The Vampire of New York by Lee Hunt

Author:Lee Hunt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2010-03-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 17

Diddy was waiting for Carrie and Slattery at a dimly lit table in the back of Nancy Whiskey’s. It was late afternoon now, and the after-work crowd was straggling in. A pair of TVs was showing rugby games, the shuffleboard tables were doing business and AC/DC was pounding out “Safe in New York City” on half a dozen speakers spread around the pub, ringing off the brown tin ceiling as Max and Carrie came through the door. Diddy looked both nervous and excited. Before he had a chance to say anything, Max whistled up a waitress and ordered double orders of wings and rings and a pitcher of St. Pauli Girl.

The food and beer arrived. Max poured everyone tall glasses of the ice-cold beer, then bit into one of the onion rings. “Talk.”

The noise level in the pub meant that they had to lean forward to hear one another, but the blaring of the televisions, the music and the cheering sections around the shuffleboard players also ensured a level of privacy.

“You might not notice it unless you worked around computers a lot, but right from the start I had a feeling. Little jumps and jerks in the programs, lags that shouldn’t have been there. The ghost in the machine. You know what I mean?”

“No,” said Max flatly. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” He took another onion ring and dipped a chicken wing into the accompanying bowl of barbecue sauce. He chewed through the onion ring and started on the wing.

“Think of it in terms of the echo you used to get on old-fashioned phone taps,” said Diddy.

Max sucked the meat off a wing and started on another. “Okay, now I’m with you.”

“It was that kind of feeling. So I ran a few checks. Then I ran a few more. I found Spector CNE on all the computers in the office, and Net-Vizor as well.”

“Which means?”

“Which means someone’s monitoring and recording everything that we do on every computer in the office.”

“Who?”

“I’m working on it,” said Diddy. He tried one of the onion rings and took a tentative sip of beer.

“Anything else?”

“The phones.”

“What about them?”

“They’re being monitored. There’s some kind of CO/REMOBS activity on both the phone lines and the cable for the Internet.”

“Say what?” Max asked.

“CO/REMOBS,” said Diddy. “Central office remote observance. Somebody’s actually tapped into the local switching computer at the phone company and is redirecting all the calls to some remote location, where the conversations are monitored or recorded or both.”

“Take a lot of pull,” said Max, chewing thoughtfully on another wing. Carrie gave up, took one off the plate and dipped it into the blue cheese dressing.

“Like LinCorp?”

“They own the cable company we’re using for the Internet hookup,” said Diddy.

“So they’re watching us,” said Max. He signaled to the waitress for another pitcher of St. Pauli Girl.

“Literally.” Diddy nodded.

“Cameras?” asked Carrie.

“Everywhere,” answered the young cop. “Wireless pinholes in every room.”

“What kind of range are we talking about?” Max asked.

“With LinCorp’s resources? Almost infinite. They could be watching us from Rangoon if they wanted to.

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