Outfoxed: An Andy Carpenter Mystery by David Rosenfelt Page B

thing.”
    “Right,” I said.
    “So I did, and I didn’t find anything very interesting. He was rich, we already knew that, but even richer than I would have thought. Of course, he was the head of a privately owned company, so he could pay himself whatever he wanted. I’d have to dig a lot more, but I have my doubts I’ll find anything we can use.”
    “That wasn’t the good news part, was it?” I ask.
    “No. Everything I found in his finances is in this file; I’ll leave it with you.”
    “Can we move this along, Sam?” He has a tendency to draw these things out in a way that makes me want to kill him. Hike is rolling his eyes, though that doesn’t mean much, since Hike’s eyes are always rolling.
    “I’m getting there. I also checked his phone records for the week before he was killed.”
    “And?”
    “Well, the business phone records do nothing for us, because there’s no way to know who within the company made each call. Wright had a private line, but he didn’t seem to use it.”
    “Sam…”
    “Instead he used his cell phone, so I got those records, as well as his home landline. He made quite a few calls”—he looks at his records—“a hundred and fourteen in that last week. Most of them seem as if they could have been business calls, you know, money guys. Some of it was more trivial kind of stuff. Like ordering in food, that kind of thing.”
    Sam does not realize it, but he’s two boring sentences away from strangulation.
    “But two of the calls stand out, one more than the other,” he says.
    “With the next words out of your mouth, I want you to tell me who those calls were to,” I say.
    Sam nods. “One was to a guy named Steven Thurmond. I checked him out; friends call him Stevie. He got out of prison three years ago.”
    “What was he in for?”
    “Hacking. He’s a master at it.”
    “As good as you?” I ask.
    “If he was as good as me, he wouldn’t have gone to prison. Anyway, I think it’s interesting that Wright would be talking to him. Because of his background, and because of other stuff.”
    “I agree. What other stuff?”
    “Well, Thurmond lives in Harbor Towers, but he doesn’t have a job.”
    Harbor Towers is an exclusive apartment building in Fort Lee. “Maybe a rich uncle died and left him money.”
    “Then the uncle keeps dying. Thurmond has three hundred and seventy-five grand in the only bank account I checked, and it comes in twenty-five grand at a time, through untraceable wires.”
    “You hacked into his bank account?” I ask.
    “I shouldn’t have?”
    It’s obviously illegal, but no more so than many of Sam’s other activities on my behalf. “I approve wholeheartedly. Who is the other guy he called that you were about to mention?”
    “Tony Costa.”
    “The Tony Costa I just read about?” I ask. Tony Costa was Angelo Mazzi’s right-hand man, before a bunch of bullets made Mazzi no longer require either right- or left-hand men. The paper said that Costa was one of the men arrested and held by the FBI.
    “The very one,” Sam says. “He made a call to Costa on the day he died. Of course, I have no way to know what he said.”
    “Sam, it took a while, but you came through.”
    I’m going to want to talk to Thurmond, but I’m not sure that will come to anything. Gerry Wright was in the technology business, so dealing with a computer expert, even a convicted hacker, falls into the realm of the possibly legitimate.
    But Wright talking to Tony Costa is far more significant, and more interesting to me. It connects Wright to organized crime, and organized crime is full of people that a jury could reasonably see as killers.
    I want to talk to Costa, and I think I might have a way in.

 
    “Cindy, great to hear your voice. How long has it been?” I’m calling Cindy Spodek, the second in command of the Boston office of the FBI. Cindy is a friend, more Laurie’s than mine, but she has helped me on a number of cases. She’d never admit it, but