Stolen Prey

“Jacob, you put some pants on or I swear to God I’ll call the cops.”
    “These
are
the cops,” he said.
    The woman was coming along the hall, slowed, and said to Lucas, “I was joking. He plays with it, but he never wags it.”
    “Doesn’t necessarily qualify him for an honorary degree,” Lucas said. She was pretty, and he was always up for a chat with a pretty woman.
    “No, but … he’s not actually a pervert,” the woman said. “Well, he
is
a pervert, but not a dangerous one.”
    “They say they’re not looking for my stash,” Kline told the woman.
    “Then they must not be,” she said. “The police never lie. It would be against their ethics.”
    “You’re my witness,” Kline said to her. Then, to Lucas and Del, “You can come in, but you can’t search the place.”
    “Okay, I’m your witness,” the woman said, and went on her way.
    “Good-bye,” Lucas said, and she twiddled her fingers over her shoulder, but didn’t look back.
    K LINE’S APARTMENT stank of tomato-based food-like products, ramen noodles, pepperoni, and maybe some spilled Two-BuckChuck with an underlying whiff of ganj. Two wooden chairs faced each other across a tiny table in the compact kitchen; in the living room, a couch faced a huge television that was wired into three different game systems, the consoles of which sat on a plywood coffee table; and straight through, they could see the foot of an unmade bed.
    Kline flopped full-length on the couch and said, “So, get the kitchen chairs.”
    Del picked them up, handed one to Lucas, and they put them in the living room facing the couch, their backs to the TV, and Lucas asked, “Did you steal twenty-two million dollars from an account at Polaris National Bank through a back door you put into the system before you were fired?”
    Kline looked from Lucas to Del and back, then said, “Noooo … Do they think I did?”
    “Some of them do,” Lucas said.
    “That’s right, blame it on the handicapped guy,” Kline said. Then, in what seemed a genuine question, “They lost twenty-two mil?”
    “They didn’t exactly lose it,” Del said. “Somebody took it. We thought maybe it was you.”
    “I confess, Ossifer, it was me,” Kline said. He waved his arm at his living quarters. “The first thing I did when I got the money is, I went out and rented this beautiful apartment, so I could live a life of leisure and luxury with a lot of high-price hookers.”
    “If you didn’t do it, who did?” Lucas asked.
    Kline pushed himself up, looked under the coffee table, came up with a pack of cigarettes and a Bic lighter, lit one, and blew smoke. “Good question. I mean, I didn’t do it, so it must be somebodyelse. But they’re all so fuckin’ straight … on the surface, anyway. I suspect Angela … have you met her?”
    “No.”
    “Blond chick, big headlights.” He cupped his hands on his chest, to indicate the size of the headlights. “One of the analysts down there. I suspect her of being a secret rubber freak. She denies it. Anyway, I don’t know who would take it. The money. I sort of can’t believe that anybody did. If
somebody
did, of the people who work down there, or used to work down there, it’d most likely be … me. That’s who I’d suspect. But let me tell you a secret: their security isn’t as good as it looks. You’ve got the cameras and the doors and all that, but if you’ve got administrator’s status, you can actually get in from a couple of places around the building. Did they tell you that?”
    “Yeah, but we’ve got a pro checking it out, and it doesn’t look like that to her,” Lucas said. He hadn’t known about the other entries, and that worried him. “It looks like it took a pretty heavy programmer, who really knew the system. This wasn’t some casual hack from a secretary who took a college course in C.”
    “Her?” Kline blew more smoke. “Would I know her? Your pro?”
    Lucas said, “Ingrid—”
    “ICE. Well, well.” Kline blew more smoke, and then laughed up at the ceiling. “They let little ICE into the security section, huh? Fuckin’ morons. They’ll be missing a lot more than twenty-two million before she gets out of there. She’s not gonna build in a back door, she’s gonna build in a fucking Holland Tunnel. How’d you ever hook up with a crook like ICE?”
    “She used to work for me,” Lucas said.
    “Oh, yeah,” Kline said. He shook a finger at Lucas. “Now I know the name. Davenport Simulations,