Breaking-in, CH 15 (Patreon)

That Wagler guy’s accountant’s good. His finances aren’t immaculate, but any cleaner, and I’d get suspicious. Wait, already am. I need a different analogy. Anyway. There is something there. Well, maybe not there, as in his bank accounts, but there as in, he thinks he pulled one over Tristan.

Tristan’s okay with it.

I can’t tell if it’s overconfidence on his part, or if he’s already made plans for any and everything that could be thrown our way. With anyone else, I’d jump on overconfidence.

I grab a travel mug, too light. Another, also too light. On the fifth one, I look up from the screen. I can not be out of coffee already. It’s only been two hours since the day started. The eighth one is the only one that still has coffee.

I might have a problem.

I don’t have enough space on my desk for any more mugs.

I check the space under my desk with a foot and hit the crate. Right. I never brought that home, because Tristan would have confiscated it like he did everything coffee related.

It’s because I’m distracted from the screen I see Kat heading in my general direction and quick tab to another screen. It wouldn’t do for her to see that I’m into a banking system that I haven’t been instructed to test, or is even one of her client.

I watch her approach like she’s planning on asking about my personal life. Because lets face it, ever since she found out my married and Emil is part of that equation, she gets that amused look. The one that says she knows something I don’t. And that any moment now, she’s going to spring it on me and she is going to enjoy the—

She stops by my cubicle opening, but she doesn’t have smirk on right now. 

“That doesn’t look like work.”  She nods to my screen.

“What are you talking about? I’m—” I turn to my screen to see the property listings I’d set up for once I’m done going through Wagler’s accounts. “I’m…” come on, think of something.

“The house’s feeling a little cramp?” the smirk is there again.

“No.” Wait, she just gave me an opening, take it! There’s no way she knows where I live. She my address is somewhere in the system, but she’s never had a reason to look at it. HR handles sending out paychecks. Well doing the electronic transfers. Who sends out paychecks anymore? Everything about the image I portray screams I’m living off that quite reasonable paycheck, and not in a house I had Dear Old Dad buy though one of his too numerous companies for his accounting department to notice.

“Well, maybe.” That’s not why we need to move. That’s the least of the reasons we need to move.

“And you felt that was better than the work you’re here to do?”

“What work?” I blurt out, and she raises an eyebrow. That’s not her ‘you think you’re so good, so I’m about to challenge you’ expression. “Have you looked at the queue? It’s empty. I doubt anyone’s busy right now.”

She’s standing, so a look around will give her the truth. And I’m not a liar, this time, her frown tells me. “I guess slow days will happen even in our industry.” She steps into my cubicle and looks at the screen. “That looks run down.”

Wow, my initial reaction to those properties was way less polite. Of course, considering where they are, they aren’t that bad.

“Some part of towns are a little outside my budget unless I’m willing to put in the good old elbow grease.”

She isn’t buying it.

I guess I’m going to have to go with the truth.

“I figured it’d be easier to make the place our own if we needed to renovate them. And they are cheaper too.” Everyone wants to save money, right? Doesn’t matter how much they make. Unlike me, it’s their money, so she’s going to understand the desire to save some.

Right?

Truth is that after what I saw of the plans Tristan design for the current house, not only did I realize I have to get him out of there, like yesterday, but I am not going to be able to keep him from turning the next one into a death trap. I might as well give in and just get a place where he can do that without having to hide the work from the neighbors.

Not that I think any of those places have neighbors.

Unless I’m willing to count squatters as neighbors.

“Is that a garage?” she points to the third image down the first column, then she glances at the others. It’s not the only garage. In fact, garages are kind of the majority of the images.

“Tristan likes to work on his car, so I’m thinking that if we get a place designed to work on cars, he won’t have to do the work outside.”

And maybe he’ll take on work from other people in the area. Even there, there has to be a few car owners. Tristan needs to be socialized. It will go better if it’s through something that he enjoys.  And with how noisy those things usually get, they have good sound insulation, so Tristan will be able to do whatever ballistic testing he feels like doing.

“What’s he do for a living?”

“Security, the physical kind. As in installing them and making sure they work properly,” I add before she can think Tristan’s nothing more than a common leg breaker. There is nothing common about my man.

“Maybe I should offer him a job.”

She has no idea how lucky she said that before the travel mug reached my lips. Spewing coffee on equipment costing five figure is not a laughing matter.

I did say she has us work with the best equipment.

“I don’t think he’s the kind of man you want working here.” Wow, would that be interesting.

I’d want to sit a mile away, but I’d bring popcorn.

“You do know I have a handful of on-site techs for when I this little group isn’t enough to ensure a client is secure.”

Right, I keep forgetting about those.

“He is a freelancer.” I hesitate. No, I don’t have to worry, it’s not like I have to carry through with this. “I can run it by him and see if he’d be willing to take on some jobs.” He doesn’t actually do security, so it’s fine.

“Tristan, right?” she has her phone out and is typing. “I’m guessing that’s not his company name.” There an expectation in there I want nothing to do with.

“I’m going to check in with him before giving you that. There’s a reason he keeps it private.”

She motions to the room. “I can just have one of them find out.”

Now, I’m the one smirking. “Kat, for one thing, you’d never have one of them do something that borderline illegal.”

“And for another,” she so gracefully asks when I don’t continue.

“I do his internet security.” I’m lying, but at least with that, if she has one of the others look and not find anything because there is nothing to find, she has a reason as to why it happened. I might as well use the fact she now knows I’m way better than anyone here to my advantage.

I see her consider that a challenge. “Get back to work.” She exits my cubicle.

I don’t have to reply because my neighbors does it for me.

“What work?” he asks.

I make a trip to the coffee machine to refill my mugs. Back at my desk I bring up yet another screen to see how the programs I have digging through Wagler’s internet existence are coming along. Nothing flagged as relevant yet. The window’s only a monitoring program for stuff hosted on a variety of computers; none of them mine. Come on, you think I’d bother sending very specific people viruses to encrypt their drive and extort money? It’s like you don’t know me at all. I’m after their processing power.

And if the police shows up at their door and find incriminating evidence of one of my hacks in their computer? Well, I do pick people who deserve to be arrested to host my programs. Not that I plan on having any of them traced even there. That would be sloppy work, even if they deserve it.

I don’t do, sloppy work.

Back to the properties, since, until I have to pretend I’m working, I can get away with it.

I didn’t say anything when he electrified every door knob in the house. I put my foot down at the video surveillance because that does nothing to ensure security. Yes, it’s nice to see who’s at the door, but when everyone can, when they can hack the feed and show you what they want you to see, because you’ve grown too comfortable with using that as a security measure, that’s not security.

Semtex.

That’s were I draw the line.

Not for my sake, or even Emil’s. But for that of the neighbors.

The explosives will end up in whatever other place we live in is, I accept that. It’s why these properties are in the worst parts of Phoenix. If he decides to blow the joint, it might as well take people who deserve it in the process, instead of some quasi-innocents along with the one killer there.

I quickly eliminat all the houses, as well as any garage outside of the Central City area. Its high crime rate is what’s attractive. Tristan won’t have to spend so much time acting like he’s happy with everyone if he doesn’t feel like it. That is no way that doesn’t get exhausting. I can barely last five minutes, and he will force himself to endure it for hours on end at times.

The only downside I see is Emil. He’s going to have to change school, and those in Central City will reflect the violence. That will not help with his own tendencies. But Midtown is just over the highway, and it’s a better area, so he can take the bus there, or walk. One of the garage is not too far.

I’ve set the purchase in motion, thought Dear Old Dad’s city rehabilitation endeavor. It’s something that’s been part of the business as a tax shelter. They buy houses in the bad part of the city, renovate them and lease them out at a significant loss. I hate him for the thought process. But I can’t deny that if not for that, a lot more people in the city would be unable to afford housing.

Everything’s in order when I get a ping from my programs. I look around to make sure Kat’s not heading my way, this would really piss her off, finishing another mug. Damn it, is someone stealing my coffee? And I look through the results.

My programs are smart. Smarter than the average bear at least. They don’t just look at data and make a list. They are able to run comparative algorithm, send information between them when a different kind of program will be better suited for the next part of the work.

I’ve been tempted to leave them roaming for a few months without supervision, but I’ve had too many Skynet nightmares. As cool as it would be to live in that world and challenge that computer. The idea I could be the guy to give birth to it has me keeping my program on a tight leash.

What I get are a series of transactions.

It takes me a few minutes to untangle what is there. First, I have a trail, a series of them, actually. Large sums of money going to brokerage accounts. Never the same origin point twice. In under five minutes, I’ve unearthed who is behind enough of them to know they are individuals. Wealthy, but that’s yet to be a crime.

The brokerage accounts are just that. Places that hold the money until something happens. Their security is good enough I can’t take the time to get in right now. I send my programs looking into the people who sent money there. The reason will be in there.

From the brokerage, the money goes to a series of accounts without any relations to them, until I find the thing that made the program ping me. Each of them has been contacted by the same IP address. Those contact always happen within five minutes of the money reaching the brokerage, and when it is transferred to the account.

The brokerage is secure enough that whoever is behind the IP will have to call in.

So who is, behind the IP?

That’s another series of links my program traveled to.

I will give him that. He’s good at hiding his tracks.

No, his hacker is good.

And why does that code seem familiar? That’s for later.

The trail led my program around the world, four times, and terminated at an account that look normal enough. No normal, I know the street the bill goes to every month. It’s my street. The number is a few houses down mine.

It’s Wagler’s house.

He has access to hidden accounts that total in the millions of dollars.

Huh.

Why?

He’s already rich. I’d have to look into where the money came from to know if it’s legal or not, but it looks good enough it passed my first looks, and when Tristan asked me to look again. So why hide these accounts?

I go back to the start of the money trail.

My programs have twenty I can look at.

It takes me another trip to the coffee station to refill my mugs before I find a common point. Each of the person that sent money to the brokerage has had someone on the national waiting list for organ transplant.

Rich folks hate that list, because it’s one place the government’s doing a good job of ensuring equality. Money isn’t what determines who gets what organ first. But the names don’t stay there long. It’s easy to match them leaving the list with the time frames of the payments to the brokerage. 

It’s why there’s such a lucrative underground market for body parts, for back, and not so back, alley doctors to transplant off the books. It’s lucrative enough anyone successful at it would need a lot of accounts to hide that money.

Kind of like all those accounts my programs found.

Except that Wagler isn’t a doctor.

And Tristan isn’t anything of what he might claim to be, and he’s still good enough at it to fool experts. Is that what Wagler’s smirk was about? Because Tristan hadn’t uncovered that? So he kills people for rich folks and transplants the organs.

And he is the doctor, the money I’m looking at isn’t what a lowly hired killer gets. It’s top of the ladder kind of money. And since he’s both the doctor and the killer, that’s one less expense.

So, I’ve unearthed the big mystery, well, not mystery, but reason why he was so full of himself when he left. Not really a game changer. We knew he’s a killer, so what if he moonlights as an organ transplant doctor. That’s not out concern.

I’m about to recall the program and shut everything down when I notice a detail on one of the organ transplant recipient. It’s a small detail, but it sends me digging through every other names as soon as my programs give them to me.

This… this changes everything.