Gregg Hurwitz - Prodigal Son

“We’re not having this discussion again. Pick another major.”

“But then I’d have to do work . When we both know that—especially now that you’re in your dotage—my talents would be better spent taking over for you. I’d be a way better Orphan X. You’re a middle-aged white dude. Get with the times. C’mon, X, tell me the world’s not ready for a rebrand.”

That ice pick made further headway, burrowing toward the brain stem. “The world’s not ready for a rebrand,” he said wearily. “ I’m not even Orphan X anymore. We’ve discussed this. I retired.”

“Then what are you doing here?”

“I just need help on a … thing I’m looking into.”

She rolled her eyes, shot a glance at the wall clock. “Can we get on with whatever it is you need?”

“I need to hack into the CDCR website—”

“Even a two-digit-IQ noob like you should be able to manage that.”

“—and get cleared as a visitor to Kern Valley State Prison. And get put on the log under one of my fake IDs to meet with the inmate. For tomorrow.”

She frowned. “Hmm. Which ID you wanna use?”

He told her. As his unofficial in-house hacker, she kept files on his various identities and papers.

She whipped back around in her chair and pounded away on one of myriad keyboards. A cluster of monitors hovering around her lit up with code. She went at it for a while, fingers blurring, pausing only to slurp from her Big Gulp and once to strain herself into an awkward half hug so she could massage out a knot beneath her shoulder blade. Dog the dog shifted on his bolster bed, emitting a contented groan.

At last Joey’s hands slowed. She tapped the mouse. Rolled the sensor ball. Tapped it again. She spun to him and chef-kissed her fingers, complete with a “Muah!”

“Done?”

“You’re on the books for seven A.M. under the name ‘Frank Kassel.’ Bring the appropriate photo ID and filled-out waivers. I sent you a link. I assume you can figure the rest out all by yourself like a big boy. Now, is that it?”

Her urgency caught him off guard; he was used to her prying for details, not rushing him out.

He thought about the impound lot where the murder of Jake Hargreave took place. How the surveillance cameras had magically gone down during the key seven minutes. If Joey could coax some other electronic eyes out of the ether, there might be a way to piece together a picture of what happened.

“Can you find geotagged cameras in a specific area?”

She snickered. “Is Putin an alpha?”

“One straight answer would be so lovely.”

She did robot voice and robot arms. “Yes. I can. I’m so sorry, Mr. X.” Her posture reverted to her characteristic slump, as if she had no bones and the chair was her exoskeleton. “I’ll just hack up some code to hit the Shodan device discovery API and filter results for our target area. It already comes back geotagged for every device it finds. Then we fire up five hundo Amazon EC2 instances and automate the crap out of sploiting them with pro_exploit from Metasploit again. We bust into that shit, we’re looking at the world through their eyeholes.”

“I have an idea for your new major.”

“What’s that?”

“English as a second language.”

“Wow. Dad joke. Maybe you could start wearing plaid shorts and T-shirts with golf puns on them. And, like, wearing shower sandals with socks. And drinking Arnold Palmers. And—”

“Joey.”

“Fii-nuh.”

As he stepped into her circular work area, he sensed an immediate rise in temperature, the burned-wire smell of electronics working overtime. He commandeered a keyboard to search out the impound lot’s address, but the monitors were stacked three high all around and he wasn’t sure which one to look at. Joey reached up, cupped his chin, and pivoted his focus to the appropriate screen.

He pulled up the lot on Google Maps. “A murder took place there three weeks ago, but the security system was knocked out. I need to know if there are any other cameras with a partial view of that parking lot that we can get into and grab archived footage from.”

“I need specifics, X. Date, times. And what’s the story with this? A prison visit, a murder scene. That’s a lotta shit for a retired dude instead of … ya know, bingo.”

He stared at her, his mouth shifting. He had no one else he could talk to about something like this. Someone who had the same points of reference to understand how tricky this was for him to navigate. He mustered the words. “The woman who gave birth to me contacted me.”

Joey’s eyebrows shot up, disappeared beneath a fringe of hair. “You don’t have a mother. I mean, you know what I mean. No wonder you decided to risk your whole presidential immunity setup. Must be super emotional, right?”

He said, “No.”

“But I mean, it’s gotta be weird, right? Like it must’ve rocked your world?”

He said, “No.”

“C’mon. Everything you thought you knew about yourself is different. I bet you’re freaking out . I mean, internally obviously, since you’re all No Affect Guy outside and incapable of expressing human emotion.”

He said, “No.”

“X,” she said. “It’s your mother . What’s she like?”

He grimaced. Leaned back against one of the curved desks. Crossed his arms. “Can we skip all that so I can read you in on the mission?”

“Ah. It is a mission. I knew it.”

“I misspoke.”

She started her next retort, but he raised his palm emphatically. “Joey. Do whatever you need to do to get to those cameras. Shut your piehole. And let me fill you in.”

As quickly as he could, he gave her a just-the-facts intel dump. When he finished, she stared at him, eyes wide, her surprised face looking impossibly youthful.

Before she could respond, someone rapped on the door, and she stiffened as if she’d been hit with a cattle prod.

25The Wide World of Fuck

Evan couldn’t read Joey’s face. She kept her gaze at the monitors, not looking over at the door.

The rapping came again, more insistently.

“You expecting someone?” Evan said.

“Nah. Just ignore it. They’ll go away.”

“Joey. Is someone harassing you?”

She shot him a look, her green eyes blazing, emphasized all the more by that eyeliner. “Harassing me ?” she said. “Have you met me?”

“I’m gonna answer it.”

“Don’t answer it.”

Already he’d exited the workstation. He put his body to the left of the jamb and cracked the door.

A young guy stood outside. Sagging jeans, wide-collar shirt, thumbs looped in a distressed leather belt. A tuft of rigorously mussed hair with a hard side part razored in. He was ridiculously good-looking, no doubt a future actor or a Starbucks barista.

“Oh,” Evan said.

Joey’s makeup. The blouse. The orange-blossom perfume.

“Oh,” Evan said again.

“Hey, man. I’m Bridger. Joey here?”

Evan heard a thunk behind him. Joey’s forehead hitting the desk.

“Where do you know Joey from?” Evan asked. “Bridger.”

“Like, lecture class.”

“Lecture class,” Evan said. “How old are you?”

“Uh, eighteen.”

“Eighteen,” Evan repeated. “You know it’s illegal for you to—”

“Evan.” Joey was suddenly at his shoulder, tugging his arm. Behind his back she gathered his hand in a pronating wrist lock to steer him away from the door. He reached back with his other hand and deployed a countergrip, prying her hand off his.

They both kept their faces pointed at Bridger, maintaining smiles as he rubbed at an honest-to-God soul patch on his chin.