Eye of the Burning Man: A Mick Callahan Novel (The Mick Callahan Series) (11 page)

She sat down to applause. Peanut leaned past Larry Donato and squeezed her hand.

Some of these people are bad, and scary.
I felt uncomfortable and glanced up. A heavily made-up girl wearing sunglasses was staring right at me. I almost waved but caught myself. She looked familiar at first, but then I couldn't place her. She broke eye contact, turned and walked out of the room.
Probably someone else who's seen the billboard
, I thought.
Take it easy.

As the next person shared, I got to my feet and went to the lavatory. The room had gray tiles with black grout and smelled of antiseptic. I threw water on my face and washed my hands. Someone else entered the room hurriedly; more footsteps followed, and my survival instincts kicked into high gear. I turned carefully, while reaching for a paper towel.

Three men dressed in business suits. One wore sunglasses. The tallest was a skinny man in his thirties with auburn hair and a light dusting of freckles. He stayed by the door and quietly slid the lock into pace. My pulse jumped up a notch. The shortest, a stout middle-aged man who was nearly bald, stood next to the one in sunglasses and kept his arms folded over his chest.
Laurel and Hardy
. I felt giddy.
What was it that Mary had said about the past catching up to her?

The third man removed his sunglasses, folded them, and tucked them neatly into his pocket. He closed the distance to the sink, washed his hands daintily and dabbed his face with a wet towel. He had clear, intense hazel eyes and neatly combed blond hair. He turned, face only inches away from mine. His breath smelled of mint.

"I fucking hate California," he said, softy. "The appalling heat. The foul odor of smog."

"So leave."

"I want to, Mr. Callahan, truly I do."

"That happens all the time." I manufactured a wide smile.

"What does?"

"That radio guy. I guess I look a lot like him. People come up and ask me for autographs and stuff. Silly, huh?"

Something slammed into my kidney. I moaned and sagged forward. Four strong arms caught me from behind. I measured the distance to the third man's testicles, but held myself in check.
Who are these people?

"Guys, that was very rude."

"My name is Fields, Mr. Callahan," the dapper man said. "Agent Jack Fields of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Baltimore Division. I work with a group called the Innocent Images Initiative. I am also a liaison with the U.S. Department of Justice, Criminal Division, with respect to Child Exploitation and Obscenity."

"Your mother must be very proud."

Knuckles struck my other kidney. This time I kicked out at Fields, but the agent had already stepped to one side, and I only managed to knock over the trash container.

"What the hell did I do, what
is
this?"

"Knock it off," Fields said. He frowned at his subordinates. "There's no need for that yet."

"Yet? That's comforting. Do you mind if I ask to see some ID?"

"Not at all." Fields opened his calfskin wallet, flashed an FBI identification card listing his name and phone. I committed the number to memory.

"Agent Fields, what the hell are you hassling me for, especially at something as benign as an AA meeting?"

Fields began trimming his nails. I noticed that he wore a new Rolex. "I wanted to ask you a few questions in private, and it would have been inconvenient had you decided to have an attorney present. This way we can have a candid, off-the-record conversation. Are you reading me?"

I just stared. "So far. Go on."

"You turned up in a surveillance photograph, and that fact disturbed me."

"Why is that, Agent Fields?"

"A public figure like you should be very careful about the company he keeps, Mr. Callahan. If a photograph like this were to fall into the wrong hands, especially after our investigation is finished and the subject goes to trial, the implications for your career prospects would be dire."

Now I was genuinely curious. "Would you mind letting me see the photograph you're talking about?"

Fields slid a brown envelope from his jacket pocket. I started to reach for it, but the other two men still held my arms from behind. Fields opened the envelope and slid a couple of eight-by-ten color prints into his hand.

A tall man was standing in the shadowy street, holding a gun pointed down at the ground. He was talking to a small, handsome black man with a withered left arm. Fields showed me the second shot, and in this one my face was visible.

"Fancy."

"So you admit you're cozy with the little prick?" It was one of the agents behind me. Fields shot the man an annoyed glance.

I sighed. "Cozy is not the word I would choose."

"What word would you choose, then?" Fields relaxed a bit. "Please do define this relationship. I shall be most attentive."

"Quid pro quo," I said. "First, was this picture taken by a camera on some kind of timer?"

"Why do you ask?"

"Because I want to know if you saw what happened a few seconds before and after the photograph was taken."

Fields studied me without expression. Finally he answered. "This particular photograph was taken by a camera hidden in a deserted building. It takes a shot every sixty seconds, and then forwards each image to our central computer. Satisfied?"

"Yes, and don't worry. All you missed was me getting into a scuffle with the two street punks Fancy sent after me."

"And why was that?"

"First have these honor students let me go. I think you and I can do some business."

Fields nodded. The other two agents released me and stepped back. Someone knocked on the restroom door. The short, bald agent said, "Out of order, man. Somebody took a dump and it backed up all over the place. Sorry." The footsteps went away.

I continued to address Fields. "A girl Fancy was pimping and using in porn called me for help. She wanted to get sober. I went out to get her."

"And?"

"That's it."

"How old is this girl?"

"I don't know for sure, but she is well into her late twenties, maybe even thirty."

"Can I talk to her?"

"Not yet, she's newly sober and shaky. She already tried to run once. I want to give her a fighting chance."

"And what if I say I am just going to talk to her anyway?"

I shrugged. "I have an LAPD officer sitting in the next room. There are also several attorneys present. A couple of them are friends of mine, and one does personal work for the Mayor. I will have the local law involved, and her ass covered up, in less than thirty seconds. It will take you months to get her in for a deposition."

"You're a prick," Fields said, a small hint of admiration in his tone. "Just so you know, according to our latest information Fancy is probably aware of that hidden camera. That may be the only reason you're not pushing up daisies."

"Gee, does that mean I owe you one?"

"You think you're bad, don't you?" Laurel said. "He thinks he's bad."

"Me? I'm a pussycat." I kept my face pleasant.
Kidnappings and child pornography. What if this ties into Blanca and her missing nephew?
"Now you answer me something, Fields. Are you trying to tell me that Fancy makes and distributes kiddy porn over the Internet?"

"I'm telling you he is under suspicion," Fields said. He reached into the envelope for some other photographs. "Take a look at these."

A small African-American boy was naked, crying; apparently being fondled by someone wearing panty hose over his face to distort his features. I thought of Blanca's nephew Loco again.
Damn, could it really make sense that it was Fancy who ordered that boy kidnapped? The man who kidnapped Loco was described as white. Weren't all of Fancy's boys black or was it maybe just the ones I saw?

I looked down again. Another photo showed a nude Oriental-looking girl wearing eyeliner and lipstick. A third showed a prepubescent white boy and a heavily made-up little girl kissing and fondling one another.

I gave the photographs back to Fields. "You've made your point."
But I need to know if you're for real before I tip my hand. Why slap me around in a toilet if you're who you say you are?

"Good. You don't need any further motivation?"

"No."

"Then let me inform you of something else," Fields said. "I take my work seriously, Mr. Callahan. I take it
very
seriously. You might say that I am on a bit of a personal crusade, here. If I can prove what I suspect is true, your Mr. Fancy is going to go down in a big way. Would that bother you?"

"No. This crap is as distasteful to me as it is to you."

"Then I need your help. What do you know that we don't?"

An awkward silence followed.
He's bargaining. He is a self-centered and ambitious man. He won't believe me unless he thinks there's something in it for me, too
. "Look, I think we can work something out."

"How?" Fields asked.

"You know I do radio, so you probably know I used to do investigate reporting. I want to get back into it. I've been talking to a network about doing a new television show."

"So?"

"You help me, I help you. I want you to feed me a solid exclusive on your investigation, smashing a ring of child pornographers. Do we have a deal?"

Fields studied me. "Maybe we can do business."

I nodded.
And just maybe I'll buy enough time to decide what to do, and how to approach this if Fancy does have Loco.

"How did you get on to Fancy's operation in the first place?"

"For more than a decade, there has been one primary ring operating in the United States." Fields coughed daintily, as if offended by the restroom's odor. "They are gigantic, and no one seems able to touch them. A cynic might say that it's because they have some friends in high places. I'm a cynic."

"Me too."

"Our sources tell us that now a second production and distribution ring has popped up, and this just in the last several months. It's a small-time operation but seems to have caught on fast. And because of that, it already has a great deal of capital. It is growing rapidly enough to be a serious concern."

"And you think this new guy is Fancy."

"Do you know the work of Stephen Whitelaw? He is at Buchanan International Security, the software firm near Glasgow, Scotland."

"I remember reading something about him. He was trying to find a way to track what he called the dark side of the world-wide web."

"Correct. It was his people who tipped us to a second U.S. ring, and how rapidly it was growing. Father Rinaldi did the rest."

"I have heard of a Father Fortunato Di Noto. Do they work together?"

"No, but it was Father Di Noto who inspired Father Rinaldi. These gentlemen are a great help to us. They work with our agents by going on line pretending to be teens looking for older lovers, or pedophiles looking for kiddy porn. When they identify a contact, they pass the information along."

"And you put the ring out of business."

"If we can find them."

"Because finding the website alone isn't enough, right?"

"Right," Fields said. "In fact, that's just the beginning."

"How does it work?"

The second guy, Laurel, butted in. His voice was thin and reedy. "Let's say there is a website that has illegal content posted on it. We track it down, but then we find out it's just a mirror site, a relay point. There can be a load of them, in fact hundreds of illegal mirrored sites coming from only one source. Someone has hacked into a gated community and used the server that the residents use for shared bandwidth. Are you following this?"

"Mostly."
Jerry, where are you when I need you?

"The residents get their own IP address and access the Internet," Hardy said. "The IP is a static domain, so the numbers don't change. This perv gets into their server and uses the resident's IP numbers to post his site. Since they only use the bandwidth for net access, and not hosting, chances are they don't even know anything is going on. After a few months, he folds his tent and goes somewhere else to do business."

"What about collecting the money? Same idea?"

"More or less." Hardy knew his stuff. "Any smart hacker can pull it off. They create endless dummy corporations to launder the cash, until it finally it ends up in the Netherlands Antilles or the Cayman Islands. There somebody skims maybe twenty percent and passes the rest on to our guy back in the States."

"How much money?"

"Multi-millions, each and every year."

I was saddened by the amount. "It's that large a problem? I knew it was bad, but that's a lot bigger than most people realize."

"Let me put it this way," Fields said. "In 1998 we had something like seven hundred cases of online pedophilia that we investigated. By 2000 there were nearly three thousand. As of 2001, five thousand, and so on. So this year we expect to be humping around twelve thousand open files."

"Jesus," I said. "And any therapist will tell you that pedophiles are virtually impossible to treat."

"He's been gone quite a while, Jack," the taller agent said. "Someone is going to notice."

Fields looked away, then back at me. He picked imaginary lint from his sleeve.
Fussy about his appearance, very vain
. "I'm going to trust you," he said. "And we are going to share information. For the time being, we won't bother the girl. How much time does she need?"

"A couple more weeks."

"But when you are willing to let her talk to us, you will get in touch. Agreed?"

"Agreed."

"Here is my card." He handed it over. I verified that the ID number matched the one on the badge. "Keep it on you. Do you have any reason to think you will be hearing from Fancy in the near future?"