As Gary wandered into the room, taking a seat in an uncomfortable lime green IRS chair, his director immediately pounced. “There’s a task force we want you to join,” the supervisor said. (There would be no small talk here; this was the IRS, after all.) The supervisor continued, moving into an explanation of who, what, and why. The case, he told Gary, involved a Web site where you could buy drugs and guns. “What do you know about the Silk Road Web site?” (Gary knew nothing about the site and stared back with wide eyes.) “What about Tor?” (Nope. Nothing.) “And Bitcoin?” (Blankness.) “Well, that doesn’t matter,” the supervisor said. “The strike force is a drug task force, and you’re going to be leading the money-laundering side of the case.” (A tinge of excitement.) “It’s a big change, Gary.” (You’re damn right it is.)
The strike force, Gary was told, included local and state police investigators, DEA agents, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York. That alone made the case seem important to Gary. Finally Gary was told that he would be moving to a new office in Chelsea, a few dozen blocks north.
It was time to bring in the people with the calculators.
He left the supervisor’s office grateful for, and invigorated by, his new assignment. Back in his cubicle he immediately logged on to his computer and began reading as much as he could about the Silk Road, three times over.
He started with the Gawker article, then clicked on dozens of other newer links, scouring the words and images, until he leaned back in his chair, staring at his computer as pages of articles about the drug-dealing site and Bitcoin and Tor flickered on the screen. He knew full well, as his supervisor had told him, that teams of law enforcement had been searching for the creator of the Silk Road for almost two years, and each road they had traveled down had gone nowhere. He also knew that he would have to find a new investigation technique if he wanted to have any chance of taking down the site and its creator.
But how? he thought.
His mind spun in a thousand different directions as he tried to figure out how he could approach the case anew. Almost immediately an idea struck him. He thought back to a time in his life that he didn’t remember but that he had heard so many stories about: the summer of 1977, the year Gary Alford was born. He remembered the story of David Berkowitz, the American serial killer who had murdered six people and wounded seven others in New York City that year, the man better known as the Son of Sam. And Gary imagined that the way the cops had caught that ruthless serial killer would be the way Gary Alford could catch the leader of the Silk Road.
Chapter 46
LIFE AND DEATH ON THE ROAD
Green is dead and disposed of,” Nob wrote. “I will get you a picture for proof of death.”
“Ok, thank you,” the Dread Pirate Roberts replied. “I guess they were unable to get him to send the coins he stole.”
“They had to do CPR on him one time, actually the trick to torture sometimes is keeping the guy alive,” Nob wrote back, explaining that Curtis Green, the thief who stole the Dread Pirate Roberts’s $350,000 in Bitcoins, had been tortured and drowned before he ultimately succumbed to a heart attack. “Died of asphyxiation / heart rupture.”
When Dread didn’t respond to the macabre description of the murder, Nob asked, “You ok?”
“A little disturbed,” DPR said. “But I’m ok.” And then he admitted to Nob, “I’m new to this kind of thing is all.”
Variety Jones had reassured Dread that what they had done wasn’t simply the right decision but the only one. “We’re playing for keeps,” VJ wrote. “I’m perfectly comfortable with the decision, and I’ll sleep like a lamb tonight, and every night hereafter.”
“Well put,” DPR wrote back. “Enjoy the rest of your evening mate.”
“I will, you too,” VJ replied. “Sweet dreams.”
When Ross opened his next e-mail from Nob, he was greeted by an image of a lifeless Curtis Green peering back at him. Green’s thick jowl hung off to the side, and a pool of vomit had erupted from the dead man’s mouth. From the picture it appeared that Curtis’s T-shirt was drenched, likely from the waterboarding Nob’s thugs had administered before the thieving Green had taken his last breath.
Ross then saved the picture to an encrypted folder on his computer and messaged Nob again, asking where he wanted the final $40,000 to be sent for the hit. “Send to the same account?”
“Yes.”
Ross was obviously torn up by what he had done. Killing someone wasn’t an easy decision, but he also knew that this was something he might have to do again in order to inoculate his empire against people who threatened it. There was no fate worse to him than losing control of what he had built.
It was, after all, his legacy, the thing people would remember him for two hundred years from now. He wanted so badly to leave an imprint on this world and for people to know (eventually) that he was the one who had done it.
Being forced to order the murder of someone was just the price he had to pay to leave that mark. And who the fuck was anyone to judge? All of the greatest people in history had to make such decisions. The president of the United States faced these kinds of choices every day, pressing a button that unleashed a drone over a village in Afghanistan, killing people to protect the republic. This was the case in business too. Dozens of Chinese workers who made iPhones had subsequently jumped to their deaths because their working conditions were so dire, but Steve Jobs had to accept those sacrifices because, by fucking God, he was changing the world on a massive, massive scale. This was simply the plight of men and women who wanted to leave a dent in the universe.
In addition to the murder, other issues had been pummeling Ross. As of late hackers had again been targeting the Silk Road on a regular basis, knocking the site off-line for hours at a time. While DPR’s employees were working tirelessly to build defenses, the only way to get the hackers to stop was to pay them a ransom of $50,000 per week thereafter.
What Ross needed right now was a break. Thankfully, the same weekend that DPR paid Nob for his services and it was clear Green was dead, Ross was going to see his new girlfriend, Kristal.
Things had really blossomed between them since the camping trip a few weeks earlier. After a night in the woods looking up at the stars and sitting around a campfire, they returned to the city and made plans to see each other as much as they could. Over e-mail and text message, they told stories about their pasts, and shared hopes about their futures—though Ross only skimmed the surface of those dreams.