The Shadow Broker (Mr. Finn Book 1)

  The Shadow Broker

  Copyright © 2014 by Trace Conger

  All rights reserved.

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products, bands, and/or restaurants referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This book is dedicated to Zoe “Bag of Doughnuts”

  and the real Mr. Finn.

  It’s also dedicated to my wife, Beth.

  This book wouldn’t exist without her loving support and encouragement.

  “Here is something you can’t understand.

  How I could just kill a man.”

  —“How I Could Just Kill a Man,” Cypress Hill

  “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine.

  You make me happy when skies are grey.

  You’ll never know, dear, how much I love you.

  Please don’t take my sunshine away.”

  —“You Are My Sunshine,” Oliver Hood

  Title Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  A Note From The Author

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  I’M NOT SURE OF THE EXACT moment I became a criminal. It didn’t happen overnight. There wasn’t one event or act that defined the point when I crossed over the invisible line separating good guys from bad guys. It was a gradual transition. Like watching your daughter grow up. One day she’s playing with her Disney princess dolls on the carpet and the next day she’s packing up her car and heading to college. No, I don’t know the exact moment, but I have a good idea when it started.

  I WAITED FOR THE NAVY-BLUE Ford Expedition from my window seat at Winans Coffee on the corner of Eighth and Walnut in downtown Cincinnati. The coffee shop was quiet except for the occasional steamer blast or whirring coffee grinder behind the counter. Two coffee jocks snatched muffins from the bakery case and poured drinks for the steady stream of caffeine addicts coming through the door.

  My watch said I still had ten minutes. I sipped my coffee and yanked my bookmark, an old receipt, from inside of Joe Lansdale’s Vanilla Ride. The story was good and I hoped to finish it today, but reading Lansdale’s books, as good as they were, didn’t pay the bills. According to the phone call I received yesterday, the man arriving in the Expedition could.

  I had just returned to my seat with my first refill when the SUV slowed to a stop across the street. From where I sat I could see directly through the front passenger window. The driver opened his door and rocked back and forth, struggling with the seatbelt and the tight confines of the driver’s seat. Once he was out, the SUV’s leaf springs, now free from his weight, released their tension, snapping the vehicle upwards like a slingshot. He reached back into the SUV and pulled out one of those red-and-white refillable gas-station soda containers with a handle as long as my forearm and set it on the vehicle’s roof.

  The driver plunked some coins into the meter and walked around the SUV. For the first time, I took him all in. He was the largest man I’d ever seen. Had to be over four fifty. He wore a black-and-white suit, a custom job, and looked like a cross between an undertaker and a limousine driver. The only thing missing was the black cap. He lumbered down the side of the SUV toward the rear door. He shuffled more than walked, and I couldn’t tell if his feet actually left the ground. He gripped the rear passenger door handle and opened it with what I imagined was enough force to rip the door from its metal hinges. He yanked the door open wide and a man about my size, thin and average, stepped out. He checked the oncoming traffic and walked across the street toward the coffee shop. The fat man took a few steps before turning back for the container he’d left on the SUV’s roof and then double-timed it across the street behind the thin man. He moved faster than I thought he could.

  Both men came through the door, but only the big guy had to turn to his side when he stepped over the threshold. From the earlier phone call, I had the impression these guys might lean to the inconspicuous side, but the fat man crushed any chance of keeping a low profile. He turned heads.

  I tipped my hand in the air to identify myself, and both men approached the table.

  The thin man leaned forward. “You Mr. Finn?” he said.

  “I am.”

  “I’m Bishop,” he nodded to the fat man. “This is Sam.”

  Bishop surveyed the room. Winans wasn’t a big place, but most customers preferred the dozen or so tables in the front of the coffee shop to enjoy the view of Eighth Street. The room tapered toward the back, where at the moment only one chair had an ass in it.

  “Let’s move to the rear,” said Bishop.

  Fat Sam led the way. The elderly man sitting at the table looked up as the big man’s shadow engulfed the entire section. Fat Sam picked up the guy’s coffee cup, snatched the Cincinnati Enquirer from his hand and placed them on a table at the front of the coffee shop. The elderly man didn’t speak. He just looked at Fat Sam, who returned the stare, waiting for him to retreat. Then, he looked at me and Bishop, stood up and relocated to his new seat n
ear the front window.

  Fat Sam moved two tables together and the three of us sat down. I set my coffee cup on the table in front of me.

  “Want something to drink?” I said.

  “No. I don’t drink coffee,” said Bishop.

  Fat Sam held up the forty-five-ounce coma-inducer in his hand. “I’m good,” he said. “It’s diet.”

  Bishop put his skinny hands on the table. “Thanks for meeting us,” he said, his voice low. “As I mentioned on the phone, I need to locate someone. I got your name from a contact in Boston. Who knew you were right here in my own backyard? He says you’re good at that type of thing—finding people. And you’re sensitive to the needs and position of people like me. That right?”

  I leaned back in my chair. “I’d like to think so,” I said.

  I’d never heard of Bishop and had no idea what he did, but if he needed me, he was bad news. People like me are the last hope for people like him. I locate people who don’t want to be found. And I understand that once I find them, they won’t be found again. I’m sort of like Death’s GPS.

  Bishop leaned in so that we were almost face to face. “I’m a straightforward person, Mr. Finn, so I’m going to get right to the point. Someone is blackmailing me, and I want to know who. I don’t need law enforcement involved, which is why we’re having this conversation.”

  I took a sip of my coffee, which was now lukewarm. “Do you have any idea who it might be?” I said.

  “No, he’s a ghost. All I have is a handle. Silvio1053. In my business, I work with some unsavory individuals. Data thieves and hackers mostly, so he’s likely someone I’ve worked with in the past or at least someone who knows my business.”

  My ears perked up. “What business is that, exactly?”

  Bishop paused for a moment and then looked at Fat Sam. He hesitated.

  “Look, Bishop. You contacted me,” I said. “I only ask the questions I need answers to, and that information doesn’t leave this table. But if you don’t want to tell me what I need to know, I can’t help you, and we can save ourselves a fuckload of time and just part ways now.”

  Bishop nodded and then leaned in closer.

  “I sell information, Mr. Finn. Illegal information that people pay a lot of money for. I run an underground website, the Dark Brokerage. It’s a black market for sensitive and personal information. Stolen information.”

  “How exactly do you get this information?”

  “Various ways. I have a network of providers who can deliver pretty much anything. Hackers to crack sophisticated systems, lower-level cons with access to various information sources. Even got high-schoolers eager to dumpster dive for a few extra bucks. If there’s a market for it, I can usually get it.”

  Bishop was an information reseller. Need to purchase a block of one hundred credit card numbers? Bishop had them. A Social Security number for someone born in Illinois in 1975? He could get it for the right price. All that compromised financial data from those department store data breaches? It finds its way to people like Bishop, who packages it up with a big pink bow and resells it. The concept was ingenious and unsettling at the same time.

  “So where does the blackmail come in?” I said. “With all that information, shouldn’t you be the one doing the blackmailing?”

  “It’s not the information, but the way I sell it. Once someone logs onto my site, they can browse the information available for sale or they can make a request for something not yet available. But they have to log into the site before they do anything. It requires a username and password, just like you have for logging onto your bank online. But my user list is a who’s who of bad people. It’s a list that the authorities might be interested in. And if that list ever made it out to the public, I’d be fucked.”

  “That’s what Silvio1053 is holding over your head? Your user list?”

  “Right.” Bishop explained in tech-nerd speak I didn’t understand that Silvio1053 somehow hacked the records from the Dark Brokerage site and threatened to go to the Feds and reveal Bishop’s customers’ names, addresses and order histories unless he ponied up fifty grand a month. He’d already paid one month’s sum, but it wasn’t a business expense he wanted to continue to write off. And that’s where I came in.

  “What can you tell me about this Silvio? What do you have to get me started?” I said.

  “Not much. You’ve got to understand that I deal with a lot of shady people, so secrecy is a way of life.”

  “Kind of ironic that someone who deals in secret information can’t identify the person blackmailing him.”

  Bishop smirked. “I get the irony, thanks,” he said.

  “How does he contact you?”

  “Through e-mail,” said Bishop. “He’s using an encrypted account. Everyone I work with does.”

  Fat Sam looked up and I followed his eyes. Two hipsters in vintage T-shirts, tight jeans, boots and thrift-store cardigans made a beeline for the table next to us. Fat Sam stared them down with a look that said, “Turn around, or those sweaters go up your ass.” They must have received the message because they stopped in their tracks and looked around for a safer place to sit.

  “This Silvio1053, you sure he really has something on you?” I said.

  “He e-mailed me samples and they’re solid. He’s legit.”

  “What about the first cash drop?” I asked. “Where did you meet him?”

  “I didn’t meet him. It was all handled online.”

  “So you’ve got a bank account number, a routing number or something? Maybe we can trace him that way.”

  “Not exactly. Ever hear of bitcoins?”

  I knew about bitcoins, a type of digital currency. They’d been in the news lately. The word was still out on whether they were completely untraceable.

  “Heard of them, but never used them,” I said.

  “It’s an anonymous currency. You convert your cash into bitcoins, purchase your product and then the seller takes your bitcoins and uses an exchange to convert it all back to cash. Completely digital and anonymous.”

  Fat Sam swirled the tumbler in front of him. “Ain’t you gonna write any of this down?” he said.

  I glanced at him. “No paper trail,” I said and turned back to Bishop. “This keeps getting more complicated.”

  “Look, my entire business is based on invisibility. I’ve got names and details on customers buying and selling illegal information. These people don’t want that info to get out. Without anonymity for the seller or buyer, it all falls apart.”

  “But they found out your identity? To blackmail you.”

  “My guess is Silvio1053 cracked my administrator login and got into my customer data. That’s why I think he’s someone who either sold information to me or purchased it from me. He has some familiarity with the site and knows how it works. I’m not exactly sure how he did it, but I can promise you that once you find him and I put a gun down his throat, I’ll find out how and make damn sure it never happens again.”

  Fat Sam slurped his diet whatever through his straw. “But you didn’t hear that gun part,” he said.

  “Right,” I said. “So there’s not a lot to go on. I’ll have to get creative.”

  “This is why I need someone who specializes in this type of work,” said Bishop. “It’s not your average case. And my Boston contact says you’re not the average guy.”

  “Got that right,” I said.

  Bishop nodded to Fat Sam, who dropped an orange file folder on the table. I hadn’t noticed it concealed under the bulk of his black jacket.

  “This is all the info I have,” said Bishop. “It’s got Silvio’s e-mails. There’s not a lot there, but it might help. My number is in there, too, if you need to contact me. You’ve got thirty days to locate him. I’ll pay you twenty grand for his identity and location. Half now and half when you give me the info. You can’t find him in thirty days, then Sam here puts you on the shit list.” He paused. “And you don’t want to be on the shit list.”
<
br />   I was silent for a moment. “I don’t get an opportunity to turn down the case?” I said.

  “Not after hearing everything I just told you,” Bishop answered. “Now you’re in it.”

  Bishop nodded to Fat Sam again, who pulled an envelope from his cavernous jacket and slipped it onto my lap under the table.

  “This oughta get you started,” said Bishop.

  “Okay,” I said, and we shook on it.

  “Find this fucktard and maybe we can do business again.” Bishop stood up from the table and Fat Sam followed. “If you’re as good as I hear you are, then I could use you on a longer-term basis.”

  “So what are we supposed to call you?” said Fat Sam. “You got a real name?”

  “You’re not the only one who deals in anonymity,” I said. “Mr. Finn is good for now.”

  “Fair enough,” said Bishop. “Thirty days. Call me with updates.” Bishop and Fat Sam left the coffee shop, crossed the street and disappeared into the navy-blue SUV.

  I waited a few seconds and then ripped open the envelope that Fat Sam tossed in my lap. Crisp hundred-dollar bills. A ten-grand down payment. I slipped the envelope inside my leather messenger bag on the floor next to my feet. Morality doesn’t exist in my business. There isn’t good and bad—just shades of both. The idea of Bishop or Fat Sam pushing a gun down a blackmailer’s throat didn’t unnerve me. Criminals can kill each other all day as far as I’m concerned. They’re just thinning out the herd. But Silvio1053 might be a hard man to find, if he were even a man at all.

  I walked to the counter for a third cup of coffee. I needed the caffeine boost to get my brain firing on all cylinders.

  I HAD TO START BUILDING a profile on Silvio1053 as soon as possible, while the details were still fresh in my head. The crowd thinned out at Winans, so I left the back table and took my original seat at the window. More sunlight.

  A skilled investigator can find almost anyone, mainly because people can’t hide for shit. They have the innate inability to stay quiet. People can take all sorts of measures to cover their tracks, but it’s usually something simple that gives them away—a phone call to a parent or ex-girlfriend, a post on a social media network, a Christmas card to a friend. They can’t disconnect.