Black Hat Blues (41 page)

Chloe looked to Ken, nodding for him to make the case. He got the

signal. “It’s like this, Ms. Marsh. I need to clear my name. I need to

prove that I was set up. You’ve done great work for me already on this,

great work. No doubt. But the thing is, I need this to wrap up fast.

Every day I’m on the sidelines, my business suffers. If I’m not cleared,

I’m out of the lobbying business forever, guaranteed. And again, I’m not

complaining about what you’ve done so far, it’s just that if these people

can help things move forward faster, well, that’s important.”

“I take your point, Ken. And after all, you are the client. But I

wouldn’t be doing my duty to you if I didn’t warn you against this plan.

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I believe it could end up being more trouble for you than you think.”

Ken started to say something, but Marsh talked over him. “But I see

that your mind is made up. Fine. Let us hear the proposal.”

“For first,” Sacco said. “We must to share information between our

two groups. We know things. You know things. Until we are all know-

ing the same things, we cannot move forward.”

When Marsh didn’t immediately reply, Chloe jumped in. “If we pool

our data and hand it over to the Post Hoc guys, they can start digging

into it and hopefully come up with something new. And of course

you and your people can go over everything and we’ll comb through

it on our end. Between us all, we should be able to come up with

something.”

“Maybe I’m just not up to date on all the technology these days, but

I’m still not sure what you hope to accomplish.”

Chloe felt her frustration mix with panic and grow inside her. Sacco

tried to answer her question. “They say two heads are better than one,

yes? Surely you see the advantage of working together.”

Marsh smirked. “I’m not entirely sure I agree with you on the subject

of heads. But what I’m looking for from you is some sort of concrete

plan. Think of it from my point of view. I may or may not have informa-

tion about the people who hurt you. Whatever information I do have,

it came from private sources and/or law enforcement agencies who I

would rather keep confidential. My reputation is at stake here, and I’m

loathe to risk it without some firm idea where you’re headed with it.”

“We turn whatever information we have over to the police,” said

Chloe.

“I’m not entirely satisfied that any information we get would be use-

ful to the police, as the methods Post Hoc employs are not, from my

understanding, clearly legal.”

“There are certainly other ways to use this information,” Sacco said.

“Fighting the fire with fire, yes?”

“You mean breaking the law to strike at lawbreakers?”

“It is—” Sacco started to say, but Chloe cut him off, sensing a trap.

“Nothing like that, of course not,” she said. “We’re confident in Post

Hoc’s legal status and would strictly work within the boundaries of the

law, of course.”

“Of course. Because your associates would never break the law.”

“We would not. Are you implying otherwise?”

“I’ll leave the sorting out of implications to you,” Marsh said. “It

would however be impossible for me to do business with admitted

criminals.”

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“So you’ll share what you have?” Chloe asked.

“Yes, yes, let’s have a little show and tell, by all means.” Marsh pulled

open a desk drawer and laid a file in front of her. “After you.”

Chloe opened her brief case and pulled out a file of her own. It con-

tained a heavily edited version everything they knew about what Isaiah

had done, plus Paul had added in some pretty enticing false leads. From

the file’s contents Marsh would understand the full breadth of the dam-

age Isaiah had done to the slavers down in South Florida, from petty

thefts and minor property damage all the way up to mass embezzlement

and the arrests. And of course there was the one big piece that tied those

responsible for Clover’s problems with those behind the attacks on the

slavers: the fake checks from Clover’s account that were spread out

amongst immigrant workers all over the state. The Crew had debated

long and hard about putting that data in the file, but aside from the firm

connection to Isaiah’s Crew that their version of the story made clear,

it wasn’t anything Clover and Marsh probably didn’t know already. “I

think you’ll find it interesting reading,” said Chloe as she handed over

the file.

Marsh took the file and handed her much slimmer one back to Chloe.

“I have more than this of course, but I need a day or too to assemble

everything I’m going to share with you. In the meantime, this should

get you started.”

Chloe opened the envelope and pulled out two pieces of paper—one

a page long description of a “suspect” and the other a grainy picture of

Isaiah. Chloe willed her eyes not to bulge and kept her breathing slow

and steady.

“You should recognize him,” said Marsh.

What the fuck did she mean by that? “I don’t,” said Chloe, looking

up from the photo into Marsh’s gaze. “Who is he?”

“The man responsible for the attacks on you and your friends,” she

said. “Find him, and you’ll get your revenge.”

“But who is he?” asked Chloe.

“I don’t know yet. What I do know is in that file. I’m going to take a

day to go over what you’ve given me here. In the meantime, why don’t

you find out what you can about that man. Then maybe we’ll see if two

heads really are better than one.”

Chloe and Sacco made their thanks and Larry showed them out. She

listened to an excited Ken Clover babble on about his revenge until

the limo pulled up and she practically shoved him in it and just barely

avoided slamming his fingers in the door. Then she and Sacco started

looking for a cab. He started to say something but Chloe just walked

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on ahead, forcing him to almost jog to keep up. She took the second

cab that presented itself and didn’t say a word to Sacco until they were

in the subway headed towards Maryland.

“Now what do we fucking do?” she asked at last. Sacco didn’t have

any answer.

“It’s not that bad,” said Paul.

“Isaiah is going the freak the hell out,” said Sacco.

“Not if we don’t tell him,” said Chloe.

“How can we not tell him? He’s our ally, our comrade. We can’t fuck

him over like this!”

“I’m not saying we fuck him over, I’m just saying we haven’t decided

to tell him.”

“Isn’t that the same thing? I mean, she has his fucking picture. If we

don’t tell him, we are in fact fucking him over, yes or no?”

“It’s not that fucking simple, is it?”

Paul wasn’t sure what side he was on or even if Chloe and Sacco were

on opposite sides or just yelling at each other because everyone was

freaked out. “All right, all right, let’s talk this through with some logic

here, OK?” He looked around the dingy Baltimore room. There was

one bare bulb hanging from the ceiling and the glow of three laptop

monitors. C1sman had his head down, looking at one of the screens.

Bee was next to him, looking at the floor. Chloe and Sacco were pacing

around each other in the center of the room while Paul leaned against

a peeling wall. If the tension were any thicker, they’d all suffocate.

“Here is a fucked up situation, but we need to sort it out. We need to

do something.”

“What do you suggest?” asked Sacco. “Let me guess, you’re with her,

right?”

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“He can’t be with me,” snapped Chloe. “I haven’t even decided where

I am yet.”

“Nobody’s anywhere yet,” Paul said, doing his best to exude calm he

didn’t feel. “Let’s just talk it through.” Nobody made any objections, so

he continued. “So, we know she’s got a picture of Isaiah, but no name

to go with it. At least not one that she’s sharing with us. Now from the

picture quality and angle, it looks like it was taken from some sort of

security camera or maybe a hidden camera. Not high quality, not good

lighting. That means she can probably place him at an exact time and

place, and that time and place probably have some connection to his

operations in Florida, otherwise Marsh probably wouldn’t care. But that

picture alone is not going to get her anywhere near Isaiah. He’s in New

York, not Miami. He has no criminal record as far as we can tell, and

while Marsh no doubt has better connections in that area then we do, if

she had found something like that I think she would’ve told us. Instead

she just gives us a photo that she says connects him to the attacks on the

slavers. So right now, Isaiah’s pretty safe. Safer than me, for instance.

“And then there’s Sandee. He’s under house arrest in Key West, which

sucks. And I think it’s pretty likely that Marsh could pull some strings

and have him released. The question is, how do we convince her to do

that? She’s not going to do it out of the goodness of her heart, she’s

going to want something in exchange. And right now the only thing

we have that she wants is information on Isaiah.”

“Then we should give it to her,” said Bee. Paul looked at her in sur-

prise. She hadn’t spoken for half an hour. “Tell her everything we know

about Isaiah if she lets Sandee go.”

“Are you high?” asked Sacco. “We can’t turn Isaiah over to her. She’ll

tear him and his Crew to pieces. Without him we wouldn’t have pulled

off any of this, right? I’m not going to betray him.”

“But you’ll betray Sandee?” asked Bee.

“We’ll find some other way to get Sandee out.”

“You’re just too embarrassed because you slept with him and now

you think you’re gay.”

Sacco opened his mouth but no words came out. He swallowed and

tried again. “That’s not it. It’s not true.”

“I saw the video of you four fucking!”

“I mean that’s not why I don’t want to rescue him! I do want to rescue

him. But I don’t want to screw over Isaiah. That’s not right.”

“The Crew comes first,” said Bee. “Sandee matters the world to me

and Isaiah can go to hell. He’s not part of us. He used us. You weren’t

there when we met him. You don’t know what he’s like. He doesn’t care

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about us and there’s no way we should care about him. Especially not

more than we care about Sandee.”

“I’m not a traitor,” Sacco insisted.

“You’re betraying Sandee!”

“I’m fucking not! There’s gotta be another way to do both!”

Paul was letting them just work it out. He’d sensed the tension

between them building and hoped that if they cleared the air a little it

would help. But Chloe had apparently had enough.

“Stop it, both of you,” said Chloe. “Listen, Sacco, I think Bee’s right.

We need to focus on Sandee. He’s in real danger. The cops fucking have

him, OK? And we need to do something about that.” Sacco started to

say something, but Chloe wouldn’t let him. “Hear me out. Isaiah’s free,

well-connected, and has a ton of resources. Sandee just has us. Isaiah’s

already on a super paranoid defense footing, and is probably already

looking out for people like Marsh. It’s not like they’re going to take him

by surprise. Wait, there’s one more thing. We couldn’t give up Isaiah if

we wanted to. Do you know where he lives? I don’t. I don’t even know

his real name, but I’ll bet you a million bucks it’s not Isaiah. So I say

we give her what we’ve got, which is not much. Maybe we gin up some

extra bits to fill out the file. We tell Marsh some shit she doesn’t know

and in exchange she pulls some strings for Sandee.”

Sacco didn’t seem happy with Chloe’s take, but he didn’t have any

immediate rejoinder. C1sman however, did. “Why would Marsh pull

strings for Sandee?” he asked.

“To get Isaiah,” Bee said.

“No, yeah, I get that,” c1sman said. “What I meant was, why would

we as, you know, representatives of the slavers, why would we ask for

Sandee to be freed? Why would we care?”

Now both Sacco and Chloe looked unhappy. “That’s a good point,

c1s,” Paul said. “We’ll have to think of something. I
will
think of some-

thing if that’s what we decide to do. But first let’s decide what we’re for

sure going to do. I think Chloe makes some good points, but I’m not

sure it will be enough. I think in order to have enough leverage on her

to free Sandee, we’re going to have to give her some information that

seems both recent and useful enough for her to find Isaiah.”

“And you’re willing to do that?” asked Sacco.

“If that’s the way the vote goes. If that’s what we decide to do. The

question is, are you willing?”

Sacco looked at each of them in turn and then sighed. “Yeah. What

else am I going to do?”

“All right then,” said Paul. “Let’s vote.”

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

It was a careful balancing act, trying to look like you were hunting

someone to your best efforts while at the same time hoping you didn’t

find them. But Paul knew that Marsh was definitely going to be a “show