By a Spider's Thread Read online

  "I'm not sure what we can do in this situation," the dispatcher said in the clipped manner of a government employee keen to cut off a request outside the normal parameters.

  "Couldn't a patrolman meet us and authorize her landlord to open the apartment, just so we can make sure something hasn't happened?"

  "I'm not sure we can do that."

  "Why not, if the landlord agrees? Landlords have the right to enter the premises if they think something is amiss."

  Tess had to keep laying it on thick, but it was a slow morning in the northwest district, and the dispatcher finally relented.

  "Great. We're about two miles away, so we'll meet the patrol cop out there."

  The cop was everything Tess could have asked for. First of all, he was young, so young that he insisted on calling her "ma'am." Normally, this would have sent her to a mirror, moisturizer in hand, but it was a godsend in this situation. He was even more deferential to Mark Rubin. Only the landlord seemed skeptical of them, and Tess inferred a touch of anti-Semitism in Mr. Hassan's attitude.

  With Hassan leading the way, they entered Lana's apartment. It was neat, almost depressingly so, a place that spoke of a lonely existence with few real interests. No books, no art, not even posters. The only personal touches were two photographs of Natalie, including one with Isaac as a baby. Mark stopped for a moment, transfixed by the images, then shook his head as if reminding himself to keep his focus on the very particular mission he and Tess had devised.

  "Hello?" the young cop called, heading deeper into the one-bedroom apartment, opening doors and peering into the bathroom. "There's no odor—" he began, then stopped, as if remembering just in time that his tour group was made up of a distraught coworker and Lana Wishnia's rabbi. For less had told him that little lie as well, deciding that it gave them even more credibility.

  Tess and Mark played their parts well, tiptoeing around, stealing glances at the things they had agreed ahead of time they must absorb—notes on the kitchen counter, a flashing light on the phone. Using the sleight-of-hand trick Mark had shown Tess at their first meeting, he palmed a key lying in a shallow bowl on the kitchen counter. Perhaps it would open her box at the mail store. When Tess saw that the phone in the bedroom had a built-in answering machine and caller ID, she shot Rubin a look. She then walked out in the hall, dropped her knapsack, bent over to pick it up—and promptly let out a bloodcurdling scream.

  "My back. Shit, I threw my back out again. I won't even be able to walk down the steps without someone's help."

  The young cop was all sympathy, standing next to her and trying to help her straighten up, while the landlord looked away, indifferent. Tess continued to groan and whimper.

  "Why don't I take one side and your friend can take the other, and we'll help you out," the cop suggested.

  "Mark can't touch me—as an Orthodox Jew, he's not allowed to touch a woman who's not his wife. He was bending the rules just to be here with me today, unchaperoned. But you can help me, can't you, sir?" Tess appealed to the surly little Hassan, who didn't seem inclined to help anyone. "If you just get me down the steps, I can lie on the ground with my knees to my chest. Five minutes like that, and I should be good enough to get in the car and go home to bed."

  "Does this happen a lot, ma'am?"

  "Just since I turned thirty," Tess said, and the young cop looked even more sympathetic.

  Slowly they righted her, but Tess stayed in her bent-over crouch, hobbling like a crone, a man at either elbow. She called back over her shoulder, "Mark, grab my knapsack, okay? But make sure nothing fell out. I'm afraid some things scattered when I dropped it."

  She felt she deserved an Oscar, or at least a Golden Globe, for her oh-so-slow descent down the stairs. Once outside, she allowed the young cop and the sullen landlord to lower her to the grass, where she brought her knees to her chest and hugged tightly. It was a pretty day, and it was pleasant lying on the ground and looking at the sky. Tess had to remind herself to whimper every now and then. By the time Mark Rubin came out with her knapsack, she had almost persuaded herself that she had, in fact, thrown out her back. She eased into the backseat of the Cadillac, holding her knees to her chest, and stayed in that position until they were several blocks away.

  "Anything?" she asked Mark.

  "Nothing on the answering machine," he said. "But there were long-distance calls logged on the caller ID—Ohio, then West Virginia."

  "Did you call the numbers?"

  "First I hit the redial button, just to see what number she called last." Tess was impressed. She had not thought of that detail. "A woman with an accent answered, but I couldn't think of anything to ask her, so I hung up."

  "An accent? It could have been Natalie's mother. Did you dial the numbers on the caller ID?"

  "The Ohio and West Virginia numbers just rang and rang. Pay phones, I guess. We should have stayed with her. She probably would have taken us straight to them."

  "Not straight. Based on the geography, the second phone call came only after Mary Eleanor had trailed them to Wheeling. Lana sent them money in Zanesville, but that wasn't good enough for some reason. They need something else from her, something that couldn't be wired."

  "Maybe," Mark said, "they're going to send the children back with her. Maybe they think I'll give up if I have the children back."

  "Would you?"

  "Probably not." He sighed, as if disappointed in himself. "I'd have to see Natalie, just to ask why. And I can't cut her out of our children's lives, whatever she decides to do. She's their mother, after all."

  "Do you think she would fight you for custody?"

  "If it comes to that, absolutely."

  "If it comes to that. You still think reconciliation is possible?"

  "Until I know the cause of the problem, I have to assume it's a problem that can be solved."

  Again Tess found herself wondering if the information about Natalie's past could change Mark's view of his wife. The problem is… your wife used to be a whore. But that didn't explain why she had run away, nor did it shed any light on the identity of the man with her. Natalie was a willing participant in this odyssey, but what was its point, its purpose? If she wanted to be with this other man, why not divorce Mark and take whatever money she could get? Even if his inheritance wasn't marital property, she'd still be better off than she was now.

  "Another woman in my network suggested something," Tess said, by way of changing the subject. "A needle-in-the-haystack solution, but it might yield some info. The only thing is, it involves going through government agencies, and you know how slow they are."

  Mark actually seemed intrigued. "Ah, but I also know how to grease them so they go a little faster. I've given generously to politicians at every level of government. It's time to call in my favors."

  "I never give to politicians," Tess said. "Not that I have any money to give. It's like being shaken down by the Mafia—give me money and I'll take care of you."

  "Exactly," Mark said. "Exactly."

  * * *

  MONDAY

  * * *

  Chapter Thirty-four

  It took Mark Rubin less than seventy-two hours to get the results that Jessie Ray said could take several months—and he might have gotten them even faster if the weekend hadn't imposed a rain delay of sorts. By Monday afternoon he and Tess were being welcomed into the office of an undersecretary at the Department of Health and Human Services in Washington, D.C.

  I really should work with people who have money more often, Tess thought, looking around the bland office that they hoped would provide their next lead.

  "As you know, this program is used primarily to track down deadbeat dads," explained a pouty-lipped blonde in glasses. Without the black horn-rims and the business suit, she would have had no problem passing for a sixteen-year-old cheerleader. Even in conservative attire, she looked more like the sort of bespectacled woman found in a porn film. Tess kept thinking she was going to whip off her glasses, among other things. "B
ut we've been keen to see if it could be applied to welfare fraud as well. Mr. Rubin's case gives us an opportunity to see how clients might abuse the system."

  Tess did not literally bite her tongue, but she pressed her lips together until the lower one all but disappeared beneath her front teeth. This was neither the place nor the time to tell the young woman exactly what she thought of the changes in social services and her administration's priorities. By all means, track down those people taking the federal government for a few hundred dollars, while letting rapacious CEOs run free.

  "But it's the same old story," the woman continued. "Garbage in, garbage out. That's why I was so pleased"—she cast an almost coquettish glance at Rubin—"to work with someone such as Mr. Rubin, who understood the kind of information we needed. It was the combination of birth dates and aliases that kicked out a pattern. The birth dates alone might have done it, but the names cinched it."

  "Names?" Tess asked.

  Mark smiled ruefully. "I know my wife well—despite what you've suggested over the past two weeks. She has a singular obsession with the movie star Natalie Wood. Remember Wilma Loomis?"

  "The person who picked up the check in Ohio? Sure."

  "The formal version threw me. Wilma Dean 'Deanie' Loomis is the full name of the character played by Natalie Wood in Splendor in the Grass. Natalie always insisted they looked alike."

  Tess remembered her own sense that Natalie Rubin resembled a famous actress. "More Merle Oberon or Gene Tierney, I think."

  "Anyway, once I realized she had taken a name from a film, I thought she might give the children names that correlated to Wood's life. I suggested that they try Warren and Robert for the boys, as those were Wood's best-known leading men on-and off-screen."

  "How did you know that?"

  Mark smiled. "I actually listened to my wife when she chattered. Figuring out Penina's alias was harder. I tried Lana."

  "For her friend?"

  "No, because it was Wood's sister. I also suggested Maria and Daisy."

  "Daisy?"

  "From Inside Daisy Clover. An odd piece of filmmaking, one of those movies made when Hollywood was in transition, but Natalie—my Natalie—loved it."

  "And Daisy was the one that helped us hit!" Miss Horn-Rims almost shouted. "A woman named Wilmadeane—she spelled it wrong—Loomis has been visiting various county social-service offices, inquiring about benefits. She begins to fill out the application but always lacks some crucial piece of paperwork—the children's birth certificates, I'm guessing—and settles for a temporary check to tide her over."

  "Doesn't a woman who applies for social services have to provide information about her children's father, so the agency can contact him? I thought there was a big push to make fathers pay."

  "There is." The young woman nodded vigorously, a welfare-wonk bobblehead. "But there are loopholes. The woman can decline to provide that information if she says she's a victim of abuse."

  "Abuser." Mark Rubin's face flushed wine red. "How could anyone… ?"

  But Tess was remembering Nancy Porter, the Baltimore County homicide detective who had felt obligated to make the same discreet inquiries, in part because of the insular nature of Baltimore's Orthodox community. Natalie had used the system—and, perhaps, certain cultural biases—quite cleverly. Maybe that explained her route through smaller Midwest towns. She was banking on people's being unfamiliar with the lives of Orthodox Jews and therefore even more inclined to believe her stories about an abusive, vengeful husband who must never know where she was.

  "Is there a pattern to the towns or to the route?"

  "Not that I can find," Miss Horn-Rims said, in a tone that implied that something she couldn't find didn't exist. "They just zigzagged around Indiana, Illinois, and Ohio."

  "But we know they suddenly started heading east in a pretty linear way, driving across Ohio to Wheeling."

  "No one ever went to West Virginia to perpetrate welfare fraud," Miss Horn-Rims said. "I could call these county agencies on your behalf to try to get more information, but my guess is she's dropped this scam. The last check was cut in Valparaiso, last Friday. Before that they never went a week without a check."

  Which was, Tess calculated, right after they were spotted in French Lick. And just before Amos was killed. The zigzagging had stopped once Amos was dead. Were the two things connected?

  "I'm trying to work this out," she said, remembering Amos's state-of-the-art photocopier, the templates for documents. "You say the grants averaged a hundred to two hundred dollars, which she received in the form of a check. So Natalie clearly has a fake ID, or else she couldn't cash the check."

  "Right," Miss Horn-Rims agreed. "But the check is issued through the state or the county, so no bank or check-cashing store is going to be too worried about it bouncing. If she has an ID that satisfies welfare workers, she must have one that will meet standards at most banks as well."

  "Still, that's not a lot of money. Total it all up. She probably hasn't made a thousand dollars since she left, and that's just not that much money for five people on the move. Her friend Lana couldn't possibly cover them for this long."

  "She could be getting off-the-book work or staying in shelters," Miss Horn-Rims said with a blithe shrug, as if food and shelter were simply abstract concepts to be plugged in to her theories and formulas.

  "Possibly," Tess said, trying to keep a lid on her partisan animosity. "Meanwhile, could I have a list of the banks and check-cashing stores where Natalie cashed her checks? Maybe someone will remember her or a telling detail about the man she's traveling with."

  "A real man, an able-bodied man," Mark put in, "supports a woman."

  The perky Human Services analyst nodded again, mistaking Mark's private bitterness for a larger worldview. "Traditional core values are at the heart of this administration's mission."

  "I know," Tess said, pushed past her breaking point, a short trip at the best of times. "Sometimes I can't sleep at night, worrying about welfare fraud. Or whether billionaires are going to qualify for the family tax credit."

  Miss Horn-Rims' smooth forehead crinkled. "She means well," Mark said swiftly. "She's just a little agitated. Thank you for all your work on this."

  On the street outside the nondescript D.C. office building, Mark offered Tess another life lesson while she scarfed down a hot dog from a street vendor.

  "When people are doing you favors, you have to swallow a few things—including your own tongue."

  "Is that in the Talmud?"

  "If it's not, it should be."

  Tess quickly learned that small-town bank tellers don't necessarily remember strangers, not even beautiful ones who resemble Natalie Wood—or Gene Tierney or Merle Oberon—and have three children in tow. Not in Valparaiso, not in Paoli, not in Mount Carmel. The managers were invariably friendly, smothering her in chatter and irrelevant detail before finding the right teller, but no one seemed to know or remember anything. One teller did recall a dark-haired woman, but he insisted she was traveling with two children, a boy and a girl. No, he couldn't tell if they were twins. No, he didn't remember anything else.

  "It was the seventeenth, a Thursday," Tess said. "Can't you recall anything more?"

  The man's voice, already high and effeminate, became shrill. "Look, I'm sorry if I don't remember everything that happened that day. I happened to be held up at gunpoint, and that memory is a little more vivid than cashing some county check."

  "I'm sorry," Tess said, understanding the man's testiness. Tellers were sometimes questioned closely after bank robberies, in case they were conspirators in such crimes. "That must have been harrowing."

  "Well, I didn't see a gun," he said, mollified. "But you're not supposed to put up any opposition, no matter what. There's a protocol. I guess I should be grateful it's the only one so far this year."

  "Really? Is Fort Wayne that dangerous?"

  "Oh, the security in our branch is practically nil, but you find that everywhere these days. Did you
know bank robbery is actually up, even though the takes are smaller than ever? This joker got four hundred out of my drawer, but he knew enough to make sure I didn't put a dye pack in. Made me count the money out like a withdrawal, telling me all the time that he had a gun and he had an accomplice with a gun inside the bank. I've been on Paxil since, and the side effects are dreadful."

  "Side effects," Tess repeated, just to be saying something.

  "Dry mouth. Among other things. Anyway, the federal agents spent all of twenty minutes with me—if it doesn't involve some guy in a turban, they're just not interested."

  "That's awful," Tess said, unsure how to end the conversation without seeming callous. This man clearly had nothing to tell her, except his own sob story.

  "The field agent actually said to me, 'Look, we've had five of these in the past two weeks'—not just in Indiana but in southern Illinois and Ohio, too. It's a new craze, like one of those silly dances that comes along every so often."

  "A new craze of bank robberies," Tess repeated. "In southern Illinois and Ohio."

  "And Indiana. So I said—"

  Through being polite, Tess hung up the phone and asked Mark to read her the number for the Valparaiso bank.

  "But you already talked to them."

  "I know, but there's something I forgot to ask."

  The Valparaiso bank had been robbed the day Natalie cashed her check. So had the Paoli bank. Only the Mount Carmel bank had been spared for some reason.

  "That's how they're making it," Tess said. "Natalie gets a social-services check, takes it to the bank. Within an hour or two, it's robbed."

  "Natalie's not a robber," Mark said.

  "No one's saying she is. But it's three for four, which is a hell of a coincidence. She's casing the places, don't you see? The check gives her cash, but it also gives her a plausible reason to go into the bank and study the layout. That's how they're making it. They're robbing banks with lax security. Bonnie and Clyde, with three kids in tow."