“I couldn’t let you go around telling the whole restaurant their food is free. I do have a business to run, you know. And my daughter loves their TV show? Nice touch.”
“Thanks.” The evening sky had darkened considerably since I’d docked Incognito, and Argo’s was beautifully lit up from our vantage point on the water. We sat in the air-conditioned salon, the boat rocking just enough to remind us we were on water. Morgan declined anything to drink.
“How does it work?” I asked.
His shoulders slumped. “There’s a hidden microphone.”
“Yeah, I figured that much. Tell me how it works. And why it’s at the GT.”
He went to the galley and returned with a beer. “Changed my mind.”
After a few beats of silence, I asked again: “How does it work?”
“It was already in place when I took over the restaurant.” He told me the story of how he’d found it accidentally, how there was a wireless microphone in the Green Table’s centerpiece along with a receiver in the ceiling that was wired directly to his office, and how something would divert his attention every time he went in early to dismantle the setup. He wanted to get rid of the microphone, he said. He just hadn’t done so yet.
An owl sounded from somewhere nearby, and its call echoed faintly across the water. “And why, specifically, were you listening to the Divine Image Group?”
Morgan stared at his untouched can of beer. “I was listening to everybody.”
There had to be more. I waited.
“When my fiancée showed up with her old boss,” he said, “I put them at the GT because I wanted to listen in. I had to know what was going on. When I heard them talking, I knew in an instant that they were sleeping together. It felt like somebody ripped my gut out with one of those fillet knives they use in the kitchen. But I kept listening. I learned that they were together the whole time she was with me.” Morgan looked straight into my eyes. “I’m glad I found out the truth. Now I know what a shallow, conniving, immature person she is. I’m glad she didn’t marry me.”
“And after that?”
His eyes left mine and found the water, a bright moon giving its surface ripples a reflective glow. “I just… I just put the earbud in one more time. To listen to another conversation. I didn’t even know the people. I guess I wanted to listen to somebody—anybody—because everyone else’s life is so much more interesting than mine.”
“And tonight? Why were you listening to the Green Table tonight? The hostess said you weren’t here, but I saw your car in the parking lot, Morgan. I even knocked on your office door. What do you care about the private business of a television series producer?”
“I don’t care who sits at the GT It doesn’t matter. I listen to everyone, even the random groups of tourists who get seated there because they know somebody. It’s … it’s hard to explain. It’s an escape from my real world.” He dropped his head into his hands. “Oh, Lord, what have I become?”
He might have been crying, but I didn’t want to know. I can’t stand to see an adult cry. “Morgan, people can get addicted to anything. Drugs, gambling, looking at porn, whatever turns you on. I’m no shrink, but it sounds like you’ve become addicted to eavesdropping on people.”
Head still in his hands, he nodded. “I suppose so. I can’t wait to get to the office every evening, so I can put in my earbud and listen. Sometimes I’ll watch them on the overhead monitor, so I can see who is saying what. Mostly, I listen. My life sucks, Jersey. But when I’m hearing about other people’s issues and problems and plans, I feel… really … alive. Energized. You know?”
I didn’t know. I couldn’t quite grasp the appeal of eavesdropping on total strangers. The judge had warned me that her brother was an outsider, a shy introvert with no friends and no social life. Perhaps he got off on living vicariously through his dining customers, even if only in short snippets.
“You do realize that what you’re doing is illegal?”
He sat up. Breathed deep, straightening his posture. Took his first drink from the can of beer and regained his composure, once again looking like an attractive young professional. “Yes. I’m sure it probably is.”
“Were anyone to find out, there could be criminal charges. And civil lawsuits. Argo’s would likely be forced out of business.”
“Yes,” he said. “I’ve thought about that.”
But just like a junkie using the pharmaceutical drug network, Morgan allowed the pleasure he derived to override any fear of getting caught.
“Are you recording people’s conversations, too?”
He shook his head no. “I wouldn’t even have a clue how to do that,” he said. “I just listen.”
We stepped off Incognito and returned to the dining room. Spud was teaching Fran how to play blackjack. Their dessert plate had been cleared, and they were slurping coffees. Spud explained that Fran needed practice for the cruise ship’s casino.
“I’ll be a few more minutes,” I told them, and dropped a credit card on the table to pay our tab.
“I’d comp you guys,” Morgan said as we walked to his office in the back of the house, “but I’ve already given away a four-hundred-dollar tab tonight.”
At least he’d kept a sense of humor about my little stunt.
Argo’s kitchen brimmed with hurried staff, and I wondered how they managed to get through a shift without crashing into one another. Three chefs stood over burners and a fourth tended a grill, all of them communicating in a clipped language that I couldn’t quite decipher. It was an entirely different world from the laid-back kitchen at the Block.
Morgan unlocked his office and we went in, shutting the door behind us. One more person in the little space and it would be uncomfortably crowded. He showed me the small blue box he’d talked about, along with the wired earbud coming out of it, and showed me how to adjust the volume with one of the dials. I held the bud to my ear and heard a woman talking about a Lexus they’d recently bought and how she hated to have a car payment again, but what a great financing rate they got. A man told her that she deserved a new car. A younger female, probably their daughter, asked if she would get the car in a few more years, when she left for college. All of the voices were intimately clear. I felt as though I were sitting at the GT with them, and when I looked at the security monitor overhead view, I suddenly understood how Morgan might get a rush by doing what he’d been doing. Especially since he didn’t have a life outside of Argo’s. And especially since people will talk about almost anything while they’re having dinner: finances, travel, sex, work, gossip. Probably, though, Morgan’s interest in the Green Table would quickly fade if he were to make some friends and take up a hobby and find a new girlfriend and get a life of his own.
I killed the volume, removed the earpiece, and examined the blue box. I hadn’t seen the exact setup before, but it appeared to be a basic box with audio connectors. A single cable ran downward and connected with the back of the computer console. I asked Morgan how he switched to the hostess stand microphone.
“What hostess stand microphone?”
“The Green Table is the only hidden mike you’re aware of?”
He nodded.
“What about the computer?” I said.
“What about it?”
“Any audio files on there?”
“You mean like a song that somebody would listen to on their iPod?” He shrugged. “I don’t think so.”
I called Soup and found him at home. He answered on the first ring.
“I’m still working on it, Jersey. I’ll call you the nanosecond I have the full scoop on your divine doctors.”
“I have another question.”
“I couldn’t be more surprised.” Rapid keyboard clacking sounds. “Does my time on this particular question pay?”
“It’s one question, Soup. Good grief.”
He told me that lawyers charge for their time, even for single questions that come over the phone.
“Then get a law degree,” I said. “List
en, I’m in front of a desktop PC at Argo’s restaurant. I need to find out if there are audio files on here. What do I do?”
Soup wanted to know what type of audio files.
“There’s more than one kind?”
“Next time I come to the Block,” he said, “I’m bringing friends. And we’re going to order lots of shrimp and whatever the fresh catch of the day is, and a boatload of bottled imports.”
“Fine,” I agreed.
He gave me detailed instructions as to what to do on the desktop, and we went back and forth for five or six minutes when I came across a drop-down list of files that ended with “.aif.” The letters stood for audio interchange file format, Soup explained. Like I’d actually remember that in ten minutes.
“There are about twenty or twenty-five files with that same extension, and each one is titled by a date, I think,” I said. I double-clicked on one to open it, but nothing happened.
Soup asked if I had Internet access. I asked Morgan. Morgan told me to click on the little Internet Explorer icon. I did. In a few seconds, the World Wide Web lay at my fingertips.
“Send me an e-mail with all the files.” Soup gave me an e-mail account address to go to, along with the password to get in. “This account will handle large file sizes, so you can probably send them to me all at once.”
I did as instructed, and after four attempts, Soup had received all the audio files I’d found on Morgan’s computer.
“I’m headed to your place,” I told my hacker friend.
“Bring me soup, then. Whatever their soup of the day is. And beer. I’m about out of beer.”
Soup is an ex-fed who got tagged with the nickname because he always eats soup when he works. He’s something of a soup aficionado. On the way out, I cautioned Morgan to keep up his normal routine but to stop listening to the Green Table. Unless the doctors came back. He agreed.
I collected my father and Fran, signed the tab, and left Argo’s with a self-adhesive wireless microphone and three Styrofoam containers. The bug had come from the underside of the top panel of the wooden hostess stand. Whoever had placed it could only be listening from the road or the parking lot in front of the building. And since its battery remained good, it had to have been installed recently. The to-go containers held a catfish-and-mango-lime soup and a “midnight” snack for Spud and Fran. I forced myself not to think about why they might need a midnight snack.
We cruised back to the Cape Fear Marina, navigation lights cutting through the darkness, Spud and Fran debating the merits of their bananas Foster flambé, prepared tableside for dessert.
“If I want burnt food,” Spud was saying, “I can light something on fire at home, for crying out loud.”
Concentrating on the water, I tuned them out and wondered what Ox was doing and if he’d been thinking of me as much as I’d been thinking of him.
TWENTY-TWO
Still driving the bodymobile, I see,” Soup said when he let me into his place.
“The price was right.” I handed him the container of soup and a six-pack of Coors Light. “Besides, it grows on you. Great sound system.”
Although it was well past eleven, Soup’s place was brightly lit and buzzed with energy.
A mixture of genuine retro and modern tech, it held a U-shaped command center in the living room. Monitors, printers, computers, and a plethora of electronic stuff connected by a highway of wires and cables were placed strategically so he could wheel his desk chair to position himself in front of anything. Each time I visited Soup’s place, the screens were flatter and larger, the computers smaller, and his collection of gadgetry bigger.
“Those files you e-mailed were taped conversations.” He held up a stack of stapled papers. “I used a voice recognition program to translate them into text documents, so you’ll see a few strange words and punctuation marks.”
While Soup made food appreciation noises over the Styrofoam container of catfish-and-mango-lime soup, I sat down with my bounty. The top of each page was labeled with the audio file’s date and total length. The conversations spanned a seven-month time period, and all took place before Morgan relocated to Wilmington. Before his father died. Which indicated that Garland had likely put the Green Table’s bug in place for a specific purpose. He was the only person who had access to Argo’s small office, and rumor had it that he always kept the door locked. Fanning through the conversations, I saw that they were all of the Divine Image Group doctors. Either Garland suspected them of something or he planned to blackmail them. Odd, since everyone said that they’d been family friends with Garland and Rosemary for years. On the other hand, people say that best friends make the worst enemies.
Flipping back to the first conversation, a brief one that didn’t reveal anything other than a discussion over that day’s plastic surgeries, I noted that it took place mere weeks after Rosemary died. Interesting.
Soup twisted the caps off two bottles of beer and gave me one. “Excellent soup. The spice is perfect. And whoever would have thought of pairing catfish with mango?”
“The chef at Argo’s.”
“I’d like to meet him,” Soup said, meaning it. Skilled hackers and creators of appetizing chowders were his heroes.
I scanned each stapled stack of paper and was fast-forwarding through their headers when the doorbell sounded.
“You expecting anyone?” Soup asked. I told him I wasn’t.
A video screen displayed a man standing outside his door. The doorbell sounded again. Soup did something to make the outdoor camera zoom in on the visitor’s face. Brad stood there, hands stuck in his pockets.
“Crap,” I said. “My DEA buddy. He must have followed me.” Unless he’d put a tracking device on the hearse. Bastard.
“You want me to let him in?”
“If we don’t, he’ll sit out there and wait for me.” I rubber-banded my stack of transcripts and put them on the floor with my handbag, facedown.
“Plenty of ways to get rid of your boy,” Soup said, wicked grin stretched across his face. “Like, for example, I could hack into the local police dispatch, pop in a description of Brad and his vehicle, and code it with, oh … something like soliciting a minor. At a rest stop. Yeah, that’ll work. Then we place a 911, using one of my voice modification programs. We’ll make it a female caller, with a European accent, like a tourist. A frantic mama can say that a man just exposed himself to her daughter at this location. She stopped to get directions at the convenience store. She gives an exact description of Brad and his vehicle.” Soup nodded to himself. “Then we sit back and watch the light show outside my window.”
I sighed. “Soup, just let him in.”
“My way would be much more entertaining.” Soup opened the door. I introduced the two men. Brad scanned Soup’s place, taking in all the electronics.
“What do you want, Brad?” I think my hands were on my hips.
He said something about driving by and seeing my hearse and stopping by to say hello. Yeah, right. I’d have known if he’d followed me. My government-conditioned brain has been trained to maintain a high level of awareness. Doing so is second nature. Which meant that Brad had probably attached a GPS device to the corpse caddy. It made perfect sense that someone in his position would do so. But the fact that he’d gotten away with it pissed me off.
I dug through my handbag, found the microphone I’d removed from Argo’s hostess stand, and held it out. “This what you’re looking for?”
He pocketed the quarter-size device without looking at it.
“I’ll return the tracker you put on my car, too, soon as I locate it. Sometimes, though, I accidentally drop and smash those little GPS thingies. So you might want to go get it yourself and save me the trouble of removing such an expensive gadget.”
Brad’s arms moved without purpose for a few seconds before he folded them across his chest. “You do realize that you’re interfering with an ongoing investigation?”
“I’d never do that.” I made a show of im
itating his stance. “As I told you before, I’m merely doing a favor for a friend.”
We eyed each other, playing the who-will-blink-first game.
“Jeez, you two,” Soup said. “Go get a room already.”
I blinked first and threw my gaze on Soup. “What are you insinuating?”
He looked at the ceiling, as though everything were obvious. “Nothing. Never mind.”
“A hotel room might be fun,” Brad said.
“Sure, if I swept it for audio and video first.”
“It’s been real.” Soup herded us to the door. “Not so fun, though.” He claimed he had piles of work waiting, but I think he just wanted Brad out of his place. Even though Soup used to be a federal agent, he’s leery of active uniforms and undercovers. They make him uncomfortable.
Seemingly not offended, Brad said that pancakes would be good, and I agreed to join him at a twenty-four-hour diner. Like I needed pancakes. Or live conversation from Brad at midnight.
Sitting across from each other in a corner booth at the Waffle House, Brad and I continued to eye each other like two wary tigers thrown together in a cage. Territorial. Stubborn. The same species, but not always hospitable to its own kind. Something about him got under my skin, like an unseen chigger that itched just enough to be irritating.
“Why have you been listening to the Argo’s hostesses?” I asked. “And from where, just out of curiosity.”
“Nearby house,” he said. “Weekly rental. My team has been rotating shifts during restaurant hours. Main phone line is hot, too.”
I should have known. “Learn anything interesting?” I asked. As if he’d tell me.
He chugged some coffee. “We know who is eating at Argo’s and how many people are in their party every evening.”
“Wow.” I stirred cream into my coffee. “Your information-gathering skills are phenomenal. Do you keep a spreadsheet of the chef’s nightly specials, too? Maybe a breakdown by entrées from land or sea?”
Our banter went on until the food arrived: his tower of pancakes and my egg sandwich. His looked better.
T. Lynn Ocean - Jersey Barnes 03 - Southern Peril Page 17
