Free Suspicion by Joseph Finder Page B

Every single item on top of Galvin’s desk. Danny was quietly pleased at how much he was able to recall. The two agents took turns. One asked the questions while the other went for coffee or water or a potty break.
    “Why do you need to know all this?” Danny asked at one point.
    Slocum, the bad cop, said, “Why don’t you let us ask the questions.”
    “Did you ever see him place a call on a landline?” Yeager asked.
    “Actually, no. Just his mobile phone. His BlackBerry.”
    “And you’re sure it was a BlackBerry? It didn’t look bulkier or different in any way?”
    “I didn’t get that close a look.”
    “Do you have his cell number? Of his BlackBerry, I mean.”
    Danny nodded. He took out his iPhone, went into his contacts and read off Galvin’s number.
    “Did you notice whether he did any texting?”
    “I don’t think I could tell the difference between texting and making a call,” Danny said. “Why? What do you need to know all this for?”
    “We need to know who he’s talking to and what he’s saying,” said Yeager.
    “So tap his phones.”
    “Brilliant idea,” said Slocum, getting up. “Why didn’t I think of that?” He shook his head in mordant amusement and walked out of the room.
    “What makes you think we haven’t done that?” said Yeager. “The problem is, the cartels have gotten too smart. They never discuss business over phone lines that aren’t encrypted.”
    “Did it ever occur to you guys that maybe the reason Galvin doesn’t talk cartel business over the phone is because he’s not doing any cartel business?”
    Yeager seemed to be suppressing a smirk. “We’ve picked up an encrypted signal going out over one of his landlines, probably in his home office.”
    “So?”
    “There’s a reason he’s using encryption.”
    Danny shrugged. “You guys can’t break it?”
    “Not so simple. You’ve been reading too many spy novels.”
    “No such thing as reading too many spy novels.”
    They asked for his iPhone and installed a couple of apps on it. One was ChatSecure. It used an encryption protocol called Off-the-Record. It allowed them to send and receive text messages securely.
    “We’ve given you a Gmail account to use.”
    “I already have one.”
    “Don’t use it. Not for messaging us. Use this one.” He wrote on a yellow Post-it:
[email protected]
.
    “If you want to use Google Talk for messaging, use that account.”
    “Jay Gould,” Danny said. “You’ve done your homework.”
    “And 1836—”
    “Is the year he was born, yes, I know. And what makes you think Galvin’s going to open up to me?”
    “We don’t think that,” Yeager said. “Of course he won’t.”
    “So what do you need me for?”
    “For this.”
    Slocum’s voice, triumphant. He’d appeared in the doorway, a white cardboard box in his hand instead of a cup of coffee. He swooped in and put the box on the table in front of Danny. It looked like a bakery box, like it was intended to hold pastries, maybe a half dozen cupcakes. He opened the flaps and pulled out a little sculpture. A cheesy-looking repro of Rodin’s
The Thinker
, the kind of thing you’d find at a flea market. It even had a fake patina of green over black to make it look like the bronze original in the Musée Rodin, oxidized from decades of Paris rain. It was meant to be used as a bookend. It was a curio. It was a piece of crap.
    “What’s this?” Danny said.
    “A gift,” Slocum said. “You’re going to give it to Galvin as a token of your gratitude for the generous loan.”
    “A . . . bookend? Is it at least part of a pair?”
    “What you see is what you get,” Slocum said. “It’s a room bug. There’s a GSM listening device built in. Transmits over cellular service.”
    Yeager said, “Since we can’t decrypt the phone signal, our best hope is to plant a listening device in the room itself. Listen to his end of the conversation at least. We’ll monitor it for thirty days. Then we’re