“Valentine,” I corrected him and perched on the edge of the chair.
“No nicknames, is that it?”
“Something like that. What did you want to see me about?”
“You’re going to entertain at my fund-raiser tomorrow night.”
“Are you asking or telling?”
He narrowed his eyes at me. “You’re the one that told me you were interviewing for a job yesterday. So I’m giving you a job.”
“Okay. What’s the pay?” I asked.
“Depends on how good a job you do. I want you to do your magic thing, but not a kiddie show with stuffed animals. I need the guests to open their wallets wide. There’s going to be speeches and slide show about the poor kids with AIDS. Heart-wrenching stuff, but a downer. You’ll bring a lighter note. It has to be more sophisticated than the show I saw. Think you can pull that off?”
“I could do a set on string theory or one on Schroedigger’s cat. Which one would you prefer?”
“Not cats,” Elizabeth said before Kroy could answer. “Bobby just told you no stuffed animals.”
Kroy gave me a half smile. “That’s okay, Beth,” he said and patted her knee. “It’s not a real or a stuffed cat.”
“Schroedigger’s cat is an illustration of the theory of multiple universes,” I said. “Very popular in physics currently. And string theory is a concept of how everything in the universe is connected. Sophisticated audiences I’ve played to enjoyed my take on it.”
“Okay, whatever you want, as long as there’s illusion and spectacle.”
“There will definitely be smoke and maybe fire too. So you’ll have lots of spectacle. I have to go buy supplies for the show. I don’t have them on hand.”
“Okay. How much do you need?” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a wad of bills held by a diamond-studded money clip.
“That’s okay. I have money. And you said you’d pay me to perform, right?”
“Look, take the money.” He held out the bills to me. “I said I want a big entertaining spectacle, and I don’t want you cutting corners to increase your take. And get yourself something to wear. Something that shows off your assets. Know what I mean?”
I took the money from him. The bills were all one hundreds. I peeled off five of the bills and handed the clip back to Kroy. “This is more than enough. And I don’t need to buy clothes. I can wear something of Elizabeth’s.”
Elizabeth rolled her eyes. “Don’t worry, Bobby.” She placed a hand on his arm. “I know what you want, and I’ll take care of it. She’ll look perfect when I’m done with her.”
“And get something for Ash, too.”
“Certainly. We’ll get her out of those god-awful Annie May outfits.”
Kroy gave me a little smile. “That’ll be great.” He winked at me.
Elizabeth caught both the smile and the wink and narrowed her eyes at me.
“I’ll be back in a little while.” I headed out the door. It was good to have a coalition with Kroy, but I’d pay a price later with Elizabeth. I crossed to the Lincoln Town Car parked at the curb. Carl, wearing a black suit and matching black chauffeur’s cap, got out and held the back door open for me. I slid in next to Rico.
I waited until Carl had pulled away from the curb before saying anything. “I don’t think I’m going to be much help, Carl. Kroy wants me just to entertain guests at the fund-raiser.”
“That’s okay,” Carl said. “He wants you to stay in his home. That’s all we need. We’re going to show you what you have to do.”
“Who’s ‘we?’” I asked. “You and Rico?”
“No,” Rico answered. “Remember Mike? You met him that night you stayed in the loft.”
“Red-haired guy who was building furniture in his spare time? Is he a confidential informant, too?”
“No, he’s a federal agent like Carl.”
“Nancy, too?”
“Yes, i-systems is the fake company I convinced Bobby to use to ship his pharmaceuticals. They’re supposed to set it up so that nothing can be traced back to him.”
“And what am I supposed to do?”
“Mike will explain it all.” He turned to look out the window.
We drove in silence toward the condemned building where I’d had my fateful encounter with the elevator. Just thinking about it gave me the shivers. I clenched my teeth. There I went again. Going all neurotic and I wasn’t even near an elevator. What I needed to remember was that my freak out in the elevator had cost Phil her life.
“You okay?” Rico draped an arm around my shoulders.
“I’m fine,” I lied and pulled away from the comfort of his touch. I leaned forward in my seat and asked Carl, “Are you going to find Phil’s killer?”
Carl glanced at me over his shoulder. “Not me personally, but the Bureau has pulled out all the stops. The director flew in with a bunch of specialists. All leave cancelled and every available agent working around the clock just to find this Dwayne and the woman you saw. Which reminds me.” He pulled his cell from his coat pocket, held it in the palm of his hand and pushed buttons with his thumb while he drove with his other hand. “Here.” He handed the phone over the seat to me. “Check out the pics. That’s her, right?”
I swiped through a series of photos of Lies-About-Her-Age. They had shots of her in the hotel lobby as a redhead and others of her standing outside Elizabeth’s apartment building. “Incredible. How did they get these?”
“Nothing happens anymore without people recording it on their phones. Agents made a canvas of the whole neighborhood and collected everything anyone had taken. And they pulled the hotel lobby cameras. Those weren’t great, but our lab can do miracles with fuzzy photos.”
“Are you going to give these to the media?”
“Already done. The phones calls are pouring in of sightings of both of them.”
“Yeah,” Rico said. “And how many of those tipsters saw those two talking to Elvis?”
Carl laughed. “Granted most of the calls won’t pan out, but a few will. All we need is one good lead. So stop with the pessimism and give Valentine her present.”
“Right.” Rico reached into his jacket pocket and held out a small velvet box. The kind jewelry comes in. I just stared at it. No one ever gave me presents that Elizabeth had allowed me to keep. Except Aunt June, of course. And never jewelry. “Go on,” he said. “Take it.”
I took it and opened it. A heart-shaped pendant lay inside, one half crystal and one half gold. “I don’t…I mean, you shouldn’t give me anything. It’s very pretty, but…” I tried to hand it back to him.
“It’s not from me personally. It’s for the job Mike wants you to do.” Rico lifted the heart from the box and pulled it apart. A small piece of metal protruded from the gold half of the heart.
“It’s really a…”
“I know,” I interrupted him. “It’s a flash drive.” My cheeks felt hot. How stupid was I anyway? Thinking Rico would give me jewelry.
“No, actually it’s a micro-miniature hard drive,” He clicked the two halves back together. “But it works on the same principle. We want everyone to think that it’s a special present from me that you never take off for any reason.” He unclasped the chain. “So let’s put it on you now.”
Carl drove us to the back entrance of the building. The back door was propped open with a piece of scrap lumber. Carl kicked it aside once we entered. The woodworking equipment was silent and Mike nowhere in sight. We passed into the hall and on to the i-systems office and found Mike at a computer laughing and swearing. “Think you can pull that ricochet shit with me, you son of a bitch? Think again. Hah, gotcha!” He looked up when we came into his line of vision. “Hey, guys.”
“Hey, yourself,” Carl said. “Is there a problem?” He gestured toward the computer.
“No problem. Well, kind of
a problem, but nothing I can’t deal with. Kroy has a ricochet virus on his computer. So whenever his firewall is breached, no matter what you try to see, all you get is this EXE file that once opened fries your motherboard.”
“So he fried your motherboard?”
“You kidding? I know the guy who wrote the original program. So I have my own program that sends it right back to him. Only he had the same idea, so it gets sent back to me. Then I send it back and so on. It’s like Pong, only played in cyberspace.”
“I thought you already got into Kroy’s system and couldn’t find anything. Isn’t that why we brought Valentine here?” Rico asked.
“We found something, only it was crap,” Mike said. “He’s partitioned his hard drive. So when you hack in and look for anything hidden, you find this partition. Get through the partition and you think, bingo. Only you’re wrong. That section is just to fool you so you don’t look any further.”
“So where are the files we’re looking for?” Carl asked.
“In yet another partitioned section.”
“So why don’t you just hack into it?” Rico asked.
“Because we can’t do it without him knowing.”
“But he already knows you’ve hacked into his computer,” Carl said.
“Well, he doesn’t know it’s me, just someone. Which is what we want. Make him a bit paranoid and edgy. But also make him think we haven’t breached his last partition. And that’s where Valentine comes in.”
“I think you have the wrong person,” I said. “I don’t know anything about computers except how to use the search engines.”
“And you don’t have to know anything but how to identify a USB port, and I’ll show you that. You plug in the pretty little device Rico gave you, and the computer will blast a byte by byte image of Kroy’s hard drive to our microdrive. When I have that I’ll be able to find and decrypt the hidden partition. And I know that this time it won’t be garbage.”
“I don’t have to tell it what to copy?”
“No. That’s the beauty of it. It’s programmed, so once it’s plugged in, it does it all on its own. Just wait till the little light on the drive goes off and pull it.”
“How long will it take?”
“Since all it’s doing is taking a picture, so to speak, of the hard drive and not copying it file by file, it’ll only take about ten minutes.”
“Ten minutes! That’s too long. Kroy doesn’t let anyone go into his study unless he invites them. And his bodyguard is just as paranoid as he is.”
Mike looked at Carl and Rico. “Okay, boys. It’s over to you. You said she could do it. The lady doesn’t agree.”
Carl and Rico exchanged glances. Rico spoke first, “I’ve said all along it’s too dangerous.”
“Look, Valentine,” Carl said. “If it’s not possible, all right. But if you can find a way in, then go for it. Once you’ve made a copy, you leave immediately.”
“That’s all you need to nail Kroy?” I asked.
“Kroy and everyone up the line from him in the whole scheme.”
Mike opened his mouth to say something, but a look from Carl silenced him.
“If I’m not there,” Rico said, “and you sense that Kroy’s on to you, walk out. Just go.”
“I’ll do it.” I had to. “Piece of cake,” I said with more bravado than I felt. “I am, after all, the Great Valentina.” I made a dramatic sweeping gesture with my arm and bowed to them.
With this, tension seeped from the room like a balloon with a leak. “Atta girl,” Mike said. “Come over here, and I’ll show you what to do.” He led me to a nearby cubicle. We sat down in front of a computer.
“This computer is identical to Kroy’s. There are USB ports here,” he pointed to the front of the hard drive. “And here.” He pointed to the side of the monitor. “Any one will do the job.” He spoke slowly, as if to a child or a mentally challenged adult. “Okay?”
“Okay,” I said, I said slowly, imitating him.
“So give me the microdrive.” He held out his hand. When I didn’t move, he said, “Here, let me help you. It pulls apart very easily.”
He reached for the pendant, but I blocked his hand with one arm and grabbed the pendant with the other. “That’s all right. I can get it myself.” I pulled the microdrive section free with one hand and palmed it with the other. “Oops.” I held out my empty hand. “I must have dropped it.” I looked down at the floor. As soon as he bent to scan the floor I pushed the microdrive into the side of the monitor. “Do you see it?” I asked.
He straightened. “No. Maybe it fell in your lap. Stand up slowly and let’s see. Don’t move your feet. You don’t want to step on it.”
I stood and staggered as if I’d lost my balance.
“Goddamnit! Hold still. You know what that piece of equipment cost?”
“I’ll ask you to watch your language, sir,” I said in my best Southern belle imitation, “There are ladies present.”
Carl and Rico appeared outside the cubicle. “What’s the problem?” Carl asked.
“No problem,” I said.
“Oh, yes there is.” Mike said, his face nearly as red as his hair. “This ditz just dropped the microprocessor and she’s about to step on it.”
“You mean that microprocessor?” Rico said, pointing to the side of the monitor.
Mike swiveled the monitor so he could see where Rico pointed. “What the hell?”
“Thank you, gentlemen,” I said to Rico and Carl. “We’ll be fine now.” They moved away.
Mike turned to me. “What was the point of that?”
“I don’t know what your problem is with me, but I’m not a ditz and I resent being spoken to like a child.”
“I get that and I apologize.”
“Apology accepted. Now maybe you can help me. Kroy’s security system monitors all the ways in and out of the house. What if I want to get out, but don’t want to trigger an alarm or show up on camera?”
“Can you get access to the monitoring station?”
“At night I can.”
“Okay, then,” he swiveled his chair to face the computer and typed something on the screen. “Kroy has an ADT system. I’m pretty sure he has the H473HK model and it looks like this.” A picture came up of a multiple screen set up.
“That’s it. I was in the room for a second. It looks just like that.”
“Okay then Miss Not-Ditz, watch closely. This button would turn the system off, but you don’t want to do that because that would trigger an alarm. Instead, you need to go through this sequence. Turn off the alarm, turn off the back-up power, then hit these two keys.” He moved the mouse and pointed to each button and he described the steps.
“Does that turn off the system?”
“Nope, that’s the beauty of it. It will just freeze the picture. It stops recording without being turned off. Normally the system would alarm and switch over to back-up power if the picture freezes for more than two minutes, but if you turn it off in that order, it can’t.”
“Brilliant,” I said.
“Thank you,” Mike replied with a grin. “And you’ll be beyond brilliant if you pull this off.” He removed the microprocessor from the monitor and handed it to me. “Good luck.”
I joined the microprocessor to the other half of the heart on the chain around my neck. I’d need more than luck, but I hoped I had luck as well. I rejoined Rico and Carl and we set off for the magic shop. I hadn’t decided which routine to do, and since I had plenty of money thanks to Kroy, I bought enough to do both. I needed to practice. I had only this afternoon and tomorrow day. Not really enough time.
Rico and Carl let me do my own thing in the magic shop, but when we got back to Kroy’s, Rico got out of the car with me and walked me to the door. “Wait a minute.”
“What is it?”
“Make sure you have your phone with you at all times.”
“Roger that. And my super spy device,” I said fingering the pendant.
“Call me before you go to sleep, okay?”
“Checking up on me?”
He gave me a steady look. “It’s not a game.”
“Yeah, yeah. You already gave me that lecture.” I rang the doorbell.
Rico opened his mouth to say something, but Elizabeth opened the door. Behind her in the middle of the foyer a red-faced Kroy raged at a young man I’d never seen before, while Connie stood nearby, arms folded across his substantial chest. “Listen, you son of a bitch, I don’t want any excuses. You said no one could hack into my system.”
“N-no sir,” the man stammered. “I said no one could retrieve anything of use if they hacked into your system.”
Kroy shifted his gaze to Rico and me standing in the doorway. “You,” he said, jabbing a finger in my direction. “Where the hell have you been? Get in here. Now. And you,” he said to Rico, “get the hell out of here.”
Rico gave Kroy an ironic salute and said, “Talk to you later,” to me.
Kroy crossed to the doorway and closed the door on Rico. He turned, his face still dark with rage, to the trembling computer tech. “What’s going to stop the hackers from getting the real data next time, tell me that.” He jabbed a finger at the cringing man’s chest.
“Your computer’s alarmed so we know whenever there’s a breech. And I installed a program that inserts a virus into the hacker’s computer, a virus that destroys their computer. It’s just that in this case the hacker was very sophisticated and he countered the virus with one of his own.”
“What?” Kroy yelled and grabbed the man by his shirtfront. “So now I’ve got a virus on my computer?”
“No. I blocked it. Nothing’s been infected. R-really,” the poor man stammered in the face of Kroy’s ever mounting rage.
Kroy was teetering on the edge of violence. Time to defuse the situation, if I could. Neither Elizabeth or Connie seemed willing to intervene. “So you used the ricochet virus?” I asked the techie.
Kroy released his grip and frowned at me. The techie staggered backward and turned to me eyes wide in surprise and with a shade of relief. “Yes. It’s very effective most of the time.”
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