“Darrell Cromley,” Zola said.
“I’ll bet Darrell nets a hundred grand a year hustling DUIs. All cash.”
“But you don’t have a license,” Zola said.
“Did we ask Darrell to show us his license? Of course not. He said he was a lawyer. His business card said he was a lawyer, so we just assumed he had a license. He could’ve been a used-car salesman moonlighting at the jail.”
“What about going to court?” Zola asked.
“You ever been to city court? I have, and it’s a zoo. There are hundreds of Darrell Cromleys running around, hustling small-time criminals for fees, ducking in and out of courtrooms where the judges are bored and half-asleep. And the judges and clerks and everybody else in the courtrooms just assume, as we did, that the guys in the cheap suits scrambling around are really lawyers. Hell, there are a hundred thousand lawyers in this city and no one ever stops and asks, ‘Hey, are you really a lawyer? Show me your license.’?”
“I think that beer’s gone straight to your brain,” Todd said.
Mark smiled at Zola in the mirror.
13
The first day of classes for the spring semester meant money. The Department of Education wired Foggy Bottom the sum of $22,500 for each student’s tuition, along with another $10,000 for living expenses. The school immediately wired the bulk of the tuition to its owners at Baytrium Group, then handed out individual expense checks to the students. The Office of Financial Aid was a busy place throughout the day as cash-starved students waited in long lines.
Mark and Todd skipped classes and arrived just before five, when the office closed. With $20,000 in their pockets, they retired to a dive they had discovered over the weekend. The Rooster Bar was tucked away on Florida Avenue in the U Street section of the District, far away from the Foggy Bottom clientele. It covered the ground floor of a four-story building that, though painted bright red, attracted little attention. Todd’s boss, a bookie everyone called Maynard, owned both the bar and the building, along with the Old Red Cat and two other joints in the city. Maynard had succumbed to Todd’s badgering and agreed to transfer his services. He had also agreed to hire Mark, who claimed to have vast experience mixing drinks. They would tend bar at night and on weekends, and, with new day jobs, their financial future looked much brighter. Of course, their massive debts were still on the books, though they had no intention of addressing them.
The Rooster Bar had the look and feel of an old neighborhood watering hole. Most of its regulars were government workers who lived in the area or stopped by each afternoon for a few stiff ones before heading home after the traffic thinned out. For some, the thinning out took several hours. The bar’s wide, half-moon counter was polished mahogany and brass, and by five each afternoon it was packed two and three deep with important mid-level bureaucrats slugging happy hour booze and watching Fox News. Its kitchen cranked out decent bar food at decent prices.
In a corner booth, over chicken wings and draft beer, Mark and Todd spent hours plotting their next moves.
They skipped classes on Tuesday and searched the Internet for a respectable forger who could sell them new identities. They found one in Bethesda, in a garage shop where the “security consultant” printed two sets of perfect driver’s licenses for each. D.C. and Delaware for Mark Upshaw and Mark Finley, formerly Mark Frazier; and D.C. and Maryland for Todd Lane and Todd McCain, formerly Todd Lucero. The cost was $200 cash for each set, and the forger offered perfect passports for another $500 each. They declined, for the moment anyway. Their current passports were valid and they had no plans to leave the country.
With new names, they purchased new cell phones and numbers. They kept their old ones to monitor who might be looking for them. They left the phone store and drove to a quick-print shop where they ordered stationery and business cards for their new venture, Upshaw, Parker & Lane, Attorneys-at-Law. Mark Upshaw and Todd Lane. New names, new phone numbers, a new future. The address was 1504 Florida Avenue, same as The Rooster Bar.
They skipped school on Wednesday, and while the Coop’s other renters were in class and no one was watching they loaded up their clothes, a few books, even fewer pots and pans and dishes, and fled the building without a word to anyone. Their January rents were already past due and they expected to be sued by their slumlord, who would have an extremely difficult time finding them. They moved into a grungy three-room apartment on the top floor above The Rooster Bar, a real dump that apparently had been used for storage since the days of FDR. They had not come to terms with Maynard on the lease payments, and had floated the idea of swapping labor for rent, with, of course, everything off the books. Maynard liked it that way.
The idea of living there was not in any way pleasant, but then neither was the option of paying more or being stalked by the loan sharks. If living for a few months in a rathole kept the loan collectors at bay, then Mark and Todd could grind it out. They bought two beds, a sofa, some chairs, a cheap dinette set, and some other odds and ends from a salvage store next to a homeless shelter.
They decided to stop shaving and grow beards. As proper law students, they rarely shaved anyway. The scruffy look was expected. Now the whiskers might provide additional cover.