Going For Broke (7 page)

             
“Hi, Mom?”

CHAPTER 5

             
Mike sat on the park bench on Fifth Avenue at Central Park and 84th Street.  At least the Vernon’s apartment was easy to watch from this location.  He really didn’t relish the thought of being a babysitter on the Upper East Side, but knew enough to take his punishment like a man.  He figured he’d have to do it for one or two weeks, tops, and then he’d be back in Organized Crime where he belonged.  Who knew how long this Trip Vernon could hold out, anyway? 

             
Ever the boy scout, he had come prepared for the day.  His cooler was filled with a lovely lunch (Mike was a sandwich maestro). He had a thermos of coffee, three newspapers, an ipod filled with music and podcasts, a light jacket, camera with a macro lens and a bird watching book.  Half-ruse, half-serious, if anyone questioned him he went with birdwatcher.  Kind of creepy, and people usually backed off darned fast.

             
The Vernon’s building was three buildings in from Fifth, with a dark green awning and a dark-suited doorman with a black cap.  It probably looked exactly the same as when it was built in 1926.  It was early April, and today was an exceptionally spring-like day, which put Mike in a good mood.  If he had to sit here all day to wait for Trip Vernon’s big homecoming, at least he got to do it in good weather.

             
He settled in with the New York Times crossword puzzle.  It was Tuesday, which meant Mike could hammer it out in under fifteen minutes.  He was so lost in thought trying to figure out the answer to “Much Devalued Currency” that he almost didn’t see the bright orange U-Haul stop in front of the building.  Interesting, he thought to himself.  People on East 84th Street usually didn’t traffic in U-Hauls, that was much more the domain of someone buying a sofa on Craigslist.  He watched as a dark-haired man, mid-30s with a Metallica t-shirt got out of the driver’s side.  A dark-haired woman, his sister, perhaps, got out of the passenger side.  Well, times were tough.  Maybe even the folks on Upper East needed to sell that old sofa.

             
The doorman greeted them, though, as if he knew them.  You didn’t need to be FBI to know that Metallica t-shirts and U-Haul trucks were not the natural habitat of old monied New York.  Mike put his crossword puzzle aside and grabbed his camera.  He snapped a couple of shots of the couple, and then really zoomed in to get the plates on the truck.  Could be a burglary ring, and the doorman was in on it.  Break that and he could get himself out of White Collar in no time.

             
             
             
             
             
             
###

             
Victoria heard the elevator open and her kids ran to greet Lumi.  Lumi had brought her brother Emil to help move the Vernons out.  Not that there was much left to move.  Their boxes were packed and they were ready to go.  She decided to leave the little furniture that was left and told Lumi to take whatever she wanted after they were gone.  She couldn’t use it at her mother’s little house, anyway.

             
Her mother had been surprisingly laid back about the entire situation.  Ever since she married Bud Brewster six years ago, she had lost the edge that was omnipresent during Victoria’s childhood.  Perhaps it was the anger that Tom Patterson had the nerve to die on them, or that he left them without any life insurance and she was forced to take a job as a bank teller.   Vicky Patterson grew up with biting words and a sharp edge as the order of the day.  It really threw her off that her mother had mellowed so much.  Maybe a little too much.  Victoria had grown to prefer her people with an edge.

             
As Emil and Lumi loaded their pathetically small bounty into the service elevator, Victoria inspected her children before getting them into the proper front elevator.  Even if she was leaving in a burning blaze of criminal suspicion, financial ruin and social annihilation, she was going to make sure that both she and her children looked damn good doing it.  Parker was head-to-toe in J. Crew.  Khaki pants, button down shirt and Stan Smiths, he could have been in one of their ads.  Posey was wearing the cutest Juicy Couture top with Dolce leggings and Tory Burch flats.  (Tory Burch may have been over for adults, still for the under-12 set, they were de-rigeur.)  She had on what she considered to be the perfect traveling outfit: Armani gabardine trousers, a fantastic Katherine Malandrino top, a Hermes scarf and her beloved Tod’s driving mocs.  She put her Gucci sunglasses on her head, grabbed her Birkin Bag and took one last look around.  She had a sinking suspicion that she wouldn’t be back anytime soon.

             
             
             
             
             
             
###

             
First rule of U-Haul driving: Take a practice run before you start your big life-changing, cross-country trip.  Victoria was able to hold her head high in the elevator down, and thankfully no neighbors were around to have a first-hand sighting of Victoria hopping behind the wheel of the big bright Orange U-Haul.  The children hugged Lumi goodbye and Victoria handed over $200 of her fast-dwindling life savings to Emil.  As much as it pained her to part with what little cash she had, she couldn’t fathom the idea of having to load the damn truck herself. 

             
She got in the cab of the truck and started the engine. So far, so good.  The kids were in great spirits - they had ridden in a hundred limos, but this was their first drive it yourself truck experience.  What a great childhood memory.  Victoria really hadn’t driven since college, as she had a driver take her anywhere she wanted to go in the city, and Trip always drove to the house in Connecticut.  So she was working with a fairly good strike against her to begin with.  She hadn’t driven a stick shift since 10th grade when Laura Sndyer had gotten too drunk to drive her brother’s VW bug home and Victoria had to do it.  Laura slurred the instructions to Victoria as they stopped and started the entire way home.  That went much more smoothly than today’s outing.

             
Like a scene out of Austin Powers, Victoria did a 72 point turn getting them out of the parking space, nearly giving all three of them whiplash.  When she finally got on the open road of 84th Street, she almost took out two cabs and a bike messenger.  As she took a left onto Fifth, she spied Frances Harvey standing at the corner with her two yippy little dogs.  Frances Harvey was the biggest pain in the ass Victoria had ever met.  She and her effeminate husband wintered in Antibes every year so Frances insisted on speaking with an annoying French pronunciation for even the most mundane words.  One the biggest snobs Victoria had ever met, she bullied everyone on every Board and club she was involved with.  Victoria sucked up to her like everyone else.  Now, driving away in her big rented truck, Victoria flipped her the bird as she drove on.

             
             
             
             
             
             
###

             
Mike watched the entire getaway, if you could call it that, from his perch on the park bench.  He watched as the young pair brought down boxes and suitcases, and got the entire thing on film.  He was sure that he was breaking a burglary ring.  Nothing could have surprised him more than watching Victoria Vernon get in the cab of the truck and drive away.  Or at least try to drive away.  He had to admit, watching her try to maneuver that truck was damned hysterical.  In his mirth, he almost lost sight of the bigger picture.  That Victoria Vernon had packed herself up and drove away.  Where on earth was she going to go?

             
Mike picked up his cell and dialed Clark’s number.  Maybe now he could be finished with this ridiculous assignment. Clark wasn’t so easy to let her go.

             
“Then find her, goddamn it,” Mike didn’t think he had ever heard Clark swear.  He cringed. 

             
“Clark, she’s obviously getting out of town.  Vernon’s had no contact with her at all.  We’ve got her phones, I’ve staked out the apartment.  He’ll have no idea where she’s gone,” Mike argued.

             
“You better, Towner,” Clark slammed down the phone.

             
             
             
             
             
             
###

             
The FBI rarely uses personnel to monitor a person of interest.  Technology today is so good, that it’s easy to track someone’s movements, though cell phones, credit cards and internet use.  It’s fairly simple to track someone who knows what they’re doing, and Victoria Vernon certainly wasn’t someone who knew what she was doing. 

             
Victoria Vernon didn’t have any credit cards.  Her cell phone had been confiscated.  Electronic tracking wasn’t an option.  Mike already knew where she was going.  He had done his homework on Mrs. Victoria Patterson Vernon.  It must be hard for her to go home, because it looked like she had spent the majority of her life trying to get as far away from it as possible. 

             
He opened his file and reviewed what he had found out.  The only child of Tom and Barbara Patterson, her father had died when she was young.  Vicky, as she was called in her hometown, and her mother lived in an apartment on top of a local fried chicken franchise.  He thought about the apartment they had just cleared out.  She had done nicely for herself.  At least until the recent turn of events.  She got a full ride to Boston College and graduated Summa Cum Laude.  After college she had moved to Manhattan, gotten a job with a wine distributor, met Trip Vernon and then never looked back.  He looked through his papers to find her mother’s current address.  It looked like she had remarried, and still lived in Tenaqua, Illinois a suburb just north of Chicago.  He was sure that was where the U-Haul was headed. 

             
An instant message popped up on his computer screen.  Clark had decided this was how he liked to communicate when they were in the office.  In his last job, someone would just bellow “hey, asshole, come here.”  Clark liked instant messaging.  What was he, a 7th grade girl?

             
“Status on Mrs. Vernon?” it read.

             
“She’s heading to her mother’s.  Outside of Chicago.” Mike typed back, except it took him about ten times longer than if he had just gotten up and had the conversation with Clark at his desk.  His fingers were like Snausages on the keys. 

             
He waited for a reply, and got none.  Mike really had no idea as to how instant messaging worked.  Clark appeared out of nowhere, and perched on the side of his desk.  Mike watched Clark’s cufflinks as he talked.  He had to be the only guy in the office with cufflinks.

             
“Chicago, huh?  Aren’t you from Chicago?” Clark fished.

             
“Philadelphia,” Mike wasn’t offering any more information than necessary.

             
“Oh.”  Clark seemed thoughtful.  “You’ll like Chicago.  It’s great this time of year.”

Chicago?  There was no way Mike was going to Chicago!  “You’ve got to be kidding?  What good will I be there?  There is no fucking way Trip Asshole Vernon is going to head back to his Mother In Law’s house!”  Mike was screaming now, and the other agents tried to look away and still listen at the same time.