“Tony” was written on the first loose page. I saw his name, and I remembered his seedy smell. I shivered all over again at the feel of his cold, fumbling hands through the thin knit tank top. But I felt something else, too, as I looked over the notes-a stirring of anticipation, because Tony, a client of the ring, had given me the name of the Web site he accessed to schedule dates, along with his sign-in name.
“ Harvey, type this Web address into your computer.”
He swiveled around to face the typewriter stand on which he had replaced his IBM Selectric with an old and slow desktop PC. He used his index fingers to tap himself into his browser. I read the address, and he typed that in. I walked around to see just as the error message popped up on the screen.
“It does not work.”
“Try it with ‘dot org’ and ‘dot net.’ ”
He did. “Nothing.”
I went back to the source documents and studied them again. Tony the Actor’s information had come earlier in the evening, so it was perfectly legible. The Web address was there, but so was something else that caught my eye.
“He said something about pool girls.”
“Who?”
“This guy I was talking to. He thought I was a hooker. He mentioned pool girls.”
“Pool girls? Such as cabana girls?”
“I don’t know. I wonder if it was something about the pool at the party?” I tried to think back to my conversation with Tony. There was so much about it I didn’t want to remember; it was hard to pick out the wheat from the chaff.
“Do you have the Web site?”
I found the address and read it off again, this time assuming thei was anl.
“That one works,” he said, leaning in to study the results.
I went over and insinuated myself in front of his keyboard. “Scoot over.”
The two of us stared, Harvey sitting and me crouching next to him, at a screen that was blank except for a sign-in box and a password box, just as Dan’s contact had said it would be.
“I have the sign-in name.” I found it on one of my wrinkled pages. “It’s TonyThesp001. But that doesn’t help us much without the password, and this guy had no password. That’s why he was talking to me.”
We stared for a few more seconds. I knew very little when it came to what was behind the slick surface of the Internet. Harvey knew less. But I knew someone who could help.
“ Harvey, would you be averse to me bringing someone in who might be able to help us on this Web stuff?”
“Help how?”
“He’s a hacker. We worked on that case down in Miami earlier this year. He’s phenomenal. He helped me break it.”
“What can he do for us?”
“First of all, he can get us past this screen. That would be a snap. Maybe he can track it all back to the Web master. If he can, he might be able to suck everything we need right out of there without anyone ever knowing.”
“Can we afford him? Our margins at this point are razor-thin.”
“He worked for free last time. I don’t want to ask him to do that again. I’ll pay him out of my end.”
“If you think he can help, call him, by all means. You do not have to pay from your share, but keep in mind that we are time-constrained.”
“I know. That’s one reason we need him. He’s fast.” I checked my watch. It was after eleven, which must have been the reason Harvey was in a robe and slippers. My internal clock was wacky from traversing time zones. All I knew was this one day had already seemed two days long. I had to go home to bed. “I’ll call him tomorrow.”
Chapter 15
FELIXMELENDEZ, JR., PICKED UP IN THE MIDDLE of the first ring.
“Majestic-Airlines-Passenger-Services-this-is-Felix-how-can-I-help-you?”
He sounded the same, his voice as bright and sparkling as the morning sun streaming through my window. I wondered if he looked the same, tall and lanky, all joints and hinges, like the kid he still was. I also wondered if Majestic had let him keep his spiky hair with the frosted tips.
“Hello, Felix.”
After the slightest pause, there came a gusher of excitement that flowed over the phone lines and practically lifted me off my stool, where I sat enjoying breakfast at home and not in some hotel coffee shop on the road.
“MissSha nahan? Is that you? Wow. This is so cool to hear from you. How did you find me…I mean…of course, you could find me. How are you? How have you been? I can’t believe it. Are you in Miami?”
“I’m in Boston. How is life at the airport? Do you love it?”
“Way cool, Miss S. Way,way cool. I love it so much here. The people are so nice to me. It’s exactly what I wanted.”
Same old Felix. He lived in a world without skepticism, irony, or sarcasm. He was delighted by life, all parts of it, even something as dispiriting as the airline business. I loved talking to him.
“Listen, Felix. Do you have time to do some work for me? I’ll pay you this time.”
“Really? Are youse rious? That would be, like, so awesome to work for you again. But you can’t pay me.”
“Why not?” I finished my last spoonful of oatmeal, went to the refrigerator for an orange, swung by the sink for a paper towel, and sat back down to start peeling. “I don’t want you working for free.”
“It’s a rule. I’m employed full-time for Majestic Airlines, which means no way I can have any other jobs.”
“It wouldn’t be a job. It’s more like a…a…”
“I read the regs, Miss S. It says it in there.”
“You read the regs?” A staggering thought. The rules and regulations of Majestic Airlines were collected in three thick volumes written in the driest prose this side of the phone book.
“Yes, ma’am. All three volumes.”
I hadn’t even considered the conflict of interest. But I needed his help, and I did not want to take advantage of him. “I won’t tell if you won’t.”
He batted the suggestion aside, which, having said it, I realized he would. Felix was an honest fellow. “I’ll do it as a favor to you, for getting me this job. I love this job.”
“No, Felix. Remember, I got you this job to repay you for the last bit of work you did for me for free.”
“Miss Shanahan, please. It would be my pleasure. I insist.”
It was too tempting an offer to turn down. Felix was masterful with a computer and was just plain fun to have in my life. I would figure out some other way to pay him. “I don’t want to interfere with your work schedule there.”
“Whoa, cool…I mean, that’s not a problem. I make my own schedule.”
“You make your own schedule?” There was no making of your own work schedule at an airport that operated around a real schedule-departures and arrivals.
“They made up a new job for me. I’m in charge of all the computer equipment. Do you know how often the baggage system goes down?”
I finished peeling my orange and pulled apart the sections as he rattled on. It was good and sweet and sticky, and the juice got all over my fingers. “Are you having fun?”
“This is so much better than working at the hotel. I’m going to owe you for the rest of my life. What do you need? Do you need me to come up there? Because I can be on an airplane tomorrow-”
“No, Felix. I think you can do this from the comfort of your own home. I need you to track down the origination of a Web site.” I gave him the Web site address from Tony the Actor and his sign-in name. “I have no password.”
“I don’t need a password.”
“Right. Sorry.” I’d forgotten that offering a password to Felix was like offering a key to a locksmith. “What I need you to do is try to find a way into this site so I can see the screens and the customer interfaces. Also, if you can track back and get any information on who pays for the domain and/or who maintains it, that would all be useful. Best-case scenario is we can find the person who runs it, track back to his computer, and suck out all the data it collects.”