“OK, OK, sorry.” Her expression shifted, her eyes now probing me. “Tell me something. You promised my big boy a get-out-of-jail-free card in exchange for helping you out. Which, let me tell you, while he’s with me-he ain’t gonna need, I’ll make damn sure of that. But regardless-you’re not in any position to help anyone out now that you’ve joined the dark side, are you?”
She was right. But I wasn’t going to encourage it. I needed her and Kurt in my corner. I just looked at her, and said, deadpan, “And your point is?”
She just stared at me, not moving a single facial muscle, just expressionless. Then she burst into a big grin. “I’m just messing with you. Hell, I’m happy to do it just for the fun of it.” She pulled her face back and headed back toward the kitchen area. “Come on, Squidward. Your feast awaits.”
The loft took up the top floor of a six-story, early twentieth-century building a couple of blocks east of the highline. From what I saw when we arrived late last night, it looked pretty iconic with its elaborate brickwork and beaux arts touches. The living space was huge and bright, even on a cloud-dampened day like today, enhanced by the light from the full-height windows at the front and the glass doors that lead to a small, private garden-like terrace at the back that was further enhanced by a commanding view of the Empire State Building. I glanced down from the window of my enclave. The street was lined with high-end furniture stores and quirky fashion showrooms, all with big logo-bearing flags outside marking their territory. Directly across from the building was a restaurant whose name I recognized, one of those big, trendy brasseries that are always packed. Gigi was clearly doing very well for herself, which I was curious about.
I pulled on my jeans and ambled out into the open space. It was dominated by a massive steel table at its center that was covered in stacks of every flavor of personal computer, server and router imaginable but only a single Mac. I guess that was yet another thing Kurt and Gigi had in common-a hatred of all things Apple.
A high-tech, glass-fronted cabinet stood along the sidewall, lights blinking asynchronously across the faces of the shiny new kit bolted within. I had no idea what any of it did, but I assumed that some of it was what enabled Gigi to roam the Internet undetected.
“Careful,” she said as she appeared from the kitchen. “That’s some highly tuned machinery you’re looking at.”
She explained that it was her gateway to the digital world, and I quote, “running across multiple fiber connections and defended by myriad firewalls, each and every IP packet bouncing both internally through spoofed IP subnets then externally through POPs at random and constantly changing locations around the globe and back again before reaching their destination.”
I just nodded like I even understood ten percent of it. I glanced around, took in the space and the technology, and told her, “Nice.”
She gave me a curious glance. “I know, right? And I bet you’re wondering who’s paying for it all?”
“I wouldn’t presume,” I said with a smile.
“Just another classic tale of a black-hat hacker turned corporate security consultant. I tell banks how not to get compromised. In return, they pay me considerably less than if I were hacking their firewalls and moving funds into my own account, but it’s still some serious green and at least I don’t have your cyber-crime buddies on my tail. And yes, I’ve done that, though I never kept a cent. It was just a thrill, but the whole thing’s got a bit boring, which is why I’m enjoying all this black ops stuff Kurt and you are into.”
I was happy to hear it was all legal. I was rapidly becoming a fan of Kurt’s gal and, although she was still breaking into all kinds of secret databases-a lot of it for me-I was glad she wasn’t involved in anything else that could land her behind bars.
I followed her to the gleaming white island around which the rest of the kitchen was arranged. An industrial-strength laptop was open at one end, so I sat at the other. Gigi was wearing an oversize Metallica T-shirt and track-pants, her hair scrunched up pineapple-style. Without makeup or a costume, she still looked pretty damn good. Maybe even more so. Kurt’s toast had definitely landed jam side up.
Gigi set down two plates piled with pancakes, bacon and fruit, then brought over a cafetière and two white china mugs.
She pushed the plunger down and poured us some coffee. She took a sip from her mug and started tapping away at her laptop keyboard.
I asked, “Anything overnight?”
“You’re extremely hot right now.” She realized what she’d just said and blushed, something I wouldn’t have guessed she was capable of. “I’m talking about the chatter. You’re not my type, though.”
“Duly noted.” I steered the conversation back on track as I dug into the pancakes. “FBI? CIA? Any others?”
She smiled. “All of them. The NSA has been particularly animated. Everyone’s asking how a killer got himself invited to dinner at the White House. Somewhere, I suspect, heads are about to roll.”
I shook my head sadly. “I never did get Angus Beef with the truffle-scented Merlot sauce.”
“All served on official White House china,” Gigi added.
“Of course.”
“Wow. That sucks.” She pointed at my plate. “Try the bacon. I fry it in maple syrup. It’ll run rings around that Angus Beef any day.”
“I don’t doubt that for a second.” I took another sip of coffee and bit into a strip of bacon. I was impressed. She saw the look on my face, and it clearly pleased her.
“You’ll be glad to know that the cops have been told to back off,” she added. “There’s no BOLO. No all-ports. No all-agency alerts.”
“Nothing about a missing FBI agent?”
“Not that I saw.” She set her mug down and fixed me squarely. “So… what do we do now?”
I finished my mouthful. “There was something else. This guy called me. Like with a proper, ‘Deep Throat’ vibe. Not the movie,” I added. “I mean, not that movie.”
She grinned. “I kind of got that.”
“He told me he had information for me. Stuff he wanted me to put out there. A record of something he was involved in. He said that the last person he reached out to got burned to death. Said he told the guy not to look into it before they’d met, but he did. Said it was in his blood and that he couldn’t help himself.”
That seemed to get some wheels turning. “You have any idea who your source was?”
“He never showed. The way things are going, he might be dead too. But the guy he talked about, I’m thinking he could be an ex-cop, maybe a private investigator.”
She put down her fork and started tapping away at her laptop’s keyboard.
“Let’s see… died, fire, news, in the last-what, month maybe?”
I nodded.
She went back to work. “Limit results to US news sites… OK.” Her eyes were scrolling down the screen, totally fixated. “Greensboro woman dies saving her three kids in a house fire, guy dies jumping into a fire at Burning Man…”
This went on for about a minute, then her face lit up. “OK, try this one on for size. Kyle Rossetti. Writes these big investigative pieces for The New York Times, HuffPo, Vanity Fair-quite the action man. Embedded with the troops in Afghanistan, did a big piece on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill that earned him a Polk award. Hot, too. The good kind, I mean. Check him out.” She flipped the screen around so I could see his head shot. Yes, I had to concur: the man had a rugged face and a gaze that pretty much conveyed the extremes of human behavior he must have witnessed.
“And?”
She flipped the screen back, and the edges of her lips turned south. “Electrical fire in his apartment, a condo at 113th and Adam Clayton Powell Jr Boulevard. He burnt to death. About two weeks ago. Wife’s a nurse. She was on night shift.” She stabbed a strawberry half with her fork and looked over at me. “These guys really don’t like reporters.”