“There is a safer place than here. Even if you were right, that doesn’t justify-”
“You’re not listening. I told you it doesn’t. That’s why you have to fire me.”
“Unless we come to some…”
“Understanding.”
“Like what? I have a strung-out stripper kid in the bowels of my office.”
“Sam, don’t call her that.”
“You’re right. She really has nothing to do with the rank piece-of-crap trick you pulled on all of us.”
Sam took out a single Marlboro, his last.
“You don’t smoke. Do you?”
“Hell, no. I quit long ago.”
“Besides, that’s against company policy.”
He tossed it in the wastebasket. For as long as he could remember he had never seen her look this worried.
“We all talked about it. Your mother asked me a lot of questions. And we came up with something.”
“Okay,” Sam said. “What is it?”
“Of all my material possessions nothing means more to me than my car. We’ll all take a blowtorch and cut it into two-inch squares and we’ll put the squares in a giant box by the door to rust.”
“And everyone agreed to this?”
“No, that’s not all. For Paul that wasn’t enough.”
“Okay, what else?”
“I made a deal with Paul to drive some piece-of-crap car for a year. He will pick it out and it will come complete with rust spots. That is, if you agree to all this.”
“This is bizarre. It’s kindergarten. Tell me honestly: Would you do the same thing if you had to do it over?”
“No. I would ask you and if I couldn’t convince you, I would leave it alone.”
Sam thought for a moment. Two years ago she would have been out of the building by now. Getting soft in this business was scary.
He made sure to take his time and look her square in the eye. She took that to be his answer.
She turned and opened the door and walked through the office, aiming for the exit. They could all see the sorrow on her face and Sam saw the anger in their eyes.
“Jill,” he shouted as she waited for the heavy door to open. “If everybody agrees, then it’s okay by me.”
“I can stay?”
“Yeah. I just wanted you and everyone else to see exactly what it’s going to be like if anybody does it again. Anybody.”
Sam shut the door, wondering if he had done the right thing.
There was a knock. He opened the door and found Grady bursting at the seams to speak.
“Can I talk now?”
Sam nodded.
“I think I can do the job. I know you can trust me,” Grady said, looking at Sam. “You don’t even have to pay me.”
“You don’t know what you’re asking. We will be on your ass for two years. You’ll have to be in school and getting grades.”
“Fine.”
“If you drink even once you’re fired. There is no compromise on this job.”
“Fine.”
“You would have to counsel with Spring by telephone twice a week for the first three months when she’s available. And you will have to go to a substance abuse group chosen by Spring.”
“Fine.”
“You would have to live with Jill and exercise five days a week with her. I would tell her to torture you.”
“Fine.”
“You would have to take a polygraph should Jill ever ask for one. But most probably, if I think you are dishonest in any respect, you’re fired. I wouldn’t trust you for a long time.”
“Okay.”
“You do as Jill says at all times without question.”
“I know.”
“You never tell anyone about the company or your work without my permission. Break that rule and you’re fired.”
“Uh-huh.”
“What is uh-huh?”
“Yes. I agree.”
“You’ll see a lawyer and sign a contract. With the help of Spring and Jill you are going to create guidelines that will give a lot more structure to your life.” He hesitated. “It has to be a structure the rest of us can believe in.”
“I know.”
“You still want to work for my company?”
“Yes.”
“Pay starts at ten dollars an hour. Nice even number.”
“You won’t be sorry.”
“Time will tell.” He looked up to see Jill standing behind Spring.
“And, Jill, you are committed to this?”
“Absolutely,” Jill said.
“You know Jill is doing this for you?”
Grady nodded and held out her hand to shake Sam’s.
“I’ll shake your hand in a month. Right now performance talks. We both made a decision today. I’m counting on you to make it a right decision.”
When Sam left the conference room he noticed that Anna was talking to Spring.
Great.
Twenty-six
An hour later, Sam introduced Anna to Grogg and Big Brain. She learned that Sam had roughly fifty people worldwide gathering information around the clock, in addition to the fourteen staffers in Sam’s office. Detectives were checking credit cards, phone traffic, looking for disgruntled former associates, people with ties to law enforcement, and into all manner of databases. Each iota of information was funneled into Big Brain, which stored images, driver license numbers, car VINs, Social Security numbers, telephone numbers, cell phone information. If it could be rendered digital, Big Brain stored it.
In the beginning, before the computer began to draw correlations and aggregate people who knew each other, it all seemed somewhat useless. Gradually, however, patterns emerged. Even more significantly, for years Sam had kept records that could not lawfully have been retained by many law enforcement agencies even after the war on terrorism. A few people in law enforcement did not like the limitations and had private webs kept at home on large PCs, and Sam had downloaded several of these. Much more significantly in off-the-record trades with the U.S. and other governments, he had downloaded various government databases. It was a dumping ground that hungry government spooks could come back to-a place they could find things that had to be wiped from government computers.
Terrorism had helped create the flexibility that Sam needed, but it had started long before the 9/11 attacks. Since bad guys tend to run in packs and deal with (or screw) each other, Sam already had information on both DuShane Chellis and Samir Aziz, along with hundreds of thousands of others. It was now becoming apparent that Samir and Chellis seemed to know some of the same unsavory people. Scotland Yard suspected that DuShane Chellis used a hired killer who had been employed by other criminal types.
“I’m so impressed,” Anna said when the short tour was over.
“Everything here is backed up on the East Coast every day so if something happened, not a great deal would be lost. If both Paul and I die, a board of my employees along with five other guys, law enforcement and former law enforcement, get it all. Ultimately it would be used by the government for antiterrorism and organized international crime. Of course they may have to delete a lot of it Legality for government data is a big issue.”
“I’ll bet the government would love it right now.”
“Actually they get pretty much what they need. But in bits and pieces. They don’t have the software to handle much at a time, and they aren’t even close. The database without the software to search it is not nearly as productive as it could be. My data warehouse programs are proprietary. The problem with sharing everything with the government is that my clients are not always odor free. But there isn’t really a bad person among them, inasmuch as it’s for me to discern such things.”
“Can’t they subpoena stuff?”
“Paul is a licensed attorney and our general counsel. I also am a licensed attorney. I went to correspondence school and passed the bar a long time ago, when I was young and could sit on my ass for hours. You also sign a contract with Paul and me acting independently as your attorneys. There is a clause that, at least purportedly, makes information that you give us subject to the attorney-client privilege. Much of the rest of the data is covered by the attorney work-product privilege. I have the best lawyers in the country protecting my stuff and the government, of course, has learned that the hard way. Not because I beat them in court but because we never get there. They know they would have to fight and go to court to get the stuff. That takes time and they have to ask what happens if they lose. And if they win they have to ask whether it will be there and whether they will be able to retrieve it and more importantly whether the public would stand for the government having this stuff.