Watch Dogs: Dark Clouds

CHAPTER FOUR

The mid morning light was coming pearly gray through the filtered window of Verrick’s office window.

Tranter seemed puzzled as he squinted at Verrick. “So you don’t want an APB out on this Wolfe character after all?”

Verrick shook his head. “If you can get some of the Chicago Cops in that area to look for Mick Wolfe without telling ’em why, fine and good. If they pick him up, they should call you and you should call me. And I’ll make it worth their while to turn him over to me directly. But an APB—no. We don’t want a general alert—we don’t want the media in on it. Because, you know, the Four Clubs isn’t legal… aaaaand because I was there with a known hooker. All that could come out.”

“Oh.” Detective Tranter cleared his throat. “Speaking of that high class whore…”

“She taken care of?”

“She’s part of a new parking lot on the North side, about five feet down. As of this morning.”

“Good, good…” Rose had heard too much of what Wolfe was talking about, which had made eliminating her even more imperative. “Another thing is, Tranter, if Wolfe is caught and he talks to the wrong cops, or to federal agents, you never know what he might say. I don’t think he’s got anything that’d stand up in court, but…”

Verrick didn’t want to go on. It would mean having to explain to Tranter what it was that Wolfe knew too much about. And Verrick definitely didn’t want to give Tranter that information.

Tranter never asked about it.

Detective Tranter just stood there, waiting—and Verrick kept Tranter standing there, as if he were an NCO in the presence of a Major. Which was more or less the way Verrick thought of it. He could see rainwater evaporating from the shoulders of Tranter’s trench coat, blown in the current of warm air from the heating vent.

“The Club doesn’t want any noise made about what happened at the Four Clubs,” Verrick went on. “CPD knows all about the place, of course, but all the right people are paid off. I assume you’re getting your cut.”

Tranter shrugged. He wasn’t going to confirm or deny it.

“If the media runs a story about the fight at an illegal casino,” Verrick said, “then the CPD is going to have to make surprised noises and raid the place. No one wants that.”

Tranter nodded, slowly. “I heard Wolfe shot you. That right?”

It was Verrick’s turn to shrug. “Little bit of something in my side. Went right through. Couple of stitches. Not much of a wound. I’ve had worse.”

Actually it was bothering Verrick enough, along with his aching back, that he planned to go home after lunch. But he’d needed to put in an appearance here to seem like the iron man for Tranter and Luke—Luke Kelly was out in the hallway, keeping watch, in the unlikely event that Wolfe turned up here. There were three other guys hired from Graywater Security watching over the building—two in the alley, downstairs, one in the lobby. Real professional mercenaries.

Tranter put his hand in his coat, brought out a tissue and blew his nose. “Sorry. I think I’m getting a head cold. So you want to handle Wolfe completely unofficially?”

“That’s right,” Verrick said. “You got a problem with that?”

“No. It’s just… harder to find the prick that way, without all those eyes on the street looking for him.”

“You’re standing in the Blume building, Tranter! We’ve got ctOS in our pockets! And I’m the man with access to every security application ctOS has. Count on it, Tranter. We’ll find Wolfe. And not just him. We’ll run down that loose cannon Aiden Pearce too. We’re starting to suspect that’s who set up Wolfe’s getaway…”

It was an abandoned building, one of the old Projects, a ten story tenement long slated to be torn down. Most of the windows were boarded over. A fence had been erected around it, the hurricane wire now mostly knocked down.

That’s where they’d taken Wolfe…

On the outside, that’s how it looked: Just more abandoned projects housing near Washington Park in Black Viceroy territory. On the inside, that’s mostly what it was. Floor after floor with apartments missing their doors, every inch of wall, in halls and rooms, covered with spray-painted and markered tags, with graffiti of all kinds, but especially a lot of Black Viceroy insignias. Each room emptied out, the walls often broken open so copper could be torn out to sell to scavenger companies. Here and there in the hallways you might come across an old overturned doorless refrigerator or splintery bureau. Walk down those scarred up halls and your shoes crunched paint chips.

But on the seventh floor of the old tenement, one apartment was different. The door to the apartment had been replaced—the new one was double layer steel—and the one-bedroom flat had been cleaned out and simply but comfortably refurnished. It was now one of Aiden Pearce’s safehouses—so Pussler claimed, after giving Wolfe the key and taking his leave, though Wolfe had seen nothing of Pearce since coming here.

The windows were boarded up, but inside there was a working television, a radio, an operating bathroom, toilet paper, towels, plenty of functional electrical plugs with pirated power, a fairly new sofa bed and blankets, a closet in which leaned a nicely oiled pump shotgun and boxes of ammo; a PC on a desk, the PC, interestingly, not hooked up to the internet or wifi; a bedroom with a cot and a chest of drawers; a kitchenette with a microwave, its cabinets stocked with canned foods and freeze dried goods, instant coffee, pots and dishes and knives and forks. There was a small clothes washer, in the kitchenette, like something from a recreational vehicle, and a small dryer. There was even a bottle of damned good Scotch in a desk drawer.

Wolfe was availing himself of that Scotch right now, as he brooded on his situation. It was late afternoon following the night of the Four Clubs debacle, and Wolfe was getting antsy. He was fed and warm and comfortable—and restless.

He sat there on the sofa with a small glass in his hand, sipping the Laphroaig, looking at the television news with the sound turned off. He’d seen nothing, not a word, about his personal raid on the Four Clubs. He’d half-expected to see his face on television in a public service warning about an arch criminal with Verrick swearing he was a mad dog killer. But, nope. It was almost disappointing. More than that, it was worrisome. It suggested that Verrick was going after him some other way…

Shouldn’t have tried to strike a deal with him, Wolfe thought. Stupid.

He’d known instantly his former C.O. had no intention of following through on any deal. You get crazy ideas, sitting in stir in the federal Disciplinary Barracks. You got desperate notions and programmed yourself with them. Then when they didn’t work… what next?

And where did Aiden Pearce fit into it?

“Hello, Mick,” said the television to Mick Wolfe.

Wolfe sat bolt upright, spilling some of his Scotch on the floor.

Aiden Pearce was staring at him from the television screen. No doubt of the identity of this man. Those sharp emerald-green eyes, that dark-brown hair. Pearce’s face was filling most of the screen. It was gazing right at him.

Pearce smiled. “Don’t be spilling that Scotch, Wolfe. Stuff’s expensive.”

“What the hell? Why are you on television?”

“Just something I can do. I’ve rerouted a webcam transmission to this television, just this particular television set. The set has been customized. I’m reaching you through a Local Area Network I’ve set up. There’s a special switching hub—but, never mind. We can talk about all that some other time.”

“I could swear I muted that television.”

“If I can put myself up here you don’t think I can unmute the television?”

“Good point. Feels weird talking to you this way. Like hallucinating.”

Pearce chuckled. “I guess it could feel that way. But I can’t just call you on a cell phone. Not yet.”

“Haven’t got a cell phone currently anyway. I’ve got a laptop. Trying not to use it too much, in case ctOS picks up… Wait—I get how I can see you. But if you can see me…”

“There must be a camera in the room. Yes. But you know where that would be.”

“Webcam in that PC.”

“And a microphone. Pussler naturally didn’t mention that.”

“Pussler—you trust that guy?”

“Didn’t he get me off the street when I was shot? Didn’t he show up for you?”

“Sure, but… he seems like a… uh… waste case.”

“He is. In fact I make sure he doesn’t know where I am most of the time. I’ve left the last safehouse, gone to another he doesn’t know. There is someone else I can’t trust… but I don’t know who it is yet. But it isn’t Pussler.”

“Good to hear. Because he knows where I am. If he decides he wants to make a deal with someone else…”

“He’s on my payroll. And he’s like a stray dog that’s very loyal after you feed it.”

“How many people are on your payroll?”

“A few too many lately. I’m going to be pruning that back. Someone seems to have found out about my meeting with you. Someone on my team. I don’t know who. I didn’t tell anyone. But they must’ve…”

He didn’t seem to want to say what they “must’ve” done.

“How do you finance this payroll?”

“I steal from bad guys. Through hacking.”

“Like—who?”

“Like meth dealers. After I’ve skimmed enough from people like that, I turn them over to… well, I have people I get the information to, occasionally. Even certain people in the FBI, now and then. They sometimes act on my information and sometimes don’t. But it salves my conscience to tell them…”

“I’m down on conscience. I’ve been screwed over by my own conscience. And my dad was screwed over by his.”

“Yes. I know he was. I remember. That’s one of the reasons you’re where you are at this moment—and it’s one of the reasons I’m going to do what I’m going to do.”

“Which is what?”

“If I decide it’s safe to do it, I’m going to give you a very special tool, to help you in your… your personal mission. At least, I think that’s what I’m going to do… But I need more information.”

“About?”

“About what you were doing in the Four Clubs, and why Roger Verrick is being so secretive about trying to find you. Why he’s using every covert technology at his disposal to find you. I heard you talking about some of it when you were with Verrick—I was tracking you all that day. I read some of your military files… but I didn’t get a clear picture. I want to hear the full story, Mick.”

“You mean—now?”

“Yeah. Now. This line is secure, I promise you. Every packet from that room is being switched and repacketed and routed again and encrypted and then repacketed before it gets to me. And vice versa.”

“Maybe. But…” Could he trust Pearce that far? He’d hoped to get some help from him—but should he tell him everything? “Pussler says I owe you bigtime. What is it I have to do for you?”

“I have a feeling our missions are going to converge, Mick. I got a ctOS shot of you talking to a cop, a police detective named Tranter. I got a lip reading program giving me part of what he said. Which had to do with his advice on you not having anything to do with me. Now why is he telling you that? When I checked him out, I found out he’s connected to Verrick. He’s been having meetings with Roger Verrick—meetings Tranter doesn’t put on his police log. Roger Verrick, whom you nearly shot last night. Tranter seemed to know all about that attempt to kill me, judging by his warning to you. Seems like we just might have the same enemies.”

“But there is something you want…”

“Lots of somethings, probably. First off… I had a scrambler on the cameras, that whole block we were on, where they tried to shoot me. So they couldn’t see me. But they’d followed me there… Trouble with that scrambler, I didn’t get an image of the guy taking the shot at me. But I did get one of the van going down the street, and where it ended up. I traced it to a train station. He got out and I lost him in the crowd after that. Never did get a real good look at him. But I did get a shoddy image when he got out of that van. Not enough for ctOS facial recognition programs. Still… from what I understand, you’re an expert on satellite picture enhancement. Is that right?”

“More or less.”

“I hope it’s more. Same enhancement issue. You know where to get any software relating to that? Something you could use?”

Wolfe snorted. “It’s on my laptop! I knew they were coming to arrest me, in Somalia—so I uploaded stuff that might be useful. Put it up in my own little corner of the cloud. And when I got out of jail I downloaded it onto my laptop. Which I swiped from… well, it doesn’t matter where I swiped the laptop from.”

“You stole a car the other day, too.”

“Yeah. I did.” He decided not to ask how Pearce knew that. “After they busted me, on a bogus pretence, I stopped caring much about the law. But I don’t make a profit on stolen cars, if that’s what you mean. I just borrow them now and then and leave them where they can be found. One of them had a laptop in it that hadn’t been used much…”

“I’ve been known to borrow a few cars myself. Listen—one thing I need from you is to take the scrappy image of the shooter who nearly took my head off. See if you can use that program and your experience to enhance it.”

“I can do that.”

“I’m transmitting it to the PC there. Upload your software to the PC—see what you can do.”

“That PC doesn’t seem to have wifi—”

“I have my own, for that apartment—when I want it to be there.”

“It’ll take me time to run the enhancement.”

“Then do it after you tell me your story…”

“I still feel funny talking to a television.”

“You’re talking to me, Wolfe. Go on. What happened in Somalia?”

Wolfe thought about it. He’d probably be dead now, if it weren’t for Pearce…

Wolfe took a sip of Scotch, and then he took the leap. “I was in an air conditioned trailer, on a CIA black ops base….”

I was in an air conditioned trailer, on a CIA black ops base, when I saw the takedown.

I shouldn’t be talking about the base, Pearce, but I’ll tell you this much: it was pretty well camouflaged on a little Yemeni island called Socatra, in the Gulf of Aden, couple hundred miles off the coast of Somalia. I was Army, Delta Force, not CIA, but we worked closely with the spooks and shared a lot of runways. Special Activities Division, Special Operations Group—I rubbed elbows with all those guys out there. Spook soldiers.

I was running surveillance drones over a compound about five klicks south of the eastern edge of Mogadishu. This was pure surveillance—no weapons on this kind of drone. Keeping it unarmed made it smaller, better for staying covert. I used the drones and the satellite surveillance detailing program to look for possible al Qaeda operatives, and now and then for some of those Gulf of Aden pirate dhows.

I remember being tired of that cramped trailer under its green and black cammie netting; tired of the monitors, tired of wearing the headphones. I was good at what I was doing. I was good at anything digital, electronic, computerized, remote controlled, so that’s how I ended up there. But I was starting to miss working in the field. When I was sent on missions into the field I used to set up likely sniper targets using infrared gear. I had to sneak a good distance in-country for that, all on my lonesome. Scary as hell but at least it wasn’t boring. Not like sitting in a trailer staring into monitors.

Before I was stuck in the trailer, I got caught out with my ass hanging out three times, when I was in the field—and three times I was lucky enough to fight my way back to the exfiltration point. Another time I saw the enemy moving some prisoners of war, a small group of Navy SEALS. I went outside my orders, took out the al Qaeda guards, got the POWs out of there, and the brass gave me a Silver Star for that. Not a year later the same guys who’d given me the medal were throwing me in the federal slammer.

Why did I get the slammer? It’s because of what I saw when I went outside my briefing in my last drone operation. Guess who gave me the briefing? Major Roger Verrick: “You search this area, Wolfe, don’t go outside it, we’re not risking another drone. Don’t get cowboy with those drones. You know what those things cost?”

He’d given me a much smaller area than usual. It bothered me. I was fully vetted, I had top access, it was like he didn’t trust me to see some operation.

So maybe I ignored him, and wandered outside the search area a little; yeah, maybe I colored outside the lines. Verrick had been working on my last nerve. Calling me a cowboy, telling me to stay on my leash like a good doggie.

Maybe I should have. But they train Delta Force to think independently.

It was nighttime on the Somali coast, and I was watching the roads from a drone’s eye view, infrared scanning, and saw something interesting: a fairly small cargo truck heading south on a highway paralleling the coast—but it was a truck with an escort. There were two unmarked humvees along for the trip, one in front of the truck, and one behind it.

That looked like one of the CIA’s little convoys. Why hadn’t I been briefed on it?

Then I saw the humvee in front of the truck skid to a stop. The truck had to stop, too, so the humvee in back stopped.

Then four men got out of the front humvee, all at once. I had to move the drone in closer to try to see their faces. They wore paramilitary togs, with no insignia, and cammie blacking on their faces. I zoomed as much as I could. One of them looked at the sky, just for a second.

The driver of the front humvee moved back to the truck’s driver, and had the driver open the door. While he spoke to the driver of the truck, another man moved to the passenger side. Meanwhile the other two paramilitaries from the front vehicle moved toward the rear of the truck. They signaled the rear humvee, which, apparently on their orders, backed up about twenty meters. One of the guys from the front humvee climbed up into the back of the truck—and a moment later jumped out, with an RPG launcher in his hands. Rocket Propelled Grenade…

The RPG gunner had the weapon set up. He fired it straight at the rear humvee.

The rocket hit the humvee solid, right in the grill. The big vehicle exploded—and it was too big an explosion for an RPG: someone had set another explosive in advance, a passive charge, somewhere on the front of that vehicle. Because, let me tell you, Pearce, that thing went up like a can of gasoline under a flamethrower. Ka-wham. Pieces of it rained down everywhere.

The man with the RPG looked up at the sky. Could be he sensed a drone nearby. His glance gave me a good shot of his face. I wasn’t sure, but… Blacking on his face or not, I thought that was Major Roger Verrick, down there.

I caught flashes from the front of the truck and I realized the two men flanking the truck were opening fire through the open doors.

Even from the drone’s high point of view I could tell the men inside were shot all to pieces. Had to be.

I thought about calling in a strike on the shooters, or calling in other observers—but I didn’t know for sure what was going on. If that had been Verrick, there could be an operational reason for all of this. Those guys in the truck and the rear humvee might be anyone…

Maybe Verrick had warned me away from observing this area for legit reasons.

But this sure didn’t feel legit.

The killers pulled the bodies out of the cab of the truck, climbed up, and took over… They must’ve settled down in puddles of blood, on those seats. Not giving a damn.

The two in back of the truck returned to the front, one of them carrying the RPG launcher, and stood by. The truck drove around the parked humvee, and waited a ways ahead. One of the men with the RPG fired at the front humvee. That one blew up too.

Then they tossed the RPG in the brush, jogged up to the truck, and got in the back. And the truck drove off.

I didn’t know definitely who most of the guys who’d done the killing were. I had one uncertain I.D.. I didn’t know who they’d killed. I didn’t know who to turn to.

So I started analyzing the images on my own time.

The faces weren’t sharply defined until I pulled in the analysis and enhancement software. There, first guy who’d looked at the sky—Major Roger Verrick. Second guy, Rafe Callahan.

Maybe this had been some a U.S. black ops takedown. Could be that it was something so classified it had a classification level I’d never heard of. There were rumors of accesses like that.

So I didn’t say anything, not right away. I’d have to find some discreet way to ask about this.

But I had trouble sleeping for two days, wondering about it. Not feeling right.

Then I heard about the al Qaeda attack on one of our delivery convoys. “Yeah, we lost a buncha guys,” Specialist Gamble was saying, in the mess tent, as he speared roast beef and shoved it into his mouth. He was chewing with his mouth open and gabbing at the same time as usual. “Navy SEALS killed, what I heard. Six good men down. The front humvee hit some kinda IED, then your garden variety terrorists come out with RPGs and they nail the humvees and steal the truck.”

“What was in the truck?” I asked.

“I’m not supposed to say…” Gamble swallowed, drank some milk, and then glanced around.

I knew he’d get around to telling me what he’d heard. He was one of those guys who like people to think they’re “in the know”. He was in the know, too, because he was tasked on the ultra-frequency receiver that decrypted intel stuff; he turned it into reports for people in the high access loop.

Now he lowered his voice and went on, “Money! Al Qaeda ripped off more a hundred-forty million bucks in cash. Bundles of cash, piled up like it was nothin’ but notebook paper shipping out of a warehouse! It was going to pay off Somali warlords, see, get them on our side.”

“They shipped it in cash?”

“Sure! Like all that big cash that disappeared into Iraq, years ago, remember that?”

“Uh huh. They never did catch those guys…”

“Well, word is, this was terrorists killed those guys in the trucks and humvees, stole that money intended for the guys who were gonna switch sides against ’em… But listen, bud, you didn’t hear it from me!”

Terrorists. That was the official story. Only I’d confirmed that was Verrick out there—and Callahan.

So what did I do then, Pearce? Did I leak the stuff anonymously? Did I get myself sent back to the DC, so I could slip right to top levels with what I’d seen—what I’d recorded?

No! Like a dumbjack, I went to my base commander, right there on the island. I took it to General Van Ness, and I told him all about it. I gave him a disk with the goods on it.

Van Ness went white when he heard that stuff. I didn’t realize why at the time. I thought he was just worried about guys from his command ripping off money.

About an hour later I was just going over to the drone control trailer when I almost ran into Specialist Gamble—he came off frightened when he saw me.

Whoosh, he turned on his heel and went the other way.

I can read the signs in the military.

So right then I went to the CIA attaché, told her what I’d seen—I can’t give you her name. Well, she stared at me for a long moment after I told her the story, then said, “How about some evidence?”. I told her sure, I’ll get it.

I went to my bunk. The only other copy I’d made of that disk should’ve been in my personal effects case—it was gone. I went to the trailer, looked in the hard drive of the PC I’d used. Nothing.

Then I realized it was not even the same PC. The one I’d used was missing.

I went back to her, told her what had happened. I said somebody was covering up. She wasn’t letting on if she believed me or not. She said, here, fill out this form…

I did. I heard her talking on the phone to her boss in Washington as I filled out the report. She seemed genuinely concerned I might be telling the truth.

Turned out, that didn’t do me any good.

Half an hour later, I stepped out of the Agency’s Quonset, and two MPs were waiting there. They put me under arrest.

General Van Ness had “turned me in”. He claimed there was evidence that I’d sold classified data to Al Qaeda operatives.

During the preliminary hearing I demanded to know what evidence he had against me. He produced a doctored clip from the disk I’d given him.

They rushed me into military court as fast as they could. Major Verrick came in and perjured himself with about ten large lies, cool as a cucumber the whole time.

My legal rep wanted to bring Captain Callahan in. Rafe Callahan apparently had been drunk ever since the incident, maybe having an attack of conscience.

They couldn’t find him for a while. Then they found him in pieces.

He’d gotten killed in a handy terrorist bomb attack while he was on leave. Something arranged by Verrick, I figure.

A handy explosion would’ve taken care of me too if I hadn’t gone to the CIA attaché. But after that it’d look too suspicious if they arranged for me to die like Callahan.

The CIA attaché was on my side. But the attaché couldn’t save me from prison and a dishonorable discharge and a ruined reputation. Van Ness and Verrick put it around that I had some connection with the “terrorists” who’d stolen the cash. They couldn’t prove it but a lot of people believed it.

I had a pretty good military lawyer. But in the end it was a Master Sergeant’s word against a General’s. The General’s version of my disk didn’t seem authentic to any of the I.T. people looking at it, and it was thrown out as evidence against me.

Verrick called me an accomplice to murder, in the hearing. I lost it and slugged Verrick, right then and there, knocked him on his keister. I said he was the murderer; he got up and hit me back and then the MPs moved in.

I was convicted of that attack on a superior officer, mitigated by circumstances, and perjury for supposedly lying about what I’d seen, and they gave me a year in military prison. I think I’d have gotten more time, maybe life, but the CIA attaché pulled some strings for me.

So that’s it. Roger Verrick’s a murderer—killed some good American soldiers. And one bad one—Callahan.

And Verrick hoisted more than a hundred million dollars in cash. Somehow laundered it.

I heard he bought a lot of shares in Blume after his discharge, amongst other things. His family already owned a lot of shares. Now Verrick owns a lot more. He doesn’t control the company—but he’s powerful there. So he got himself shoehorned into the security boss job.

That makes him more powerful still. A hard man to bring down.

“You see what I mean about having a conscience?” Wolfe said. “It’ll get you.”

“I see what you mean, Wolfe,” said Pearce, from the television screen. “But… I ran from my own conscience, for most of my life…”

“Didn’t seem like that to me, when I was a kid.”

“I tried to be decent. But not hard enough. And when I buried my conscience away people got hurt, Wolfe. People I loved—they got caught in the crossfire of my life. They died and it was my fault. Way I look at it now, in the long run, conscience is pretty much all we’ve got. Otherwise we all turn into Roger Verrick.”

Wolfe snorted. “Verrick!” He winced, remembering the gunfight in the Four Clubs. “I don’t know what I was thinking, confronting him at a mob casino. It was like I was wound up tight by a year in ‘Disciplinary’. The spring all of a sudden… uncoiled. And there I was in the Four Clubs, waving a gun around.”

“Maybe it’s not such a bad thing,” Pearce mused. “You’ve got him off balance now. Worried. A man off-balance makes mistakes. It might force him to show his hand. What we need is to prove he’s hooked in with the Club.” After a moment’s silence, he added, “There are rumors about something else. Something called Purity.”

“Which is what?”

“I don’t know. Some secret organization moving in on Chicago. Doing a search on Verrick, I found a sketchy piece by an investigating journalist, trying to find out just what Purity is. The journalist disappeared—and next time I went online to look at the article again, it was gone too. The journalist claimed Purity is a secret political organization using a front company called Iceberg Investments. And Roger Verrick is one of the names from Iceberg’s board of directors. There’s not much information about Iceberg out there, though. We look into that, maybe we can find out what Verrick had against me—and find some evidence that helps you clear your name.”

“Starting where? Seems like the dirt on Purity’s been cleaned up.”

“Starting with the guy who tried to shoot me. Identify him, maybe we’ll work from there back to Verrick and Iceberg. See what you can do with that image I got from the train station. You’re the expert on long range image enhancement. We get a face, we’ll run it through ctOS facial recognition, see if we come up with something.”

Wolfe figured he was committed now. He’d been looking for Pearce anyway. He shouldn’t let his paranoia put him off his only ally. “Okay. You got it, Pearce. I’ll do it.”

“I’m gonna do some more checking on you. Could be I’ll have that special tool I mentioned for you, pretty soon.”

“When do I see you in person?”

“The time will come. I’ve got to keep my head down now. I don’t know if you heard—but someone recently tried to blow it off my shoulders.”

Then Aiden Pearce’s head and shoulders vanished—from the TV screen. It was replaced by a pink cartoon bear in a toilet paper commercial.

Wolfe sighed and turned off the TV.