by Mark Treble
Chapter Three
“Ms.Hartag, I can help the police.”
She was regarding me with a look that said, “Oh, good, another numbskull who thinks he needs to get involved in a police matter.” Then her look shifted to “Stock Speech number 17-D about letting the police do their work, let me quickly personalize this shit in my mind.”
“Mr. McQuade, Ethan, I appreciate your offer to help. The police have dealt with many disappearances before and they know what they are doing. There is no proof of foul play involved in Alexander's disappearance, you know. Yes, it's unusual, but that doesn't mean suspicious. Please let them do their jobs.” She was following protocol, but I was less interested in protocol than in finding my son. Dana's son.
Myra Hartag was an Assistant District Attorney in New Orleans. A fairly new member of the prosecutor's office and about my age (31), she was moderately attractive in a mauve pantsuit. Although, since Dana died, my standards had slipped significantly. “Moderately attractive” included most women with two ears and one nose.
“Ms.Hartag, I agree. I am a journalist with access to confidential sources across a wide variety of groups, not all of which are law-abiding.” I hoped she was actually listening.
“OK, then give their names to the officers and they will take care of it.” Hartag had me pigeon-holed. This pigeon bites.
“You did hear the part about ‘journalist,’ right? Louisiana Revised Statutes Sec 45: 1451-1459.” This pigeon also had done his homework. “You have no grounds to compel me to reveal the identities of confidential sources.”
“Mr. McQuade, do you want to stand on ceremony or do you want your son back?” Miss Empathy had just lost her crown.
“Ms.Hartag, obeying the law is not standing on ceremony. The statute requires that revealing the names must be necessary to protection of the public interest. Neither you nor the police has any idea why I want to contact these sources, let alone what information they might provide about which aspects of this case. Now, please get the lead investigator over here and we'll talk about how to proceed.” Mr. Empathy never had a crown to lose.
“Mr. McQuade, you need to cooperate with the police if you want them to find your son. Quit trying to play lawyer, Mr. McQuade, and just talk to the police.” She knew she had beaten me.
Sometimes things we know don't turn out to be correct. “No. I'm going to call the paper's lawyers now and let them know a prosecutor is trying to get me to reveal confidential sources. Or, you can let me talk to the detective.”
Ms.Hartag was looking angry. Tough shit. Then I remembered she was just trying to do her job. “I'll talk with the chief investigator about how to proceed when he's available. And, if he and you conclude that I can help, I'll do so.”
Hartag seemed somewhat mollified. “Detective, Mr. McQuade has some information for you.” Detective Danny Flint joined us.
“Do you have something you want to tell us?” The “us” evidently included Hartag, and I could see he was trying to humor her.
“Detective, if this involves foul play then someone with ties to illegal activities knows something about it. The police have multiple informants in narcotics, sex trafficking, gangs, vice, contract killings, kidnapping for ransom and a dozen other unpleasant fields. Each of these informants works for a different handler. I have contacts in all of these fields and can cross-reference in my head immediately. Let me give you a hand.” I watched his face soften.
The detective started to explain why this was not a good idea, then stopped himself. Rinse and repeat until he finally caved.
“OK, I've got kids too. But you have to agree to our conditions. First, use the panic button I'll give you to call for help if it turns to shit. It will emit a locator signal and we'll see it on GPS. Second, you'll tell us in advance the illegal activity on which the source can provide information. Third, you'll listen to my briefing on disappearances of kids Alex's age. Fourth, you'll be under surveillance.” He had obviously given this speech more than once.
“One, OK. Two, OK. Three, I can't wait to hear. Four, no. That is tantamount to revealing my sources' identities. If you won't withdraw that one, what do you take in your coffee? I'm not going anywhere.” This pigeon also had resolve.
Flint turned to a uniformed officer. “Greg, get me an M-3 Panic Button, call in the ID to central and register it to me.” Flint then spoke to me. “You do know you may be betting your son's life on your journalistic skills?”
I had already considered this before I offered to help. “I acknowledge that. You've read my columns. Either I can get criminals to open up or I've made up a whole load of shit. I'm confident that I can get my sources to open up.” More resolve.
Hartag actually helped. “I read your column. The police use it sometimes to identify trends in criminal activity, and when they do we usually get results.” Maybe the harridan wasn't a hopeless case.
Flint spoke softly. “You have forty-eight hours and your results come to me and only me. Call me every hour. In the meantime the police will conduct their own investigation, using tools you do not have. Agreed?” I nodded my head. Now it was time to get my ass in gear and try to find Alexander.
But first, the briefing.
“Mr. McQuade – OK, Ethan – Alex's is the tenth unexplained disappearance of men his age in the last thirteen months. Victimology is all over the board. White, black, Asian, Hispanic, and any combination you can imagine. Rich, poor, students, unemployed, the whole gamut. Every part of the city. No common clubs or groups, few common interests, common schools doesn't look promising. No common churches. No common online stuff except porn, but what can you expect out of a guy seventeen to nineteen?
“We've done a complete workup and shipped it off to the FBI's profilers. They're stumped. It can't be coincidence, but we cannot find any pattern. That means we don't have motive. And that means we don't really have a starting place.”
I asked to see the profiles. Danny checked with Ms. Hartag and then made a call. He said it would be a few minutes. I could read them from his laptop but not make copies. I couldn't even make notes. I was welcome to point out patterns that the police and FBI had missed, but I shook my head. Not my specialty, and experts had already done the work.
I spent an hour reading the two-page profiles twice each. Nothing jumped out at me. I had this frustrating feeling that something should, but it didn't. They were all males between seventeen and nineteen. Not a lot to go on.
As I was finishing my reading Danny's phone rang. He took it into another room and came back in a few minutes. “Good news, the first suspect is eliminated. Some dickwad at Luke's made a suggestive remark to Alex this morning and Luke kicked dickward's ass. We tracked down dickwad and our new interrogation consultant broke him. Actually, he talked a female uniformed officer through how to break the guy.
“She put him in an interrogation room with his hands cuffed behind him. She told him he had raped and murdered Alex and when the body was found dickwad would be booked. Other than that, she asked no questions and refused to let the guy say a word. Took two minutes and nine seconds. He demanded that there not be a lawyer and that he be allowed to talk right now. Alibi checks out, it's not him.”
Danny looked quizzically at my smile. “Danny, it's the principle of the source's need to impart information. Tell you about it later. And give the consultant a raise. Applying that to police interrogation just had never entered my mind.”
A uniformed officer came over and handed me a small device not unlike a car's keyless entry fob. “Push this button to call for help.” That was the whole instruction.
“Can you go over that again?” The officer looked at me like I was crazy. Then I grinned, and he grinned back. No matter how dismal the situation, without at least some levity it was going to be grim.
Chapter Four
I got in my three-year old baby-shit brown Malibu and drove away. First stop was my mechanic, who put it up on the lift. Sure enough, a tracking device was attached to the
frame. He removed it and looked at me with a number of questions in his eyes.
“Bart, you've got my credit card. Please give this to one of your employees who's getting off work and promise him $200 if he'll drive aimlessly around with it for two hours. After two hours put it in a trash bin near the Lake.” This part was easy.
“Ethan, are you doing something illegal?” I used Bart because of his ethics. I could trust the Nigerian immigrant with anything. The flip side is that he would not under any conditions help me do something against the law.
“My son is missing. I have to go talk to confidential informants who may have information. The police can't force me to tell them who the informants are. But, if the police follow me they find out without my telling them. Their lawyer already acknowledged that it was illegal to force me to reveal their names. This is just a technical way to force me to do something against the law.
“Can you help me with this?” I know I sounded pleading, but shit, I was pleading.
Bart was indignant. “I don't hold with any illegal shit, even illegal shit done by the police. Saw too much of that back home. Fuck 'em. And, keep your money. I'll give the thing to somebody to take up to Baton Rouge and then attach it underneath a semi at a rest stop.” Bart was indignant, but he was also smiling. And, now, so was I.
Next step was to move about three miles then pull into a fast food restaurant. While in the drive-through lane I dug out my supply of burner cellphones and cash. There were only three cellphones left, but I still had $800 in twenties. I hoped it was enough. I picked a cellphone at random, plugged it into the charger and dialed.
“Hello.” No name. Good. I recognized the voice.
“You know who this is?” We had agreed not to use names on the phone. He knew me.
“You got a few minutes? Need to talk now. It's important.” I didn't want to spook him, but I also didn't want to wait until tomorrow.
“Where we met time before last. See you in an hour, and I can keep talking as long as you're buying the beer.” Got it. Smoking patio for a dive bar outside downtown.
I got my food, ate it in the parking lot, and then drove the three miles to the bar. I stopped on the way to get him two packs of cigarettes. I called Flint from the payphone in the convenience store. Yeah, some of them still have pay phones.
“Flint.” The answer invited me to speak, so I did.
“First visit is to an internet fraud source. Hitting the highway, gotta go.” I hung up.
I parked a block from the bar and walked up to the smoking patio. I could see Shorty sitting by himself nursing a beer. In the bar I ordered a pitcher of beer and a coke. I shoved a twenty dollar bill between the packs of cigarettes and joined him.
Shorty's eyes lit up when he saw the beer. He'd been a decent programmer until the booze got him. Lost his family, his job, his house and his self-respect. He did some odd programming jobs for shady clients, but his skills were aging and he couldn't keep that up much longer. I had no idea what would happen to him when he couldn't get any work. I tried to convince him to go to AA, no joy. He had finally accepted a burner cellphone from me and used it judiciously. A good guy done in by his addiction.
“Hey, man, good to see you! Ah, do you mind pouring the beer? I ain't had enough to drink yet today to steady my hands.” I first passed him the cigarettes. He took a peek between the packs and smiled. “What can I do for you?”
“My son is missing.” Might as well start with the punchline. Shorty did not react at all. “And you may be able to help me find him.”
While he downed half of his mug Shorty scratched his head of wiry black hair. He had started losing his hair maybe a year ago, and combing over the tightly-wound strands was not an option.
His skin was a color that could be anything. It was darker than mine, but so were most Italians'. It was lighter than Marcus's, who himself was a relatively light-skinned African-American. Mottling from the alcohol abuse didn't help. I once asked him what his race was and he said “Kentucky Derby.”
“How am I suppose' ta help?” he asked. “I'm just a fucking drunk.”
“You ever do any programming for on-line games, you know, special programming they don't want people to see?” I stilled the hand ready to bring more beer to his mouth.
“Yeah, do it from time to time,” Shorty allowed. “A couple a months ago I done somethin' for that “Real Housewives of Orgy City” game. Ya know it?” Never heard of it.
“It's kinda like, ya know, the Simpsons?” Still no help.
“OK. Well, they got this buncha big-boobed mostly naked sluts runnin' around. The purpose is to track em down and fuck em. It's online with a buncha players at the same time.” He looked as though that should explain it to me. It did not.
“So, OK, like, they was wantin' to let the guys pick how big their dicks was gonna be. The game was open to anyone over eighteen. Or, anyone who could click a box sayin' he was over eighteen. Same difference.” Shorty wanted more beer and wanted it now. I could handle that. If he got too much booze in him he wasn't going to be any help. This was going to be a careful balancing act. Just like life. Ya know?
“So I did what they ast. I didn't tell em how fuckt up it was gonna be, just did what they wanted. They was back in a week because all the sluts was pinned to the players. Every slut had a four foot long dick stickin' out of her and nobody could figure out howta separate them. It was hilarious. Beer, please.” I was beginning to doubt that Shorty was going to be much help, but he was on a roll.
Interviewing 102 is about knowing how much the source needed to tell you. Almost everybody has a need to impart information about what they think is important. Until the source has met her or his need to I impart information the interviewer's agenda had to wait. Otherwise, the other guy or girl was answering your questions but really just thinking about what they wanted to say about their own topics. That didn't help with accuracy or completeness of the information.
To sum that up, I allowed myself to complain inside, but outside I had a smile and all the patience in the world.
Shorty smacked his lips. I liked beer. This guy lived for it.
“Where was I?” The alcohol had destroyed enough brain cells that Shorty got lost from time to time. Such as from Monday through the following Sunday most weeks.
I mentioned the sluts and the players pinned together with four-foot long dicks.
“Oh, yeah. So, I did what I knew I shoulda done the first time and put a limit on how big a player could make his dick. They was real happy and they paid me twice. Life don't get no better than that, except with beer. Speaking of which….” I poured him some more.
“Then they came back and wanted me to fix it so that the game could sneak through parental controls on kids' computers. I don't do that shit and told em so. They offered more money and I still refused. I got no job, no house, no family, almost no brains and zero self-respect. But I still got some standards.” Shorty was looking proud of himself. I didn't want to know the answer, so I didn't ask him how hard it would have been to penetrate parental controls on kids' internet access.
“How do you get these jobs?” At last, I could start moving the conversation closer to what I needed.
The one-time programming whiz beamed. “I been movin' up in the world and got me a agent.” Getting closer.
“Who's your agent, Shorty?” Shit, I knew that expression. I had moved too quickly away from what he wanted to tell in the direction of what I wanted to hear.
“Need some more beer. Can't talk when my throat's so dry. Ya know?” Shorty lit a cigarette and leaned back. Patience, Ethan. Journalism 101. Shit, Life 101. Patience.
I came back with more beer and “accidentally” dropped another twenty on the ground.
“I think you dropped this.” I picked up the twenty and handed it to him. He grinned and put it in his pocket. This was going to be one of Shorty's better days if I could just keep him sober long enough.
“So, I was tellin' ya I gotta agent. Big ugl
y motherfucker, Japanese or something. Barfus or Doofus maybe.” How Shorty could remember programming commands when he couldn't remember his own name most days stumped me. But, it wasn't relevant here.
“Rufus?” I knew who Rufus Yardley was. For the first time I hoped I was wasting my efforts in talking to Shorty. I knew who Rufus was. I knew what Rufus was. And who and what Rufus was scared the crap out of me.
“Yeah, that's it! Rufus.” Shorty was beaming as if he'd thought of this all by himself.
“So, Rufus brings you jobs for underage online fuck games. Is that it?” Please let it be yes or no, just not ‘I can't remember.’ If it was yes, then deadly Rufus wasn't part of this. If it was no, then maybe I hadn't been wasting my time. If he couldn't remember I'd have to follow the lead a different way, and I wasn't looking forward to that.
“A coupla months ago I made a maze for some fuckin' video game. It had a triple log-in and two failures froze the whole thing. If someone got in there was a maze to follow before you could really see anything. I made it too complicated, though.” Shorty paused and reached for his mug. I let him take it.
“What do you mean too complicated? I thought the more complicated the better it was to secure something.” I showed my ignorance immediately.
Shorty asked me to pour more beer. I let him have half a mug out of the pitcher. Never stupid, just drunk, he realized I wasn't going to let him inebriate himself before I got what I came for.
“Yeah, the lady said that she couldn't never get through that shit. So she had me put in a back door where she could go in and fix things.” Shorty guzzled the beer. “Dumb cunt had me put the same back door into the rankings and the photos. Even I know how stupid that is, but that's what the animal wanted.” He was dismissive of less technology-savvy people than himself.
“Who was the lady?” The mention of photos and rankings had piqued my interest. I wasn't sure the lady was the next step in the chain, but wasn't about to pass her up. And an animal is a creature.