P. Tracy - Live Bait

‘That’s a scanner, Gino,’ Magozzi informed him.

‘What’s a scanner?’

Grace snapped them a look. ‘You two want to know what I’m doing or not?’

‘Absolutely,’ Gino said.

‘I just scanned Arlen Fischer’s photograph into the new face-recognition program I’m working on.’

‘We’ve got one of those,’ Gino said, glancing at Magozzi. ‘Don’t we have one of those?’

‘I don’t think so.’

Grace rolled her eyes and kept typing. ‘If you had one, which you don’t, it would be the Flintstone version. Some of the facial-recognition programs out there draw on a single database – like the setups they’ve got at some of the airports. They’ve got one database with photos of known terrorists, criminals, and anybody else who’s red-flagged; the machine takes a digital photo of the guy walking through the security line, and checks it against all the photos in their database.’

Gino was pretty impressed. ‘I get it. The facial-recognition program is like a witness, and the database is like a mug book. It looks at all the pictures and picks out the bad guy.’

‘Exactly.’

‘Well that sounds simple enough.’

‘It would be, if there were a single database with a picture of every single Nazi in it, but there isn’t. What we’ve got is hundreds of individual Web sites with archive photos of some Nazis. So what we’re left with is entering each site one by one, pulling out each picture one by one, and entering those into the recognition software that runs comparisons with Arlen Fischer’s picture. You could spend your life on that kind of a search.’

Gino sighed. ‘I should have brought my pajamas.’

‘Not necessary, thank God,’ Grace said, her fingers busy. ‘Instead of pulling photo images off the Web and entering them individually into a recognition program, I put together a program that would go into the Web instead, and do the search that way. It’s still slow – I can only route it to about ten sites at a time – but it’s a hell of a lot faster than the old way. I’m going to run Fischer’s photo through the Nazi watch group sites first, because that’s our best chance to get an early hit – they’ve archived more photos of the period than any of the historical sites.’

Magozzi frowned. ‘Fischer would have been a lot younger then.’

‘Doesn’t matter. Skin sags, chins fall, people get fatter, thinner, have cosmetic surgery, whatever; but the bones remain essentially the same. The program focuses on thirty-five key structural points in the face. So even if you had your jaw and your cheekbones reconstructed, for instance, that still leaves twenty-some identifiers the program will jump on. It’s never wrong.’

‘Never?’

‘Not unless somebody put their head in a mangle and had the whole thing rebuilt.’

Gino smiled and elbowed Magozzi. ‘She’s quick.’

‘Like a bunny,’ Maggozi agreed.

‘It’s still pretty primitive,’ Grace conceded. ‘But eventually you’ll be able to slap a school photo of your fifth-grade sweetheart into a scanner, push a button, and if there’s a picture of her anywhere on the Web, the program will find it.’

Grace rolled down to another computer and held out her hand. ‘Give me the stats on the overseas victims. I’ll start the standard search program on them while we wait.’

Gino’s stomach made a noise that sounded like a large volcanic eruption. ‘I’ll give you my first-born son for a cracker.’

Grace raised an eyebrow. ‘The Accident?’

Gino frowned and thought a minute. ‘I’ll give you a picture of my first-born son for a cracker.’

Grace shooed them away with a wave. ‘Give me five minutes alone to work this, and I’ll get you a cracker. Go sit in the dining room.’

Gino, Magozzi, and Charlie took their seats at the dining room table while Grace finished up in the office.

Gino kept eyeing the dog in the chair at the head of the table. ‘Jeez, he really does sit in chairs like a person. That’s kinda creepy.’

Charlie turned his head to look at him.

‘Shit. Does that dog understand English?’

‘Hell, why not? McLaren understands French.’

Gino’s stomach let out another rumbling protest. He leaned sideways to peer through the archway to the kitchen. ‘Maybe I could just go in there and rummage around until I found a crust of bread of something.’

‘The cupboards are all booby-trapped.’

‘Oh.’

Magozzi rolled his eyes. ‘Kidding, Gino.’

‘Well, I believed it. She’s still got the house locked up tighter than a drum.’

‘A lot of people have home security.’

‘Most of them don’t run around in their own house with a gun strapped to their ankle.’

‘She’s getting better, Gino.’

‘You keep saying that, but personally, I don’t see it.’

‘She bought me a chair.’

Gino arched a brow. ‘You mean for here? Your very own chair?’ He looked over his shoulder into the living room. ‘Where is it?’

‘Outside.’

‘And that doesn’t tell you something?’

‘You don’t understand.’

Grace came from the hall into the kitchen then and started making little domestic noises. A minute later she walked into the dining room balancing four plates. Three held mounds of glistening greenery topped with large, snowy chunks of lobster. The fourth held kibble buried under some kind of chunky gravy that smelled like the greatest hotdish ever made.

Gino looked pointedly at that one. ‘Smells terrific,’ he said, saddened a little when she set it in front of Charlie. ‘But jeez, Grace, this is some cracker.’

‘I figured you hadn’t had a chance for lunch with all that was going on today. We might as well eat while we’re waiting for the program to kick out something.’

Gino looked down at the generous pile of lobster on his plate and almost wept. ‘This is the nicest goddamned thing…’ was all he managed to get out before his fork found his mouth. When he was finished, he patted the corners of his mouth with a napkin. ‘Grace MacBride, I will tell you this. Aside from Angela’s marinara, this is, without a doubt, the best food I have ever eaten in my life.’

‘Thank you, Gino.’

‘And I like the way you decorated the plates with all this green stuff, too.’

‘That’s not decoration. You’re supposed to eat that.’

‘No kidding.’ Gino prodded warily at the greenery. ‘So what are these little round things that look like worms?’

‘Eat one.’ Grace pointed with her fork. ‘Then I’ll tell you.’

Gino sorted through the meadow on his plate, finally stabbed one of the scary little green coils, and eased it carefully into his mouth. He chewed tentatively a couple of times, then scooped up another forkful. The real measure of Gino’s eating pleasure was taken by the number of times he chewed. Steak got three chews, pasta got two, dessert got one, but this time Magozzi could have sworn he swallowed it whole. ‘Man, this stuff rocks.’

Grace looked on in satisfaction; Magozzi looked almost alarmed. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen you eat anything green before. Am I going to find a pod in the car?’

Gino looked offended. ‘I eat green stuff sometimes.’

‘Like what?’

‘Lime popsicles.’ He grinned at Grace. ‘Okay. What is this stuff, ’cause I gotta get some.’

‘Fiddlehead ferns in a champagne vinaigrette with Comte cheese.’

Gino nodded. ‘That explains it. I’d eat Leo’s shoes if you poured champagne on them. There is no culinary road I won’t travel.’ He pushed away from the table and laced his hands over his protruding stomach, looking at Grace. ‘You are going to make some lucky man a wonderful wife someday.’