Jury of Peers

by Troy L Brodsky

  Finn lifted the skewered donut. “Gold, frankincense, and cherry somethin’.”

  The kid stood there, his clip–on tie clasped crookedly to his open collar, a tiny little rock band blaring around his neck. “Oh,” he said, and slid the donut off of Finn’s finger. “Thanks.” He searched for a place to put it in on the desk. There was room for his computer and his ass–it was an old school desk, complete with ink filled etchings about Van Halen circa 1984. In the end he decided to just eat the thing, as rapidly as possible.

  “You’re Ramish? That right?”

  Mouth full of donut, he nodded. “Close,” he said a moment later. “Call me Ray?”

  Tonic asked, “That your real name?”

  “For here it is,” he said. Ray swallowed. “My parents are from New Delhi.” As if that explained it all.

  “Well I’m Finn, this is Spencer Tonic.” They all shook.

  “Finn and Tonic.…” Ray began with a smile and then stopped. He took a big bite of cherry filling, and then another when he realized that they’d heard it all before.

  For the first time, Finn noticed that the kid was wearing a division name tag. He squinted––it seemed like he had to squint at everything no matter what the distance anymore. “Ravish Ramadeep?”

  “Ray,” he managed between swallows. “Easier on my social life.”

  Tonic snorted. “You can’t have much of a social life if you’re getting in before five fuckin a.m.” He pulled up a chair, turned it backwards, and sat.

  “Yeah, well seems like the calls went out early. Besides, I’m just part time. X number of hours and I’m free. I like to start early so I can get home and be with my kids.”

  “You got kids? Jesus, how old are you Ram–Damish?” Finn asked as he too pulled up a chair.

  “Twenty four. And four.”

  “Bullshit,” Tonic said.

  “No bullshit, really. Twins twice equals four kids.”

  “You’re a busy lad Ravish. I don’t even have a girlfriend,” Finn confessed.

  “That’s ‘cause you’re gay,” Tonic said. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”

  “Oh Christ, don’t start.”

  “Just sayin’.”

  “Just don’t.”

  “How many cats you got Finny?” Tonic argued on.

  “Shut it.”

  Tonic jerked a thumb. “A multiple cat household single guy who wears a leather jacket and gets his nails done.”

  Ray watched, not sure if he was supposed to join in, officially out of donut to fill the void.

  “Alright, so what's on the guy's computer?” Finn asked.

  Ray sat back down, turned off his iPod, and flipped the computer so that they could see it. “Encryption. Really cool encryption. I've seen some things like this, but online, never for real. It's über–stuff. Not commercial… his.” He tapped the box. “It’d help if I knew more about what this was all about.”

  “You don’t know?” Tonic asked.

  “Not really. Just what I’ve figured out on my own.”

  “What’s that? Enlighten us.”

  “Well, a computer guy got beat up, family got killed.”

  “Yep. His little girl and wife. He lived,” Finn said. “Can you get into that thing or is it a lost cause?”

  “Well the machine is pretty default, like right out of the box, but like I said, there’s some protection here, not commercial stuff. That can make it harder. But I’ve got like a hundred things on my plate here.”

  “Can you get more off of it?”

  “Yeah, given time, I think so. Getting past the login is easy, that's done already, but I don't know what I'm looking for… used to be that it was megabytes that we were thinking about, but this has a two–terabyte drive. And listen….” He tried to inch his desk over toward them and it made a terrible grinding sound on the floor. “Listen, I googled all of the info that I had, put it together and got the guy’s name and stuff.”

  Tonic wiped his mouth, “Yeah, it’s on the news.”

  “Nuh uh. What’s on the news is that some Wall Street big shot’s kid got beat up, his family got killed. It’s still all about his dad. Thing is, I know this guy.… I mean, I've heard of him, Seth Meek. Works for one of the security companies in the city, but for the government too. He knows his shit, and that’s bad. I mean, the guy’s famous, kinda.”

  “Explain kinda famous,” Finn said.

  Ray drummed his fingers on the keyboard and the pitter–patter seemed to soothe him a bit. “Well, alright. Um… okay. Why’s Silver King famous?”

  “Who?” Tonic asked just before Finn could say, “Pitcher for the Pirates from way back when.”

  “Right. Right, he was the first guy to really blow people away with the weird side–armed pitch. No one could hit off him. They just couldn’t figure out where the ball was going. He was kinda famous. Why didn’t you know that?” he looked at Tonic.

  “Cause I’m not old like him? Why did you know that?”

  “My parents are from New Delhi.”

  “Right,” Tonic said.

  Ray went on, “Seth Meek is that guy. Outside of IT and the hacker community no one really knows him, but he’s throwing huge sliders for the NSA. He’s building a whole new system.”

  “NSA?” Finn’s eyes came up.

  “National Security….”

  Finn waved his hand, “I know… just thinking. What kind of system?”

  “Encryption, that’s what they do.”

  “So you’re saying you can’t bust into this laptop?” Tonic asked as he watched Finn stare into space.

  “Probably not everything in the next hour,” Ray said. Then seeing Tonic’s expression he kept going. “I don’t know. I’ll try. I worked my way through law school doing this kind of stuff. I've been doing it since I was a kid. Like I said, this is just a stock machine, he’d be nuts to put any of his own classified kinda work on here… for obvious reasons right? Just takes time.”

  “You might not have much time Ray,” Tonic said as he pretended to catch his partner’s thought. “Fuck," he ran his hands through his hair. “Fuck, I didn’t think of that.”

  “Yeah me either. I’ll go check right now,” Finn strode over to his desk and lit up his computer.

  “What?” Ray asked. “What’d I say?”

  “What’s this guy do for the government again?” Tonic asked.

  Ray shrugged. “He works through a place called Esoteric, contract work. It happens a lot. Private guys make huge steaming piles of cash doing contract work for the government. It’s not full time, just when the government needs you. I think he’s been at it for a year or… well, more than that actually, and usually that means he’s doing something major. He’s an MIT guy, one of the romantic theoretical types. Young guy. Hot wife.”

  “Dead wife.”

  Ray grimaced. “Yeah. Yeah, well she was doing alright, too, carrying briefcases for the ACLU in some pretty high profile cases. Then she just quit. From what I'm reading they played it off as her moving from a full time attorney to a full time mommy, but the timing isn't quite right. Something happened."

  “Why in the hell do you know all this stuff about a kinda famous computer guy?” Tonic asked.

  “I remember weird shit. Meek is Silver King. He’ll change things and people won’t ever know his name, but the game will be different. All this stuff is on the Internet, I just put it together mostly. Meek has done everything. He's the guy that everyone wishes they were when it comes to computers, because in the end computers are encryption. If you can break the code, you can do anything, and that's what it's all about.”

  Tonic was listening, but watching his partner now. Finn looked up and nodded.

  “What?” Ray asked again.

  “Since 9/11,” Tonic began, “lots of guys with government contacts are on the watch list.”

  Ray’s mouth came open, but a long moment passed before he could put together his words, “The terrorist watch list? He’s a ter
rorist?”

  “No,” Finn said as he returned. “He just got fucked by life. Point is, the government evidently thinks that he’s got stuff rolling around in his head that they’d rather he didn’t share. He’s supposed to let the Feds know if he’s going to leave the country for example.”

  “So what? I’m not following.”

  “So, it won’t be long until the government gets worried about him. Then they’ll investigate on their own, and then they’ll look at the evidence manifest.…” Tonic let it hang for Ray.

  “And then the computer disappears?” Ray finished.

  “Prolly. And if there’s anything on that machine that could help us in running these guys down, it’ll probably disappear sooner rather than later. I doubt that the NSA will care as much about our little homicide investigation as it does about their pet geek.”

  “I really doubt….”

  Finn, returned, waved him off. “Won’t matter. They’re gonna want that box. If they aren't already on the way. I think your X number of hours just went up.”

  Ray nodded. “Alright. How can I get a hold of you if I crack something?”

  “Crack is a bad word around here, Rainman,” Finn said. “Besides, we’re just pullin’ your chain. Meek said just to call him and he’d tell you how to do it.”

  “Serious?” Ray asked.

  “You sound relieved,” Tonic said.

  Ray didn’t reply. Conflicted was probably a better word.

  “Well, here’s his number, and here’s ours. Call him then call us if you find anything.” Finn took Ray's hand and scrawled the numbers on his palm. “We’ll be out in the projects chasing tags.”

  “What?” Ray asked.

  “Tags. Gang signs, Krylon and all that.”

  “Oh. This was a gang thing?” Ray asked.

  Tonic stood. "Lots of gangs do jump–ins of one sort or another. Stuff like jackin’ a car, or getting the shit kicked out of ‘em. Some just want their nooblets to rape a girl, cap another banger, shoot at a cop. You know, to prove they’ve got big brass ones.”

  “Jesus.”

  “The house where it happened has tags all over it. On the walls, on the victims. An east side gang in town. SMG crew.”

  “So… you do what? Drive around until you start seeing where these guys pee–peed on the telephone poles?” Ray asked. He seemed sincere and in that moment it turned the tide in his favor.

  “Pretty much, which is why we want more. Drivin’ around down there is gonna suck a lot. I, for one, don’t wanna. 'Specially for nothin’.” Tonic dropped the rest of his donut in the trash. Ray’s eyes followed it down.

  “They’re good aren’t they?” Finn smiled.

  “Donuts? Always.”

  “This kid’s a cop at heart, I told ya,” Tonic said.

  “Why’s it for nothing?” Ray asked.

  Finn answered. "It’ll just be a dog and pony show then. We’ll be in the trenches shaking down the wrong bangers. They won't talk. If there's anything on that box, finances, email, whatever, it gives us something. If not, we’re back to not much.”

  “That’s the deal with random crime Ray,” Tonic went on. “It’s fucking random. And that’s why this kind of jump in shit is so fugly. There’s no way to link anything up unless someone is stupid. Sometimes they are. These guys… not so much. We were hoping for prints but thus far there’s nothing in or out of the house that didn’t match up with the family. Prolly, the guys wore gloves. There’s gonna be fibers, there’s a blunt that someone sucked on, and there’s some… other stuff.” He glanced at Finn.

  “Like what?”

  “Semen samples galore,” Finn said.

  “Jesus Christ, killing his wife wasn’t enough?”

  Finn leaned down, it was time to reel Ramish in all the way. "Wasn’t just his wife Ray. Listen, I’ve seen some bad shit in twenty some odd years. This is right up there. These two raped and killed a pregnant woman. You with me?”

  Ray was pale. What seemed academic when he arrived earlier was now cramping his stomach. “Yeah, I understand.” Ray looked back to the keyboard, wondering if he was the right guy for this job.

  “Make sure you do. They did the same thing to the little girl. I want these fuckers.” He turned to Tonic, “And I think we need to go see a priest.”

  Chapter Ten

  Inane

  “Yeah?” Hack answered before he was fully awake.

  “The wife died.”

  “Keep going.”

  “The father worked for the government but….”

  Hack cut him off. “Be useful and tell me things that I don’t know.”

  There was a pause, and the line hummed. “He worked for Reagan on foreign intelligence. Switched to intelligence oversight at Reagan’s request. Something called the PIOB.”

  “President’s Intelligence Oversight Board. Come on I looked all this up two hours ago, Jesus.” Hack pulled down a new pencil and crunched.

  “He left his position after the attacks into Libya in 1986. The ones that blew up Gaddafi’s kid. Evidently there was a conflict of some sort between he and the military regarding that operation, but I don’t know what. He also had a hand in some other military stuff too, Afghanistan right after 9/11, but again, I don't know what.”

  Hack hadn’t known that, but while interesting, it didn’t make a whole hell of a difference. “Anything else? This isn’t getting me anywhere.”

  “His kid works for NSA. And it sounds like he might be on some terrorist watch list or something…. I don't know much more.”

  Hack came up out of bed.

  Chapter Eleven

  Impiety

  Irving hit over twenty sources in a little over two hours including one who could safely query the police department to confirm this watch list business. It was his talent: organizing raw information, analyzing it, and then creating a piece of art from what he found in the clutter. He balanced truth and the public's tenuous grasp of reality like a surgeon exploring a gunshot wound, with a mixture of urgency and agility. Hack was good at what he did, and very few would dispute the fact. Loathsome at times, granted… but in a good way, he would joke. When he had the opportunity to joke. Mostly, his was a solitary life filled with quiet phone calls to employees whom he might meet once in a lifetime if at all. Still, he was a wholly social creature by nature – he had to be in order to juggle personalities, keep discipline, pat heads, and crack them if necessary. Hack was a man of words, not actions, but his words had felled the mighty again and again, thoroughly humbling many of those who had moved through life unscathed by much of anything at all. Hack was truly a man to be feared in many ways, and he loved it. That no one would have known his true measure of fame at the local grocery was a fact that clawed at his ego, but it was better to be known as that nice old man in the bow tie that ran the Standard than to be stalked and beaten every week after his column came out across the nation.

  He squinted at his jumbled legal pad and spat into his ashtray. Many of his great pieces had come to be in just this way. Single bits of vital inside information would set him on a course of research and digging that diverged so radically from what the public was seeing that he appeared to be the single voice of reason.

  People believed his column because Hack was usually right. It was always a bit of a gamble because HUMINT was sketchy at best. The human part of human intelligence was all too often… human.

  He traced his fingertips over the legal pad as if trying to find the pulse, the cryptic meaning behind all of these scribbles that poured in from around the city. There was information here that came from new kids in entry–level positions, and some sleepers that he'd run for years to get within earshot of the decision makers. He'd found in nearly a half century of doing so, that what he paid his sources was not often the determining factor in the overall quality of their information. Nor was it a reliable way to judge what they would do in the future, and as fucking annoying as that was, it was absolutely true. There were kids who would gro
w up in his employee, building entire careers within the companies in which they had been 'placed.' They cost a great deal to get into position, but once there… the pay off could be beyond his wildest dreams–and often had been. Big tobacco had fallen hard, and all over a handful of memos that had crossed the right desk at the right time. A desk that Hack had 'owned.' It had cost him three hundred thousand dollars over nearly twenty years to keep that little desk, but when the smoke cleared, he added a zero to that number and wrote himself a check.

  The flip side was noobs like the kid he had inside of the PD. Ray had cost exactly five hundred dollars a month to risk his ass as contract labor for the cops. But he was desperate and that made it easy. Ray knew that if he produced, he'd be rewarded in direct proportion to what he dug up. These disposable kids felt immune to the risks that they took with the promise of a lifeline to hundred dollar bills and occasionally they too would hit on something worthwhile.

  A link to NSA was likely worthwhile.

  He'd make sure that Ray got an extra bone in his bowl this week.

  Chapter Twelve

  Inundate

  Sleep was no longer an option. His mind felt compressed, squeezed to the point where something would split and spill out into his bed. Images rushed up through his mind unbidden and he swatted at them with thoughts of his own: fantasy, reality, possibility. He ached. Everything ached.

  He stood and walked over to the window. The parking lot below was filling up with a new shift, mostly young kids drawn to the hospital by the lure of a cafeteria and janitorial jobs, not medicine. They didn’t talk to one another for the most part, just trotted through the cold morning wind with hands jammed down into their pockets.

  The room phone started ringing just before six and didn’t stop. He ignored it. His cell came to life too, a few friends, the cops, and then at 7:02 one that he took. It was a call that he’d just been planning.

  “Seth?”