8
“What have you got for me?” I sit back, watching Morgan boot up his computer.
He grins back at me, inhaling his cigarette like it’s the last one on the planet. “Get ready to be happy. This baby has been working her ass off for you.”
“You ever going to upgrade?” I ask him while the machine clicks and beeps, the whirring fan under his desk already smelling of smoke. “One day, this place will burn down when you’re trying to look at porn.”
“No porn in the workplace,” he replies with a grin, stroking the top of the monitor. “That’s a white boy thing. We go with actual pussy, not the fake kind. I built this beast to my very personal specification.”
The screen brightens, and he starts reading. “Clarissa Marino is currently living in Grant’s Hollow, Iowa. Cornfields for about a hundred miles any direction once you leave town.”
“Good work.”
“Hey, you got Maddy’s phone number off their super. Piece of cake linking the files together once I got into the phone records from that. Then I just had to dehash the encryption key on the bank software and reverse engineer their code via the original dos level entry system they kept in place. Child’s play, really.”
“Then why’d it take you four days? I’ve got a deadline here.”
“You ever hacked into anything, Jack?”
“Why would I when I pay you to do it?”
“Shit takes time. It’s not like the old days when everything had a back door. I’ve been twelve hours a day on this for you. Hardly got any sleep. Didn’t help that she doesn’t have any social media, no online presence at all. Not registered to vote. Phone in her roommate’s name. She keeps life on the QT, I’m guessing because old pappy might want to track her down. She’s good, but not that good. If I can find her, I’ve no doubt he can too. He’s got more money than you, and that helps when you’re hunting. I had to work my ass off to find her.”
“And you’re paid accordingly, so don’t bitch at me. You got a number for Clarissa?”
He grins at me. “I’ve done you one better. I’ve put a direct trace on her phone and I’ve sent it to yours as a tracker. Can get you within five yards of her cell whenever you feel like it.”
“Recent movements?”
He turns the screen so I can see an aerial map of Grant’s Hollow. “Stays in town. Living with Maddy D’Angelo, walks to the kindergarten nearby where she’s been working according to the employee records of the place. They weren’t even encrypted. I should have started there. Got the job about three weeks back.”
“What’s that line there?”
“Diner twice a week. Grocery store’s that red line off to the left. Called Bud’s. See what I mean. She’s not exactly well traveled at the moment.”
“Send me that map, would you?”
“Already done. You mind me asking what you want her for?”
“You can ask.”
“And you won’t answer. I know, I know.” His brow wrinkles as his eyes scan the screen. “But she’s an untouchable and you’re only brought in to…” He makes a gun with his fingers and mimes pulling the trigger. “Is the organization on board with you going in? I don’t like to use the word unprecedented, but shit, Jack. I’ve known you twenty years. You’ve never broken the rules, not once.”
“Above your paygrade,” I tell him, getting to my feet. “If you want to talk about ethics, it can wait until I’m retired. I’ve got a job to do.”
“All right, but she’s real untouchable. Disconnected from her family. Not touched their money, not one red cent. Living in a real crappy place and earning peanuts. No calls back and forth to dear daddy before he popped his clogs. Not a hint that she has anything to do with them. If this is some lesson to teach her father, I’m just saying maybe she’s not the right one.”
“I just take the assignments I’m given, Morgan. We’re done here.”
“Fixed up your car for you. You’re welcome, by the way.”
“Put some power in the engine?”
“More than you can handle, my boy.”
“We’ll see.”
“You’re welcome,” he calls after me as I walk out of his office and into the cut and shut. I weave through the vehicles and mechanics. None of them look my way. They all know better than to engage with me.