When he was ready to make his big move, he would work a dozen big-dollar scams simultaneously, snatch millions, and be cashed out and long gone before anybody saw him coming. He had targeted banks and investment firms that moved millions daily. He would stand beside a flowing river of funds and, using a few keystrokes as his explosives, blow a hole in the levee. He would let the river flow into his canal a bit, then plug the hole and watch the canals he had built, each moving a tributary’s worth, join together and make a river of his own.
Soon.
Peanut’s latest interest in Click’s computers was as an avenue for selling pornography, which he was sure he could generate, and in collecting credit card information from the horny hordes that subscribed. For example, you set up a website for bait, and you chose a subject that rich people would be looking at. They visit, you run into their computer and plant a seed in it that collects their financial information from their hard drives. You didn’t even need to ask for credit card numbers, because people usually had that information on their drives.
Click had to admit that the porn thing would work, but it would attract the mob’s attention since the mob controlled porn and they would demand a big slice. Dixie had all the male and female prostitutes they would ever need. Buck wanted to be a producer, but that would be like hiring a wino to work in a crystal shop and putting him up on stilts.
He parked in front of the Media Warehouse. Ferny Ernest looked at the credit cards again, decided on an American Express card that belonged to Edmund C. Kellogg, and put the others back in the secret compartment.
“Another day, another dollar,” Click said as he opened the car’s door.
23
Thanks to Clayton Able’s intelligence-gathering, Winter and Alexa knew who the kidnappers were. And thanks to Winter’s knack for remembering faces, they had a subject to focus on.
After years of recovering federal fugitives, Winter had developed an ability to memorize primary facial features. The shape of the jaw and chin, the nose and the eyes, remain constant, where hair was the first thing people altered. The second change was of their style of dress and by utilizing distractions of one sort or another like hats, glasses, and items of clothing. In the real world, very few fugitives had the means for or the access to reconstructive facial surgery. Despite what movies wanted you to think, there were a limited number of plastic surgeons who fabricated new faces in their secret clinics or the kitchens of hideouts.
Alexa had cell phones for herself and Winter, connected by speed dial both to each other and to Clayton, who would remain in the hotel room hooked up to his sources. Alexa had acquired a GPS tracker in case they needed to follow a vehicle. Now, since there was moving-target surveillance to be conducted, and the target had seen the members of the covering team, Winter had decided to tag Click’s car and see where he led them.
Alexa’s tracking unit had a five-mile range. The receiver was similar to the sort of handheld GPS outdoorsmen used, the small screen showing named lines for streets.
Since they probably wouldn’t be returning to the hotel for a good while, Alexa and Winter took Clayton’s files on the Smoots, and the equipment they figured they might need. To avoid coming out into the lobby, they used the fire stairs, going through a side door that opened into the parking deck. Alexa unlocked her rental car and put everything inside it before she positioned herself near the mouth of the deck, which gave her a view of the entrance.
According to Clayton’s files on the Smoot crew, son Click had two registered vehicles: a silver 2004 Nissan Z and a 1974 GMC panel van. Winter hoped he was driving one of them. He took one bug, a dark gray plastic wafer with a magnetized disk on one side, and found a silver Z parked on the deck’s second level, its grille facing out. Winter checked the tag to make sure it was Click’s, then he stuck the bug behind the license plate so that only its thin-wire antenna was visible.
Winter’s cell phone began vibrating in his pocket just before he heard footsteps approaching. He moved silently to a position behind the vehicle parked beside the Z and waited. He heard an electronic chirping, and the door to the Z open and shut. The engine roared to life and the Z drove off down the ramp.
Winter sprinted to his truck and speed-dialed Alexa while he was backing out.
“I tried to let you know Click was coming up,” she said.
“I planted the bug,” he said. “You got a signal on him?”
“Ten and ten,” she said, her voice flat and professional. “I’m pulling out behind him. Will feed location and direction.”
24
Hank Trammel, Winter’s law-enforcement mentor, once told Winter that law enforcement was like a twenty-four-hour, seven-day-a-week gambling casino. The bad guys ran the house, so while there were hot streaks for the cop players, over the course of any lawman’s career the house odds prevailed. The best a lawman could do was to ride the hot streaks and grin and bear it when the deck went against you. Since you couldn’t count on luck, you used your brain, worked hard, and called upon your skills to raise your odds of success. Life-and-death cases like this one were the high-stakes table. If Lucy and her child were still alive, they wouldn’t be breathing any longer than necessary.
Winter didn’t know why Click had left the hotel, but he was sure the boy hadn’t run because he knew anybody was onto him.
The rain and the traffic acted as an effective veil. Winter used the cell phone’s earpiece so he could talk hands-free. He stayed a quarter mile behind Alexa, who remained far enough behind Click so she could keep him in sight, but far enough back so he wouldn’t notice her car.
“You think somebody spelled him at the hotel?” Alexa asked.
“Doesn’t matter.”
“If we’d been a couple of minutes later in realizing who he was, he’d have been long gone. We couldn’t have spooked him, could we?”
“No,” Winter said.
“Not like we have a lot of leads, if this doesn’t pan out,” Alexa said.
“The fact that he was tagging after the judge is more than enough evidence for me that the Smoots are involved in the abduction.”
“Clayton’s the best there is at gathering and interpreting intelligence. Far as I know, if the man says he’s sure, he’s right on target.”
“He certainly gathered a lot of information in a very short time. Does he have his own firm?”
“He’s part of a larger network, I guess you’d say.”
“They know he hacks intel systems?”
“Well, if they didn’t trust him, he couldn’t do it. Not in these troubled times. The intel community has been under so much pressure lately.”
“You’ve used him on official business?”
“I’ve used him in an advisory capacity. Brass doesn’t like agents going outside, especially when it turns out they are successful where we weren’t. I don’t have to tell you how it works.”
“Territorial imperative meets the Peter Principle,” Winter said.
“All I know is that without Clayton, we wouldn’t have been able to get our hands around this one. If he hadn’t come in, I’d have done about as well standing on a median strip with a cardboard sign that said, ‘Stop if you’ve seen any missing people.’?”
Winter laughed. “You couldn’t say which people.”
“Click might not know any of the specifics about the grab or where our people are being held,” Alexa said, sadly.
They were driving on Independence Boulevard in light traffic. Click wasn’t trying to be evasive in the least.
“What do you hear from Precious?” Winter asked.
“Why do you ask?”
Precious was Antonia Keen’s nickname. Antonia was Alexa’s younger sister, but before they had found a permanent foster home, Alexa had also been a mother to the younger girl. Antonia had been a tomboy with a capital “T.” Winter had never particularly cared for her, and perhaps that was because she had openly resented his relationship with her older sister. He understood the psychology, but he couldn’t forgive her hostility toward him.