Hard Candy (Tom Keeler Book 4), page 17
He said, “You didn’t need to protect me. Could have told them about me.”
Mini shot back, “They didn’t deserve to know shit.”
“That’s true.” He pointed at her face. “Might have avoided that.”
Mini ignored him, sipped at the bourbon. Candy set a bowl of ice and a kitchen towel on the table, along with rubbing alcohol and cotton pads. Keeler allowed her to move back to the stove before speaking. “The guy who showed up and hit you. Tell me about him. Did he leave after?”
Mini sipped bourbon. “Ugly fuck with a graying goatee and bad teeth. Pink face. Guy was pissed off, kind of hysterical. Shows up, figures out that I’m not telling him anything, that I don’t actually know anything. Hits me and leaves.”
Keeler nodded. He figured it was the same guy with the blue Ford pickup who’d tried to get the laptop from him at Mini’s house. “So you didn’t know him. Hadn’t seen him before.”
“No. I recognized Mike Stephanopoulos right off the bat. Then that other guy, Tommy from down at the station.” She sipped bourbon. Looked at Keeler with knowing eyes. “These aren’t professional kidnappers, man. They’re a bunch of local morons caught up in something. I don’t know about the goatee guy.” She shook her head. “Can’t believe Mike Stephanopoulos is dead, what an idiot.”
As if he’d died from natural causes, like a falling tree. Keeler looked at her, engaging her eyes, wet with tears. She was beautiful. He didn’t say anything, reminded that Mini hadn’t yet learned about Frankie’s death. He figured it was going to be Candy’s job to disclose the information. Preferably in the privacy of a bedroom, sisters huddled into a familiar embrace.
Mini looked at him now, shot glass lifted and whiskey half gone. “So what happened with the laptop? Why did you bring it into the lost and found with books? Where’s the computer now?”
Keeler explained it to her, how the guy with the goatee had braced him outside of her house. The footprints in the snow and the car that had been there in the night. How he’d taken the computer and gotten it into the relative safety of the UPS delivery system. How they could pick it up in the morning and deal with it. She listened, sipping on the bourbon and looking down at Candy’s kitchen table, nodding once in a while. She looked up when he was finished.
“That was smart.” Her eyes bore into his like burning coals.
He had a hard time looking away, so he went to work cleaning up Mini’s injury. He applied alcohol to one of the cotton pads and scooted himself close to her. She turned her head slightly, glanced once at him and then looked away, allowing him inside her personal space. Keeler worked the cotton pad around the area on the left side of her face. Her hair brushed his wrists and forearms. He could feel her warmth.
They stayed like that for a few minutes. Keeler taking his time, Mini closing her eyes and relaxing. He had his left hand on the table and she covered it with hers, squeezing hard and then letting her hand just stay there, keeping the warm connection.
Candy had her back turned across the kitchen, heating up leftovers. “This isn’t ma’s cooking or anything, but it’s going to do the job.”
Mini looked at Keeler, making eye contact. He drew back. She took her hand off his and picked up the bourbon glass. He got an ice pack going with the kitchen towel and handed it to her. “Keep that on your face for a while and it won’t blow up too bad.”
She spoke softly. “Thank you.”
Candy was ready, two plates of pasta in her two hands. “Come on Min, let’s go to my room. These guys can fend for themselves.”
The sisters left the kitchen. Keeler got it, Candy wanted alone time with her sister. They had things to discuss. He wasn’t hungry, so he cleared up the kitchen and washed out the glasses.
Vitalek was laid out on the sofa, deep in a sleeping bag that he’d pulled out of his pack. The whole room smelled like a camp site. Keeler eased a folded blanket from under Vitalek’s sleeping form and took it over to the easy chair. He removed his outer layers, feeling good and airy in boxer shorts. He allowed himself to sink back into the cushions and pulled the blanket over, happy to be reclining in such luxurious conditions.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Keeler woke to the smell of fresh coffee and the machine-gun-fire tapping of fingers on a keyboard in close proximity. His internal clock was already telling him that it was late in the morning, for him. Maybe ten o’clock. He opened his eyes and found himself looking at Vitalek, stretched out on the couch with a laptop resting on a pillow perched on his belly. He was typing furiously, intent on the screen. Keeler had worked with people who could touch type before. Being able to type blind had its advantages.
Vitalek swung his clear blue eyes over without moving his head. “Sorry if I woke you.”
“No problem. How many words per minute?”
“Never counted.” He went back to the screen. “I made coffee. They’re not awake yet.”
Keeler threw the blanket off and sprang up from the chair, stretched his body to the ceiling, and then dropped to a squat before standing up again feeling perfectly ready.
Even better with a cup of fresh-brewed black coffee. Candy had her coffee cups stored in a reasonable location, easy to guess and away from dust accumulation. The cups themselves were divided into two varieties. Mugs with slogans and mugs without slogans. Keeler chose a mug with the words “Sisters Before Misters.” He filled it with black coffee from a French press on the kitchen table and brought it back to the easy chair like a prize.
Keeler said, “What do you have there, emails?”
Vitalek nodded. “Haven’t looked at my correspondence for a week, the whole time I was up in the woods. I made the mistake of opening the laptop while I was waiting for the coffee.” He gazed at Keeler with a smile. “Now, I’m screwed.”
Keeler took a slug of coffee and let it run around in his mouth before swallowing. Good coffee, well dosed and strong. He hadn’t checked his email account in over a month. He said, “How many spoons of coffee did you use?”
“I don’t calculate in spoons.”
“What’s your method?”
“Ratio of coffee to water, estimate the size of the pot and then make your best calculation. I figure the pot is a liter. I use a liter of water, sixty grams of coffee and then add a couple more for the pot, you know.”
“But you ballpark the coffee, unless you’ve got a scale.”
“Yeah, ballpark it.”
Keeler took another sip. “Good coffee.”
“Grandmother taught me.” Vitalek was nodding, still absorbed in his typing. Now he was more intent. He cursed under his breath and executed a wild flurry of clicking and clacking keys, fingers flying over the surface of the keyboard. He glanced at Keeler. “I have to fix this, just give me a second.”
Keeler didn’t mind. He drank coffee and observed. He’d been around computers quite a bit back in the military. There had always been a couple of geeks assigned to special tactics, like a small on demand nerd force. One thing they all had in common was the ability to type furiously at a million miles per hour. He had no real idea of how the computer stuff worked, but it looked as if coding took a lot of concentration, like playing a musical instrument.
Three minutes later, Vitalek snapped his laptop shut and looked up. “All right, sorry.” He lifted a cup that had been perched precariously between his hip and the sofa back. Managed to get it operational and sipped. He kicked his feet and made himself more upright, head back against the arm rest.
Keeler said, “What was that, computer coding?”
Vitalek stared into the ceiling and spoke slowly. Spacing his words and kind of rolling his eyes as if they were also searching for what to say. “Yes, exactly. I had to fix something that a colleague of mine broke a couple of days ago and nobody thought to tell me about.”
“A couple of days is a long time in computer world.”
“Sure is.” Vitalek laughed. “Who knows what could have happened if someone had tried to use the broken part. Might have erased a couple of billion dollars or something. Oops!”
“You have the internet here?”
“Sure.” He tapped the side of his laptop, a black plastic nub stuck out with a green light blinking furiously as the data flowed.
Keeler saw what it was, a mobile data key. Convenient. He said, “Let’s search something on the internet, if that’s okay.”
“I love a good old internet search.” Vitalek opened the laptop again and put his finger on the keyboard, repositioned his face to the screen. Keeler noticed the security measures. Not just a password. Vitalek had facial recognition and a biometric finger print, in addition to the password. “What are we searching for?”
Keeler said, “Let’s find information on a limited liability corporation registered in Delaware, Kitchewan Old Cars. I’d like to know who the owner is, and also run a search relating the company to the name Pat, or Patrick.”
Vitalek grunted and got his fingers working on the computer. Keeler remembered how the axe guy had thought he was Pat. He’d called Pat’s name, coming out of the woods into the clearing.
Vitalek’s furious typing slowed to a crawl and stopped. He drawled. “Okay. Well, Kitchewan Old Cars is a limited liability company registered in Delaware, for tax purposes we assume. I know that you already know that.” He darted a look at Keeler. “You want to guess who the company is registered to?”
“Pat.”
“Ten points. One Patrick Rooney of Newark, New Jersey.”
The blue pickup truck with the Jersey plates.
“Jersey. See if he’s got any kind of an address here, in Kitchewan Landing.”
“Roger that.” Vitalek returned to the internet, looking like he was enjoying the exercise.
Keeler was thinking, if Pat Rooney’s got an address here, maybe they’d find Santarelli and the other surviving taxi guys at Rooney’s house and wrap it up. Whatever they had gotten into, he didn’t care. What he cared about was the safety of the DeValla sisters.
The apartment had a large bathroom on the other side of the sofa. Keeler had already paid it a visit during the night, had seen the shower in there and the towels, stacked up on a steel-framed shelving unit. Fluffy and fragrant, unlike himself. He rose from the easy chair and stretched again. Joints popped and cracked and vertebrae groaned.
Vitalek made a face and looked at him. “Don’t tell me you’re going to start doing push-ups.”
“No. I’m going to take a shower.”
He strode barefoot across the carpeted floor in his boxer shorts, opened the bathroom door with a confident twist, and stepped inside. Mini DeValla was standing on the other side of the bathroom in her bra and panties. There was a connecting door to Candy’s bedroom. Mini was turned away from him, examining her bruised face in the mirror. Keeler managed not to stare at her body but caught her eye in the reflection. He wasn’t embarrassed and didn’t apologize for the mistake, but he was polite. He opened the door again, just enough to step out and close it behind him.
Keeler leaned back against the bathroom door, an afterimage of DeValla in his mind, like staring into the sun. She hadn’t frowned at his intrusion. Whatever it was, the eye contact, the expression, it had been warm rather than cold. And even though he had managed to avoid staring at her body, he’d seen it anyway and even had the time to read the words tattooed vertically to each of DeValla’s perfectly formed calves, wild on the left and kitty on the right.
Keeler came back to the easy chair and rolled the words around in his mind. Two words, two legs, one remarkable concept. Wild Kitty.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
In the meantime, Vitalek had been busy.
He was nodding to himself on the couch, staring into the screen. “Interesting.” Each syllable pronounced as if it were a word. “Very, very, interesting.”
“What do you have there, an address?”
“Maybe.”
Keeler said nothing. Which elicited a look from Vitalek, who seemed impressed with himself.
“I got him through his socials. Look at this.” He held his laptop so that Keeler could see.
It was the guy who’d accosted Keeler outside of Mini DeValla’s house. The same blue Ford pickup truck registered to Kitchewan Old Cars. The photograph showed the man with unkempt dirty blond hair and a greying goatee set into an unshaven face. The image wasn’t flattering. It looked hot out, summer in the Hudson Valley. Rooney, in cutoffs and a Mötley Crüe t-shirt, had a bead of sweat on his lip and was making a face in front of two dogs who were howling and slobbering and chained to the bed of a pickup truck.
Keeler said, “That guy is Pat Rooney, huh?”
“So it seems.” Vitalek rattled on the keyboard, and a riot of boxed computer windows flipped and flickered across the screen. Most of them were photos of Rooney engaged in leisure activities. “Got him triangulated through a bunch of social media sites and also, importantly, through other people’s socials. People he’s friended and stuff.” He looked up at Keeler. “You don’t use social media.”
“No.” It occurred to him that Vitalek might have already checked him out while he slept and maybe had even taken a photo of his face and run it through a computer program.
Vitalek nodded, as if what Keeler said had made sense and was important. “Lack of a social media presence is smart but can be read as an indication that you’re up to no good. You know that, right?”
“Know what?”
“That keeping up the appearance of a social media presence is one way of deflecting unwanted interest.”
“You mean, people with no social media presence are suspicious. You’re suggesting that I get on board.”
“To certain parties it’s suspicious, yes. The conventional wisdom being, what do those people have to hide? You understand, your position is non-conventional, Keeler; you’re an outlier. If you really wanted to hide in plain sight you could just have someone post for you, or set up some automation.”
Keeler didn’t even try to untangle what Vitalek had just said. “We’re not interested in me here. Get back to Rooney.”
Vitalek did a little duck with his head. “No problem. So this guy, Rooney. He’s not simply on all the socials, he’s the kind of guy who uses the internet full on without any regard for hygiene.” He flipped to a browser window that showed a young woman on a bed. “He’s into cam porn and doesn’t use a VPN. So, check this out.” Vitalek flicked a key to display a window with a black background and a tangle of white text that looked like computer code.
“What’s that?”
“IP addresses of visitors to this cam site. Site was hacked a year ago and they data dumped all of this onto some random cloud storage service.” He giggled. “I found it after running an IP search for Rooney.”
“How’d you get the initial IP address to search?”
Vitalek shrugged. “Once I saw he was an unhygienic cam site dude, I did a reverse image search and got lucky.” He found a window and pointed to it. “Rooney uploaded a photograph of himself onto a free image sharing site. See that?”
Rooney was by a lake holding a largemouth bass. Keeler saw it, half knew what Vitalek was talking about. “I see it.”
“Image site records IP address of uploader and includes it in the post.” Vitalek held up his hands, fingers making quotation marks. “For transparency.” Vitalek rolling his eyes. “Duh.”
“Did that give you a street address in the real world?”
Vitalek pointed to the pickup truck photo. “Not exactly as simple as that, but I think this is his house.” Behind the truck was a house, set back from a small grassy plot with a worn picket fence.
“What makes you think it’s his house?”
Vitalek shuttled through several other pictures showing the same house. “I don’t know, but it’s in a bunch of other photographs, so there’s a chance it is.”
“Did you geolocate?”
“Of course.” He flipped open a map. “Thompson Hill Drive, probably number 68.”
“Kitchewan?”
“Kitchewan Landing. About two and a half miles from here.”
Vitalek was clearly excited by the chase, enjoying the facility by which he’d found Rooney’s address. Keeler knew people who did that kind of a thing for a living, but they weren’t normal people.
“What are you doing here, Vitalek?”
“Doing as in what, here on this couch?”
“As in here in Kitchewan Landing.”
“Oh.” Vitalek swung his legs over into a sitting position. His toes wriggled on the rug. “I’m supposed to attend a conference some place, I forget the name.” He gave a goofy grin. “Maybe someone’s house.”
“Copenhagen House.”
Vitalek snapped his fingers. “That’s it. Is that the only possible location for a conference in this town?”
“Could be. Unless you wanted to confer at the diner.”
Vitalek perked up. “Speaking of, I’m quite hungry.”
Keeler ignored that. He knew who he was looking at, sitting casual on the sofa, the guy Jill from Copenhagen House had talked about, the protagonist. He was having a hard time imagining Vitalek as a crypto king and one of the wealthiest people on the planet.
He said, “Does the name Irma Rosenbaum mean anything to you Vitalek?”
Vitalek’s gaze came around slowly to his, something in the eyes gone flatter than before, wiser than he was letting on. “You know who I am.”
Not a question, a statement.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Keeler decided to put about half of his cards on the table, keep the other half in his pocket. “Rosenbaum is in the hospital; they didn’t tell you?”
“What? No. Nobody told me anything. I’ve been out of touch.” Vitalek looked genuinely shocked.
“Because you’ve been camping.”
“Right.” Vitalek frowned. “Hold on, what happened with Irma, why is she in the hospital? We’re supposed to be on a panel this afternoon. Did they cancel it?”
