Watch Dogs

by John Shirley

  #

  “Wolfe? Any luck with that imaging?”

  It was Pearce’s voice, coming from the TV. It almost made Wolfe fall out of his chair.

  “Jesus, Pearce, I wish you’d give me some warning.”

  “I specialize in not giving warnings. What happened to your shirt?”

  “Black Viceroys. Little run in.”

  “I heard they were tracking you. But—you didn’t kill any of ‘em, did you?”

  “No. Found a friend. Close enough to a friend. Their neighborhood boss, name of Shuggie.”

  “Shuggie. There’s worse than him around. How’d you friend up with him? Military connections?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Better put on a new shirt, clean up that jacket.”

  “I plan to. You don’t need to micromanage, Pearce.”

  Pearce chuckled. “So how about that image enhancement?”

  “Yeah. I got it. Can you pick it up out of this PC?”

  “I can.”

  The PC wasn’t hooked up to anything. But there was something concealed in it, Wolfe figured, some tech that responded to a signal, and when exactly signaled it transmitted on a discrete wifi frequency...to some local hub that sent it to another, and so on, till Pearce got it through the almost legendary black market apps on his smartphone.

  “It’s up on the desktop,” Wolfe said. “Do you need me to—”

  “No, no, I got it. So that’s the son of a bitch who tried to splash my brains on the sidewalk...”

  “Yeah. I think it is.” The image of the shooter, at the train station Pearce had traced him to, was now fully enhanced. Wolfe knew that enhancement programs could distort too—he’d seen it happen with those “face on Mars” photos—but he knew how to do it without distortion and anyway, he recognized the face that had emerged from the process. It was the guy he’d seen shooting at Pearce. He hadn’t seen him with much clarity out there on the street, but he was pretty sure this was the shooter.

  “Okay, I’m gonna run this through ctOS facial recognition. They’ve got access to an international database. Hold tight.”

  The wait wasn’t more than ten seconds.

  “Uh huh,” Pearce said. “Here he is. Stan Grampus is the prick’s name. Says he’s rumored to be an assassin used by fixers. Works out of Chicago and St. Louis mostly. I hope he’s still in Chicago. I don’t want to go to St. Louis to find him.”

  “What else they got on him?”

  “Ambidextrous, it says. Amphetamine habit. Caught with half an ounce of amphetamines about six months ago. Charges dropped because they couldn’t find the evidence...Oh and look who arrested him. Detective Tranter, CPD. He’s the dirty gold shield I saw you with in that parking lot. The one who tried to warn you off. I figure this Tranter ‘lost’ the evidence in exchange for Grampus doing work for him.”

  “And maybe some cash thrown in?”

  “Maybe. Good chance Tranter hired Grampus to hit me. Doesn’t seem likely to have been Tranter’s personal priority to have me killed. He did it for someone else..”

  “So whose priority was it?”

  “That’s what we gotta find out. From Tranter—or maybe Grampus. Maybe Tranter told him...”

  “That system say where to find Grampus?”

  “No. It doesn’t. Last known address is now a confirmed ‘no longer resides’. But if he works for fixers...I just might have a lead for you. First thing you need to do, though, is meet Blank tomorrow. He’ll wire you in—and then you can be a serious player.”

  “Pearce—” Wolfe turned in the desk chair just in time...to see Pearce’s image vanish from the screen of the TV.

  #

  Noon, under the Dwight D. Eisenhower Expressway, near West Van Buren.

  The homeless encampment beneath the freeway ramp overpass was like a great overcrowded bird’s nest to Wolfe’s eye. Spilling out from under the concrete and steel overpass were broad, moldy pieces of cardboard, rusty sheet metal, large plastic black bags and old paint stained blue tarps were spread out in a rough circle, like the outline of a nest around the edges of the camp. Tents, some of them homemade, were propped up here and there; at almost regular intervals were shopping carts, some of them piled high by hoarding. A couple of people had made their own flags on scrappy wooden poles, rags with hand painted symbols snapping in the cold wind: one peace symbol, one obscene gesture. The indigent tried to grab some sleep, fully dressed against the cold as they lay in sleeping bags and under transparent plastic sheets.

  There was surprisingly little trash. Most of the encampment tried to keep it clean.

  Wolfe got some hostile looks as he walked through the encampment, and some curious looks; most of the squatters, lost in their own inner world, looked at him with dull, indifferent eyes.

  Not standing out much from these people, he thought. Really have to get some new clothes.

  “Did I see you here before?” asked a red-nosed, bearded man in a floppy hat and shaggy overcoat.

  “Maybe,” Wolfe said. “I’ve been here before. I’m...” He remembered what Lulu had called him. “Mickey. You?”

  “I’m Mayor Brock. I’m the mayor of this camp.”

  “He’s full of shit, said a toothless woman with lank gray hair, sitting on a sleeping bag, with another one wrapped around her shoulders. “He’s not mayor of nobody or nothing.”

  “You see Blank around?” Wolfe asked.

  “Blank? Yeah he’s...wait, you got to tell me something funny first. I don’t give nobody nothin’ unless they make me laugh.”

  “That sleeping bag—you know what they call those in the Army?”

  “What?”

  “Fart sacks.”

  She cackled at that and pointed. “Up there, underneath the freeway ramp!”

  Between the concrete columns holding up this end of the freeway ramp was one of the only burning campfires here now—the fire department had recently made them extinguish the most obvious ones. This campfire, made from broken wooden pallets, was filling up the space under the ramp with gray smoke.

  Wolfe wondered how long it would be before the smoke drifted up onto the freeway, attracting the cops. He’d better get his mission done here, and leave.

  He worked his way carefully through debris, over a puddle of piss and between sleeping people, till he spotted Blank, who was squatting on the farther side of the fire. Wolfe couldn’t see what passed for Blank’s face, but he could see the familiar dented broad-brimmed hat and that heavy black overcoat.

  Wolfe made his way to where Blank was hunkered; a ragged man in shapeless layers of clothes was hunkered beside him wearing a watch cap, his deeply lined face lean as a hatchet.

  “I’ll tell you what, Blank,” said the man in the black watch cap, “they’re closin’ this encampment, and soon. Too close to downtown. Too many people, breakin’ too many rules. There’s rules to living in a place like this if you want the fucking cops to leave you alone.”

  “I expect you’re right,” said Blank, in his gurgling rumble.

  He looked up at Wolfe, as Wolfe coughed from the drifting smoke.

  “Who this?” asked the man in the watch cap. He glared at Wolfe, showing eyes gone yellow, around their black irises—yellow as nicotine stains. “Might be the cops, his own self, undercover.”

  “Not guilty of being a cop, your honor,” Wolfe told him.

  The tramp didn’t think Wolfe’s attempt at humor was funny. “You better back off here, sonny boy.”

  “Yeah, better go, Wolfe,” Blank said, standing up. He walked past Wolfe, discreetly sticking a piece of paper in Wolfe’s coat pocket as he went.

  Wolfe turned to follow Blank. But Blank turned to him after a few steps, and growled, “Don’t follow me.”

  “So that’s it, that’s what I’m here for?” Wolfe patted his pocket.

  “Yeah. It’s enough.”

  Wolfe nodded, turned, and quickly left the encampment.

  #

  Wolfe walked alo
ng a wet street where cars whooshed by from time to time. As he got to each corner, he put his hand in his pocket and used the ctOS camera scrambler Pearce had given. When he was two and a half blocks from the camp, he stepped into the recessed doorway of a locked emergency-exit, and read the message.

  The note Blank had slipped into Wolfe’s pocket was just two handwritten lines in capital letters. One line said,

  THIS WILL CHANGE EVERYTHING.

  The second line was a nearby street address and the words

  UNDER D, BEHIND B. MEMORIZE. DESTROY THIS.

  “If you say so,” Wolfe muttered.

  He memorized the note and tore it up into tiny pieces and then started along the street. As he walked he scattered little pieces of paper into the chilly wind bit by bit.

  He trudged down the street toward the address he’d been given and fifteen minutes later he was there. The address was for a big, rectangular building on the corner, the building fronted by white stone. A fancy restaurant occupied its lowest floor. The restaurant was closed but he could see workers inside prepping it for a 12:30 opening time. Under D, behind B. . .

  The restaurant was called Fern Gulley. Not a B or a D.

  Wolfe walked around to the side of the building where he found a parking lot with only two cars in it. He saw nothing that prompted him to look under it. He walked around the next corner of the building, looked behind it.

  An alley. A pretty nasty alley it was, with old filthy gray snow edging its darker parts.

  To the left was a large white metal dumpster, still brimming with old garbage from the restaurant.

  Under D. Did that mean under the dumpster? He hoped it didn’t mean he was supposed to climb in and look under the garbage inside it.

  Then he noticed that the back wall of the building was all brick. Was behind B...behind a brick?

  He glanced around, saw no one around, and hurried over to the dumpster. Then he flattened, crawled forward. It stank under here. There was a movement, close to his right hand—and saw two beady black eyes staring at him. It was a large, humped over brown rat.

  The puzzled rat wriggled its snout toward Wolfe’s hand, as if it were wondering if any part of him was good to eat.

  “Get outta here!” Wolfe told it, swiping at the rodent.

  The rat scurried off, and Wolfe crawled forward to the brick wall. He didn’t see any obviously loose bricks. Maybe this was all a trick, a gag, to make a fool out of him...

  But he noticed a brick to the right that seemed just faintly lighter than the rest. He reached out to it, tugged—and it came neatly away from the wall. He crawled closer, looked inside. There was a hole back there, behind the brick. And in it was a parcel wrapped in black plastic. He reached in, pulled the parcel out, and slowly wormed his way back out from under the dumpster.

  He was glad to be out in the cold, bracing air. He stuck the package in his pocket, looked around, saw a drunk weaving down the alley down on his left.

  Wolfe turned right, and headed for the nearest train station.

  He decided to wait till he was back at home base to look in the package. Waiting wasn’t easily. He badly wanted to look...

  This will change everything...

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Seline Garnera walked out of O’Hare airport, looking for a taxi to her hotel. She still had her duffel bag for luggage, but she wasn’t wearing a uniform. She had a long white Armani coat on over a charcoal-colored suit, things she’d bought on her layover in London.

  There was a line for taxis. She got in the line, and waited, trying to get clear in her mind the reason she had come to Chicago at all.

  She was relieved to be out of the Marine Corps, in comfortable walking shoes, in civilian clothes, with her long black hair on her shoulders just the way she liked it. Sure, she was proud of serving in the Marines. But the military had some toxic seams deep down in it, like something deadly you’d find in a mine.

  Probably she used the mine analogy, thinking about it, because her dad was a retired mining engineer. He’d worked in tin and copper and gold mines all over the world. After she’d gotten that nerve-wracking meeting in Chicago over, she planned to fly to Northern Georgia to see her dad. He was going to be relieved she wasn’t on that aircraft carrier anymore. He’d always been afraid terrorists would hit it when it was in port.

  She hadn’t seen much action—except off the coast of Libya during the overthrow of Gaddafi—but she’d done her part. She’d advanced to Chief Computer Security Specialist, and she’d found it interesting. But she had the misfortune, at least a misfortune in the military, of being a pretty good looking woman, and she’d had to fend off a lot of knuckleheads on that flattop. Carriers were mostly crewed by Navy men with some Marines on board, almost all of them men. Rough, lonely men. The worst that had happened was one groping, and some inappropriate talk. But she’d put a stop to it.

  Her C.O. had been sympathetic, and he’d put the groper in the brig for a month. The Commander in Chief, the President of the USA himself, had pledged zero tolerance for sexual harassment and it had been working in the last year. The knuckleheads were starting to leave her alone. She’d even dated a naval lieutenant, when she was on leave, a nice guy who’d treated her in a gentlemanly way. Seline had been thinking about “re-upping”, signing up for another four years...

  But then she’d come across the “Van Ness files”. And the military had soured for her. She didn’t blame the whole military. She still believed in military service. But she had to get out, if she was to get any justice for Ruth Medina.

  General Van Ness was Army, not Marines, but there were Marines involved in this too. And one Central Intelligence Agency attaché who’d disappeared...right after transmitting the Van Ness files to Seline.

  Oh yes, Seline had known the CIA attaché—they’d been pretty good friends. She was civilian, a confident, sharp-eyed career CIA agent about forty years old: Ruth Medina, Italian-American like Seline. Ruth had been on the carrier, had transferred from the base on the island of Socotra, assigned to communications with North African classified troop activities. Agent Medina had done her job quietly, and sometimes she and Seline had eaten dinner together in the cafeteria, for mutual support. They’d talked about a lot of things, but since they were both sworn to secrecy about their work, they almost never spoke about it—and when they did they never broke the rules of classification.

  One evening, as they ate in the cafeteria, Ruth had been unusually quiet. She kept glancing fretfully at her cell phone.

  “Something wrong?” Seline had asked her, at last.

  “Um...you have that app on your phone where stuff can be transferred to it just by touching it with another phone, if...”

  “I do have that. Almost never get to use it.”

  “’Kay. Is it alright if I test mine, transfer a jpeg to yours, maybe a couple of them?”

  “Sure!”

  They set it up and the two women touched their phones together. Then Ruth signaled her to wait—and she sent Seline a text.

  The text said, Pretend to look at a jpeg. Don’t look at file. Just keep for me.

  Seline nodded. She clicked on a photo she’d taken herself, off the fantail of the ship, pretended to study it, and smiled. “Nice!”

  Soon after, Ruth smiled nervously at her, got up, and took her tray to clean it off...

  And that was the last time Seline ever saw her.

  Ruth disappeared from the ship the same night, somewhere off the coast of Yemen.

  “Taxi, lady?”

  Seline was jarred from her thoughts, and looked at the taxi driver, a smiling older black man.

  “Sure. Michigan Shore Hotel.”

  “I know the place. Let me take that duffel for you...”

  “It’s okay. I’ll take it in back with me...”

  She wasn’t letting that bag out of her hands. In it, along with her uniform and passport and souvenirs and discharge papers, was a flashdrive.

  And on the flashdrive
was something that Ruth Medina had died for.

  Seline was going to make sure Ruth hadn’t died in vain.

  #

  Mick Wolfe sat down on the sofa in the safehouse, and unwrapped the package.

  Inside the package was a black smartphone. One of the slightly larger types. It didn’t seem unusual...

  He looked for a note in the package, found nothing except a charger and an extra battery extension. No, there was one other thing. It looked like a small hearing aid. He realized it was some kind of Bluetooth device, so he could listen to the phone without seeming to, when he wanted.

  He switched the phone on and waited. It booted up quickly, and almost immediately a message appeared, text within a jpeg frame:

  W: Touch on the icon in the corner. And learn...

  There’s a program that will only exist on a temporary basis and that will teach you how to use this device.

  I’m probably crazy to create another one with access to the new ctOS, and crazier to give it to you. Maybe this knock on the head has made me even crazier but you may as well take advantage of it. I still have some symptoms of a concussion, so I still have to stay off the streets to avoid getting worse. So here’s a way you can bust a move for me. And for you. You and I knew each other back when. Your father helped me, so...I’m helping you, with this. And maybe we’ll help each other...

  P.

  Wolfe’s fingers trembled as he tapped the screen icon. The program came up with animated imagery showing the methodology for using what Wolfe thought of as the PearcePhone.

  He read the directions excitedly, and then with increasing skepticism. For one thing, Pearce claimed the phone’s transmissions were totally untraceable; no one could listen in on it, or trace back its calls. Wolfe doubted that was totally possible.

  But this other stuff...taking control of traffic lights? Remotely shorting out power boxes? Controlling trains?