Chapter One Hundred and Seven
One Hundred and Seven
Thomas put down the photo and used his unbandaged hand to wipe something from his good eye. He continued the story, trying hard to keep his composure.
THOMAS: ‘That day in court, what I really wanted to do was follow you back to your place, wait until you fell asleep and strangle you to death – happy days – but that would mean that you’d get off too easy, and that just wasn’t good enough.
The right thing to do was to serve you a full dose of your own medicine.
Do to you exactly what you did to Phillip…
and God knows how many others. You see, Mary, my con on you started the day that I saw you in that courtroom in Woburn.
From there, I had someone follow you twenty-four seven, until I had a workable plan – something that would destroy your life. ’
Thomas paused to touch his swollen lip again.
THOMAS: ‘Just a few months later, it was time to start implementing it.
Mary took a deep breath as she nodded.
MARY: ‘Luke Jenkins.’
Thomas nodded back.
THOMAS: ‘His real name is Eddie Cowell. He’s an actor who I’ve cast a few times before in a couple of minor productions. He’s also a very accomplished guitar player and singer/songwriter, as I’m sure you found out.’
MARY: ‘That doesn’t add up.’
Mary challenged him because she was sure that Thomas was keeping something from her.
MARY: ‘There were no guarantees that I would’ve agreed to watch Luke’s gig that night. And more to the point – how could you possibly know that I would walk past that bar that night?’
THOMAS: ‘Oh, Mary, Mary. I know you’re brighter than this.’
He took a breath.
THOMAS: ‘It’s simple behavior psychology. Humans are creatures of habit, Mary. We love routines. It’s comforting to know exactly what we’ll be doing, instead of having to create something new every day.’
Mary thought about it for a beat before her jaw tensed.
In Nashville, to escape the boredom of sitting at home alone, she had developed an evening walking routine.
Almost every evening, she’d walk along the Cumberland River then down the Broadway for at least a couple of blocks.
Always the same route, past The Whisky Bent Saloon.
THOMAS: ‘All I needed to do was get “Luke” to approach you at the right time.’
Mary shifted uncomfortably on the stiff bed in her cell.
THOMAS: ‘The trick was not to have him approach you too soon. During your first few months in Nashville, you were still on high guard – concerned that someone from your ex-husband’s camp was looking for you.
If a stranger approached you in the middle of the street during your “high guard” phase, preservation instinct would’ve told you to walk away, no matter how charming or unthreatening that stranger might’ve looked, but as the months piled up and you saw no threats coming your way, you would’ve started to get more comfortable…
more confident that your trail was clean…
and your guard, inevitably, would start to relax. ’
Mary looked angry, but at herself, not at Thomas.
THOMAS: ‘Boredom also played a big part here. You’ve been living in Nashville for five months… no friends… no job… barely spoke to anyone… We are also social creatures, Mary – we long for conversations… for friendships… and for the feeling that we’re not alone.’
He shrugged.
THOMAS: ‘Luke was an attractive and charming guy, who didn’t pose a threat to you because he was simply trying to get people into his gig.
The way you saw it, he wasn’t targeting you specifically – he was targeting anyone who walked past that bar – a simple diversion trick, but tremendously effective. ’
Mary stayed silent, but inside she was screaming murder at herself because she had taken the bait like a hungry child.
MARY: ‘How about the guy in the gangster suit? Where does he fit into all this?’
Thomas lifted his left eyebrow.
THOMAS: ‘Marlon? He was my backup plan. A private eye based in Boston. He kept an eye on you. He was the one who spotted your walking routine… your eating routine… everything about you, really. But that night, he made a mistake that almost cost me my whole plan. He got spotted, and by doing so, he spooked you. If it weren’t for the fact that by then you already had Luke’s CD with you, we would’ve probably lost you that night because credit where credit is due here – it was a great counter surveillance trick you played on him back in Alabama.
He ended up in Milwaukee, and let me tell you – he wasn’t best pleased. ’
Mary closed her eyes, as she felt a drop of bile spill from her throat into her mouth. That damn CD.
THOMAS: ‘But thanks to Luke’s CD and the tracker in it, from that day on, we had your location twenty-four seven, which made implementing the next part of the plan a lot easier. But I had to do it fast, before you decided to throw that CD away.’
Mary’s voice was now nothing more than a whisper.
MARY: ‘New Orleans. Just a few weeks later.’
Thomas attempted another smile.
THOMAS: ‘Beautiful New Orleans – a city full of tourists, is it not? All I had to do was plant a new actor or actress in your path.’
A muscle flexed on the left side of Mary’s jaw.
MARY: ‘Natálie.’
THOMAS: ‘Correct again. A very talented actress called Manuela Oliver, but to you, she was just some stranger, who you had shared a few drinks with at a random bar in New Orleans, and who had handed you a piece of paper with her phone number on it. You do the math.’
Mary breathed out pure anger. The first time that she had ever seen the name Quaddra Buckner had been in a newspaper article, talking about a couple of his new acquisitions.
But the truth was that Mary hadn’t read the article about Quaddra in a newspaper.
She’d read it on a ‘torn’ page from a newspaper – the page that Natálie had scribbled down her number and handed to her.
This was a psychological technique called subliminal manipulation, but con artists and advertisement experts called it ‘force feeding’ – the subtle art of presenting relevant information to a mark so as to guide that mark, unsuspectingly, down a pre-arranged path.
Mary had used that same technique many times in the past. And that was exactly what Natálie had done to her.
THOMAS: ‘If there is one thing that every con artist on this planet has in common, it is that regardless of them running small cons for a couple of bucks, or big cons for millions, they are always on the lookout for a possible next target – even if they say that they aren’t.
And the first rule of con artistry is that if a good opportunity presents itself, you should never walk away from it.
All I really did was plant the seed, Mary.
The con artist and the greed inside you did the rest.’
Mary couldn’t believe that she’d been so na?ve.
THOMAS: ‘Once “Natálie” handed you the newspaper page, all I had to do was wait.’
Another lopsided smile.
THOMAS: ‘That same night, one of our many “Quaddra” fake websites, after being online for over seven months, got its first-ever hit. How coincidental, don’t you think?’
Mary now knew why they had chosen the name Quaddra – double ‘D’ – a very uncommon name that no one searching the Internet would’ve come across by accident, which made it so much easier for them to track the number of visitors to any of their websites.
THOMAS: ‘In the subsequent days, all the sites we created kept on getting hit after hit, which meant that you were doing your research, getting all your info together. Once you moved to San Francisco, I knew that you were hooked and your plan was “go”. All I had to do from then on was simple maintenance, just to make sure that you were riding along the correct path.’
MARY: ‘Betsy to get me to go to the exhibition. And that weird couple to give you the perfect excuse to approach me.’
THOMAS: ‘Betsy would also encourage you to come out with me on that first date, telling you how hot she thought I was and how you just couldn’t miss that exhibition. The “friend approval”. Subtle, but also very powerful.’
Mary’s blood was about to boil in her veins.
THOMAS: ‘Rule number two of con artistry – always control the pace of the con. From there, the rest was easy.’
MARY: ‘All your friends? Ricky, your business partner? His family?’
THOMAS: ‘Actors and actresses… all of them… and all of them under a very generous contract that stipulated that they were never to set foot in San Francisco, unless I asked them to.’
Of course, Mary thought, as another piece of the puzzle slotted itself into place. Thomas couldn’t risk Mary bumping into any of his ‘fake friends’ while she was out by herself. What if they didn’t respond when Mary called out their ‘fake names’? What if they didn’t recognize her at first?
MARY: ‘So, I take it that you’re not from San Francisco either, are you?’
THOMAS: ‘Bridgeport, Connecticut. Just like Phillip.’
Running such a long con inside his own city would’ve been too great a risk to take, Mary knew that.
Regardless of how much of a private person Thomas really was, the chances of him running into someone who knew who he truly was, while on a night out with Mary, was always there.
So, the trick was to move the con to a place where he was almost certain that he would never bump into anyone he knew, or anyone who knew him – another simple rule of con artistry: tip the odds in your favor.
THOMAS: ‘It wasn’t a perfect plan. I know that. There were many weak spots throughout, but your greed blinded you to them. Your desire to rob “Quaddra” of everything he had was stronger than your logic, creating blind spots along the way.’
MARY: ‘The restaurant… after we left The Legion, on our first-ever date.’
THOMAS: ‘According to you, it wasn’t a date, remember?’
If he could’ve laughed, he would’ve done.
THOMAS: ‘But I’m guessing that you’re talking about the credit card incident.’
MARY: ‘Yes.’