Fun and Games - Duane Swierczynski [19]
“He’s a former consultant with the Philadelphia Police Department,” Factboy said. “Now he’s a freelance home security specialist, working with an agency out of Dallas.”
“Home security?” Mann asked. “We didn’t trip any alarms.”
“No, he’s not a guard. Hardie’s just a house sitter. The owner of the house, one Andrew Lowenbruck, is away for a month. Hardie’s here to watch the place.”
“And he shows up now, of all times?”
“Seems legit to me. Lowenbruck left just last night according to the agency’s records. Hardie caught a red-eye, made it here this morning.”
“So he wasn’t called in because of the target,” Mann said.
“There’s no indication. No phone calls have been made from the residence, or from the target’s phone.”
Factboy waited for the smallest indication that Mann was impressed by how much he’d cobbled together in such a short span of time, but Factboy knew better. Mann wasn’t impressed by miracles; they were expected.
Factboy had a large array of digital tools at his disposal, but lately his weapon of choice was the National Security Letter, something the FBI invented over thirty years ago but really came into its own after the Patriot Act. NSLs were lethal little mothers. If presented with one, you had to open up your files, no questions asked. Didn’t matter if you were a used-car dealer or a US Customs official—all your base belong to them.
And the NSL came with a nifty feature: a built-in gag order, lasting until your death. Say one word about the NSL, and you can be thrown into prison. Before 9/11, the FBI used NSLs sparingly. But in the hazy, crazy days that followed, the FBI handed them out like candy corn on Halloween—something like a quarter of a million in three years alone.
Factboy had quickly learned how to fake them. He could even send one digitally. No voice, face, no human contact whatsoever.
This was just like his relationship with Mann—which, like “Factboy,” was a code name. They had never met. They probably never would. But hey, as long as the checks cleared.
“You said he was a consultant,” Mann said. “What kind?”
“I’m still working on that.”
“Work harder.”
Mann disconnected. Factboy stood up, slid the phone into the pocket of his cargo shorts, stepped on the metal handle to flush the toilet, then opened the stall. The men’s room was crowded. He walked over to the one open sink, splashed some lukewarm water on his hands and face, then went outside to rejoin his family.
They were on vacation.
Factboy had a real name, but he made it a point never to reveal it. His real identity wasn’t even known to Mann, who accounted for roughly seventy percent of his income. Factboy presented himself as a ghost in the system, a man (or maybe a woman!) living off the grid somewhere in a country where extradition laws do not apply, with servers spread throughout the globe with a nominal headquarters in Sweden. Trying to catch Factboy would be like trying to grab a fistful of smoke—physically impossible. But if you needed information quickly, Factboy could find it for you quickly, cleanly, untraceably.
In reality, Factboy was a suburban dad, thirty-four, with two laptops, a smartphone, and really, really good encryption software.
And right now, he was on vacation with his wife and two kids at the Grand Canyon, ready to have a nervous breakdown.
This was unusual for Factboy, who spent most of his waking hours in his attic office “programming.” A total lie. He was busy retrieving information, then selling it to people who would pay him a lot of money for that information. This took anywhere from ten seconds to a couple of minutes, depending on the type of information. Nothing—nothing—took more than a few minutes. The rest of the time Factboy watched 1980s-era horror movies, prowled message boards, and jacked off. Which was pretty much his life twenty years ago, too, come to think