the gambling Mecca, showered and shaved, then rushed back to explore the casinos.

He hardly slept
that  night,  feeling juvenile at having discovered a stimulating new fantasy to play out.  He exhausted himself scouting the different casinos on the strip, eventually realizing that beyond the seductive display of luxury and splendor, all were exactly alike.  He finally settled himself at a Flamingo Blackjack table, forgetting for a while the circumstances that had brought him there, and enthusiastically plunged into the tempting card game, losing the fifty dollars he had allowed himself by five in the morning.

He awoke with a splitting hangover at noon, went down to one of the lobby restaurants and drained a container of coffee to shake away the headache.  By late afternoon, feeling more settled, he fetched his car and went in search of Cascade's corporate offices.

He followed a simple street map he had borrowed from his hotel room and found the address with little effort.  He found a one-storey, unattended house with peeling yellow and green paint on a semi-deserted dead-end street by the eastern outskirts of the city.   A simple sign over a beat up wooden door flaunted the Cascade name and logo.  It was the corner house in a row of duplicate houses that took up one side of the street.  The other side was half bare and half taken up by a used car lot.   It looked more like a rundown suburban neighborhood than an office district, Mikki thought, though he did notice at least two other houses displaying what could be described as business signs over their front doors.

He parked by the used car lot among the vehicles that were parked out on the street and surveyed the house, not really sure what he was looking for.  He opened the car window a fraction allowing a warm westerly breeze to stroke his face, and noticed the sun disappearing steadily beyond the Las Vegas skyline and the vast
desert beyond.

A concrete driveway with a heap of dry weeds growing out of its cracks led to the house, at its end a low wooden gate that concealed its back yard.   The two windows to the driveway side looked to be shut and an additional side entrance was shut as well.  A low flight of wooden steps led up to a tiny porch at the front of the house where some clay flower pots stood empty by the front door.

It dawned on him that the place was deserted.  He could see no movement in or around the house.  No cars were parked by and its overall condition was one of neglect.  It certainly did not appear to be a corporate office of a respectable real estate business or any business.  He got out of his car and casually strode into the car lot.  An aging salesman with a flashing orange tie and a well-seasoned suit approached him instantly.

"What can I do
Ya?"   He greeted Mikki cheerfully with a heavy southern accent. "Got 'em all at lowest ol' prices."

"Is this real estate office open?"  Mikki asked without preamble, pointing to the house.

The salesman looked in the direction, straining his eyes. "Wha', can't say I've paid attention much."

"They sent me here to sign some papers but the place looks deserted," Mikki lied.

"I've taken a spin or two around this block in the past ten years…" the salesman said, scratching his balding head, thinking out loud, "it was surely occupied a while ago, but..." he looked at Mikki thoughtfully, "not lately, come to think of it."

"Any idea how long?"

"Betta' ask the tool chap next door, he may know more."

"Much obliged," Mikki said, trying to impersonate the accent with little success.  He crossed the street and approached the house adjacent to Cascade's.  The sign on the front door read "Jerry's Tools".  The buzzer did not seem to produce any sound so he knocked on the screen door and called out.

"Out back!" someone called from within over a persistent machine noise and Mikki entered the house.   Most of its interior was dark.  He passed a small kitchen noticing its space taken up by a large refrigerator and its sink piled to the hilt with pots and pans and he recognized a familiar scent - Marijuana or Hashishas he passed by the living room toward the rear door.

He stepped out to the back yard and into an inquisitive gaze of a rugged looking character, partially dressed in jeans, a wide brown leather belt and heavy pointed leather boots, with a bare upper body displaying an impressive array of tattoos over bulging arm and chest
muscles.  A large earring to his left earlobe and a pony tail completed the spectacle.  He was standing by a work bench under a shed, operating an outmoded miniature lathe, an array of automotive parts hanging behind him on the shed's back wall.

The man seemed quite absorbed in his work but periodically stared at Mikki, making him feel quite self-conscious.  Mikki stuck his hands in his pockets and stood fidgeting, shuffling his feet in the sandy earth, waiting for the man to break.  The entire backyard was clogged with automobile parts.  Frames, wheels, disassembled engines, and random parts were dispersed around the yard and it occurred to Mikki that Jerry's Tools was probably making a living off the used car lot across the street.  Cascade's back yard was quite visible over the wooden fence that separated the two properties.  It was bare, scattered patches of yellowing grass embellishing the sandy earth.

The man finally shut off his machine and approached Mikki. He was quite intimidating up close, towering over Mikki, his upper body glistening with perspiration.

"Can I help you?" he said, sounding somewhat irritated at the intrusion.  He could probably discern a potential client from ordinary folk, Mikki thought.

"The car salesman said you may know how long that place has been deserted," Mikki said, pointing to the house across the fence.

"What's it to you?" 
the man asked suspiciously.

"It's supposed to be a real estate office where I'm to sign some papers but it looks abandoned," Mikki said, wanting to add that he didn't think it was a place to run such business, or any business, but held his tongue.  Offending the next door neighbor would not serve his purpose.

The intimidating figure looked at him appraisingly.

"Haven't seen anyone there for at least a year," he finally said.

"Was it ever a real estate office, like the sign says?"  Mikki asked quickly, hoping to capitalize on the toolmaker's momentary responsiveness.

"I wouldn't know or care if they were running a whorehouse over there," the man answered, looking straight at Mikki with a contemptuous grin.  Then he turned and walked back to his lathe.

Driving back to the Flamingo, Mikki realized he had learned a few things about Cascade even though their place of business was abandoned and the indifferent neighbors provided little insight.

His most intuitive thought was that finding the place in such condition could point to Cascade being a cover up to some form of unlawful activity such as tailing people like himself. But on further
reflection he realized it was not as straightforward as he wished it to be.   The company could have moved its offices.  The information he had received from Lisa indicated they were listed as real estate brokers in various states across the US; the local Vegas paper even carried some of their listings.

Through unsuspecting eyes, they could easily pass as a legitimate business.  However, two of the characters he had seen using Cascade's office at the San Fernando Valley shopping center did seem questionable and one of their cars did rendezvous with the car that had been tailing him. Cascade Realty showed no other address in Nevada.   The closest office was the one in Los Angeles and the next closest was in Provo, Utah.   Lisa was able to locate the Nevada residence phone and addresses for William Devon and Steve Carson from their DMV records. Devon had an address in Las Vegas and Steve Carson was still registered in his home town of Willow.  Perhaps that was the next avenue to pursue, Mikki thought. In his mind, he kept trying to evaluate the puzzle from different angles.  It was clear those people were involved, but to what extent would following them put him on the right path.

Night had fallen when he reached the hotel. A slight headache was reshaping in his forehead, just above his eyebrows, reminding him that he had not fully recovered from the previous night's outing so he ate a light supper with tea and retired early.

The following morning he rang Cascade's corporate number, using a public telephone at the hotel lobby by a bank of slot machines.  A female voice answered.  He introduced himself with a fictitious name and said he was interested in one of the properties listed in the paper.  He was instantly transferred to a local agent who identified himself as Frank Garcia and offered to meet him at the house.

Mikki insisted he wanted to meet at the office and look at other prospects before making a decision.  Garcia made excuses about the office being renovated and offered to meet Mikki anywhere, saying he had a portfolio of all the properties in his briefcase, but Mikki was adamant and Garcia caved in, giving him an address.

The office looked very similar to the one in the San Fernando Valley.  It was secreted in a little shopping center, just off the Vegas strip, about a mile from the Flamingo.  Mikki got there on foot and positioned himself in an ice cream shop, such that he would be able to follow the comings and goings at the puny real estate office.

There wasn't much to follow.  He pretended to be licking ice cream for an hour, all the while recording but one person peeking out from within for a brief minute, then disappearing back inside.   Mikki guessed it was agent Garcia looking for him.  He then moved to an adjacent sandwich shop and spent another hour nibbling on a large ham and cheese sub.  There was no activity at Cascade.

Toward sundown, Garcia and a petite brunette with large sunglasses, emerged, locked the office and sped away in a Toyota Corolla.   Mikki recorded the automobile license number and spent the next two days surveying the joint.

Steve Carson showed up in his Thunderbird at the end of the second day.

-------

It took a while, but Lisa found a way to track real estate sales through Escrow company databases. She sat staring at the computer screen, tracing Cascade's real estate sales in the last two years and found it to be peculiarly sparse. She managed to pinpoint the location of every house sold in the United States, its asking and selling prices, dates of execution and title transfer, names of buyer and seller, and the brokers involved.

Cascad
e’
s nine offices across the US, from California to New York, managed to close but ninety one escrows in a little over two years, which meant only five houses per office per year. It was an astonishingly low number compared with other real estate firms of similar size who averaged the same number of houses sold per month.

The California and Utah offices showed almost no activity, selling but two houses each year while the Nevada and New York offices each sold eight, in each of the two years.  The rest were spread more or less even.  On closer examination she noticed other things that seemed quite peculiar.  On several occasions, some of the sellers and buyers were the same people.  A person, who sold in
Nevada repurchased the same house a year later.  The same happened in New York and Cleveland, Ohio.  A person buying in New York bought two more houses in Nebraska and Utah.  She also noticed some of the buyers to be names she recognized.  The Carson brothers had purchased a house each, Phil in Ohio and Steve in Nebraska.  William Devon, had purchased two houses, one in Utah and one in New York.