Into the Fire(47)
Evan circled to the opening in the desk. “Look, I doubt you’ll be able to uncloak—”
“‘Uncloak’? What is this, Middle Earth? Easy, Gandalf, I just need to grab the IMEI—that’s international mobile equipment identifier for you mouth-breathers in the room.” At this, she directed a pointed look at Evan and then at the dog, snoozing in the corner. “It’s the fifteen-digit number burned into each phone they use to authenticate you to the network, charge you for minutes, all that. Then I’ll just jump into the maintenance channel of the telco switch and use their SS7 hacks to look up which number texted this IMEI at…” Scrolling through the Turing’s text messages, she cocked her head, not unlike the dog. “Wow. Kama Sutra, huh? Here we go—9:37 last night—and wham. Call detail record, bitches!”
He stared blankly at the wall of numbers on the screen. “So how do I…?”
“Subscriber data’s in another part of the database, dummy.” She tucked back in, fingers blurring. “Lookee here. Your caller’s account is registered to … Three Monkeys Café in Glendale.”
She spun around in her chair, pulling in her knees, a full 360 ending with her bare feet stomped down and jazz hands.
“I’d express admiration for what you just did,” Evan said. “But your ego doesn’t need any shoring up.”
“Who is this guy anyways?”
“Looks like I’ll have to head to Glendale to find out.”
“No, I mean, who is he, like, contextually?”
“Seems like he’s the boss who unleashed Terzian,” Evan said, plucking the phone from the desk and backpedaling out of the cockpit-like enclosure. “Which means the money-laundering operation’s bigger than I thought.”
“Why don’t you bring me the thumb drive, let me take a spin through the spreadsheets?”
“I already analyzed them.”
She stripped a Red Vine from a plastic tub and flopped one end into her mouth. “I’d think by now you’d have learned to extrapolate what my insulting reply to that might be.”
He held up his hands. “Okay. Uncle. I’ll bring you the thumb drive when I can.”
As he started out, she called after him, “Take the dog with you.”
“Can’t hear you over the music.”
The ridgeback lifted his head from his paws, his forehead wrinkled in a show of intense interest. Or concern.
“Take the dog with you!”
“Sorry, still can’t hear you.”
Evan winked at the dog and closed the door behind him.
25
An Unusually Painful Slip
At the third hour, things got interesting.
Evan had parked himself across Brand Boulevard, Glendale’s commercial thoroughfare, on the second-floor terrace of a career college. Flopped open before him were several dog-eared study guides he’d bought used downstairs. To blend in with the denizens, he’d picked up an abomination of an iced-coffee drink with whipped cream and caramel streaking the insides of the clear plastic. It reminded him of the cheapo peanut-butter-and-jelly combo jars they used to get at the foster home around Thanksgiving when the churches donated baskets. The drink was the size of a fire hydrant and contained enough caffeine to make a racehorse’s heart explode. Or to fuel Joey for fifteen minutes.
Up the street the Alex Theatre’s gaudy Greco-Egyptian fa?ade funneled into a hundred-foot art deco column, lit with neon and topped with a spiked ball befitting a medieval flail. The theater was hosting a Buster Keaton marathon, the signage bringing Evan back to late nights in the study with Jack watching Buster scurry around a locomotive like an ant surveying a leaf. Jack rarely laughed, but he’d prop his cheek on his fist, the wrinkles at his temple conveying something like pleased contentment. It was rare to see Jack at peace with his place in the world, even if only for the two-hour running time. Every other waking second was spent striving for the ever-receding horizon of perfection. Evan drank up those precious moments of leisure with Jack. He imagined for most people that was what life generally felt like. He sensed that once this mission was completed, that would be the sensation he’d search for.
But today Evan wasn’t here for the movie theater. Or the steroidal coffee.
He was here because of the view, as clean a vantage as he could have hoped for across four lanes of traffic onto the entrance of the Three Monkeys Café.
Half of Glendale’s population was composed of folks with Armenian roots. The café, with its overpriced khash and khorovats, seemed to cater to the upper slice of the community. The whole area had an upscale gleam not unlike that of Violet’s South Pasadena neighborhood. Sun-kissed buildings, breeze-ruffled foliage, pop-up shops selling artisanal ice cream or hemp purses or accent tables made out of driftwood.
It brought to mind how far Los Angeles proper had slid. From downtown sidewalks cloaked in a forever haze of freeway exhaust to Eastside shanties ready to topple from a strong wind or a stray bullet. These surrounding towns and incorporated neighborhoods with their own taxes and budgets fared better than the great wheezing city, a beast of burden bearing the load of four million souls.
A convoy of Town Cars interrupted Evan’s musings. Three heavy-duty Lincolns, black as pitch, rolled up to the valet. Six doors opened in concert. Twelve loafers set down on the asphalt. Even at this distance, the clunk of the closing doors was audible, armored metal reseating in reinforced frames.