Mirror Image

by Ice-T

  Champa laughed and said, “I’ll take you back if you’re worried, Al, don’t sweat it.”

  Al P. looked at the guys, nervously laughed, and said, “Nah, it’s cool. I just been ridin’ solo awhile, so a nigga tends to be a bit cautious.”

  Champa opened the door and Al got in Shin’s car. Casey looked at Shin and said, “Bless this nigga with five K and drop him wherever he needs to go.”

  Shin already had an envelope ready and gave it to Al. “Buckle up, you in for a helluva ride.” And he pulled away from the curb.

  Champa looked at Casey and laughed. “Nigga, you did that on purpose!”

  “Hell yeah! A dude like that likes to be in control, but this time he’s gotta know that he’s not—I’m the fuckin’ shot caller. But look, he talked a good game, let’s make sure he can deliver. Have him get a couple phones bugged so we can see that shit in action. Once we know they’re good, we’ll be able to place them strategically.”

  “I was thinking the same thing. It would be good to have phones to eavesdrop for us, you know, when a nigga goes into a hairy situation. Maybe you could also give one to Carla.” Champa looked at Casey with a straight face, but couldn’t hold it and started laughing.

  Casey laughed back and said, “Now, how’d I know you would go there, Champa. Whassup with Rich’s cousin Jacob?”

  “I went by his spot this afternoon and told ’em we wanted to do a meeting tomorrow around two P.M.”

  “Is he cool?”

  “Yeah, he’s a Rasta computer geek, spends all his time at a keyboard, he wants to be down. ’Sides, Rich told him what’s up and he’s not tryin’ to get him pissed off, otherwise he’d never get laid again.”

  Casey laughed and said, “Okay, text Shin and see what’s up with his sister-in-law and have him meet us at the office after he drops Al.”

  Both Champa and Casey hopped in their rides and were at the Urban Victory offices in a few minutes. Inside Casey’s stealth office, he ran down the progress to Shin, then got down to business about setting a meeting to meet Alek Petrosian. Shin told him that his brother’s wife wasn’t much help, or maybe she just didn’t want to get involved. The only thing she said that was of any use was that she’d seen the man a couple times at an Armenian restaurant in Queens called Marat’s. Shin had been there before, because it was where his brother had held the wedding reception.

  “Shit, now what?” Champa asked.

  Casey sat quietly rubbing his chin, thinking of a way to get at Alek Petrosian. On one hand, he could just have him shadowed and orchestrate a hit, but that would only temporarily solve the problem, as he would surely have a number-two guy ready to take his place. Besides, if he did that and anyone found out he was behind it, there’d be a full-scale war, and Casey had too much on his plate to deal with that shit now. That meant he’d have to take out Petrosian’s whole fucking crew. That didn’t really sit well with him, as his guys would want to know why they were doing it. His crew wasn’t in the vigilante business unless it paid paper. Also, for Casey to put their lives at risk—to handle his dirty business with no upside to them—seemed really foul.

  As he mulled over every unappealing option, Casey wondered how he’d let himself get into this fucking mess. His concentration was broken by his second-in-command. “So what you wanna do, man?”

  Casey looked up, took a breath, and said, “Shin … have one of our soldiers get a job washing dishes up in that spot, have him go in desperate, sayin’ he’ll work for next to no money. Make sure it’s someone who knows to shut up and listen and not question what he’s been told to do.”

  Shin nodded his head. “I got it. I know a couple of guys, I’ll have one of them apply tomorrow morning.”

  “Tell ’em it’s a grand if they land the gig, plus a grand for every week they gotta work there. Make sure they show up, shut up, and don’t make friends. Get them a picture of Alek Petrosian and report to you ASAP if he shows up there.” Casey checked the time; it was about 7 P.M. “Okay, Champa, let’s go see Jacob.”

  Champa looked at Casey funny. “Hold up, I set the meeting up for tomorrow, what if he’s not there?”

  “I want all these cats working for us to be on their toes at all times, so just consider this a surprise inspection. I’m willing to bet he rarely leaves his house and is always glued to the computer, so I’m sure he’ll be there.”

  “Okay, I dig it, that’s tight.”

  The guys rode the elevator down to the garage, where Casey told Shin to meet Champa and him at Jacob’s and gave him the address. Casey told him when he got there to hang outside and keep an eye on things. Casey jumped in the passenger side of Champa’s black-on-black DB9 Aston Martin. Champa turned on the monster, its growling engine echoing in the enclosed garage. He had Sly Stone bumping as the Aston slowly crept out onto the street. They went a few blocks to the Cross Bronx Expressway, where Champa opened it up. The sports car rocketed down the expressway, with Champa confidently weaving in and out between the cars with flicks of his wrist on the leather-wrapped steering wheel.

  As his man drove, Casey admired the car’s custom interior. All the wood paneling had been replaced with custom black carbon fiber; the seats were done in black Alcantara leather with red stitching and Champa’s initials were embroidered on the headrests. “How much did Hans charge for all this?”

  “Twenty-five Gs, including the hiding spot for the 9 milly.”

  “That’s tight. I’m too hot right now to drive anything but the Escalade, and even that’s pushin’ it.”

  As they drove to Jacob’s spot, they passed the Bronx-Lebanon Hospital Center. Champa said, “Remember I was laid up there for two weeks after I got stabbed by that Dominican bitch?”

  “Yeah … that’s also where Antonio was born.”

  “Right, I remember.” Champa pretended to check his cell phone while he drove.

  Casey remembered being at the hospital for thirteen hours, waiting for his son to be born, hoping he was gonna have ten fingers and ten toes and all that other stuff parents fret about. He wondered if his son had been brought there when he was shot up. He knew Champa would probably know, but he didn’t want to ask. That type of curiosity just took him to a dark place.

  They pulled up to Jacob’s spot and chilled in silence while waiting for Shin. A few minutes later, they saw him pull up in his dark gray Mercedes G-Wagen. Champa and Casey got out and walked over to him. Shin rolled down his window and Casey said, “Call me if you see anything.”

  “And if you see any niggas next to my shit, put a cap in their ass!” Champa added. He cackled as they headed to Jacob’s, while Casey just shook his head. That nigga’s his own best audience.

  Jacob’s building was a small four-story walk-up. On the bottom floor was an Afro-Caribbean restaurant called Uncle Charlie’s, packed with Rastafarians and with a big picture of Haile Selassie in the front window. Casey smelled the strong aroma of jerk chicken as they passed the restaurant and walked into the lobby. They climbed the stairs to the top floor, and before they could knock, Jacob answered the door.

  “Hi, Champa. I thought we were supposed to meet tomorrow at two?”

  Jacob was a light-skinned brotha of medium build, with dreadlocks to his shoulders and black horn-rimmed glasses. He wore jeans, Birkenstocks, and a T-shirt that read, MIT FOOSBALL. Unlike most people who got a surprise visit from Crush Casey, Jacob didn’t seem nervous or intimidated. Casey liked that.

  Champa hesitated, then said, “Yeah, well … how’d you know we were here?”

  Casey quickly interjected, “He has microcameras set up with motion sensors.”

  Clearly impressed, Jacob turned his attention to Casey. “Yeah, good eye. It’s nice to meet you—my uncle’s told me a lot of stories about you.” He stepped out of the way and waved them into to the living room. “Come on in.”

  Jacob’s apartment was immaculate, actually antiseptic. On the coffee table were neatly arranged magazines: CoEvolution Quarterly, Scientific American, and Who
le Earth. In the corner of the living room there was a huge, elaborate cat tree house covered in brown shag carpet that reached from the floor to the ceiling. The apartment had two bedrooms, with the smaller one holding only a twin bed and nightstand. The bigger bedroom had all the computer shit in it, including six huge monitors. It was a geek’s paradise.

  Casey had actually met Jacob very briefly back in the day, when he was a toddler. Rumor had it that Jacob’s mom had wanted a baby bad, but didn’t want a dude to come with it. Supposedly, she’d heard of a computer convention taking place at the Javits Center and went down there to find the smartest cat she could. Given that those guys probably never got laid, it was like shooting fish in a barrel. The folklore was that she’d landed a guy who eventually became the chief scientist at the National Computer Security Center, a onetime division of the National Security Agency. After Jacob was born, she did nothing but point him in the direction of computers, hoping for big results. And it had worked, sort of.

  Jacob had been into computers since he could walk. He’d gotten his first computer when he was nine, a TRS-80 MC-10 that you had to hook up to your TV. It was one of those joints that you had to load and save programs on a cassette tape recorder. He lived on it, doing nothing but pecking keys morning, noon, and night. His aptitude was evident, along with his mischievousness, and by the time he was twelve, he was hacking the NY transit system to get free rides. At fourteen, he hacked into the school computer to give his friends passing grades, and when he was sixteen, his mom got cancer. She didn’t have insurance, so he hacked into an insurance company’s computer system and overnight she had the best care possible. Nine months into her treatment, Jacob got busted and charged with computer tampering and trespassing in the first degree.

  That was during the ’80s, so there was a lot of “gray area” when it came to the law and information security. Also, the fact that he was sixteen—but looked like he was twelve—and trying to help out his mom made it even more complicated. He pleaded not guilty, but accepted a plea agreement to a lesser misdemeanor charge, and was sentenced to two hundred hours of community service. His mother still got her treatment, because of the possibility of malpractice, and her cancer eventually went into remission.

  Now, he spent his days being an anonymous cyber Robin Hood. He’d recently released an application that successfully searched for registered sex offenders using different social networks to solicit sex from children. So far, his app had exposed more than 2,600 registered offenders, and had led to the arrest of a half-dozen scumbags.

  Dispensing with the small talk, Casey and Champa sat down in Jacob’s living room and started running down the list of things that needed to be done. “The first thing I need is a system that can record multiple conversations at once instigated by a preprogrammed VOIP call.”

  Jacob instantly flipped into nerd mode. “How many calls and how many hours? And how many people? You’re talking both cell phones and landlines?”

  “As many as thirty people, and about fourteen hours a day worth of audio for three or four weeks, all cell phones.”

  Jacob’s eyebrows rose until they almost touched his dreads. “Whooooa, that’s a huge amount of data. Wow … okay, so that’s about three thousand hours a week. I think I’d need about eight terabytes of memory, that should be more than enough. I could have the system also delete dead air and convert the audio from .wav files to MP3s to increase storage capacity. Everything would be time stamped, of course.”

  Casey instantly knew he had the right guy and kept talking. “I also need a program that transcribes the audio conversations on the fly and simultaneously scans for specific phrases and words, then sends alerts once matches are made.”

  “Okay, I can do that, too. I’m gonna need to get more hardware to handle all that processing, but I’m guessing that won’t be a problem.”

  Casey ignored that. “I also want e-mails and SMS messages, on the targets’ phones, scanned for keywords, too—can you handle that?”

  Jacob began pacing the room, rubbing his hands together. Casey could tell he was pumped at the prospect of doing some spy shit.

  “I also want a phone and computer app that shows me where all the targets are in relation to where I am. That program should also alert me when any target is within a quarter-mile of me or anyone else that has the app installed.”

  “Okay, that’s doable, too. I can do a Google Maps thing and have you be able to tap on the dots representing the targets to see who they are and where they’re at.”

  “Dope! I also want to be able to tap into cameras in specific locations around Harlem, Brooklyn, and the Bronx, record video, and sync that with the audio from the targets’ phones.”

  At that, Jacob stopped pacing the room and sat down. “Damn … okay … I can do that if the cameras are IP cameras. I’ve already got a database of hundreds of unprotected cameras all over the city. Even if they’re password protected, I can crack them pretty easily.”

  “The last thing’s a bit more complicated—”

  “More complicated than what you’ve told me so far?”

  “Can you tap into a cop car’s computer and pull a live video feed?”

  Jacob took a deep breath and stared at Casey for a long moment, making him think he might have asked the wrong question. The hacker sat back and closed his eyes, deep in thought. He started talking out loud to no one, looking like a fucking madman. Casey watched him go into what almost looked like Rain Man mode.

  “The cars probably have a Linux device, so … I’d need to hack the police department’s FTP and telnet servers for access to those grids.… I could scan IP addresses that the police department uses. Holy shit, I can do this! I bet I could also hack directly into a police cruiser’s DVR and watch, delete, and even add video.” He turned to Casey, his eyes wide. “I can do it. Why don’t you guys bounce, and I’ll get started now and let you know when I got that all working.”

  Champa laughed and said, “Hold on, nigga, we dig your enthusiasm, but we still got to go over logistics.”

  Casey looked at Jacob, who was obviously amped. He’d given the guy a helluva challenge, and this geek was eatin’ it up. “Okay, so how long to set everything up?”

  “Well, my existing gear isn’t gonna be able to handle everything. I’m gonna need about fifteen grand in additional equipment. Is that cool?”

  “Absolutely,” Casey replied.

  “Excellent, I can order it today. It will be here in two days and take a half a day to set up. Meanwhile, I’ll write a program that can eavesdrop, transcribe, set alerts, and test it while I wait for the equipment to arrive. To perfect tapping into the police cruisers, that shit could take anywhere from a few hours to a few days, depending on how complicated and protected their tech is. As for the mapping application that lets you see where you are in relation to the targets, that’s easy, I can do that in a couple hours.”

  Casey nodded and said, “I want you to do all the work yourself, no subcontracting to anyone.”

  Jacob looked slightly offended. “I’m not some script kiddie. All of this work will be coded one hundred percent by me, no one else.”

  “So this’ll take about four days on the outside?” Champa asked.

  Jacob nodded.

  “Okay, cool. Champa’s gonna be your contact on this. I want you to understand that you cannot brag on this shit under any circumstances. You need to keep your mouth shut, got it?”

  “I got it, I got it,” said a distracted Jacob.

  Casey leaned forward and got in the hacker’s face. “Jacob, listen up. I ain’t bullshittin’ here. I am not your average guy, you know this. If you listened to those stories your uncle told, you know I’m not a man to fuck with. Don’t … say … shit.”

  Jacob was completely focused on Casey now. “I understand, I won’t say anything to anyone, and I won’t get caught.”

  “That’s what I wanted to hear. Now, how much you want for setting this up and monitoring everything twenty-four/seve
n for the next three to four weeks?”

  Jacob looked at his shoes and mumbled a bit. Casey could tell that he was uncomfortable negotiating, or maybe it was something else. Casey remembered Champa telling him that he’d done stuff for Rich, and in return, he’d gotten the computer geek laid.

  “How about this? I’ll give you ten grand now; as far as the equipment goes, order it online and e-mail a link to Champa and he’ll take care of the bill. After that, I’ll give you ten Gs a week, cool?”

  Jacob perked up and agreed immediately. Casey nodded to Champa, who pulled a knot out of his pocket that weighed ten grand. He handed it to Jacob and followed Casey to the door. Casey was reaching for the doorknob, when Jacob tentatively said, “Oh … uh … Mr. Casey, would you mind, I mean … can I keep the equipment, too?”

  Casey looked at Champa, then back at Jacob. “Sure … if you deliver and don’t cause me problems.”

  When they got downstairs, they walked over to Shin, who rolled down his window. Casey told him to put together a team of guys to watch Jacob’s place around the clock ASAP, but by no means should they talk to him or make contact. He told him to make sure Jacob knew that he had eyes on him for his protection; he didn’t need him getting paranoid.

  Casey pulled back his coat sleeve and looked at his watch. It was 8:40 P.M., and he had a 9 P.M. parole curfew he didn’t want to blow. He didn’t think Lomax would check on him, but now that he was building his pyramid, he wanted to limit any exposure that could fuck his shit up. He got in Champa’s ride and told him to step on it.

  Casey made it back to his crib at 9:10 P.M. As he walked in, the doorman told him he had a visitor. Fuck, he thought—he’d had a feeling all day that Lomax might pull a surprise visit and sweat him about Petrosian. Casey’s concern evaporated when the doorman told him his visitor was Carla, and that she was up in his crib.

  Casey walked into his spot to find Carla waiting for him in a tight-fitting business suit and skirt that showed off all her assets to maximum effect. He walked over to her. “Didn’t expect to see you here.”