Savant (23 page)
Kansas City, Missouri
O
kay, Buzz. I think I get the idea. And I could get all that stuff—you know—without a problem?"
"Go over a few blocks to Radio Shack, man. Get everything you need to build a great bug." He shook his head. "Get your earplug or headset, your connectors, your listening unit, monitor, recording unit, everything you'd need to be in business."
"I didn't know it was so easy to record private conversations."
"For all we know
this
could be recorded. The guy who owns it is worried one of his waitresses is running setups, okay? People eating steaks and lobster and paying half their tab. The waitress and the customers are both ripping him off. Happens." He shrugged again. "He thinks the cook's in on it. So he bugs a few of the booths and tables. We could be on tape right now. You called the station—for all we know
that's
on tape. It's absurdly easy to record conversations."
"But you wouldn't use the, uh, jammer thing."
"No. See—that tells them you're hip to being recorded. Hell, if somebody is bugging you, get smart. Get even. Bug
them
." The thin, wiry man took a noisy sip of coffee. "Fuck 'em all, down with everything, and up with the ladies' dresses."
Trask laughed quietly and unfolded a twelve-by-eighteen-inch sheet of art paper he'd been working on—a rough layout of the radio station. "Recognize it?"
Reid just stared for a minute.
"KCM."
"Yeah. I see it. There's the front doors. What's all that shit?" Reid pointed.
"That's the second floor—see—upstairs?
"Um."
"Wow, Buzz. You mean you don't think I'm too great an artist, eh? Man, I'm hurt."
"I wouldn't give up your other job yet."
"Okay. Anyway, let's say you wanted to do what we had discussed? How would you do it? You got a twenty-four-hour security guy right here."
"Okay. That's easy. You come in to work. Do your thing. Go home. But you forget something. You go back—all right? This is about three-thirty-five A.M. There are fewer employees between three-thirty A.M. and four-thirty than at any other time. Right?"
"Yeah."
"You come back. 'I forgot something, damn it,' you say as you bullshit with the guard. I assume you bullshit back and forth, right?"
"Not really. They just wave you on in. We don't talk that much back and forth."
"Okay. You go in. Walk back, go in the elevator. Get off on the second floor, and you go right back to Engineering. Now the last time I was there they had monitor cameras here, here, and here." Reid made dots in the foyer, in the elevator, and across from the programming department in the hallway.
"As far as I can recall—yeah. I think those are the ones I'd go past on the way to Engineering."
"There aren't any cameras back there. You'd open the door across from Purchasing with a key I would make a copy of for you. You unlock the Engineering Supply door. You close it behind you and lock it."
Trask sneezed. "Sorry about that." He blew his nose.
"You close and lock the door. You try not to sneeze real loud." They both laughed. "You unlock the cabinets against the west wall with a key—as before, I make a copy of for you. You pull out the shit on the floor, stack it neatly in a row, and pull the floor hatch out. If it's locked, you'll take a prybar or whatever—you'll get it open. No big deal. You'll see a ladder. You'll carefully climb down. There's a little ledge just a few feet away. You'll have a flashlight—and get the kind with a ring you can attach a cord to and
tie
this thing to you so it can't be dropped. Make sure your batteries are new. Okay, you still with me?"
"Uh-huh." Trask felt as if he were in dire need of a half hour on the po-po. This could be a miracle discovery—want to be regular again? Move up to the ultimate laxative-contemplate burglary!
"You're standing on the ledge now right back of the heating ducts, the pipes are in front and back, electrical cables, air conditioning, and what you do now is—"
It was way too much for him. He'd known it to begin with but the idea kept appealing to him. What a payoff to the violence-theme series, to have proof of his own employer's intrusions against the staff. He didn't have a clear way to tie it in yet, but something along the lines of psychological battering might work. Wasn't this a kind of force being exerted against the worker ants?
He listened to Buzz tell him how simple it would be to remove, bulk erase, or simply rewind and sabotage the six security camcorders with the remote unit. Photograph the room, take examples of illegally taped phone conversations and bugged offices, and go back up the ladder, replacing hatchways and locking doors.
"'Course—" he heard Reid tell him by way of a disclaimer in case he was caught or captured, "I'm not sure how you neutralize a hidden security monitor, but I don't see 'em being that smart or whatever. I think you'd have some trouble bypassing an alarm system, too, so if they got an alarm set you might trip that. But they're probably too fuckin' cheap for that. With those two exceptions, it would go smoothly. It would all be a lot easier than it sounds."
"Man, I gotta tell you." Vic Trask smiled. "There's no fucking way. I'd love to do it. They deserve it. But halfway through your thing there, I felt my balls shrink to approximately the size of frozen peas. Okay? I just don't think so. Thanks anyway, buddy."
"Fine. Okay. Just go to the Shack, or go to Bob's Electronics and get what you need. Bug 'em back. Get your proof thataway."
"Yeah. Write down what I need to get and show me how it. connects together." He folded the large piece of art paper so Reid could write on the back.
They shot the breeze a while longer and Trask thanked him and they said their farewells.
Less than two hours later he was back in his apartment sitting on the john, sipping O.J., munching aspirin, and wondering what to do next. On the table in the next room, in a Bob's Electronics bag, were a few small packages that had kicked a great big hole in the middle of his checkbook. But he now had the ability to secretly record private conversations.
Trask went back to the station the next afternoon with roughly the same feeling of happiness one has on the way to an IRS audit or triple-bypass surgery. Gloom descended over him the moment he came through the big showy double doors, clip-clopped down the impressive first-floor foyer past Security and the front desk, and hit the UP button on the elevator. It took some discipline not to look up at the camcorders, but he made it upstairs. Monica Heartbreak said nice things to him, cooed solicitously, and he started feeling a bit better.
But just as he rounded the corner by Louie Kidder's office he ran into the dour Babaloo Metzger, who greeted him in typical fashion.
"Welcome back. Come on, we've got a production meeting." He never got to open his office door, take a leak, or plant a bug in Barb Rose's potted plant—just "hi, how are ya, let's go."
His distaff nemesis was out on assignment. Metzger, Laymon at his side, and Flynn distanced from them by the length of the Programming Conference Room table, kicked around concepts.
"Got anything for the hole?" Flynn asked. It was his turn. He slid a pile of papers over to The Man. Sean Flynn was in his customary garb, dress shirt open at the throat, silk tie pulled loose, trousers of an expensive business suit on, looking very serious and somewhat pissed.
Flynn read for a moment and spoke. "I like the media thing. The post-Gulf War coverage through Somalia to present day. I like some of this. Let's clean it up and do something with it. But you don't have a slant yet." He went back to the pile, reading a few lines as he shook his head.
"The Big Bang. It may have killed all the dinosaurs and it's going to smash into the earth again. Giant meteorites on the way.…Tie it in to the Jurassic Age theories.…Palimony…Love Gone Sour…from Marvin to Martina…"
Flynn was again getting that look he got when he was pissed off. He'd started losing it with the media thing, but he had it back, a serious, worried expression on his face, as he rubbed his forehead and eyebrows with the fingers of his right hand.
"Out of Gas Again? Solar power, electric cars, gasohol-the fuel of the future." Flynn looked up at the Mystery Tramp. "Jerri, make a note to check on state vehicles using the gasohol mix, I'll understand what it means.
"Yes, we have Joe Bananas." Was he really the boss of bosses? Is Big-Time Payola Back? Dubious Cures for Terminal Diseases. The Deficit and the Coming Catastrophe. The Other Sex, What Men and Women Want from Each Other.
"Vic?" Flynn looked at Trask directly. "You know what killed the dinosaurs?"
Trask saw it coming but he shook his head no.
"Forget the meteorite business. I'll tell you what killed the dinosaurs…ennui. They were bored to death."
Gee, Sean, he thought, smiling on the outside, does that mean you don't like my ideas so far?
Trask, ensconced in the snug privacy of the tiny cubicle he called an office, sorted through a pile of news clippings and wire service copy, culling the stuff that was going to go inside his pocket. He took two write-ups on the "crucifixion/mutilation killings," and some miscellaneous stories on violent crimes. Made a few telephone calls just to get on the books, in case his phone was being monitored, and went through the motions of typing up some Factlets for Flynn.
When he could do so with a reasonable measure of impunity, he got up and walked out of the office, turning right past the talent lounge, and again in the direction of the programming foyer. He was pleased to see the hallway empty, so raging was his professional paranoia. Monica Heartbreak was occupied, and he was able to make it to the elevator without having to exchange pleasantries, much less explain why he was leaving so early.
Outside he found a public phone and dialed the police, asking for the Homicide unit.
"Apodaca, Homicide," came a terse male voice, succinct to the point of being unclear. It sounded like "bakka-dakkaahm-side." Each concise syllable spat out and bitten off as if the man had said it ten thousand times and to say it once more would poison teeth, lips, tongue, and roof of mouth. It threw Trask, who was nervous and shaky, off so badly he couldn't remember Julie's last name for a second. "Bakkadakka-ahm-side" had knocked it right out of his mind.
"Is—uh—may I speak to Julia, you have a detective by that name?"
"A detective named Julia?"
"Julie," Trask corrected, his mind an absolute blank.
"Detective Julie Hilliard," the desk officer volunteered in that suspicious tone cops have.
"That's the one. Is she in, please?"
"I'll see. Just a second."
"Thanks."
In a moment the voice came back on the line.
"She's not here right now. She'll be back in a half hour or so, I believe. Would you like to leave word?"
"I'll call her back. Thanks."
"Could I say who's calling?"
"Thanks. I'll call back." Trask hung up abruptly before the cop could pressure him to leave his name. The last thing he wanted was Julie Hilliard to call up KCM and ask for him. He could see the pink message form on the spike:
Mr. Trask
, it would say,
call Hilliard at Police HQ
. No. He didn't think so. Trask walked to the parking lot, got his car, and headed home.
He pictured how the conversation would go, tried to imagine what he'd say to her. Would she snarl "Hilliard, Homicide" into the line like the other dicks? Probably. The woman had a way of wearing her cop identity as if it were a shield, which, in a way, he supposed it was.
Trask knew some of the guys at KCPD fairly well, others just as familiar faces. He wasn't sure why he hit on Julie, except that they shared some history between them—not good history—but at least something. She didn't care for Trask at all, and she'd not been one of his favorite people either, but this was business. Hers, presumably, as well as his.
There was some heavy baggage between them. Vic's ex-wife and Julie Hilliard had been close buddies years ago, and she and Vic had not been at all close under the best of circumstances.
Once, when his ex had become fed up with him for the umpteenth time, it was to Julie's apartment she'd gone. There'd been the usual angry words. Many a tear had fallen. He barely remembered the incident, but felt sure Julie would.
His ex was now living in Aurora, Colorado, married to a rich podiatrist, and was the mother of three "used kids," as someone had put it. Their beautiful daughter, Kit—short for Kitty—had detested "the, proctologist," as she insisted on calling her new stepfather, and all siblings attached thereto. She blamed Victor, her dad, for every second she'd had to spend under the man's roof.
Kit, who was cursed in that every day she looked more and more like a beautiful and worldly woman, had become wilder and tougher to control. Now, at fifteen, she was living with her second live-in lover and was a year out of the nest. Gorgeous, smart, she was a champion skier, and barely spoke to either parent, but seemed to have the greatest animosity for Vic. He had written his family off, he realized. It killed him that he no longer even thought about his daughter, and he knew this made him an asshole, but he was what he was. If you wrote him off, he wrote you off. He was sure Julie Hilliard would know all this.
After a half hour had gone by he called and got her on the phone. She was coolly professional and agreed to meet him, but couldn't get away for a couple of hours. He told her no problem and they decided on a downtown restaurant. He was evasive when she tried to ask what it was about, and she didn't press the matter.
Julie was unnerved a bit by the call. She wondered if the daughter had got into trouble. Probably not. If she was a runaway it wouldn't have been Vic Trask who called her. She hoped nothing had happened to Jasmine, her friend of years gone by, but pushed it out of her thoughts and concentrated on the meeting.
The metro squad was in the conference room, away from prying eyes. Unlike what films and TV shows often depict, the K.C. Metro Homicide Squad room was not covered in maps with push pins showing all the murder locations. As a matter of fact, there was little that a civilian could see. The ongoing investigations were contained inside the file folders and attach6 cases of the investigating detectives, or they were kept in locked file drawers behind closed office doors.