Lockem decided to call on Sam Black. He knew from experience that the incarcerated man’s lack of on-going information often led to intense frustration and he wanted to keep his client in the loop as much as possible. The jail routine was fairly flexible, so Lockem only had to wait a short while before the accused was brought to the interview room. This room was smaller and in a corner of the oldest part of the building. Two of the outside walls were painted stone. Lockem made no effort to conceal his examination of the room for hidden cameras or listening devices. He found none.
“Sam,” he said, extending his hand. “How are they treating you?”
“’Bout the same as before. What’s the news?”
“I think we can safely talk here. I want you to tell me about your business.”
“You mean my stock trading business?”
“That’s the one. I went to your apartment and I have some questions. Until you were arrested how were you doing?”
“Actually, pretty well. My client list was growing, my income was up. Second year in a row.”
“It appears you haven’t registered with the SEC. Isn’t that a requirement?”
“I, well, I hadn’t got around to it. Things are pretty casual and part-time, you know?”
“I get that. How much money do you figure you skimmed last year?”
“Excuse me?”
“We don’t have time to do a dance here. I’m pretty sure you haven’t killed anyone, but it looks like you have been stealing from your clients.” Black’s jaw tensed and he half rose from his chair. He glanced over his shoulder at the guard on the other side of the glass wall and then subsided.
“Look. I’ve been an investor in the markets. I have some basic understanding of the way things are. I know it’s pretty easy to steal from clients if that’s your game.”
“Easy?” Sam Black grimaced. “It’s almost harder not to. I’m not actually stealing, I’m just overcharging some people who can afford it. Double fees, a little bit of stock churning, buying and selling between two clients so I get the fees at each end. It’s all very low key and low risk. Least it was. The whole market is really just a license to steal.”
“How much?”
“Excuse me?”
Lockem leaned forward in his hard wooden chair. “How much are you stealing? Rough estimate will do.”
Black sighed, fidgeted. To Lockem, he appeared hesitant, reluctant to answer. Were there facts he wanted to keep hidden? “The big traders, hedge fund managers, are making millions. I probably cleared an extra five grand last year. I don’t make exorbitant claims of big returns. When somebody asks I never promise really high returns. I don’t want the agro if it doesn’t always work out. Look, Mr. Lockem. I know I’m stealing but these people can afford it. They have no idea…”
“You’re smart. I’ll give you that. You aren’t vulnerable to a black swan event.”
Black looked across the table at Lockem. “You know about things like that? Bernie Madoff in New York and Tom Petters in Minneapolis.” He nodded as if confirming something to himself. “It figures.”
“What does?”
“My mom said something. It was a month or so before I got arrested. She said people were talking. You know, she said she heard something about how people ought to be careful with their money around me. She asked me what that meant.”
“Did she say who?’
Black shook his head. “I just shrugged it off. Told her people complained all the time about the way the markets were going. Their investments go up, they complain ‘cause somebody else made more. They lose a little and complain about that. I don’t have any long-term investors.”
“Any clients who lost big with you?”
“No! I told you. All my clients made money last year. Not a lot, a few thousand here and there.” He stopped and held up one finger. “I just thought of something. The only local speculator I know about who lost some serious money was Ketchum. He’s not one of my clients. There was something odd there.”
“I’ll say,” remarked Lockem.
Black seemed a little agitated. He stared across the table at Lockem, his eyes wide. “I heard he lost a hundred grand or so. Maybe a little more.”
“But not with you.”
Black shook his head again, vigorously. “No. No. Not with me. The only way I could have been involved if I had clients who were also connected to Ketchum somehow. Unless that was from a whole bunch of small trades, and that’s volume I would have heard about. Traders are funny. Squirrely. Sometimes—most times we play it really close to the vest. Other times we might casually mention a big score. In the right circumstances. We don’t want to appear to boast, but if word of a good profit gets around, it sometimes draws new clients. I don’t think I had any regular clients who connected with Jack Ketchum, but it’s a possibility.”
“Do stock players you know work with more than one trader?”
Sam nodded. “Some do, if they have the money. I’ve had clients who traded with me and another guy in town for a few weeks. One of them said he wanted to compare our work. It helped him decided who to use.”
“Who won?” Lockem smiled to take the sting out of the question.
“The other guy.”
“Where are your operational records. You know, client lists cash flow, so forth.”
Sam told him how to get Edie to open a separate laptop where he stored his trading operations as a backup. “My lawyer also has access.”
Lockem smiled and ticked off an item in the notebook he held. “I suppose the opposite of boasting would be true as well, yes? You’d avoid revealing a bad deal because it might drive possible clients away.”
Black nodded. “So you think—“
Lockem held up one hand. “I think there are several avenues that need exploring. Now. I went by your apartment. Pretty sparse accommodations. In the dining room I saw four computers on that long table.”
“Yeah. There should be five but the cops still have my personal computer. Those four are all hooked to market lines.”
“The branch power switch is set to off. Any problem if the machines were turned on?”
Black thought a moment and then frowned. “No. The switch controls the computers, a printer, the routers and a small internal network.”
“Yeah, I saw the setup. Okay. With your permission, I might just hook in my laptop. The wi-fi service at the hotel isn’t the most reliable. Is that okay?” Black looked puzzled for only a second.
“Sure. OK. And if you need any technical help, my mom has the name of the local guy I use.”
***
Black had assured Lockem that he could power up the rig with no problems and had given him the passwords, but Lockem still hesitated. He knew enough about computer electronics to think somebody might have screwed with the system and planted an electronic bomb of some sort that could obliterate target files. Black had assured him all the data was backed up on jump drives. He didn’t tell Alan where the jump drives were stored and Lockem didn’t ask. There was no evidence of somebody physically tampering with the setup it so he took a deep breath and threw the switch on the junction box.
There was a series of faint pops. It was as if some mysterious creature had awakened and was shrugging to life joints that had gotten stiff with lack of use. There were no explosions, the screens flickered to life, modems reached out electronically, feathery invisible fingers entwined and brought new knowledge to waiting disks. Lockem smiled and breathed easier. He spent the next hour typing in passwords, cursing aloud when he got them wrong, peering at screens that filled and then rolled. Eventually he penetrated at least some of the information still stored on Sam Black’s computers. He found odd and possibly significant gaps.
The operation appeared to connect to data streams from stock and bond markets all over the world. Most of them Lockem had never heard of. Some appeared to be in Cyrillic or Japanese or maybe Chinese character printing. Even when he couldn’t read them, the layout and movement of columns of numbers gave him a sense that he was watching the buying and selling of goods and services all over the globe. There rose an eerie feeling as if he was seeing the private efforts of thousands, perhaps millions of workers collecting and shifting billions and billions of dollars, garnering huge profits and shoving huge amounts of money around while at the same time, others might be destroying the lives and fortunes of unknown numbers of other people. The images seemed at times uncontrollable, even menacing. He shuddered in the face of so much simultaneous commerce. He preferred to deal with the world on a much more personal level. Even when it was violent.
He found a USB wire and connected his laptop to an open port. Then he took a deep breath and switched it on. The screen sprang to life and Alan found he was connected at a much higher speed than when he was at the hotel. For several minutes after connecting to Black’s modem he surfed around and spun through a number of digital file folders and an occasional document. Black had installed three popular search engines and two others that Lockem didn’t recognize but that seemed tied to the world of on-line financial investing. After several minutes of scrolling about he began to believe that Black’s investing universe was intact and apparently undisturbed since the date of his arrest. There was no way to tell if the files had been copied, of course, and no way to trace a possible penetration. After an hour, Lockem shut off the machines, threw the junction box lever to off. Then he took a brief detour through the rest of the barely furnished apartment. He didn’t see anything that appeared to be of significance.
Outside he scanned the block, taking note of a muddy brown sedan with Montana plates that hadn’t been in sight when he arrived. Using his cell, he strolled to his rental and speed-dialed the hotel. Marjorie picked up on the third ring.
“Anything happening?”
“Alan? Why are you calling me through the hotel switchboard? Did you forget to charge your cell?”
“Just a little caution. Or misdirection if you prefer.”
“Oh, well, it’s quiet. You have had another call from the sheriff. It didn’t sound urgent.”
“I’ll be back in half an hour and we can see about dinner.”
They rang off and Alan unlocked the car. That warning itch between his shoulder blades appeared. Sometimes it seemed to suggest he was being observed in a not-so-friendly way. Other times, it was just an itch.