Smart man.
Yuell returned the pen to its slot, folded the sheet of paper, and slipped it into his coat pocket, then sat down.
“You’re a cautious man,” Bandini observed, his gaze like chips of frozen mud. “Don’t you trust me?”
That had to be a joke, Yuell thought. “I don’t even trust myself. Why would I trust you?”
Bandini laughed, a humorless grating sound. “I think I like you.”
That was supposed to make his day? Yuell sat quietly, waiting for Bandini to look him over and get to the point.
No one looking at Yuell would have taken him for the janitor he was. He cleaned up messes, left things looking pristine. And he was very, very good at his job.
He was aided by his looks. He was very average: average height, average weight, unremarkable face, brown hair, brown eyes, indeterminate age. No one noticed him as he came and went, and even if someone did notice him, he or she would be hard put to give more than a vague description that would match millions of other men. Nothing about his appearance was threatening, so it was easy for him to get close to someone without ever being tagged.
He was, ostensibly, a private investigator—a very expensive one. The know-how came in handy when he was tracking someone. He even took regular PI jobs, which usually consisted of getting the goods on a cheating spouse, and which made him good with the IRS. He reported every penny of income that was paid by check. Luckily for him, the majority of the jobs he took were ones no one wanted a paper trail on, so he received cash. It took a bit of fancy laundry work to make the income usable, but the majority of it was stashed offshore in a healthy retirement account.
Yuell had five carefully chosen men working for him. Each one could think on his feet, wasn’t given to mistakes, and wasn’t hotheaded. He didn’t want any cowboys fucking up the operation he’d spent years building. He’d hired the wrong type once, and had been forced to bury his mistake. Only a fool made the same mistake twice.
“I have need of your services,” Bandini finally said, opening a desk drawer again and extracting a snapshot, which he slid across the glossy expanse toward Yuell.
Yuell looked at the photograph without picking it up. The subject was dark-haired, eye color not discernible, possibly late-thirties. He was dressed in a conservative gray suit, getting into a gray late-model Camry. A briefcase was in his hand. The background was suburban: brick house, lawn, trees.
“He took something from me. I want it back.”
Yuell pulled at his ear and glanced at the window. Bandini grinned, showing eyeteeth as sharp as a wolf’s. “We’re safe. The windows are acoustic. No sound gets in or out. Walls are the same.”
Come to think of it, there was no street noise. The only sound was that of their voices. No air-conditioning hum, no water rushing through pipes—nothing penetrated. Yuell relaxed, or at least stopped worrying about the FBI. He wasn’t stupid enough to relax around Bandini.
“What’s his name?”
“Jeffrey Layton. He’s a CPA.
My
CPA.”
Ah, the book-cooker. “Embezzlement?”
“Worse. He took my records. Then the little fucker called me and said he’d give them back when I deposited twenty million in his numbered account in Switzerland.”
Yuell whistled between his teeth. Jeffrey Layton, certified public accountant, had either balls the size of
“And if you don’t give him the money?”
“He downloaded them on his flash drive. He said he’d turn it over to the FBI if the money isn’t in his account in fourteen days. Nice of him to give me time to get that much together, right?” Bandini paused. “Two of those fourteen days are already gone.”
Bandini was right; this was way worse than just taking money. Money could be replaced, and getting Layton would be a matter of saving face, no more. But the downloaded files—and Bandini had to be talking about his true financial records, not the second set of books kept for the IRS—would not only give the FBI indisputable evidence on tax evasion, but would also give them a wealth of information on the people Bandini did business with. Not only would the IRS be on Bandini’s ass, so would the people who would blame him for the whole mess.
Layton was a dead man. He might not have reached room temperature yet, but it was just a matter of time.
“Why did you wait two days?” Yuell asked.
“My people tried to find him. They failed.” His flat tone didn’t bode well for the continued good health of the failures. “Layton had already skipped town before he called. He made it to Boise, rented a car, and disappeared.”
“
“No. Why
This was one time Yuell wished he hadn’t so assiduously built his reputation. He could happily have spent the rest of his life not having a face-to-face with Salazar Bandini.
The way Yuell saw it, this was a lose-lose proposition. If he turned down the job, his body would turn up either in little pieces or not at all. But if he took it, Bandini would have to figure he downloaded the flash drive onto his own computer before turning it in; knowledge was power, no matter which world you lived in. Bandini wouldn’t hesitate to backstab anyone, so he expected it from everyone. What to do in such a case? Kill the messenger. You can’t blackmail someone if you’re dead.
The thing was, Yuell hadn’t built his rep by being stupid—or by being a coward. He met Bandini’s cold, empty gaze. “You’d have to figure anyone who found the flash drive would copy the files before giving it back to you, so it follows you’ll kill whoever finds it. That being the case, why would I take the job?”
Bandini began his grating, humorless laugh. “I really do like you, Faulkner. You
think.
Most assholes don’t know how. I’m not worried about anyone copying the file. It’s coded to wipe clean if anyone tries to access the file without the password. Layton had the password.” He leaned back in his chair. “Any future files will have to be coded not to allow downloading, but you learn from experience, right?”
Yuell thought about that. Bandini might be telling the truth. He might not. Yuell would have to do some research on computer files to find out if it was possible to write a program that would erase itself from the drive if anyone tried to access it without the password. Maybe. Probably. Damn hackers and geeks could probably make a program sit up and bark if they wanted.
Or maybe the file would be emptied, but the info would still be on the drive somewhere. He’d been thinking about recruiting a computer forensics expert, and now he wished he’d already taken on the expense. Too late now; he’d have to go with what he could find out on his own, and he wouldn’t have enough time for a thorough investigation.
“Get that flash drive,” Bandini said, “take care of Layton, and the twenty million is yours.”
Holy shit. Fuck.
Yuell managed not to show any reaction, but he was as alarmed as he was enticed. Bandini could have offered half that—hell, one-tenth that—and he would have felt overpaid. For Bandini to offer twenty million, the flash drive had to hold some explosive stuff—probably more than just his financial records. And whatever it was, Yuell didn’t want to know.
Or Bandini planned to kill him anyway, so it didn’t matter how much he offered.
The thought niggled at him. He couldn’t ignore it, but from a business standpoint it didn’t make sense. If Bandini got the reputation for reneging on deals, he was gone. Fear could take you so far, but it didn’t trump the bottom line. You start pissing on people’s money, and they’ll find a way to piss back.
But he was in it now, and he’d do the job.
“You got Layton’s social security number?” he asked. “Save me a little time if you do.”
Bandini smiled.
YUELL CALLED IN HIS TWO BEST MEN, HUGH TOXTEL AND Kennon Goss, because he didn’t want any mistakes on this job. He also sent another man, Armstrong, to Layton’s house in the suburbs to look for information such as credit card bills that might have arrived since Layton had bolted. Hell, Layton might even have left stuff like that lying around. People did stupid shit every day, and Layton had already demonstrated he wasn’t the most logical person in the galaxy.
While Yuell was waiting for the men to arrive, he ran several search programs on his computer, digging up every bit of information on Jeffrey Layton that he could find, which was a lot.
Most people would have a stroke if they knew how much of their personal information was out in cyberspace. From public records he got the dates of Layton’s marriage and subsequent divorce, and he noted down the ex–Mrs. Layton’s name for further investigation. If she hadn’t remarried, it was possible Layton would run to her for help. Yuell also noted how much Layton’s property taxes were, and some other details that were probably useless but which he wrote down anyway. You could never tell when something that looked trivial on the surface would turn out to be crucial.
Some of the programs he used weren’t exactly legal, but he’d paid through the nose for them because they worked, allowing him to get into databases that were otherwise closed to him. Insurance companies, banks, Federal programs—if you could make the computers think you were a legitimate user, you could go anywhere in their systems. By logically starting with Illinois’s largest health insurer, he discovered that Layton had high blood pressure for which he took medication, and that he also had a two-year-old prescription for Viagra—which he’d never had refilled or renewed, which meant he wasn’t getting laid very often, if at all. Nor had he had the foresight to refill his hypertension medication before absconding with Bandini’s files. Running for your life was bound to be stressful; the fucker could stroke out if he wasn’t careful.
Exiting from the insurer’s system, Yuell logged in to the state system and soon netted Layton’s driver’s license number. Going into the social security system took a bit more finesse, because he had to piggyback on another, legitimate user, but he persisted until he had it because the payoff was worth the risk. The social was the magic key to a person’s life and information; with it, Layton’s entire life was his.
Armstrong called on his cell from Layton’s house. That was one of the first things Yuell told his guys: Never use the phone in someone else’s place. That way no cop could hit “redial” and find out the last number called. That way no information connecting you to the place turned up in the phone company’s records. Yuell’s rule was ironclad: Use your own cell. As an extra precaution, they all used disposable cells. If for any reason they thought the number had been compromised, they simply bought another phone.
“Jackpot,” Armstrong said. “This fucker kept everything.”
Yuell had hoped that Layton, being an accountant, would. “What do you have?”
“Practically his whole life. He kept the important shit, like his notarized birth certificate, his social security card, his credit card accounts, in a wall safe.”
That was why he’d sent Armstrong, on the chance Layton might be cautious enough to have some kind of safe; the small, commercial safes were child’s play to Armstrong, and most custom jobs merely slowed him down. “I already have the social. Give me his credit card numbers, then put everything back and leave it the way you found it.”
Armstrong began reading off the various credit cards, their numbers and security codes. Layton had a ton of cards, the hallmark of someone who was likely to spend more than he could afford. Maybe that was why he was taking the desperate chance of blackmailing Bandini, but Yuell didn’t really care
why.
The dumb fuck had sucked him into Bandini’s orbit, and now Yuell had to do the job or go into hiding himself.
For a minute he thought of doing just that; telling his men to scatter, taking his money, and disappearing, maybe in the Far East, for a few years. But Bandini’s arms were long and his well-earned reputation was brutal. Yuell knew he’d spend the rest of his life looking over his shoulder, waiting for the shot into the back of his head or the knife slicing into his kidney, and Layton’s life wasn’t worth it to him. Layton was a dead man, one way or the other. If Yuell didn’t do the job, someone else would.
He set to work with the list of card numbers. Layton had two American Express cards, three Visas, a Discover, and two MasterCards. Yuell began methodically piggybacking into the credit card databases so he wouldn’t set off any alarms, looking for any new charges. On the second Visa account he found a hit: a charge at a bed-and-breakfast in Trail Stop,
Bingo.
Just how stupid was this guy? He should have paid cash, stayed under the radar and given himself some time to hide his tracks. The only reason to use a credit card was if he was running critically low on cash, which again was stupid because who the hell would start something like this without a sizable roll of cash at hand?
Yuell sat back, thinking hard. Maybe the credit card charge was a feint. Maybe Layton had booked the room, then neither called to cancel nor showed up to claim his reservation; most places charged a night’s stay for holding the room, whether you showed up or not. Maybe Layton was acting stupid but thinking smart.
He noted the name of the bed-and-breakfast, and pulled up the telephone number. Checking whether or not Layton had showed up was easy enough. He picked up his own cell phone.
A woman answered on the third ring. “Nightingale’s Bed and Breakfast,” she said pleasantly. Yuell liked her voice, which was melodic and cheerful.
He thought fast; she might not give out information on a guest to just anyone. “This is National Car Rental,” he said. “A customer hasn’t returned his car on schedule, and he left this as a contact number. His name is Jeffrey Layton. Is he there?”
“I’m afraid not,” she said in a regretful tone.
“Has he been there?”