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Stories from the Verse
Multiverser: The Thirteenth Story
Chapter 26: Takano 165
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Beam 204
Tommy had dinner with the Kellers again that night. She still had leftovers from her surf and turf the night before in her fridge, although she had eaten the lobster for breakfast, but she had no qualms about eating it again when Keller ordered it for them. This time the soups included New England clam chowder, which she decided she would enjoy, and it would be considerably less filling than the salad had been so she could eat some of the meal.
After the waiter had delivered the soup course, Tell said, “Aceydeecy got away. The Eagle did swoop down, but didn’t find him.”
Tommy nodded. “Metalika?” she ventured.
“In jail, stone cell with special wooden bars. They’re not as strong, but he can’t melt them. Finding a carpenter who would do them with peg-and-nail carpentry, no screws or nails or metal fittings, was tricky, but they did it.”
That was satisfactory. She turned her attention to the soup, which was good enough to draw her mind away from her concerns for a moment. Then she said, “What I don’t get is how they knew.”
“Knew?”
“Obviously they knew there was going to be a diamond shipment, and they knew the time and the route. O.K., so they got a tip. But then they also knew that there was going to be a decoy car, and they ignored it. We didn’t even know about the decoy; we had to guess. So how did they know?”
The Kellers stared at each other, and then together they said, “They’ve got an inside man.”
Tommy nodded. “That’s what I figure. The question is, can we find it?”
Keller pursed his lips. “I don’t know,” he said. “A lot of people work for Wells Fargo, between here and Denver and wherever else was involved.”
“Well, we’ll have to think about it.” She finished her soup, and the main course arrived. She tackled the spinach first, because she had discovered that it did not pack well in the doggy bag, and she did not get gravy for the same reason, although fried onions and sauteed mushrooms she thought would work fine. She was collecting some decent food for the upcoming days, but at least today she would eat some of it while it was fresh in the restaurant.
“You know,” she said, “it has to be someone who has access inside Wells Fargo, probably someone who works for them in some way. And he has to have the kind of access that would enable him to know about what cars were being sent where. Also, since he’s in touch with Metalika and Aceydeecy he must be local--if he were in Denver, he probably would have contacted someone up there to pull off the heist. So unless he’s wherever they have their national office--and even that probably wouldn’t work. Give it fifteen years, and they’ll have a central computer system tracking all their vehicles nationwide, another fifteen beyond that and they’ll have GPS in all of them so they can know where they are all the time.”
“GPS?” Belle asked.
“Technically GSPS--Global Satellite Positioning System, using satellites and computers to track objects on the ground. Back home, the system can tell where my cell phone is to the nearest square yard.”
“That’s frightening,” Keller said.
“Oddly, you get used to it.”
“I don’t know that I would,” Belle suggested.
“Anyway, the point is that the only places that would know about the truck or about the decoy truck would be the Denver office that dispatched them and the Berkeley office that received them, and maybe somewhere along the way that they stopped. And the Berkeley office is the only place where it makes sense for the insider to give the information to our local villains. So that’s where the leak must be.”
The Kellers stared at her.
“That’s quite good,” he said. “It’s a start, anyway.”
Yeah, that’s what you said last time, she thought--but then, she recognized that it really wasn’t much to go on. She didn’t know how many people worked in the local office, but there would be administrators to handle the paperwork, mechanics to maintain the vehicles, guards who came and went and worked security jobs throughout the region, and who knew who else. It was a lot of people, and really it could be an ordinary secretary who had leaked the information. It really was only a start.
She again took home leftovers in a doggie bag--a good hunk of steak with sauteed mushrooms and onions and a baked potato. She also asked if she could get dessert to go, and so took home a slice of blueberry cheesecake in a separate bag.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
