The Identity Thief (5 page)

The masseuse strode in, a leggy, light-skinned African-American in a tight miniskirt that put her high, round rump on spectacular display. She looked about 25 and stood taller than him, thanks in part to stiletto heels that gave her an extra two inches. She would have been out of his league had he not been a wealthy Arab playboy. Now she was most definitely in his league, a thought X found tantalizing.

An aroma wafted in with her - but it was merely soap, he realized. She'd showered recently and, unbidden, the image of her stark naked and scrubbing down entered his mind.

"My name is Stacy." She stuck out her hand in an incongruently professional manner and X took it.

"Come right in," X said, so taken by the shapely miss that his accent didn't kick in right away.

"What kind of massage are you interested in, Mr. Nazeer? We offer Swedish, Shiatsu, deep tissue, full body."

"What is full body?" he asked, although he knew the answer perfectly well.

"That is a very sensual message that reaches all areas of the body."

"That sounds ... quite appealing."

"We can use the bed."

He led her through the luxurious suite to the bedroom, with its emperor-size mattress large enough to accommodate four people.

"I'm going to step into the next room," she said. "Please, undress completely and lie facedown. Here's a towel."

X stripped except for his turban, neatly folded his clothes and placed them over a chair, then lay face down on the table, the warm towel covering his hindquarters.

He was going to miss being Nazeer, he realized. The thought of returning to his old existence - holed up in that apartment in New York - suddenly seemed dismal. Of course, with the money they earned from this endeavor, he could live like a prince anywhere in the world.

X lay prone as the lithe young thing oiled his shoulders and worked her way to his lower back.

It wasn't the most expert massage he'd ever had; X was something of an aficionado. But her hands were soft and surprisingly strong. The stress X always felt when called upon to pretend to be someone he was not for extended periods began to ebb. She had lit some scented candles and placed a CD of New Age music in the room's player.

"Where are you from?" she asked him in a breathy little voice.

"A place you have probably never heard of. Al Jahra, in Kuwait."

"Is that in South America?" she leaned into him, kneading one buttock at a time.

American high schools are getting worse and worse,
he thought.
You'd have thought the gigantic turban would be a clue.

"It is in the Middle East."

"Oh. What kind of work do you do?"

"I'm in business. I invest," he said.

"Cool, cool," she remarked, now massaging his inner thighs.

X felt something stirring. Her fingers, working his abductor muscles, would come tantalizingly close to his genitals, and then dance away.

"My daddy is in business. He owns a garage," Stacy said.

X wished she would just shut up. Although lying was second nature to him, the effort of having to speak was something he could do without right now.

"Where are you from, young lady?" he inquired, trying to get his mind off his rising manhood.

"I'm from Georgia. It gets mighty hot there too."

He was drifting off to sleep, lulled by the bland conversation, hypnotic music and cloying scent that acted as yet another sedative.

It then occurred to him that her accent was not authentically Georgian. Why was she talking with a phony southern accent? An ordinary solid citizen might not be too concerned by this - after all, how many showgirls in Las Vegas recreated themselves, leaving behind pasts as runaways or battered wives? There were perhaps a thousand reasons why she would be something other than what she claimed to be. But X could not afford to take any such chances.

He listened more closely as she rambled on.

No, the dialect was all wrong. It was definitely from the West Coast. Though she threw in some southern expressions like "y'all" from time to time, she sounded as if she'd picked up bits and pieces of redneck patois from reruns of
Hee Haw.

She's an undercover cop.
The sting that he had been dreading for years was actually taking place.

"Now I'm going to leave you for a few minutes. Just go on ahead and keep your eyes closed and relax, sweetie."

Yeah, right! She was supposed to lull him to sleep, so that her partners could slip in and arrest him, naked and half-asleep, with no threat of resistance. X knew he had to do something quick.

He rolled over and caught her wrist. He pointed to the bulge under the towel.

"What about, how do you say, 'a happy ending?' "

The girl's eyes betrayed her - was that a flash of panic? Obviously, respectable massage therapists did not stoop to hand jobs, but they were accustomed to such requests and knew how to field them.

"I'm sorry, sweetie. We don't do that." And she blushed.

He laughed like a man whose whims are never refused. "Oh come now, do not be shy. Name your price. Shall we say $5,000?"

Now the undercover cop - if that was what she was - might feel trapped. To turn down an offer so generous after creating such a flirty, sexy persona could be seen as out of character.

"Well, okay, sweetie. Let me just powder my nose first."

The girl turned her back. As she headed toward the bathroom, X silently arose from the bed, tiptoed up behind her and clapped a hand over her mouth.

"Don't move. I have a gun," he whispered in her ears.

X was bluffing about the gun; he abhorred firearms and regarded any con man who toted a handgun an amateurish embarrassment to the trade. He was not ordinarily a violent man, but desperate times called for desperate measures.

He pushed her onto the king-size bed, grabbed an errant sock and stuffed it in her mouth. He quickly whipped the belt out of his silk bathrobe on the bed and used it to hogtie her, face down. His hand slid under her blouse and slid up and down her torso, searching for a wire. Sure enough, there was a tiny microphone and transmitter taped to her creamy brown lower back.

Stacy, though he doubted that was her name, began to make muffled protests.

He tried to cover the noise by saying loud enough for any mike to pick up, "That's it. That's it. That feels fantastic. Your mouth feels so good."

The undercover cop rolled her eyes in fury.

The good news was there must not be any hidden cameras, otherwise her partners would have burst through the doors and busted him already.

X crept up to the front door of the suite and peered through the peephole. He was 90 percent sure he would see two or three armed cops outside, backup waiting for a verbal signal from the undercover policewoman to move in. What he saw instead made him gasp. There was not one or two or even six. There had to be 10 FBI agents crowded in the hall, decked out in body armor and "Fritz" helmets, and toting MP5s.

WTF
? Yes, he'd arrived at the hotel with a couple of bodyguards, but the raiding party looked like it was prepared to shoot it out with the private militia of a Colombian drug lord.

Well, strolling out the front door isn't an option,
he thought.

X quickly hauled on his pants and shirt, and raced to the door to the adjoining suite. He always packed a lock-picking kit with him for just such occasions. But as he knelt he heard shuffling from the other room that told him G-men were on the other side. This was no avenue of escape - more than likely the other suite housed the command post of the FBI team, including their recording equipment.

The "masseuse" continued to let out muffled protestations, which did sound for all the world as if her mouth was working magic on a male member. But he knew this stalling tactic had only bought him a matter of seconds. Assuming they were listening in, they would not want to burst in on the female agent and humiliate her in the act of fellatio. On the other hand, they wouldn't allow the supposed love act to go on for more than maybe two minutes before some cowboy decided it was time to kick down the door.

He had to get out of the suite, but how?

He raced to the slanting window. X had beaten a hasty retreat through more than one window in his day. During his stint pulling the classic Lost Puppy scam door to door, when the deal went sour he'd often used the bathroom window as an egress. But those were the first or second floors of homes. This was the 25th story.

He futzed around for a moment, trying to recall how the slanted windows slid open, before succeeding. He poked his head out and looked at the wall sloping down 250 feet to the cement.

I should have booked a lower floor,
he thought.

From the ground, the pyramid walls looked like perfectly smooth black glass, but upon closer inspection, X saw that there were subtle ridges where the giant blocks of glass met. The ridges looked just deep enough to accommodate human fingers and toes - perhaps. About 14 feet away another window was open. Tantalizingly close.

X, whose mountaineering skills were meager, hesitated. If he slipped he'd go sliding down and slam into the pavement below as surely as if the angle was 90 degrees instead of 39. But X could NOT go to prison. The image of a concrete prison cell was more terrifying at that moment than that of his body as a heap of broken bones at the foot of the pyramid. He could imagine himself as the smallest guy in the cell receiving the unwanted attentions of some tattooed gangbanger.

That unpleasant image propelled the identity thief into action. He began to climb out the window. He did not, fortunately, have much fear of heights. In fact, in his boyhood, the rooftop of the mansion where his mother worked as a maid had been one of his places of refuge.

"Stacy" managed another muffled protest - perhaps warning him of his folly.

"Yes, I'm almost there," he groaned as he slithered out.

X's fingers and toes fought for purchase on the tiny ridges as he inched his way toward the other window. The ridges were slighter than he'd thought - no more than a few centimeters deep. Another thing he hadn't factored in was how windy it was up here. It felt as if a sudden gust might at any second yank him from his precarious position. Those 14 feet looked awfully far away now. X resisted the temptation to shut his eyes.

That's it,
he thought
, that's it. Keep going. Not far now.

A loud noise from his suite - a door being kicked in - startled X and he lost his grip. Suddenly, he was cascading down the pyramid like a child sledding on ice. He was too scared even to shriek. Now he did shut his eyes, although the image that filled his mind - his body smashing into the pavement and splattering like a tomato - didn't much put his mind at ease. He slid down at least 30 feet - down a full three stories - picking up speed as he descended. Then, miraculously, X skidded across another open window. His hands caught the metal window ledge and he gripped it for dear life.

X dangled for a couple of seconds, letting out a deep sigh of relief
. I can't believe I'm alive,
he thought.

Using all his upper body strength, the identity thief hauled himself up. X clambered in through the window with difficulty and rapidly slid it shut.

By now the agents had burst into the Pharaoh Suite and were rampaging through it. One peered out the window, scanning for any open ones and spotting a few to the side, above and below. Fortunately for X, he'd closed the one he entered in the nick of time.

X crawled on his hands and knees through the stranger's room.
Damn, the shower is running. Someone is in here.
X hopped like a rabbit into the closet and cowered there, peering through the crack between the double doors.

A middle-aged couple, dressed in Giza bathrobes, emerged from the bathroom.
Oh, no,
he thought.
They'll head straight for the closet for their clothes.
X balled his fist, ready to strike. The guy was only a little bigger than X, but had a rugged build that worried him. X was no fighter; hadn't struck a blow since middle school. He tried to concoct a story that would innocently explain his presence, but everything that came to mind seemed ridiculous. A tech checking out a WiFi outage?

But fortune was on X's side. Instead of approaching the closet, the couple headed for the room door. They were going down to the pool, X realized.

If he continued to be blessed by such serendipity, he had a good chance of getting out of this in one piece.

"Jon, your wallet," the wife said.

"Oh, yeah."

Through the crevice, X watched as the man turned back and took a bulging wallet from the night table. He strode toward the closet. X glanced down and much to his dismay saw that in the far right of the closet sat a squat little room safe.

The husband reached the closet 10 seconds later and yanked open the right door. He flicked the light switch and the closet remained dark.

"Bulb's blown. Can't see a thing. I'll just stuff it under the sofa cushion."

"You know I hate when you do that."