Black Hat Blues (38 page)

“Maybe, but not when it comes to talking to my lawyers. You won’t

be paying me, you’ll be hiring one of them.”

“And they’ll credit your account,” said Chloe. Smart move.

“My accounts with my lawyers are complicated, I assure you. But

you’ll find them more than worth their fees. Sound good?”

Chloe looked to Sacco as if asking him to confirm the deal. He did.

The three of them exchanged pleasantries, the mood much more conviv-

ial now that a mutually beneficial arrangement had been struck. Chloe

glanced at the cordless phone on the kitchen wall and sighed with relief

as she allowed herself to be shown to the door without having to make

any unusual requests to use the bathroom or get a drink of water or,

God forbid, make a call because her cell battery was dead. Thankfully

the Clover home was like 82% of American homes when it came to its

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choice of home hand sets. She and Sacco drove off in the Mercedes, not

even glancing towards the white plumbing van parked one street over

with Paul and Bee in it.

Paul was thankful that Clover was being pretty paranoid but not very

smart about it. He’d given up using his cell phone apparently, hav-

ing perhaps figured out it was hacked or warned off using it by whoever

told him to stop going online. So he was using his landline, knowing

that legally the government couldn’t eavesdrop on his conversations

with his lawyer. Of course this was the new golden age of illegal wire-

tapping, so Paul wasn’t sure why he was so confident about his security,

but perhaps all he was worried about was what they could use in court.

His “landline” was only on the land up to the base station of his cordless

phone. From there, it was broadcast through the air, and although the

phone probably had a pretty sticker on it that claimed to be in the 5.8

Ghz spectrum (which was hard to scan without special gear), the base

station’s signal was sill in the 900 MHz range (which Bee, her scanner,

and her large antenna could scan with relative ease). He waited all of

three minutes after Chloe and Sacco left to make the call.

Bee would be able to figure out the number he was dialing from the

sound of the tones that went flying by from his speed dial. Paul pressed

the headphones close to his ears and he strained to hear every nuance

of the static-laden signal. “Marsh, Dutton, and Hermann, how may I

direct your call?” said a crisp, professional young man’s voice.

“This is Ken Clover calling.”

The receptionist or whoever paused for just a moment before replying.

“Just a moment, Mr. Clover,” he said, then put them on hold. Paul lis-

tened to Vivaldi for over a minute, wondering if perhaps this delay was

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designed to time out any feds listening in. Paul suspected that was just

something from the movies though. He’d have to look it up. Either way,

it was interesting that the receptionist knew just who Clover wanted to

talk to without him saying.

“Ken, how are you?” a woman suddenly said in Paul’s ear. She sounded

older, with a friendly, almost motherly tone to her voice.

“I’m doing OK, Emily, I’m doing OK.”

“I didn’t know we had a phone conference scheduled.”

“We don’t, and I’m sorry for calling without an appointment, but

there’s been a development. I think I might have a referral for you.”

“We’re not taking new clients right now, Ken, I’m so sorry. I can give

you some names if you’d like.”

“No, no, I know that. It’s not like that. These are people that are sort

of connected with my case. Similar interests.”

“Why don’t you come by and you can tell me more about them. Let’s

see here, how about Thursday at 7 AM?”

“I’ll be there.”

“Wonderful. It’s always a pleasure, Ken.”

“Thanks, Emily. I really appreciate it.”

By the time Paul had taken off the headphones, Bee had already

pulled up Marsh, Dutton, and Hermann on Google. The biggest sur-

prise was that the law firm didn’t have a website at all. They were listed

in various directories and mentioned in some other sites, but they had

a very low exposure level. All Paul could learn from his quick scan

was that they were a Washington DC based law firm with offices in

Georgetown. There wasn’t even any indicator as to what kinds of law

they specialized in, although the few other places where their name

came up were all related to political matters rather than lawsuits. On a

hunch, Paul checked with a database for registered lobbyists and found

all three of the named partners listed there, although there was no

indication who their clients might be or even what kinds of issues they

specialized in. He already knew that this firm was not the same one

that was actually defending Clover against all the charges filed against

him. That was one of the national mega-firms based out of New York.

This was going to require more research.

They waited another half-hour to see if Clover was going to make

any more calls, but he didn’t, so Paul climbed up front and drove them

back to the rendezvous point with Chloe and Sacco. The four of them

made the long drive back to their base of operations up in the DC area.

This time they were, unfortunately, all the way over in Baltimore, where

Sacco had lined them up an empty apartment where some friends of his,

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who were doing aid work down in Ecuador right now, normally lived.

It was kind of a dump in the way that hippified group homes often

are, but it was a clean, secure, and untraceable dump that had neigh-

bors whose wi-fi c1sman could hack, and that’s what they needed. Any

hotel they were likely to find that was quiet and secure enough was on

the system somewhere, and they couldn’t trust any of their fake-name

credit lines or identities now that the Key West house had been blown.

Even the van and the old Corolla they were using had been bought

with cash using fake IDs in South Carolina, and they were paranoid

enough that they’d destroyed those IDs once they’d driven the used

vehicles off the lot.

Once they were back at the Baltimore base, they filled in c1sman on

what they’d learned and then everyone started digging into this Emily

Marsh person any way they could think. Chloe even went out and

bought a new disposable phone, drove into DC, and pretended to be a

reporter doing a story on lobbyists who wanted to interview her, but she

never got past the receptionist’s firm “Ms. Marsh doesn’t do interviews.”

Not, apparently, even on deep background. Sacco suggested calling

his DC area activist contacts, but those were the very people who were

under heavy investigation, probably thanks to Marsh, so they decided

any contact with them was too great a risk. That left hard core online

searching, but even that didn’t reveal much that they could do a lot

with. That night they met around the house’s third-hand wooden din-

ner table to assess their newly revealed foe.

“Emily Marsh, age 54, lobbyist and lawyer.” said Paul from one end

of the table. “What’ the deal here?”

“The deal is,” said Sacco. “We have no idea what the deal is. She’s

a registered lobbyist, but her only registered clients are other lobby-

ists. No direct ties to any corporate or policy groups, but plenty of

money coming in from practically every firm on K Street. Including,

of course, our friend Kenny-boy Clover. They’re also a law firm, but

we couldn’t find any record of them representing anyone in any legal

cases or any public records filings that we could dig up. In essence, she

knows lots and lots of powerful people and they pay her firm money,

but she doesn’t have any firm positions or history of serving particular

interests that I can see. Going through all the forms they file reporting

their lobbying stuff is dense shit, and I can’t be sure I’m reading it right

though. But my general take is that it’s a bunch of bureaucratic hand

waving to cover up whatever it is she really.”

Paul nodded and turned to Bee. “Yeah, OK. So, I went through the

public records and stuff for her, you know finances and whatever. She

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owns a house with her husband in Georgetown, worth well over a mil-

lion dollars, although they’ve lived there for 14 years, so I think the

appraisal is, you know, low. She has great credit as you might imagine.

Her husband doesn’t seem to do much of anything as far as I can tell.

No job record for him in forever, but he used to be a lawyer too. He’s

no longer a member of the bar. There are two kids, Milo who’s 24 and

attends Columbia for grad school in philosophy and Melinda who’s 19

and is at UCLA in her freshman year. They own three cars, all of them

Mercedes of different types. No criminal anything on them, not even

parking tickets. No lawsuits filed against them. They sorta seem like a

rich, white family and that’s all.”

Bee looked over at c1sman, who was fiddling with something on his

laptop. She nudged him with an elbow. “Yeah, I know, hold on. I had

an idea while you were… damn, never mind.” He looked up. “OK, well,

there’s not much to say really. No corporate website or anything like

that. It took me forever to even turn up an e-mail address. The mail

server’s beyond secure as far as I can tell from poking around a little.

I could poke more, but I think it’d be useless. If you want to read her

e-mail, you’re going to have to get her to open up a trojan or something,

and even then their system might sniff it out before it ever got to her. So

that’s that. And there’s no home internet connection at all as far as I can

tell. Maybe they’re using some cellular wireless service or something,

but nothing going into the house that I could find. I do have both her

kids’ e-mails though. They were easy. I gave them to Chloe.”

Chloe nodded, “I looked through them. Nothing much there. Nothing

at all about Emily Marsh. Neither of them e-mails their parents or talks

about them much with their friends. Milo is pretentious and well-read

and really likes latina-porn. Melinda spends a lot of time on Facebook

and has a wicked music downloading habit, but again, nothing out

of the ordinary. Both have a lot of friends but neither has a signifi-

cant other. Neither seem to have been back home since Christmas. My

attempt to call their mom at the office got me nowhere. It’s by appoint-

ment only and you can only make an appointment if you either have a

personal recommendation from another client or Ms. Marsh has invited

you to do so personally. The Dutton and Hermann who’re also on the

firm name are both retired. Marsh joined the firm back in 1982 and was

made partner in 1991. The others retired in 2000. I get the impression

from reading between the lines in some of the minuscule coverage that

she might have forced them out. Whatever, they’re both off fishing or

whatever. So she’s the only one in the firm, aside from associates and

aides and what not. Total of fifteen people working there.”

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“So, what do we think?” Paul asked the table. “Follow Clover to the

meeting and make sure that we just spent all this time researching

the right person. I guess there’s an outside possibility that she’s just a

go-between for him and someone else, but I doubt it.”

“I think that’s right,” said Chloe. “We follow him and we have a

camera or someone waiting near her office—which is only five blocks

from her home by the way—to confirm it. But then what? She’s got no

weaknesses that we can see, and I at least am certain she’s got powerful

friends.”

Paul let out a breath and thought it over for a moment. Marsh was

not, as far as they could tell, a criminal of any kind. That didn’t matter

to him in the least—she was behind the assault on their Key West home

and Sandee’s arrest, or at least he was pretty sure she was. Theoretically,

then, she might hold the key to getting Sandee free. But with no obvi-

ous vices, secure phones and computers, and unknown but probably

vast resources at her disposal, there was no obvious way to get any

leverage on her. “Yeah, I got nothing,” he said at last. “Let’s do the fol-

low her around thing and then see where things go from there. Maybe

some obvious weakness will present itself. Or fuck, even some non-

obvious one.”

They started planning for the surveillance, and had everything ready

bright and early the day of Clover’s meeting. They had to, since they

were operating out of Baltimore and had to get going before 4:00 AM

to ensure they beat the DC area traffic and had their teams set up at

both ends. Paul and Sacco took the van this time, while Chloe and Bee

set up cameras outside Marsh’s home and office back in the city. There

were no surprises from Clover, and it didn’t look like he’d noticed he

was being followed. Once he parked in Georgetown, they took the

opportunity of his car being on the street to plant a GPS device on it.

He went in, had his meeting, and walked down the street to have some