Blow Fly

58

BENTON TAKES OFF his jacket and drops it in a trash can. A block south, he tosses his baseball cap into another trash can and ducks into the shadows of scaffolding to unfasten his canvas knapsack. Inside is a black do-rag, and he ties it tightly around his head. He slips on a denim vest that has an American flag embroidered on the back. During a brief lull in pedestrian traffic, he substitutes his sunglasses for amber-tinted ones in different frames. Rolling up the knapsack, he tucks it under his arm and cuts left on 73rd Street, then left again on Third and back on 75th, where he stands at the corner of Lucy's building. Jim the doorman ignores him and wanders inside the lobby for a welcome rush of air-conditioning.

New technology is Bentons ally and enemy. Cell phone calls can be traced by more than caller ID. Signals bounce off satellites and boomerang to where the caller is located geographically when the call is made, and to date, it is impossible to foil this technology. Benton has no choice but somehow to work around it. While caller ID will erroneously indicate that the call is being made from a Texas prison, the satellite transmission will reveal that the call was made in Manhattan, pinpointed to an area that is smaller than a city block.

He uses this to his advantage, however. All obstacles can be steps to a higher benefit.

Benton makes the call from Lucy's address at Lexington and 75th Street. Jean-Baptiste is on death row, and that is easy enough to check. Logic would dictate that Jean-Baptiste could not have called collect from Manhattan. Then who did? Lucy will puzzle over the call made in the immediate area of her office building, and knowing her as well as Benton does, he is certain she will make a call from her own address and see that the same coordinates are pinpointed by the satellite.

This will lead her to the conclusion that there must have been a technical glitch, that somehow the transmission traced back to where the call was received instead of where it was initiated. She will not understand how this could have happened when it has never happened before. Lucy will be paranoid. Without a doubt, she will be angry, because she does not forgive sloppy work or technical screwups. She will blame the snafu on the telephone company or her staff Probably the latter.

As for Jim the doorman, when asked, he will say that at the precise moment the call was made, he saw no one on a cell phone in front of the building or close to it. This will be a lie. Almost everybody in New York walks around with a cell phone to his or her ear. The truth is, even if Jim remembers the precise time he left his post for the air-conditioned lobby, he won't want to admit it.

The last obstacle is voice analysis, which Lucy will conduct immediately to verify that the caller was Jean-Baptiste Chandonne. That is no threat. Benton has spent several years meticulously studying, transcribing and editing recordings of Jean-Baptiste's voice, then rerecording them into digital files with a single directional microphone that, when used in a high-sensitivity mode, picks up multidirectional sound, or background noise-in this case, the inside of a prison. He edited and spliced it on a computer, and the results are seamless, each file a blitz of sound bites intended for voicemail or a live recipient who has no chance for a response that would force a mental engagement that is impossible. Switching from Menu to a folder he named Redstick for Baton Rouge, he verifies the time stamp on the LCD and double-checks that all details of the setup are in order.

He plugs the microphone into a speaker port and tucks in the earpiece.

The phone at Infosearch Solutions-The Last Precinct-is picked up.

"Manhattan. Collect call to Infosearch Solutions on Seventy-fifth," he says into the microphone.

"Your name?"

"Polunksy Unit."

"Please hold."

The operator connects the call.

"Collect call from Polunksy Unit. Will you accept charges?"

"Yes," without pause or change of inflection.

"Good afternoon. May I ask who's calling?" a male voice continues, the caller ID showing the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

Benton sets noise cancel on high to eradicate the live feedback of New York traffic and other sounds that would be ruinous for a call supposedly made from the interior of a penitentiary. He presses Play. The indicator light glows green, and File One begins.

"When Mademoiselle Farinelli returns, tell her Baton Rouge. " Jean-Baptiste s recorded voice is as natural as if he himself is speaking in real time.

"She's out of the office. Who's calling? Who is this?" The man in Lucy's office tries to talk to what is nothing more than a memory chip on the line. "May I give her a message?"

The call ended seven seconds ago. Benton erases File One from Red-stick, to ensure that Jean-Baptiste s faked message cannot be played again, ever, by anyone.

He walks swiftly along the congested sidewalk again, head bent, missing nothing.