“It says, Thomas Piketty.”
The line went dead and her face went cold. She looked at Gibson. “I’m sorry.”
He put his hands on her shoulders and squeezed. “You killed it,” he said with a huge grin. “You really are a natural.”
“Yeah,” agreed Swonger. “You seemed like actually nice.”
“But we still don’t know where he is.”
“We know so much,” Gibson said, spreading a map of West Virginia out on the table. With a pencil, he drew a circle around Charleston. “He’s only a couple hours away. That eliminates the eastern and northern corners of the state. Plus we know he’s in state, so the Ohio River cuts down our western area.”
“Also cuts out everything right around Charleston,” Swonger chimed in.
“Exactly.”
“So we just have to search a band that’s a ‘couple hours’ from Charleston.”
“You did it,” Gibson said. “We have a shot.”
“So now what?” she asked.
“Now? Now we wardrive.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
Wardriving dated back to the early days of wireless networks, when few routers came with encryption already enabled. Most people, too lazy to follow instructions, just plugged the router in, factory settings enabled, and left themselves exposed to the world. Big cities became all-you-can-eat buffets of wide-open Wi-Fi that software such as Netstumbler or InSSIDer could exploit. Often it was simply to “borrow” free Wi-Fi, but open Wi-Fi presented many less adiaphorous avenues if one were so inclined. Many hackers were, driving the length and breadth of a city, mapping all its unprotected access points. Nowadays, commercial routers defaulted to passwords, so wardriving was less prevalent than it once had been.
Lea’s performance on the call had significantly narrowed their search parameters, but Gibson knew they still had a lot of roads to cover and not a lot of time to cover them. To have a chance meant driving twenty-four hours a day. The plan called on them to drive in shifts, stopping only for gas, food, and bathroom breaks. A fold-down cot in the back of the van would serve as a communal bed. They would drive until they found the cell phone or time ran out. Either way, Gibson didn’t see returning to Niobe. This was his shot, and if he missed, he wasn’t fool enough to mix up with the predators now circling the prison.
Emerson Soto Flores folded his newspaper and watched Gibson check out of the hotel. Two of his men sat in the parlor over a chessboard. Jimmy Temple looked tired and anxious. His once-spotless suit had a stain on the lapel, and a small black thread dangled from his sleeve from a missing button. Eartha Kitt vamped her way through “Santa Baby” over the lobby speakers as Gibson and Jimmy shook hands over the counter. Gibson thanked him for his hospitality. Jimmy accepted it with a careless shrug. He hardly seemed the same man.
“Good luck, Jimmy.”
“Drive safe.”
Emerson met Gibson at the counter and escorted him across the lobby. “Don’t be hard on yourself; there is no shame in cowardice. Sometimes knowing your limits is all that keeps a man alive.”
Emerson held open the door for him, and Gibson saw the van idling at the curb. Lea motioned to him from the passenger seat, but Gibson hesitated. Emerson felt it and faced him as his men emerged from the parlor.
“You have something to say?” asked Gibson.
God knows Emerson did, along with a bully’s excitement at the prospect. His men pressed closer. The van honked, and Gibson could hear Lea calling him. He should go, but still he found it hard to be the one to look away first. His father, a shrewd political strategist, had always said, Fight the fight, but never let them pick the venue. It was good advice. Before Emerson could speak, Gibson broke away, descended the front steps, and threw his bag in the van. He turned back to take one last look at the Wolstenholme Hotel. Emerson watched him from the front doors, an amused expression on his face. Gibson climbed in back, gave Emerson a lazy two-finger salute, and slammed closed the sliding door. He’d be happy to leave Emerson, the hotel, and Niobe in the rearview mirror.
“Ready to go?” Swonger asked.
“As I’ve ever been.”
Lea piped in with an exuberant English accent. “Engage!”
That broke the tension. Even Gibson cracked a smile as he pointed the way forward. And that set the tone for the wardrive, all smiles as they left the poisonous atmosphere that had settled over Niobe, West Virginia. They had reason to feel confident: the job at the motor-pool depot, their good fortune to capture Merrick’s cell number on the first day (only Gibson knew the truth), Lea’s artful handling of Merrick’s partner . . . they were on a roll, and what’s more, they had the edge. Sure, tracking down Merrick’s partner might be a long shot, but they shared the belief that things would break their way. Plus, it felt good to leave the competition sitting on their hands back in Niobe.
It wasn’t until they’d spent a few hours on the highway that the magnitude of the task dawned on Gibson. On the map, the wide band circling Charleston that needed to be swept looked comfortingly small, at least compared to the entirety of West Virginia. However, to be effective, the Stingray couldn’t move faster than about thirty-five miles an hour. It also required line of sight, and West Virginia wasn’t the flattest state in the Union. Clearing a grid would mean combing back and forth over every road, from highway to dirt trail, before moving on. Gibson kept his reservations to himself—morale was high, and he wanted to keep it that way for as long as possible.
As the days wore on and they made their meandering way across West Virginia—the Stingray resolutely and defiantly silent—a strange thing began to happen. Gibson expected tempers to fray and the close quarters to breed contempt and short fuses. Especially between Lea and Swonger, who couldn’t have had less in common. She of the Upper East Side pedigree and prep-school education, and Swonger of Buckingham Correctional Center. Instead, it brought them together.
It began over music during one of Lea’s shifts behind the wheel. The first rule of wardriving—driver controlled the music. She took great pride in her eclectic taste in music, and she deejayed her shifts, one hand on the wheel while she scrolled through her music library for the next track. An odd, discordant, synth-heavy song began. Swonger looked up questioningly at the speakers, and Gibson braced for the inevitable explosion. From his time in the Scion, Gibson knew Swonger took a dim view of anything not rap, but to his surprise, Swonger slid into the passenger seat and asked Lea the name of the song.
“‘Ashes to Ashes,’” Lea said. “David Bowie?”
“Who’s he? It’s cool.”
With the breathless, intimate pleasure that comes from introducing someone to a favorite musician, Lea spent the next several hours playing Bowie for Swonger and answering his questions. Then she moved on to Iggy Pop, Lou Reed, and Talking Heads. Perhaps that’s how “Life During Wartime” became the wardrive’s official theme song. When it was Swonger’s turn to drive, Swonger returned the favor and educated Lea about the underground rap scene: Action Bronson, Danny Brown, Vince Staples, Westside Gunn, Schoolboy Q. Swonger was an encyclopedia on the subject.
From the cot in the back, Gibson recognized only one song in ten, which made him feel hopelessly out of touch. An old man at twenty-nine. His childhood had skipped the part where he developed his own tastes. His music collection belonged to his father, to the Marines, and to Nicole. He didn’t know why it mattered, but it made him a little melancholy. Up front, Lea and Swonger were howling over some private joke, and just like that, Gibson had become the third wheel. When it came time for his next shift behind the wheel, Gibson opted for silence.
Lea took a growing interest in Swonger and peppered him with questions. Swonger, suspicious at first, gradually opened up and told her about his life, his father, and the bleak future of the Birk farm. He told it straightforwardly and with none of the false machismo that Gibson expected. She seemed mightily affected by it and grew increasingly pensive as Swonger railed against Merrick. Finally, Lea turned to G
ibson.
“Does he know?”
“Not from me,” Gibson said.
Lea looked at Swonger and told him her real name.
It took Swonger a long time to speak. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Seemed right.”
“Stop the van,” said Swonger.
Gibson pulled over, and Swonger got out and walked into the woods along the road. Lea and Gibson watched him until he disappeared from view, then looked at each other. Gibson shrugged.
“What do I do?” she asked. “Go after him?”
“Let him work it out.”
“I thought I should tell him.” She had a thought. “Is he armed?”
“In a manner of speaking,” Gibson said, but he didn’t explain about Swonger’s .45. “I wouldn’t worry about it.”
They waited in silence. Finally, Swonger emerged from the woods. He climbed back in the van and slid the door shut.
“He named the third fund after you . . . ,” Swonger said, his words pitched halfway between a question and a statement.
“Yes, he did.” Lea had turned all the way around in the passenger seat to face Swonger.
Swonger’s eyes studied the floor. “That why you’re here?”
“Something like that. I’m sorry.”
“Wasn’t you,” Swonger said. “Let’s go.”
They didn’t talk about it again after that. In her downtime, Lea continued parsing through Merrick’s text messages, hoping to decipher all of his instructions. She made notes in pencil, keeping a running tally when she wasn’t researching stocks on her phone. Slow going, but she made steady progress, becoming more and more excited as her list grew. Gibson and Swonger were both dying of curiosity, but Lea seemed content to let them die. It was Gibson’s shift when Lea finally finished her calculations.
“Oh my God,” she said. “Oh my God.”
“How much?” Gibson asked.
“Yeah, how much?” Swonger asked.
“One point two seven billion. US.”
Gibson caught a glimpse of Swonger in the rearview mirror and saw the exact moment that his brain fused to the top of his skull. Swonger began to whoop and drum the roof of the van with his palms.
“No. Your math has to be wrong,” Gibson said.
“I’m telling you, I did it five times. One point two seven billion.” Lea held up her worksheet for him to see as if he could check it while driving.
“There is no conceivable way that the Justice Department missed one point two seven billion,” Gibson said. “It’s just not possible.”
“Maybe it wasn’t that much when they arrested him?”
“Maybe Justice just ain’t all that?” Swonger suggested.
“Or maybe they didn’t miss it,” Gibson mused under his breath. He had been wondering how Merrick had pled out to such a short sentence. Could there be more at play here than a Wall Street crook with a big mouth?
“You think he made some kind of deal?” Lea asked.
“It would explain a lot.”
“What could he have that the feds would want?”
“You’re asking us?” Gibson said.
Gibson didn’t know, but assuming the fisherman knew as much as they did, he must have wanted something pretty important in order to pass up $1.27 billion. It made him question exactly whom he had gotten into bed with. He brooded on that as he drove on. Glancing over, Lea looked troubled about it too. Of the three, only Swonger seemed in good spirits about the news and babbled excitedly about it.
Lea’s discovery changed the tenor of the wardrive instantly. The hypothetical had become a one followed by nine very real zeros. And now that the stakes were known, the pressure was on and the tension began to mount. No more music; they drove in silence, and every day that the Stingray remained idle brought more backbiting among them. Four days before Merrick’s release, Swonger raised the idea of Lea calling the number again and digging for more information. Gibson shut him down. It was a nonstarter, as far as he was concerned; going back to that well would almost certainly spook their target. But the idea came up with increasing frequency as Merrick’s release drew closer, and even Lea began warming to the concept.
Still, they kept crossing grids off their list, kept shrinking the remaining map. Gibson had lost track of the one-gas-station towns that they’d stopped in. Mostly because Swonger had a bladder the size of a leaky teacup. At one pit stop, they both had to go. In the empty restroom, Swonger sidled up to the urinal beside Gibson—in clear violation of every unspoken rule of men’s room etiquette. Gibson glanced over at Swonger, who was staring down thoughtfully.
“You circumcised?”
“What the hell, Swonger?”
“I am. Strange thing to do to a kid, know what I’m saying? I mean it’s weird. Like who was the first dude to look at a baby and think, yeah, I’ll just take a little off the top? What’s that about? And it was a long-ass time ago. Like BC. So weren’t no scalpels. They were taking like flinty rocks to their baby boys’ business. No Bactine neither. Nobody even knew there was such a thing as a germ until like the nineteenth century. I mean, it’s hard enough out there for a baby in olden times without dying over some infected junk. And for what? Ain’t no purpose to it.”
“What is your point?”
“Just saying. People can talk themselves into almost anything being a good idea.”
“We’ll find him,” Gibson said, sounding far less confident than he’d intended.
The day before Merrick’s release, Gibson drove nonstop for ten hours, exhausting the largest remaining grid. That left only nine more grids to cover, but when he turned the steering wheel over to Lea, it was already past noon. Gibson calculated that they had time to cover only four of the remaining grids before Merrick walked free. Not great odds, but they would ride this bet out to the bitter end. He climbed onto the cot, put in a pair of earplugs, and was asleep before the van left the gas station.
Gibson’s body felt the van come to a stop and woke him from a guilty dream about his daughter. The van doors slammed shut. He sat up and stretched his aching back. Nighttime—how long had he slept? He climbed out of the van to find himself in front of Margo’s garage back in Niobe. Lea and Swonger stood together at the top of the driveway, watching him.
“What are we doing back here?”
“It’s futile,” Lea said. “We agreed.”
“Oh, did we? Did we agree?”
“You were being unreasonable, so Gavin and I took a vote.”
“While I was sleeping.”
“Majority ruled, dog.”
“I’m not your dog, Gavin. This was still our best chance.”
“Less than fifty percent isn’t much of a chance,” Lea said.
“What’s our alternative?”
“Not sure there is an ‘our’ at this point,” Lea said.
And like that, their alliance came to an end.
“And what about you?” Gibson said to Swonger.
“Sorry, dog,” Swonger said with a shrug. “Wasn’t happening.”
“I’m sorry,” Lea said. “Facts are facts.”
“So you came back here? You know what you’ll be up against at the prison when Merrick walks through those gates? Do you even have a plan?” When neither spoke up, Gibson snatched his bag out of the van. “You screwed us good here. I want you to remember that. This was the way.”
He started down the driveway toward the street.
“Where are you going?” Lea asked.
“To the hotel. I need a shower. Park the van out of sight.”
They called after him to come back, but Gibson kept going. The walk was the most exercise he’d had since they left Niobe. It felt good to stretch his legs, and it gave him time for his anger to dissipate. Well, not to dissipate but at least to spread evenly throughout his body and stop his temples from throbbing. He came up Tarte Street and saw the hotel on his right but instead walked down to the river and looked out toward Ohio. The river was beautiful by moonl
ight, and the ruined bridge seemed almost dignified. The road down to the bridge still stood, although it was blocked off by orange barrels and sealed at the mouth of the bridge by a plywood wall. What a strange thing to live with, he thought. How could anyone imagine a fresh start with the ruined bridge reminding them of what had been? Knowing your history was one thing, but living in it? That was a cage.
Gibson pushed through the door into the Wolstenholme Hotel. One of Emerson’s goons sat in Emerson’s chair, watching the lobby; at the sight of Gibson, he spoke into a radio.
“Big day tomorrow,” Gibson said. “Shouldn’t you be getting some rest?”
The goon smiled, uncrossing one leg and crossing the other, shifting in his seat as he did. Tomorrow was coming fast, and Gibson had a bad feeling that not everyone would live to see another. He wondered if Merrick had any inkling of the tempest waiting to fall upon him.
A disheveled Jimmy Temple appeared from the back after Gibson rang the buzzer several times. He didn’t look any too happy to see Gibson.
“I need a room.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“Something facing out back.”
Jimmy handed him a key. “How long will you be staying?”
“Just the night.”
“Good.”
Up in his new room, he’d barely put his bag down before a knock came at the door. He engaged the chain on the door before opening it.
The fisherman stood on the other side and smiled through the crack. “Welcome back.”
Gibson acknowledged the greeting with a faint nod, in no mood for the fisherman’s particular brand of vague. Wary too of what his real interest in Charles Merrick might entail.
“Will you invite me in?” the fisherman asked.
Gibson shook his head.
“Were you successful?”
“No. Too much ground to cover.”
The fisherman thought it over. “That is a shame, but it was a lot to hope. I’m sure you did your best.”
Gibson expected a “but.” There was none; instead, the fisherman started away down the hall.
Poisonfeather (The Gibson Vaughn Series Book 2) Page 23