Lynne Heitman - First Class Killing

“They just came in. What are they?”

“They’re the original blackmail correspondence to Arthur Margolies. I was hoping you could use them to track back to Web Boy. I need to get to him fast. You’re my only option now.”

“Maybe,” he said. I heard his keys tapping. “I’m looking at it, and it won’t be that straightforward. Let me get to work, and I’ll get back to you.”

I didn’t want to hang up, but I wasn’t sure what else to say. “Felix, can you stay on with me for a little while?”

“Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Sure thing. Did I tell you about the boarding pass printer problem I’ve been working on?”

HARVEY LEFT ON THE THREE-FIFTEEN P.M. DEPARTURE to Orange County the next day. I stood in one of the windows and watched him take off. We had decided it was best for him to go on without me. He could do the briefing on his own. Felix had worked through the night trying to find Web Boy. He thought he was close, so I stayed behind to try one last-ditch effort to get what we knew was out there. Harvey had set midnight in California as the absolute deadline for adding new information to the presentation. If I couldn’t come up with anything new by then, he would go with the case we had.

I watched the aircraft rumble down the long concrete launch pad and lift into the afternoon sky. I had to force myself not to try Felix again. I knew he was working as hard as he could. Every time I stopped at a light all the way home, I had to resist all over again. There was no way I could stay in my apartment and not call him, so I went for a run. The phone was ringing when I got back.

“Hello?”

“I’ve got him, Miss Shanahan.”

“Felix, you’re my hero.” I know he was dying to tell me how he’d figured it out, but I didn’t have the time. I found a pen and my notepad. “What have you got?”

He gave me the address of Stewart Belkamp, a.k.a. Sluggo, a.k.a. Web Boy, the Dark Hacker. Without Angel to introduce me, I’d had to come up with another way to get in to see him. I had one. I just hoped it would work.

“Felix, can you send an e-mail that looks as if it came from Monica?”

“Sure. Piece of cake.”

“Remember, you have to fool Web Boy. He’ll probably check to make sure it came from her account.”

“No problem. What do you want Monica to tell him?”

“The Dark Hacker is about to get an offer he can’t refuse.”

Angel had said she didn’t like being with Stewart Belkamp because he had a tendency to drool all over her. The second he opened his apartment door, I knew what she was talking about. With a tuber-shaped body, frizzy red hair, and a starchy complexion, he was physically unattractive. He was probably in his mid-twenties, but he stared with the slackjawed lust and overblown impudence of a sixteen-year-old boy who had learned everything he wanted to know about women fromMaxim magazine.

“You’re Stewart?”

He talked around the wad of bagel in his mouth. “Who are you?”

“Jane Doe.”

I stepped past him and into his standard, no-frills, new-construction apartment, which was located near the heart of the Cambridge tech and biotech centers. He wasn’t well fixed for things to sit on, but he had lots of toys to play with-a big-screen TV sat flanked by two high-end speakers and a bookcase full of video games and DVDs.

“Where’s your computer?”

He couldn’t maintain eye contact but couldn’t keep his eyes off various other body parts. Of course, he did think I was a hooker, so maybe I was fair game. “It’s in the back. Where’s Monica?”

“She decided not to come. Let’s get to work. We have a lot to do.”

He shoved in front of me. “How do I know you won’t tell Angel I’ve been talking to you?”

“Because I work for the women in LA, and our goal is to put Angel out of business. Why would I want her to know we’re courting you?”

“Courting me?”

“Monica told you, didn’t she? I’m here to look over your system so we can decide if we want to hire you. According to everything we hear, we want you working for us.”

He stuck his thumbs into the front pockets of his jeans but didn’t move out of the way.

“Stewart, have you ever considered living in California? Maybe a little bungalow on the beach? It’s warm out there all year round. I think you’d like it.”

“You’re a…you’re one of the hookers?” From the way he was checking me out again, it wasn’t hard to figure out what he was considering.

I tried to look sultry. “You can make all sorts of demands, Stewart, and have every reason to believe they will be fulfilled, beyond your wildest imagination.”

He shifted from one foot to the other and wiped the crumbs from his upper lip. He didn’t seem completely comfortable with the situation, but he was intrigued enough to go to the next step. “My stuff is back here.”

He led me down the hall to a depressingly dim room with a low ceiling and wood-grain blinds. There was an unmade twin bed shoved into a corner. One full wall was taken up by a glass étagère that displayed an octopus of a stereo system, a vast array of CDs, fancy camera and video equipment, more DVDs, and a vast and colorful collection of comic book heroes. There were statues large and small of Batman, the Green Lantern, Superman, the Incredible Hulk, and a bunch I couldn’t identify, certainly more than I ever knew existed.

Stewart’s work area included two large monitors, multiple CRTs and printers, and lots of modems and switches and drives. There was enough cable to wrap around the apartment complex twice, a sprinkling of crumbs on the desktop, and a trash can that smelled vaguely of fried rice. He had the space set up like a cockpit, with room for only one chair.

I looked at him. “Where do I sit?”

“Over there.” With a tight little smile meant to look wicked, I presumed, he nodded to the messy bed.

I didn’t want to sit on his bed, partly because it was his bed but mostly because it wasn’t close enough to see anything. “I need to watch what you’re doing.”

He snickered. “As if you’d even understand.”

“You want me to understand, Stewart, so I can appreciate the sophistication of your work and be duly impressed.”

With a blubbery sigh of acceptance, he left the room and came back dragging a stiff-backed chair behind him. He placed it well behind his own comfy swiveler, but I grabbed it and wedged it forward before he had a chance to plop down and completely freeze me out. That put our knees bumping together beneath his keyboard tray, something that I wasn’t crazy about but didn’t seem to bother him.

“So, you people are running hookers out of LA? That explains what’s been going on with the numbers.”

“Has her revenue declined?”

“Angel’s revenue never declines. It just hasn’t been going up as fast as before.”

Prostitution. An unlimited market driven by infinite demand. No wonder it was the oldest profession. Angel’s business was under heavy attack by a direct competitor, and she was still growing, only at a slower rate. I wondered what the depressed growth rate might be. Twenty percent? Fifty?

“We’ve heard about you in LA, Stewart.”

“You have?” He puffed up a little.

“We’ve heard that you’re the key to Angel’s success.”

He let out the long and lonely sigh of the unappreciated. “She couldn’t do anything without me. Until she found me, she was so small-time.”

“My only question is why put up with her?”

“What do you mean?”

“She takes all the credit for your work. She talks about you as if you’re some kind of trained monkey. You know what she calls you, right? Sluggo?”