City of Endless Night

7

Lieutenant D’Agosta parked his squad car in the taped-off area in front of the town house. He got out of the car, his associate Sergeant Curry emerging from the other side. D’Agosta took a moment to look up at the town house, built in pink granite, occupying the middle of a quiet block between Second and Third Avenues, lined with leafless ginkgo trees. The victim, Cantucci, had been the worst kind of mob lawyer there was, slippery as an eel. He’d been in their crosshairs for two decades, subjected to several grand jury proceedings — and they’d never even been able to take away his license to practice at the bar. He was one of the untouchables.

Except he’d gotten touched now — big time. And D’Agosta wondered just how the hell the killer had penetrated the town house’s formidable security.

He shook his head and walked through the darkness of the December evening and up to the front door. Curry held the door open and D’Agosta entered the foyer, looking around. It was some house, filled with rare antiques, paintings, and Persian rugs. He caught the faint scent of the various chemicals and solvents used by the CSU team. But their work was now complete, and he wouldn’t have to put on the usual booties, hair covering, and gown, for which D’Agosta was grateful as he breathed in the stifling air, the town house’s metal shutters still closed.

“All ready for the walk-through, sir?” asked Curry.

“Where’s the security consultant? He was supposed to meet me here.”

A man materialized from the shadows, African American, small, white hair, wearing a blue suit and carrying himself in a gravely dignified manner. He was said to be one of the top experts in electronic security in the city, and D’Agosta was surprised to see he looked at least seventy years old.

He offered a cool hand. “Jack Marvin,” he said, his voice deep, like a preacher’s.

“Lieutenant D’Agosta. So tell me, Mr. Marvin — how’d the son of a bitch get through this million-dollar security system?”

Marvin chuckled ghoulishly. “Very cleverly. Would you care for a tour?”

“Sure.”

Marvin set off, moving briskly down the central corridor, D’Agosta and Curry following. D’Agosta wondered why the hell Pendergast hadn’t shown up here in response to his request. This was just the kind of case that would fascinate him, and given the rivalry between the NYPD and the FBI, D’Agosta thought he’d been doing the agent a favor by extending him an invitation. But then, on the other hand, Pendergast had shown little interest in the case so far — just look at how reluctant he’d been to visit Ozmian.

“What we have in this house,” Marvin said, his hands moving constantly, “is a Sharps and Gund security system. Sharps and Gund is beyond state-of-the-art, the best there is. Favored by Persian Gulf oil tycoons and Russian oligarchs.” He paused. “There are twenty-five cameras distributed through the house. One there—” he pointed to an upper corner— “there, there, and there.” His finger moved swiftly. “Every square inch covered.”

He stopped and turned, sweeping his hands to one side and then the other, like a tour guide in some historic mansion. “And here we’ve got an IR break-beam fence, with motion detectors in the corners, up there and there.”

His gesture swept around to the elevator door, and he pressed the button. “The heart of the system is in the attic, in a reinforced locker.”

The elevator door — riddled with bullet holes — slid open, and they crowded in.

The elevator hummed its way up to the fifth floor and the doors reopened. Marvin stepped out. “Cameras here, here, and over there. More IR break-beams, motion detectors, pressure-plate sensors in the floor. Bedroom’s through that door.”

He pirouetted. “The front door and all windows are alarmed, and at sunset the place is sealed with steel shutters. The system has multiple redundancies. It’s normally powered by household current, with two independent sources of backup, a generator and a bank of deep-cycle marine batteries. It has three independent reporting methods to live operators standing by: via phone through the household landline, again through a cellular connection, and again through a satphone. Even if nothing happens, the system is designed to report a fair-weather signal every hour.”

D’Agosta gave a low whistle. He couldn’t wait to hear how this system was defeated.

“The system reports all anomalies. If a battery gets low, it reports. Power failure, it reports. Cellular interference, it reports. Lightning strike, power surge, spider building a web on an IR detector, it reports. Sharps and Gund has its own security teams that it dispatches, in case the police are slow or tied up.”

“Looks impregnable.”

“Doesn’t it, now? But like everything else ever designed by man, it just so happens to have an Achilles’ heel.”

D’Agosta was getting tired standing on his feet in the dark hall. An elegant sitting room with comfortable chairs beckoned at the end of the hall, and he’d been up for hours after less than ninety minutes’ sleep. “Shall we?” He motioned with his hand.

“I was planning on taking you to the attic. Here are the stairs.”

D’Agosta and Curry followed the spry man to a set of narrow stairs, which led into a half-height attic. When Marvin switched on the light, D’Agosta saw a space filled with dust and smelling of mildew. The air was stifling, and they had to crouch low.

“Over here,” Marvin said, pointing to a large, new metal cabinet, with the door open. “This is the central control of the security system. It’s essentially a large safe. No way to get in unless you have the code — and our perp did not have the code.”

“So how’d he get in?”

“Trojan horse.”

“Meaning?”

“The Sharps and Gund system is famous for being impervious to computer hacking. They accomplish this by partially isolating each security system from the Internet. You can’t transmit data into the system, ever. Not even the Sharps and Gund main office can transmit data to a security system. The security system is designed to send data only one way: out. Hackers cannot get in remotely.”

“So what if the system needs to be updated or reset?”

“A service technician has to physically go to the location, open the safe with a code that not even the owner has — that not even the technician has, it’s generated by a randomizer at the main office and orally transmitted to the tech when he’s on-site — and download new data into the system with a direct connection.”

D’Agosta shifted, trying not to bump his head against the ceiling. He could see a pair of rat’s eyes gleaming in a corner, peering at them. Even in a twenty-million-dollar house, you got rats. He wished Marvin would hurry up and get to the point.

“All right, so how’d the perp get around all this?”

“The first thing he did a few days ago. Out on the street in front of the house, he used a blocking device to interrupt the hourly fair-weather reports of the cellular. He could do this from a parked car, with a fairly inexpensive electromagnetic jammer. Just a couple of random bursts of interference that blocked the cellular signal a few times. It fooled Sharps and Gund into thinking the unit was going bad and needed to be replaced. So they sent two guys — always two guys — out with a new unit. Normally they double-park and one guy stays with the van. But your perp used a couple of traffic cones to snag a really convenient parking space for the van. Just down the street. Very tempting. So they park there and both guys go to the house, leaving the van unprotected for about three minutes.”

“You worked this all out?”

“Sure did.”

D’Agosta nodded, impressed.

“Your intruder breaks into the truck, gets his hands on the cellular device, swaps out the SD card for one with malware on it, and puts it back. The repairmen return, collect their stuff, go into the house, open the impregnable safe with the code given them from the home office, install the new cellular device, and leave. Then the malware downloads itself into the system and hijacks it. Totally. That damn malware unlocked the front door for your killer, then locked it behind him. It turned off the phones. It shut down the IR beams and motion detectors and pressure-plate sensors while leaving the CCTV cameras functioning. It even unlocked the safe so the perp could take the hard drives when he left.”

“How could some anonymous perp possibly know enough about the system to create this malware?” D’Agosta asked.

“He couldn’t.”

“You mean, inside job?”

“Absolutely no question. The intruder must have decompiled the firm’s system software in order to write this malware. He knew exactly what he was doing — and he knew the company’s proprietary way of doing business. There’s no doubt in my mind that an S and G employee or ex-employee was involved. And not just anyone, but someone with a deep familiarity with the installation process — of this particular system.”

This was a damn good lead. But this attic was getting to D’Agosta. He was bathed in sweat and the air was stifling. He couldn’t wait to get back out into the December cold. “Say, are we done up here?”

“I think so.” But instead of moving toward the stairs, Marvin lowered his voice. “Got to tell you, though, Lieutenant, when I tried to get a list of present and past S and G employees, I hit a stone wall. The CEO, Jonathan Ingmar, is a first-class obstructionist—”

“Let us handle that, Mr. Marvin.” D’Agosta fairly guided him by the shoulders to the staircase. They descended into the cooler air.

“It’s all going in my report,” said Marvin. “The technical details, the specs of the system, the works. I’ll have it for you tomorrow.”

“Thank you, Mr. Marvin. You’ve done an excellent job.”

When they emerged onto the fifth floor, D’Agosta took a number of deep, grateful breaths.