James Grippando - Need You Now

Fahid belted back another Paraguayan firewater. “Mandretti gave you this three years ago. Why am I hearing this government conspiracy theory just now?”

Robledo reached into his pocket and removed another document. “Do you remember the Treasury Department memo I told you about?”

“Of course.”

Robledo laid the memo on the bar, then read the key language: “ ‘Treasury’s most promising lead as to concealment of proceeds from the Cushman fraud remains Gerry Collins’ banking activities at BOS/Singapore, and the key person of interest at BOS has been identified as Lilly Scanlon.’ ”

“Yes, I remember. This memo is what put that girl Scanlon and her boyfriend in the crosshairs.”

“I think this memo is part of the government’s plan,” Robledo said.

“How?”

“It came to me so out of the blue, like a gift from Allah. Now I know it was no gift. It was leaked to me to keep me chasing after the money.”

“Why would the U.S. government want you to keep looking?”

“Because it was one thing to lose my clients’ money in the Ponzi scheme. It is quite another for the U.S. government to actually find out the names of my clients.”

Fahid studied the Treasury memo, took another look at Evan Hunt’s analysis, and then shook his head. “This troubles me,” he said.

“It should.”

“My concern is that if the U.S. government wanted us to lose our money, then they must have known the true identity of your investors.”

Robledo paused. He knew the consequences of any breach of client confidentiality. “No, you are jumping ahead. It has to be the case that the Americans simply had suspicions about my investors. That’s why they are using this girl Scanlon. She’s the bait they want me to chase. The longer I chase, the more chances they have to find out who I represent.”

“That may be. But I’m sure you will agree with me that if that information did get out, neither Gerry Collins nor the U.S. government is to blame.”

Robledo swallowed hard, but he knew there was only one correct response. “I wouldn’t blame anyone but myself for that.”

“Nor would I,” Fahid said, his stare cutting right through him. He took Robledo’s shot glass, tipped it back, and slammed the empty glass on the bar. Then he left a hundred-dollar bill and said good night.

Robledo was alone at the bar, watching through the Fugaki’s plate glass window as Fahid made his way out, crossed the street, and passed another busload of Brazilians checking in at the Hotel Hamburg.

“W hoate the leftover pizza?” asked Connie.

I had no idea that the city that never sleeps extended all the way to New Jersey. Her kitchen was like an active crime scene, more like two o’clock in the afternoon than two in the morning. Before we’d gone to bed, Scully’s tech expert had called to confirm that there was indeed spyware on my BlackBerry, which would have allowed someone to overhear my conversation with Evan before he died. Scully called him in again after the computer crash, so there were five of us in a cramped kitchen trying to figure out what had happened to Connie’s outdated PC, though Connie’s immediate concern was the case of the missing slice.

“I ate it an hour ago,” I said.

Connie grumbled as she closed the refrigerator door, then pulled up a barstool next to Lilly. I stole a quick glance, and all that kept Lilly from doing a face-plant on the floor was her elbow on the Formica counter and her chin resting in her hand. All of us were exhausted, but Lilly especially was struggling to focus on what Scully’s friend was telling me.

“The attempted download completely fried the motherboard and the hard drive along with it,” he said.

Zach Epstein was the same former FBI tech expert whom Scully had called upon to find the spyware on my BlackBerry. Zach was definitely not “retired.” A good techie with as little as two years of “FBI” experience on his résumé could easily land a job in private security that paid ten times his former government salary.

“Exactly what does that mean?” I asked.

Zach said, “Ever see that old public service announcement on TV with the egg in the frying pan: This is your brain on drugs? That’s pretty much Connie’s hard drive.”

“Can we recover Evan’s file?”

“I’ve run every diagnostic test I can run,” said Zach. “The file is not there to recover, is what I’m telling you. The download failed, and in the process it fried the hard drive. I could recover Connie’s address book and probably 80 percent of whatever data was there when you attempted the download. But I can’t recover a file that never made it to the hard drive.”

“There has to be a way to recover that file,” said Scully. “People are always saying that e-mails never really go away.”

“Normally the surest route would be to access Evan’s e-mail account and retrieve his sent messages.”

“Then let’s do that,” said Scully.

“Already tried,” said Zach. “Not only has the account been shut down, but there’s a monster security wall around it. No doubt that’s part of the homicide investigation.”

“Or part of the continued cover-up of Operation BAQ,” I said. “There has to be another option.”

“Just to make sure we’re not overlooking the obvious, is there any way for me to get my hands on Evan’s actual computer?”

“Gone,” I said. “Whoever killed him took it.”

“That’s what I figured,” said Zach. “The other possibility is that even though the message is no longer in your in-box, we could recover it from the bank’s server. Do you think the bank’s IT people would work with us on that?”

“I wouldn’t even ask,” I said.

“I get paid to do things the hard way, but it would be a whole lot easier if I had the bank’s cooperation.”

“That’s not possible,” I said.

“Why not?” asked Zach.

I glanced at Scully, who gave me a little nod that said Zach was cool and that it was okay to share my theory with him. “You said before that the BlackBerry is a highly secure smartphone, less vulnerable to spyware than most. And my BlackBerry was made even more secure by enhancements from BOS security.”

“That’s right,” said Zach.

“Someone still managed to load spyware without ever having touched my phone. It was a remote implant, which makes me think it was the bank that put it there.”

Zach said, “That would be a likely source, at least from the standpoint of technical ease and opportunity. But ‘the bank’ is a big place.”

I didn’t see a reason to be more specific, but Scully overrode me.

“We think Joe Barber authorized the spyware,” said Scully.

Zach was like a walking computer, and I could almost see his mind working as he processed the various puzzle pieces we’d fed him: the phone call from Evan telling me that he’d decrypted the Treasury memo; the e-mail with his decrypted attachment sent minutes later; Evan’s body in the Dumpster minutes after he’d hit Send.

“You’re saying that Joe Barber killed your friend and stole his computer to stop you from getting a decrypted copy of the Treasury memo on Operation BAQ?”

“To keep the world from seeing that memo,” I said. “I’m not saying he physically pulled the trigger. But, yes, I believe he’s behind it.”

Zach glanced at Connie, as if he were suddenly interested in the family consensus. “You agree with him?”

“That depends,” said Connie. “I would need to know more about how that spyware you found on Patrick’s BlackBerry actually works. It’s just hard for me to imagine someone-especially someone like Joe Barber-eavesdropping on Patrick’s BlackBerry in real time, twenty-four hours a day, just in case something of interest came along.”