I parked on the street in front of my condo and exited the car. And, once again I had a creepy feeling that all was not right. I shook it off, mounted the front steps and pointed my key to where the lock used to be… the doorframe around the lock was shattered and the door was slightly ajar.
Ahh, shit! I thought savagely. Not again.
Instinctively, I reached for my weapon. Gently, I pushed the door open, took a step back, and waited, listening: nothing.
I took a deep breath and stepped inside. All was quiet, but all was not well: my condo had been trashed.
Stepping around flipped over chairs, trying not to step on scattered papers, picking up slashed sofa cushions, I made my way carefully into the living room and went to the wall safe. I pressed the hidden button on the frame; there was a click and the picture swung open an inch. I opened it the rest of the way and was relieved to find the contents were intact… except for my spare weapon, a twin of the Smith & Wesson 9mm semiautomatic I still held in my hand.
Oh shit! I thought. That’s all I need.
Whoever it was that had broken into my home was long gone. I went downstairs to the basement, to my office and looked around. Geez, what a frickin’ mess.
I shoved the gun back into its holster and returned to the kitchen, sorted through the mess, found what I needed, and made some coffee. That done, I went to the living room and flopped down on the couch in front of the big windows; it was starting to rain again. Damn! Is it ever going to stop?
I stared out into the mist; the far riverbank was barely visible. I sipped a little coffee, placed the cup down on the side table, and in what seemed only minutes, I was at peace.
I woke a couple of hours later with a crick in my neck and a pain under my arm where the M&P9 was pressing against my bare skin… and it was still raining. I checked my watch: it was almost seven o’clock and I felt like shit. I looked around the room, took in the mess, sighed, rose, and headed for the shower.
Twenty minutes later, and for some reason feeling better than I had in a week, I set about trying to figure out what else my intruders had stolen. Surprise, surprise, nothing seemed to be missing except for my gun, Phoebe’s napkin and the note from the sandwich wrapper.
Well, there goes any chance I might have had of getting prints, I thought. I should have turned ’em over to Kate yesterday. Well, at least I have photos of them.
I made more coffee, toasted a bagel, slathered it with cream cheese, and texted Ronnie. I asked him if he’d found us an office and if he had, was it in a secure building?
The next message went to Kate. I told her that my place had been trashed, that I was okay, but the napkin and wrapper were missing. I figured it would be a good idea to keep her in the loop.
I took my coffee and bagel to my office, shook my head at the mess, then fired up my laptop, found the number for a local security company and made a note of it. No way was this going to happen again.
I sat for a minute, trying to get my head around the mess I’d gotten myself into. I couldn’t; none of it made any sense. I shook my head, changed gears, and thought again about Goliath.
JoJo? Meh, I don’t think so. Goliath suits me just fine, I thought, as the image of his exploding face when I sank my fist into his gut flashed through my mind, and I couldn’t help but smile.
I called Kate.
“Hey, Velda,” I said when she answered. “Have you got a minute? I have some questions.”
I heard her laugh.
“Sure,” she said, “but first tell me what happened at the condo. Are you okay?”
“Oh yeah, I’m fine, but the place is trashed and… they took my spare M&P9, along with Phoebe’s note and the one from the café. They were both on my desk.”
“Geez, Harry. That’s not good, your weapon. You’ll need to file a report… No, I’ll file it right now. If it’s used to commit a crime, you need to be covered. Give me the serial number.”
I read it off to her, then said, “Kate, I’ve got to get to the bottom of this, and I have almost nothing to go on. I have a meeting tonight with the waitress who handed me the note. Maybe she has some answers. Other than that, there’s just the big guy, Joseph James, JoJo. What do you have on him?”
“He’s a nobody, Harry. He has a rap sheet a mile long, but it’s all for petty crime, and he’s been arrested several times for assault and extortion. Seems he works as muscle for anyone willing to pay him. Here’s the thing, though: it’s all old stuff. He’s been clean for almost three years. Either he’s turned the page and is going straight, which we know he hasn’t, or someone is looking after him.”
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s what I figured, but who? He’s an animal, and high profile. He’d be more trouble than he’s worth.”
“I don’t know, Harry. Tell me about this meeting… You want me to come along with you?”
“No, but thanks for the offer. If she knows anything, I need her to talk, and—”
She interrupted me, “And I don’t like your methods, right?”
I smiled; she knew me better than I knew myself.
“Oh, come on, Kate. When did I ever put the screws to a woman?”
“Never, that I know of, but there’s always a first time. And you’re out on your own now, no oversight, no one to answer to, except me, if you break the law.”
“Me, break the law? Never. Okay, I gotta go. See you later?”
“Maybe. Just be careful, Harry.” She disconnected.
A basic Google search for James’ name turned up nothing, which told me that whoever he was working for knew what they were doing. I sat for a long moment, staring at the screen, willing it to tell me something, anything, but it remained silent. I sighed.
I was pretty good at tracking people, but if I was going to make this PI thing work, I figured I’d need someone a whole lot better than me, and I thought I knew exactly who that someone was.
I tapped the keyboard, found what I was looking for, closed the laptop, grabbed my coat and weapon, and headed out the door. It was almost eight.
Five minutes later, I was on my way to the only twenty-four-seven Internet cafe in town. Yeah, it was Friday evening and the place would undoubtedly be busy, but that didn’t matter. I knew they’d be there—they always were—the hardcore computer geeks with their glazed eyes, sallow skin, and brains that thought only in binary code. With any luck, the guy I had in mind would be one of them.
The streets were quiet, which was good after the hustle of the past few days. It seemed like things had been going nonstop since I picked up the kid, Phoebe Marsh, in the rainstorm. The quiet solitude as I drove through the rain gave me a chance to think.
Why Phoebe? Did her old man really sell her? Maybe he did. They sure as hell went to a lot of trouble to grab her that night. I guess it could be they had an investment in her… if he didn’t, there had to be another reason, but what?
And who the hell is this Goliath guy working for and why did he slash my frickin’ tires? It couldn’t have been just for the hell of it... Maybe they were trying to keep me there at the Rose Café. Hmm… And what about that Penelope? Will she really turn up at Starbucks, or was she part of a trap… to set me up? Oh yeah, whether she turns up tonight or not, I need to talk to her again.
The blue light of the sign appeared on my left, snapping me out of my thoughts. I made a U-turn and parked in front of the Blue Tornado. Who the hell thought that one up, I wonder?
I remembered the place from a couple of years ago when it had been a sleazy bar cum whorehouse. The city had shut them down, not because it was a health hazard, which it was, but because two people had died right there, out front, during a couple of drive-by shootings.
The heavy wooden door with a peephole in situ still smelled a little of cigarettes and booze.
I pushed the door open and stepped inside, and again the twin stale smells assailed my olfactory system: ugh. It was dark inside and must have been about as close to heaven as a geek could expect to get: dim blue lighting and little else but the glow from a dozen or so computer screens. It wasn’t as busy as I’d expected; just five customers, all of them under eighteen, I guessed. Fortunately, one of them was the kid I was looking for. I’d gotten a break at last.
“Hey, kid. You got a minute?”
Tim Clarke, the kid from the poker game at the Sorbonne, just about leaped out of his skin. He jumped up from his seat and threw his body in front of the computer screen.
The kid’s up to no good.
“Whattt?” he stuttered, wide-eyed, terrified.
“Hey, it’s okay. Calm down. We met at the poker game at the Sorbonne, remember?”
“Um… yeah… sure,” he said with his back still to the screen. He was pretty nervous which told me he was either surfing porn or hacking, and I was betting on hacking. Either way, he was just what I needed.
“I need a minute. Is that okay?”
He nodded but didn’t move away from the screen.
“You remember the girl that was playing with us that night?”
Again, he nodded.
“Someone grabbed her. Threw her into the back of a van right after she got up from the table. She was abducted. I’m trying to find her.”
“I don’t know anything about that. I swear.”
“No, no, kid. I know that. Look, I’m a private investigator and I…” Hell, I knew basically what I wanted, but I was new to the game and had no idea how to tell him.
“Okay, look,” I said, sitting down on his chair. “I’ve got leads, but I need help fleshing ’em out. I need someone with your kind of skills. You interested in a job? I pay well.”
The surprised look on his face was just short of amusing. He poked at the bridge of his glasses with an extraordinarily long forefinger, and frowned, like he was thinking about it.
“Doing what?” he asked.
“Computer stuff. Geeky stuff. IT. Finding people, tracing phone numbers, anything computer related, maybe even a little hacking. You up for it?”
He scratched his head and pushed up his glasses. “I… I don’t know.”
“Let me guess,” I said. “You’re what… sixteen, seventeen… still live with your mom. You come here because you have no privacy at home, on your mom’s computer. You’re probably surfing porn or hacking something on this one, right?” The minute I said hacking, his eyes got wide. Oh yes! He’s frickin’ perfect.
“Seventeen… I’m seventeen. But… I… um…” He was scared. Probably thought I was gonna turn him in.
“Come on, kid. You can do better than this. Who are you hacking? A bank? The government? Somebody else’s government? All hackers get caught sooner or later, and they end up in jail. You don’t want that, now do you?”
He shook his head.
“So come work for me and use your talent legally. I’ll pay you well, and you can pick out whatever equipment you think you need. You can have your own machine… top-of-the-line stuff, and your own place? And I’m not talking about sharing a prison cell with a roommate named Dragon.” That got him.
He stepped away from the screen, grabbed a chair, sat down, and poked his glasses again. I looked at the screen.
“Shit! You’re hacking the IRS? Oh man, as much as the bastards have hounded me in the past and how I’d love for you to completely wipe my records, it’s wrong and you shouldn’t be doing it for anyone else either.”
He looked at me with puppy dog eyes, tears welling up in them.
“You’re not going to tell my mom, are you?”
Geez. The kid doesn’t care about jail, all he’s worried about is his mom.
“No. I won’t tell her if you promise to knock it off and come work for me. I’ll give you an office. You get to set up the network, buy all the computers and any other tech toys you think you might need. What do you say?”
He turned back to the computer and with a few keystrokes he was out of the IRS database, clicked the mouse, and shut down the computer. He pushed back the chair, stood up, grabbed his backpack, looked at me and said, “When do I start?”