Private L.A. (Private 6)

Mo-bot was white as a sheet. “How did they do that?”

The ladies from Cal Poly looked at each other as if communicating telepathically. Then Goldberg said, “The only thing we can come up with is the rest of the metadata on the file. The stuff that came from the state to us.”

“Translate, ladies,” I said, feeling more and more eyes on me. Private had assured them the ten million would be recoverable, which it still was. But a hundred and fifty million had been taken from the state with no tick attached. They were looking for a scapegoat. I was looking very good for the role.

Hollings said, “The passwords and access codes must have been referenced in the metadata that went along with the original transfer. Someone bright had to have recognized it, copied it, and then used it to go back into the account while it was sitting there, in effect, open.”

“I’m fucked,” Watts said, growing red. “Fucked!”

He began to slam his fist on his desk. “They used my password. Fucked!”

“Any chance it went through our software?” I asked.

Clarkson shook her head. “Bypassed us.”

“Are you saying this is the perfect crime?” the sheriff demanded. “There’s no way to track it at all?”

“No, I—” Goldberg began.

“Wait a second,” Hollings called out. “The ten million. The first ten million. It’s moving again.”

You couldn’t tell up on the Google Earth map until the computer scientist gave her machine an order and new colored lines appeared. They all looked like they were heading back to the United States, to Southern California. But not quite. The lines converged south of the Mexican border.

“Banco Santander México,” Goldberg said. “Ensenada.”

“Call that bank,” I said. “Find out who owns that account.”

Special Agent Townsend said, “I know someone at the consulate here.”

Ten minutes later, she hung up her cell phone. She was grinning.

“The account holder is Edward Gonzalez. Mexican national. Claims to live in Tijuana, but does virtually all of his banking online.”

“They have records of his user name, password, and IP address?” Hollings demanded.

“They did,” Townsend said, handing her a sheet of paper.

The ladies from Cal Poly were joined by Mo-bot, all of them feeding the information through various tracking systems too esoteric for me to grasp.

Five minutes later, however, Mo-bot threw up her fist and said, “We’ve got them! They’re in the City of Commerce. That computer is live and online from a light-industrial complex east of South Atlantic Boulevard. The place is leased to a company doing business as L.A. Standard Demolition.”

Chapter 106

AND SUDDENLY THERE was not much Private could do.

FBI, LAPD, and L.A. Sheriff’s SWAT commanders took control of the situation. If Cobb and his men were as dangerous as Carpenter had described, it was going to take a whole lot of firepower to corral and subdue them.

By eleven that morning, teams were secretly staging in the Hobart Railyard a mile west of the address Mo-bot and the ladies from Cal Poly had given us. FBI snipers had already moved into the area around the building that housed the demolition company. They’d used infrared scopes on the exterior roll-up door and had seen evidence of two men inside.

Were there others? Or had this been a three-man show that with the death of the drag-queen skater was now reduced to two?

Had they flown? Or were they just out somewhere?

Special Agent Townsend, in consultation with her hostage rescue leader, decided to wait to see if more conspirators returned to the garage, a confined space where they could be surrounded and taken without civilian injury.

It made sense. From the high ground the FBI snipers had already taken up on the roofs, Cobb and his men would be sitting ducks if they tried to resist. It was a waiting game now.

I yawned, realized I’d been up since three thirty. My stomach began to growl. I’d eaten nothing since the beer and popcorn the evening before. Well, if you didn’t count five cups of coffee and the stale doughnut I’d salvaged from a plate in the mayor’s office. In any case, I was ravenous. Townsend said there was food on the way, but that it would be at least another half hour. She added that I was good to take off in search of a quick meal. Unless something drastic happened, her teams were unlikely to assault the garage in the next couple of hours. She said she’d text me if the situation changed.