Chapter 29
“Yo, hop in!” Alex says, and the passenger doors open in unison. It is a rather dramatic car entrance. “I went to the locker. I found something. Wanted to tell you in person just in case your phone was bugged.”
“Bugged? You’re sounding a little paranoid,” I say.
Alex has bought into a few conspiracy theories in the past, though luckily I’m usually able to convince him they are largely without merit.
“We’ll fill you in on that in just a second. Tell us, what was so important it couldn’t be said over a phone call?” Amaya asks. She taps her hands on her legs, something she does when she’s a little annoyed. She’s apparently not impressed with the car.
“So I went to the racquet club…you know, because I’m a member,” Alex begins casually.
I can almost feel Amaya’s annoyance and impatience roll off her, her tapping even louder now. We have clearly established that he is a member of the racquet club. I want to shrug my shoulders and say, “Men, am I right?” But Alex has done so much for me, I can’t be an asshole now.
“I go to his locker. I enter the locker combination…” Alex pauses, as if for dramatic effect. “Inside, there was a USB.”
“What was on the USB?” Amaya demands.
Alex looks back at her and laughs a little as if she’s asked a stupid question.
“It’s password-protected. To hack in, I need a truly powerful computer like the type that I have at work. There is some software out there that could probably do it on my personal laptop, but it’s sort of illegal and I really can’t risk it.”
Alex has done plenty of illegal things in the past. I wonder what’s changed now.
“Discovering any material illegally could preclude us from using it in court anyways,” Amaya replies, seemingly agreeing with him.
“We have to decrypt it though,” I protest.
Amaya pauses. “We can try our best…we’re already on shaky ground getting this out of the locker…”
My life is on the line here, but before my annoyance can build, I remind myself how much Amaya and Alex have already done for me. It’s ridiculous, not to mention selfish, to ask someone to risk so much for me.
Somehow we need to find out what’s on that USB without getting anyone in trouble.
—
On the way to Alex’s office, Amaya and I tell him about Charlie and Green World, and about the threatening text situation. He takes it in in silence, which is surprising because Alex usually provides a nonstop commentary about everything.
Once we arrive at Alex’s office building, somewhere I’ve never visited him before, I find it is even more impressive than his home.
Everything is sleek and smart. Temperatures adjust to the people in the room; doors open only after an eye scan.
I can’t imagine how much this all costs, and it looks like it belongs in a James Bond movie, not an office.
I’m waiting for Daniel Craig to pop out of a closet.
“Okay, take a seat here.” Alex directs us to two chairs. My chair is possibly the most comfortable thing I have ever sat on and probably the most expensive, too, if you didn’t count the seats in Alex’s Porsche.
I take in my surroundings as Alex taps on his computer aggressively. I didn’t realize that Alex now occupies a corner office. Did he get a raise? A promotion? Why didn’t he tell me? Did he keep good news from me so as not to rub it in or hurt my feelings?
I spot a toy car on Alex’s desk. The first thing I ever gave him back when we were kids.
It was my favorite car, one of the few toys I owned, which I bestowed on Alex.
I am touched it is in such a coveted position in his office and that he hasn’t lost it over the years, especially as I can recall the much more expensive toys, like G.I.
Joes, that Alex’s parents hurled his way to make up for never being around.
His parents didn’t know the things he really liked to play with.
They never really seemed to know him at all.
Alex looks up from his work and catches me staring at the car.
“You remember when you gave that to me, right?”
“I do.” I smile.
“It was after someone made fun of my ‘Jewish nose,’ an insult you didn’t understand at the time.”
I didn’t know exactly what a Jewish nose meant, but I got the idea. Besides, a preteen boy singling someone out for their personal appearance was usually a bad thing.
“I have a big nose too,” I had replied.
“Not as big as mine,” Alex had replied, tears in his eyes. “Mine is bad because of who I am.”
“Mine is brown, and people don’t like my skin color,” I had said. I had been made fun of so many times in my nearly completely white school that I had lost count. It didn’t make the additional insults any easier to hear.
“People suck sometimes, don’t they?” Alex had said, looking up.
“Not all of them,” I responded, holding out a hand to Alex. “Wanna go to the bodega and grab some snacks?”
To this day, Alex and I use food to turn around a bad day. Back then, it was Fruit Roll-Ups and Snickers bars. Now it’s sushi (if Alex is buying…that stuff costs a fortune), or bodega bacon, egg, and cheeses and pizza if I pick up the tab.
Deep down inside, no matter the money or flashy things, Alex will always just be the kid on the playground that day.
“Um, hello…let’s get back to work?” Amaya chides.
“Any chance you can guess the password?” Alex asks, seemingly half-joking, half-serious.
“It could be literally anything…Uh—” I pause to think.
“Well, I can’t get in without the password…”
“My password is my name and one-two-three-four-five,” Amaya offers.
Alex types while rolling his eyes. “It’s not his name and one-two-three-four-five. And I’d suggest you change all your passwords now. That’s a predictable password. Have you heard of two-factor authentication?”
“Alex. We have to focus. Um, maybe try…‘Frankie’?” I offer.
An angry-sounding beep tells me I’m wrong.
“I feel like you’re on the right track,” Amaya says as she rummages into her bag.
“It’s not going to be that simple. He’s a tech guy. So it’ll be a combination of letters and characters,” Alex mutters under his breath.
Amaya pulls out the documents from the animal hospital from her bag. “Maybe it’s Frankie’s birthday?” The sheepish look on her face makes me think that Amaya uses her own birthday as her phone password. Nearly 60 percent of people do this and I make a mental note to tell Amaya to change hers.
“Try ‘Frankie’ followed by his birthday,” I state.
Alex is trying to say that won’t work, when I push past him and try it. There’s a chirp and…we’re in.
“You cracked it,” Amaya says with a rare smile.
I look at Alex, vindicated. He simply shrugs.
I stand up to get a better look at the computer. Amaya does too. I expected this code breaking to take hours or even days. I guess James didn’t think anyone would ever find the USB and therefore it wouldn’t require the complex passwords we all need to use online.
“Oh shit, this looks big,” Amaya says, mouth open, scanning a screen filled with thousands of numbers. “What does this mean?”
I take a few minutes to scan it, making sure I am understanding correctly.
“I think these are balance sheets,” I say before scanning for another few seconds. “But the numbers don’t appear to be adding up.”
I grab my phone and start to add some numbers on the calculator app to confirm. “That’s odd…there’s something missing. Money missing.” Math was by far my worst subject, so I look to Alex to see if he’s seeing what I’m seeing, and he is reviewing the screen just as intently as I am.
“What does that mean?” Amaya asks.
“I think it means that someone is stealing money from New Frontier. The money that is supposed to go toward the so-called environmental solutions is, in part, going into someone’s pocket. This is proof the environmental fixes New Frontier promises are not being delivered.”
“I mean…what if these aren’t complete balance sheets? Maybe these have been tinkered with,” Alex says.
“Why would James create fake balance sheets and put them in an encrypted USB?” Amaya asks.
“Seems like hundreds of thousands have come from oil and gas, plastics producers. New Frontier says they are working toward getting better energy ratings for these polluting companies, but at least according to news coverage, they’ve done some stuff but not much,” I say.
“Environmental change takes time,” Alex responds as if he is a New Frontier spokesman. “Who knows what’s happening behind the scenes.”
“Here it states ‘Money moved to JT account’…” Amaya says.
“James Wilkerson-Taylor? He was stealing the money?” Alex asks, frowning.
“It looks like it…Catalyst is one of the companies buying ‘services’ from New Frontier,” Amaya says, looking as if she is deep in thought. “I think I’ve heard of them…”
“Yes, you’ve heard of them because they’re accused of deforesting millions of acres in the ,” I offer.
“You’ve also heard of Catalyst because James’s sister works there.
And his girlfriend just so happens to run the place.
” True crime rule number nine: Coincidences in criminal investigations should raise suspicion. Investigate them.
“If this got out before the company went public, everything would go south,” I declare.
“Why would James keep a USB with proof of his wrongdoing on it?” Amaya questions. “More likely someone other than James was stealing money and James was trying to show that he was being framed.”
“Or…Charlie knew what James was doing and was trying to use the USB as leverage. Maybe gave him a copy—could be anything,” Alex says.
“Charlie was clearly the angriest. He felt James had ruined his life. He betrayed their friendship and literally was a part of something that went against everything they had ever believed. If it’s the way you guys described it, the guy had motive for murder. For everyone else, it’s just money.”
When you’re poor, you’d certainly kill for money, but Alex can’t appreciate that.
“What’s next?’ Alex asks.
Everyone instinctively looks at Amaya’s purse, thinking of the carton within. So much riding on a piece of trash.