The Millionaires (30 page)

She takes a final look around the apartment and studies every detail. The lack of furniture, the papered windows, even the
machete. If we were the bad guys, she’d already be dead.

Gillian tentatively slides off the counter, smacks the linoleum with her bare feet, and pauses a moment just as she’s about
to open the door. She’s trying not to look distressed, but as her hand holds the doorknob, she still needs to take it all
in. Without turning around, she says six words: “This better not be a trick.”

Charlie and I scramble forward. She steps outside. The sun’s not shining, but it’s close.

“Gillian, you’re not gonna regret this,” Charlie says.

C
lutching the sides of the computer screen in his callused hands, Gallo glared down at the laptop that he balanced between
his gut and the base of the steering wheel. For two hours, he watched Maggie Caruso make her lunch, clean her dishes, readjust
the hems on two pairs of pants, and hang three silk shirts on the clothesline outside her window. In that time, she got two
phone calls: one from a client, and one wrong number.
Can you have it ready by Thursday?
and
I’m sorry, there’s no one here by that name.
That’s it. Nothing more.

Gallo cranked the volume up and opened the feeds from all four digital cameras. Thanks to their most recent interrogation,
as well as her recent contact with her sons, they were able to expand the warrant and add one to her bedroom, one to Charlie’s
room, and another in the kitchen. Onscreen, Gallo had views of every major room in the apartment. But the only person there
was Maggie—hunched over the sewing machine on the dining room table. In the corner, an old TV blared midday talk shows. Up
close, the sewing machine pounded like a jackhammer. For a full two hours. That’s it.

“Ready for some relief ?” DeSanctis asked as the passenger door popped open.

“What the hell took so long?” Gallo asked, never taking his eyes off the laptop.

“Patience—haven’t you ever heard of patience?”

“Just tell me what you got. Anything useful?”

“Of course it’s useful…” Still standing outside, DeSanctis swung two silver aluminum attaché cases into the front seat, stacking
them one on top of the other. Sliding in next to them, he pulled the top one onto his lap.

“They give you a hard time?” Gallo asked.

DeSanctis answered with a sarcastic smirk and a flip of the attaché locks. “You know how it is with a Delta Dash—tell ’em
what you need, tell ’em it’s an emergency, and bing-bang-bing, the James Bond gadgets are on the next shuttle. All you have
to do is pick ’em up at baggage claim.”

Inside the silver case, set into a black foam mold, DeSanctis found what looked like a pudgy, round camcorder with a wide
oversized lens. A sticker on the bottom read “DEA Property.” Typical, DeSanctis nodded. When it came to high-tech surveillance,
Drug Enforcement and the Border Patrol always got the top toys.

“What is it?” Gallo asked.

“Germanium lens… indium antimonide detector—”

“English!”

“Handheld infrared videocamera with complete thermal imaging,” DeSanctis explained as he peered through the viewfinder. “If
she’s sneaking out late at night, it’ll home in on her body heat and spot her down the darkest alley.”

Gallo looked up at the bright winter sky. “What else did you get?”

“Don’t give me that look,” DeSanctis warned. Resting the infrared camera on his lap, he tossed the first case into the backseat
and flipped open the second. Inside was a high-tech radar gun with a long barrel that looked like a police flashlight. “This
one’s just a prototype,” DeSanctis explained. “It measures motion—from running water, to the blood flowing through your veins.”

“Which means what?”

“Which means it lets you see straight through nonmoving objects. Like walls.”

Gallo crossed his arms skeptically. “No friggin’…”

“It works. I saw it myself,” DeSanctis insisted. “The computer inside lets you know if it’s a ceiling fan or a kid spinning
around in circles. So if she’s meeting someone in the hallway, or stepping out of camera range…”

“We’ll catch her,” Gallo said, grabbing the radar gun and pointing it up toward Maggie’s apartment. “All we have to do is
wait.”

S
o where do you want to start?” Gillian asks as we step into her dad’s faded pink house.

“Wherever you want,” Charlie says as I survey my way through the overcrowded living room. Set up like an indoor garage sale,
the room is filled with… well… a little bit of everything. Overstuffed bookshelves that’re crammed with engineering and science
fiction books cover two of the four white stuccoed walls, stacks of papers bury an old wicker chair, and at least seven different
throw pillows—including one shaped like a pink flamingo and another shaped like a laptop—are tossed haphazardly across the
stained leather couch.

In the center of the room, a mod Woodstock-era coffee table is lost under remote controls, faded photographs, an electric
screwdriver, random loose change, plastic squeezable figures of Happy and Bashful from
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,
a stack of Sun Microsystems coasters, and at least two dozen rabbits’ feet that’re dyed in impossibly bright colors.

“I’m impressed,” Charlie blurts. “This room’s an even bigger wreck than mine.”

“Wait’ll you see the rest,” Gillian says. “He was purely function over form.”

“So all this stuff is his?”

“Pretty much,” Gillian replies. “I’ve been meaning to go through it, but… it’s not that easy to throw away someone’s life.”

She hits it right on the head with that one. It took my mom almost a year to toss dad’s toothbrush. And that’s when she hated
him.

“Why don’t we start back here,” she suggests, leading us into the spare bedroom her dad used as an office. Inside, we find
an L-shaped black Formica countertop jutting out from the back wall and continuing down the righthand side of the room. Half
of it’s covered in paperwork; the other half with tools and electronics—wires, transistors, a miniature soldering iron, needle-nose
pliers, a set of jeweler’s screwdrivers, and even some dental tools to work with small wiring. Above the desk is a framed
picture of Geppetto, from Disney’s
Pinocchio.

“What’s with the Disney fetish?” Charlie asks.

“That’s where he used to work—fifteen years as an Imagineer in Orlando.”

“Really? So did he ever design any cool rides?” Charlie asks.

“To be honest, I don’t even know—I barely knew him growing up. He used to send a stuffed Minnie doll every year for my birthday,
but that was really it. That’s why my mom left—we were just his second job.”

“When did he move back to Miami?”

“I think it was five years ago—said goodbye to Disney and found a job at a local computer game company. The pay was barely
half, but luckily, he had a pocketful of Disney stock options. That’s how he bought the house.”

“And maybe that’s how he opened the account at Greene,” Charlie says, adding the rest with a glance. But we both know that
even Disney stock options don’t add up to three hundred million.

I nod in agreement. “He wasn’t a bigshot at Disney, was he?”

“Dad?” she asks in that completely disarming laugh. “Naw, even with the engineering degree, he was pure worker bee. The closest
he got to the action was linking the computer systems so when Disney’s central weather station sees rain coming, all the gift
shops in the park get immediate messages to put out umbrellas and Mickey ponchos. The shelves get stocked before a single
drop hits.”

“That’s still pretty cool.”

“Yeah… maybe—though knowing my dad, his role might be a bit… overstated.”

“Join the club,” I say with a nod. “Our dad was a—”

“
Our dad?
” she stops. “You two are brothers?”

Charlie pummels me with a look, and I bite my tongue.

“What?” Gillian asks. “What’s the big deal?”

“Nothing,” I tell her. “It’s just… after yesterday… we’re just trying to keep a low profile.” As I say the words, I watch
her weigh each one. But like Charlie on his best day, Gillian lets it roll away. “It’s okay,” she says. “I’d never say a word.”

“I know you wouldn’t,” I smile back.

“Can we get on with this?” Charlie interrupts. “We’ve still got a house to search.”

* * * *

Twenty minutes later, we’re lost in paper. Charlie has the piles on the top of the desk, I’ve got the drawers below, and Gillian’s
working the file cabinet in the corner. As far as we can tell, most of it’s useless. “Listen to this one,” Charlie says, wading
through a stack of science newsletters. “
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ Lasers and Electro-Optics Society Journal.
”

“Ready to be shamed?” I ask. “Dear Martin, If Abby lived across the sea, what a great swimmer you would be. Happy Valentine’s
Day. Your friend, Stacey B.”

“You think that beats the Lasers and Electro-Optics Society?”

“It’s a Valentine’s card from the 1950s!” I shout, waving the musty card through the air. In front of me, the bottom drawer
of the cabinet is packed tight with thousands of others. “He’s got every postcard, thank-you note, and birthday card he’s
ever been sent. Since birth!”

“These are all magazines and old newspapers,” Gillian says, slamming her own file drawer shut. “Everything from
Engineering Management Review
to the Disney employee newsletter—but nothing that’s actually useful.”

“I don’t get it,” Charlie says. “He keeps everything he ever touched, but doesn’t have a single bank statement or phone bill?”

“I’m guessing that’s what he kept
here
…” I say, pulling open the file drawer above the birthday cards. Inside, a dozen empty file folders sway on metal brackets.

“They must’ve grabbed them when they grabbed the computer,” Gillian says.

“Then that’s it—we’re dead,” Charlie blurts.

“Don’t say that,” I tell him.

“But if the Service already picked through this—”

“Then what? We should give up and walk away? We should assume they took everything?”

“They
did
take everything!” Charlie shouts.

“No, they didn’t!” I snap. “Look around—Duckworth’s got junk stuffed everywhere—fifteen colors of rabbits’ feet. And since
we have no idea what the Service left behind, I’m not leaving this place until I flip over every coaster, pick apart every
drawer, and tear off Happy and Bashful’s plastic squeaky heads just to see what might be hidden inside. Now if you have any
better options, I’m happy to hear them, but like you said before, we’ve got a whole house to search!”

Charlie steps back, surprised by the outburst—but just as quickly shrugs and moves on. “You take the kitchen; I’ll take the
bathroom.”

S
he knows,” Gallo said.

“How could she possibly know?” DeSanctis asked.

“Just look at her,” he said, jabbing a fat finger at the computer that rested on the seat between them. “Her sons are missing…
it’s another night alone… but does she report it? Does she cry on the phone, sobbing to a friend? No—she just sits there,
sewing away and watching the Food Channel.”