Part One: Chapter 4

IV

I sit at the computer and, not wanting to be distracted by any of the trash I had to look at a few moments before, I right-click and close the minimized toolbar link to the slideshow. I do the same for the Windows Explorer window, Rachel’s email, and the bogus instant message that purported to be from me. I wonder immediately if this housecleaning was a mistake: will I be able to bring the instant message back up later when the time comes for a thorough investigation this weekend? It is increasingly obvious that some of my weekend plans will have to take a hit so that I can get to the bottom of this unsavory mess. But for now I just need to focus on our financial accounts so I can see what has caused all of Diana’s plastic to shoot blanks, so from the desktop I click on the cute little icon that Rachel has created called The Branford Family: a thumbnail photograph featuring a “family” of four dogs superimposed on the front stoop of our home, two big dogs in the back and a smaller dog and a little puppy in front.

The family page comes up quickly and I right-click on our checking account to open it in a new window. I am not a lazy man, but I’ve gotten a little weary of entering passwords and PINs and user IDs and trying to remember which number is assigned to which account every time I want to manage something online, so Rachel is able to power the web page with inter-active autofill mini-programs to take care of details like that for us, and the result is that within a second I am starting at a summary page of our primary bank account, a summary page that shows a current balance of – what is this? -- $942,016.58! I expected it to show about four thousand dollars, maybe closer to six thousand if this month’s mortgage payment has yet to clear. It is a problem, a mistake, that it shows much closer to a million. Neither Diana nor I has ever had anywhere near a million dollars in any bank account at any time in our lives.

It is obvious to me what has happened. The bank has made one of those mistakes that you hear about every once in a while, crediting an implausibly large sum of money to our account in error, and now the bank has frozen our account lest we head for Mexico with the money while they are sorting out the mess. Aargh, the arrogance of banks! They are all about protecting themselves, the customer be damned! Now it looks like I will have to go in person to the local branch in Belmont Center, and perhaps even drop a thinly veiled hint about a newspaper column on this experience, in order to get an actual human being to intervene and rectify this problem.

Then I look back at the account summary page again and I notice that the available balance is a good deal lower than the nearly million-dollar current balance. It is so much lower that it is a negative number:

Current balance: $ 942,016.58

Available (collected): $-19.77

So, we are almost twenty dollars in the red. I’ll bring a twenty-dollar bill when I go down to the bank in the morning, just in case. But it angers me. It makes no sense, since the last deposits we made into the account were payroll direct-deposit transfers that are treated as cash and become immediately available. I scroll down a little further and see more information that has to be mistaken:

Total credits, this period: $ 2,770,492.59

Total debits, this period: $2,776,518.22

Obviously, there is a broken algorithm or formula somewhere in the dark bowels of the bank’s computer system, so that maybe it is totaling all our deposits and debits since I first opened the account decades ago, or maybe the error is that the summary is totaling all transactions by all of the bank’s customers this month or this week or this day. It has to be something like that, because I am quite certain that we have not spent two million dollars this month. Or this year. Or this decade.

I close the bank account window and click back to the Branford Family page, then scroll down to where our credit cards are linked near the bottom of the page. I right-click on the link to the workhorse card that we use for most of our credit-card activity, a VISA that is tied to our home equity and consequently had a very low interest rate (zero, if paid within 45 days, as it always is) and a very high line of credit: ninety thousand dollars, more than we will ever need for any family emergency, any family vacation, any tuition bill, or even any new car.

But now, according to the window that is opening up on the screen, the card is maxed out:

Total amount due: $90,666.15

Total amount overdue: $ 0.00

Line of credit: $90,000.00

Credit available $ -666.15

I listen to myself breathing, because in the last moment or two my breathing has become very noticeable to me. Before, when the pornographic images were refreshing themselves on the screen, I had trouble getting a full breath. Now it is just the opposite: I am hyperventilating. Neither extreme is a good thing. I try to slow myself down and breathe deep, and I actually feel myself calming down, mind over matter, as I scroll down the screen to the link I want:

Click here to view recent account activity

Okay. I will print this out and research it, and finally get to the bottom of this before it goes any further. I select options to show myself the last ten days of transactions, most recent activity first, 25 transactions to a page, and thanks to our high-speed broadband connection it is on the screen in a second.

I scroll down through the 25 most recent transactions. Nothing looks familiar. There are some large cash advances and at least a dozen transactions labeled:

Transfer to pay balance on another credit card account

With each transfer there is a credit card number, and none of the credit card numbers look even vaguely familiar to me. There is also a recurring charge, at least once every day in different amounts, for a vendor that I have never heard of:

YoungEntertainment.com 1-617-555-7913

It looks as if our credit card has been used with this vendor once or twice every day for the past ten days, usually for about five hundred dollars a pop. I open a new internet window and type in the website address. Then I reach for the phone next to the computer and dial the toll-free phone number. At the same time, the website fills the monitor with a looped animation of a young woman sliding down a dancer’s pole in a strip club and reaching out toward me to offer an oversized heart-shaped lollipop. She is dressed, if that is the word, in a G-string, with black patent leather shoes and bobby socks. Besides the accessory that holds her ponytail in place, her only other adornments are sunglasses hat continue the heart-shaped motif – Sue Lyons’ sunglasses from Lolita, the first Lolita, I think – and large black mouseketeer ears, with apologies to Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse club. Above her and behind her, as background, a large hot pinkish purple neon sign spells what looks like the name of the strip club:

Little Girls

“Yeah,” a gruff male voice answers the phone. “Little Girls.”

“Oh,” I say, “This is Little Girls?”

“Yeah, Einstein, this is Little Girls.”

I vaguely remember now: this is a local strip club – in Chelsea or Revere? – that has been in the newspaper at some point because of some minor controversy.

“Is it connected with Young Entertainment dot com?”

“Who wants to know?”

“Never mind. Could you tell me how to get there? I was thinking of coming over for a drink.”

“Sure, Pal.” The man gives me the directions, and hangs up. I put the phone down. I sense that I am being watched, and look over my shoulder and see that Rachel has returned home. She and Diana are standing in the doorway watching me, each with the same steely expression on her face, almost as if they were actually mother and daughter.

Rachel turns and leaves the doorway. I realize that there is probably no flattering way she could interpret what she just heard me say, and what she has just seen me watching on the monitor. It is all just more fuel for the fire.

Diana is speaking to me in a monotone: “I have no idea what you are doing, Stanley. I don’t even want to know. I just want you to leave. Please be out of the house in the next five minutes.”

“It’s not what it seems like, Diana, I promise you,” I say. But she has already walked away, and my attention is riveted more on my need to investigate what is being done with my credit card at some strip club than on any need to explain myself or to win this implausible little battle of wills with my wife. I will find out. I will come back. I will reclaim my home and my life. But first I have to learn who has taken them from me.