“That’s true . . . ,” said the reporter. That brought Heat’s attention back to the cubicle.
Rook said, “Then how could you say it was me?”
“I,” muttered Heat under her breath to the writer.
“Simple.” Tam sat and swiveled to her computer. After a few keystrokes her printer started spitting out pages. She handed the first one to Rook. “See? This is the e-mail you sent me.”
Heat moved close to him and they read it at the same time. It was an e-mail addressed from Rook to Tam. The subject line read, “The Two-oh, Inside.” What followed was a single spaced, full page of notes detailing facts about the troubled Graf case as well as the controversial problems surrounding Captain Montrose. The next three pages finished printing and she handed them over to Rook, too. He just skimmed, but the last paragraphs were all about the conflict surrounding Montrose’s funeral. Rook lowered the pages and felt Nikki’s stare. He said, “This looks a lot worse than it is.”
“Wanna bet?” said Heat.
* * *
Magoo was waiting for them in the vestibule of the loft when they got back to Tribeca. If Rook’s computer guru wasn’t college age, he was close to it, pear-shaped, about five-two, and had one of those sparse, curly beards, with only a promise of a mustache, that made Nikki wonder, why bother? His pale, earnest face was dominated by black-framed glasses with lenses as thick as they come, eliminating any doubt how Don Revert got the nickname Mister Magoo. The question, which would remain unasked, was why he kept it.
“You didn’t waste any time getting here,” Rook said as his consultant snapped open a hard-shell rolling equipment case and began to set up shop on the desktop in the office.
“You shine the Bat Signal in the sky, I must answer.” Magoo pulled out cables and diagnostic equipment—small black boxes with meters—and set them beside Rook’s laptop. During his setup, he looked up from time to time at Heat, treating her to glimpses of eyes made giant by his thick glasses.
“That’s a nice case,” she said, not knowing what else to offer.
“Oh, yeah. It’s the Pelican Protector. Of course, I got it with the foam lid liner and padded dividers. As you can see, I can pretty much use the Velcro tabs to custom configure it for any load.” Nikki was pretty certain that had just constituted foreplay.
Rook explained to his personal nerd the e-mail Tam Svejda received and then showed him the hard copy. “The thing is, I never sent it.” He said this as much for Magoo’s information as for reiteration to Heat.
“Yessss,” said Magoo. “Come check this out.”
He and Nikki both came around to flank him, but Rook’s laptop screen was filled with an intimidating string of code and commands that made no sense to either of them. “You’re going to have resort to plain English, my man,” said Rook.
“All right, how about, ‘Dude, you’ve been owned.’ Is that vanilla enough?”
“Getting warmer.”
“OK, layman’s terms. You know those ads on TV and radio for the services that allow you to subscribe to RDA? Remote desktop access?”
“Sure,” said Nikki, “you pay a fee and they set you up to be able to access your work computer from anywhere. Especially geared for traveling businesspeople. You go online from a laptop in your room at the Cedar Rapids Holiday Inn and you can do work and transfer files on your office computer in New York or LA. . . . That it?”
“Absolutely. It’s basically an access account that lets you make any remote computer you designate do what your other computer tells it.” He turned from Heat to Rook. “Somebody broke into your laptop and installed their own RDA account.”
“I’ve been hacked?” Rook straightened up from hunching over the desk and beamed at Nikki. “This is wonderful! . . . I mean, not so good for the computer but . . . Oh, man, excellent news. But also bad. It’s complicated. I’ll shut up.”