by Tom Clancy
He went downstairs and out of the apartment building, setting off for the neighborhood park. Sure enough, there was Martin Gray, playing catch with James and Tommy. The game was not preparation for a career in the major leagues. In fact, it looked like more of a chance for the younger guys to run back and forth yelling, ‘To me, Dad!” “No! To me, Daddy!”
Instead, Dad lofted a high blooper in David’s direction. David snagged it on the fly, then walked over to hand it to his father. “Dad, do you have a minute? We have to talk.”
Martin Gray took the ball and tossed it to James. “You guys take over for a minute— gently!’ ‘
Then he turned to his oldest son. “What’s up, David?”
“While you were working last night—” David stopped and tried a new approach. “There was a piece on the news today about a body found in an alley somewhere in the Southeast section. Were you irron it?”
“Not my case,” Dad replied. “Why?”
“I may have a possible ID.” David took a deep breath. “I think it may be Nick D’Aliso.”
Martin Gray’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “That guy you were working with at Hardweare?” He thought for a moment, then shook his head. “You said he had some run-ins with the law. We checked fingerprints. His should have been on file.”
David nodded. “I read about that. But, Dad, D’Aliso was a hacker. Given enough incentive, he would have been able to weasel into federal records and change the files.”
A new chill ran down his back as an unwelcome thought entered his mind.
Or somebody else might have futzed up the records to hide the identity of a dead Nicky da Weasel.
Dad dug out his wallet and began tapping numbers onto the foilpack keypad, first switching it to telephone mode, then giving it the phone number. “Hey, Des. Marty Gray here. Anything new on that execution-style killing in the alley? Uh-hmmm. Still no ID? I heard a name you ought to run down. Nick—I guess Nicholas—D’Aliso.” He spelled it out. “Sure, I’ll hold.”
David stood beside his father, wondering if he’d wandered into some strange twilight zone. Here they stood, talking about a murder. In the background his kid brothers were running, giggling, having the time of their lives.
His father stood holding the line, alternating between looks of “If you made me give up my day off for nothing …” with glances that said “Please don’t be right.”
“I’m still here,” he said abruptly. He straightened slightly. With every word he heard, Martin Gray became more and more a cop.
He put his hand over the foilpack and turned to David. “The fingerprints in D’Aliso’s file are different from the ones on the body. But with a name to go on, they can call up the dental records as well—and those matched perfectly.” He turned his attention back to the phone.
“Des, I have to talk some more to my source about this— no, I’ll get back to you—soon.”
He cut the connection, glanced to where Tommy and James were trying to see who could bounce the ball harder, then faced David again. “You know, son, most dads would find it flattering to have a son interested in their business.” David’s father sighed. “But I can’t say I’m happy to see you getting involved in mine.”
David nodded, equally unhappy to have any sort of connection to a homicide.
Martin Gray’s gaze grew harder. David had seen the look before. “Cop’s eyes,” his dad called it.
“When you told me, you knew I’d have to ask. How did you know it was D’Aliso?”
“I didn’t,” David said. “At least, I hoped it wasn’t.” He went through the whole explanation, the self-loading download, the weird chase sequence, the murder, and the system crash.
“There’s no trace of the file’s icon on the computer now,” he finished. ‘ ‘I looked this morning. Then, on the news, I saw the same place from my—I was about to say my nightmare. But it was real, wasn’t it? And when I heard about the murder victim who seemed to be a hacker—well, I had to come to you.”
Martin Gray shook his head. “If it weren’t my son telling me this, I’d be—very, very doubtful,” he said.
David thought for a moment. “Does anyone have an idea when D’Aliso was killed?”
His father went back to his wallet-phone and hit redial.
“Des, I have one more thing to check, then I’ll head down to see you. Do we have a time of death?” He listened, then turned to David. ”Somebody dialed 911—a ‘shots fired’ call— a couple of minutes before ten.”
David nodded. “Let’s go check my computer. Even if we can’t check the download, we can certainly trace the crash and reboot times.”
Dad gathered in the younger boys, and they all headed back to the apartment building. Mom stiffened a little when she saw the look on her husband’s face. She took Tommy and James into the kitchen for a snack without asking what was going on. David and his father went down the hall. A couple of orders settled the question. According to the computer’s internal records, the crash took place at 9:57.
“We’ll have to go downtown,” Dad said.
A couple of hours later David still sat in an interrogation room, going over his story with several of Dad’s colleagues.
Des O’Connor, the detective in charge of the case, shook his head as they entered the information into a file server. “I guess I’d have to call that story … pretty screwy, and I’m restraining myself out of respect for your dad. We’ve checked what we can. Public utility transmission records do show a Net transmission to your house at the time in question.”
The detective gave David a speculative glance. “Obviously, you weren’t physically present at the murder scene. We’ve got your mom and both brothers as witnesses to that. They all saw you burst out of your room and heard you redecorate your toilet with everything you had for dinner, just after this D’Aliso character got his. It would be nice to know who sent you the download, but it was done on a completely bogus account. Maybe if we can get into D’Aliso’s computers without causing a meltdown, we’ll get an answer to that little mystery.”
O’Connor was obviously not thrilled with David’s story, which wasn’t a surprise. Cops are great fans of Occam’s Razor, the scientific principle that says the least complicated theory which fit the facts is most likely to be correct. For O’Connor, that eliminated things like ESP or an out-of-body experience—or a phantom download—to explain David’s knowledge.
If David hadn’t experienced the download, he’d be skeptical, too.
Detective O’Connor shrugged yet again. “As things stand now, you’ve only told your father and us about this download. Please keep it that way. No statements to the press or going on the HoloNews to give interviews. We want to hold back your story—and any mention that we’ve identified the body as DAliso.”
“I understand,” David said. From his father, he’d learned certain tactics the cops used. Keeping details out of the media helped to determine whether witnesses were giving truthful testimony.
David noticed another measuring stare from O’Connor. There was another reason to keep some facts as a reality check—it helped deter cranks from making fantasy contributions. It also kept the real perpetrator guessing how close the police actually were to solving the case.
“Is there anything else you’re holding back at this point? Stuff I might know because of the download and shouldn’t talk about?” David asked.
“Nothing you can help us with,” O’Connor replied. “Just a common-sense kind of thing. The dead guy—D’ Aliso—was wearing a Hardweare vest under a sweater.” The detective shrugged. “The place he was hiding out was a cesspit—abandoned buildings, some of the streetlights gone. On those dark streets he’d stand out like a lit Christmas tree if he didn’t cover the thing up.”
O’Connor gave David a crooked smile. “And it ain’t the kind of neighborhood where you’d advertise owning a comb, much less an expensive computer toy.”
Leif Anderson sat in his room reading a book—an actual, turn-the-
pages type book, no holotext, hypertext, musical accompaniment, or sound effects. Well, he did have the system in his room playing some background music. Otherwise, he might as well have been a hundred years in the past. So far, he’d come to the conclusion that the good old days must have been a lot quieter.
He was still leading a somewhat restricted life, although things had gotten a bit better after he and his folks had talked things out. Leif was also making an effort not to get involved in anything that would strain the family peace right now.
Then David’s call came.
Leif could see his friend was upset before David even said a word.
“What’s shakin’?” he said flippantly, hoping to lure a smile to that too-serious dark face.
“What’s shakin’?” David echoed. “Right now it feels like the ground under my feet.”
David was definitely not in a mood to be cheered up.
“Okay,” Leif said, equally serious. “Tell me what happened.”
“I just got back from the police station.” David hesitated for a second, then said, “There was a murder down here in D.C. I don’t suppose the news will make it to New York— I’m not supposed to talk about it, at least to the media.”
“I’ll cancel all my press conferences,” Leif promised.
“Leif, it was Nick D’Aliso. And I was the one who gave them the ID.”
Leif whacked the side of the holo display. “Did I accidentally put this on fast forward? Sounds like I missed something.”
David nodded grimly. “I’ll tell you the whole story, then you can decide if I’m missing anything—like, say a few bricks shy of a full load.”
Leif listened to what had happened to David the night before—and that afternoon. He had a pretty good poker face, but it took some effort to stifle the disbelief he instinctively felt.
On the other hand it was David Gray telling him this incredible tale—Mr. Straight Arrow, the serious scholar. Guys used to joke that if David were picked up by a UFO, he’d come back with full holo recordings and a spectrographic analysis.
Leif lounged back in his seat—he realized he’d almost leaned into the holo display while listening to his friend’s account. “It’s pretty wild stuff,” he admitted. ‘Tm glad I didn’t have to explain it to my folks—not to mention the cops.”
David nodded, his face stony. “Oh, it was fun, all right. I don’t think the detective I spoke with really bought what I was saying.”
“Well, if you’re not happy, we could probably sell the story to some of the people we met out in Hollywood,” Leif suggested with a grin. “I can see the holo-feature now.” He raised his hands, spreading them apart. “Based on an actual story.”
“Dammit, Leif, this is serious!” David’s voice rose as his control frayed. “Nicky D’Aliso’s dead. And somehow he dragged me along for the ride in some weird kind of download. And then there’s our dead pal Cetnik. Remember him? I don’t need jokes about what’s happening!”
“I’m not denying that you’ve got reason to be worried,” Leif said. “But is panicking going to change anything that has already happened? I’d say your cool meter is pretty much red-lined right now. Talk it out, pal.”
“I need to talk to someone who knows what’s going on,” David said. “That comes down to either you or the Mac-Phersons. And I can’t share anything about D’Aliso’s death with them—they may be suspects.”
Leif shot up in his chair. “Say again?”
“I thought about it on the way home,” David said. “It makes a horrible kind of sense. We know that D’Aliso was dealing with the Forward Group. What better way to deal with a corporate spy than to silence him forever?”
“I get the tune, but I think you’re jumping ahead a few tracks again,” Leif said.
“You had to have seen it,” David said. “I was on holo with Luddie and Sabotine MacPherson when he decided to cut Nicky da Weasel loose. He was trying to hide it, trying to keep cool, but Luddie was plenty angry.”
“So?” Leif asked.
David looked worried. “We know that when he feels pushed, he plays rough.”
him from the display. Of course, as soon as he arrived, an advertisement for a Dodge truck came on.
“What is it?” David asked as they watched an actor who used to play a doctor plug headache pills.
“You’ll see in a minute,” Dad replied, talking over the promos for other HoloNews shows. Then came a spot for laxatives.
I never noticed there were so many medicine commercials during news broadcasts, David thought. Is there something about news that makes people sick?
Considering the knots in his stomach waiting to see what the anchors were going to say, maybe the advertisers had a point.
James wandered in to see what everyone was watching. When the ten-year-old saw the news logo, he promptly headed right out again. The show returned, and the cameras zoomed in on the female anchor, who looked as if she were about to reveal a great secret. Behind her, the logo for “Crime in the Streets” appeared.
“Returning to our headline story, the murdered man found earlier behind a condemned building has been identified. He’s a well-known computer hacker, Nicholas D’Aliso, known to his peers as ‘Nicky da Weasel.’ ” A holopic of D’Aliso, giving off plenty of attitude, appeared in the display as the voice-over went on. “D’Aliso, whose body had been stripped of all identification, was recognized by our own Don Samuelson—”
The scene switched to an outside shot. David’s stomach knotted tighter as he recognized the alleyway, with the obligatory trenchcoated reporter standing in front of the paint-peeling wall. Don Samuelson ran through the story again, and then narrated as a series of clips ran through the high points— or low points—of D’Aliso’s career.
“So,” David said numbly, “somebody recognized Nicky da Weasel.”
“It will only get worse,” his father said with the certainty of years of homicide experience. “When the newspeople only had a dead body, it was good as shock news. ‘Look, everybody! There’s still crime in Washington!’ “
Martin Gray looked disgusted. “But now the media knows it’s Nicky da Weasel. They’ve got a celebrity of sorts. That means the story isn’t going to fade. Just the opposite. Reporters will be digging even harder to come up with new angles. And you can bet some hot dog down at headquarters will feed them at least part of your story. It’s weird enough to make good copy.”
David stared. “But I thought they were going to hold it back,” he said.
“Some version will come out,” his father angrily predicted. “The brass won’t think it’s important enough, compared with keeping some newsman—or woman—happy.”
David’s father proved to be an excellent prophet. After only a couple of hours even the entertainment channels were teasing viewers with a “Download of Death” to get them to watch the late news.
When the item finally came on, it turned out to be more hype than news. They started with a chalk outline in the alley, then went to a photo of Nick D’Aliso. By now the newspeople had uncovered D’Aliso’s connection with Hardweare. They showed a clip of Luddie MacPherson with Nicky da Weasel in some flamboyant publicity stunt Nicky’d arranged. Luddie looked uncomfortable in the shot.
When the reporter finally got around to the download, it was almost an afterthought. “Sources close to the investigation say that D’Aliso somehow managed to download information to an associate, the son of a police officer—”
David sighed with relief. “No names.”
“Yet,” his father said grimly. “If this case doesn’t break soon, you can expect to become famous—whether you want it or not.”
“Unless a more interesting crime happens to take away their interest,” Mom put in. “I’d never wish that on anybody. But—”
She was interrupted by a muted chime.
“Who ccmld be calling at this hour?”
“I’ve got it!” James said from the hallway. A second later he came into the living room,
giving David a sly look. “It’s a girl. She looks kinda upset.”
Frowning in puzzlement, David headed to the small holo-system in the hallway. He skidded to a halt before he got within pickup range when he recognized his caller.
She did indeed look “kinda upset.”
It was Sabotine MacPherson.
“David!” she exclaimed as he came into her view.
“Just a second,” he said. “I want to transfer to someplace a little more private.” He heard a theatrical sigh from James behind him as he headed to the bedroom.
David brought up the call on his own system and cut the hallway connection. “Okay,” he said.
“I just saw the news.” Words seemed to tumble from Sa-botine’s lips. “Why didn’t you tell me—us—that Nicky sent you a message? It’s bad enough, discovering that someone killed him—” She blinked back tears, focusing on David’s face. “It is you, isn’t it? I know your dad is with the D.C. police force. And you’re about the only ‘associate’ of Nick’s that I can think of with a policeman father.”
Reluctantly David nodded.
“Then why didn’t you talk to us? Can’t you imagine what I’ve been going through? I’ve been trying to call Nicky, leaving messages—” Her voice broke again.
“I—I’m sorry.” David hated how inadequate those words sounded. “When I realized that the download might be connected with a murder, I had to tell the police. And they told me not to discuss it with anybody.”
Sabotine’s lips firmed. “Well, you’re going to discuss it with me,” she insisted. “Nicky and I—we meant something to each other. If there’s a last message, I want to hear it.”
Her eyes began to flood with tears again. “H-he should have sent it to me.”
This is only getting worse, David thought. “It’s nothing you’d want to know,” he said aloud.
“I’ll be the judge of that.” Sabotine shook her head. “This is no good. We have to talk—face to face. Meet me at the Musket House Cafe—do you know it? It’s in Georgetown.”
“Sabotine—” David began.
