“I see what you’re saying. Except I think we’ve established he’s not really FedEx.”
“So, you get the computer to do its data-mining thing and match the images.”
“We search by keyword or category. Not by image. Maybe someday,” Petrowski said.
“Then how come you can Google images like photographs you want and download them?” Marino asked.
He couldn’t take his eyes off the jumper. It was true. He must have changed his mind. What had changed it? Fear of heights? Or was it all the fucking attention. Jesus. Choppers, cops, and live TV. Maybe he decided to hang around, be on the cover of People magazine.
“Because you’re searching by keywords, not by the actual image,” Petrowski patiently explained. “An image-search application requires a keyword or several keywords, such as, well, see our logo on the wall over there? You search on the keywords RTCC logo or moniker and the software finds an image or images that includes those same keywords-actually finds the hosting location.”
“The wall?” Marino was confused as he looked at the wall with the logo, an eagle and American flags.
“No, the hosting location isn’t the wall. It’s a database-in our case, a data warehouse because of the massive size and complexity since we started centralizing. Every warrant; offense and incident report; weapon; map; arrest; complaint; C-summons; stop, question, and frisk; juvenile crime; you name it. Same type of link analysis we’re doing in counterterrorism,” Petrowski said.
“Right. And if you could connect images,” Marino said, “you could identify terrorists, different names but the same person, so why aren’t we? Okay. They’ve almost got him. Jesus. Like we should rappel off the bridge for some squirrel like that.”
ESU cops in harnesses were suspended by ropes, closing in on three sides.
“We can’t. Maybe someday,” Petrowski answered, oblivious to the jumper and whether he made it or not. “What we link is public records, like addresses, locations, objects, other large collections of data, but not actual photographs of faces. What you’re really getting a hit on is the keywords, not the images of tattoos. Am I making sense? Because I don’t feel you’re clear on what I’ve been saying. Maybe if your attention was here in the room with me instead of on the GW Bridge.”
“I wish I could see his face better,” Marino said to the flat screen with the jumper on it. “Something about him. Like I know him from somewhere.”
“From everywhere. A dime a dozen these days. It’s selfish as hell. If you want to do yourself in, don’t take out other people with you, don’t put them at risk, don’t cost the taxpayers. They’ll slap him in Bellevue tonight. Tomorrow we’ll find out he was involved in a Ponzi scam. We’ve just had a hundred million cut out of our budget, and here we are snatching his ass off a bridge. A week from now, he’ll kill himself some other way.”
“Naw. He’ll be on Letterman,” Marino said.
“Don’t push my button.”
“Go back to that Mount Rushmore wino tattoo you had up a minute ago,” Marino said, reaching for his coffee as the ESU cops risked their lives to rescue someone who wasn’t worth it, was a dime a dozen and probably should have splashed down by now, been picked up by the Coast Guard and escorted to the morgue.
Petrowski clicked on a record he had opened earlier and, using the mouse, dragged an image into a big empty square on a laptop screen. A mug shot appeared on the data wall, a black man with a tattoo covering the right side of his neck: four skulls in an outcropping of rocks, what looked like Mount Rushmore to Marino, and the Latin phrase In vino veritas.
“Bottle of wine, fruit of the vine,” Marino said, and two ESU cops almost had the jumper. Marino couldn’t see his face, couldn’t see what he was feeling or if he was talking.
“In wine is truth,” Petrowski said. “Think it goes back to ancient Roman times. What the hell’s his name. Pliny Something. Maybe Tacitus.”
“Mateus and Lancers rosé. Remember those days?”
Petrowski smiled but didn’t answer. He was too young, probably had never heard of Mad Dog or Boone’s Farm, either.
“Drink a bottle of Lancers in the car, and if you got lucky, you give your date the bottle for a souvenir,” Marino went on. “The girls would put candles in them, let all the wax run down, lots of different color candles. What I called a candle fuck. Well, guess you had to be there.”
Petrowski and his smile. Marino was never sure what it meant except he figured the guy was wrapped pretty tight. Most computer jockeys were, except Lucy. She wasn’t even wrapped, not these days. He glanced at his watch, wondered how she and Berger were making out with Hap Judd as Petrowski arranged images side by side on the data wall. The tattoo on the neck of the man in the FedEx cap was juxtaposed with the tattoo of four skulls and the phrase In vino veritas.
“Nope.” Marino took another swallow of coffee, black and cold. “Not even close when you really look.”
“I tried to tell you.”
“I was thinking of patterns, like maybe where he got the tattoo. If we found something that was the same design, I could track down the tattoo artist, show him a picture of this FedEx guy,” Marino said.
“It’s not in the database,” Petrowski said. “Not with those keywords. Not with coffin, either, or fallen comrade or Iraq or anything we’ve tried. We need a name, an incident, a location, a map, something.”
“What about the FBI, their database?” Marino suggested. “That new billion-dollar computer system they got, forget what it’s called.”
“NGI. Next Generation Identification. Still in development.”
“But up and running, I hear.” The person Marino had heard it from was Lucy.
“We’re talking extremely advanced technology that’s spread over a multiyear time frame. I know the early phases have been implemented, which includes IAFIS, CODIS, I think the Interstate Photo System, IPS. Not really sure what else, you know, with the economy being what it is. A lot of stuff’s been cut back.”
“Well, I hear they got a tattoo database,” Marino said.
“Oh, sure.”
“So I say we cast a bigger net in our hunt and do a national, maybe even international, search on this FedEx shitbag,” Marino suggested. “That’s assuming you can’t search the FBI database, their NGI, from here.”
“No way. We don’t share. But I’ll shoot them your tattoo. No problem. Well, he’s not on the bridge anymore.” Petrowski meant the jumper. Was finally curious but only in a bored way.
“That can’t be good.” Marino looked at the flat screen, realizing he’d missed the big moment. “Shit. I see the ESU guys but not him.”
“There he is.”
Helicopter searchlights moving over the jumper on the ground, a distant image of his body on the pavement. He’d missed the air bag.
“The ESU guys are going to be pissed” was Petrowski’s summary of the situation. “They hate it when that happens.”
“What about you send the FBI this photo with the tattoo”-looking at the alleged FedEx guy on the data wall-“while we try a couple other searches. FedEx. Maybe FedEx uniform, FedEx cap. Anything FedEx,” Marino said.
“We can do that.” Petrowski started typing.
The hourglass returned to the data wall, twirling. Marino noticed the wall-mounted flat screen had gone black, the police helicopter video feed terminated because the jumper was terminated. He suddenly had an idea why the jumper looked familiar, an actor he’d seen, what was the movie? The police chief who got in trouble with a hooker? What the hell was the movie? Marino couldn’t think of the name. Seemed to happen a lot these days.