The Brothers Read online

  Chapter 19… The Travel Plaza

  Having checked out of the Avalon Motor Inn despite Pruitt’s warning not to do so, Harry and Denise took a booth at the Hilltop Diner in order to plan their next move. Asking to sit away from the other patrons, they kept their eye on the parking lot as best they could as they sat hunched over Harry’s cell phone—his new cell phone, the one that supposedly only a couple of people knew about. His old cell phone with the New Jersey 732 area code sat on the table in front of him.

  “Maybe Detective Pruitt was right, Harry. If we pull the battery out of that phone, there will be no way for anyone to figure out where we are.”

  “If we pull the battery they’ll know we’re on to them. If we’re going to turn the tables, we have to let them think they have the advantage.”

  “I don’t know, Harry. What if—”

  “Listen, let’s call Suzanne like we’d planned and we’ll talk about this later.”

  * * * * *

  “Yes, the visit to Bobby’s has been good in a lot of ways, but it’s been depressing at the same time. Bobby is trying so hard to make me comfortable that... well you know how it is. Rather than taking my mind off of Hutch, it just reminds me of why I came out here. I miss him so much, Harry.”

  He could hear the heartbreak in Suzanne’s voice. “Still, I’ll bet that seeing your grandchildren has been nice.”

  “Oh, for sure,” Suzanne agreed, and then she hesitated. “Listen, Harry, not to be rude, but you’ve never been good a small talk. Do you want to tell me why you’re taking time to call me on the Friday afternoon before Memorial Day when you could be heading for the beach?”

  Denise was sitting in the booth next to him with her ear to the phone. Upon hearing Suzanne’s last comment, she took the phone out of Harry’s hand and gave him the elbow, obviously not concerned about his still-healing ribs right now. This needed a little more tact. “Suzanne, Denise here. First off, we want you to know that we love you, sweetheart, and we’re doing everything we can to find out what happened to Hutch.”

  “We? Are you involved in it too?”

  “If you had been aware that someone was trying to kill Hutch, wouldn’t you have gotten involved?”

  Emotionally, Suzanne said, “So Harry’s suspicions about Hutch’s death have been right all along. Are you also trying to tell me that what happened to Hutch could happen to Harry? Harry, is that true?”

  Calmly, Harry took the phone back. “I’m afraid so, Suzanne. At least it looks that way.”

  “But why?” Neither Harry nor Denise answered the question and Suzanne picked up on it. “Is it because of your association with Hutch? Oh my God, did he get you into this somehow? Oh, Harry, I’m so sorry.”

  “Now don’t go there, Suzanne. Hutch did nothing wrong. He would never have knowingly put me in jeopardy, but....”

  “But what? What is it Harry?”

  “We need your help.”

  Suzanne started sniffling and Denise put a hand on Harry’s arm. “Let her get it out,” she whispered so that Suzanne wouldn’t hear.

  Harry nodded and waited for Suzanne to come around. She was the first step in his plan and he couldn’t afford for her to think that he and Denise had gone off the deep end. They needed to sound composed and rational, as if hunting down someone who’d committed multiple murders was a normal and rational activity.

  “What do you need?” Suzanne asked shakily.

  “We need you to send an email.”

  “That’s it?”

  Trying to sound as casual as possible, Harry said, “Yes, that’s it.”

  “To whom?”

  “Jerry Brennan, at the bank.”

  “And what do you want me to say?”

  Suzanne’s voice was still shaky. Thinking Denise would have a more calming approach, Harry signaled her to continue the conversation with Suzanne. Instead of calmness, however, Denise barreled ahead like a torpedo. “We’re trying to nail the bastards who killed Hutch, Suzanne. They need to suffer for what they did to him—and to you, and your family. Do you want to get the bastards, or not?”

  The sniffles suddenly stopped. “Absolutely,” Suzanne replied, her voice more resolute.

  Mission accomplished, Denise smiled and signaled for Harry to continue. “You know that some people are desperate to get hold of Hutch’s laptop, right?”

  “Of course.”

  “We need you to send an email to Jerry Brennan indicating that you still have that laptop and that you want to get it out of your house. Tell him that you’re leaving on a trip and that you want someone to come and pick it up this coming Monday.”

  “Monday is Memorial Day.”

  “You just say Monday. My guess is that someone besides Jerry will email you back and say that picking it up on Monday is not a problem. You just agree to whatever they say as long as it’s picked up on Monday.” Harry gave it a moment. “Would you like me to write the email and send it to you so you can copy and paste it?”

  “That would probably be helpful,” Suzanne replied. “That way it can say precisely what you want it to say. One question, though.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Would it be better if the email came from the computer in my home rather than from Bobby’s computer here in Chicago?”

  The idea hit Harry and Denise like a punch to the head. Saugus to North Cambridge was a half hour drive. “Where did you leave the key to your house?” Harry asked.

  * * * * *

  The rain was coming in buckets. Suzanne told them she’d given a key to one of the neighbors before her trip, but that there was also a key hidden outside the house in case anyone ever got locked out. She started sobbing again when she realized that anyone was just her now, but she’d been explicit: the key was under the fourth patio brick from the left nearest the back porch steps, second row; it would be in a little plastic bag. It wasn’t that easy.

  They were completely soaked by the time they found the key and made it into the house. The old wood floor planks creaked with every step, which would have sounded charming under normal circumstances, but sounded spooky now. They took off their waterlogged shirts and dropped them on the floor mat near the front door so as not to drip all over the place. Harry took one look at Denise and said, “Let’s make love.”

  “Here? Now? Are you crazy?”

  “Yeah, I am. C’mon, they’d want us to.” He pulled Denise into his arms, his hands slithering all over her wet body. “Now. Right here.”

  “On the floor, like dogs?”

  “Yeah, right on the floor.”

  “Harry, what’s gotten into you? Are you... oh my. You are, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah, I am.” Her pants were down. His lips crushed into hers. His pants were down, onto the floor, then he and Denise were down too. It happened in a moment and went on for what seemed like forever while the storm thundered outside. When they were done and the rainwater on their skin was replaced by sweat, they both laughed like high school kids who’d just ripped one off in the basement while her parents were watching TV upstairs.

  Denise said, “Harry, you’re dirty.”

  Harry looked up and said, “Thanks, Hutch. I needed that.”

  “How are your ribs?”

  “Funny, they don’t hurt a bit... oooh, until now.”

  Slapping him on the ass, Denise said, “Over the hill old fool.”

  Harry smiled a smile of familiarity. “It was good though, wasn’t it?”

  She smiled back. “Yeah, it was real good, but lying here on this wet floor is getting less and less romantic. Help me up so I can find a towel and clean up this mess.”

  Harry helped her off the floor and was back into detective mode in an instant. He’d been in this house a number of times over the years, and he knew Hutch had maintained an office off the dining room. Heading there, he was suddenly aware of how humid it was in there and he assumed that Suzanne had turned
off the air conditioning. He found the thermostat and clicked it to auto and he heard the AC unit jump to life outside the house. Entering the office room, he stopped and stared at two computer monitors there, one of them on a large oak desk, the other smaller monitor on a small writing desk against the windows that looked out onto the patio. That was the one he wanted, for it would be the one that probably carried Suzanne’s email address.

  He fired it up and waited for the startup cycle to complete, noticing the date and time. It was Friday, May 24th, 2:27 p.m. Still sweating, he called to Denise to look in the fridge and see if she could find him a cold beer. He needed to get moving on this. It being the Friday before Memorial Day, it could be entirely possible that people would be checking out early from work to get a jump on the three-day holiday weekend. If what Jerry had told him was true, someone was monitoring Jerry’s email address. What he didn’t know was whether that person, or people, was inside the bank, or outside. He couldn’t take the chance that whoever it was would leave early.

  The computer was old and slow—probably had some spyware on it, Harry figured—but the desktop finally came up without having to enter a password. Thank God for that, he thought as he found the Outlook icon. Easy enough so far. He double clicked it and up comes the inbox, easy-peasy. Then, he froze. Not easy-peasy after all. “Shit,” he said as Denise came in with his beer.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I don’t know Jerry’s fucking email address.”

  “Do you have to curse? How can Hutch not have Jerry’s email address?”

  Harry thought, duh! He changed seats and went through the same drill with the machine on the other desk. It wasn’t as easy this time. He found the Outlook all right, but he didn’t see Jerry’s email address in the contacts listed there.

  “Shit,” he said loudly.

  “There you go again,” Denise scolded. “What’s wrong now?”

  “Hutch didn’t have Jerry’s email address in his contacts list.”

  “He probably knew it by heart,” Denise responded.

  Duh! again.

  “Do you remember Hutch’s email address?” Denise asked. “Jerry’s will probably follow the same format. You know, like first initial, last name... at... something.”

  “You’re right,” said Harry, “but I think I used Hutch’s personal email address whenever I corresponded with him.”

  “Check the bank’s website,” Denise said. “Maybe you can get it from there.”

  “I doubt it, but maybe you’re right,” said Harry, and he clicked the icon for Internet Explorer. He’d tried this before, he remembered, when he was looking for information on Brendan Phillips, and when the Explorer home page came up he typed First International Bank, adding HQ Boston into the search bar to refine the search. As the listings appeared, he spotted a website down the page that had the words corporate office in the description. As he’d suspected, it was just a landing page and there were no email addresses listed there, but there was a Contact Us button. He clicked on that and noted that there was a general information email address: [email protected].

  “Bingo,” he said. “I’ve got the domain address.”

  “What’s that?” Denise asked, taking a swig of his beer.

  “It’s the company part of the email address. If I try a search on Jerry’s last name at that domain, I’ll bet I can find his email address. Makes sense, right?”

  Denise shrugged. “I guess.”

  Harry went back and typed “[email protected]” into the search bar, in quotes, so that the search would pick up anything using that exact combination of letters. It was actually quite amazing, he thought, that out of zillions and zillions of pieces of information, in a few seconds he could find an email address if it contained the combination of letters he’d just entered. Sure enough, one of the results was a summary of attendees at a banking industry conference held in Buffalo about a year earlier. The list was for communication purposes in case any of the attendees wanted to correspond with each other after the conference. Plain as day, there it was: [email protected] .

  “Bingo,” Harry said again. “I got it.”

  “You’re welcome,” said Denise, taking credit for the discovery.

  Harry smiled and wrote down the address when, suddenly, he said, “I wonder if there’s anything on here that might shed some light on who Hutch’s killer might be.” He went back to the search engine home page.

  “What are you doing now?” Denise asked, looking over his shoulder.

  “Let’s see....” said Harry, his voice trailing off. He just clicked on the search engine logo and up comes another page where one of the buttons indicated Search History. “I hope there’s no porn in here,” he said, clicking on it. There wasn’t, and it was unremarkable, except for one search that Hutch had conducted titled isograms. “What’s an isogram?” he asked.

  “I have no idea. Click it and let’s find out.” Harry did and the first listing was from Wikipedia. “What’s it say?”

  “It means two things, one of them being that an isogram is a word or phrase without a repeating letter.”

  “So?”

  “So, I don’t know,” said Harry, and he went back to the search history. Slowly, he perused the listing of what Hutch had searched for most recently, and he noted a couple of other searches containing the word isogram, they being 7 letter isograms and 10 letter isograms. Harry clicked on the 7 letter isograms, and up come sites giving examples of such: toenail, elation, routine, and a long list of others.

  “Why would Hutch have been looking at this stuff?” Harry said under his breath, and he moved to the search for 10 letter isograms. Like the previous search, up come the listings, one of them indicating favorite 10 letter isograms. “I didn’t know there was such a thing as favorite ten-letter isograms.”

  “Click on it,” said Denise, intrigued as he was.

  Harry did, and up come the examples: algorithms, birthplace, bankruptcy, fornicated.... “Hah, fornicated... sound familiar?” he snorted, and Denise popped him one in the back of the head. He went on to read a few more of the other examples: importance, microwaves, obfuscated, palindrome, precaution.... He stopped. Precaution. Harry, use precaution. It was the message on the outside of the envelope Suzanne had given him. He realized now, in an instant, that while the words Harry, use precaution were instructions, they weren’t instructions in the way he had interpreted them. Inside his head, bells were going off.

  “What are isograms used for?” he asked excitedly, not waiting for an answer. Back to the search engine page, into the search bar he typed uses of isograms. Seconds later, it was there on the screen in front of him: Isograms can be useful as keys in ciphers... Ten letter isograms are commonly used to represent numbers or prices... the first letter representing a 1, second letter a 2, and so on. Harry leaned back in the chair. Harry, use precaution. “Holy shit,” he said. “Hutch was giving me the code, not telling me to be careful.”

  Wide-eyed, he looked at Denise, who said it first. “He was giving you the code for the account numbers.”

  * * * * *

  “Harry, where the hell are you?” Ducky asked urgently. “I thought you were back in Jersey.”

  “Denise and I are at Hutch’s house in North Cambridge.”

  “What are you doing there? No, wait, I don’t want to know. Listen, you need to be careful, okay? I heard from Monica that the bank’s CFO killed himself the other day. That’s got to be connected to this, Harry.”

  “It is. That’s why I’m calling. And how did Monica find out about that?”

  “Evidently Pruitt called her this morning. What have you got her roped into?”

  “Who, Monica?”

  “No, Pruitt. She asked Monica if she could arrange to have the CFO’s death classified as a John Doe. What’s that all about?”

  Harry took a moment and shifted the phone from one
ear to the other. Pruitt hadn’t filled him in on that little tidbit. “I’m not sure,” he said, moving on to why he’d called Ducky. “I need your help.”

  “Really? There’s a surprise.”

  “C’mon Ducky, stop dicking around.” Harry could feel Ducky’s hesitation and he waited for him to respond. They’d had this conversation before and despite Ducky’s previous insistence that he was into this investigation “all the way,” his doubt was palpable.

  “Monica told me that Pruitt’s boss has allowed her to look into the case,” Ducky said out of the blue.

  Pruitt hadn’t said anything about that either, but that wasn’t a surprise to him. When they’d spoken earlier that day, they weren’t exactly seeing things eye-to-eye on things. Looking back on it, he had to admit that it really didn’t matter what Pruitt said that morning; he probably wasn’t going to hear it anyway. “What are you trying to say, Ducky?”

  “I’m trying to tell you that now that she’s on the case, you should let her do her job. You got what you wanted, the cops are on it, it’s time for you to back away.”

  Ducky had a point. Getting the police to investigate was indeed the original intent. “I don’t think I can,” said Harry.

  “Do you have a death wish? Why not?”

  “I sent an email from Suzanne’s computer to Jerry Brennan’s email address at the bank.”

  “And?” said Ducky, his tone indicating he knew there was more to come.

  “I pretended to be Suzanne and said that I was going on a trip, and could someone from the bank pick up Hutch’s laptop on Monday?”

  Ducky instantly understood the implications. “That’s the laptop that someone has already tried to steal from Suzanne’s house, the one that the bad guys think contains everything Hutch knew about the illegal accounts.”

  “That’s right.” Like a spider waiting for something to get caught up in its web, Harry left it there and waited for Ducky to catch on. It didn’t take long.

  “Oh, shit. Oh shit oh shit oh shit. You’re using the laptop as bait to see who shows up at the house, and then you’re planning on... what? What exactly are you planning?”

  “Well, plan is such an inflexible word sometimes.”

  “Are you, like, nuts? Harry, these guys kill people, and they’ve already tried to kill you once. What are you thinking?”

  “Well, that’s where things get a little fuzzy. I was hoping maybe you and the other brothers would help me figure it out.”

  “Me and the other brothers.”

  “Yeah, you know, Fish, Fighting Al—”

  “Yeah, I know who the other brothers are. And once we get the other brothers to agree to this crazy-ass scheme of yours, what then?”

  “You said we.”

  “What?”

  “Just now, you said, ‘once we get the other brothers to agree.’ Does that mean you’re in?”

  “I also said, ‘what then?’ Why don’t you answer that question before we go much further?”

  “I can’t answer that until I know if I have any help or not. Are you in with me, Ducky? You once said you were in all the way.”

  “You bastard.”

  That was close enough for Harry. “What about the other brothers who were at the reunion? I was hoping you could convince them to help us out as well. What’dya say Ducky?”

  “Damn it, Harry. I’ll make some calls.”

  * * * * *

  “Do you have any plans for tonight?”

  “It’s already tonight. What did you have in mind?”

  Harry looked at his watch, noting that it was already past six o’clock. “Why are you still at the office on the Friday night before Memorial Day?”

  Al said, “I’m a dedicated lawyer. What can I say?”

  “You can say you have no life.”

  “Yeah, well, that too. Why are you calling, Harry? I suppose it’s to see if I got anything on that cell phone number.”

  As it was with Ducky, Harry felt that he was wearing thin on Fighting Al. It would probably be the same with the other brothers, he figured, none of them thinking this little inquiry into Hutch’s death would get to this point, that it would become so... inconvenient. “I was hoping you’d made some progress on that and maybe we could talk about it over dinner.”

  “Are you still in the Wallingham area?”

  “No, I’m in North Cambridge at Hutch’s place.”

  “Jesus, you and Denise get around, don’t you? How’s Suzanne?”

  “She’s not here. She’s in Chicago visiting her son Bobby.”

  “Well, okay then, I guess.”

  Al seemed to lack his normal edge. “Sounds like I caught you at a bad time. Would you rather talk about it over the phone?”

  “No! Not on the phone.”

  That wasn’t normal. “Yo, Al, dancing around the edges of something doesn’t work for you, man.”

  “Story of my life. Listen, it’s about that phone number.”

  “Yeah, figured that. You’re still dancing, Al.”

  “Listen, shut the fuck up for a second and let me tell you what I got to tell you.”

  There was the Fighting Al he knew and loved. “I’m listening.”

  “Look, I found some stuff out.” Harry didn’t press. “I found some stuff out but I’m not so sure it’s something I want to talk about over the phone.”

  That was a long way to go for a guy as ballsy as Al to simply repeat himself. “What would you suggest?”

  “This ain’t gonna be easy.”

  “What ain’t gonna be easy?”

  “Cambridge is an hour-and-a-half from me, Harry.”

  Al was going in circles. “So we can meet in the middle. Do you know a place?”

  “There’s a spot a couple of my clients have been known to use when they don’t want to be noticed.”

  Harry guessed he was now in the same category as Al’s clients. Chilling thought. “Which is?”

  “There’s a travel plaza in Framingham on the Mass Pike going west. That’s not far from where you are now. Park near the dog walk area. I can meet you there around eight o’clock. Can you make it?”

  “Yeah, sure,” Harry replied, wondering what all the intrigue was about. “You’re scaring me, Al.”

  “You should be, Harry. What are you driving?”

  “Uh, we’re using my wife’s car right now. Mine is still in the shop.”

  “Yeah, okay. So what is it?”

  “A silver Audi A6.”

  “Have you been driving that car since the accident?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “Not good. Do you have access to another vehicle? If you’re at Hutch’s place, where is Hutch’s car?”

  “The Mercedes? I don’t know, in the garage, I guess. I can check.”

  “Do that. And you need to pull the batteries out of your cell phones so check for any directions before you leave and print them out, got it? I’ll see you at eight.”

  Harry pushed the end call button and felt his heart beating rapidly in his chest.

  * * * * *

  They felt naked the entire way to Framingham, which took all of forty-five minutes. Both their phones were sitting in the car’s cup holder with the batteries nearby as if some great catastrophe was about to happen and they’d need to snatch them up in an instant.

  “What did we do before cell phones?” Harry asked, surprised that he seemed more insecure and dependent on the thing than Denise.

  “We actually had to talk—to each other,” she replied, and he knew that was a dig at him. He’d never been a chatty sort, and to him the term sharing his feelings had always meant answering with words instead of grunting when she was firing questions at him like a machine gun.

  Contrarily, the one cell phone he left intact was his original cell phone, the one with the New Jersey 732 area code. That phone he’d left on and fully charged, battery in place and GPS enabled. If anyone was
tracking that phone as he suspected, there was no way he was going to let his trackers know that he was aware of them by trying to hide his location. It was a reverse logic sort of thing. Fighting Al was so insistent that they come to the travel plaza undetected, however, that he didn’t dare take that cell phone with him.

  The one pleasant thing about the drive was the car. Nice machine, thought Harry. Hutch’s car exuded strength and refinement, and sitting in that leather driver’s seat Harry could almost feel Hutch’s presence. So could Denise, evidently. Harry could tell she was creeped out.

  They reached the travel plaza and found what they assumed was the dog walk area, seeing as there were people there with dogs. Harry figured he needed to be vigilant, and after a couple of minutes of people watching, he turned to Denise and said, “Do you realize how many really fat people there are in this country?”

  She didn’t answer, but pointed back past him. “I think this is for you.”

  He was startled to see some kid standing there with his hat on backwards, waving at him to lower the window.

  “Some guy just gave me ten bucks to deliver this and said you’d give me another ten when you got it.”

  Harry looked past the kid but Al was nowhere to be seen. “Fuckin’ Al,” he griped, as he dug a ten spot out of his pocket. The kid handed him a bag from the ice cream store inside the travel plaza, inside of which were two old-fashioned frozen Drumstick ice cream cones—and a note. “Nice touch,” said Harry, handing one of the cones to Denise.

  “I haven’t had one of these since I was a kid,” she said, suddenly giddy.

  Harry unfolded the note, which read, Go into the ice cream store and go to the door past the men’s room on the left. Knock three times, knock, knock... pause... knock. “Again with the cloak and dagger stuff,” Harry complained, and he turned to Denise before exiting the car. “Are we locked and loaded?” he asked, referring to what was in her handbag.

  “We are if you want us to be,” she said.

  “I think we better be. Al wouldn’t get this dramatic for nothing.”

  Harry unwrapped his cone and exited the car, trying to look casual. They made their way toward the entrance doors to the food court, almost fighting their way past the seemingly endless parade of douchebags who were looking at their phones as they bounced like pinballs off people going in the opposite direction. “This is like bumper cars,” Harry said. With aggravation now adding to their already heightened sense of apprehension, they made it to the designated door past the men’s room. Knock, knock... pause... knock. They heard a couple of bolt locks being unlatched and the door swung open.

  The guy at the door had no neck and his eyes pointed in different directions. “C’mon in,” he said casually. “We’s been expectin’ yous.”

  Harry took Denise’s arm and stepped past their eloquent host. “This don’t look like the back room of no ice cream store I’ve ever seen,” he said, spotting Fighting Al sitting at the far end of what had to be a twenty-foot conference table. Identical tufted-leather executive chairs surrounded the table, with subtle track lighting casting a soft glow in front of each chair. The chair Al was sitting in looked like a throne, and behind him hung a massive tapestry of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling.

  Once they were safely inside, no-neck relocked the door behind them and turned to Al. “You be needin’ anything else right now, Mister Fiorello?”

  Al said, “Thanks Tiny. I think we’re good.”

  Pointing to the phone on the conference table, Tiny said, “I’ll call you on that phone if I sees anythin’,” and he disappeared through another door that looked like a panel in the wall.

  Al pointed to a clock on the wall, which read 8:15. “Right on time. I appreciate that. Did you guys eat?”

  Not knowing what to make of the whole situation, Harry said, “We’re fine, Al. Thanks for desert.” Then, gesturing at his surroundings, he asked, “What is this place?”

  “Oh, this,” said Al, feigning normalcy. “Like I said, it’s a place some of my clients use when they conduct private business in the Boston area.”

  Right, thought Harry, private business, like how to make sure that longshot comes in at Suffolk Downs. “So this room—”

  “You don’t need to worry about anyone listening,” said Al, “which is why I thought it would be a good place to talk about that phone number.”

  Harry rubbed his hand along the back of one of the leather chairs, thinking it was the softest leather he’d ever felt. “What’s this gonna cost us, Al?”

  Al smiled a knowing little smile and his eyes crinkled at the temples. “Hello Denise. How are you doing with all this?”

  Steadfastly, Denise replied, “That depends on how you answer my husband’s question.”

  Al nodded and said, “You’re a lucky man, Harry. It must comfort you greatly to know you’ve got someone in your corner no matter what.”

  Harry said, “It goes both ways, Al.” Then, he looked at Denise and said, “But I am a lucky man.”

  Al took a moment, seemingly contemplating something. As if defending himself, he said, “I play it straight, Harry. I’m a believer in the law, and while my clients may not be the cream of society, the law protects them as much as it protects you and me. I bend no rules and I make no excuses, and I operate to the letter of that law. If my legal opponents cannot provide the burden of proof they need to make their cases, then I win. If my clients have broken the law and I cannot refute the charges according to the law, then my clients suffer the consequences—and they know that. Like I said, I make no excuses.” Al tilted his head and looked Harry in the eye. “It’s a different code of honor, but I can stand up for what I do, Harry. I’d like to think that it’s what makes me one of the brothers.”

  Harry wondered how long Al had been looking to get that off his chest. He wondered further why it was important for Al to say that now. “You didn’t answer my question, Al, and I didn’t fall off the turnip truck yesterday. What’s this gonna cost us?”

  “You’re a smart guy, Harry, and you’re right—there’s always a payback, but in this case it’s not gonna cost you anything. You have my word on that.”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “I’d like to ask you the same question,” Al replied. “I’ve wanted to ask that for a while now.”

  “Hutch was one of us. I want to find out who killed him and bring the bastard to justice.”

  “Would you do the same thing if it was me that died in that car?”

  It was a legitimate question, one that Harry hadn’t been prepared for. “If any of the brothers died the way Hutch did, and the authorities failed to investigate like they did with Hutch, yeah, I think I might go down this road again, but Hutch was a special friend to me. I gotta be honest with you, Al, it would depend on the circumstances.”

  Al nodded. “Honest answer. Fair enough.”

  “What about you, Al? Do you want to find Hutch’s killer and bring him to justice? Up to you, man. I don’t want to pretend like I’m some sort of moral high ground here. I’ll understand either way.”

  “You’re fuckin’ A goddamn right I do,” Al replied, “but maybe for different reasons.” He looked at Denise and added, “Oh, sorry for the cursing, Denise. I know you hate that.”

  She waved it away and Harry went on, “Then tell me you found out who was on the other end of that phone call when Hutch died. If that person wasn’t Hutch’s killer, he knows who is.”

  “I think I got us closer,” Al said. “A lot closer.”

  “Why all this?” Harry asked, indicating the surroundings.

  “Just listen and you’ll know,” Al said. “But people are dying over this and I needed to make sure we were in a secure environment. It’s for my own benefit as well as yours.” He indicated a couple of chairs at the table. “The phone number we’re talking about belonged to a burner phone. If that phone was purchased with cash, it’s li
terally impossible to know who purchased it.”

  “So Hutch probably wasn’t talking to someone he knew,” Harry concluded.

  “Not necessarily,” Al responded. “But whether or not that was the case the person who purchased it probably didn’t want the conversation traced back to him.”

  “So we’re dead in the water.”

  “Again, not necessarily,” said Al. “While it may not be possible to ID the person who actually purchased the phone, it is possible to determine when the phone went online, and it’s also possible to determine who received calls from that phone, and when.”

  Harry smiled. “And you have that information.”

  Al smiled back. “I’m working on it, but getting that information comes with a lot of risk, maybe too much risk.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the program we need to obtain that information belongs to the NSA.”

  Harry’s eyes got real wide. “NSA, as in National Security Agency.”

  “That’s right,” Al verified. “And hacking into that network is a big time no-no.”

  More than a little surprised, Harry asked, “How do you know this?”

  “I told you before Harry, I know people. Why don’t we just leave it at that? Besides, we may not need to go there.”

  “Because?”

  “Because some burner phones need to be activated using another phone, either another cell phone or a land line. In order to activate the burner phone, the purchaser calls an activation number, which more than likely is a call center in India. In order to activate the phone and establish a phone number, the purchaser has to give the operator the phone’s IMEI number.”

  “What the hell is that?”

  “IMEI is short for International Mobile Equipment Identity. It’s a unique number used to identify your phone, sort of like a license plate number for your car, and it is usually located under the battery cover. It will tell you who manufactured the phone, and it’s used to connect the phone to the right network. The call center operator will ask for this IMEI number, and will also ask the purchaser for his or her name and address so that a phone number and area code can be assigned based on that address. Essentially that it, no other information is required.”

  It was Denise who picked up on it first. “Are you saying that somewhere in the world there’s a name and address associated with the phone number we’re talking about?”

  Al said, “Possibly.”

  Harry jumped in and said, “Wait a minute. What if the purchaser didn’t care about the damn area code? What if the purchaser gave a bogus name and address when activating the phone?”

  Al replied, “That’s the chance we take, but most people know that burner phones that are purchased with cash are virtually untraceable so they might slip up and give their actual name and address when activating the phone. If they did—and I know this is a big if—then we can check to see if there are any credit cards associated with that name. If they didn’t, we can then do another check to see if any additional minutes were purchased at some other time.”

  “How would that help us?” Harry asked.

  “You can purchase what are called top-up minutes two ways. You can go into a store and purchase cards with additional minutes which are then loaded into the phones using a code, or, more conveniently, you can purchase additional minutes online.”

  “And if the dumbass purchased the top-up minutes online, then he or she would have had to pay with a credit card, which might be traceable to the name and address used when activating the phone.”

  “It might be traceable to something,” said Al. “Even if the name and address are both fake, and even if the credit card was obtained with bogus information, someone is paying that credit card bill. In addition, if the minutes were purchased online, you might even be able to trace the IP address of whoever purchased them.”

  Harry looked at Al and said, “Al, you’re a genius.”

  “Not me,” said Al, “but I know a couple of freelancers who can pretty much get past any firewall on the planet. Actually, for them, this wasn’t that tough.”

  Harry leaned on the conference table and took aim on Al. “Are you telling me they came up with a name associated with that burner phone?”

  Al pulled a piece of paper out of the inside breast pocket of his blazer and laid it on the table. Harry picked it up and unfolded the paper.

  Up to her eyeballs in the suspense, Denise said, “Harry, who is it?”

  Harry put the piece of paper back down on the table and said, “CIA Special Agent Darryl Breckenridge.”

  Denise said, “I told you he was slimy.”