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“Wait.” Ryan stopped her from hanging up. “I’ll let you hear the one-sided conversation through the phone. It’s the meat market owner. Please, Leilah. This is urgent.”
“Okay.” She sighed. “Play the conversation for me.”
Ryan put the phone on speakerphone and pressed the pause button again.
The shop owner’s voice resumed, speaking in a transactional way. His conversation was brief.
The instant he hung up, Ryan hit Pause again, and addressed Leilah. “Did you get that?”
“Uh-huh.” Leilah began translating. “The owner told whoever’s at the other end to give a man named Jack five thousand dollars. He told him that, as they’d previously agreed, he would receive a handling fee of two hundred and fifty dollars. The owner ended by saying that Jack would be there this morning to collect his money, so to keep an eye out for him.” She broke off. “Is that what you were looking for?”
“Exactly. I owe you a steak dinner.” Ryan was watching the screen again. “Just wait two minutes until I’m sure he’s finished talking. Then you can go back to sleep.”
“If I’m lucky,” Leilah muttered in a grouchy voice.
Ryan and Marc watched as the owner opened the large ledger book, scribbled something inside and closed the book with a loud thud. Then he rose from his chair, walked toward the door, flipped off the light and closed the door behind him.
The last sound they heard was the locking of the door.
“We’ve got to get moving,” Ryan told Marc. “We have no idea how early this morning Jack will be showing up to get his money.”
“Good night, Ryan,” Leilah called out.
“Sleep tight. Dream of steaks.” Ryan punched off the call.
“What now?” Marc asked.
“Now we find out where Jack is headed so we can beat him there.”
Ryan got on his computer and fired up his audio analysis toolkit. First, he extracted the initial portion of Gecko’s audio recording—the exact timespan during which the owner was dialing the phone. Using a spectrum analyzer and applying different Fourier transforms, he isolated and then amplified the touch tones generated during the dialing process.
The first set of dual tones corresponded to a frequencies of 697 Hz and 1209 Hz. Ryan checked his table, which translated DTMF key presses into pairs of tones. Frequencies 697 and 1209 together was the number 1. Next was 852 and 1209 Hz. Number 7. Frequencies 697 and 1209 Hz again. Number 1. Soon Ryan had decoded the phone number from the touch tones: 7-1-8-8-3-6-6-6-1-3.
A quick Google search revealed that the phone number belonged to a Kwik Pik Convenience Store at 8595 Fourth Avenue, Brooklyn. Ryan switched to Google Maps, locating the store in the Bay Ridge section, not far from the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge.
That was going to present a problem. Rush hour was already under way.
“I’ll take my bike,” Marc said, referring to his motorcycle. “I drove it here this morning. It’s the fastest option.”
Ryan agreed. “And you know the turf.” Marc lived in Brooklyn, so he’d know just where he needed to go.
“I’m outta here,” Marc announced.
Leaving the brownstone, he jumped on his motorcycle, revved it up and turned on West Street. From there, he drove toward the Brooklyn–Battery Tunnel.
Once through the tunnel, he took the first exit and zigzagged his way through Red Hook, avoiding the Gowanus like the plague. Finally, he turned onto Fourth Avenue and headed south to 86th Street.
* * *
Jack Fisher exited the Kwik Pik, his elbow guarding his zippered jacket pocket—and its con
tents—carefully. He hurried down the stairs into the 86th Street subway station.
As he did, he could hear the whine of an approaching motorcycle at full throttle heading in his direction.
* * *
Marc parked right outside the Kwik Pik, facing the convenience store. Time to activate his helmet cam. Ryan had wirelessly connected it to Marc’s iPhone. As he saw a person appear on his iPhone screen, one tap and the image from his helmet cam along with a time stamp was saved on the smartphone and simultaneously uploaded to Intueri, where it was processed through facial recognition by Yoda. In a matter of seconds, Yoda’s voice would report the results to the Bluetooth-connected speaker in Marc’s motorcycle helmet.
