While most of the men in Ward Six spent their days staring dreamily at Karla Raven’s too-perfect body, according to Private First Class Edwin Tyler Jones’ way of thinking, Catalina Talavera filled every category that defined a beautiful woman. Not that ET didn’t appreciate Karla Raven. She’d saved him from a real beating the day Lew Fergusson had taken a dislike to him.
Edwin liked the way her large dark eyes flashed. The curves on her petite figure filled his imagination. He could only fantasize what it would be like to run his fingers through her thick, long black hair. That she was only five-foot-four, while he was six-three, added to her appeal, and her porcelain-doll vulnerability just begged him to comfort her.
He suspected that she was the only woman on earth who was smarter than he was.
His only problem: she acted as if he didn’t exist.
Frustrated, Edwin toyed with his green beans as he sat at the cafeteria table and sneaked surreptitious glances at Cat. She sat alone at the next table, eating slowly, her dark eyes lost in thought. As she chewed, the muscles at the corner of her jaw gave charm to her perfect cheekbones. Her delicate nose wrinkled just the littlest bit as she reacted to some internal thought.
“You ought to go talk to her,” James Falcon, sitting to ET’s right, suggested between forkfuls of mashed potatoes.
“Man, you don’t understand.” Edwin reached for his orange juice, irritated at Falcon’s perception.
I gotta be slipping. Locked up here in the nuthouse, I’m losing control. That shit woulda got my ass killed on the street.
“You know she doesn’t have any friends here. She’s not military. The woman’s lonely, more than a little frightened—” Falcon made a circular gesture with his plastic fork that took in the cafeteria and its occupants, “—and most of this crowd’s a bit unpredictable. She might appreciate a friendly voice.”
Edwin swallowed the last of his orange juice and set the paper cup down. “Unpredictable? We got loony central here. Gotta be when they count these crummy plastic spoons and shit when we turn in the dishes.” He paused, glancing thoughtfully at Falcon.
“Come on, Edwin, you’re erecting barriers on purpose. Defeating yourself before you start.”
“All right, Captain, maybe so. But here’s what’s what.” He ticked off on his long and nimble fingers. “She’s high-class West-Coast Latina, I’m a black gangsta’. Off the hard streets. Detroit hard streets, my man. I lived by my wits. Muled drugs over the bridge to Windsor . . . that’s Canada, bro. And I did it for some damn dangerous dudes. Only reason I sent my ass to the army was ’cause I got ratted out. Wasn’t nothing gonna save me.” He grinned. “’Course, I had to construct Edwin Tyler Jones, come up with a name, give him a high school diploma, clean sheet, and a nice family to make Edwin look respectable.”
“You built Edwin Tyler Jones?” Falcon asked, his eyes now half-lidded, his head tilted.
Edwin leaned back, attention on Catalina Talavera. “I was maybe four. Somebody . . . older brother I think . . . left a laptop in the house. One he stole from somewhere. Man, it just come natural, you know? The whole computer thing. And there’s always somebody ready to teach. And, yeah, the gangs do hard crime, but that don’t mean they’re stupid, not when a fortune can be made scammin’ folk on the Internet.”
“So you learned computers on the street?”
Edwin absently rearranged his green beans, making them into a square, slowly adding layers as if to build a miniature log cabin. “They spent real money training me. And not for no reason. First, I’m pretty damn good. And second, if I get caught, I’m just a kid, see? Got deniability. ‘Hell, he don’t know what he doing! How’s he supposed to know he done hacked into the Wayne County Courthouse? Wha’chu mean he done changed court records? He only fifteen!’”
Falcon laughed, a gleam in his ever-so-average brown eyes. “You actually altered court documents?”
Edwin could see the faint scars on Cat Talavera’s wrists, and they touched a vulnerable part of his soul. A woman had to really be hurting to do that to herself.
“Made for an easy mistrial. Hard to convict a brother when written reports say one thing, computer records, they say another. I just wiggle past the firewalls and security and put in what the lawyers tell me. They know what to change. Them prosecutors? They never know what hit ’em.”
Falcon was nodding slowly, his bland face half thoughtful, half amused. “Very clever, Edwin.”
“Oh, yeah. And not just computers.” He grinned. “I took a course in how to be a locksmith at community college. After that, I got this job at one of them security companies. Took less’n a month. I could bypass any alarm system they had. Brothers was so impressed, they had me apply for this job at the bank. Security analyst, they called it.”
Falcon leaned forward, listening intently. “How long did it take you to crack their security?”
“Couple of weeks.” Edwin knocked down his “cabin” of green beans. “Had to be damn careful, Falcon. If’n I’d left fingerprints . . . traces in the system? They’d a had my ass in jail so damn fast it’d left a streak across the floor.”
“So you did money transfers for your brothers?”
Caution sent warning tendrils along his spine. “Money transfers? Hell, no. Would’a been illegal.”
“Of course.” Falcon agreed too easily.
“What I can mine out of Amazon, Google, Yahoo, Bing, and the others? Stunning. Ain’t even the tip of the bogeyman’s nose. You ain’t done nothing till you get into RFID traces, public utilities, cell phone data, GPS traces. And the NSA database? Diamonds, gold, and shine!”
Falcon fixed his attention on the empty air and nodded, as if listening. Turning back to Edwin, he casually remarked, “The major says you’re not a mental patient. What are you doing here, Edwin?”
So, how much do I tell? He noticed that Falcon’s hands were twitching in unison. They’d been cutting Falcon’s meds back. Rumor was they did that when they wanted him to evaluate intel data.
“Why’s the major wanna know?” Everybody in Ward Six knew about the major.
“Major Marks is just curious. Nothing more.”
“He’s here now?”
Falcon inclined his head toward the opposite side of the table where a chair sat at a cocked angle.
Edwin chewed his lower lip for a moment, gave Falcon another appraisal, and lowered his voice. “Army put me in signals intelligence. Sweet deal, SigInt. They got a lot of smart guys working cyber defense. Me? I got too cocky. A little slow getting out of General Jaffer’s personal email. He didn’t want the world, ’specially his wife and kids, to know he got a mistress and a house in the Cayman Islands.” Edwin made a face.
“You were reading the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s personal email?”
“That damn military prison at Fort Leavenworth? Bad dudes in there, and I didn’t want no part of Kansas. So I write my own psych evaluation to get sent here instead. Made myself safe in the process, right? That General Jaffers, he got an out now. Anything I say, it’s crazy talk. No need for no assassin in the middle of the night.”
ET watched as Cat Talavera very carefully placed her plastic fork and spoon side by side at an angle on her paper plate. She stared sadly down at it, took a deep breath, and stood. Without making eye contact, she walked slowly from the room to the hallway that led to the female wing.
“Talk to her,” Falcon reminded. “She’s alone and hurting.”
“Too much of a mountain to climb there, Captain. Man, she’s got two PhDs, and she’s only twenty-nine! What’s she see when twenty-three-year-old me walks up to her spouting the talk? She sees some black kid dropped out of the sixth grade, don’t know the name of his real father.”
Captain Falcon seemed to be listening intently, and it took Edwin a moment to realize it wasn’t to him. But then, what did he expect? Smart as Falcon was said to be, he still carried on conversations with people who just fucking weren’t there.
Edwin shoved his chair back, stood to his full six-three, and said, “Give my best to the major.”
He made himself walk away with all the dignity he could muster. Glancing back, he saw Falcon, nodding, talking earnestly to the empty chair. The man’s hands were still twitching, and his right foot was rhythmically tapping the vinyl floor.
Edwin shot a wistful look at the female wing, wondering.