The Gray Zone (15 page)

Kelly pressed the tuner until she found the talk station again.

“… adoption. It’s the best solution to the black hole that is the foster care system. However, a mentor who commits to be a part of a foster child’s life for a long time can change his or her life. It just takes someone who cares … Most of these kids develop an acute sense of what makes people tick. They can spot a person’s most vulnerable push button and use it to their benefit. They learn to excel as manipulators, and ultimately they can become brilliant criminals.

“This is Dennis Prager. We’re talking about child welfare and foster care. Let’s go to your calls. From Costa Mesa we have Laura. Go ahead, Laura.”

“I grew up in foster homes—twelve, to be exact. In ten of them, I was beaten regularly. Most of it was the dads, but sometimes the moms, too. They knew exactly where to hit me to make sure I didn’t bruise. For example, you hit someone on the back of the head, you’re not going to see the bump.”

“You were beaten in ten of your foster homes, Laura?”

There was a pause on the line, then the caller continued, her voice edged with sarcasm that was concealing her true emotion.

“Yes. I’d say around eight of them really thought about where to hit me. At one house they always punched me in the stomach. The lower stomach—you know, below the waistband on your pants? People don’t usually see it there.”

“What else happened to you?”

“My parents died in an accident when I was five. The first foster home I was taken to forced me to take tranquilizers so that I would
appear to be slow. That way I would be worth more money to them each month. I’ve figured this out since then, of course.”

“How are you managing now, Laura?”

“I was raped when I was fourteen. By my foster father. That’s when I ran away. Luckily I was picked up by a policewoman who believed me. She decided to become my mentor. A year and a half later she adopted me. That’s really rare, though. Every day—I’m not exaggerating—I think about how lucky I am.”

“How old are you now?”

“Twenty-one. I’m at UCLA, majoring in psychology. I hope to go into social work and work with other kids like me someday.”

“A success story. We’re the—”

“But we—”

“Excuse me. Go ahead, Laura.”

“I just wanted to say, to remind you and your listeners, that we’re—my story—I’m the exception. Most kids who go through what I did don’t end up this way. Most don’t get adopted.”

“Good point, Laura. Thank you. And thank God for people like your mom. You’re an inspiration. Please take care. And call us again sometime. Let us know how you do at UCLA. This is Dennis Prager, talking about how it takes just one person to change the life of a child at risk.”

Gary Gordon pulled the blankets off of Kelly with one hand and grabbed her hair with the other. He dragged her across the floor to the bathroom and smashed her head against the wall over and over again. “You want to be a pig?” His voice was rough and croaky.

Cheryl Gordon turned her face away. Her husband grunted as he kicked Kelly in the stomach.

A touch on her face woke her. Mrs. Gordon was stroking
her hair. Kelly, so alone at that moment, started to reach out and hug the woman. Mrs. Gordon shook her head and walked out of the room. Kelly knew that she, too, was afraid of him.

Kelly stopped at a red light and watched a pedestrian cross the street while a caller expounded upon racial inequity in the foster care system.

She rarely allowed her mind to travel down the road of “what if,” but at this instant she couldn’t stop imagining herself growing up in a home surrounded by a white picket fence and a mom baking something in the kitchen. In her mind’s eye she saw the back of this woman, the adoptive mom she could have had. The woman turned, and Kelly saw the face of her own mother.

“Shit.” Kelly braked and pulled left on the steering wheel in time to swerve around a white van. She tore a Kleenex out of the box and blotted her eyes. She flicked off the radio and willed herself to stop crying. Years of practice had made her able to turn off the tears just as she would a faucet. She calmed herself by focusing on her driving, turning onto the 101 West and merging with the cars on the other freeway. Then she took a deep breath and concentrated on becoming her character.

One of the things she had always noticed when she wore the disguise of an older woman was the anonymity. Drivers did not glance over; pedestrians barely made way on the sidewalk for her. Each of her identities had its own difficulties, and each had its particular charms. The charm of Joan Davis was being able to work almost entirely unnoticed. The difficulty was not being cut the special slack that went along with the twin powers of beauty and youth.

Kelly parked in a space in the far corner of the lot of a branch of American Capital Investment Bank, the bank she had researched at the library in Arizona. Watching the entrance, she waited. When the bank opened at eight, she held back until another customer entered, then slipped out of her car.

As Kelly entered the bank, she noted where the security cameras and guards were positioned. A plainclothes guard stood near the door, scribbling on a deposit slip. Kelly stood in line and waited her turn.

“Next?”

Kelly moved toward the teller’s window. She plunked her big bag down on the counter.

“I’d like to cash this check. You see, it’s my grandson’s birthday tomorrow. I’m going to put some money in his cake.”

If there was one way to repulse a bank officer’s attention, it was to talk about grandchildren—a habit older people tended to be addicted to.

The teller responded in an ultra-bored voice. “Your identification and account number, please, madam.”

“Here it is.” Under the bulletproof glass, Kelly slid the Bensenhill Rolls-Royce check, Joan Davis’s driver’s license, and a strip of paper with a string of numbers on it. Her nerves were steel. The teller was probably in his early twenties, but he looked about seventeen, with pebbly skin, freshly shaved, on his jaw and cheeks. Comb marks raked through his gelled hair. His black-and-red tie reflected the overhead lighting. A nameplate identified him as Eduardo Munoz. He glanced at the driver’s license and then up at Kelly, barely lifting his eyelids. He typed some numbers into his terminal, then stamped a receipt.

Eduardo looked up slowly and stared at Kelly for the first time.

“You shouldn’t be carrying so much cash, Mrs. Davis. A cashier’s check is safer.”

Kelly started coughing, a hack that sounded deep and dangerously chronic. She watched Eduardo’s reaction. She could practically see his mind weighing the options: the amount of cash this lady wanted versus the hassle he’d have to go through if she got sick, or worse, needed his help during the transaction. Quickly, Eduardo opened his cash drawer and started counting out the $9,989.72. To Kelly, his
movements were in slow motion, his fingers meticulously double-checking each bill. Finally, he clinked the pennies on the stack and shuffled the money into an envelope. He was about to slide it under the window when he stopped and peered at her again.

“A cashier’s check really would be safer.”

Kelly coughed again, pulling another couple of tissues out of her purse.

“That’s kind of you, dear. I prefer cash. Checks are just pieces of paper, after all.” She smiled thinly and cleared her throat. Eduardo pushed the envelope through. “Have a lovely day,” croaked Kelly, and she walked stiffly out of the bank.

She jumped into her car and fired the engine, reviewing the route in her mind. As she pushed along the wide boulevard south through the San Fernando Valley, a smile—her first genuine one in several days—spread across her face. Funny how technology works: All you need is one account in one branch, and you can cash as many checks as you wish in any other branch, and no one will ever know.

Kelly repeated the routine at the Encino branch with no trouble. At the Burbank branch, she approached the teller with another Bensenhill payroll check in her hand.

“I’m moving from Santa Monica to Burbank. Everyone wants to be paid in cash nowadays …”

Kelly started the coughing routine again. The teller checked the computer, glanced at the official corporate stamp on the payroll check, and stamped and initialed it. Then she looked up at Kelly, as if wondering what this lady did at a Rolls-Royce showroom.

Kelly picked up on the unspoken curiosity and responded, talking a mile a minute.

“This week was a killer. I had to organize fifteen cars to be shipped all over the country—can you imagine? To top it all off, I’m
moving to Burbank, of all places … Excuse me, it’s cold in here. Could you turn down the air-conditioning?” She coughed some more.

The perfect touch. Now the teller looked as if she just wanted to get rid of Kelly as fast as possible.

“Just one minute, madam.” The teller’s long fingers swiftly counted out the money. The envelope slid under the window and Kelly took it, silently voicing her relief.

I’m outta here.

Steeling her nerves, Kelly walked out to her car and drove away from the bank. Double-checking the map in her memory, she headed for the 101 freeway again. The next bank was in Santa Monica, then two on the west side, two in Beverly Hills, one downtown, and one in Manhattan Beach.

It took her the rest of the afternoon, but Kelly posing as Mrs. Joan Davis repeated the routine until she had more than $120,000 in cash. She had known the plan would work, but even so, she was relieved that it had gone so well. The banks wouldn’t cross-reference the withdrawals until Monday. And she also happened to know that the Joan Davis accounts got special treatment.

* * *

Gathered in the small, glass-enclosed manager’s office was the entire sales staff of Bensenhill Rolls-Royce. Ali was sweating, and everyone had the downcast eyes and slumped shoulders of salesmen everywhere who are being ripped a new one.

“Which of you mother
fuckers
sold a car to someone named Joan Davis?”

The men fell over each other denying it. They looked suspiciously at one another, ready to pounce on one of their own.

“Well, she’s cashing our checks at the bank. None of you losers will admit to knowing someone named Joan Davis?”

The men shook their heads.

“Well, somehow she got in here and got the checks. Did anyone let a customer in this office in the last day or two?”

Ali felt the blood drain out of his face.

* * *

Just a few blocks away, at the headquarters of American Capital Investment Bank, the president, Todd Gillis, received a phone call. His usually impassive face turned molten with anger.

“The Joan Davis account? Hit? How much?”

He heard the answer and hurled the phone down. In a corner of the room, slumped back in an armchair, his bodyguard, Brigante, sparked to life.

Todd Gillis kept his voice measured. “The Joan Davis accounts have been hit. Go get her.”

* * *

Finished with her last bank, Kelly drove slowly through the quiet residential neighborhoods of the small seaside community of Manhattan Beach. She parked on a narrow street called Maple Drive and studied the maps she had saved in her smartphone. There was another bank, in Long Beach, that she hadn’t planned on hitting. She glanced at the clock on the dashboard. It was earlier than she had expected. If she hurried, she could just make it. But immediately she decided against it. She had done enough for one day.

Through her window Kelly saw two towheaded children running in their front yard. The scene was like a television commercial:
the late-afternoon light glazing everything gold, the boy teasing the girl, the girl chasing the boy. The door of the house opened, and a young mom called the kids inside. Kelly knew it was time to head back, call Holly, and reunite with her own kids. But as she glanced in her rearview mirror, she froze.

Behind her loomed a hulking black SUV with darkened windows. It hadn’t been there when she’d parked. She held her breath. No one got in or out.

As she pulled away from the curb, the SUV moved forward. Kelly accelerated, ready to duck down a parallel street and, hopefully, lose it in an alley. But the black behemoth kept up.

With a sickening realization, Kelly knew what she had to do, where her safest place would be. Gripping the steering wheel, she pushed the car onto the 405 South, toward Long Beach and its branch of American Capital Investment Bank.

* * *

When she finally arrived at the bank, there was a long line. Agitated, Kelly examined the face of everyone in the bank from behind her sunglasses. She had lost the black SUV on the freeway, but she knew that she could trust no one. At last the teller called her to the window.

“I’d like to cash this, please.”

The teller glanced at her. Kelly could see her impatience, could tell she was counting the minutes until the bank would be closing.

Kelly passed over one of the payroll checks and the Joan Davis driver’s license. “It’s my grandson’s birthday tomorrow,” she explained, struggling through her fatigue to get Joan Davis’s voice right.

The clerk smiled noncommittally and examined the check. She turned and typed something on the computer. “That’s strange,” she muttered.

“What? What is it?” asked Kelly, allowing Joan Davis to sound a little irritated.

“This will only take a moment, ma’am. I just need to check something with my manager.”

“I’ve got to have that money for tomorrow!” cried Kelly. “I’m going to put it in my grandson’s cake!” She broke into her hacking cough.

“I’ll be right back,” said the teller politely. Unseen by Kelly, she pressed the security button under the counter with her knee, then stepped away from her window, taking the check and the driver’s license with her.

BUCKLEY’S TAVERN COULD NOT HAVE BEEN A MORE perfect choice. On a dire stretch of Pico Boulevard in West LA, under the shadow of the 405 overpass, the bar was windowless, airless, and brainless. The steak sandwich was gristly and fatty; the bread all but evaporated when Jake dunked it in the dishwater-brown
jus
. A half-empty beer bottle stood next to a glass. Jake stared into his food.