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“Yeah. Encryption on both ends so there’s never a record. Everything is done by voice, anyway. So, again, no records other than the fact a phone call took place.”
“And where do you do the exchanges?”
“That’s different too, same reason. The organizers didn’t want any discernible patterns.”
“Are they dead drops or live?”
“Uh… I don’t know. Dead, I guess. I don’t ever meet with anyone in person.” And shit like that right there was why I had zero doubts Misha had been a spy in his former life, no matter what he did anddidn’tsay on the matter.
“So walk me through it.”
“There’s a Mexican restaurant on Dearborn. I seal the money in a bag and toss it in the garbage can that’s there and let Brooklyn know. I wait two days and go back and pick up a new package that’s been set inside one of those heavy-duty cement planters.”
“Does Brooklyn pick up the money?”
I shrugged. “I doubt it. She makes the arrangements but I don’t think she’s running all over town picking up that much cash.”
“All over town?” He arched an eyebrow.
I shrugged again. “Yeah. It’s a city-wide operation. I told you. They’ve got players in each ward, making sure we don’t overlap too much, or else we’ll be each other’s competitors.”
“Do you know any other dealers? What their routines are?”
“Jude was too new. He was still working on the initial package I gave him. The only other guy I knew for sure was Lee, my old roommate. You should remember, you broke his nose. But anyway, I had to make a drop for him one time. Same thing. Put the money in the trashcan and go back in a couple days for the new supply.”
“At the same restaurant?”
“No. Not that one. He had a Chinese place on Cermak.”
Misha took a step backward and folded his arms over his chest, staring at the board. I glanced between him and the mass of information, trying to see what he was seeing. Even though I had the insight as to how Nirvana operated, his whiteboard didn’t reveal anything groundbreaking to me, either.
Moving forward, he grabbed a stack of what looked like surveillance pictures from the edge of the board and flipped through them. He cocked his head, staring at one of the photos.
“What?” I asked.
He didn’t answer. Instead, he circled around me and sat at his desk, opening his laptop. Clicking and typing quickly, he scrolled through a mountain of digital information until he got to a section with video recordings. Fucking city cameras. He had access to the city cameras! Not a spy, my ass.
“What are you looking for?” I asked as he bounced back and forth between a list of my phone calls with Brooklyn and the dates timestamped on the recordings.
“Your drops.”
“I told you, I never met with anyone.”
“I heard you. But someone had to retrieve the money and provide the new drugs. How could they do that in plain sight? Throwing away trash is nothing, but digging through trash? That is more obvious.”
It wasn’t long before one of the city’s little blue garbage trucks rolled across the screen. The driver hopped out, grabbed the whole garbage bag, stuffed another inside the can, and away he went.
Misha paused the recording and grabbed a notepad from the center desk drawer. Writing something quickly, he zoomed forward to the next time a garbage truck entered the screen. Another pause, more note-taking. Lather, rinse, repeat.
“Congratulations. You’ve proven Streets and Sanitation actually do their jobs,” I said after we watched the tenth truck tootle across the screen.
“That’s how they’re doing it,” he murmured, more to himself than me, from the sounds of it. “They’re using the city network.”
“That’s because theyarethe city. Itoldyou.”
Ignoring me, he typed an email at warp speed. As soon as he hitSend, he stood, taking my face between his hands and kissing me soundly.
“What was that for?” I asked, eyes wide.
