Do You Believe in Magic

chapter ELEVEN



Thursday evening about six, Clay and Bill Childress sat at a table in a Market Square bar, located in one of the few original buildings left in the northern end of downtown. A mix of business people and blue-collar construction workers occupied many of the tables and all the stools at the bar. The lighting was only slightly subdued, and everyone could be seen clearly. The hum of conversation was low.

“I hope Brenner gets here soon,” Clay told the detective. He shifted the props, a notebook and file folders open on the table, and then took a handful of the popcorn for which the bar was known and ate some of the fluffy kernels. “I’m filling up on this stuff.”

“Relax. The man just walked in the door. Remember, the microphone is picking up everything just fine. Don’t lead him too much. Let him initiate the offer.” Bill pretended to look at the papers in front of him.

Clay and Bill waited until Kevin had said hello to a couple of people and ordered a beer at the bar. When Kevin turned around to survey the crowd, Bill rose, closed the folders, picked them up, and held out his hand. “I’ll be calling you, Clay,” the lieutenant said, loud enough to be heard at the bar.

“I’ll look forward to it.” Clay rose to shake hands, then sat down as Bill exited. He closed the notebook and, settling back in his chair, picked up his Scotch. He hoped to God he looked like he was in no hurry.

“Clay?” a voice asked beside him. “Clay Morgan?”

Clay looked up to see Kevin standing there. “Hi, Brenner. How’s it going?”

“Fine, fine. How’s business?”

“Okay. I just met a prospective client for a drink. Now, if he will only make up his mind about using me. . .” He let the sentence fade off.

“Yeah, I know what you mean. Waiting to know if you made the sale is the hardest part.”

Another man went by Kevin and lightly punched him on the arm. “Hey, Brenner, how’s it hangin’?”

“Fine,” Kevin threw over his shoulder and turned back to Clay.

“You come here often?” Clay asked.

“Yeah, usually on Thursdays when Tamara works late at her shop.”

“It’s a nice place,” Clay said, glancing around. “Why don’t you join me if you have no other plans? I hate to drink alone.”

“Don’t mind if I do.” Brenner took the chair Bill had been using. He took a couple of swallows of beer. “How’s Francie?”

“Good. How’s Tamara?”

“Fine. That was a nice dinner Francie fixed.”

“Yeah. We had a good time.”

“We did, too.”

Clay ate some more popcorn. “How’s business?” he asked.

“Pretty good.” Brenner shrugged and shook his head. “But this being a manager sucks. I wish I was still out in the field. Some of the guys on my sales team can’t make a sale if it’s handed to them on a silver platter, know what I mean?”

“Man, how you can sell all the time, wait for somebody to decide to buy, face rejection over and over, is beyond me,” Clay said, shaking his head. He pointed at the notebook on the table. “Take this meeting I just had. Bill’s company needs me. They need me bad. But all they care about is how much I’m going to cost, and he’s trying to nickel-and-dime me to death. If that’s not bad enough, I think he’s talking to one of my competitors, trying to play us off against each other. That ever happen to you?”

“All the time. All the friggin’ time.” Kevin frowned at his beer.

“If I knew what the other consultant was charging, I’d be able to undercut him, I’m sure. But . . .” Clay shrugged his shoulders.

“Can’t you find out?”

“Not easily. Not unless I have a friend in the company with access to the information. If any of this made it into the company’s computer system, I’d have a chance, but all this is done verbally, maybe a few e-mails, but mostly with proposals on paper, and by the time the contract’s entered, it’s too late.”

“How would you find out? If you had the chance, I mean.”

“There are ways, my friend. There are ways,” Clay said with what he hoped was a sly smirk. He finished his drink and signaled the waitress for another round for them both. “But these bozos will just fart around and not make up their minds for another two or three weeks. I don’t have the time. There’s a big game coming up in Vegas in three weeks. I’m going to have to hustle up another client pretty quick if I want to make it.”

“How’s your luck been holding?” Kevin asked. “You said something last Saturday about having a bad run.”

“Man, it’s worse than bad. My ready cash is tapped out. I was hoping this guy I met tonight would be able to bring me in tomorrow, Monday at the latest. The job’s not a difficult one. I figured I could be well into it, probably halfway done, by the end of next week. Then I could bill them for work done to date. Knowing the money’s coming in would allow me to dip into my reserves and head for Vegas. But, no billing, no Vegas, no game. A chance to make a heavy score and I’ll miss it, damn it.”

He leaned back while the waitress served their drinks and continued when she was out of earshot. “One very important tip about gambling, Brenner. Always keep your reserves separate from what you gamble with. Never, ever bet your going-home money or the mortgage payment. Discipline, it’s all about discipline.” He stared into his Scotch and nodded sagely.

Kevin took a gulp of beer and frowned as he moved the mug around in a circle on the table. Clay could almost see the wheels turning in the man’s head.

“Can I ask you a question, Morgan?” he said finally. “About computers? Sort of off the record?”

“Sure. What do you want to know? I won’t even charge you for it,” Clay answered with a negligent wave of his hand.

“How would you find out about your competitor’s bid—if the info was in their system, I mean?”

“How do you think?” Clay repeated his smirk. “Remember what we talked about at Francie’s?”

“Yeah,” Kevin nodded. “That’s what I was thinking about. Is it difficult? Getting into a company’s files without them knowing it?”

“Like I told you on Saturday, it’s more tricky than difficult—when you know what you’re doing, of course. It’s a matter of routing yourself through several different servers on the other side of the globe. See, what you do is . . .” Clay continued his explanation, degenerating rapidly into technobabble until Kevin’s eyes were glazing over. “That’s basically how you do it,” he concluded.

Brenner hunched over his beer, moved a little closer to Clay. “What if I knew of a job right up your alley?” he asked in a low voice.

“Yeah? Who with?”

“Me. I need to get some information about one of our competitors. They’ve been eating our lunch lately, and we think it’s by their pricing, but we’re not sure. It could be some special delivery considerations. None of my salespeople is able to find out. I’m saddled with incompetent idiots who couldn’t sell refrigerators in the tropics.”

To cover his grin at Brenner’s statement about “incompetent idiots,” Clay sipped his drink, put the glass down, and leaned toward Kevin to place the microphone under his jacket closer to his target. “So, you’re looking for what, exactly?”

“I need someone to hack into our competitor’s customer files to see what they’re buying, at what price, and at what shipping costs.”

“You just want the information, right? You don’t want to change any data, mess anything up?”

“Right. I don’t want them to know I’ve seen the information.” Kevin took a swallow of beer as if his mouth had suddenly gone dry. “So, what do you think? Can it be done?”

Clay leaned back in his chair, stared at Brenner until the man began to fidget, then sat forward again. “How much?”

“How much?”

“How much are you willing to pay for this information?”

Kevin gulped, then assumed an indifferent expression contradicted by his tight grip on the beer mug. “Name your price.”

“Who do you work for, and whose pockets do I have my hand in, yours or your company’s?”

“Why?”

“Because theirs are deeper than yours.” Come on, Brenner, make the connection.

“Oh. You’d charge them more.”

Clay just nodded.

“Mine,” Brenner said, leaning a little closer. “I work for NatChem, and they don’t have anything to do with this. I have a real bastard for a boss. Man, he’s on my ass like there’s no tomorrow. I need the information to turn my sorry sales team into winners instead of losers. It’s my only ticket to a promotion.”

Clay gave Brenner a hard look. “If I agree to do it, I need to know something first.”

“Name it.”

“Did you try hacking on your own?”

“Yeah, but I got nowhere. Why?”

Clay shook his head disgustedly. “Because I have to know how much crap you left behind. How did you get in? Whose computer did you use?”

“It’s okay,” Brenner said earnestly. “I used . . .” He paused. Clay could tell the exact moment when Brenner decided not to inform him it had been Francie’s. “I used someone else’s computer. There’s no way to trace anything back to me.” He held up his hand. “I swear.”

Clay ran his hands through his hair. “All right,” he said. “I’ll only do this one time. I’ll need you with me, showing me what information you want. And, in the meantime, you stay off the other computer. The last thing I need is for you to make a dumb-ass mistake and alert them about an intruder.”

“Fine with me,” Brenner said, his eyes beginning to light with excitement as he realized Clay was going to do his bidding.

“Five thousand,” Clay stated.

“Excuse me?” Brenner looked astounded.

“Five thousand, cash, hundreds is fine. Payable up front.”

“Oh. That much?” He took a big gulp of his beer.

“And,” Clay held up his hand and pointed his finger at Kevin, “nobody ever mentions this again.”

Brenner’s gaze fell to his beer, roamed the room, and finally met Clay’s. He shook his head as he said, “Uh-uh. Never.”

“Shit, do you want to do this or not?” Clay let his irritation show. Brenner looked like he finally realized the implications of what he had just asked Clay to do. Or maybe it was the cost. Either way, they had their hacker.

“Yeah. Yeah, I do.” Kevin nodded and hunched over his beer again. “But it will take a couple of days for me to come up with the money.”

“We’ll do it next Wednesday, my place. I need to use equipment I trust.” Clay pulled out a card and wrote his address on it, under the phone numbers. He handed it to Brenner. “Be there at seven. With the cash. Know exactly what you’re going after. The less time we spend in their system, the better.”

“Right, right,” Brenner agreed, nodding his head like a bobblehead doll’s.

“By the way, whose system will we be getting into?”

“Brazos Chemical.”

“Francie’s company?”

“Yeah. Is that a problem?” He fidgeted as he asked the question.

Clay paused a beat, until Brenner turned pale. “No.”

“Thanks, man. I appreciate it.” Brenner let out a huge breath and looked at Clay like he was the answer to the salesman’s prayers.

Clay stood up and picked up the notebook. As he put some money on the table, he leaned down close to Kevin and stated, “Don’t mention this to anybody, especially not your girlfriend or mine.”

“No, no. Not a word.” Brenner held up his oath-taking hand again.

Clay nodded, said, “See you next week,” and walked to the exit. As he opened the door, he glanced back at Brenner. The hacker was grinning like a fool as he swaggered to the bar calling for another round.

Outside, Clay took a deep breath as he walked to the truck where the police were recording the conversation. Even though he himself had done nothing wrong, he had not enjoyed the experience of pretending to be unethical. “How’d I do?” he asked as Childress opened the door for him.

“Just fine. It came through loud and clear. Once we tape the hacking, we should have a strong case.”

Clay took the microphone and transmitter from beneath his shirt and handed them over to the technician running the equipment. “You’ll be at the house to set up on Wednesday?”

“That’s right. Bright and early in case we have any problems.”