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They all looked at Baxter, who struggled to sit up and said, “I wanna see about assault charges on this asshole,” and nodded at the agent who’d hit him. Then, still holding a hand over his eye, he said to Letty, “You’re right about the circus. They all oughta bewearing clown shoes. Maybe we’re done. Maybe we can go home and call the whole fuckin’ thing off.”
The agent who’d found Letty’s gun tossed her jeans to her. She caught them, pulled them on, and led the way to the door, barefoot, as the lead agent followed.
Outside, Letty shut the door behind her, turned to the agent and shouted, “Don’t you fuckin’ feebs coordinate anything? You just busted a Homeland Security and NSA undercover job. We’re dealing with a threat of national significance that could kill hundreds of people. Now... I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t know if we can salvage it. Bob and Sue and that goddamn Harp can broadcast our identities all over the LA basin.”
The agent pulled his head back, as if slapped. “Do you have...”
“We’ve got IDs and my federal gun permit in our truck. I also have the name of the agent in your office who is our contact here, and who should have, if you weren’t a bunch offuckin’clowns...” She was no longer quite shouting, but she was close. “...warned you off any kind of computer-based stings in the Caltech area. But didn’t, obviously. Let me get you that number, Bozo.”
Telephone calls ensued.
Bob and Sue kept asking what was going on. The FBI’s assistant director in charge, for Los Angeles, whose name was Samuels, got involved, and she and Delores Nowak exchanged hissy fits.
While that was going on, one of the feds filled an evidence bag with ice, gave it to Baxter to put on his eye, and almost apologized. Then Letty came up with a solution for handling Bob and Sue, one she’d heard about from her father.
She asked the lead agent, who’d led the way through the moteldoor, how they’d gotten Bob and Sue to cooperate in the sting. They were hackers, he said, who’d gotten caught.
“They developed software that allowed them to tamper with certain off-brand ATM machines,” he said. “The kinds they have in casinos. We don’t know how many they’d cracked before we caught up with them, but it ranged between ‘several’ and ‘many.’ They own a condo, free and clear. A one-bedroom, but still...”
“You already arrested them for that? The hacking?”
“We didn’t formally arrest them,” the agent said. “An arrest would kick out too many computer-based court files. We wanted to use them undercover, looking at other hackers. Hackers who might be very good cracking those court files.”
“If you formally arrested them now, for the ATMs... could you hold them for a while before giving them access to an attorney?” Letty asked.
“I see where you’re going with this,” the agent said. “Let me call Agent Samuels, see what she thinks.”
Bob whined and Sue wept,but the feds gave Letty her gun back, and as they led the two hackers to their Tahoe, the lead agent said to Letty and Baxter, “You got seventy-two hours. We might do some bureaucratic stuff that’ll keep them quiet a little longer, like, if they have a problem with bail, but we can’t guarantee it.”
Letty: “Seventy-two hours. After that, we’re SOL?”
“Thatmaybe the case,” the fed said. “We’ll see what else we can figure out.”
When the feds had gone, Letty called Delores Nowak. Nowak said, “We’re reassessing here.”
“We’ve got seventy-two hours,” Letty said. “We’re still operating.”
“What are you going to do?” Nowak asked.
“You might not want to know that,” Letty said.
After a moment’s hesitation, Nowak asked, “Who’d you say this is?”
When she’d rung off the call with Nowak, Letty said to Baxter, “Now for that goddamn Harp.”
Eight
They made it to Harp’s house at eleven-thirty, on what almost looked like a Halloween night, dark clouds scudding across a rising moon. Baxter was back to pissing and moaning, until Letty told him to shut up. “I’m not going to kill him. I’m just going to nick him up a little.”
“C’mon, Charlie...”
“Suck it up, Paul.”
“Hey, I’m the fuckin’ wounded one,” Baxter said. “My eye looks like a goddamn meat loaf.”
“Keep the ice on it, and try to start acting, you know, like aman.”
“Sexist.”
