I rub my tongue over my two-toned front teeth. The only difference between my kind of con and theirs, I think, is the amount of money at stake. And, of course, the part about the drinking of acid. That hasn’t happened to a wrestler yet, as far as I know.
While we’re watching TV, the phone rings. I pick up. It’s Ed Napier.
“Tomorrow morning,” he says, “I’m wiring money into your account. Three million dollars.”
“Three million dollars,” I repeat. “Okay.”
“Remember our agreement?”
“Sure,” I say.
“Don’t do anything stupid.”
“I won’t.”
“Call me when the funds clear.”
He hangs up.
Toby turns to me. “Who was that?”
“Ed Napier.”
“And?”
“He’s going to wire three million dollars into my account tomorrow.”
“Three million dollars,” he says. “You only owe Sustevich twelve. Almost there.”
“Almost,” I agree.
Toby smiles and nods. For the first time in my life, he is impressed with his father.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
It’s Monday morning at ten o’clock, and Toby, Jess, and I are playing foosball.
Foosball is a game of miniaturized violence. We twirl our wrists, slam rows of four-inch-tall celluloid soccer players against a yellow Ping-Pong ball. The table shakes and thumps. The ball flies, crashes against the wall, ricochets back.
I flick my wrist. My plastic man knocks the ball home. Jess yells, “No!”
The ball blurs past Jess’s defender and into the net. “Shit,” she says. “Where the hell is Peter?”
It’s two against one: me and Toby on one side, Jess on the other. Peter has been missing all morning. We can get by without his programming skills for a morning, but we need him for foosball, desperately.
“Toby,” I say, “call him.”
“I just did.”
“Call again.”
Toby leaves the table, grabs his crutches, hobbles to a phone. He dials Peter’s number, listens to the message, hangs up. “Not answering his cell,” he says.
“You try his home number?”
Toby nods.
“Where is he?” Jess says again.
“He’ll be here,” I say. I take the foosball out of the net, toss it onto the table. “Five serving two,” I say, and knock the ball into Jess’s little plastic man.
Peter arrives a little past eleven, pale and out of breath.
“We have to talk,” he says as he walks into the room.
Toby, Jess, and I are still playing foosball. She is losing, badly. “Take your position,” she says. Without looking up, she points to the spot beside her.
Toby tosses the ball onto the table. Jess whips her man around, sending the ball shooting toward our goal. Toby wrenches his defenders to the left, rattling the table. He stops the ball with a thwack.
“We have to talk,” Peter Room says again.
He reaches down to the table, grabs the ball, pockets it.
“Hey!” Toby says.
“This is important,” Peter says.
I look up. “What’s the matter?”
“I quit.”
“You what?”
“I quit.”
“You can’t quit,” I say. “We’re in the middle of . . . of what we’re doing. We need you.”
“Something’s going on,” he says.
“Meaning what?”
“I’m being followed.”
“So you’re being followed,” I say. “Big deal. Me and Toby are being followed, too. Isn’t that right, Toby?”
“It’s true. Freaked my dad out so much, he got in a car accident. Nearly killed a nun.”
I say to Peter, “It’s probably Napier’s men. Maybe Sustevich’s.”
“I don’t think so,” he says. “There are too many of them. There’s like five teams of them. They’re in my parking lot when I get home at night. Another team tails me on 101. I saw a third team in Mountain View yesterday. And then there are faces. They seem so familiar, but I can’t place them. I see the same people all the time on the street, or in a restaurant. I’m telling you: I’m being followed.”
“By who?” I say.
“The police.”
I say, “The Palo Alto police don’t run twenty-man stakeout teams. They rescue cats from trees.”
“The FBI, then,” Peter says.
“You’re imagining it,” I say.
“Maybe. But I quit.”
“Peter,” I say, “calm down. You’re not quitting.”
“I am not going to prison, Kip. I know, for you, it’s old hat—no big deal. But I’m sorry. I am not playing this game. It’s not worth it.”
“First of all,” I say calmly, “it’s not a game. Not anymore. Now people’s lives are at stake.” Just in case he’s not clear about what I mean, I add, “Me and Toby’s, for example.”
“But—”
I interrupt him. “Second of all, it is worth it. We’re talking about a lot of money.”
“You promised me,” Peter says. “You promised I wouldn’t get in trouble.”
“You’re not in trouble.”
“Then why are the police following me?”
“Peter, will you calm down?” I turn to Jess. “Jess, have you noticed anyone following you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe once or twice. But I’m not sure.”
“Peter,” I say, “we need you. It’ll be over in seven days. You’re going to be a million dollars richer. For seven days work.”
“Kip, don’t you see? This thing is out of control.” He shakes his head. He points at me. “I mean, look at your teeth.”
“What’s wrong with my teeth?” I say, suddenly embarrassed. I curl my upper lip over my two front choppers.
“They’re two different colors, man.”
“You can tell?”
“Yes, I can tell.”
I look to Jess. She shrugs, to say she can tell, too.
“Look,” Peter says, “this is getting scary. Big Italian guys in suits are beating you up. Russian guys with guns.”
“Dmitri’s a friend of mine,” I say. I think about how he helped me up from the floor after knocking out my tooth.
“I’m sorry. I don’t want to get killed. I’m happy making a hundred grand a year writing Java code. I don’t need this shit.”
“Peter,” I say, “remember what I told you? When you asked to join?” I repeat the words, stressing them. “When you asked to join.”
“What?”
“‘Once you’re in, you’re in.’”
“Are you threatening me, Kip?”
“No,” I say. I raise my palms. “I would never hurt you.”
“Hurt me? Now we’re talking about violence? Against me?”
“I said: I would never hurt you. Relax.”
He shakes his head.
Jess says, “Peter, Kip didn’t threaten you. Calm down. We need you for seven more days. Then you can take a vacation.”
“Come on, Peter,” Toby says.
“Seven more days?” Peter says.
“Seven more days,” I say. “Please.”
Peter shakes his head again, walks out of the room. But he doesn’t storm from the office in a huff, so it looks to everyone in the room that we have Peter’s services for at least another seven days. Which is how I want it to look.
CHAPTER THIRTY
When a con goes well, you feel like Jesus Christ, turning water into wine, feeding the multitudes, raising the dead.
This morning, Napier visits my office for a taste of my own personal Jesus. He has wired three million dollars into my brokerage account. Moments from now, I will turn his three million dollars into six, and then wire it back to him. This is the beginning of the end. After today, Napier will become mad with greed. He will see the opportunity to multiply his loaves, and he will grasp it. Then he will learn, too late,
that money is like salvation: It’s not given easily; and when it comes, you can’t hold it for long.
In the conference room, we dim the lights, flip the projector, and watch as Pythia plasters the screen with ten stock charts, and ten predictions. The red prediction circles splatter on the screen like raindrops in a puddle, one after another, and stock prices rise and fall, and land in the circles where Pythia says they will. We make ten thousand dollars here. Nine thousand there. We watch as Pythia repeats the process, ten charts at a time, one hundred thousand dollars gambled each thirty seconds, until our winnings build to five hundred thousand dollars, then seven hundred thousand, and then, finally, a million.
In four minutes, we’ve made two million dollars. In six minutes, three million dollars.
Finally, Peter walks to the keyboard, types something. We look at a table filled with numbers. He turns to Ed Napier. “You just turned three million dollars into six million.”
“Did I?” Napier says. “Never worked so little in my life. And that’s saying something.”
On the speakerphone, in front of Napier and my team, I call my broker and give wiring instructions: I will now wire six million dollars from my account to Napier’s. Of course I cannot really predict the stock market, and of course Pythia did not place real stock trades, and of course the entire Pythia company, and the software, and the science behind it, are completely and utterly false. However, to make the con work, the money must be real. So the six million dollars I now deposit into Napier’s account is no illusion. It’s the money that Sustevich lent us. It was his investment in our con, his venture capital.
Thirty seconds after I replace the phone receiver, there is a knock on our office door. I walk down the hall to answer it. Toby and Jess follow.
I pull open the door. Two men—one white, one black—both in identical suits and stylish aviator sunglasses—stare at me.
“Kip Largo?” the white man says.
“Yes?”
He flashes a badge. “My name is Agent Farrell. This is Agent Crosby. We’re from the FBI. May we come in? We have a few questions.”
PART THREE
CACKLEBLADDER
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
I lead the FBI agents down the hall, past the Ms. Pac-Man machine, past our Potemkin village server room, and into our conference room. Peter at least had the good sense to shut down the projector and hide from the agents the evidence of our massive stock fraud, which was being projected in bright colors across a five-foot-wide screen.
“So, what is this about, gentlemen?” I say. I hear my own voice. I sound friendly, but nervous. I wave my hand, offer the agents seats at our conference table. They neither accept nor decline my offer, but instead continue standing, perfectly still.
Agent Crosby says to me, “Are you in charge here?”
“Sometimes,” I say. “When things are going well.”
My attempt at humor falls flat. Crosby stares at me. He’s a big man, dark-skinned, with a head that was stylishly shaved a week ago, but now simply looks untended, like a remote patch of lawn after a long summer weekend. He has broad shoulders, rigid bearing, maybe ex-military. Or maybe his father was a cop. He stares at me sternly. Finally, he says: “I want to ask you about your company. About what you do.”
“What we do?” I say. “Well, it’s pretty complicated, actually . . .” I think about it, take a deep breath. “And it’s a bit technical . . .”
Napier pipes up, “Hold on, Kip.” He steps forward. “You don’t have to answer that.”
The agents turn to Napier, as if noticing him for the first time. “And you are?” Crosby says.
“Ed Napier. I’m an investor in this company. I also serve on its board of directors. Pythia is developing some very exciting technology, but I’m afraid we need to keep it a secret. For competitive reasons.”
“I see,” Crosby says. He squints at Napier, then looks to his partner, as if to say: Is that who I think it is?
Agent Farrell says, “Wait a second. You’re Ed Napier? Las Vegas Ed Napier?”
“That’s right.”
“I was just at The Clouds, last weekend.”
Napier gives his thousand-watt smile. “No kidding. How’d you do?”
“Lost two hundred bucks.”
“That’s all we took you for?” Napier says, with his big booming voice. “Sounds like you need to come back this weekend!”
The FBI agents laugh. Napier laughs. Even I try to laugh. Peter stands in the corner of the room. He is not laughing.
“Well, Mr. Napier,” Agent Crosby says, “the reason we’re here is to investigate some of your employees. Agent Farrell and I serve on the CCTF—sorry, Cyber Crime Task Force. We’ve gotten reports about computer hacking efforts originating from your company’s IP addresses.”
“I see.”
Crosby continues: “The targets are online brokerage houses. Datek, E-Trade, Schwab.” He raises his palm. “Now don’t get me wrong. We’re not accusing anyone in this room of hacking computer systems. But sometimes employees use their company’s facilities to commit crimes.”
“Ah,” I say.
“So we were hoping we could get a list of all the employees at Pythia. That’s the name of the company, right?”
“That’s right,” I say.
“And then we could cross-reference that list with our own list.”
“Your own list?”
“Felons, criminals, people with shady pasts.”
I look up and notice Peter. He’s staring at me, as if to say: People like you.
I say, “Of course.”
“Then we’d like to talk to each employee. It would be completely voluntary. Just a few minutes each. You know, sometimes just having the FBI show up at your door scares the bejesus out of people, makes stuff spill out.”
“Right,” I say. “The thing is, we use a lot of contractors here. About ten of them. They’re not all employees, strictly speaking.”
Crosby says, “But you know who they are.”
“Sure.”
“Well that’s fine. Then a list of them, too.”
I clear my throat. “What exactly does the FBI think these hackers are doing? Why online brokers? Are they stealing money?”
Agent Farrell says, “We’re not sure. That’s why we want to talk to people. Figure it all out.” He points to his skull, to demonstrate where all the figuring is about to take place.
“Okay,” I say. “I’ll get a list together for you. It’ll be ready later today.”
Agent Crosby steps toward me, hands me a business card. I look at it. It is stamped with an embossed gold-foil FBI seal, an eagle clutching arrows. Very authentic. You can buy fifty business cards exactly like these for $34.95 at businesscards.com. Trust me, I know.
“When it’s ready, you can call and fax it over,” Crosby says.
“Roger,” I say. “Will do.”
Napier says, “Listen, if you gentlemen need something to do this weekend, why not come back to The Clouds? I’ll comp you both. Great penthouse suites. Thirty-sixth floor. Bring your wives.”
Farrell says, “I’m not married, actually.”
“Even better,” Napier says, and winks. “I’ll comp you for that, too.”
Crosby laughs. “I don’t know . . .”
“Really,” Napier says. “Here’s my card.” He reaches into his pocket, takes out his own pile of business cards. He hands one to Crosby and one to Farrell. “Call my assistant, Clarissa, anytime. This weekend, next weekend, whenever. Tell her who you are. She’ll make arrangements. Maybe I’ll see you there.”
“That’s very generous,” Agent Crosby says, “but I’m afraid we can’t do that. Accepting gifts from someone involved in an investigation . . .”
“Am I involved in an investigation?” Napier asks.
“A little. For now.”
“Well, then,” Napier says. He shrugs. “Maybe when this is all over.”
“Yeah,” Crosby says. “Maybe.” He nods.
But I notice it: The agent’s body language has changed. He’s no longer stiff and aggressive. His shoulders have slumped, his posture is relaxed.
See how to become a billionaire? When someone investigates your criminal activity, offer them penthouses and hookers. And all this time you thought it was brains and hard work.
The two agents turn to leave. Farrell reaches for the door, stops with his hand on the knob. He turns to Peter. “Just for the sake of my notes, what’s your name?”
Peter, who was pale when the FBI entered the room, has now assumed the appearance of week-old snow: grayish white, slowly melting. “Me?”
“Yes.”
“Peter,” he says. “Peter Room.”
Farrell takes his notepad from his pocket, scribbles something. “Peter Room,” he repeats. He turns to Jess and Toby. “And you two?”
“Toby Largo,” my son says.
“Jessica Smith.”
Farrell nods. He write down the names. He clicks his pen closed, slides it into the spiral wire binding of his pad, replaces it in his pocket.
“Thank you,” he says. He nods to Agent Crosby, and the two men leave.
Sixty seconds later, after we watched the FBI Pontiac pull from our parking lot, Peter makes an announcement. “That’s it,” he says. “I’m done.”
“You’re done?” I say.
“I quit.”
“Peter,” I say. I look over to Ed Napier, meaningfully. “Not now.”
“I don’t care about him,” Peter says. “I’m not going to jail, for you, him, or anyone else. I’m out of here.”
Napier says, “Peter, calm down. Those two guys are clowns. Trust me. They’re digging. If they had something, they’d arrest us. But they have nothing.”
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