The Lights of Tenth Street (62 page)

Ronnie heard murmuring in the kitchen as she and Tiffany walked back in. Doug was standing close behind his wife at the stove, his arms around her as the two carried on a soft conversation.

They broke off when they heard footsteps, smiling, welcoming Tiffany, shooing them into some chairs, laying out fruit, pancakes and syrup. Ronnie allowed herself to be served, her heart aching at the image of Doug and Sherry snuggling at the stove.

Was this something she’d ever have? This happy home life—the husband, the two kids, the pretty house with a secure job and the respect of the community? No, she didn’t belong here. This wasn’t her world.

She stared out the pass-through from the kitchen, watching the morning sun stream through a bay window onto the neutral-colored sofas. Her world wasn’t one of gentle lights and morning sun; it was one of darkness, of hard neon, of pounding music and sights that would shock respectable people.

She hardly listened as Sherry and Doug asked Tiffany questions about herself, putting the pieces together, questioning another girl from the wrong side of town.

Why did they care? Was this all pretense? Why would perfect strangers take in two scared strippers—two
prostitutes
—give them a bed, breakfast, and what looked like friendship, no strings attached? It didn’t add up. Their nice religious sentiments made no sense to Ronnie. What were they getting from it?

She watched as Tiffany warmed to the couple—she had derisively called the house “yuppieville” last night when she and Ronnie were changing—and began answering their questions, telling these perfect strangers more than anyone at the club knew about her. And all because they seemed to actually care.

“Now, ladies.” Doug broke her reverie, his voice turning serious. “We need to
figure out what to do about everything that happened last night. I have some ideas, if you want to hear them.”

Both girls nodded.

“The FBI opens for regular business in less than an hour. I’m going to call them from the office, and see if we can make better headway. But in the meantime, Ronnie, I’m wondering if we can attack this on two fronts. If we could figure out what Maris put on that Palm Pilot that was so all-fired important, we might be able to get more attention from the FBI.”

“You’d think,” Tiffany broke in, her voice angry, “that it would be enough to explain that we suspect Maris was an agent and she said to bring the Palm Pilot in immediately.”

“You would.” Doug sighed. “But I’ve actually known a few policemen and even an FBI agent before, and they can be both incredibly busy and incredibly cynical. They see hoaxes and juvenile plays for attention all the time. Those things take just as much time as the real leads. And we don’t even know if Maris was her real name, so it may not be in their system at all. I think it usually takes them some time to sift through things and figure out whether something is worth following up on or not.”

“And Maris thought it was urgent. A matter of national security, she said.” Ronnie frowned. “Of course, I don’t know what ‘urgent’ really means. She didn’t give me any kind of deadline. So maybe a few extra hours is okay.” She brightened a bit. “And after all, maybe the police came to the rescue last night, and she’s already down there.”

Doug looked at her with kind eyes. “Maybe. But that makes it even more imperative that we not wait. We should probably push as much as we can; do everything we can from our end. So I’ll call them
again
in an hour, but I also think we should investigate the Palm Pilot. They aren’t listening to us now, but if we can show them something specific, they might.” He turned to Ronnie. “I tried it last night, and it’s password protected, encoded somehow. I couldn’t get further than the first screen. But we’ve got some great tech people at work that might be able to make some headway. My boss is also a genius with that sort of thing. If he has time, I’d like to run it by him and see if he can get into the Palm Pilot so we can see what’s on there.”

“Okay.” Ronnie grimaced. “As long as we don’t lose the thing, or no one swipes it!”

Doug laughed. “Don’t worry. We have a high-security building. It’ll be safe there.”

Jordan’s secretary ignored her phone line, ignored the internal office intercom, ignored pretty much everything except her scowling boss and his incessant commands. He was in a foul mood, his usual energetic demeanor nowhere to be seen.

She typed as fast as she could on the keyboard, trying to keep up with the growing “to do” list. Jordan had emerged from his tightly shut office a moment ago, barked another order, and disappeared back inside. He had instructed her that he didn’t want to be interrupted unless it was a true emergency—and maybe not even then.

So she ignored all attempts to get her attention, kept her head down, and worked as fast as she could.

Doug finally stopped trying to buzz her and walked down the long hallway to Jordan’s office. He stopped in front of the secretary, smiling down at her. Everyone else but this lady was relaxed today. It was New Year’s Eve for goodness’ sake! She needed to lighten up.

“What do you want?”

“Jordan pushing you today?”

“Yes. What do you want?”

Okaaay … be that way!

“I need to ask Jordan a question, if he has a second.”

“He doesn’t. He ordered me not to disturb him for any reason today.”

“I understand. But I think this is pretty important. I need his help with something.”

“What is it?” The secretary lifted her eyes for a fraction of a second, continuing to type, making it plain that Doug was a pain in the neck.

Doug held out the Palm Pilot. “I’m wondering if he can help me break the encryption and get into this device. There’s an important file on it that we need access to.”

“I don’t think that would count as an emergency. Ask someone else.”

“Okay, fine! But if they can’t help, I’m coming back. It’s an urgent matter.”

The secretary just kept typing. Doug made an exasperated noise and went back down the hall.

“Mary?” He stopped by his assistant’s desk. “Who else, other than Jordan, is really good at encryption stuff?”

“Well, there’s a couple of guys down on three—” Her eyes brightened. “And that
new kid—the intern down there—he was able to decrypt our computers when the new security software went haywire.”

“Good! Thanks!” Doug hurried down to the third floor and went looking for the resident boy genius. He was a college kid—sophomore at Georgia Tech—but seemed to know more about information technology than half the tech staff.

He found the kid in his cubicle, playing a computer game.

“Hard at work, are you?”

The intern jerked to his feet, stunned to see the chief financial officer staring at him.

“Uh—uh—sorry, sir!”

“No problem. I was just thinking we needed to lighten up today since it’s a holiday.”

“Uh, yes, sir!”

“At ease, boy.” Doug chuckled, looking at the young man with his military buzz cut. The kid reminded him of himself at that age. Doug held out the Palm Pilot. “I have a sensitive problem I’m wondering if you can help me with. There’s something on this device that we need to see, but we can’t get in. And once we get in, I don’t know if we’ll be able to see the file. It would be the last file that was downloaded, if you can figure that out.”

“How many layers of encryption?”

“I don’t know. But it’s pretty urgent. Can you work on it and bring it right up when you’re done?”

“Yes, sir!” The kid took the Palm Pilot out of his hand. “Give me an hour or two and I’ll see what’s what.”

“Thanks. And don’t pass it around, please. If you can’t get in, come tell me directly.”

The intern nodded, already fiddling with the device and mumbling to himself.

Doug took the elevator back up to his office. Might as well try the FBI again; he’d waited long enough for a call back.

This time he got a more willing listener—someone with the title of “Special Agent”—but no more movement. The man seemed interested in his third-hand account of a possible undercover agent working in a strip club, but Doug could hear the skepticism in his voice when he relayed Maris’s comment about national security. Doug finished his story and sighed.

“Listen, I know you probably think this is a hoax, but I’m just passing along what the woman said.”

“Yes, sir—what the woman told the stripper, you mean. You didn’t actually hear her yourself.”

“Of course. But—”

“And where is this possible agent, now?”

“We don’t know. But Ronnie said she thought her life was in danger.”

“Uh,
huh
.” There was a pause, and Doug could practically hear the sigh over the telephone. “Tell you what. I see in the record that you’ve called four times now. I can tell you think this is important, sir—”

“I do.”

“—and we always appreciate the tips provided by the general public.”

Doug tried to keep the wry sound out of his voice. “I’m sure you do.”

“So let me fast-track this and ask around. But it’s too preliminary for you to come in for a meeting.”

“You don’t even want me to bring the Palm Pilot?”

“Well, sir, you’re always welcome to bring in any item you think might be of interest. But that’s your choice. I can’t promise that someone will get to it right away.”

Doug kept his mouth shut. He’d rather keep control of the device and see if he could crack it. Then maybe he’d have something concrete to get their attention.

The man was still talking. “If you still had that numeric code you said the strippers dropped, focusing this search wouldn’t be a problem. But the FBI is a large organization, and I don’t know who might’ve been dealing with this matter—if indeed someone was. It could’ve been an op run out of Washington, or even a completely different field office, for all I know.”

“I understand, sir.”

“We have your numbers, Mr. Turner—work, cell and home. Be assured, we’ll get back to you if something comes up.”

“Okay.”

Doug put down the phone, looked at the clock and grimaced. He had three or four business-related things that had to be done today—financial things that had to be cleared before midnight at the end of the year—but all this other stuff kept getting in the way.

He promised himself he’d return to the mystery as soon as the tech-wizard intern showed up with the Palm Pilot, and closed his door. Maybe he could get some of these other things cleared off his desk in the meantime.

Behind his own closed door, Jordan was almost continually on the secure cell phone he’d gotten just for this purpose. He called Tyson for the third time that hour.

“I forgot to ask—any sign of the girl?”

“No.” Tyson sounded frustrated. “We’ve made some progress, but haven’t turned anything up yet. There is one bouncer, Brian, who Marco had drafted early on. Since he’s loyal to us—he doesn’t know the full story, obviously—he agreed to join the search. They’ve visited all the coworkers, but no one has seen the girls. And they tried calling their cell phones, but no dice. One of the dancers said Sasha left her purse and cell phone behind at the club. But the police confiscated it. And Ronnie’s evidently not answering hers.”

“She’s smart.”

“That’s why she was in the group, after all.”

Jordan swore. “Family? Any luck?”

“Not yet. None of the other dancers know much about where they were from. The only thing they do know is that the girls were best friends growing up. So, we find one, we find the other.”

“All I want is that Palm Pilot!” Jordan slammed his fist on the desk. “The client was not pleased that the code had been compromised. If we get the thing, we should be able to tell whether anyone has looked at it or whether all this worry is for nothing.”

“We’re moving ahead with the preparations for tonight, though, Chief. You can reassure the client that, barring any last-minute problems, it should come off as planned.”

“No problems with the ad time?”

“No, that was purchased months ago. We’ve added a few secondary networks, of course. And there were a few that wanted to run the commercial too late. But we paid big enough premiums that none of them minded bumping whichever other ads were slated for that time slot.”

“What’s our expected impact? Any numbers yet?”

“Not as big a splash as Super Bowl Sunday, of course. Probably about a million hits.”

Jordan picked up a pen. “Give me the breakdown.”

“With almost 8 percent market penetration of over one-hundred million households, that’s at least eight million devices.”

Jordan was scribbling, smiling. “Right. Go on.”

“From our research, it appears that at least half of those households are in the Eastern time zone.”

“Excellent.”

“So assume—we’re being rough, here—that about four million devices are in that time zone, and maybe 25 percent of those will be watching the ball drop live on New Year’s Eve.”

“Hence, one million hits.”

“Well, we might actually get more, as presumably there will be more than one person watching in each household. In some households, there’ll be parties of dozens of people.”

“All sitting in front of their nice little television sets, one minute after midnight when the networks cut to their commercial breaks.”