Chairs had been brought in, but Mag, Vance, Joker, Dutch, Joe, Rhashan and Eddie had all opted to hold up various walls.
As Mo took his seat, Axl moved to stand by Mag.
“Right, let’s get this shit out of the way so we can all have a Saturday,” Hawk started it and then looked to him. “Axe, break down what you told me this morning.”
Axl gave it to them about the setup.
When he was done, Hawk shifted his attention to Lee, “You’re up.”
Lee nodded and launched in.
“Part one, I had Brody on something else yesterday, so it sucks you lost a day when he could have saved you that time, but he had to put your search aside until this morning. But he got on it and Laszlo Kovack took a company transfer about a week after Boone handed him his ass. He’s currently up to his neck in packing to move to Portland, Oregon, something that’s scheduled to occur next Monday. And as a farewell to Colorado, he’s up in Vail right now, and this morning he had a Denver omelet for breakfast prior to gassing up and heading back down. However, what there is absolutely no evidence of him doing is dicking with Axl and Boone. So it’d come as a big surprise to him if you boys showed and handed him his ass again.”
And there it was.
They were being played.
And Axl bet there were eyes on Laszlo Kovack’s house so they could get caught in the middle of handing a man his ass.
But now, they couldn’t look for those eyes because, in how they needed to look, it was very illegal, so they couldn’t get caught trying to find the means set up to catch them out.
“Onward from that,” Lee continued, “Brody confirmed Kovack’s computer was also hacked. He sometimes takes pictures of his partners. And those are the shots that were sent to Hattie. So as Axl figured out, it was a setup.” Lee looked to Boone. “He’s bi, he sometimes does multiple partners, but there aren’t any shots of your woman.”
Some of the tension shifted from Boone’s shoulders.
“Part two,” Lee carried on. “We finally got something interesting on the ME that reported the Mueller/Bogart double murder was a murder-suicide, before he changed his findings in the official report. He’s been laying low, keeping his nose clean. Though, it seems the high stress of his job had to be addressed. And he did that by sorting a vacation on a houseboat on Lake Powell, something he and his wife like to do once a year. Thing is, this time, he bought the whole fucking houseboat. And two jet skis. And to round that out, a powerboat. All with cash.”
And there that was.
He’d been bought.
“At least he didn’t sell his soul on the cheap,” Shy noted with open disgust.
“Yeah,” Lee replied.
“That needs a follow-up, he needs someone leaning on him about that,” Tack noted. “And since Eddie already got up in his shit about it, it can’t be a cop.”
“When’s he going to Lake Powell?” Knight asked.
“Next week,” Lee answered.
Knight nodded. “I’ll talk to Sylvie and Tucker. They can plan a family vacation. Head up from Phoenix, track his ass down and finesse a conversation.” There were nods of assent all around that was the way to go.
“Now for another break,” Hawk said then he focused on Jorge. “Jorge?”
“With Brody hung up, but the diagnostics run, we picked shit up on Ryn’s laptop. She had three hacks. One to download her web search history. One to download her email. And one to download all her documents and pictures.”
Boone already knew this, since it was one of the things they were following up yesterday, but Axl still looked at Boone to see his face hard, his jaw clenched.
He wasn’t over that violation of Ryn.
Not surprising.
Jorge kept going.
“These originated from three different Internet cafés. We followed up at the cafés. They got records that show three different bogus IDs were given when he bought time. We ran them. One was from a dead guy. One from an incarcerated guy. And one from a guy who doesn’t exist.”
“Another dead end?” Ally asked.
Jorge shook his head. “Nope. Checked in with some boys I know who deal fakes. One of them remembered the name that the guy asked for him to use for an ID, since it’s apparently some famous porn star’s name, Phil Charismo.”
“For fuck’s sake,” Knight muttered.
“Yeah, pure class,” Jorge agreed through sarcasm. “He remembered the name, remembered the guy and remembered the guy visited him with another guy. He thought it was a sting. Patted them down. Asked if they were cops.”
“He sold them an ID when he thought they were cops?” Rush asked.
Jorge shook his head. “Not Phil Charismo. But the guy with him, my dealer says he’d lay money on that guy at one point having been a cop. This guy does good fakes. He’s also greedy. What I wouldn’t call him is smart. He thinks if he asks a cop if he’s a cop, the cop has to say.”