by Tom Fowler
He smiled again. This one broadcasted full wattage. “Better,” he said, “I want you to write it for me.”
“Come again?”
“You ran your mouth back in the day how good you were with computers.” Esposito nodded at my office setup. “You got three screens here and at least as many computers, I’ll bet. You could write it.”
“You could download it,” I said. “A few good ransomware products are out there.”
“I don’t want what everyone else uses. I want something new. Something ain’t getting caught by Norton or whatever.”
“Most ransomware doesn’t get caught by those programs,” I said. “You can download some good ones to give you what you want.”
“You could write me better stuff.”
“Maybe, but I won’t.”
“Think about it. Some poor bastard goes to use his computer one day and all his files are encrypted. He can’t get anything back unless he pays two hundred. He’s paying the two hundred.”
“You can almost get a new computer for as much,” I said.
“But you can’t get your files,” he said.
There were ways around it. I figured Esposito knew, so I didn’t bother pointing it out. It wouldn’t have dissuaded him anyway. “Even if you get this ransomware,” I said, “what are you going to do with it? Tony’s still in charge.”
“Tony’s old,” Esposito repeated. “He ain’t changing with the times. He ain’t keeping up. It’s time for some new blood.”
I shook my head. “Let me get this straight,” I said. “You want me to write you a new piece of crimeware, even though you can download your choice of the best.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And you intend to use the proceeds from it to fund some kind of takeover of the Baltimore mob.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And I presume your plan ends with Tony dead. Tony, whom I’ve known my whole life. You basically want me to help you kill Tony Rizzo and take over for him.”
“Pretty much,” Esposito said with a nod.
“Get out of my house,” I said.
“Mr. E does not get refused often,” the driver said, reminding me he was still in the room, wasting his portion of the oxygen.
“He’s getting refused today,” I said. “Get out. Both of you. Don’t come back.”
“You need some time to think about it,” Esposito said. “It’s a lot to take in.” He stood. The driver did, too. “I’ll give you some time. But remember, I came to you. I know you could do this. And you’re used to Tony, so I know you ain’t gonna cheat me.”
“I also ain’t writing you a piece of ransomware.”
Esposito smiled again. This time, it reminded me of a predator. “One way or the other . . . with or without you, I’m taking over for Tony. It’d be a lot better for you to count me as a friend than an enemy.”
“I’ll take my chances,” I said.
“You think about it,” he said. Esposito and the driver walked back to my foyer, then outside. I left the door open and watched. The driver opened the right rear car door for Esposito, then closed it once the boss was settled. He got in, started the Town Car, and pulled away. I took note of the license plate as the car passed my house: MISTER E.
What an asshole. And I knew I hadn’t seen the last of him.
Chapter 3
I didn’t like having Esposito come to my house and threaten me in so many words. I also didn’t relish the idea of a jackass like him taking over for Tony. Tony was old and set in his ways, and I figured he had sent as many men to their graves as some tinpot dictators. Still, I had known him my whole life and could work with him. I couldn’t see myself getting along with Esposito. Better the devil you know.
Besides, with Tony dead, where would I get good Italian meals for free? The case against Esposito mounted.
Having to deal with Esposito sapped my desire to work my current case. I made up for it by going to the gym. I’m not much of a weight lifter, but I throw up some iron here and there to keep my strength above par. After a half-hour of free weights, I got on the treadmill for three miles. An hour on the go tired me, but I strapped on some MMA gloves and went after the heavy bag. Punches, elbows, and knees. Twenty minutes later, sucking wind, I finished my second bottle of water and hit the showers.
Smelling clean and feeling refreshed, I left the gym. Two women dressed like they wanted to be seen working out headed toward the front door. Despite my fresh workout scent and vibe, they kept talking to each other and walked right on past me. Perhaps I needed to flex as I walked to the car.
Behind the wheel, I thought about the case for the first time in a couple hours. In some ways, two days was a long time to be missing, and in other ways, it was no time at all. I called Joey Trovato and told him I wanted his professional opinion. Conveniently for him—and unfortunately for my wallet—he hadn’t had dinner yet. We agreed to meet at Della Notte.
When I arrived fifteen minutes later, Joey was there, and the bread basket was already empty. I took my time walking to the table, enjoying the smells of the restaurant. Pasta, meat, and tomatoes hit my nostrils in equal amounts. Sometimes, the aroma of the place was just as good as the food.
Joey was a black Sicilian of good demeanor and boundless appetite. I slid into the booth opposite him and looked at the barren basket. “You give ‘fast food’ a whole new meaning,” I said.
“This was the second one,” Joey said.
“Jesus. I never would have agreed to this if you’d told me you hadn’t eaten today.”
Joey smiled. “I had a light lunch.”
“Just one pizza?”
“You’re hilarious.”
A waitress showed up and dropped off another basket of bread and another dish of oil and spices. She asked if we wanted appetizers. We did. Joey ordered mozzarella sticks. I opted for garlic bread with cheese.
“No more than shitty pizza,” Joey said as the waitress left.
“I just worked out for an hour and a half,” I said. “I need shitty pizza right now.”
Before Joey could scarf down the third basket of bread, I broke off a couple pieces and put them on my appetizer plate. I thought the spice array in the oil looked lacking, but it tasted good. It didn’t seem to stop Joey. He finished his two pieces before I did and polished off the rest of the basket in short order. Joey always possessed an appetite and had forever been overweight, but he wasn’t obese and surprised people with his athleticism. At every occasion, he ate well on my dime.
The waitress dropped off our appetizers and freshened our drinks. We ordered entrees—chicken parmesan for Joey and whole wheat linguine with meat sauce for me. The waitress walked away. Her tight black pants were more interesting than any of the décor. Exposed brick added a nice touch, but the rest looked like most Italian restaurants. Joey and I both watched the waitress disappear into the kitchen.
“Whole wheat pasta?” Joey said.
“Does it offend your heritage?” I said.
“And my palate.”
I took out my phone and called up a picture of Chris Sellers. “This guy has been missing for a couple days.” I slid it screen-up across the table. “His younger brother hired me to find him. Has he been to see you?”
Joey shook his head. Like me, he had always been good with computers. He used his skills to create new identities for people. It allowed him to do well for himself, but he also got to see a lot of people at their worst. “Haven’t seen him,” said Joey.
I flipped to the next photo. Anna Blair smiled up at us. “Seen her?”
“I wish,” Joey said.
I shrugged and put my phone away. “I figured it was unlikely.”
“They been gone two days?”
“Yeah. No word anywhere.”
“I’ll keep an eye out,” Joey said.
“Thanks. I think Chris would want to take Brian with him if it got to the point they came to see you. They’re all the family they have.”
“You think the br
other is dead?”
I pondered his question for a second. “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t have a great intuition for this sort of thing.”
“What does your gut tell you?”
“He’s alive,” I said after a moment of thought.
“Listen to your gut.”
“It’s done wonders for you,” I said.
Joey patted his stomach. “Damn right.”
Chris Sellers, like most people a few years younger than I, maintained a sprawling social media presence. I wanted to find places he might have been. His uploaded pictures—and there were a lot of them—could have geolocation data in them. For now, I settled for his LinkedIn page. It listed the company he worked for, a small government contractor I never heard of. They kept an office in Aberdeen, just off the proving ground. I found a couple of his coworkers who were closer. One of them agreed to meet me.
I met Bobbi Lane in the Barnes and Noble Café in White Marsh. Like most people who meet me, she arrived first. I ordered an iced chai and met her at her table. Bobbi was a tall and slender light-skinned black woman with delicate features. I might have called her exotic looking if I hadn’t spent over three years in Hong Kong. She wore an outfit suggesting she was going for an evening run after our meeting. I approved of both the clothes and the exercise.
“You’re the detective,” she said as I sat opposite her at the small table.
“I am,” I said. I showed her my ID. She looked at it and nodded.
“I don’t think I’ve ever talked to a private detective before,” she said.
“I’ll try to set a high bar.”
She smiled. “You carry a gun?”
“Yes.”
“Ever shoot someone?”
“Not yet.”
She smiled briefly before returning to business. “You said this is about Chris.”
“His brother came to me. No one’s seen him or his girlfriend for two days.”
“We were wondering about him.”
“I take it he hasn’t been to work?” She shook her head. “No calls?”
“No,” Bobbi Lane said. She took a small drink from something resembling a smoothie. “He always calls if he’s running late or anything like that.”
“Is he running late often?”
“No more than anyone else, I guess. He’s just better at letting us know.”
“How closely do you work with him?”
“We’re on the same team.”
“What is it you do?”
She cast a glance around the room. “You know we work for a contractor.”
“I do,” I said.
“OK. I can’t tell you a lot of specifics. We’re both researchers. Chris is a postdoc. I’m a grad student.”
“What do you research?”
She smiled again. It was a good one. Gloria’s was better, but a man could get used to seeing Bobbi’s. “That’s one of the things I can’t tell you.”
I thought about a better tack to approach this. “Open source research?”
“For the most part,” she said.
“On the Internet.”
“Yes.”
“The Internet isn’t classified,” I said.
“I guess you have me there.” Bobbi took another sip of her smoothie. I smiled in encouragement. It wasn’t my full-power version. I didn’t need her disrobing in the café. Fewer lumens would still have a good effect.
“Computer stuff,” she said after a moment. “We’re both computer scientists. The government is . . . always looking for an edge when it comes to technology.”
“Exploitation?”
“Now we’re getting into I-can’t-tell-you territory again.”
“Can you let me know how Chris’s research was going?” I said. I sipped my chai while she thought about her response. It wasn’t coffee, but it came pretty close.
“Promising,” she said. “He did a lot on his own, too. I know he built a test lab in his apartment.”
“He did a lot of research off-hours?”
“Yes,” she said. “He definitely enjoyed it.”
“Did he work at home?”
“For practical stuff, he’d use his lab. He put some virtual machines together.” She paused. “You know much about computers?”
“Your company would be desperate to hire me if I hit the open market,” I said.
She eyed me up and nodded. Maybe I passed some kind of trial. “OK. He had a VM lab where he would . . . test out his research and document his findings. That kind of stuff he did at home. Most of the time, if he wasn’t at work or home, he was in a coffee shop somewhere.”
“So the government’s future computer exploits could have originated in a Starbucks?”
“I never said exploits.” Bobbi grinned and sipped her smoothie.
“No, you didn’t,” I said. “But you didn’t have to.”
We sat in silence for a minute. I doubted she had much else to tell me, at least anything she’d be willing to share here. While Bobbi glanced around the café, I took the chance to admire her legs. She had toned runner’s legs, matching the rest of her body. I wondered how many miles she did in a week. “You think you can find him?” Bobbi said.
“I’m good at finding people,” I said, “so I think so.”
“I hope you can. Chris is a good guy.”
“You ever meet his brother?”
“Yeah, the Christmas party last year,” she said. “Chris brought his girlfriend and Brian.”
I didn’t know much about her yet besides a name. “What’d you think of her?”
Bobbi shrugged. “I only met her twice. Never got much of a chance to talk to her, so I can’t say what she was like.”
“Did you like her?”
“She was fine, I guess.”
“But?” I coaxed.
“But I’m not sure she’s right for Chris. They’re really different.”
“You know what she does?”
“I think she told me once, but I don’t remember.”
“Must not have been interesting,” I said with another encouraging smile. The wattage might have increased. If I were forced to encourage Bobbi to keep her clothes on, I doubted I was up to the task.
“It wasn’t.” She gave a non-collegial smile back at me.
I took out a business card and slid it across the table. “If you hear from him or think of anything to help me find him, let me know.”
Bobbi took the card and looked at it. “One of these is your cell?” she said.
“The 410 number.”
“What if I want a running partner one day?” She showed me a quick, almost shy grin. I might need to be careful how much I put into my smiles when attractive women were involved.
“You can call me for anything,” I said.
Counting national places like Panera and Starbucks, plus smaller local joints, there were eight coffee shops near his apartment where Chris Sellers could have done his work. The one I was about to leave would be one of them, if farther than the rest. I showed his picture to the baristas, but none remembered seeing him. Ditto at the proper Starbucks a few doors away. Yes, there’s really a Starbucks a few doors down from the Barnes and Noble Café, which is a rebranded Starbucks. It didn’t make sense to me, but both were always crowded, so it worked out.
I started circling back toward Chris Sellers’s apartment. The first two places were swings and misses, but I found someone at the third place who recognized him. “I see him in here about once a week or so,” she said. Lucy was a cute barista who looked like she just finished high school.
“How often are you here?” I said.
“Four nights a week, usually.”
“When was the last time you saw him?”
She thought about it as she worked on someone’s order. “I guess about a week ago? I mean, I don’t try to keep track of customers. Unless they’re cute.” She grinned.
“I guess Chris didn’t meet your cuteness standards?”
“Gross .
. . he’s way too old.”
I decided not to ask about myself. Kids these days.
The next place I tried was the same: someone saw Chris Sellers about once a week and hadn’t seen him in approximately the same timeframe. The next coffee shop was a local place called The Great Bean. I parked around the side and went in. It featured brick walls, postmodern art, and furniture I took for reclaimed wood. I always wondered why no one claimed it the first time. The manager recognized Chris’s picture. He might have been a year out of college. I lamented the standards for management in the coffee shop industry as I talked to him.
“You see him often?”
“Couple nights a week,” he said as he checked off a couple things on an inventory list.
“When was the last time?”
He looked up at me and frowned. “Don’t you all talk to each other?”
Uh-oh. “What do you mean?” I said.
“Someone was just in here asking about him,” he said.
“A cop?”
“I don’t know.”
I looked out front. A car’s headlights switched on. I dashed out the door. A black Town Car sped away from the curb. As I watched it drive away, I saw the rear license plate.
MISTER E.
Well, shit. What the hell was going on?
Chapter 4
The next morning, I had coffee with my cousin Rich and Detective Paul King at The Daily Grind in Fells Point. I met King through Rich for a case I wrapped up a month or so ago. Rich showed the short hair and general neatness he learned in the Army and maintained since. He looked like a cop. King looked like an artsy rock singer who couldn’t decide on a way to dress. His blond hair was shaggy and generally looked like a straw mop placed atop his head. He wore a neat goatee framed by a perpetual five-o’clock shadow begging for a razor.
This was only my second cup of coffee for the day, so I opted for a strong light roast. Rich and King already started in on theirs. “Can’t get enough of me?” King said as I slid onto the chair opposite them.