‘That’s what you pay me for.’ He asked Dale, ‘Did you get the bugs in place?’
‘Planted ’em while the wife was dropping off the kid at school.’ Dale’s breathing was labored. He looked worse than usual. ‘I also plugged in that whatever thingy you told me to put on her laptop. It was in the kitchen. I didn’t find any other computers. No iPads. Nothing. Weird, right?’
‘Really weird.’ Sam told Angie, ‘The program Dale put on the laptop is called a shadow tracker, like spyware, but better. I already downloaded every file from the hard drive onto this tablet.’ He reached toward a bin and pulled out a scratched-up iPad. Two old-school antennae stuck out of the back that reminded Angie of the rabbit ears on a television. ‘I loaded an app to ping the GPS tracker on her car. It’s this button here with the car on it. Works exactly like the police model. You’re familiar with it?’
‘Yes.’
‘You can follow her anywhere she goes as long as it’s not underground.’ He started swiping and tapping the glass. ‘The spyware on her laptop acts in real time. Whatever she types on the computer from now on will show up on this iPad, but since I already downloaded all the data, you can also go back and do searches through her hard drive. It’s basically her laptop. Not just a copy as of a certain date.’
Dale said, ‘You mean not like the thing you gave Polaski before.’
Sam’s eyes bulged in his head. ‘I didn’t—’
‘I told him,’ Angie interrupted. Dale wouldn’t give her Sam’s contact information unless Angie told him why. Angie had been a little creative on whose laptop she was breaking into. She told Sam, ‘We’re cool. Just keep doing what you’re doing.’
‘All right.’ Sam tapped a few more times on the screen. He handed the iPad to Angie. ‘Just so you know, the hacker’s code is you don’t rat out your customers. I’m solid for you, yo.’
‘Sure, kid.’ Dale pulled a melted Snickers out of his pocket.
Angie looked away so she didn’t have to watch him chew. She still wasn’t sure what had driven her to copy Sara’s laptop. Her patient files were on there, so Grady Hospital had installed some kind of encryption software that took a higher level of espionage than Angie was capable of. Sam had given her something called a dongle that broke Sara’s passwords and downloaded all the files. Angie knew this was crossing a line—not with Sara, but with herself. That was the moment at which she had gone from being annoyed to being obsessed to being a full-on stalker.
Was she dangerous?
She hadn’t figured out that part yet.
‘Get out of the van.’ Dale was talking to Sam. ‘I need a minute with Polaski.’
Sam balked. ‘In the sunlight?’
‘You’re not going to melt, Elphaba.’
Angie laughed. ‘How the hell do you know the Wicked Witch’s real name?’
‘Look.’ Sam tried to talk reason. ‘I’ve got sensitive stuff in here. For other clients. I can’t tell you what it is, but it’s top-secret stuff.’
‘You think either one of us knows what the fuck any of this shit is?’ Dale reached back and pushed open the door. ‘Get out.’
Sam kept up the hurt act as he jumped out of the van. Dale slammed the door shut. Angie felt her eyes sting at the sudden changes in light.
Dale fished a joint out of the ashtray. He used a plastic lighter to flame it up. He took a long drag and held it. Smoke sputtered out of his mouth when he said, ‘I took Delilah to see Wicked.’
‘Father of the year.’
Dale offered her the joint.
Angie shook her head. She already had three Vicodin on board.
Dale took another drag. He squinted at all the electronic paraphernalia. ‘If I knew how to use half this shit, I’d be a billionaire by now.’
Angie knew he’d be exactly where he was, and not just because of his shitty luck at the track. Men like Dale Harding only knew how to hold on to one thing: desperation.
He said, ‘Look. I need a favor.’
Angie was familiar with Dale’s favors. They all had one theme. ‘Did Delilah fall off the wagon?’
‘No, nothing like that. She’s solid.’ He gave her a hard look. ‘She’s gonna stay clean, right?’
The guy was delusional, but she said, ‘Right.’
‘It’s another thing. My bookie.’
Angie should’ve expected this. Even the threat of death couldn’t stop an addict from taking a hit. Delilah had the horse and Dale had the ponies.
He said, ‘I’m into Iceberg Shady for fifteen K.’
‘I know you have the money.’ Angie knew that Dale kept bricks of cash under the spare tire in the trunk of his car. ‘Just peel some off the top.’
He shook his head. ‘It’s all gotta go to Delilah. She’ll need some cash to live off of while the paperwork is moving through. You promised me you’d look after her.’
Angie leaned back against the bins. Wires poked into her back, but she was feeling too claustrophobic to move away. Dale’s neediness was eating up all the air. He’d made some kind of side deal with Kip Kilpatrick, his last-ditch attempt to do right by Delilah. There was $250,000 being held in an escrow account. In two weeks, when the All-Star Complex broke ground, the money would automatically flow into a trust fund Dale had set up for Delilah. He was holding on to the promise of the trust fund as his one chance at redemption. Like a big payday could erase the thousands of times Delilah had earned Dale’s gambling money between her legs.
Angie wasn’t interested in Dale’s redemption, and she didn’t want the job of wrangling a junkie whore. The only reason she’d said yes was because Dale was dangling the job at 110 over her head. If she had wanted to be responsible for a kid, she would’ve kept Jo.
Dale dropped the joint back into the ashtray. ‘I got this from the lawyer, okay?’ He pulled a folded stack of papers out of his inside jacket pocket. A racing form floated to the floor of the van. ‘I just need your John Hancock.’
Angie shook her head. ‘I’m the wrong person, Dale.’
‘I got you the job with Kip. I didn’t ask you any questions. You agreed to do this for me, now you’re gonna do it.’
She tried to buy some time. ‘I need to read it before I sign it, maybe talk to a lawyer.’
‘No you don’t.’ He had a pen in his hand. ‘Come on. Two copies. One for you, one for the lawyer to file.’ She still didn’t take the pen. ‘You want me to start asking questions? Like maybe about your husband? Like why do you need to crack the encryption on medical software?’
‘That dickslap,’ Angie said. Sam had ratted her out after all. She stalled for time. ‘How would it work? The trust?’
‘The executor, that’s you, is authorized to pay out for basic things, like an apartment, utilities, health-care expenses. I want to make sure she always has a roof over her head.’ He added, ‘I put it in there that you get a grand a month for taking care of it.’
Not chump change, but not enough to retire on, either. Here was the bigger problem: Angie knew Delilah Palmer. She was a selfish, spoiled brat, even without the junkie habit. The first nickel the girl got would end up melted in a spoon and shot into whatever vein she could find.
Which is the reason Angie took the pen and signed the agreement.
Dale laughed at her signature. ‘Angie Trent, huh?’
‘What about your other problem?’ She tucked her copy into her purse. ‘I’m gonna guess your bookie, Iceberg Shady, is also a pimp?’
‘He runs whores off Cheshire Bridge. That’s your old stomping ground, right?’
During her detective days, Angie had worked honey traps out of the Cheshire Motor Inn. ‘That was years ago. Those girls are all dead.’
‘You don’t gotta know their names. You just gotta get them locked up.’
‘You want me to get APD to pull a sting on Cheshire Bridge?’ She was already shaking her head. She might as well tell them to round up all the sand on Daytona Beach. ‘That’ll take mountains of paperwork. The girls will be out in hours, arraigned in a week. There’s no way they’ll do it.’
‘Denny will do it if you ask nice.’
Angie hated that Dale’s sticky fingerprints were all over her life.