CHAPTER 24

CHARLIE SCHWAB DROVE HOME to his regular Monday night tennis date with Taj Rau, the proud owner of five blue Lincoln Town Cars in the APlus Car Service. Only ten years in America and already a total success in his world, Taj had taken up tennis-the better to nag his nine-year-old daughter, Sonia, whom he fully expected to be the next Venus Williams as soon as she could serve into the right box. Charlie was bolstering Taj's own lessons with a weekly hitting session that included vicious volley, lob to the moon, quadrant splitting, slice and spin. Working on the finer points of the game, however, was a waste of time since Rau lacked any hand-eye coordination whatsoever.

Mostly Charlie was supporting his neighbor's dream to be a real American in possession of a sport, sports equipment, clothes, and a club of his own, with all the outrageous monthly expenses the endeavor necessitated. Every bill was a joy to him. Every weakness on the part of his U.S. government agent neighbor thrilled him even more. He nagged Charlie about his beat-up car almost as much as he nagged Sonia about her tennis and Taj Jr. about the awful music he played so loud, it made him want to cry, and the oversized pants that were falling off his skinny rear end.

Charlie's old Buick was coughing again. For the last week the muffler had been attached to the underside of the car in a complicated way that involved a piece of laundry rope provided by his father, Ogden. But now the laundry rope had come loose, and the muffler was sparking along on the highway to a chorus of honking from other drivers to let him know about it. As if he didn't know about it. His car was a sore point with everyone. Disgruntled taxpayers were always doing things to it, and he couldn't get the Service to compensate him for the damages. Still, as long as the car got bashed and he didn't, he was cool. A car was just the means to get around.

But it was not the car or the ridiculous tennis game that was on Charlie's mind right now. He was in a state of obsessional seething over the events of the day. In almost equal measures, Charlie loved his job, prided himself on his work as a top snooper, and was dogged by the profound humiliation of knowing that his private life was a flop. On the occupation front, all the news was good. He was productive and, as long as he didn't step on anyone's toes, he had job security.

He was such a fine detective, in fact, that the Brooklyn District Director, Mel Arrighi, was always telling him he should transfer to the special agent branch and top the ranks there. As a special agent, he'd have a lot more power in the field. He'd have bigger cases, mob related, drug related. He'd get more juice. He'd be on the road all the time. That was a plus. And life would be exciting. That was another plus. Special agents who worked for the Treasury and the Justice Departments had almost unlimited power stalking their prey, much more power than FBI agents.

But Charlie couldn't do it. He had to stay close to home for Ogden. He hopped around the tristate area with no problem, but treks to God-knew-where every single week would be too stressful for his father. Charles Schwab was one of 120,000 employees of the IRS. As a revenue agent, he was part of the main snooping body in the federal tax force. Revenue agents carried out routine audits and tax examinations. When they suspected tax evasion or fraud, they worked with special agents and the CID to build the cases that the Justice Department would prosecute. His was a safe path for a careful person who had sustained a couple of losses so great that even an accountant such as he could not calculate the damage.

Charlie's special skills involved the alchemy of turning disappeared assets into found ones. Over the years he'd learned the ten thousand ways that people shaded the truth, used their stories like sleds in the snow, slid all over the place, hid their assets, schemed, played with the numbers. He knew how honest people shielded their money from taxes in relatively innocent ways, and how dishonest people schemed to cheat the old U.S.A. any way they could. At work, digging through mountains of paper, he felt like a detective. When he was out in the field he wore a hat and thought of himself as a Columbo. He took pride in his juice "finds." He was a doggedly persistent man, untrusting, unyielding, obsessional about the details.

He loved playing tennis, but only two times a week. He cooked imaginative meals four times a week for his father, went out two times, and one night a week he hung out at the bars in Bay View. His car had gone completely to hell. He was bored, he was lonely, but his world was safe. He worked mostly with accountants, usually men. A few were women, but they were not good-looking. Likewise, the large force of female revenue agents were not generally hired for their looks or personality. His supervisor, Gayle Katz, had never married and cared only about her cat. Charlie rarely had the opportunity to see, much less get to know, any of the high-profile women whose lives he examined through their documents. Even when he evaluated women's houses or yachts, their assets of all kinds, they themselves were in the background, shadowy and inaccessible. When they came on to him, it was always to cover something up.

Although Charlie fantasized about excitement every day of his life, longing for something more that he couldn't really name, he actually counted on the status quo. He didn't want to fall in love and risk his life like last time. Years ago he'd married young to an unremarkable girl of ordinary attractions he'd thought he loved well enough to last a lifetime. Her name was Ingrid, and he'd never in a million years thought she would leave him. They'd had a baby. The baby died when it was two weeks old. Soon after that, Ingrid left him for a podiatrist she'd consulted a year earlier about her bunions. Ingrid's sudden departure raised a doubt in Charlie's mind that the baby he'd anticipated with such excitement and loved with all his heart had really been his. After both mother and child were gone, it was too late to investigate. Charlie went on to investigate other puzzles.

His personal tragedy occurred so long ago that torment had long since been replaced with cynicism about the opposite sex. Just as really bad dental experiences leave behind perpetual anxiety about all practitioners in the field, Charlie's experience with Ingrid left him skittish about women. His name and occupation were an added catastrophe. It was always the same thing: When women thought he was the financial giant, they threw themselves at him. Literally. The bodies flew at him the way Mona's had when she'd tripped on nothing and tried to fall into his arms, breathing hard with mint-freshened breath.

Then everything changed the second they found out he was not the "real" Charles Schwab. As soon as he told them he was a revenue agent with the IRS, he suddenly became the "fake" Charles Schwab, less than a nothing, a poisonous toad. A dangerous enemy. But this had not always been the case. Once the "real" Charles Schwab had been an unknown and the "fake" Charles Schwab had been young and handsome. And it was not completely true that Charlie was a total loser now. He just felt like one. The Beech Avenue strip of bars in Long Beach was near Kennedy Airport and the place where the stewardesses came for R and R. He dabbled with them easily enough, especially since the next flight out was only a few hours, or a day, away. He didn't like to stick with anybody longer than that, couldn't really stand prolonged encounters. He liked the getting-to-know-you part. But he became nervous when anyone tried to stake a claim on him. He didn't think he'd ever meet someone he really liked.

Charlie was still smoldering and obsessing about his humiliating experiences with the strange duo of Cassie Sales and Mona Whitman. He drove east toward his house in Long Beach. He didn't know what was up with the two women, but something definitely was. Cassie had looked crazy to him even before Mona had tipped him off. With the sunglasses and the scarf on her head at eight in the morning? Come on. And the story about the stroke? Please. Cassie was a borderline personality like Livia in The Sopranos.