No Witnesses

card operation, we might as well go fishing instead. Clear?”

Boldt had said nothing of the case he was on.

Perch reminded him of a man who played racquet sports. He had fast eyes that preferred Lucille Guillard’s hem length to Boldt’s cool exterior, brown hair that was washed too often, and an athletic bag snugged up to his desk where everybody could see it. The office was unexceptional except for a pair of watercolors of the San Juans, and an unspectacular view of I-5 and a marina on Lake Union that almost counted as a water view.

Perch had telephoned Shoswitz in order to verify Boldt’s identity. He called Lucille Guillard “Lucy,” and he said it a little too smugly, as if she considered him an intimate friend, which she clearly did not.

From what Guillard had told him, Boldt’s real-time tracking could only be accomplished through a coordinated effort between Pac-West and NetLinQ.

“This is not your everyday extortion,” Boldt said.

“I’ve worked with Freddie Guccianno a couple times,” Perch admitted.

“Freddie’s not working this case.” Boldt said.

“Freddie’s good people.”

Boldt hated that expression.

“What is important, Ted,” Lucille Guillard said smoothly, “is that the bank and the switching station come up with a real-time environment that makes it possible for Sergeant Boldt to track certain withdrawals.”

“I understand that, Lucy. But what I’m trying to point out-to both of you-is that real-time monitoring just isn’t possible across the entire network. No such software exists-not that I know of. It’s just not something we’re set up to do. What? What, Lucy? Why are you looking that way at me?”

“It is something you must do. At the moment, Sergeant Boldt is asking politely. None of us, the police, the bank, wants to initiate legal steps. The idea is that we cooperate.”

Ted Perch looked a little hurt. She knew more than he did, and he did not like that. And if he tried to look up her skirt one more time, Boldt was going to say something about it.

He nodded slowly at her, made a sucking sound in his teeth, and directed himself to Boldt. “The way the system works is this, Sergeant. The account in question is with Pac-West. Clear? If a Pac-West ATM is used to access this account, as I’m sure Lucy explained to you, then that request goes directly to their server. Several verifications are made almost instantaneously, the server okays the withdrawal and instructs the ATM to dispense the cash. Whambam, thank you, ma’am. But in the case of a Pac-West customer using say a First Interstate ATM, that’s where we come in. First, the PIN-the personal identification number-is encrypted by the machine, so as it travels along these phone lines, no one can grab it. Next, the account number and a BIN number-the bank identification number-are routed directly on to the First Interstate server in California, which recognizes that the BIN number is not theirs, and they then route the request back to us. Our computers reroute the new request according to the BIN number-in this case, to Pac-West. Pac-West confirms the account information and approves the withdrawal, routing the approval and an individual authorization code, through us, back to First Interstate, which then instructs the ATM to dispense the cash. In some cases, the request may pass through a national switch first, and then be routed to us, back to the national switch, back to the bank in question. At any rate, this entire process I’ve just described takes three-point-two seconds. There are four-point-one million credit and debit cards in use in the Northwest alone-and eighty million in the U.S. And to give you an idea of volume, of usage, of the number of hits we receive: ATMs in Washington and Oregon alone process one billion dollars a month. That works out to somewhere around twenty million dollars a day during the short week- fifty million dollars a day Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. That’s four hundred thousand hits per day! And you want us not only to pull an individual hit on this system, but pull it realtime? Are you beginning to see my problem?”

His intention had been to mow Boldt down with the facts and figures, and he did just that. Four hundred thousand withdrawals a day. The number fifty million rang in his head.

“Have we met before?” Perch asked, as if Boldt had just walked through the door.

“No.”

“You look damn familiar to me. Do you play racquet-ball?”

“Piano. Jazz piano.”

“A club! Am I right?”

“The Big Joke.”

“Exactly. I knew I’d seen you before.” To Lucille Guillard he said, “He’s good.” To Boldt he said, “You’re very good. Happy hour. Right?”

Boldt thanked him and pointed out that he had to drop the piano when a case like this came along.

“A case like what? You’re not Fraud, are you, Sergeant? Not unless you just transferred. I know the guys from Fraud, believe me.”

“Homicide,” Boldt said.

It was a word that hit most people sideways, and Ted Perch was no exception. He actually jerked his head back as if he’d been struck. “The big leagues,” he said.

“Just another division.”

“What is this thing? Blackmail? No, extortion-right?”

“Right.”

“Bet someone’s dead,” Perch guessed, “or what would you be doing here?”

“Someone’s dead,” Boldt confirmed. “Maybe others if we don’t hurry.”

“If people’s lives are at stake, that’s different.”

“We need your help,” Lucille Guillard said earnestly. “The problem is that by the time a real-time system identifies a hit, Sergeant Boldt has about ten seconds-or less-to apprehend this person.”

Boldt added, “And that’s not enough. Not even close.”

“Slow down the entire system?” Perch queried. “(A) It’s not possible-not that I know of, and (B) I would be hanged. If the system goes down for five minutes, it makes the news these days. People have gotten used to ATMs. They expect them to work. Twenty-million a day, don’t forget.”

“Does it have to be the whole system? Couldn’t we isolate just these requests?” Boldt asked.

“It doesn’t work like that. Sometimes there are two, three, even four ATMs installed right alongside one another. What’s this person going to think when his transaction takes forever and the guy next to him receives service as usual? Let me tell you something: People have built-in clocks when it comes to ATMs. They know how long a transaction is supposed to take. The average transaction takes twelve seconds. You stretch it to forty and a guy like this, someone jerking the system around, is going to notice. Plain and simple. He’s gone.”

Boldt was glad that Perch had the gender wrong.

Guillard said, “But if the whole network were to slow down. Or at least every request in the city. What then, Ted? So it makes the papers for a couple of days?”

Boldt agreed. “Oddly enough, that kind of publicity might help us. Might convince him it’s a regional problem.”

“Help you, maybe. It’d get me fired. I can tell you that. But it’s all moot anyway. I’ve never heard of such a thing. You can’t just slow down the network by flipping some switch.”

“That is what I told the sergeant. But I was hoping you might know more than I do.” She hit Perch right where he lived. He wanted to know more than she did, and he didn’t see the trap she had laid for him.

“We have some software techs. I could ask them.”

“Our people are looking into it, too,” she said, adding a sense of competition.

“I’ll need permission from the nationals,” Perch said, already a step ahead. “There would be some serious explaining to do.”

“We’re long on people capable of serious explanations. That shouldn’t be a problem,” Boldt offered.

Perch suggested, “Let me circle the wagons. How soon you need this?”

Lucille Guillard recrossed her legs and Perch didn’t even notice.

That was when Boldt knew he had him.