Page 97 of Into the Fire

“Shodan?”

“Dude, c’mon, X. The search engine for Internet-connected devices? Every device that sends data out has a string that IDs what it is. Shodan searches all those strings, feeds you the geolocations based on the IP addresses. I bust into the cameras, and I’m looking at a bunch of ugly-ass felons sitting in jail. Oh—and a deputy in the control room picking his nose. Aaaand he’s eating it.”

Pulling on a T-shirt, Evan ducked into the bathroom and fingertipped in another specialized contact lens to cover his dilated right eye. Then he yanked open the other drawers, searching their contents.

“I’m gonna drop in a zero-day exploit now,” Joey said. “Make that two, so I have one for insurance. Hang on, and…”

Evan heard the pounding on his keyboard and wondered if she’d actually break it. It struck him how odd it was to hear another voice within the walls of his penthouse. He was used to drifting through the rooms accompanied only by the sound of his own breathing.

“The more secret digital doors into the system software we have, the better,” Joey was saying. “Then, to cover your ass, I can always slew a lens to face a wall or spoof a frame to show an empty room or just burn down the whole house with a distributed denial of service attack and be all, ‘How ya like me now, bizatches!’”

Beneath the sink he found the bottle he was looking for. Charcoal pills. He pocketed eight of them and stepped through the shower into the Vault.

Joey had shoved Vera II to the side and yanked the keyboard into her lap so she could type while cocked back in his chair at a breaking-point angle. Her dirty bare feet were up on the sheet-metal desk. A glass of orange juice rested on his foam mouse pad.

As he entered, the projection light hit him in the face, streaming glare and shadow across his eyes. He lifted the sweating glass off his mouse pad, swiping at the condensation ring with his wrist. “Don’t they teach the use of coasters in evil-hacker school?”

“Shockingly not on the curriculum,” Joey said.

Dog the dog lifted his leg and urinated in the corner. Joey swiveled her head from the dog to Evan, trying unsuccessfully to bite down a smile.

He watched the trickle leaking out from the wall. “This isn’t funny.”

“Actually, it’s really funny.”

“You’re gonna clean that. Paper towel in the kitchen and Clorox spray beneath the—”

“Whatevs. Once you see what I just did, you’re gonna drop the whole OCD routine.”

Evan came around the L-shaped desk, nearly tripping on her kicked-off shoes, and stood behind her to take in the OLED screens horseshoeing the walls.

One photograph was front and center.

A bland-looking man in his late forties. Side part, affable features, totally ordinary.

“Who’s that?”

“That’s your shot caller.” Joey flicked a hand over the mouse, bringing up a rap sheet for Benjamin Bedrosov. “Weird last name. I mean, I thought this was an Armenian operation.”

“Quite a few Russian Armenians had their surnames changed to end in ‘-ov’ somewhere along the way,” Evan said. “Like Garry Kasparov.”

“He that actor in all those westerns? High Noon and shit?”

Evan knew that a withering look would be wasted on her, so instead he studied the rap sheet more closely. A host of dismissed charges. Two failed convictions. A deep bench of defense attorneys with Century City and Beverly Hills addresses—a clear upgrade from Alexan Petro’s array of legal firepower. Under Aliases a single nickname was listed: Bedrock.

“He’s a full-on businessman,” Joey said. “Bernie Madoff motherf—” She caught herself. “Homey’s got a I-banking firm downtown, slick crib up Beachwood Canyon, on the board of a half dozen companies. Check out the fancy website. If you didn’t pull his rap sheet, you’d think he was legit.”

Evan couldn’t help marvel at the photo again. Bedrosov wore a suit jacket and a button-up shirt loose at the collar. He wasn’t smiling exactly, but his face was set in a pleasingly mild expression. It was the kind of portrait you’d see on bus benches and billboards, a Coldwell Banker Realtor conveying can-do competence.

Evan leaned over Joey and thumbed up Bedrock’s booking photo. The suit jacket was gone, but the same inoffensive expression remained, a businessman you could rely on to be steady at the helm through rocky waters.

It called to mind that well-trodden line about the banality of evil.

Dog the dog tapped his way over, circled a few times at Joey’s feet, and lay down with an old-man groan.

“How’d you find this guy?” Evan asked.

“The payments to the dirty cops didn’t come from Petro,” she said. “They came from this other account. Which is funded with incoming wires directly from a shell corp that happens to also have the controlling interest in—you guessed it—Petro’s Singapore bank. The shell corp lists Benjamin Bedrosov as the principal. I’m guessing this guy has a few Petros under him scattered around the city, all of whom feed his bank for a small piece of the ownership.”