John Sandford - The Hanged Man’s Song

Not that an experiment was taking place, at any rate. And some of the items in the Background section made me think.

“You know what? Bobby was inside this project. He was in their system. Look, they’re talking about the senator’s daughter’s DWI case, and about the Bole-blackface tape.”

“Maybe that’s why they were so worried about him.”

“No, no-but that’s why Carp went after him so hard. He suspected Bobby was in there, or maybe the operation hinted what a guy like Bobby might have. But I bet that’s what got the ball rolling.”

WE FOUNDmore about Carp, too. Carp had sent a memo around repeating a rumor that Bobby had sent computers to poor black kids and suggesting that the name of a poor black kid be dragged through sites Bobby was known to inhabit. He even had a name, a young computer freak he’d known in New Orleans.

The idea was summarily rejected-a notation on a separate file called Carp a “technician” who seemed “obsessed” by Bobby, even though it was possible that Bobby didn’t actually exist, but was some kind of elaborate hacker construct. The memo suggested that Carp’s “access to group personnel” be limited, which might have been a reference to the sexual harassment problem.

Then there had been a recent exchange of memos, begun after the Bobby attacks started, suggesting that they “keep all bases covered” by contacting Carp to see if he had had any contact with Bobby. Heffron and Small, the two guys we’d seen at the trailer, and who had gone into Carp’s apartment building the night before, had been delegated the job. There was a note from Small suggesting that somebody else be sent, because neither he nor Heffron knew Carp by sight, but an answer from the department head said that nobody else could be spared at the moment and that “ID photographs should be sufficient… this is a completely unofficial contact.”

We looked through the available stuff that would indicate that the group was investigating or was even aware that Heffron and Small had been killed, but there wasn’t anything in the system yet. Not on the files we’d copied, in any case.

I also found myself in the system: a report on my face-to-face talk with Rosalind Welsh. “Subject is approximately six feet tall and athletic,” LuEllen read. “… in a pursuit, deliberately burned a car to destroy any biometric evidence. He is considered exceptionally dangerous, and may be traveling in the company of a young female accomplice.”

“Must have seen you from the helicopter,” I said.

“That athletic-and-dangerous shit makes me hot,” LuEllen said.

“I can handle that,” I said.

THEnight before, LuEllen, in her moment of intimacy, had told me why she might quit stealing. This night, with the lights dimmed, I had a couple of fingers hooked inside the front elastic band of her underpants, and we were going through some kind of juvenile what-does-this-feel-like routine, when I absolutely geeked out.

I’m not a geek. I’m an ex-wrestler and an artist. But I gotta admit, I was easing her underpants down and the words just burped out of me: “Jesus Christ, it won’t work.”

“Won’t work?” LuEllen pushed up on her elbows, confused, with a certain tone in her voice.

“Not that, dumb-ass,” I said. It must have been churning around in the back of my brain. “This data search stuff won’t work. They’ve got a fundamental problem. It won’t work.”

She yawned and asked, reluctantly, I thought, “Why not?”

“Suppose they get every database in the country hooked together and they start looking for patterns. Going through all the data, looking for terrorists, looking for criminals. Okay, got that?”

“Um.” Her interest was under control.

I kept talking; like I said, geeking out. “Okay. Suppose this data-mining method has amazing capabilities. If it’s ninety-five percent accurate-which is way, way more than anything I can even imagine-one person in twenty would still get past them. A false negative.”

“So it’s got holes.” She was a little more interested.

“More than that. It’ll also point a finger at one person in twenty who is absolutely innocent. If you ran it against, say, the population of the U.S., that’s…” I did some figuring. “That’s fifteen million false positives. Fifteen million people who you think might be guilty of something, but who are absolutely innocent. Victims of random error. Unless you take a closer look-surveillance, wiretaps, that sort of thing-there’s no way to tell them apart from the real positives you get. No way at all.”

“Fifteen million?”

“That’s it. At ninety-five percent accuracy. Nothing is that accurate. I don’t think anything ever will be. There’s just too much fuzz and bad information in the system. How in the hell do you do hard surveillance on fifteen million people?”

“So it won’t work.”

“Nope.” I flopped flat on my back. “Nothing they can do to make it work-not that they won’t try. And they gotta have people smart enough to know it.”

“Then why are they doing it?”

“Funding, probably. Jesus. This whole goddamn data-mining thing is another five-hundred-dollar hammer.” I reached over and patted her on the leg. I was so pleased .

After a moment of silence, she said, “You’re such a fuckin’ romantic that sometimes I can’t stand it.”

LuELLEN HAD BEEN AWAKEhalf the night, occasionally poking me to ask, “Are you still awake?” and then following with a disturbing question. Like “What are our chances?” and “Why do you think Carp cracked Bobby’s computer?” and “Would Bobby really put the decryption codes on the same computer?”

“Our problem is,” I groaned late in the night, “is that we really didn’t know Bobby. We thought his security was almost perfect, but some low-rent federal technician figures out a way to get to him.”

She pushed herself up on her elbows and was looking down at me in the dark. Somehow, she still had nice-smelling breath. “We know they’re looking for us. Looking for you and me, I mean. Personally.”

“They have been since the satellite heist,” I said. “I never gave a shit before. We were covered.”

“So what’s going to happen?” she asked.

“Well, in the next three minutes, I’m going back to sleep. Unless you stick a finger in my ribs again. Christ, I almost pulled a muscle.”

“Why do you think Carp cracked Bobby’s computer?”

“Because I haven’t seen anything, anywhere, about the Norwalk virus. That’s the biggest thing he’s done so far, and I can’t find any trace of it in the DDC files.”

WHENwe finally got up the next morning, LuEllen insisted that we get out the tarot cards. I dug out the card box and did a spread called the Celtic Cross, which I like because it combines simplicity and flexibility. The Hanged Man came up again, but this time, as the basis of the problem rather than the outcome. The outcome spot was taken by a card from the minor arcana, the King of Cups, in the reversed position.

“Is that bad?” she asked. She became very quiet and focused when I was doing a reading.

“It’s ambiguous, just like the readings with the Hanged Man,” I said, as I rewrapped the deck in the silk rag. “It can mean treachery , but that doesn’t tell us a hell of a lot. Everything in this deal is treacherous.”

“So are we stuck?”

“I think… I may have a really bad idea. Either that, or I’m a genius.”

She looked at me skeptically. “What idea?”

“Remember when I went to see Rosalind Welsh? That moved some people around. I’m thinking… what if we go after Senator Krause? Face to face. Figure out where he lives, hit him sometime when he’s alone, or maybe with only another guy or his wife.”