Between Ada and her mother, she had $3,000. But after showing Frank police records, hospital pictures, and divorce and custody papers, he took on the case pro bono. Ada’s bills were altered. But because of the small budget, she couldn’t fly anywhere to fake an apartment search. Instead, for the misinformation stage, Frank had her mother make a phone call every Thursday night at around 6 to a random home in a northern Plains state. For 10 minutes, the mother talked with the same stranger about how weird it was that she got the wrong number again and how sorry she was about it. Later she joked with the stranger about the repeat misdial, maybe mentioned the weather. This act would help distract anyone looking for Ada. Finally, Frank set up a shelf corporation for the girl and linked it to a fake Mail Box Etc address. Frank told Ada to move and take a job that mostly paid cash. He told her that when her son enrolled in school to use a different last name.
Like many of Frank’s clients, Ada was conflicted, even melancholy when the process was finally over. She was free, but “she would never see her family again,” Frank says. “And when her mother dies, she is going to have to make a very hard decision of whether or not to go back. If she goes back, it could be very bad.”
Not all of Frank’s clients are as sympathetic as Ada. From time to time, he has helped people who probably didn’t deserve it. He once disappeared a man who was amid a divorce case, and wanted to hide money that could be taken in a settlement. Frank claims he checked to see if the man had a criminal record of any kind, including incidents of spousal abuse, but found nothing. These are not the cases that make Frank the proudest. But that doesn’t mean he sweats the ethics too much. “Nothing in life is black and white,” he says. “Starting over is having the ability to recognize that life is filled with grey.”
Recently, an evangelical Christian woman contacted Frank and told him that what he did “was horrible that everybody should face their problems and not hide,” he recalls. “She ran her whole Jesus Christ rant on me.” Frank was nonplussed. “I told her Peter himself ran and denied who he was in the garden.”
Frank says he’s ready to pull off a disappearing act himself. “We’re leaving this place, just as soon as it sells,” he tells me as we drive to a pale yellow prefab that Frank shares the house with his fiancée and skip tracing partner, Eileen. Inside, it is sparkling, the wall-to-wall carpets just washed, but full of boxes with very little on any of the white walls. The only room not boxed up is the one-window office, where they sometimes work.
“We’ve been living like this, in boxes, for a little while now,” Eileen says to me. She is pretty in a biker chick kind of way – tough, thin as a chopstick, white blond, with a bunch of tattoos, including a butterfly on her chest, a large wizard on her back and a thorny vine that winds up one arm. “I’m not used to it. But it doesn’t bother Frank. That’s the way he is. Always in motion.” I ask Frank where he’s headed. Before he answers, he takes a swig of black coffee, his fifth cup of the day. “Let’s just say it’s gonna be a nice place on the ocean and not a trailer park.”
Frank never sees the people he disappears once their gone. That’s his policy. The less he knows the better. Have any of them ever been caught? He doesn’t know. The fact is, he can help erase the things that identified a person, hide their tracks, and get them moved away safely -- once they’re gone it’s another story. They’re on their own.
Staying disappeared isn’t easy. Loneliness hits hard, makes you start thinking about what you left behind - the old friends, the family, a meal at a particular restaurant, the friendly wave of a neighbor. As a disappeared person, you are stripped of your history, even your personality. “Disappearing is a lifestyle,” says Frank. “Mr. Miami can’t be Mr. Miami anymore. He’s gotta be Mr. Des Moines.” Sometimes there are failures. Frank cites the case of Sammy “The Bull” Gravano, the Mafia turncoat who moved to Arizona under the Federal Witness Relocation program, only to chafe at the quiet life. He wrote an autobiography, jetting around the world and signing autographs like a superstar, and eventually returned to crime. In 2000, he was arrested for distributing ecstasy pills and sentenced to 15 years.
“What I tell people in the end is ‘this is it,’” Frank says. “Don’t slack. The guy looking for you can make a million mistakes. If you make one mistake, it’s over.’”
Of course, one of the difficulties with Frank’s business is that it’s impossible to get client testimonials. You don’t see Ada’s face on a brochure saying, “Frank changed my life,” and when I ask Frank if there’s any way at all I could reach out to any of his disappeared clients, he just laughs. But I persist, and finally he tells me he’ll try to get a message out to one of them: Ken.
A few weeks later, Frank and I receive an email from an anonymous overseas e-mail account.
Sirs,
Frank has shown me freedom. Life is good at the beach.
Signed
under the sun
I do not, of course, have any way of knowing if the email is phony or for real. But I like happy endings, so I hope it is from Ken.
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