Chapter Eighteen
Brandon
“Everything is frozen, Josh!” I screamed into the phone after trying to use my card to get coffee.
Not only was my credit card frozen, my bank account, my brokerage account, everything had been frozen. When I called the bank, they said it was frozen from an unknown entity. There weren’t enough swear words to encapsulate how I was feeling.
“I’ll meet you at your house,” Josh said.
“No, I’m going to my attorney’s. You can meet me there if you’d like. It’s Sunset and Twelfth.”
I had waited long enough to get the attorney involved – probably too long. I had to get him and the private investigator figuring this mess out. My life was falling apart right before my eyes. Delilah hadn’t returned my calls all week, my house had been broken into two additional times, and now my money was all frozen. It didn’t seem like this was my life – it seemed more like I was living a nightmare.
When I arrived at my attorney’s office, he was waiting for me. My frantic call to him before calling Josh had been enough to get him to cancel whatever else he had scheduled for the day and get me in.
People of my stature just didn’t get their accounts frozen for no reason. No agency wanted to be involved in such high-profile cases and when they were, I was certain they would follow all the rules. Something outside of the rules was going on with my life at the moment and I needed all the help possible to figure it out.
“Okay, sit down, tell me what’s going on,” Dick Anderson, my lawyer, said as I walked into his office.
I went over everything with Dick, and the private investigator came in and filled him in on the other details I hadn’t learned yet. My life was an absolute disaster and neither man could figure out what had started it all or how we were going to get my accounts unfrozen.
“You haven’t received any notices in the mail regarding your accounts being seized?” Mr. Anderson asked.
“Seized? What do you mean seized? Holly hell, is the government going to take all my money? What’s going on here, Dick? I’ve done nothing. I’m not guilty of anything, except maybe a little stupidity. Billy, tell him what you found out about the official investigation.”
“Yeah, it’s not official, as far as I can tell. From what I’ve been able to find out, it’s something more personal. I’ll need access to someone at your bank to confirm who froze the accounts, though.”
“Is your brokerage account connected to the bank?”
“Yeah, it’s connected to my savings account,” I said.
“Well, at least that solves a little bit of this. It all seems to originate at the bank, or at least that’s one of the big areas we need to look.”
As Billy and Dick started to coordinate their attack, I sat quietly and let them work. None of us knew exactly what was going on, but I was becoming more and more confident that it was going to come out very soon.
“Hey, guys, my ex-wife is calling; I’m going to take this out in the hall,” I said when Rose’s number popped up on my screen.
“Hi, Brandon. I hate to bother you but I’ve got some forms I need you to fill out before I get married next month.”
“Sure, what are they about?”
“I’m not sure, just some stuff that Carlos and his lawyer put together. You can come get them and have your attorney take a look, if you like. I think it’s about stock options or something.”
“Stock options?” I asked.
“Yeah, I don’t know exactly,” she said. “You’ll have to look at it. You know I’m not technical like you are.”
“Sure, I’ll come grab them later today. I’ve got to run for now.”
“What was that all about?” Dick asked when I returned.
“I’m not sure. Rose said she needed me to sign something before she married Carlos. Do you have any idea what it is?”
“She probably wants to keep her alimony. It’s no big deal; I’ll take a look at it. Now, let’s get back to the problem at hand. Billy has the bank on the line and they need to confirm your identity before they will answer any questions.”
“Sure, but I was on with them before and they weren’t very helpful,” I took the phone from Billy and flipped it to speaker. “This is Brandon Baker; what do you need to verify?”
The woman was nice enough, but she went on and on with verification questions for at least five minutes before she would actually answer anything we had to ask. It was comical to me how hard it was for me to get information about my own account, considering how easily someone seemed to be able to block my account.
“Mr. Baker, your account was flagged for fraud last week; is that correct?”
“Yes, but it was a misunderstanding with my ex-wife. Everything was straightened out.”
“Okay, well, it appears an outside agency has frozen your accounts. They accessed them through your credit cards. So, you could start by looking for who had access to your card ending in zero-two-seven-eight.”
“Wait, so it’s fraudulently frozen and you can’t unfreeze it?”
“At this point, I’m going to ask for an investigation because I can’t tell who has actually activated the freeze. Normally if it was activated by a court order or government agency, we would have that legal document on file. So, from what I’m seeing, it appears to be an illegal freeze.”
“Great, so you can fix it?” Dick asked.
“No, sir. I can ask for it to be investigated.”
“So, you think it is frozen by an illegal means, yet you won’t unfreeze any of his accounts?” Billy asked. “How long will it take for your investigation?”
“Three to five weeks.”
All three of us burst into laughter at the same time. The bank was practically admitting that some illegal person had frozen my accounts, yet they were in absolutely no hurry to fix the problem or offer me any sort of timely assistance.
“So what should Mr. Baker do for money until the time that your bank can verify this is a fake freeze?”
“You are welcome to come in and open up a line of credit if you’d like. I see you are a loyal customer and we’d be happy to extend the credit to you while this is getting straightened out.”
“Fine, I will come down right away,” I said grumpily. “How long will it take to get the funds from the loan?”
“Oh, you will get them right away, after the loan has been processed, which only takes forty-eight hours. But it is the weekend coming up, too, so I’d estimate it will be processed by Tuesday.”
I rolled my eyes and looked at Dick in search of some sort of answer to this issue, but he only shrugged his shoulders. I was at the mercy of the bank and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it. One thing I knew for sure, though: when this mess was figured out, I would be switching my accounts to a different bank. The security at this one was horrible.
“Thank you for your help,” I managed to muster before hanging up. “You know, I haven’t used that credit card for anything in a long time. Oh wait, I did use it,” I said as I pulled the account up on my phone. “I used it to join Dating the Rich.”
“Is that the only place you’ve used it?”
“Yep, I think so.”
“Weren’t you dating a girl from there? Josh said there was some trouble with you and her,” Billy asked and I felt the blood rushing from my extremities to my heart.
“Yeah,” I responded. “She’s pissed at me and not returning calls.”
“Just playing devil’s advocate again: is it possible she is an identity thief?”
“No.”
“Let’s look at what we have going on here. Your problems started after you met her. The bank has evidence that the attack on your accounts originated from the credit card you have on file with her company. And, she’s suddenly disappeared from your life?”
When he said it like that, it didn’t look good. Delilah wasn’t some sort of identity thief, though; she wasn’t causing all this trouble in my life. It just wasn’t possible.
“It’s not her,” I quietly mumbled as I continued to think through everything that had happened. “Josh told me there were scam artists on that site. I don’t think she is one. We connected. I really like her.”
“Brandon, I hate to break it to you, but scam artists are really good at what they do. If they were bad at it, they wouldn’t make any money. Using a good-looking young lady like that is just one of the tricks to their trade. You said there was a man who visited you. Was it possible he was just casing the joint as part of a larger team?”
“No. Well, maybe. I don’t know what’s real and what isn’t anymore. I guess he could have been there to case the joint. He seemed to know a lot about me and my former business partner, though.”
“These sophisticated networks of thieves work closely together. They sometimes even infiltrate your friends and marry people close to the target in an effort to swindle people. I’ve seen a lot of really wild things. It doesn’t surprise me that you liked this girl. They probably hired her because she was someone they thought would appeal to you,” Billy explained.
“Man, I’ve heard of these scams, Brandon,” Dick added. “We can find them and sue them if there isn’t enough evidence for criminal charges. Don’t you worry; we will get revenge.”
I was dumbfounded by everything the guys were saying. It just wasn’t possible that Delilah was part of this scam. I couldn’t believe it and I wouldn’t until I talked to her. She and I had a real connection that couldn’t have been faked. Plus, we’d slept together. We talked about our losses and that wasn’t a lie: I saw it in her eyes when she talked about her late husband.
“Are they going to take all of my money?”
“No, no, no. The bank won’t let them pull that money out. Most likely they are freezing it and then will get in contact with you and request a sort of ransom in exchange for giving you access to your accounts again,” Billy continued to explain. “They know it takes banks months to straighten this stuff out and if you authorize a transfer to one of their bank accounts, they will unfreeze everything. Or so they say. I’ve heard of people getting stuck in that loop for a while with the criminals, as well.”
“Hey, hey, what’s going on,” Josh exclaimed as he bounced into the office.
“I need a drink is what is going on. But I don’t have any money, so you’re paying this time,” I said as I grabbed him and made our way out of the office. “You two call me when you figure this out. Don’t let them steal all my money, please.”
“Dude, what’s happening?” Josh asked.
“It’s a long story, and I need to be drunk to go over it again. Let’s get some food and then head out.”
“Absolutely, man, I’ve been waiting for the opportunity to pay the check,” Josh laughed.
We both knew he didn’t have billions of dollars, but considering I had absolutely zero dollars to my name, Josh was officially richer than I was that night.
I expected to feel better when we got to the club. The lights, alcohol, and music were going to drown out my sorrows – but I didn’t feel better at all. All I could think about was Delilah and how nothing seemed to be matching up. I still held out hope that she had nothing to do with what was going on, but the longer she avoided my calls and refused to talk to me, the more it was looking like she was guilty.
We drank bottle after bottle of beer as Josh tried to keep up with me. I didn’t give a crap anymore. Nothing mattered, and I was going to get so drunk that I’d have to be put in a cab and delivered to my front door.
The funny thing about my mindset was I didn’t want to find another woman to bring home. That was the strangest thing to me by far. Normally, I’d have chalked Del’s behavior up to her being a horrible person and the best way for me to get over that was to find another woman.
I just couldn’t do it, though. I couldn’t see Del as a bad person, no matter how much evidence was piling up against her. There had to be an explanation. I was waiting for a damn explanation.
By midnight, I was calling Del and trying to get her to answer. I called once and it went straight to voicemail, as if she had seen my call and purposely sent me away. I sent her a text and asked for just one minute of her time. That was it: I needed to hear it in her voice and that was going to be the only way I’d know if she had been involved or not.
Brandon: I’m going to call you in five minutes. Please answer; just give me one minute and you can be rid of me forever.
Delilah: I’m out with Mattie. I need to go outside or I won’t be able to hear you. Call in 10 minutes.
She’d responded! At least she responded to my message. I raced outside and to the alley so I could talk to her in private. I wanted to clearly hear her voice when I confronted her about what was going on. It had to be quiet so I could assess the situation properly.
“Hello,” she said after answering the call on the first ring.
“Hi,” I said as I lost the words for what I wanted to say to her.
There was so much going on. So much unsaid between the two of us, but with her on the phone, I didn’t want to let her go. My body longed to just have her close, and I didn’t even know if she was involved in everything that was happening. My body obviously had its own needs and didn’t care about anything else.
“I’m sorry I’ve been taking some space lately. It doesn’t mean that I never want to talk to you, though. What was up with that message?”
“Are you at Club Night?” I asked as I looked toward the front of the club and thought I saw her standing there.
“Yes, I’m standing out front.”
“Turn around,” I laughed as I walked toward her.
The smile that crossed her face wasn’t something that could have been faked. I knew people. I’d been reading them in the business world for years: that smile of Delilah’s wasn’t fake. She was genuinely happy to see me.
“Fancy seeing you here,” she laughed and gave me a hug. “I really am sorry for keeping you in the dark. That message the other day freaked me out and then there was a guy that visited my office.”
“What guy?”
“Um, well, I don’t know if I should tell you. He said he was an investigator with the SEC.”
“I’m not under investigation; there’s someone out to get me.”
Even as the words left my mouth, I could tell how fake they sounded. I sounded exactly like a guy who was under investigation and didn’t want to admit it. One thing I was certain of: Delilah wasn’t behind what was going on with me. I needed to see her to know for sure, but as I looked her in the eyes, I knew it for a fact.
“Well, that’s why I think I need some space. You should take care of whatever is going on and then we can look at getting together when it’s all figured out.”
“It won’t take long.”
“Okay,” she said and turned toward the building. “I better get back to Mattie.
I gently grabbed her arm so she wouldn’t go back inside. I had to say something, but the right words just weren’t coming to me. This was the moment I needed to say something profound to keep her there with me. The old me would have had plenty of lines I could have pulled out in that very moment, but I couldn’t think of a single thing.
“Josh thought you had something to do with my accounts being frozen,” I blurted out.
“What? Me? Why would I have anything to do with that?”
“I don’t think you did. I mean, I did for a minute when they pointed out that my card used for the Dating the Rich site is where everything started, but I don’t think it was you.”
She raised her eyebrow at me and didn’t say a thing. Her silence made me uncomfortable, and I found myself filling the space with words. More and more words that got me deeper and deeper into a mess of ridiculousness.
“There was this guy who came to my house with a thick neck and a suit; he threatened me. Then, every account got frozen. They said it was someone I know and tried to point to you,” I babbled on.
“Okay, well, this just goes back to my original point. Why don’t you call me when you figure everything out? I hope you don’t get arrested for whatever it is they think you did, but you really didn’t do. Goodbye, Brandon.”
She turned and made her way back into the club before I could protest. That wasn’t at all how I thought it would go when I got to talk to her. I was even more confused than before.