Night Talk (16 page)

“Good idea. Ethan told me she lives in El Segundo, down by the airport, and works at LAX. His father's out of the picture, divorced. I think Ethan lived with her off and on. She wasn't tolerant of his drug habit.”

“But there are a couple things we need to do first. Your little red car is too easy to spot, your phone might be tracked already. I know someone who might help us out, up in Topanga Canyon. He dropped under the radar a long time ago.”

“Topanga Canyon. That's out in the Valley?”

“The road goes from Woodland Hills in the Valley to the coast between Pacific Palisades and Malibu. Usually forty-five minutes from here, but light-years away when you figure the odds of us making it in an unusual red convertible without getting spotted.”

“How are we going to do it?”

“We're going to make it up as we go.”

 

32

“Run the woman driving the car through HumanID,” Mond said.

Human Identification at a Distance, HumanID, was used to identify people through their facial features and/or gait even at a considerable distance. It was the most highly sophisticated facial recognition program available, an advanced form of identification using biometrics.

Biometrics using a person's unique physical or behavioral characteristics had been used by police to identify criminals for more than a century. Fingerprints and voice patterns were examples. A widely used method of biometrics to identify criminals prior to universal use of fingerprints was Bertillonage, a form of anthropometry, the measurement of individual physical characteristics of people—size of their nose, distance between eyes, length of fingers, fingernails and dozens of other possibilities. Precise measurements of a standard list of body parts were taken of criminals and the information stored. When a person was arrested and their true identity was in question, measurements taken of the arrestee were compared to those in the database.

HumanID was infinitely quicker and more thorough than nineteenth-century anthropometry, but it was essentially the same thing with exceptions: the modern method had incredible speed and accuracy and most important, was not restricted to criminals who had already been arrested. Instead a vast database of the facial features of Americans was being compiled, with a goal of having the features of every single person in the country in it so anyone, anywhere, at any time could be identified.

The government had already gathered a large percentage of Americans in the database by scanning in driver's license pictures, passports, mug shots, military IDs and every other conceivable source.

The system was more sophisticated over that being used by local police, not only analyzing visible features, but using multispectral infrared technology to identify people even by their body language.

It was Mond's favorite program. Being able to identify most people most of the time by just running their pictures through the HumanID database gave him a sense of power over them.

He wasn't moved by criticism that the program was an invasion of privacy nor that private companies would soon offer facial recognition programs by pulling tens of millions of pictures off the Web. Buy an app and you could take a shot of the good-looking woman or man sitting across the room in a restaurant or bar. Not just getting their name, but incredible amounts of information exposed via the Internet, from where they lived and worked to where they played and banked.

The concept would create a handy weapon for criminals and perverts, not to mention how much a person's credit score might fit into whether they would be asked out for a date or avoided like the plague.

Novak leaned back from her console. “Sir, she's wearing a cap and the vertical angle of the satellite image doesn't show enough of the side of the woman's face to make an identification.”

Mond pursed his brow. “Nowell went out the back. She might have joined him there. We don't have a satellite or drone image, but check the cameras on the street. There may be an apartment building or business with a camera.”

“Got it.” Novak displayed a video of Greg Nowell and the woman driving the red Mini Cooper convertible. Nowell leaned over to talk to her for a moment and then got into the car and they left.

“I ran HumanID on the woman,” Novak said. “No results.”

 

33

As they walked with the ocean on their left, Ali asked, “Should we be figuring out how to get to Topanga Canyon?”

“I already have. With a bit of luck, there will be a guy on Santa Monica's Third Street Promenade who can provide transportation.”

“Instead of getting the car, you think we should get a bus to Santa Monica?”

“That's the Santa Monica Pier just ahead. We have to get to the Third Street Promenade. It's not far from the pier.”

They had been closing in on Santa Monica since they started walking on the boardwalk.

Greg said, “We would have been on street and bus cameras if that's the way we came.” He gestured at the businesses along the walkway. “Probably cameras here, too, right?”

“Right. CCTV, but most of them transmitting to a security firm who in turn can be tuned into by government agencies in case of emergency. But there are lots of people around. Until they find the car parked and empty, I think they would focus on locating the car on a freeway getting out of town.” She nodded ahead. “Don't smile, you're on candid camera.”

A camera was posted on a light post ahead.

“They can't check everyone who comes through here,” Greg said.

“Actually, they can. It just takes a while. And like I said, they're probably focusing on the car. I borrowed the car so it should take them a while to identify it and me as the driver.”

He felt as if he were being watched like an ant in the glass-plated ant farm an uncle gave him for Christmas when he was a child.

A sense of familiarity about the events shattering his life stayed with him. Not déjà vu, which would be a feeling that he had experienced being on the run from the authorities before or that there was something familiar about the woman. Rather it was a feeling that what he was going through now was expected—and with it an electrified, almost breathless tension; a feeling of walls closing in on him like a torture chamber in a slasher movie, of running from demons that had haunted him for decades.

He wasn't as shocked or surprised or completely devastated as he should be and would be if he had found himself entangled in a criminal enterprise. Like so many of his callers who saw the world through different eyes than most people, seeing layers of deceit and hidden agendas, the events that had exploded his world were not unexpected. Like an evangelical practitioner who would see the sudden appearance of heavenly fire and brimstone as prophetic, the fires raging in his own life were not unexpected.

They left the beach-side path and walked to the Third Street Promenade. He wondered how many cameras from ATM machines, traffic cams and store security were pointed at him along the way. He had heard from callers that the federal authorities were roping in the images from the hundreds of thousands of cameras picking up street images across the entire country.

How long would it take them to use facial recognition hardware to find his location? It took seconds on television shows.

They turned onto the promenade, a pedestrian street with shops, cafés, bars, movies, street entertainment and some panhandling homeless. It was his favorite Westside night spot in good weather because he and a date could just mosey along, catching the street acts and window shopping, picking up dinner at a sidewalk café followed by a movie.

Greg liked the funky, casual atmospheres of the Promenade, Westwood, West Hollywood and Old Pasadena, having been-there, done-that with the restaurants and lounges to “be seen” on Sunset and Melrose. Those in places usually only lasted less than a year before the people to be seen moved on to another place where the prices were outrageous, the food presentations were works of art and the taste was mediocre.

He led Ali to a cowboy plucking out a tune on a guitar and wailing “The Streets of Laredo.”

As I walked out in the streets of Laredo

As I walked out in Laredo one day

I spied a poor cowboy wrapped in white linen

Wrapped up in white linen as cold as the clay

“I can see by your outfit that you are a cowboy”

These words he did say as I boldly walked by

“Come sit down beside me and hear my sad story

I'm shot in the breast and I know I must die”

His handwritten sign on the ground leaning against his guitar case said he was homeless and would play for food, fire or shelter. But his expensive faded blue jeans, snakeskin belt with a silver buckle of a cowboy on a bucking bronco, polished handmade pointed-toe brown cowboy boots with wiggly patterns up the sides and red silk cowboy shirt with pearl buttons and white embroidered floral on the front and cuffs made him look like a successful accountant who just wasn't into looking like what he advertised.

“Hank used to be a water resources administrator,” Greg said. “He lost his job when he turned whistleblower on my show, exposing the fact that the high level of drugs making their way into our water supply was not being revealed. There are even hormones that can affect a person's sexuality. He claims it's making men grow larger breasts.”

“Some women wouldn't complain about that. How does the stuff get into the water?”

“Flushed down toilets and recycled or leeched. Most waste water is reprocessed to be used keeping the sewer system flowing, but as potable water gets outstripped by water demands, especially during droughts, some of it ends up diverted to our taps.”

“Good reason to drink bottled water.”

“Plastic water containers aren't biodegradable. Better to drink wine and beer. I helped him get a lawyer after he was fired. He settled for more money than Midas. He picked up the cowboy garb and drawl after he got the money.”

“Why does he play for peanuts?”

“Fulfilling a dream of being an entertainer? Celebrity status is an epidemic mind-set in L.A.”

As soon as the dying cowboy in the song was dead and buried, Hank greeted Greg, who in turn introduced him to Ali.

“I need a big favor,” Greg said. “I need to borrow a car. I can't tell you why and you don't want to know why.”

“You're right about that. I learned a long time ago that curiosity is what gets me into so damn much trouble.” Hank eyed them. “You both look pretty grim. Some of that talk you do at night got the kettle boiling over?”

“The kettle is full of nitroglycerin.”

“You know, I've got a few dollars in the bank, besides these kindly donations which I give to the real homeless on the street.” He gestured at the donated money in his guitar case. “If it's a matter of that…”

“Much more complicated. If you're asked by anyone why I needed to borrow your car, say I told you that we're trying to have some privacy and Ali's jealous husband is having her followed.”

“Partner, that's a story that would get a cowboy to even loan you his horse. Take the keys. Leave it where you like and just let me know. I got more cars than you can shake a stick at.”

The car was parked on a lot off Second Street.

“Oh my God,” came from Ali at first sight.

It was an understatement. The car was a sleek 1959 radiant candy apple green Cadillac Deville. The paint job glowed bright enough to have been manufactured in Fukushima during the meltdown of the atomic power plant. It had long, swept-back, razor's-edge tailfins and duel bullet taillights. It looked ready to blast off.

“That paint job can probably be seen from a space station,” Ali said. “I bet it glows in the dark.”

“Just be grateful it doesn't have a set of steer horns on the hood and cowhide seat covers.”

Ali couldn't kill a laugh. “The best thing is that no one would suspect us of running from the police in a car that shouts, ‘Look at me!' In a strange way it reminds me of my little red Cooper.”

 

34

Novak sat at her console and watched Mond out of the corner of her eye. He had been quiet for two minutes, an eternity when searching for a suspect. Getting stumped trying to identify the woman in the red convertible annoyed him.

No, she thought, not just annoyed him. He seemed to be angry that he couldn't identify her, as if he took it personally.

They had managed to follow the car for blocks but lost it after it made a turn onto a street with no cameras. He ordered drones into the search but the car hadn't been spotted yet.

He had Novak do a quick trace on Alyssa Neal, tracking her through telephone and credit card use to New York City, where she had gone to attend a wedding. She had left her Mini Cooper at LAX parking, had the keys with her and had not given anyone permission to use the car. Cameras at the airport showed the real Ms. Neal leaving the car, but were not working the day the car was stolen.

That meant the thieves had more talents than stealing cars. At the very least they were highly sophisticated hackers who invaded the airport's surveillance system.

Mond had a picture of the woman driving the convertible in front of the apartment building sent to the real Ms. Neal and she reported back that she had no idea who the woman was or how she got the car.

“Why steal a car that stood out like a red flag?” Novak asked. “You would think that the woman would have stolen a car that blended in rather than attracting attention if she was involved in a crime.”

“The little red convertible was clever,” Mond said. “And deliberate. People will remember the car, not the driver, especially because she blends in well. She looks like she would own that kind of car.”

“Women aren't usually car thieves,” Novak said.