The Steel Kiss

“Bingo,” Archer said, smiling.

More sedately Whitmore mused, “We could argue that the controller is defective because it wasn’t shielded from ambient signals.”

Rhyme said, “Who posted that? We should talk to him.”

The blog gave little personal information and no address.

Rhyme said, “Rodney.”

“Who?” Archer asked.

“You’ll see,” Rhyme said. A glance at Cooper, who smiled knowingly and said, “I’ll get the volume.” And turned down the control on the speakerphone.

And despite the reduced decibels, when the phone was answered a moment later, relentless rock music pounded into the parlor.

“A bit more,” Rhyme called to Cooper, who complied.

A voice from the other end of the line, “’Lo?”

Archer frowned in curiosity.

“Rodney! Can we lose the music?”

“Sure. Hi, Lincoln.” The chugga-chugga bass diminished to a whisper. It was not, however, lost.

Rodney Szarnek was a senior detective with the NYPD’s elite Computer Crimes Unit. He was impressively brilliant at collaring perps and helping other investigators with the computer side of a case, though irritatingly in love with the worst music on earth.

Rhyme explained that the detective was on speaker, then told him about the case. The smart controller in an escalator might have malfunctioned, resulting in a gruesome death. “But it’s not a case, Rodney.”

“How’s that?”

“It’s civil. Mel Cooper’s here but only on vacation.”

“And I’m confused.”

“I’m not working with the department, Rodney,” Rhyme said patiently.

“No.”

“Yes.”

“If you’ve quit, why have you not quit? I ask only because we’re having this conversation.”

“I resigned from criminal practice. I’m consulting on a civil case.”

A pause. “Oh. Well. In that case I can’t really help you. You understand, Wish I could.”

“No, I know that. All I need is for you to tell us how to find the physical address of somebody who’s written a blog about these controllers. We want to talk to him, maybe hire him as an expert witness. Pretend we’re at a cocktail party, you and me.”

“Well, finding somebody online? That’s easy enough. A WhoIs search. W-H-O-I-S. Run the.com or.net name through that. Of course, he might be using a privacy service as the domain registrant. That’s so pissed-off ex-wives or pissed-off ex-husbands can’t find out where the registrant lives.”

Rhyme looked to Cooper, who typed at the keyboard in front of his monitor. He nodded at the results. Rhyme read them. “It says Privacy Plus, New Zealand.”

“Yep, that’s a service to mask the physical address. And New Zealand? No court order. You’re screwed.”

Rhyme said calmly, “But we can’t afford to be screwed, Rodney. Let’s think harder.”

Szarnek cleared his throat. “Well, speaking theoretically, you catch that word? The-o-ret-i-cally? To get past a privacy service, one might go online and download and install—on a flash drive, of course, to be burned later—a program like, let’s just say, HiddenSurf. Then one would run that and then do a search of Russian websites for a program called, let’s just say, Ogrableniye. Means ‘robbery’ in Russian. Don’t we love our Slavic friends’ subtlety? Ogrableniye is a hacker code. Completely illegal. Terrible. I don’t approve one bit. Because it allows people to hack into a, say, a privacy service even in, oh, say, New Zealand, and look up the physical address of someone whose IP—internet—address you know.”

“We’d better hang up now, Rodney.”

“I’m in favor of that. Although how can we hang up if you and I haven’t even been talking?”

Music rose to lofty decibels and they disconnected.

Rhyme said, “Did somebody write all that down, know what to do? We’ve got to—”

Archer looked up from her computer screen and said, “Bad news, good news.”

“What?”

“I followed his instructions. The bad news is you’ve already started to get Russian porn spam. But the good news: I’ve got the blogger’s address. And, the better news: He’s here in town.”

CHAPTER 18

Too many people in this city,” Ron Pulaski said. Then seemed to regret the comment since the perp they were now seeking was in his own demented way addressing the population situation.

The young officer’s complaint really was that there were too many people crossing streets against lights and that those lights were not in his and Amelia Sachs’s favor.

She, however, wasn’t that concerned about either limitation. True, transit was slow but they were making steady progress from One PP to the intersection where the gypsy cab had dropped Unsub 40 the night he’d murdered Todd Williams with his inelegant but effective tool. Sachs was engaging in what she called the touchless nudge—easing the car close to those blocking the way with an air of sufficient distraction to make the pedestrian feel deliciously imperiled and, accordingly, scoot out of the way.

Finally they escaped from the downtown area known in the 1800s as Five Points, the most dangerous few square miles in the United States (now far more pristine, though, some said cynically, populated by as many criminals as back in the day; the neighborhood embraced City Hall).