by James Swain
“Okay, I found your account,” Meg said. “Your phone is the Motorola Z2 Droid. We have a special going on. I can upgrade you to a Z Force Droid for thirty bucks.”
“Is it worth it?”
“Absolutely. I got one myself. It’s the best phone I’ve ever owned.”
“Sold,” he said. “Can I download my apps and contacts to it?”
“Of course. You’re on the Unlimited Plan, which offers unlimited data, text, and calls plus HD streaming and a mobile hotspot. Want to keep it?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You’re in luck. You bought insurance the last time you purchased a phone, so this new one’s covered. The only charge is for the upgrade.”
“This is getting better all the time.” Taking out his wallet, he pulled out a pair of twenties. “I’ll pay cash. My credit card is nearly tapped out this month. I have a favor to ask. Will you help me download my apps and data? I’m not good with that stuff.”
“You bet,” Meg said.
He walked out of the store holding a new Z Force Droid with Zack Kenny’s personal information stored on it. So far, his plan had gone without a hitch. If he was lucky, Zack Kenny didn’t encrypt his personal information, and he’d be able to see what Kenny was looking at without having to jump in bed with a Russian mobster.
No such luck. The phone was locked and needed a password. He backed out of the space and was soon on Sunrise Boulevard heading west. Taking out his own phone, he pulled up Google and tapped the tiny microphone embedded in the search bar. The word “Listening” appeared on his screen, and he spoke into his phone.
“Directions to the Booty Call, Fort Lauderdale.”
“Here are your directions to the Booty Call, Fort Lauderdale,” an automated female voice said. “Continue to drive west on Sunrise Boulevard for five point two miles. You are on the fastest possible route and should reach your destination by 8:20 p.m.”
He arrived right on time. The club was a concrete building painted hot pink with royal palm trees framing the entrance. A valet with fresh stitches on his chin took his keys. Inside, a woman showing heavy cleavage said the cover was twenty bucks.
“I’m here to see Sergey,” he said. “Croix Tedesco sent me.”
“I don’t know any Sergey,” the woman said.
“My name’s Jon Lancaster. I’ll be inside waiting for him.”
“You haven’t paid me.”
“Nor do I plan to.”
He passed through a beaded curtain into the club. The bar was shaped like a horseshoe with the dance floor in its center. A young lady wearing a piece of dental floss gyrated on a brass pole to the beat of deafening electronic dance music. He found an empty chair at the bar and ordered a Bud. It set him back twelve bucks.
A man built like a bodybuilder and wearing a black suit caught his eye. The man was checking out the patrons, intent on finding someone. Lancaster took a swig of beer and hopped out of his chair. He’d spent thirty months training to be a SEAL and never once lifted a weight. Big muscles only slowed you down. The man in the suit pointed a finger at him.
“You Lancaster?”
“My friends call me Jon.”
“My boss wants to see you. Let’s go.”
The man in the suit slapped his hand on Lancaster’s shoulder. A split second later, the man was kneeling on the floor, writhing in agony. Pain being the great equalizer, Lancaster gave him enough juice to drain the blood from his face. When the man in the suit had taken enough torture, he released him. The man rose rubbing his thumb.
“Touch me again, and I’ll break your arm,” Lancaster said.
The dancer had stopped her routine and was watching. So was everyone else in the joint. Watching a fat guy take down a strong guy was not a dynamic they were used to seeing. He took his change off the bar and slipped it under the dancer’s G-string.
“Just a little misunderstanding,” he said.
Sergey’s office was more of a living room, with a leather couch and a glass coffee table. Three walls were taken up by flat screen TVs. A feed from the club played on one; a feed from a VIP room where a patron was getting a friction dance showed on the second; the YouTube video of him popping the kidnappers was on the third.
Sergey was sprawled on the couch. His unbuttoned shirt revealed a hairless chest covered in bright tattoos. He was going bald and wore an elaborate comb-over. He pointed at a chair leaning against a wall. Lancaster grabbed it and sat down.
“You have more hits than the latest Justin Bieber video,” the Russian said. “Do you enjoy being famous?”
“It isn’t the worst thing that ever happened to me.”
“Does the video help you get women?”
“It’s a good icebreaker. They usually ask how the little girl that I rescued is doing.”
“Do you know?”
“Kid’s fine. Her parents sent me a Christmas card last year.”
“How touching.”
“Glad you think so. Croix told me about your problem. I have a solution.”
In Lancaster’s experience, Russians were difficult to read. Something resembling a smile crossed Sergey’s face. Without getting up, he fetched two beers from a small fridge, and placed one on the coffee table in front of his guest.
“Tell me,” Sergey said.
“When cops shake down businesses, they choose ones that are breaking the law. The owners don’t go to the police because they’re afraid of being arrested. Your problem is worse because you’re breaking a lot of laws. Your dancers are blowing customers, you’re videotaping the sex and using it for blackmail, and you’re hacking cell phones and draining bank accounts. That’s enough to get you put away for fifteen years.”
The Russian mobster sipped his beer. “Not good.”
“Not good at all. Here’s my solution. These detectives want your dancers to move coke that they plan to steal from the police stockade. I have friends on the force that I’ll tip off. These detectives will get busted, and your problem goes away.”
“Will my name be left out of this?”
“Yes. The detectives won’t know you set them up. Now let me ask you a question. How are these detectives stealing the coke? The stockade is tightly run. It’s hard to steal drugs without it getting noticed and reported.”
“I asked the detectives, and they explained the deal,” Sergey said. “The police have drug-sniffing dogs that they use on busts. One of the handlers uses cocaine to train the dogs on a course. Before the handler returns the cocaine, he switches the drugs for flour. The handler is a veteran officer, so no one suspects.”
“How much is he stealing?”
“A kilo every other week.”
“A kilo has a street value of twenty-five grand. Fifty grand a month is a nice haul. Give me these detectives’ names, and I’ll get it taken care of.”
“I don’t know their names,” the Russian said. “They flashed their badges the first time they visited the club but did not present me with their identification. However, I do have a video that I secretly took of them stored on my computer. Will that help?”
Lancaster knew most of the detectives with the department and said yes. Sergey put his beer down and powered up the thin laptop on the coffee table. In the Broward County Sheriff’s Office, 98 percent of the cops were brave, honorable women and men who risked their lives every day to keep the public safe. The 2 percent that were bad had reputations, but managed to keep their jobs because other cops were loath to turn them in.
Sergey flipped the laptop around. A video played on the small screen. It had been taken inside the same office they were now in. On the video, a Hispanic woman and her partner stood with Sergey in the room’s center. The woman was doing the talking while wagging her finger in Sergey’s face, doing the old shakedown. He stared and realized it was Detectives Vargas and Gibbons. He leaned back and shook his head.
“You know them?” Sergey asked.
“I sure do,” he said. “They’re bad cops, and plenty of their
colleagues on the force know it. No one will shed a tear when they go down. But I have to ask you again. I’m familiar with the stockade procedures for handling drugs, and they’re strict. Did you learn exactly how the dog handler is getting the cocaine out of the building?”
“He uses his cowboy boots,” the Russian explained. “He comes to work with plastic bags filled with flour stuffed in each boot. Each bag weighs half a kilo. He gets a kilo of cocaine from the stockade and works the dogs on a course. The course has places where the cocaine can be switched, including a small shed. He picks a moment and hides in the shed and makes the exchange.”
Lancaster nodded. It was everything he needed to make a call and get an investigation started. “This is going to take a few weeks. In the meantime, continue to deal with them like nothing’s changed.”
Sergey closed his laptop. The Russian had gotten what he wanted and looked pleased. Lancaster handed him the Droid with Zack Kenny’s information.
“Your turn,” he said.
CHAPTER 19
BRUTE FORCE
Hacking a cell phone was virgin territory for Lancaster. He didn’t have a clue as to how a hacker got his hands on personal information stored inside a phone. Was it skill or luck or a combination of both? To his surprise, it was none of the above.
It was called brute force. Using a sophisticated software program, a hacker could systematically try many passwords or pass phrases until the correct one was found. The method was fast when used to check short passwords, but grew longer when the password consisted of a combination of numbers, letters, and symbols.
To aid his search, Sergey needed personal information about Zack Kenny. This included names of pets, favorite foods, names of schools he’d attended, girlfriends, and any other easily remembered things that might be turned into a password.
Using his Droid, Lancaster got on the internet and pulled up Kenny’s LinkedIn page, which contained the names of Kenny’s previous workplaces. He recited this information to Sergey, then found Kenny’s profile on Facebook, and read off the names of schools Kenny had attended and his favorite musicians and movies.
“This isn’t very much,” Sergey said. “What about hobbies or pets?”
“I don’t have any of that,” he said.
“What else can you tell me about him?”
“He’s a sexual demon who’s attracted to young girls.”
Sergey frowned. “Then we’re probably looking at a long password.”
“That would be a good assumption.”
“Then this could take a while.”
“How long are we talking about?”
“Days,” the Russian hacker said. “My software program will test hundreds of thousands or even millions of words and eventually get a hit. But it’s a long process.”
“Is there a way to speed it along?” he asked.
“Get me more information. That usually does the trick.”
He thought back to his meeting with Karissa Clement. She’d been happy to share what she knew about Zack, and with a little prodding might provide him with a piece of information that would unlock her ex-boyfriend’s cell phone.
“Where’s a quiet place I can make a phone call?” he asked.
“You can use a VIP room,” Sergey said. “If a girl comes in, kick her out.”
“Tell me the way, would you?”
Sergey gave him instructions, and he soon found himself in an empty VIP room with mirrors on the walls and ceiling and a red leather couch with a gaping tear in it. He took a spot on the couch and gave Karissa a call. She answered with a cheery voice.
“Hey there. I was thinking about you. How’s your investigation going?”
“I’ve hit a wall,” he said. “I was hoping you could help me.”
“I’d be happy to try. By the way, you didn’t tell me you were a celebrity. I googled you when I got home and read up on you. I also watched the video on YouTube. Where did you learn to shoot like that?”
“I was in the military.”
“Five hundred thousand hits. You must have women swarming all over you. It said online you were a Navy SEAL. Is that true?”
“Guilty as charged.”
“You’re the bashful type, aren’t you?”
Karissa was more assertive and self-assured over the phone than she’d been in person, and the conversation was starting to sound like a date. Either she liked to flirt or there was real interest, and he decided to tread cautiously. “I don’t like to talk about the past. There’s an expression in police work. You’re only as good as your last case. Right now, I’m striking out and need your help in a big way.”
“I’m more than happy to help. Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“You don’t wear a ring. Are you single?”
“I am.”
“So am I. And I think you’re cute. Fire away.”
He didn’t remember a woman ever calling him cute before. Maybe his mother had when he was a baby, but that was a long time ago. It made him feel strange, and he glanced at his reflection in one of the room’s mirrors. His face was bright red.
“I confronted Zack in the parking lot of his apartment building,” he said. “He knew I wanted his cell phone and smashed it on the ground. I went to a Verizon store and conned them into believing that I was Zack. A salesperson sold me a new phone and downloaded all of his personal information onto it. I want to look at his data, but it’s password protected. I was hoping you could help me hack it.”
“Wow. What do I have to do?”
“I need the names of Zack’s pets and his hobbies and stuff like that. People use familiar names for passwords.”
“Let me think for a second.”
“I’m going to put you on speaker so I can type your answers into my phone. Is that okay?”
“Sure thing.”
He balanced his cell phone on his lap and put it on speaker. Then he minimized the screen and opened up an app called InkPad. On the screen appeared a yellow legal pad and a keypad. He’d started using InkPad when he was a detective and had found it invaluable when questioning subjects during investigations. Everything he wrote down was stored in the cloud and could be accessed on his desktop computer, on his mobile device, or by going on the internet and logging in to his personal account. There was never a chance of him losing important information by forgetting to empty his pockets before he put his clothes in the wash.
“Ready when you are,” he said.
The door to the VIP room opened. A black dancer wearing a string bikini strolled in with a drunk customer. She had the customer by the tie and dragged him like a horse.
“This room’s taken,” he said.
The dancer frowned. “You in here by yourself?”
“It would appear so.”
“Want me to come back when I’m done?”
“No, thanks.”
“You sure? They don’t call this place the Booty Call for nothing.”
“I’m sure. Have a nice day.”
He rose from the couch and showed her out. She wiggled her ass as she left, just to let him know the invitation was still good. He returned to his spot on the couch, picked up his cell phone, and took Karissa off speaker. “You still there?”
“I’m here. Where are you? Who was that?” Karissa asked suspiciously.
He normally didn’t discuss the details of his cases with strangers. Only Karissa had heard everything and was probably thinking he was a real sleaze. If he wasn’t straight with her, she’d hang up, and a good source of information would be lost.
“I’m in a strip club called the Booty Call,” he said. “The owner is a Russian hoodlum who’s also a hacker. He’s helping me get information off Zack’s cell phone. I’m sitting in a VIP room, and a dancer just came in by mistake.”
“That sounds crazy enough to be true,” she said.
“I wouldn’t lie to you. It’s all true. I’m going to put you back on speaker. Ready?”
“Fire away
.”
Ten minutes later they were done. As they exchanged goodbyes, Karissa asked him to keep her apprised of how things played out with Zack, and he agreed to call her once his job was done. He walked back to Sergey’s office feeling like he was making progress.
He rapped on the door, and a familiar voice invited him in. He entered to find Sergey lying on the couch talking on a cell phone. The Russian mobster motioned for him to sit and ended the call.
“That was my bouncer. He’s at the hospital getting X-rayed. You hurt him.”
“I hardly touched him,” he said.
“Your touch is a deadly one. You ruptured the tendon in his hand. He’s no good to me now.”
“Sorry.”
Sergey pulled himself up to a sitting position so he faced his guest. “I’ve read about the SEALs. You’re the world’s most elite warriors but have problems adjusting to the real world when you leave the military. Would you say that is a true assessment?”
“Maybe for some of us. I think I’ve done okay.”
“Once a warrior, always a warrior. I think that would describe you.”
Lancaster shrugged and did not reply. He didn’t like when people tried to analyze him. In his experience, the only people who truly understood SEALs were other SEALs. The only reward for being a SEAL came from within, and that was a difficult thing for outsiders to appreciate, let alone comprehend.
“How would you like to come work for me?” Sergey said, breaking the silence. “I will make it worth your while.”
“Doing what?”
“Running security at my clubs.”
“No, thanks. I like the gig I have now.”
“I will leave the offer open in case you change your mind.”
Lancaster opened up the InkPad app on his phone. “I just got off the phone with Zack Kenny’s ex-girlfriend. She gave me the names of his pets, his college fraternity, his hobbies, and the nickname of his high school football team. Hopefully, it’s enough information for you to hack the password on his cell phone.”
“Let’s find out,” Sergey said.