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.

No one can become invisible. They can only make it more difficult for people like me to find them, and hope that I give up. But Bishop gave me twenty thousand reasons not to give up. Twenty thousand and one, if you count the implied threat against my life. And honestly, I didn’t have much else to do anyway.

All I needed was something small to get a ping on my radar. From there, I’d start building a profile until I had everything I needed. A name. An address. An employer. A license plate. It’s all out there. I just have to connect it all. But it starts with something simple.

Next to criminals in some sort of federal protection, hackers are hard as fuck to find. They use the same tricks that I use to create multiple layers to protect themselves.

Silvio1053 is already proving to be a challenge. I had an e-mail address for him, but it’s worthless. With e-mail addresses, I can drop the IP information into a program and find the origin or location of the e-mail. Pretty simple, but he used an anonymous e-mail account, same as me, so that’s out.

He also had Bishop wire funds through an online service that used an encrypted payment method. Even if he did use a traditional bank, I couldn’t get much. Thanks to Uncle Sam, anonymous banking is nearly impossible, and without a federal warrant, the bank isn’t going to give up any information. Plus, since Bishop isn’t going to the law, that’s also a dead end.

This find looked as complicated as it got. But the same rules applied. Get something simple. A ping on the radar. A slip-up. But sometimes it took time to slip up. So the next best thing is to make Silvio1053 slip up. Given the time, I could remove each security layer, build a profile and pinpoint whoever is on the other side of those e-mails, but that might take forever. And I didn’t have forever. I had thirty days. So I went with a more direct approach and e-mailed Silvio1053 using the encrypted address Bishop gave me. I hoped whoever this guy was, he’d give me something to work with.

I sipped my coffee and typed out an e-mail I thought would rile up Silvio1053 enough to show me a glimpse of his hand.

From: finderskeepers@dbzmail.com

Sent: September 4, 9:49:28 AM EDT

To: silvio1053@uymail.com

Subject: You’re Fucked

Hi Douche Nozzle. Bishop doesn’t want to pay you anymore, so he hired me to find you. I’m pretty sure I can locate your sorry ass because it’s kind of what I do. I know you’re taking measures to stay in the dark, but you’re an idiot if you think I can’t get to you.

So here’s the deal. You pay me $25,000, I go away and you can continue to fist Bishop’s ass until he hires someone else to find you. I know he already paid you $50,000, so you can float it.

If you don’t pay me, I’ll find you and then I’ll turn you over to Bishop. He wants to do all sorts of nasty shit to you, and he’s got a 450-pound sidekick who looks like he could rip a polar bear in half, so there’s that.

If you’re smart, you’ll take my deal. This offer expires tomorrow at 9am ET.

Ta.

I wanted to establish some communication with Silvio1053 to let him know I was looking for him. That ups the anxiety level, and when people are anxious, they don’t think as clearly as they should, so there’s a higher likelihood he’d make a mistake. All I needed was something to start with, because right now, I had shit. I’d almost drained my third cup of coffee when he replied.

From: silvio1053@uymail.com

Sent: September 4, 9:53:34 AM EDT

To: finderskeepers@dbzmail.com

Subject: RE: You’re Fucked

Nice try, asshole. You aren’t finding shit. If Bishop wants to stay in business, he’ll just have to keep paying. Call it a monthly business expense. Otherwise his customer list goes public and the Feds shut him down.

Oh, and Sam gets winded taking a piss, so the idea of him doing anything that requires effort is laughable.

Bottom line—Go fuck yourself.

Cheers!

I didn’t expect to get anything significant, but Silvio1053 gave me more than he probably thought he did. It wasn’t much, but it got me started. Whoever was blackmailing Bishop could finger Fat Sam, so hopefully that narrowed down the list.

I opened the orange folder, found the number Bishop wrote on the inside and dialed. A minute later I asked him for a list of buyers or sellers he’d met in person, anyone who could identify Fat Sam. Bishop explained he conducted most of his business over e-mail, rarely in person, but he said he’d get me a list as soon as possible.