Judge & Jury - James Patterson [70]
Senil Chumra was a plump, likable Indian whose office wasn’t in the Bureau’s official place downtown. He was in a nondescript warehouse building up on Eighteenth and Tenth, overlooking the river. Chumra headed up a specialized area of the department we called CAF.
Computer Assisted Forensics.
These were the guys who could trace e-mails, hack into computers, worm their way through coded passwords, track the complicated movements of cash overseas. I had last worked with him tracking the flow of Cavello’s union paybacks to the Cayman Islands. Senil’s other talent was manipulating digital images.
“Hello, Nick.” The techie lit up as I walked through the door of his lab. The technical guys always liked it when one of the so-called glamour boys showed up. “Haven’t seen you in a while. What have you been up to?”
“I’m good, Chummie,” I lied. “Busy.” These technical whizzes worked in their own little specialized cocoon up here. No reason he’d know what I was up to—or in this case, wasn’t. “You got that e-mail I sent over?”
“I got it.” The Indian wheeled over to a Mac screen down the line, maybe a little disappointed. “Got it uploaded right here.”
Senil touched a mouse, and the image of Cavello’s bearded accomplice jumped onto the screen. “Okay, Nick, tell me—what is it you want me to do?”
“I want to change around the image, Chummie. See if it matches someone I know.”
He nodded, hunching over the screen and cracking his knuckles. He clicked the mouse again. A grid appeared over the image. “Shoot.”
“First, I want to lose the beard.”
“Easy.” Senil typed in a few coordinates, and the image immediately narrowed in to just a square of the suspect’s face. Then, using a cursor, he outlined the area of the beard. Gently, he moved his cursor back and forth, as if he was airbrushing.
“What are you onto these days?” he asked while he worked, his fingers guiding the cursor like a surgeon’s. “Things have to be pretty hot up there for you C-10 boys, what with Cavello and all. What’re you thinking, he changed his face on you?”
“Sort of,” I said, not picking up on his inquisitiveness. “Just a hunch.”
“A hunch.” He sighed, dropping the conversation. “This process is called grafting and displacement,” he said, continuing to carve away the facial hair, tracing it around the chin. “Essentially, we eliminate a field: skin tone, a scar, in this case, a beard.” In a moment the facial area was blank, and Senil retrieved a section of skin from another part of the image and filled in the space. “Then we just graft onto it.” He smoothed out the facial lines. “Cut and paste.”
“That’s good,” I said, leaning over his shoulder. “Now what do you say we try and alter the hair. Make it short and close to the skull. A little darker.”
“You mean like this?” He pressed an icon, and a file of various hairstyles came up. Then he chose one fitting my description and basically transplanted it over the newly configured face.
“Now set the hairline back a bit. Around the sides.”
Chummie started playing around with the cursor again.
“Yes, like that. Now, can we ditch the eyeglasses?”
“Faster than Lasik.” He grinned. “Cheaper, too.” It took about a minute of more grafting and displacement.
The man’s dark glasses disappeared.
“Fucking A!” I exclaimed. The image on the screen almost knocked me on the floor.
“Anything else, Nick? If you’re not satisfied, give me the word. I’ll make him look like anyone you like.”
“No, Chummie.” I patted his shoulder. “I think we’re done.”
I pulled out the file of Kolya Remlikov that Yuri Plakhov had faxed me. I put Remlikov’s face side by side against the altered image of Cavello’s accomplice.
“Bingo,” Senil Chumra said.
We were staring at the same man.
Chapter 88
THIRTEEN YEARS OF working my way up through one of the most bureaucratic law enforcement agencies in the world told me to go straight to the Javits Building and drop what I had right on ADIC Cioffi’s desk.
There wasn’t much doubt that Kolya Remlikov was the man who had sprung Cavello.
I got as far as hailing a cab on the corner. Then something made