by J J Miller
“Okay, just do me a favor, would you?” I said. “Just look into it over the next couple of days—nothing exhaustive—just when you have an odd free moment to make some calls. See if anything of interest comes up.”
Jack rolled his eyes. “Sure. Whatever you say.”
“Great. Now what about Harrington?”
“Well, I’m glad you asked, because the more I look at this guy the more I think he could be capable of anything.”
“How so?”
“I spoke to a few ‘creators’ who have been doing VidCon and some of the smaller video channel events around the country for a while, and they all talk about Harrington as being an odd character with a temper. One person told me she heard him say his life would be better if Jameson was dead.”
“In what context?”
“Apparently a television production company called Twenty20 was sniffing around looking to convert a YouTube channel into a reality TV series. They spoke to a bunch of vloggers who had more than two million subscribers. The plan was to document the vlogger’s life, how they made their videos and how they dealt with the public. It promised to be huge for whoever the company chose—they’d get a huge uptick in subs, which would mean more revenue from their channel, plus whatever Twenty20 paid them.”
“And Harrington was in contention?”
“Oh yeah. More than in contention. He’d charmed the pants off the producers. Apparently, they had a shortlist of five, and both the Harringtons and Luke Jameson were on it.”
“They’d be very different shows wouldn’t they—wild boy versus Christian family.”
“Funny you should say that. Apparently, they entertained the idea of using both channels for the show. Word of this got back to Harrington, who hated the idea of sharing the show with Jameson, and that’s when Jameson started bad-mouthing Harrington. But what Jameson was saying wasn’t half of it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, Harrington has a history. When he was in his late teens, he got charged with assault. He beat up some Arabic shopkeeper. And then after the court case was done and he’d gotten off lightly, the shop was vandalized repeatedly until the owner moved. Word is that Harrington was behind it.”
“So he’s a racist with an anger management problem? But what, if anything, could provoke him to actually kill Jameson?”
“Well, after hearing what Jameson was saying about Evan Harrington being a fraud, the producers dropped the Harringtons out of contention.”
“When was this?”
“A few days before VidCon.”
Jack’s phone rang. He picked it up and then looked at me.
“It’s Charlie.”
“Who’s Charlie?”
“My hacker. Usually I just get a text. This must be good.”
Jack tapped the screen to take the call and put the phone to his ear.
“Charlie. What’s up?”
There was silence as Jack listened. Then his eyebrows raised a little.
“Good work. Now you stay put. Why? Because I’m coming over. Now. Ahorita. Yes, you have time to go get lunch, but be quick, you hear me? See you in twenty.”
Jack pocketed his phone.
“News about your boy,” he said. “And it’s not good.”
“Demarco? What about him?”
“Looks like he had probable cause.”
“To kill Jameson? Or to kill Connors?”
“Both. That’s all Charlie said.”
For a split second I pondered the prospect that Demarco was guilty. Would that matter? Would that change anything? In a sense no. If he’d confessed to the crime, I’d still defend him to the hilt, making damn sure he got a fair trial. But there was the trust issue. This case was personal. Demarco had told me he was innocent and I was inclined to believe him. Did I actually want to find out he was lying to me? Other times I’d say no, it didn’t matter. But what if Tank’s son was playing me for a fool? I decided I wanted to know everything this Charlie character had. Otherwise I felt I’d be walking forward with eyes half shut.
“Well, let’s go then,” I said.
“Brad. Charlie doesn’t deal with strangers.”
“I’m writing his checks. We’re practically family. I’m coming and that’s final. Now let’s go.”
14
Jack pulled up outside a white two-level house on Midvale in Westwood. I parked across the street, taking in the pretty white home framed by leafy trees, shiny green hedges and a white picket fence across the front.
This was where Jack’s hacker lived? I figured we’d be headed Downtown to some grimy gaming store that served as a front for a hidden room you could only access by retina scan. Jack’s vagueness about Charlie’s identity added to the covert mystique. He said he’d met Charlie though some dark net forum. That was the thing with Jack. On face value, you’d take him as a Hollywood player trading off his looks, smarts and charm. But Jack’s talents knew no bounds. On the tech front, he was fluent not just in several types of code, but also in the language spoken in the tech business pages.
Online he mixed with the kind of people who liked to roam the recesses of cyberspace and break and enter wherever they pleased. He’d said Charlie had achieved legend status by hacking the Secretary of State’s home network, emblazoning his television screen with “The blood of Syria is on your hands, Ted.” Of course, Jack was only guessing Charlie was responsible. But ever alert to the need of having good talent on standby for his investigation services, he’d managed to track Charlie down. That he did so earned him kudos with Charlie. That’s why he was trusted with a face to face.
I got out of my car and walked over to Jack.
“Don’t tell me your hacker lives with Aunt Polly?”
Jack smiled and shook his head. Suddenly, the angry sound of a high-powered motorbike under throttle reached our ears. Within seconds the bike appeared. A red Ducati. Its rider braked hard and steered the beast into the driveway. Once the stand had dropped, the rider dismounted and undid the chinstrap. As the helmet came off, I found myself staring at a very attractive girl who looked barely old enough to have a license. She was dressed like she fronted a punk band. Her hair was cut short, brown with white tips. Below a studded leather jacket, she wore a t-shirt and ripped jeans and a scuffed-up pair of Doc Martens. She was a mountain of attitude packed into a frame almost half my size. And right now that attitude looked ready to come down on Jack’s head.
“Who’s this?” she scowled. She didn’t so much as nod in my direction.
“This is Brad Madison, the lawyer we’re working for.”
Jack was watching me to see how I’d react. He knew with the name Charlie I’d been expecting a man. An adult man. I’d forgotten good hackers could more or less turn pro by the age of fifteen or sixteen. They say you have to spend ten thousand hours on complex tasks to acquire base-level expertise. Well, these computer-obsessed, nocturnal fiends could put in eighteen hours of screen time a day, easy. And at that rate they could clock up ten thousand hours in less than two years. Charlie didn’t look a day older than seventeen.
“I told you no strangers. I don’t do face-to-face with clients. Especially not suits.”
I was a bit taken aback by her insolence. “Do mommy and daddy know what you get up to in their garage, sweetheart?”
Charlie flashed me an angry, slack-jawed look. Jack momentarily put on his Switzerland face on—happy to leave me to it. Then he thought better of it and intervened before I made an even bigger fool of myself.
“This is Charlie’s place.”
“The garage? Got it, which she rents off...?”
Jack interrupted before I could use my “Aunt Polly” line again. “No, the whole house. It’s hers.”
This took a second to sink in. The Avril Lavigne of the hacker world had already made enough cash to buy herself a house in Westwood.
“You need to keep this tool away from me,” Charlie snapped.
“Easy,” said Jack. “He’s one of the best
defense attorneys in LA.”
“Did he win an award for that?”
“Yes,” I said. “It’s called keeping people’s asses out of jail.”
“Not my ass.”
“Don’t be so sure. Doing what you do. You might well need me one day.”
She gave me an “as if” shrug. I liked this Charlie girl. But I wasn’t sure she appreciated how hard and relentless the people she messed with could be. And how much they would like to make an example of someone like her by putting them behind bars for a very long time. Not everyone could expect a pardon like Chelsea Manning. While the US Government wanted to get their hands on Edward Snowden they’d settle for some hotshot trouble maker who treated real-world law and order like grandma’s house rules.
She relented and walked down a path between the house and the garage. It took no less than three keys to unlock the garage door. I figured the retina scan would be next. But no, that was it. We were in.
Inside was dark save for the light of half a dozen computer monitors.
“Play Tame Impala,” Charlie ordered her Echo virtual assistant and music began to play. Charlie dropped her pack off her shoulder and unzipped it. She took out a can of soda and a container of sushi.
“I need to eat. Sorry.”
She set the food down on her main desk, tore open a sachet of soy sauce and then some wasabi and mixed them in the container. She then split her wooden takeaway chopsticks, dipped in some sashimi and dropped a bite into her mouth. She nodded as she chewed, letting us know she wasn’t ignoring us.
“So,” she said after her mouthful. “I got some interesting stuff on Toby Connors.” She opened her soda and took a sip. “I printed it out.”
She handed a few sheets of paper to Jack, who started to read through them.
“Could you walk us through it?” I said.
Charlie swallowed another mouthful and took another sip before finally feeling like she’d taken the edge off her hunger.
“How much do you know about Toby Connors?” She was keying something into her computer as she talked. As I assumed it was an open question, I figured I’d answer.
“He was a guy with a very small channel desperate to make it big on YouTube. He had the very unoriginal idea of reaching that goal through creating his own version of Candid Camera.”
“That’s the top line, sure, but there’s a load of fine print that indicates this guy was making the kind of enemies that will kill you.”
“What are you talking about?”
I took a seat as Charlie ran through what she’d found. The data Jack stripped from Connors’ phone gave a detailed account of his activities and interests. Toby Connors had nothing going for him other than his piddly little channel, she said. Besides trying to boost subscribers by pranking famous YouTubers he’d started doing “hood pranks”, ones where white guys go into poor black neighborhoods, do something provocative to get a hostile reaction, and then point to the camera and say, “It’s just a prank, dude.” After the reveal, everyone was supposed to end up laughing and chill, but Connors had made the mistake of pranking a gang member. Charlie had found a heated text message exchange between Connors and someone else who wanted him to remove a video from his channel.
“I traced the number. It belongs to a rapper called Ramon X.”
“Ramon X?”
“You know him?”
“Yes, I’ve already interviewed him.”
“About Toby?”
“No, I knew nothing about this. I was looking into his beef with Luke Jameson. This video Ramon X wanted taken down—do you know what’s in it?”
“Yes. Connors took it off his channel, but it was still on his phone. This is it here.”
Charlie turned to her computer and played a video showing Connors approaching a car he knew was parked in Crips turf in Pomona. You could see someone was sitting in the driver’s seat of the vehicle. Connors said, “Hey, bro. You don’t mind if I tag your car, do you?” And he pulled out a can of spray paint and pointed it at the door panel. The driver leapt out, grabbed Connors by the throat, threw him up against the car, and shoved a pistol into his face. Connors started shrieking, saying, “Don’t shoot, dude! It’s just a prank! The camera’s over there. Look.”
And then there was Ramon X, YouTube star with plenty of reasons to keep his image clean while he raked in the cash off his channel and music, staring at the camera with his gun stuck into some stupid white dude’s face. Ramon X relaxed real quick, stashed his gun behind his back, and then saw Connors off with a smile. But it was clear he was furious.
“Jesus. Talk about a Darwin award,” I said. “And Connors posted this?”
“Of course,” Charlie said. “It was the type of clip that was certain to go viral. But it somehow failed to get any traction for five days and then it was taken down before Connors got to enjoy his jackpot moment and a pile of new subscribers.”
“And this text message exchange—it was about this clip?”
“Yes, Ramon X was demanding that Connors take it down.”
“Show me the number,” I said. As Charlie zoomed in on it, I pulled out my phone and compared it to the number I had for Ramon X. It was a match. “What did Ramon X threaten to do?”
“What do you think?” Charlie said. “He told Connors straight out that he was a dead man.”
I looked at the printout. It was pretty chilling stuff. What was it with these YouTubers? They were all clawing at each other like alley cats. I’d always thought YouTube was about harmless, often dumb fun. But now I was seeing behind the screen, and it was as desperate, ambitious and dog-eat-dog as Wall Street, or the ghetto for that matter.
“So it was up for five days until Connors came to his senses. When did he delete the video?”
“The day he died,” Charlie said. “Actually, his phone data shows he deleted the video where he died.”
Jack was right: Demarco’s hole was only getting deeper. To the police and prosecutor, this was probable cause. They’d say Demarco was sent by Ramon X to demand Connors delete the video. Then after he did, they’d say Demarco shot him anyway.
“What else is there?” I asked.
“Well, an hour or so before Toby dropped Demarco off, he got an odd text message,” Charlie said.
“What did it say?”
“‘Coming now.’”
“Coming now? Who was it from?”
“The number’s not in Connor’s contacts. I rang it yesterday and it’s dead.”
“Were there any other messages or calls from this number?”
“No calls. And just one message thirty minutes earlier. One word: ‘Outside’.”
“Charlie, can you find any other correspondence—in the comments sections of his videos, in a chat room, a phone call or an email—anything that could shine a light on who sent these two messages?”
“It’s too vague. There’s no telling what this person is referring to.”
“Obviously, it sounds like Connors was meeting someone,” I said. “But it could be something else entirely.”
“Could you please keep digging, Charlie?”
I was very impressed with Charlie. I was only too happy to keep paying her top dollar to continue helping me.
“Sure.”
Trying to find out who sent those messages was a long shot and ultimately of questionable benefit. Every development in this case only seemed to bury my client deeper. I thought of the promise I’d made to Jasmine and how empty it now seemed.
15
I needed some air, so I walked to Skid Row from my office. I got air alright. The gusts of wind coming down Fifth Street were thick with the stench of urine. I was headed for the Los Angeles Mission to meet a volunteer who’d helped Demarco out. It was only a fifteen-minute walk from my plush office to Skid Row, but it felt like a journey into another world. Just a few blocks away from Downtown’s high concentration of super wealth was an entire neighborhood that, economically and socially, belonged to the Third World. Here,
some twenty thousand people were so cut off from society that they lived in tents on the sidewalk, used buckets for toilets because thugs charged taxes to use public amenities. As the buildings I passed grew more decrepit and I watched a woman wheel her life’s possessions around in a shopping cart, I felt for Demarco. How had he ended up here? The man I was going to see would hopefully be able to provide some insights.
I threaded through a crowd of people at the entrance and told reception I’d arranged to meet Warren Anderson.
“He’s right over there,” said the lady, pointing back over my shoulder.
I turned around to see a tall, big-chested black guy whose t-shirt strained to cover his biceps. As I approached, he was talking to an elderly woman, who burst into tears. Warren put his big arm around her, drew her in, and patted her back. It was like a bear comforting a rabbit.
“Don’t worry, Loretta. I’m going to find her. I promise. She’ll be okay.”
The two separated, and the woman wiped her eyes with a handkerchief.
“Thank you, Warren.”
“No problem. I love you.”
I didn’t know whether these two had known each other for years or whether that was just a phrase Warren used, but I could feel that it carried weight. The man was clearly genuine in his care for others.
“Warren Anderson? I’m Brad Madison,” I said, putting out my hand.
A big smile lit up Warren’s face. “Nice to meet you, Brad,” he chuckled and spread his arms out a little. “Welcome to my office.”
“Is there somewhere we can talk?”
“The street’s as good a place as any. Let’s go.”
Warren led me back out onto Fifth Street and turned left to head deeper into Skid Row. This was not what I had in mind. I thought we’d be sitting down in his office and running through files, maybe having a cup of instant coffee from a stove kettle that whistled on the boil. Everyone on the street watched us come and go.