A Final Reminder by Buzz McCord

Author:Buzz McCord
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: love story, san francisco, sex slavery, corporate crime, ho chi minh city, vietnam business, augmented intelligence, computer surveillance, high class prostitution, silicon valley entrepreneur
Publisher: Buzz McCord

Chapter 38

Down in the Weeds

“Drugs! Gotta be the TMC Cartel.”97 Devon’s imagination had run wild, but no one had a better suggestion, “Need more data.”

Matt wanted to continue geo-flying ARz. “I can fly us over some other cities.” Alicia and Souchi wanted to look back at how long it had been going on. Devon, reluctant to give up on his drug mafia, “How about just getting down low for a closer look? I bet there’s some meth moving around.”

Matt started flying ARz through the team’s list. Filtered for <retail> he searched ARz all over South East Asia. Even a random sample in Honolulu, Sofia, Milan, Kuala Lumpur and Sydney didn’t turn up any pulses of nighttime income. The business showed up solely in Ho Chi Minh City.

Continuing back through time, five, six, seven weeks, they found that the first burst of income was sometime about six weeks before, starting small, maybe a dozen transactions a night for the first week but ramping up over twenty or thirty days. Again, nowhere other than HCMC.

Matt thought-projected for type of payment, limited to <cash> <credit card> <bank draft> and <other>. The result was bizarre. The remittances were all classified as “other.” No credit cards, no cash, no bank transfers. Souchi guessed: “Some kind of membership or club with automatic debiting?”

Removing the HMD’s, Devon insisted on moving down for a closer look. He wouldn’t be put off any longer. “Focus on a spot with the most activity. Zoom in close enough to look at about 10 meters resolution, far enough to capture a good-sized sample, like from an altitude of one kilometer. Use the same time-lapse speed.”

“Woah. Gimme a moment.” Matt was still learning to pilot ARz. The jumping display mocked his learning curve.

In about a minute, with two false starts, he had the display set up. “Headsets everyone.” Before launching he explained, “The hot spot was north and west of the chi-chi downtown around Đồng Khởi street and Nguyễn Huệ avenue. I set up for around thirty blocks east to west and about fifty blocks north to south just off the Sông Sài Gòn river.” Matt thought projected <business> <sector> <colors> <top five> <revenue> <last month>, “Looks like the neighborhood is mostly finance and import-export management. That’s the blue and green outlines.”

“This time-run we’ll look at individual sources of “other” income and ignore all the conventional revenues. I’ll add a comet function, so the spending stays visible longer. Ready?” He launched the time-lapse, again, starting at noon on Thursday ten days earlier. This time, one then two afternoon dots blinked on then faded off. Like before, activity picked up as the sun set.

Alicia counted dots. “One… Two… Three, four… Five, six, seven….” and stopped as the dots diminished after midnight. The pattern continued through the ten-day run.

Devon quantified, “Maybe thirty-five, forty pops any given night?”

“Maybe a hundred bucks each,” suggested Matt.

Alicia added, “It seems like a random distribution around the area. Weekends were a bit slower.” They were narrowing the puzzle.

Souchi knew the most about Arctan businesses.

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