The worst part was that I couldn’t figure out whether I was doing this because it was part of my job, or if I wanted to know out of some sick compulsion.
“Got a middle name or initial?”
“No,” I said. I stood behind Lonnie as he sat there, typing in commands, looking over his shoulder at the silver and blue LCD screen.
Lonnie typed in a string of letters, followed by
“Maybe this don’t work on Sunday,” I said.
“No, the offices are closed. But the computer’s on twenty-four-hours-a-day, seven days a week. Except when it crashes or shuts down for maintenance.”
The screen lit up in a burst of characters. There were four Conrad Fletchers, each with a different middle initial and address.
“That’s him,” I said. “The third one.”
Lonnie moved the cursor up to the line and pressed RETURN. “It’ll take a minute or so to print out. Want some coffee?”
“Your coffee?” I asked.
“Yeah, who the hell you think’s coffee?”
“Nothanks. I’ll pass.”
The thermal printer started buzzing and spewing out paper a line at a time. I paced the office while Lonnie went for his coffee cup. I was afraid to look at the report as it came out of the back of the computer. I could still not do this. All I had to do was tear it up and throw it away, and I’d still be able to stand myself in the mirror.
The computer beeped, indicating the report had been sent. Then the printer buzzed as it rolled out the rest of the sheet. Lonnie came into the office with a dirty mug full of coffee.
“Well,” he said, setting the cup down on the desk, then reaching behind the computer to tear the paper, “let’s see what we got here.”
I stood back as he ripped the paper out of the computer. He held it under the desk light and looked it over. His eyes flicked back and forth across the paper.
“Well?” I asked.
Lonnie cocked his head toward me, still bent over the desk.
“Sweet Mother of Jesus,” he muttered.
27
This pain shot up the back of my neck, radiating out through my skull like heat waves. “What is it?” I asked.
He handed me the curled sheet of paper. It had a grayish shiny cast to it, almost as if it had been wet. Credit bureau reports are complicated creatures; you have to know the codes or they’re largely indecipherable. When I started skip tracing for Lonnie, he gave me a handout that explained it all, but I hadn’t looked at it in a couple of weeks.
A row of asterisks ran across the top of the report, broken only by the letters REF A64 centered in the line. Below that was a line that read: NM-FLETCHER, CONRAD, J., DR., and below that, the address, and Conrad’s Social Security number.
The first chunk of the report was personal information: his age, the date he established credit, spouse’s name, spouse’s maiden name, her Social Security number, and their former addresses, going back at least five years. Below that, Conrad’s employer, position, and salary were reported.
“Jeez, he did okay for himself, didn’t he?” Conrad made just over $250,000 last year.
“Keep reading,” Lonnie said. He could digest the data a lot faster than I could. He could go through a two- page report and pick out the important material in about thirty seconds.
I read on. There was a section on Public Records, which was empty. At least he hadn’t filed bankruptcy, and there were no current judgments against him. The next section started after another row of asterisks, then a series of columns headed: FIRM; CURRENT STATUS; RPTD-OPND; LIMIT P-D; HICR TERM; BAL; and 24-MONTH HISTORY.
“Aw, man, look at this,” I said, as the statement’s impact hit me like another shot to the gut from Bubba.
“These guys were in hock up the ya-ya,” Lonnie said. “See, their house had two mortgages. They’re one month behind on the primary and three months behind on the secondary.”
“Look, both their cars are leased,” I said.
“And see up here in this section,” Lonnie said, pointing. “They had a Mercedes repossessed last year.”
“Oh, hell, is that what that code means?”
“Yeah, it wasn’t one of mine, though. I didn’t pop it. I’d remember a car like that.”
I suddenly felt dizzy. “Man, I got to sit down. You mind?”
“Sure.” He pulled the chair away from the desk for me.
There it was, the Great American Success Story. No wonder there was tension in their marriage. It’s tough making medium six figures a year when you’re supporting a high six figures lifestyle.
“Look,” I said, “two MasterCards, three VISAs, American Express Gold, Optima, Diner’s Club, Carte Blanche.”
“All maxxed out or over their credit limits,” Lonnie commented, standing over my shoulder. “Look, they’re three months behind on that VISA, two on the other ones.”
“Where did it all go?” I asked, exasperated.
“Beats me. Maybe up their noses.”
“No, you toot up that kind of dough, people are going to notice. Man, I think it’s just fancy living. Vacations, cars, clothes, restaurants.”
“Look, that’s another mortgage, I’ll bet. Bank of Cookeville-that’s up by Center Hill Lake. Sixty-five grand outstanding. Man, it’s almost got to be a summer home or something. See, next column over. They’re four months behind on that one. I don’t know why the bank hasn’t already foreclosed.”
I stared down at the paper, seeing the letters and the numbers, but too much in shock to make much sense out of it.
“Check it out, man,” Lonnie continued, “Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman-Marcus, Dillards, Castner’s, Lord amp; Taylor. Damn, man, what’d these two do? Fly up to New York every weekend to shop?”
“Down here at the bottom,” I said, pointing. “Look, a charge off.”
“Twenty-five hundred to Dominion Bank. And here, look. His student loan is even late. Now that’s some serious shit, man. You deadbeat a student loan, they go after you hard. They’ll pull your freaking income tax refund nowadays.”
“If he had one. The one thing I don’t see is an IRS lien.”
“It wouldn’t necessarily be there. I usually don’t see personal liens on these reports until after the IRS has come in and seized everything you own.”
“Then they list it afterward on your credit report?”
“Yeah. Keeps you from replacing all your stuff with something else. I tell you, fella, these two were on the edge of it.”
“Edge of what?”
“Collapse, man. Collapse.”
I scanned down to the end of the report, each printed line another nail in the financial coffin. How can anyone let themselves get in this kind of shape?” I wondered.
“We can get out the calculator,” Lonnie said, “but my guess is that between the credit limits, the mortgages, and the judgments, they owe somewhere around three-quarters of a big one.”
“No, don’t. I don’t want to know.” I let the paper fall out of my hand onto the floor, then wearily put my head down on the desk next to the computer. Lonnie leaned against the door frame, cradling the cup of coffee in his
