A linen catalogue, a coupon from a new pizza place that had opened a few blocks away, a bank statement, her cell-phone bill. If the world were beige and concrete-gray all over, her mail would have fit in perfectly.
Shaking her head, she went on to her apartment. At least she didn’t need to hassle with cooking. She’d splurged on Thai takeout the night before, and she kept enough ice in the refrigerator to make sure the leftovers would stay good even if the power had been off all day.
It was on now, so she heated herself some dinner. After she put the dishes in the sink, she sent Bronislav a text. He was somewhere out on I-10, either hauling something back from L.A. or bringing something this way. She hadn’t heard from him in a few days. She’d been beat after she got home from work, and her cell hadn’t been working anywhere close to all the time.
The cell proved it was working now by making the almost-hiccup with which it announced an error message. “The fuck?” Vanessa said. She hadn’t miskeyed Bronislav’s number. She couldn’t have; she’d taken it out of the phone’s list of saved numbers, the way she always did.
But the screen said THAT NUMBER IS NOT CURRENTLY IN SERVICE. NO REPLACEMENT NUMBER APPEARS IN THE DATABASE.
She tried it again. She got the same error announcement and the same message. “The fuck?” she repeated, louder this time. She wondered if he’d had an accident somewhere that she didn’t know about.
Wondering, worrying, she called his cell this time. It rang, which encouraged her, but instead of him or his voicemail she got a computerized voice that said, “We are very sorry, but the number you have dialed is not in service at the present time.”
“What do you mean, we?” she growled, but insulting a computer was even more pointless than zinging someone who didn’t notice he’d been zinged.
She watched TV and read a thriller till she got sleepy. Every so often, she tried Bronislav’s number again. As far as her phone could tell, he might have dropped off the face of the earth. Something was rotten in the state of Serbia or along the Interstate, but she had no idea what. All she knew was, she didn’t like it.
She slept badly. She texted him in the middle of the night, but his phone hadn’t magically come back to life. She tried yet again when she got up too early in the morning. Still no luck.
“Shit,” she said. Breakfast was bread, which didn’t need to stay cold, and jam, which could also do without much refrigeration. After breakfast, Vanessa knew, she’d have to bustle around taking care of the things she couldn’t do while she was stuck at her nine-to-five. Shopping. Paying bills. All the exciting, time-swallowing stuff.
First things first. Vanessa wrote the cell phone company a check. Then she opened the bank statement. When she’d reconciled her checkbook the month before, she’d come out ten dollars lower than B of A thought she was. She figured the goof was likely hers, but maybe the bank had decided it was wrong. Stranger things had happened—they must have. Name two, she thought, hearing an echo of her dad’s voice inside her head.
Because she was intent on the checking, she almost missed what was going on in her savings account. Almost, but not quite. “The fuck?” she said one more time, her voice far angrier than it had been when she was trying to figure out what was up with Bronislav. Two large withdrawals just before the statement mailed had almost drained the account.
The only problem was, she hadn’t made them.
“Jesus H. Christ!” she said, loud enough to scare a cat if she’d had the heart to get another one after poor Pickles. Then she swore at the bank and all the swarms of idiots, morons, and perverts who’d ever worked for it. And then she hied herself off to the bus stop through the rain to give the idiots, morons, and perverts at the Reynoso Drive branch a jagged-edged piece of her mind—and, not at all incidentally, to get her money back.
Getting wet on the way to the bus and on the way from the other stop to the bank building did nothing to improve her mood. The line for the tellers was long, as usual. But she didn’t need a teller today. She needed a supervisor. They had desks on the other side of the line from the tellers’ stations. One of the people behind the desks had no one in front of her. Her name was Denise Yamaguchi, but she had blond hair, blue eyes, and freckles. She also had a wedding ring, which probably explained the surname.
“How can I help you?” she asked when Vanessa sat down at the other side of the desk.
Vanessa slammed the bank statement down on the Formica. “I’ve got close to ten grand that needs to go back in my account,” she said. It wasn’t worth anywhere near so much as it would have been before the eruption, but it wasn’t chicken feed, either, not unless the chicken was the size of an ostrich.
Ms. Yamaguchi examined the statement. “Your problem is… ?”
“I didn’t make this withdrawal, or this one, either.” Vanessa stabbed at each item in the printout with her right forefinger. Water from her umbrella soaked into the rug. Steam from her ears should have scorched the ceiling.
“Let me see, please.” The supervisor did things with her computer. She frowned as she studied the monitor. “I don’t find anything wrong with the transactions. They were both done by computer. They used your password. It was given correctly at the first try both times. There was no reason not to release the funds.”
“Then you’ve been hacked. You—” Vanessa broke off as a horrible fear filled her mind. She yanked her phone out of her purse and called Bronislav’s number again. She got the automated announcement that it was no longer in service. “No. Jesus, no! I think I’ve been hacked. Oh, shit!”
He’d been looking at her laptop when she woke up that morning. He kept her story front and center to show her. Cover—it had to be cover. Up till then, he’d been snooping. If he wasn’t so dumb with computers as he claimed, he wouldn’t have had much trouble finding her password list.
And then, when the time was right, maybe when he found a town where he could open a little restaurant, or buy into one, and needed some money for a down payment or whatever… She didn’t know that was what had happened, not yet she didn’t, but she sure would have bet that way.
“Bog te jebo!” she hissed.
“What does that mean?” Denise Yamaguchi sounded impressed in spite of herself.
“God fuck you,” Vanessa answered absently. It sounded better, filthier, in Serbo-Croatian. Her mind raced in overdrive. “Listen—do you have the IP address of the computer or smartphone or whatever the thief used to get into my account? If you do, maybe you can find out who he was.”
“Let me see what I can manage.” For the next several minutes, Denise Yamaguchi fiddled with her computer. When she stopped, she looked as if she also wanted to say God fuck you, but she was too professional. She did say, “I can’t access that from here, but I think our IT people will be able to run it down. Now… I’m afraid you’re going to have to fill out about a ton of papers. They’ll protect you, and they’ll protect us. People work out schemes to defraud banks sometimes.” She held up a hasty hand. “I’m not saying you’re one of them, but they do. Am I right that you have an idea about who might have taken the money out of your account?”
“Oh, yeah. You’re right. My boyfriend. My ex-boyfriend, I guess I should say.” Vanessa had loved Bronislav. She’d thought he loved her back. If he didn’t… She hadn’t even started processing what that meant. All this was happening too fast. But you didn’t rip off someone you loved. That, she was solid on. “Let me have those forms. As many dotted lines as you’ve got, I’ll sign on them.”