Helen Hanson - Dark Pool (29 page)
Read Helen Hanson - Dark Pool Online
Authors: Helen Hanson
Tags: #Mystery: Thriller - Alzheimer's - Computer Hacker - Investment Scam
The clamor of his heartbeat echoed through his belly. Dad used pi to authenticate the message. It wasn’t the message. From his homepage, he clicked on a bookmark for the domain name Dad created.
http://www.AMirageVistasRight.com
The equal sign. It had to be for a program state. A pointer within a URL. Dad was pointing Travis to something. And Dad always used the ColdFusion language whenever he could because it didn’t require a lot of unneeded code. As a single programmer, he could create programs faster with it. It had to be a ColdFusion state.
In the URL box, Travis added a character string to the end.
/index.cfm?state
He then clipped and pasted the string sent by Dad.
=3point14159265.
The URL now read:
http://www.AMirageVistasRight.com/index.cfm?state=3point14159265
After he hit enter, his lungs emptied. His eyes refused to blink. The number at the top. It couldn’t be real.
$ 40,763,902,384.51.
Tension leeched from his muscles. His bones drooped in the vacuum.
A dollar sign up front. It was a dollar sign. Followed by one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven—eleven digits! Eleven freakin digits. Over forty billion dollars.
And fifty-one cents.
A chalky laugh escaped his throat. He closed his eyes several times to lubricate them.
The page Dad wanted him to see was a long list of gold storage houses and banks. Gold House. Bullion Safe. Gold Vaulted. Gold Line. Casa do Ouro. Gouden Kluis. Cámara Acorazada del Oro. Banque d’Or. Cassaforte Dell’Oro. Goldwölbung. Each with a value listed to the right. The list went on so long it made him dizzy. And a little ill. His eyes trailed the numbers all the way to the bottom. The total of all the columns equaled the amount listed at the top of the page.
$40,763,902,384.51.
And fifty-freakin-one cents.
Travis lay back in the chair. His breath heaved in short snorts. He’d found the end of the rainbow.
Now if he could only find his father.
He returned her call, but she was asleep. Her brother Travis promised to have her call as soon as she woke. The situation weighed on them both as Kurt thought her brother sounded especially anxious.
The odds were good that their father had simply wandered away. It was a symptom. Kurt’s own grandmother often strolled down to the local head shop, the same building where her favorite hairdresser used to operate. Fortunately, the head shop owner also had a grandmother with Alzheimer’s and called a member of Kurt’s family each time instead of the police. One day, she came home wearing a hemp necklace and sported a henna tattoo of a butterfly on her forearm.
If Vladimir Penniski was involved, Martin Fender was a dead man. The money Vladimir lost caused less pain than the embarrassment of being O’Mara’s dupe. His pride was more fragile than a Swarovski figurine, and the edges much sharper when shattered.
Yet, Kurt planned to grind the sonovabitch somehow for putting the keylogger on his computer. Blood punched his temples as he remembered. And it still monitored every key stroke made on that computer. Stephanie used it for trivial things. Kurt tinkered on it when the case points were already in Vladimir’s hands. Kurt wanted the information transmitting from that computer to appear secure, viable, and reliable until the moment he fed Vladimir to the jackals.
Kurt heard the outer door open. He wasn’t expecting anyone and walked out to the lobby to investigate.
“Hey.” Stephanie wore a black raincoat and carried an umbrella with purple smiley faces. Both were wet.
“What brings you in on a Sunday?”
“Trying to get ahead of the curve. Last Monday I fielded a deluge of calls from the money-losers. After hitting the bottle at the Fairmont last weekend, they apparently vowed to follow-up when they were sober. I expect tomorrow to be the same.” She dropped her umbrella in the vase by the door. “The calls from the press are fast. A simple ‘No comment’ and I can hang up.”
Kurt trailed to the coffee pot and poured his second cup. “Remind me to pay you overtime.”
“Gladly.” She took off her raincoat and revealed a tomato-red jumpsuit over a banana-yellow shirt.
Kurt shied his eyes.
“How’s the new laptop?”
He’d picked it up on the way to meet Spencer Thornton after his drunken summons. The hot, new computer was still in his trunk. “It’s great.”
Kurt wandered to his office. He hadn’t noticed the rain earlier. Now it raged against his window as if trying to break in. Forty-one floors below people scurried toward shelter to avoid the drops gathering forces overhead. The bay waters churned and peaked in white. The sight left him depressed.
Stephanie knocked on the door before he had a chance to sit. Her presence soothed his sour mood.
“I’ve got an email from Barry Martinez, the CEO of The Rockstag Group. He sent the guest list for the party they threw.” She glanced at his tainted computer. “You want me to forward it to you?”
“No. Print a copy for me, and I’ll come to your desk.” Even with the spectacular views, he was glad for an excuse to leave this room.
Stephanie’s desk was the antithesis of her personal mien. While she was spiky, dangly, kitschy, and disheveled, her workspace was smooth, spare, elegant, and ordered. Her mind was a model of discipline.
He pulled a chair in close to hers. The list ran several pages. Patty O’Mara was near the top.
She highlighted the long list from the email and clipped all the names into a spreadsheet.
“I’ll cross match these names to the list of woefully ripped-off.”
“Good idea.” He continued reading his list. Vonda Creevy’s name popped up near the top. Just Vonda. Her husband wasn’t invited after all. “What do the letters mean behind each name? Looks like ‘adults only’. Exactly what kind of a party was this?”
“A dull one. The ‘A’ means the person attended, and the ‘O’ means that O’Mara invited the person. According to Barry Martinez, the party was technically hosted by The Rockstag Group, but O’Mara was the major underwriter.”
“Spencer Thornton met O’Mara at a party like this. O’Mara invited his happy clients to these events, and they inevitably helped him corral fresh victims. The Rockstag Group needs the high-level client as much as O’Mara. It’s a symbiotic relationship. Until they kill the host.”
Stephanie nodded toward her monitor. “The guest list shows four hundred and eighteen names. O’Mara invited about forty percent of the people. So far, all of those names are on the investor list.”
“Was Brian Carter invited?”
She scrolled down. “Didn’t make the cut. There are a few names I recognize, people who were invited by Martinez. The governor, for instance, but he was busy. According to Martinez, they’re pretty tight. Frat bros from Berkeley. Let’s see. The Mayor. He showed up. Ooh. So did Vladimir Penniski. I bet he knows some great party tricks.”
Kurt scowled. “He’s sure as hell on the investor list.”
Stephanie’s face lit up with some kind of recognition. She started to say something but bit her lip and turned back to the screen.
He had an odd sense that events were spinning out of his control. Too many questions about this defied answers. His last case fell into success, in large part due to luck, but also his dogged sense of knowing what things connected. It never felt hopeless. This was starting to feel hopeless. He hated hopeless.
Kurt checked his cell phone. Nothing from Maggie Fender. Stephanie didn’t need his help. And he needed to get out of the office, off the 41st floor, and out in the cool, wet air. “Find out who everybody is on that list. I want to know if anyone has a tie to the Fender family.” He rose from his chair. “I’m going to drive over to their house now.”
“Is the father still lost?”
“Lost or stolen.” He folded the guest list and put it in his jacket pocket while Stephanie called the concierge to get his car ready. His umbrella was in the trunk next to the hottest laptop Spencer Thornton’s money could buy.
As he neared the door, Stephanie called, “I got a text message from my mom. The cops busted some lady for lacing Patty O’Mara’s chocolate with cyanide.”
“Let me guess, an investor?”
Stephanie’s expression leaned sympathetic. “The lady lost 2.3 million dollars.”
“Now she’s lost a lot more than money.”
The dogs waited for her at the back door. She clipped them to their leashes and slid on shoes and a raincoat. Along with everything else, the weather had turned against them.
Dark clouds swarmed the ocean, pelting the beach with angry fists of rain. Bailey and Belli kept to Maggie’s feet as she scanned the coastline for her father. Was he kidnapped, unconscious, and lying in a muddy ditch or wandering the hills with black bears, coyotes, and mountain lions? The possibilities made her nauseous.
The Firm walked back to the house without their usual hyper energy. They seemed to know something was wrong. Dogs were often more sensitive than humans. Maybe they resonated with the continuous bad vibes.
Travis bounded into the kitchen. “You’re up. Dad’s still missing. The police sergeant called earlier. And Kurt Meyers called you back.”
She stared at him and nodded. “I want you to call Brian Carter’s wife, Barbara. Ask her to come over today. I’m sure she’s heard about Dad.”
“Why me?”
“Because my limited people skills have ebbed.” She leaned over to scratch Belli’s snout. “Dad was giving Brian Carter money. Maybe. I want to see if the timing works with the cash he was flashing. Money was flying out of Dad’s account at the rate of twelve hundred dollars a week. The whole thing makes me sick.”
“I’ll call her.” An odd look passed over Travis’ face. “But I gotta show you something.” He took her over to the table where her laptop hesitated before waking.
She cocked her head toward the screen. “What are all these numbers?”
His half-smile seemed under pressure. “Patty O’Mara’s money. It’s here. All of it. Somehow, Dad got his hands on it.”
“Make some sense, Travis. Dad is missing.” Her voice went shrill. “He’s got Alzheimer’s. How could he have O’Mara’s money?”
Travis took her hands in his. “C’mon, sit with me.” Her head felt brick thick as if one of the rain clouds had taken up residence. He led her to the couch and sat next to her. “Let me explain it, and then I’ll show you.” He took a deep breath that stuttered on the way in his lungs. She knew his next words were going to be big. She also knew she really didn’t want to hear them.
“When Mom first got sick, Dad must have wanted to earn some money fast. His job at the Server Farm was good, but maybe he got scared about leaving us with nothing. I’m not sure. But Patty O’Mara had his servers at the Server Farm, and his hedge fund was legend. O’Mara ran what they call a dark pool fund which means the trades are intentionally kept private, so other funds don’t copy the trades.
“Dad did something he shouldn’t. He decided to find out what stocks O’Mara was trading and make the same trades. Dad installed a server under the flooring at the Server Farm and wired it to the router in O’Mara’s server cage. It captured every data packet that left O’Mara’s hardware.”
Her stomach felt like a Celtic knot. “You’re saying Dad earned this money by stealing stock trading information.”
“That’s what he wanted to do. Dad saw everything that happened on O’Mara’s computer systems. Everything. But, O’Mara’s dark pool was all smoke. The man never made any real trades. He just stole people’s money and Dad found out.”
Daddy was a crook. Maybe the disease had already addled his mind, but how could he? How could he do that to his family? Denial spoke for her. “No. I don’t believe you.”
Travis sank back in the couch and faced the rain hitting the window. He didn’t say anything. He’d heard those words shoot from her mouth too many times. No matter what, he was her brother, and she knew he wasn’t a liar. Maybe now was the time to quit calling him one.
“I’m sorry, Travis. I do believe you. I’m going to have to deal with the fact that Dad isn’t exactly who I thought he was, or who I want him to be. That’s my problem. Will you please forgive me?”
A tear steamed down his cheek. His chin quivered as he nodded.
She hugged him and wiped at his face. “Quite a family. I’m a public brawler, you’re an ex-con, and Dad’s a thief.” They shared a small laugh. “I won’t interrupt you again, Trav. I promise. Please, go on.”
His eyes sparked. “Dad sent the same email like twenty times. I got it while you were sleeping. It came from James Hendricks again, so Dad set this up some time ago.”
“Clearly.”
“He sent part of a web address for that goofy domain name of his. It was all based on pi. You know, 3.1415—”
“Yeah, I got it.” Maybe she did.
“He used the digits from pi to create odd web addresses for these particular web pages. If he wanted another page, he went out to the next decimal place in pi. No one would ever stumble on these web pages by accident. He made sure only I would see them.”
“What about the search engines? Don’t they crawl through and cache that stuff?”
“They crawl static pages. Pages with the information sitting up there for anyone to read.”
Travis’ excitement made Maggie weary.
“Remember those compiled files we found, the ones we couldn’t read? They actually generate the information on the web pages, but only when I go there. Unless I go to the exact web address, the information won’t ever display. It’s like the light in the fridge. It only comes on when you open the door.”
