Clawback

by Mike Cooper

  “Rondo might be around.”

  “Rondo?”

  I’d seen the building, when I followed Clara out on her jog, but hadn’t gone back. It had only been five days but seemed like a year. She shared a two-bedroom on the upper floor: prewar moldings and solid wood doors, but cramped and worn from years of rental use. A bathtub had been installed in a tiny alcove off the kitchen, which itself was only about six feet square. When we came in, a man was sitting at the table, eating from a plain blue plate.

  He was big. Not wide, but tall and powerful, even seated in the chair. A robust biker mustache flowed down the sides of his jaw.

  “Nice to meet you,” he said, standing to shake hands, towering over me.

  “Silas is here for dinner,” Clara said.

  “Really? Who’s cooking?”

  “I’ll find something.”

  “I bet.” To me: “Keep your expectations in check.” He sat back down. The plate before him held a large, off-white block, densely sprinkled with brown and red flecks. “I have a class at six-thirty. You can have some of this if you want.”

  “I thought you were off on Wednesday,” Clara said.

  “Sensei’s out sick, so I’m filling in.”

  When we shook, I’d felt the callus on the edge of his hand and across the knuckles, and he’d moved with a kind of grounded fluidity you only get after years of disciplined training.

  “Karate?” I said.

  “Tang soo do.” He didn’t seem offended. “You?”

  “Level Four Combatives.” Pentagon bureaucrats could never use a simple phrase when polysyllabic jargon would do.

  Rondo grinned. “Uh-huh. And?”

  “Life experience.”

  “Must be an interesting life.”

  Of course Clara’s friends wouldn’t be self-absorbed dullards. I looked at his dinner. “What are you eating?”

  “Lao tofu, with togarashi pepper and nori. Want some?”

  “Got any steak?”

  “No, but you could put A.1. sauce on it if you want.”

  When you meet a woman’s male friends, it can be awkward, especially when the parameters aren’t clear—no matter what anybody says, there are always boy-girl complications lurking. But I wasn’t getting any of that from Rondo. No posturing of any kind, in fact.

  Maybe if I was so good at some martial art that I could substitute for the master, I’d be more self-confident, too.

  “Kimmie went out,” Rondo said. “And not back anytime soon, judging by the outfit she was wearing.”

  “Kimmie?” I looked at Clara, who had dumped her bag on a chair and was rummaging in the refrigerator. “You live with your coworker?”

  “We were roommates first. She introduced me to the supervisor at the athenaeum.”

  “You know Kimmie?” Rondo cut a slab of tofu and shoveled it in.

  “We met. She seems very quiet.”

  “Kimmie?”

  “He’s putting you on.” Clara returned to the table with eggs, pepperoni, mustard and a Chinatown sack of lychees. “There might be an omelet in there somewhere.”

  “Cook much, do you?”

  “Only coffee.”

  “Like I said.” Rondo stood up, rinsed his plate in the enameled sink, and pulled a jacket from a hook on the back of the door. “I have to go.”

  “Did you read my story today?” asked Clara.

  “Every word.” He paused, and looked over at me. “Are you—?”

  “No,” said Clara.

  “Ah.” He nodded. “See you later.”

  When the door had closed, we looked at each other, across the table.

  “Hungry?” Clara asked.

  “Yeah, but not for raw eggs and mustard.”

  “Maybe there’s bread around for toast.”

  Someone had music on somewhere, loud. Bass tremors drifted through the building. The kitchen was well kept, considering three unrelated twentysomethings lived there: the floor swept, dishes in the drainer, counterspace cluttered but clean.

  Clara found an English muffin and some bread heels in the freezer. Pepperoni stretched it out, and lychees for dessert.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t think—we could have stopped at the market.”

  “It’s fine. I’ve had worse.” Like on four-day infiltrations into Indian country, nothing but water and crumbled energy bars, but no need to mention that.

  “Blacktail Capital,” said Clara. “They’re central. That’s where the story is.”

  She was right, but I couldn’t go break into their offices, too. They’d be Fort Knox compared to Riverton. “Saxon, maybe,” I said.

  “What do you have on him? Besides what you’ve told me?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing? In the digital age? You just haven’t looked hard enough.”

  “All right, you tell me.” I looked around. “Where’s your computer?”

  She got it out, pushing our plates to one side on the table. I swung the keyboard my way long enough to log into one of my one-off email addresses and pull down the file Ernie had forwarded.

  “I know his name and employer,” I said. “And scraps from this—his service record.”

  I turned the computer back to Clara, showing her Saxon’s Official Military Personnel File, the 201.

  “They blacked out just about everything, didn’t they?” She scrolled down. “Birth date, Social…wait. There’s one address, Fort Campbell. Where’s that?”

  “Kentucky. I’m pretty sure that’s his last service posting.”

  “It’s not current?”

  “He’s been elsewhere for years.”

  That was it for the 201. A straight Google search yielded nothing except some press releases more or less identical to the one I’d found, when Blacktail hired Saxon. They’d never publicized anything after that.

  “Which suggests something about what he does there,” I said.

  Clara called up Blacktail’s webpage.

  “Not much here, is there?” she said, looking at the same minimalist presence I’d found earlier.

  “No, but that’s typical for a hedge fund. They’re not trolling for customers or trying to sell anything. And they mostly want a low profile regardless. It’s just a splash portal for their investors.”

  “Where are they located?”

  “Chalder, New Jersey. Up in the north, close to where 287 crosses into New York.”

  “Suburbia.”

  “Which makes Saxon an anomaly. You don’t need SOF skills to check employee badges in a New Jersey office park.”

  “We know Blacktail was on the other side of Akelman’s losses. Saxon attacked me after I wrote about Marlett, and he killed Faust. Seems definitive to me.”

  “Yup. I just wish we knew more about him.”

  “All right.” I noticed that Clara’s mouth thinned as she confronted obstacles. “Time to get serious.”

  “Good.” She was the digital detective; maybe she could work some magic.

  “We’ll start with the identity theft arenas.”

  “Identity theft?”

  “Carding forums, hacker tool startups, you know. East European warez chat rooms. That sort of thing.”

  I watched her type, much faster than anyone I’d ever seen. “Spend a lot of time on the dark side, do you?”

  “Anyone with money can buy a LexisNexis subscription. This stuff you have to work for, and most reporters don’t bother. Gives me an edge.”

  “Hmm.”

  “So…let’s see. How about the VA? Saxon’s a vet.”

  “You’re going to break into Uncle Sam’s mainframes? On your home network? Are you nuts?”

  “No, no. But the VA has outright lost tens of thousands of veterans’ records,” she said. “Mostly on misplaced laptops, that sort of thing. The key data is for sale if you know where to ask.”

  And Clara did know, apparently. It cost some money. “They like Bitcoin,” she said. “Liberty Reserve was popular for a while, until the Euro
peans cracked down. It’s all anonymous.”

  Learn something new every day. The high-finance criminals I usually deal with have far too much cashflow for fly-by-night digital-gold schemes—they launder their money right through Citi or Bank of A. This ground-level hawala was something I hadn’t seen before.

  But no results—another empty net. “What next,” muttered Clara, thinking aloud.

  “How about tax returns?” I asked. “He’s Blacktail’s director of security. That’s not an under-the-table kind of position. There must be a W-2 somewhere.”

  “You’re right,” she said. “But not even the Feds can get at those. The IRS is mandated to protect privacy, and they do a damn good job of it.”

  “Better than the military? We got his 201, after all.”

  “It’s their systems, believe it or not. Congress has deliberately underfunded the IRS for years, which means they’re still using these, like, fifty-year-old System/360s running Fortran and storing data on punch cards. Hacking their data is like trying to crack Linear B—it’s so ancient, modern technology is completely frozen out.”

  How about that? Maybe I could start filing my own returns again.

  “What about professional groups?” Clara asked. “I don’t know, the NRA maybe? What kind of affiliations does a corporate security officer have?”

  “I can’t see Saxon going to ASIS conventions in Vegas. And he doesn’t need to read their bulletin.” We tried anyway. There must have been twenty organizations for guys in this sort of job, but we couldn’t find Saxon in any of them.

  Close to nine o’clock Clara gave up. “I hate to say it, but I think he’s defeated the internet.”

  “He works in New Jersey, lives somewhere in the tristate megalopolis and has taken himself completely off the grid?”

  “Apparently.”

  “I’m impressed.” Too bad he’d tried to kill me before we had a chance to talk shop. “What now?”

  “We know where he works, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well…”

  Of course it was the obvious next step. “I’ll drive up in the morning.”

  “By yourself?” She frowned. “Given what this guy seems capable of, is that a good idea?”

  I felt an odd reaction, defensive and grateful at the same time. Having someone worried about me was not a common occurrence—really, since I got out of the service.

  “Maybe I’ll call Zeke.”

  “Don’t take stupid chances.” Clara put her hand on mine, next to the laptop.

  A long moment passed. I couldn’t look away from her eyes.

  “I…have a question,” I said.

  “Hmm?”

  “I can’t figure out why I’m a mistake.”

  She laughed. “Let’s see. Mysterious past, check. Violence and mayhem, check. No job, mortgage, car, children, dog, 401(k) or any apparent signifier of conventional life whatsoever, check.”

  “Actually, I do have a car.”

  “Oh? Well.” She leaned across the small table, still looking right into my eyes. “In that case…”

  CRASH!

  The front door banged open, hitting the wall. I rolled off the chair, diving left, reacting without thought. Plates fell from the table—

  “Silas!”

  I hit the base of the counter, spun to my feet. Dishes shattered on the floor, shards bouncing.

  “Hey!”

  Kimmie stood openmouthed in the doorway. Her short leather jacket was dark and shiny from rain, her black boots soaked.

  “What are you doing?” Clara stood up now, too.

  “Um.” I straightened. “Hi, Kimmie.”

  “You remember Silas,” Clara said.

  “Sure.” She continued to stare.

  “He stopped by for dinner.”

  “Oh.”

  “Rondo said you were going out for the evening.”

  Kimmie shrugged. “Too wet. Everybody’s at home or whatever.”

  We cleaned up the broken dishes, righted the chairs. Kimmie shucked her boots at the door, dried off, then offered to share the takeout General Tso’s she’d picked up. Which was generous, for three people. I tried not to have more than a few mouthfuls.

  But the mood between Clara and me had fled once more, lost in the shift to normal domesticity. When we’d finished, I found my jacket myself.

  “Let me know what you find at Blacktail,” Clara said, seeing me off at the door.

  “I might have to embargo the details.”

  “Even if they’re really, really good? And could totally make my career?”

  I smiled. “You don’t need my help for that.”

  “Call me.” She ran her fingers over the uninjured side of my face—a bare, fleeting touch.

  “First thing,” I said, and got out of there.

  Clara was totally rewiring my life.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  “We don’t even know he’s here.” Zeke, grouchy.

  “That’s why it’s called surveillance.”

  “Seems like better recon would help.”

  I couldn’t argue with that. We were sitting in a white Ford Fusion, a car as bland and unappealing as its name, which of course is why I chose it at the rental desk in Newark Airport.

  Leaving the Mallory in the morning, I’d bought a MetroCard from an automated kiosk in the Second Avenue station—the uptown side, with no attendant present. Because I still had it, I’d tried Hayden’s credit card. It worked just fine. I guess he hadn’t gotten around to canceling it.

  With that confirmed, I’d gone ahead and taken the train all the way out to Newark. On the way I studied Hayden’s driver’s license. He and I were just close enough in age and hair color that I could probably use it, and the Amex, to rent the car, pretending that I’d just flown in. Why not? He’d caused me enough aggravation. I might as well take a little back.

  Not to mention I was still suspicious. If Hayden was involved somehow, it couldn’t hurt to fuck with his identity. Leave some unexpected clues for the government trackers. Shake him up, he might make a mistake.

  As one more precaution for myself, I swapped license plates with an identical Fusion in the next spot. In the vast rental lot the switch took less than a minute.

  This was as close to bulletproof anonymity as you could get on the road nowadays, at least without a fully forged identity. If, God forbid, the police ever had reason to run the plate, it would show the proper make, model and owner; the chance that they’d notice a discrepancy in the handwritten rental agreement was effectively nil.

  All dressed up and nowhere to go. Zeke and I were parked along the far boundary of the Spruce Hill Office Park, off Route 118 in Chalder. A sprawling, two-story, faux-brick building housed a dozen companies with names like Everspritz Technology and Human Potential Corporation. We hadn’t gone into the lobby to check, but from Blacktail’s suite address we deduced they were on the second floor.

  The windows formed silver-blue reflective bands around the building. We couldn’t see in. Occasionally someone walked in or out, to or from a car. A narrow strip of scraggly grass separated the parking lot from the six-lane roadway.

  “What if he goes out the back?” said Zeke.

  “Seems unlikely. There’s no car parking in the rear.” Just asphalt up to the loading dock, dumpsters and a windowless utility building. I’d checked earlier, when we arrived. “He’d need to roll up the dock doors, too.”

  “I’m going to have to piss soon.”

  “There’s a peanut butter jar in the backseat.”

  “Empty?”

  “Mostly.”

  “I’ll try to hold it.”

  He wasn’t really grumbling. Waiting behind a mud wall in hundred-degree heat and full armor, wondering whether it was going to be mortar rounds or just sniper fire when the anticipated engagement finally began—that was something to complain about. This was about as challenging as a nap on the couch.

  “What kind of support does he have in there?
” Zeke said.

  “I don’t know. It’s not like Blacktail has piles of cash to worry about or two hundred employees to keep an eye on. From their website it seems like they might have two dozen people, tops, and a roomful of PCs.”

  “So why do they need a Director of Security in the first place?”

  “That’s the question.” I shifted in my seat. The sun had been going in and out of clouds all day, and at the moment it was shining too brightly through my side of the car. “Millions of dollars flow through there, but it’s all electronic.”

  “I thought all the trading happened down at the stock exchange. On Wall Street.”

  “No. The NYSE floor’s more than half empty now. I think they keep a few guys running around just so it looks good for the tourists. Everything else is in the ether.”

  “I guess.”

  “The exchange set up its big new data center in Mahwah, about five miles from here. Blacktail must have a direct feed—probably through a massively armored cable pipe, underground.”

  “If we knew where it was,” Zeke said, “we could cut it. That would invite their attention.”

  I looked at him. “That would invite a full-scale assault.”

  “Yeah?”

  “In any given second, Blacktail might account for ten percent of total trading volume—ten percent of the entire market! Fuck with that and commandos will be rappelling out of the sky.”

  “Amazing.” Zeke had a glint in his eye.

  “No,” I said. “Stop thinking like that.”

  He studied the building. “Saxon better show up soon, all I have to say.”

  The afternoon wore on. Eventually enough people would drive away that we’d be too conspicuous. I drank some bottled water, ate a granola bar. Zeke seemed to have entered a zen state of watchful stillness. Or possibly he’d fallen asleep with his eyes open. Hard to tell.

  I drifted into my own road hypnosis. Spruce Hill was perhaps the dullest architecture on the planet—a brick-shaped block, made of brick. Traffic motored past. Clouds drifted slowly in the sky. Somewhere, paint dried.

  I put in the bluetooth earpiece and called Johnny. The markets were open, but he made a few minutes to talk.