myself for provoking her. I needed her right now; moral judgments had to be saved for later. ‘If he’s from New York, then that narrows down the possibilities considerably.’
I leaned forward and looked into her computer screen, studying the chat room, with nested columns of comments to show threads of conversation. ‘What is this site?’
‘DarkHand. A hacker community.’ She started to type. ‘That’s how I found out about Jin Ming. I found hackers who had existing back doors into the systems I needed to access. By the way, you’re paying them for their time.’
‘How much?’
‘You’ll launder some money for them. Both are Chinese, they want to clean about fifty thousand bucks into US accounts. You’ll make that happen.’
‘How, exactly?’
‘Through your bar in Las Vegas.’
She knew about The Canyon Bar. Not just that it was where I’d met Anna but that I owned it. ‘Your hacker friends are not washing their dirty money through my bar.’ God only knew what the money might be. Hackers might have cracked open ATMs for cash, might have committed extortion not to bring company websites down. She was involving me in new crimes. She seemed almost amused at my outrage.
‘You can’t refuse. The deal is done. It’s for the children.’
She was, of course, absolutely right. ‘For the children’: the three most powerful words in the language. Fine, I thought. I’d deal with that problem later. ‘Don’t make any more promises you can’t keep.’
‘Do you want to find this guy or not?’ She stood up, rage bright in her eyes. ‘You’ll do what I say. No argument.’
‘Calm down,’ I said. ‘I have every right to know if you’re dragging me and my business into criminal activity.’
‘And I have every right not to care.’
I let five beats pass in peace. ‘So. Let’s operate under the proposition he has a personal tie back to New York.’
She nodded. ‘We find the tie, we find him.’ She turned back to the laptop. ‘Let me get back to work. Thanks for breakfast.’
‘And, what? I wait? No.’
‘Do you have any idea on how to be useful?’ Her voice had taken on a hard edge to it. ‘I find him, you kill him, bullet. You have the easier job.’
‘I don’t get to ask my crooked friends for help,’ I said. Which was a lie. I had resources, through the Round Table, that I had no intention of sharing with her. I gave her my cell phone number. She didn’t write it down but she repeated it back to me.
‘Where are you going?’ she asked as I headed for the door.
I didn’t answer her. She didn’t need to know. Her way was going to take too long.
22
Chelsea, New York City
Most code names in the Company are not jokes, but his was: Fagin. Charles Dickens’s master of thieves from Oliver Twist, who pulled in the wayward children of London to shape them into pickpockets. The Fagin I knew put his own modern take on the identity.
I took the subway south to Chelsea. It was mid-morning now, and shoppers walked the streets, eyeing the art in the many gallery windows. I walked down to the last address I knew for Fagin. I hoped he hadn’t moved. I went up to the top floor of his building, knocked, listened. I picked the lock and went inside.
It was a large apartment (I didn’t even want to think about how much it cost) and still his place. A picture of Fagin and his wife hung on the wall, smiling, tropical forest behind them. He was thin and wore a reddish beard and had very dark brown eyes, the color of coffee. Dirty breakfast dishes stood stacked in the sink; a coffee mug half full. I lived in spare apartments/offices above bars; I was starting to forget what it was like to live in an actual home. Lucy and I had owned a beautiful place in London, not far from the British Museum. A home that was a comfort to return to in the evening, full of touches of the life we were building together. Best not to dwell on that right now. You might guess that a person named for the Fagin in Oliver Twist would not respond to a sentimental plea to help me save my poor child.
It was a four-bedroom apartment. One bedroom had an IKEA bed, a scattering of men’s and women’s clothes on the furniture and the floor. Fagin was a bit of a slob. The second bedroom had six computers in it, all along a table, a bean bag chair, a TV with an elaborate game station attached. Fagin – still up to his old tricks.
Two young Oliver Twists – maybe sixteen or so – sat at the computers, plugged into their iPods. In their envelope of music they hadn’t noticed me. So I went back to the kitchen, got an apple from Fagin’s fridge, and washed it. I took a knife from a drawer because I didn’t know these sixteen-year-olds and I went back to the computer room.
I bit into my apple and came up behind the first Oliver Twist. He was a thin kid, brown, curly hair, a scattering of pimples on his cheeks. He was intent on what he was doing on the computer screen, fingers hammering on the keyboard.
I glanced at the screen over his shoulder. Computer code, but with comments written in Russian. I scanned them. Interesting mischief the Oliver Twists were conjuring.
I popped out an earplug and said, ‘Hi, whatcha doing?’
He jumped out of his chair. His eyes widened at the knife in my hand.
‘Uh… uh.’
The other kid – African American, a bit older, wearing a New Orleans Saints T-shirt, jeans and the ugliest yellow sneakers I’d ever seen – bolted out of his chair. I showed him the knife and he stopped.
‘What. Are. You. Doing?’ I asked again.
Neither answered. ‘Hacking into China or Russia today, boys?’ I pretended like I hadn’t read over their shoulders and took another bite of the apple. ‘Or perhaps another country? Fagin loves putting the screws on Egypt and Pakistan.’
Again, neither answered. They glanced at each other.
‘Silence bores me,’ I said. ‘It makes me want to play knife games.’ Aren’t I nice, threatening teenagers?
‘Russia,’ the Saints fan said after a moment. ‘We’re laying data bombs into their power grid.’
‘Sounds very patriotic,’ I said. ‘Is Fagin due here soon?’
The Saints fan nodded. ‘Yes. He went to go get snacks.’
‘You poor, deprived things didn’t run out of Red Bull, did you?’
‘Um, actually, we ran out of Pepsi,’ the thin kid said.
‘Well, far be it from me to interfere,’ I said. ‘Fagin’s an old friend. I’m just going to wait for him.’
Slowly they sat back down and put their hands on their computer keyboards and resumed their work, typing at a much slower level. But neither slipped their earbuds back into place.
I ate my apple and watched them and waited.
Fagin showed up ten minutes later, opening his door, holding a paper bag of groceries. He dropped the bag when he saw me. An orange tumbled from the depths and rolled to my foot.
‘What the hell. Sam Capra.’
‘Hi, Fagin.’
His mouth shut tight. I picked up the orange and tossed it to him. He caught it.
‘Are you going to run or shut the door?’ I asked.
He shut the door. He set the small bag of groceries down on the counter. He went to the door and made sure the two Oliver Twists were fine.
‘Please,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t hurt your kids.’
