25(S3E3)-The Dirty Mole

25
(Season 3, Episode 3)

The Dirty Mole

Two weeks before the wedding…

Fenton Sanoma was not his real name.

Nor were most of the things people called him.  After years as a grifter and thief he had used so many aliases it had become hard for him to remember what his real name was anymore.  He pondered the question as he sat on the fourth floor balcony of just one of his condo properties in the United States.

“Paul?  I think its Paul.” He said to himself after giving it some thought.

The question had come to him because, after his next pay day, he might be able to start using it again. This and other questions about his impending retirement had begun to slip into his mind lately.  He had been doing this for almost forty years now, from his first game of three card monty to the major success of his fake father scam, or as he had affectionately called it the ‘reverse child support’, he had slowly built himself up to be one of the world’s best confidence men.

It was now finally time walk away.

He had stolen something worth billions, and yesterday he found a buyer.  He was going to liquidate his aliases assets and then buy a nice little island.  He had already picked one out.  A nice little place in the South Pacific.

He finished his coffee as the sun rose in the east, filling the sky with orange and red hues.  He walked back inside and dressed.  Fenton was a man in his late fifties, but looked to be more like late forties.  He had a good body for his age and salt and pepper hair that was short and well kept.  He had a tight thin grey beard that he spent a good amount of time grooming.  He preferred the beard but he had to shave it before for a job once or twice.

He put on some loose cotton Dockers and a casual Polo shirt and checked himself out in the mirror.  He was a confident well-dressed older white man who reeked of money.

Everything you wanted to be in this country.

He slipped on a pair of nice, high end sandals.  They did not fit his image but they were the one comfort he allowed himself.  He set his alarm and left for the office.

This office was just one of many well secured safe houses Fenton had acquired over the years to house his acquisitions before selling them.  Today, since he had a buyer for later in the afternoon, he would pick up the item and take it to the deal.

He arrived at the office building by charter cab, Fenton only drove nowadays if he had to.  If you want to be rich you have to act rich, and rich people do not drive.

He proceeded the elevator, hit the button for the third floor and waited patiently to get to the top.  It dinged and he walked down the hallway to his door.  He opened it and stepped in, turning to the alarm pad on the inside wall, having only ten seconds to put in the code before a response team would be dispatched.

He punched in the code 7-3-7-5-2-A-3-D.

The alarm switched off and he let the door shut.  He then moved through the empty main room to the back office.  Another key pad on the outside would unlock the door and deactivate the motion sensors he had in each corner of the room.

4-3-6-2-G-D-R-4-F. The code entered with a click and he could hear the door bolt being electronically thrown by the system.

Fenton had used this particular safe house because it was his most secure.  He smiled, entering the almost blank inner office.  The only thing in the room, mostly for posterity’s sake, was a solid oak desk with an oversized calendar in the center. A pen cup. A Stapler. And a name plate that read, “Carl Hund C.E.O”

Another alias.

Fenton moved around the desk and sat in the chair and then opened the top, right hand drawer.

This precise action was the moment when Fenton’s day took a turn.

 Inside this drawer should have been a large safe box.  After entering another key code, Fenton could access the contents which included a small caliber pistol, some forged documents and the billion dollar object.

What was actually in the drawer was a note that said, very simply, the following;

Collected for debts owed.

Fenton’s hand grabbed the note crushing it.  At this point, he noticed the hole in the bottom of the drawer, about the size of the safe box.  Fenton’s hand shook with rage and he grabbed the front of the desk, his rage assisting him as he rolled the desk over backwards revealing the hole through the floor and into the H & R Block that had been built below him that had not opened yet.

Fenton took a series of breaths, forcing himself to calm.  He had not survived this long on by losing control every time things did not go his way.  He could put off the buyers for another month, maybe less, but he had to find the object and get it back.  He had to figure out who had taken it and act quickly.

His brain retraced the past few days, looking for anything out of the ordinary and it immediately came to a stop on the janitor false alarm a few days ago.

The janitor had been new, and not realized that this office was not to be cleaned while Fenton was not present.  He had stumbled in and set off the alarm.  Fenton had shown up after the police and concurred that it was a misunderstanding.

Now, Fenton did the math.  He had been casing the office, looking for a weakness and in the small amount of time he had somehow found one; a blind spot in the motion detectors.

Now it was Fenton’s turn to find their blind spot.

****

…The Night Before

“I can’t fuckin’ believe you talked me into that shit.” Hank complained against Tobias who continued to stare at the small hotel room table.

It had been arranged with nick-knack’s and disposable soaps to reproduce the basic layout of Fenton Sanoma’s office.  The night before, Tobias had talked Hank into casing the place.  The plan had involved Hank getting purposely up close and personal with the local police.

“I mean, you realize we’re trying not to get caught, right?” Hank persisted.  “I hate being that close to cops.”

Tobias frowned at him. “Alright, alright, you’re not in jail, so can we move on?”

Hank sighed and nodded.  “Fine… so what’s the plan?”

“That is the question, isn’t it?” Tobias answered, focused on the crude diorama.

Honestly, Tobias was having problems with that question himself.

Fenton owned an office on the third floor of a normal building.  Hank had gotten a job at the building as a nighttime janitor and ‘accidently’ entered Sanoma’s office in order to find out exactly what they were up against.

“The response time is really under five minutes?” Tobias asked skeptically.

Hank frowned.  “Yes, from the phone call to the cops showing up.  Under five minutes.”

Hank was referring to the phone call that all security agencies made when an alarm was tripped.  They would call to make sure it was not a false alarm, the owner would then have to give a security word, something only he and the company would know, in order to stop the trigger.

A five minute response time was unheard of among law enforcement.  Usually the thief had at least ten minutes after the alarm was tripped.  Tobias could only guess that this was why Fenton had chosen to set up shop in this particular town.

“And the office?” Tobias asked.

Hank sighed, pulling his chew tin from his pocket slapping it a few times before heaping a wad into his lip.  “For the hundredth time, the inner office and a key lock and big heavy steel hinges.  I got a glimpse after he showed up with the cops.  Inside that room is nothing but a desk in the middle of the room.”

“It must be in the desk.” Tobias surmised.

Hank raised an eyebrow.  “And how the fuck could you know that?”

Tobias shrugged.  “The walls are detached from the structure so you can’t put in a wall safe.  Putting in a floor safe would be hard without alerting the floor below him or getting permission.  So, if I were him and I had the money, I would put a nice normal desk in the center of the room with a lockbox inside. Then, I would put a motion sensor in all four corners of the room.  The second key pad on the outside door probably deactivates them as well as unlocks the door.”

“Sounds foolproof,” Hank said after considering it.

Tobias shook his head.  “Not quite.  There is a dead spot in the motion sensors.  Anything under the desk would not be picked up.”

Hank was confused.  “You can get under the desk, it’s too low, and even if you could we would have to get past the sensors you want to trick, in order to trick them.”

“What is the office below Fenton’s?” Tobias asked as a grin crept across his face.

Hank smiled now, putting it together in his head.  “An H & R Block, I think.”

“You know how they secure an H & R Block, Hank?” Tobias asked rhetorically then answered himself, “Locks… just plain old locks.”

****

Fenton, Again…

Fenton had made good use of the two hours before the tax company below opened.  First, he had called his buyers.  They were less than receptive to the schedule change, but they were in no position to argue, not with what was on the line.

Still, Fenton knew they had only so much patience.

The minute he hung up the phone, he had returned to the security tapes, his own.  He knew he would find nothing when it came to the robbery, they were out of range of the motion sensors so the cameras certainly would not pick them up.

What he searched for was the instance with the janitor.

He reached it after only a couple of minutes of searching.  Shortly after that, he had a screen shot uploaded to a data mining contact on the web.  A couple of hours later he had a name;

Hank Tomec.

Brother of Linda Tomec who was engaged to Tobias Synder, a restaurant owner.  He continued his search until he had everything…  Including the most likely candidate…

…Sidney.

It was time to head back to Ohio.

End Episode 24.

Hy