Chapter 9

Although I like to think of myself as a city girl, I spent four months with a cowboy / hippie / redneck / poet. We were opposites in so many ways -- politics for sure. Also, taste in clothes, food, art, movies.

Just about everything except in bed.

I’ve never talked with Daddy about my sex life. And don’t plan to. He’s never asked, not even when I was way too young to be involved in the kind of mischief I was cheerfully seeking.

I certainly won’t talk with him about Corrine Anniston. Where nothing happened, not really. Although it could have. Almost did. Fuck.

Surprisingly, Walker didn’t seem to be that relieved that I backed out of going to bed with Anniston. That told me he was 100% behind my doing whatever it took to end Barry’s misery. And Bear’s frustration.

The Sullivan twins didn’t ask me how I’d managed to pull off the thumb drive stunt, but I thought I sensed some curiosity on Jessie’s part. Vamping prowess aside, I concentrated as they told me what they’d discovered on Anniston’s laptop.

Jesse, “She’s a thief, nothing big time, usually just a few hundred dollars for each incursion. She creeps individual online accounts and accesses bank passwords.”

Jessie, “Pretty basic stuff, but then she came across someone who could do a lot more. That’s how she got past the Oasis firewall.”

Jesse, “She met him in a hacker chat room several months ago. His handle is gorightnow. They migrated to private chat and he eventually shared the software. It mirrors a much earlier NSA version. Pretty much.”

Interesting. But finding out how Anniston scored the software was background noise. Who sent her after Oasis? After Barry?

Jessie, “Anniston has a small circle -- five other hackers -- that she trusts. Online anyway. One of those guys, screen name is ‘showmemoney’ is the only one who seems capitalistic. He’s in it for the cash.”

Ah.

I said, “Show me the money. Jerry Maguire.”

Jessie nodded.

Jesse, “We pieced this together from forum discussions, private chat logs, some guesswork. We think ‘showmemoney had the original Oasis contract, but couldn’t navigate through their security system.”

Jessie, “Anniston’s new software could, so she took over. Agreed to split the fee -- $10,000 -- fifty-fifty.”

Barry’s life could be ruined, or even lost, and Anniston did this for $5,000. Glad I didn’t go to bed with her. Relieved. Vindicated.

I thanked them. And paid them. $5,000 for one night’s work. An all-nighter, but worth it to Sullivan & Sullivan. And to me.

Language can be interesting, can’t it? A friend of mine from Mobile once told me that the greeting, ‘Y’all’ assumes, genteelly, that no one would be so unfortunate as to be alone.

I was reading about the word ‘pretty’ the other day. A common word, one whose meaning we take for granted. But think of a foreigner trying to learn English.

A descriptor: “The hamburger was pretty amazing, but the bun was pretty dry.” Dialed back: “That yoga class was pretty good, I guess.” Conveying beauty: “What a pretty face!” Irony: “A pretty kettle of fish.”

Pretty complicated.

Then life became pretty fucking raw. Vanessa’s digital life was, potentially, hijacked as part of the massive Equifax hack. She was one of well over 100 million whose financial and personal data became at risk.

I sent the Sullivan Calvary into battle. Equifax had not only been compromised, but the corporate fuckers delayed letting the world know about it. Adding insult, they were completely unprepared to handle the volume on the customer relations side.

Telephone? Forget it. No one could get through. Web site? Crashed and burned.

Fortunately, the Sullivans finessed their way into the Equifax system. They did an immediate credit freeze so that if her ID had actually been stolen, no new loans, purchases, credit cards would be issued.

Also no one new could access her credit info. Admittedly that would be a little barn doory if the thieves had already paid a visit. But better late than ... and all of that.

Equifax, thanks to the Sullivans, had already gifted Vanessa with fraud insurance. Free of course.

Pretty nifty.

I knew what I would do with the possible connect -- showmemoney -- to Mr. Laser. Nothing. Well, nothing personally.

I went to Daddy’s house on Meyer Boulevard to share with him what I’d learned. What the Sullivans had uncovered. I wanted his verification that my next step would be the right step.

I went through the process with Daddy. Well, I substituted ‘research’ for ‘hacking’. But he knows the Sullivans and knows how they’ve helped me in the past. And he knows how they’re helping me now.

“It started when Barry gave them his passcodes. They spotted a distinctive backdoor pattern. That led to Corrine Anniston.” I hesitated. No, Daddy deserves to know, it’s too important to gloss over.

“As you know, I took her to dinner last night. Managed to install a thumb drive, some special kind I don’t understand, in her laptop for a minute. It gave the Sullivans access to her hard drive.”

I explained about their all-night vigil. And the suspected connection to Mr. Laser -- ‘showmemoney’. Daddy said, “Tom Cruise.”

“Yep, we think so.”

Daddy did what I knew he would, called Hank Morristown. “Let’s go, he’s expecting us.”

On the drive downtown, I said, “I don’t want the Sullivans to have any trouble.”

“Don’t worry about them. Hank is results-oriented.” Like Daddy, Hank just wants to solve the case.

Daddy said, “Anniston will do time, though.”

I had mixed feelings, but not enough to argue her side. One person had already been murdered and another was under direct threat. Huddled in a fucking safe house in fucking St. Louis. Anniston didn’t know anything about that, but she had played a part.

Seated in Hank’s office, Daddy nodded at me. I knew I’d have to give the FBI more than an outline, more than a summary. I went through everything thoroughly. Hank, again like Daddy, didn’t interrupt, didn’t ask questions, just listened. Intently.

When I wound down, handed him the scrap of paper -- showmemoney -- that’s when he started interrogating me. Question after question after question. No detail was too trivial, no nuance unexplored.

He was especially interested in gorightnow. The hacker who passed along the illegal software to Anniston.

Two hours later, he gave me a wan smile, “Good work, Winter.”

Then he said, “Take me to the Sullivans.” Gulp.

“Can I call them first?” His look was his answer.

Hank, Daddy and I stood on that little Waldo porch. I knocked. My stomach was churning. The Sullivans would freak.

But after a few minutes it became clear that Hank had no interest in their hacking. He just wanted to see, firsthand, what they’d done and how they’d done it. Exactly how, step by step, they’d accomplished something that the FBI hadn’t been able to do.

Find a lead to that fucking Mr. Laser.

This visit lasted three hours. During that time Hank’s tech gal, Marcy O’Reilly showed up with her own assistant. Hank told the usually ebullient Sullivan twins, “They’re taking your devices back to the office. We’ll return them or reimburse you.”

Jessie and Jesse remained still.

Hank and Daddy and I left to go back downtown. Hank to his office, Daddy to pick up his car. During the ride Hank, said, “One bedroom.” Daddy nodded. The second one was the Sullivans’ office. Both lawmen notice stuff like that.

Jessie told me that night that Marcy had told her not to sweat the hacking stuff. That the FBI would list them as private subcontractors and Hank would cover for them if anyone raised a question. They’d even be paid for the work they’d already done.

It helps to have someone on the inside. A lesson that Daddy had taught me years ago. Hank didn’t care where the lead came from, nor how it was obtained. Solve the fucking case.

Saturday morning. Vanessa and Walker out shopping for groceries. Pilar and Hobo up on the Wrigley roof deck. I open a drawer. Le Wand. Considered, then pushed the drawer closed. I wasn’t quite in the mood. Maybe later.

I went up to the roof. Hobo glanced at me then turned back to Pilar. He listened intently to the little girl.

Safety lessons. She patted the ledge on the Main Street side and Hobo put his front paws on it, still staring at Pilar. She shook her head, said, “No.” Hobo four-pawed himself again.

Pilar made the circuit, south ledge, west, north. Same lesson, pat then “No.”

The kids were hyper aware of the potential dangers to Hobo. So focused, so dedicated, so determined to please. If a gust of wind sent that Frisbee close to the edge and he leaped...

There were too many unknowns. Who Mr. Laser was. Who he was working with. Hank, and the Quantico profiler, were convinced he wasn’t a loner. And who, if anyone, was behind them. The operation cost some money, at this stage we didn’t know how much. But some.

Plus, what traces might the Sullivans have inadvertently left behind. Maybe none, but we couldn’t assume that. So no more direct contact between the twins and me. We’d use a cutout if we needed to reach each other.

The FBI put a loose tail on Corrine Anniston. They’d leave her in the wild until they were ready to nab Mr. Laser and teammates. She might lead them to someone, but Hank didn’t really think so. Marcy had scoured Anniston’s laptop and hadn’t found anything more than the Sullivans did. No direct leads to Mr. Laser.

I learned from Daddy that the FBI was focused on ‘showmemoney’ -- the original contact from Mr. Laser or his team or his backers. The show*me guy hadn’t had the software that the Sullivans did, so they split the fee when the twins were able to breach the Oasis security.

So, show*me became Mr. Contact. Mr. Contact with Mr. Laser.

Mr. Contact was now directly in the FBI crosshairs.

Little things can amuse me, I suppose that’s true of a lot of people.

Back, post-Richie / pre-Vanessa, I wore my hair quite a bit longer. I had Wendy style it so that when I tilted my head a certain way, it would drape over my right eye, Veronica Lake style.

Once I put Walker down for the night, I sometimes visited a bar or two. Naturally I was hit on quite regularly, that’s why god made boys. I’d say nine guys out of ten who were chatting me up, couldn’t refrain from brushing my hair back from my face.

It was hardly a statistically reliable study, but more often than not, the one boy in ten who didn’t try to readjust my hair was more interesting than the ones who did.

I’m just putting that out there for any social scientists in the crowd.

In essence, I was sidelined from the Mr. Laser case. The Sullivans had been told, in quite certain terms, to butt out. To butt completely the fuck out. They bought new laptops, anything the FBI returned would have been bugged one way or another. I knew they automatically backed up every hard drive, so they had records of everything they’d done. Digitally.