“Harley, can you please go outside for a minute?” Wade asked. “I need a word in private with Malcolm.”
I nodded, then gave Malcolm a warm smile and left, closing the door behind me.
Two minutes later, Wade emerged from the room, his rings still glowing blue as he adjusted his tie. “I’ve wiped the CCTV footage for the entire night, just to be sure no one catches on to your little card tricks, either. I’ve also adjusted Malcolm’s memory regarding the footage. As far as he knows, the cameras glitched that night, and all the footage was lost.”
“You tampered with Malcolm’s memory?”
I didn’t like the sound of that. The technique itself was manipulative and invasive. But in the end, it was in Malcolm’s best interest if he didn’t remember anything. Something else bothered me, though—it wasn’t my issue, but Wade’s. “The magicals in charge of the first round of cleanup did a very poor, sloppy job. That camera footage should’ve been scrubbed the morning after,” Wade said, glaring ahead as I followed him out of the casino. “The fact that no one checked the casino left us with a dangerous opening.”
“Do you know who was in charge of cleanup?” I asked.
We reached El Cajon Boulevard, and Wade looked both ways before crossing the street, his gaze fixed on the shops facing the casino. The wide building held a number of businesses, including a Vietnamese grocery store and a printing shop.
“Poe Dexter and a couple of other magicals from his clique. I knew he was a Mediocre, but this borders on incompetence,” Wade replied, gritting his teeth. “This means we have to go around this side of the block, too, and ask around, in case that imbecile didn’t think to check the neighboring area at all.”
“Shouldn’t there be a report?” I offered with a shrug.
He stared at me for a couple of seconds, before a smile stretched his lips. “You’re not that useless after all.”
“Wow, you sure know how to make a girl like you,” I said, crossing my arms.
He checked his phone, then quickly typed a text message. “Astrid has access to the reports. I’ll have her send it over. Now, let’s go in. There’s more to check out in the meantime.”
Wade walked into the Vietnamese store first, stopping by the main counter. “Hi, Homeland Security,” he said, flashing his badge again. “I need to see your CCTV footage.”
The store clerk, a middle-aged Vietnamese lady who was half his size, looked up at him. I could feel she was afraid—either wary of government employees or simply wary of strangers in suits with badges. Whatever it was, it worked as a defense mechanism, as she started speaking in Vietnamese.
Wade was confused. Obviously, does not compute.
I picked a random magazine from a rack and walked up to the counter next to him, with a warm smile on my face. “Hi, can I get this, and two packs of gum, please?”
She nodded, her brow furrowed, as she scanned my stuff and pressed various keys on her electronic cash register.
“Ma’am, I need to check your CCTV footage,” Wade said again, slightly irritated. The woman deliberately ignored him, flashing me a crooked smile.
“Do you want mint or fruity gum?” she asked. Wade’s patience was wearing thin, fast.
“Mint, please,” I replied softly. “Do you remember me?”
She looked at me, narrowing her brown eyes as she sifted through her memory, then offered a brief nod. “You work at casino, don’t you? Pretty girl, always in black dress, right?”
I chuckled, pleased to have made an impression on her. As much as I enjoyed my anonymity, it served no purpose in this case. “Yes, ma’am, that’s me. Listen, I wanted to ask you for a favor.”
“Anything for you, sweetie. Eight dollars and twenty cents, please,” she replied, drawing my total. The one thing that made it out of the apartment with me, besides my father’s note, was my wallet, which I’d stuffed into the inside chest pocket of my leather jacket. I handed her my credit card, which she swiped through the card reader. “What do you want, pretty girl?”
“Well, first of all, I need you to ignore this stooge here,” I said, nodding in Wade’s direction. “He doesn’t have any people skills. The only thing he’s good at is flashing that stupid badge around. But I do need to check your CCTV if possible. Someone stole my car eight nights ago, and I need to see if your cameras caught anything. It’s really important. My insurance company is busting my ass.”
The woman listened quietly, a twinkle of amusement in her eyes whenever she glanced at Wade, who was fuming by my side, but kept his mouth shut. He wasn’t getting anywhere with her, anyway. It didn’t hurt to try a classic con, instead. Besides, I knew this area well. Most of the people here didn’t take kindly to badges and uniforms. Even casino security made them jittery.
“If I show you, will he go away?” she replied, her gaze fixed on Wade.
“Absolutely.”
“Is he really Homeland Security, though? He’s too young!” She frowned at him.
“What, him?” I laughed wholeheartedly. “No, no, he’s in drama school, first year in acting. Badge is a fake. He’s just trying to help, but like I said, zero social skills.”
I purposely avoided looking at him during the exchange, but I could feel my blood boiling on his behalf. The woman chuckled, then motioned for us to follow her behind the counter. “He’s a lousy actor, then,” she quipped, and guided us through a small side door, leading into her back office, which was cluttered with cardboard boxes and accounting folders.
CCTV footage didn’t show too much to the human eye, but both Wade and I could clearly see ourselves—two small black sticks in the distance, wrestling the gargoyle. Wade worked his magic on the Vietnamese lady, wiping her memory and the DVR’s hard drive, and leaving her with a similar story about a CCTV system glitch.
“We were never here,” he said to her, and she offered an absent nod in response, a faint yellow glimmer in her eyes as she watched us leave.
I ran back to the counter and took the chewing gum packets.
“You forgot your magazine,” Wade said as soon as we reached the boulevard again.
“I only needed it as an excuse to get to the counter and stop that disaster you’d probably call an ‘undercover sting,’” I replied. “You are absolutely terrible at dealing with these people.”
“What do you mean?” he asked, slightly offended. I kind of felt sorry for him. He was a typical elitist drone who followed rules and didn’t seem to understand that people in these parts of San Diego were… different.
“Waving a badge around won’t get you anywhere in El Cerrito, my friend.” I smirked. “Nobody likes a cop asking for camera footage, not with the gangs working in the area. You know what happens to snitches.”
“You seem to have a very good understanding of gangsters and interlopers, I see,” Wade replied.
I gave him a brief shrug. “I’ve worked in that place for long enough. I’ve met all kinds of people in there. I know this area like the back of my hand, and I’m telling you, next time you want to do a cleanup mission like this, ditch the suits and badges. Simple lies work better. Hell, breaking and entering works better!”
We moved farther down the boulevard, repeating the pattern—checking CCTV, asking people if they remembered anything from that night. Some had had their memories wiped by the previous investigators, based on Wade’s assessment, but plenty had slipped through the cracks.
Two hours later, we were back on El Cajon, the casino just eighty yards away to our left. Wade was thoroughly displeased with the amount of memory wiping he’d had to do. “Poe barely did anything,” he grumbled, then checked his phone. “And based on what I’m reading from Santana’s and Tatyana’s texts, the rest of the block is just as bad.”
“Did Astrid send over Poe’s report?”
“Yes, I’m looking through it now,” he replied, swiping through the pages on his phone and shaking his head with disgust. “It’s full of vague notes and several lies. I know for a fact he didn’t check certain places he says he did.”
“You should definitely tell Alton about this,” I said, gazing around.
Astrid came into view, as she turned the corner and walked toward us from the north side of the block.
“You bet I’ll tell Alton about this,” Wade muttered.
“Guys, this whole block was a mess!” Astrid exclaimed as she reached us, holding up a computer tablet. From what I could see on the screen, she was operating some kind of CCTV software with several windows open. “I had to tap into the main network and do manual overrides to wipe out multiple recordings. What the heck did the cleanup team do here last week?”
“Apparently, nothing,” Wade said, putting his phone away.
“What’s that?” I asked, looking at her tablet.
“This is Smartie!” Astrid beamed at me, holding the device up and pointing at various parts of the screen. “It’s a proprietary software I put together. State-of-the-art AI, to be specific. Named him Smartie because he’s brilliant.”
“Him? It’s a he?” I chuckled.
“Absolutely. My soulmate.” Astrid giggled, then flipped over several screens. I could see footage from all over the neighborhood through a live feed, and I was officially impressed. “Smartie taps into any system, basically. I’ve fitted him with several encryption and decryption algorithms, to the point where all I need to do is tell him where to go and what to do, and he does it. Flawlessly, I might add!”
“That’s pretty cool,” I said, unable to take my eyes off the screen. Even the software design looked good, warm white graphics against a charcoal background—elegant and discreet. She tapped a couple of controls, then pulled out a list of cameras in a separate file.
“These are the systems I’ve cleared, all the way up to the Golden Stiletto Bar, on a half-mile radius,” she said. “Where are the others?”