“Look, Uncle Hymie, I’m not in the mood for a lecture. How many diamonds like these can you buy?”
“Gott im Himmel,” the old man muttered to himself, then to Joel as he smiled wistfully, “Uncut, this quality, as many as you have.”
When Dan was brought into Craig Brown’s office, the bank manager introduced him to Alex Resnick, telling him that Resnick was a Lynn police detective investigating the bank robbery. Dan shook hands with the man and sat down.
“I hope you don’t mind,” Brown was saying, “but the detective is also trying to find out why our security system didn’t work. You won’t mind answering a few of his questions?”
“Of course not,” Dan said. As he smiled at Brown, he thought, You sneaky underhanded little prick, trying to waylay me like this. Goddamn sneaky underhanded bastard.
“Any idea what happened?” Resnick asked.
“Off the top of my head, maybe a couple of ideas.” Dan then turned to Brown. “Have you tested the system since the robbery?”
“Of course. We tested each alarm button. They all worked.”
“How about the system status?”
“What does that tell you?” Resnick asked.
Dan gave the detective a thin smile. “How long the system has been up and running. If the system was turned off before the robbery, we’ll be able to tell that.”
Brown made a show of looking through a stack of papers. “I don’t think I’ve gotten around to checking that yet,” he said.
“We’re wasting our time until we do,” Dan said, trying to keep his tone pleasant, all the while his mind spinning while he tried to figure out how he was going to handle this. He had known he was going to have to talk to the cops at some point, but he hadn’t expected it this quickly.
That little prick, he thought as he followed Brown out of the office. Goddamn underhanded little prick!
For a moment Dan daydreamed that he had pistol-whipped the bank manager when he’d had the opportunity. It had taken quite a bit of self-control on his part to only shove Brown the other day. He didn’t like the man – and this was even before Brown made the decision to farm out the software to India – and he resented the condescending comments Brown made to him afterwards.
“You don’t need this type of work,” Brown had told him. “After all, haven’t you made millions already in high tech? From what I’ve read, anyone who’s any good has.”
And…
“I don’t understand why you would want this – isn’t this only menial work? Anyway, I can’t justify paying you fifty dollars an hour when I can hire four Indian programmers for the same price.”
There were other jabs, many others. All made with a smug little smile.
When they got to the security system, Dan moved Brown aside so he could type in a command at the system’s console. He showed Resnick the response which indicated that the system had been up and running continuously for over thirty-four days.
“Too bad,” Dan told the detective. “This would have made things easy if someone had simply turned the system off before the robbery.”
“Could someone have hacked into it?” Resnick asked.
“Not if the system was built the way I designed it.”
“It was built exactly to your design,” Brown interjected, his tone defensive.
“If that’s true, then the system will only allow outgoing calls. No one can connect into it.”
“I’m not sure I understood something you said. What do you mean if the system was built the way you designed it?” Resnick asked.
“I had nothing to do with the implementation, only the design.” Dan grimaced as he straightened up. “I’m getting too old to crouch like this,” he said. “My knees can’t take it. What do you say we head back to Craig’s office?”
Resnick was frowning. “Anything you can tell by looking at it?”
“No. If it wasn’t turned off, then there are only two possibilities I can think of. Number one, no one pushed the alarm buttons during the robbery-”
“That’s ridiculous,” Brown interrupted. He was trying to appear indignant, but his act fell flat. He knew the FBI agent had suspected that and the accusation weighed heavily on him. As hard as he tried, he couldn’t muster up any genuine indignation.
“Well then, the only other explanation I can think of is that a backdoor was put into the software.”
“What do you mean by a backdoor?” Resnick asked.
“One or more of the programmers built in a way to make the system fail-”
“That’s preposterous!”
Dan turned to Brown, his affable grin hardening. “No, it isn’t. What’s preposterous is you having some firm halfway around the world building critical security software for you because they’re the cheapest ones you could find.”
“There was nothing wrong with what we did,” Brown insisted. He cleared his throat. “Would you be able to examine the software and figure out why it failed?”
“Sure, I could do that. Two hundred dollars an hour, one hundred and sixty hours guaranteed. Paid in advance.”
Brown’s head jerked as if he’d been sucker punched. “That’s r-ridiculous,” he sputtered. “We only paid you fifty dollars an hour to design the system!”
“If you don’t like my price I’m sure you could always offer it to the lowest bidder. Maybe that same firm in India who you had build the code. I’m sure for two hundred dollars an hour, they’d be able to get twenty people.”
Dan stared evenly at the bank manager. Brown blinked several times before looking away. “I think we’ll need to talk to other firms,” he said gruffly.
“That’s your choice, although I’d have to think you’d want to resolve this as quickly as possible. I’d also think you’d want the guy who designed the system to be the one looking at the code. But if you don’t care about the public relations aspect of this, that’s your business.” Then to Resnick, “Any more questions, Detective, before I leave?”
“Not right now. I’ll need a number where you can be reached.”
Dan handed Resnick a business card. “This has my home and cell numbers.” As he turned to leave, Brown stopped him.
“I’ll get you a check.” Brown met Dan’s eyes briefly and then lowered his gaze. “How quickly can you start on this?” he asked.
“Right away. I’ll need the full amount up front.”
Brown nodded. “Give me a minute,” he said. After he locked up the security system, he started towards his office. Dan was going to follow him, but Resnick stopped him. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to talk to you alone,” he said.
“Sure.” Dan maintained his pleasant smile. He was amazed at how calm he was able to appear. In reality it was more of a numbness. Almost as if he were on autopilot, reacting without any thought or plan. But still, no perspiration, no heart palpitations, nothing but a flat evenness.
Brown wavered as if he wanted to eavesdrop on the conversation. Reluctantly, he kept walking. After he was out of sight, Resnick asked Dan what he thought. “Could Brown be involved in this?”
“I don’t think so. I don’t think he’d have the balls to try something like this. It’s a nice thought, though.”
“You don’t like him much, do you?”
“No, not much. I warned him about the dangers of sending out this type of code to a place where there would be no oversight and he ignored me. I even offered to do the work at a discount.” Dan paused, his amiable smile fading. “I don’t want to appear insensitive,” he added. “I know people were killed during this robbery, but this thing really fucked me over too. I make my living designing security systems. Who’s going to want to hire me after this? All because some incompetent bank manager wouldn’t take my advice.”
“Are people going to know you worked on this security system?”
“Yeah, it’s a small industry, word gets around. Plus I’ve got dozens of resumes circulating now that mention this last contract.”
Dan stopped and let his smile drop completely. “What you asked before about Brown being involved – there is something that seemed odd to me. In my original proposal I had a backup line that would’ve been tied directly to the alarm buttons and would bypass the security system. This way if the system was down for any reason, the police would still be called if any of the buttons were activated. Brown got rid of it. The damn thing would’ve only cost about three hundred dollars a month. I just assumed he made his decision out of shortsightedness, but who knows?”