Bad Guys Read online

  He wished he could tell her not to worry, that it would be okay, but he couldn’t lie to her.

  Douglas Untermann was an eighteen-year-old sophomore. Apparently he’d skipped a grade somewhere along the line. He was extremely antisocial but not in a particularly unfriendly way. Human communication just didn’t interest him as much as computers. For him computers presented infinite possibilities and yet were always predictable. People, on the other hand, were all pretty much the same but consistently unpredictable. Doug preferred predictability. Which was all for the best, Gibbons figured, particularly for a guy with the looks of a fetal pig and the personality of a five-speed power drill.

  Gibbons sat at a spare desk at the computer center staring out the window as Doug hunched over his keyboard, ceaselessly punching in different combinations of whatever he was doing to get into the Justice Department in Washington. They hadn’t said a word to each other since Lorraine left them over two hours ago. She had to go do something or other at her office. In that time, Gibbons had had two cups of burnt coffee, shredded both Styrofoam cups into small bits, and counted the little holes on the toes of his wingtips. He’d refrained from speaking to the kid for fear that he’d bolt like a scared rabbit. But this was getting ridiculous. If Doug was telling the truth, he’d started working on this last night at ten and he was still at it now, seventeen hours later. This was supposed to be the computer age, for chrissake.

  Gibbons finally slapped his hand on the metal desktop to get the nerd’s attention. “So, Doug, what’s the story?”

  Doug shot his palm up into the air like a traffic cop, his eyes glued to the monitor. “Wait,” he blurted.

  The monitor suddenly filled with numbers, scrolling down at a demon pace. When it had gone through what must have been a thousand sets of numbers, it stopped and the monitor was empty. Doug slumped in his chair like a deflated balloon. “Shit,” he mumbled.

  “What happened?”

  “I tried everything, but I can’t get around it.” Doug looked like he was going to cry.

  “You can’t get around what?”

  “Their security system! There’re no back doors. I tried to find one, but the system is airtight.”

  Gibbons was amazed to hear that the government could actually do something right for a change. “You can’t get into the Justice Department files. Is that what you’re telling me?”

  Doug just pouted. They’d beaten him, and he wasn’t taking it well. The distant ripping sound of a dot-matrix printer in another room filled the void.

  Suddenly Doug came back to life. “Goddamn them! It isn’t fair.”

  “What isn’t fair?”

  “These new systems. Operators, human operators. It’s not fair. And everybody’s using them now. You’ve got to call an operator first and give your password. If you’ve got the right password, they call you back and give you access. The sneaky part is that they call you back at a predetermined phone number, so even if you figure out some authorized user’s password, you’ve got to be at his phone to get in. It’s un-fucking-fair!”

  Gibbons got the feeling Doug was explaining all this to his hardware, not to him. “So they’ve turned it into a user’s-only club, huh?” He still didn’t believe that the government could be so competent. These computer kids were supposed to be able to do anything.

  “Yeah, and it really sucks.”

  They fell silent for a while, then all of a sudden Doug started up again, like a teletype machine in an empty office.

  “This used to be a lot of fun, breaking into their systems. I mean, they really did make it hard, but it could be done.”

  “Yeah? What was the best one you ever did?” Gibbons knew this kid didn’t have a good bartender he could cry to, and anyway he was curious to hear how these guys operated.

  A dreamy look of nostalgia came over Doug’s pasty face. “My best one? My best one was when I found my father’s girlfriend. That was the best, hands down.”

  “How’d you do that?”

  Doug slumped down in his chair, stared into space, and gestured with his pudgy hands. “Well, my mother suspected that my father was cheating on her, but she couldn’t prove it. I had a feeling he was too. My father travels a lot in his job, so he certainly had the opportunity to have an affair. He also makes a lot of money, so he could easily afford to keep a wench if he wanted to.”

  “Where’s he work?”

  “IBM.”

  It figures.

  “So what I did first,” Doug went on, “was get his American Express account number—the business card, not the personal one—and check out where he’d been spending his time—”

  Gibbons interrupted. “How’d you get the number?”

  “Out of his wallet while he was taking a shower. Anyway, when I accessed his account records, I figured out where he’d been in the past year, and one place stood out like a sore thumb: Great Barrington, Massachusetts. It stood out because it was the only place on his records where IBM doesn’t have an office. After that, getting into the Great Barrington town computer was a piece of cake. See, I had a hunch and it turned out to be right. The tax records showed that my father owned a little house up there. His little hideaway.”

  Doug cracked his knuckles before he continued. “Now I knew the address of the house and I already had his Social Security number, so I patched into a few of the big DP companies and I looked around for his homeowner’s insurance policy. That took some time because there’s a lot of data to get through with insurance files. Anyway I finally found it after about a week. He’d insured the house through State Farm and the policy was taken out jointly with his girlfriend. That gave me her name, Social Security number, age, all that stuff. Dad was stupid. He should have put everything in her name. Guess he didn’t trust her that much.”

  Gibbons couldn’t believe this. “So then what did you do?”

  “I made a deal with my mother. I told her that if she bought me this autodial twenty-four-hundred-baud modem I wanted, I’d give her Dad’s girlfriend’s name and the address of their love nest.”

  “Did she go for it?” Gibbons already knew the answer to that.

  “Of course. Her lawyer sent a private detective up there to follow them around and take the incriminating pictures and all that. Their divorce finally went through at the beginning of the summer.”

  Gibbons shook his head. He had to laugh. “Nice kid. Turning on your old man like that.”

  “What do you mean? I could’ve told Mom about all the money he had socked away in Grandma’s name. I found out he was worth at least twice what he reported to the court. I saved him a bundle on alimony.”

  “Great. So you screwed your old lady too.”

  Doug winced. “She’s a real pain. Anyway, my father gave me a forty-meg hard-disk AT with a color monitor for keeping my mouth shut about the money. It all worked out for the best. Dad says he’s a lot happier with Emma now.”

  Gibbons stood up and stretched his back. “Thanks for the effort, Doug. I’ll tell Lorraine you did your best.”

  Doug nodded and went right back to the computer.

  Another good reason for not getting married again, Gibbons thought.

  TWENTY-ONE

  When Tozzi walked into her office, Joanne leaned back in her high-back chair and looked at him through half-closed eyes. “Is it Halloween?” she asked. She was referring to Tozzi’s suit, his “Mr. Thompson” outfit.

  Her unexpected sarcasm stung him. He wasn’t feeling very secure, having just moved into the EZ Rest Motel right on the highway in Secaucus, taking only what belongings he could stuff into a small suitcase and a plastic Macy’s bag. The room had one small window that looked out on a twenty-four-hour Exxon station. The highway traffic was loud but it was constant, like white noise, though every time a car pulled into the gas station and rolled over the pressure wires, the bells rang inside the garage, and that had kept him up most of the night.

  Tozzi was wearing his suit because he figured it was only right
that he dress appropriately for an office visit. It was bad enough that he was dropping in unannounced again; he couldn’t embarrass her by coming in looking like—what?—an undercover cop, a wiseguy, her gigolo? Besides, he had to look decent because he’d come with the vague hope that she might invite him to stay at her place, just for a little while, at least.

  She reached for a cigarette from the pack of Newports on her desk and held one between her fingers, the butane lighter poised in her other hand. “Well?” she said.

  Tozzi smiled lamely. “Trick or treat.” He sat down on the grayoatmeal sofa and sank down into the cushions. He could’ve fallen asleep right there.

  She lit her cigarette and squinted behind the rising smoke. “You look like shit. What’s wrong?”

  Tozzi rubbed his eye sockets with the heels of his hands and exhaled a short bitter laugh. He hesitated before he told her anything, but then went ahead and told her anyway. “That ex-, former, whatever-the-hell-he-is husband of yours—the guy I’m not supposed to mention in front of you—is out to get me. I had to leave my apartment because he knew where I was.”

  “You sound paranoid.” She sounded unconvinced. Or unconcerned.

  “You ought to see the piano-wire burns on my friend’s neck, courtesy of one of Richie’s gorillas. You’d be paranoid too.”

  “Is he dead?” Finally she looked alarmed.

  Tozzi shook his head.

  “How do you know Richie’s responsible for this?”

  Tozzi hesitated again.

  “Fuck you,” she suddenly snapped. “You come waltzing in here looking for sympathy, but you still don’t trust me enough to tell me the whole story. Well then, just get the hell out of here.”

  Tozzi looked at her and sighed. He wished he could just go to sleep. “Richie’s after me because I’m after Richie.”

  She pursed her lips and tapped her polished nails on the leather edge of her blotter. A thin wavy line of smoke rose from her cigarette. “I figured that out a long time ago,” she said impatiently.

  “So what else do you want to know?” This wasn’t the way he’d hoped this would go.

  “Who do you work for?”

  “No one. I work alone.”

  “Really. You’re a lone wolf? An avenging angel? How goddamn stupid do you think I am?”

  He looked her in the eye. “I never thought you were stupid. Just the opposite.”

  She turned the page on her calendar with a sharp snap and shuffled papers angrily. “Then what are you doing here? What do you want from me?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I just wanted to see you.”

  “Is that a line left over from your disco days?”

  He ignored the insult. “The first time I met you, you said that any enemy of Richie Varga’s was a friend of yours.”

  “So?”

  “So help me.”

  She looked away, looked at anything else in the room but him. He had a feeling she was deliberately trying to maintain her fury. “Why don’t you leave me alone? I don’t care about him anymore. He’s out of my life. I don’t want him back in. Can’t you understand that?”

  Tozzi noticed that her hand was shaking. “I do understand. But you’ve got to realize that—”

  “I don’t have to realize anything. I don’t care what Richie’s doing.”

  Tozzi stared at her hand and wondered if he should play the card he had in mind. At this point, there was nothing to lose. “Do you care what he wants to do to me? Do you care that he wants to kill me?”

  She swiveled her chair sideways and took a slow drag off her cigarette. Her face was set off by the high-back wings of the leather chair. For some reason, Tozzi thought of the profile of Alfred Hitchcock at the beginning of the old TV show.

  Her phone rang then—a twittering flutter, not an actual ring. She let it go for five rings before she decided to pick up.

  “Yes?” she said, sounding weary. She was still in profile as she listened to whoever was on the other end. “All right. I’ll take it.

  “Hi, Dale. How are you?” Suddenly she was someone else, Ms. Varga, vp. Her tone wasn’t friendly, it wasn’t unfriendly. It was business cordial. Formal concern, interest, but no warmth.

  “Yes, that’s right. We can channel your data any way you choose, and of course, as we discussed, it can be tailored to fit your needs.”

  Tozzi lay down on the sofa and put his heels up on the arm. It was very comfortable except that there were no pillows for his head. He crooked his forearm behind his head and watched Joanne work through heavy lids.

  “We offer a basic hospital package that we’ve found works very well. Medical records can be kept separate from billing so that people in different departments can access only what data is pertinent to their positions. Executives are provided with pass codes that will open up the entire data source if needed. Payroll and personnel records can either be included in the package, or you can continue with your present service and leave that data separate. I believe I told you, though, that the cost of issuing biweekly paychecks goes down significantly if you shift personnel and payroll onto the total package service.”

  Tozzi figured she was pitching additional data-processing services to some hospital who already used DataReach for their payroll. He was impressed with her rap. She wasn’t hard-sell, just hard facts. He knew the technique. She’d lay it out so logically and so matter-of-factly that the guy on the other end would feel stupid if he didn’t buy her package. It was the way smart cops got perps who were caught red-handed to turn on their buddies. Spell it all out for them nice and calm. Tell them what they can expect if they cooperate and what they can expect if they don’t. Tell them exactly what information you want. Work it nice and easy like an optometrist testing for the right lenses. Work it down to two choices: Is this better? Or is this? If you can do it in the wee hours of the morning before a public defender can drag his ass down to the station, nine times out of ten the felon will opt for the logical choice and spill his guts all over the floor.

  “Now you do know that as part of the package,” she continued, “we send out our auditors every six months to review your system. They check for inaccuracies, poor performance, overlapping services, and security leaks. If they discover any problems, we will either rectify the situation or recommend changes in your basic service that will accommodate your needs better.”

  Tozzi shut his eyes. Just ten minutes. That would be so nice.

  “Excellent,” she said into the phone. “I know you’ll be glad you decided to go with the total package. Alan Lurie is the systems analyst here who handles our medical accounts. I’ll have him call you today to set up an appointment so that you can review your needs with him, determine if any custom software will have to be written, and assess your existing hardware. Okay? . . . Fine. If you have any questions, give me a call. I’ll be talking to you, Dale. Bye.”

  Joanne swung around to face the telephone console. She pressed for a dial tone, then punched in four digits.

  “Alan? Joanne. Queen of Peace Medical Center finally made up their minds. They’re going with the whole package.”

  There was a hint of triumph in her voice. About as much as a good businesswoman allowed herself, Tozzi guessed.

  “The vp in charge of operations over there is Dale McIntee. I told him you’d give him a call today to make an appointment to get things rolling. Hold his hand and make him feel secure. I think he’s still a little uncomfortable with the price. You know what to do.”

  She listened for a minute, then suddenly she tilted her head back and laughed. She looked like one of those people on the TV ads for Bell Telephone, getting a real kick out of calling some dear relative in the old country. Her office laugh was about as sincere as a commercial.

  “You’re right about that,” she said, abruptly curtailing her mirth. “Get back to me after you’ve talked to him.”

  She hung up the phone and leaned back in her chair, smiling with satisfaction. It didn’t seem to matte
r that Tozzi was sprawled out on her sofa, half-asleep.

  “Big deal?” he asked.

  “A very big deal,” she answered.

  She didn’t seem so pissed-off now. There must have been a lot of money riding on this hospital deal. Probably a sweet bonus for her, too.

  “I guess I better get going,” he said, but he didn’t make a move to get up. He was too comfortable.

  She stood up and walked around her desk. When she sat down on the edge of the sofa where his legs were stretched out, the 9mm Beretta in his ankle holster dug into her back. She pulled away and glanced disparagingly at his leg.

  “Are you really in trouble with Richie?” she asked.

  “Not just Richie,” he said.

  “If you level with me, I’ll help you any way I can.”

  Her tone seemed sincere now. Nothing like the woman he’d just listened to on the phone. “I’m an FBI special agent,” he said. “Used to be, actually. The Bureau doesn’t sanction independent contractors.”

  Joanne nodded. “I had a feeling,” she murmured. “But why? Why are you chasing Richie? Why are you working alone like this?”

  “It’s a very long story. Basically, Richie’s a bad guy. The Bureau doesn’t always see the bad guys right away. And sometimes they don’t want to see them. My problem is that I see everything. I can’t help it.”

  “What can I do to help?”

  He shook his head. “Nothing really. I just need to know you’re going to be there for me, like a safety net if you know what I mean. I’m hanging out over the edge. I need to know I have someplace to fall if I slip up.”

  She was rubbing his chest gently with the flat of her hand. She seemed to be unaware that she was doing it. “Do you need a place to stay? You can come to my place.”

  He thought about it for a second and changed his mind. “No. It would be too risky for both of us. I’m sure Richie knows where you live.”

  “Do you think he knows about us?”