A Billion Ways to Die

by Chris Knopf

  “Yes,” he said, without hesitation. “Not that I owe you an explanation.”

  “Joselito isn’t in custody. At least the most important part of him isn’t. He’s online, free to roam the web at will.”

  “Impossible.”

  “You could say that with a bit more conviction.”

  “Why’s that?” he asked.

  “Because you knew.”

  Shelly never looked his age to me, despite the white hair and age spots on his hands. Looking at him then, I wasn’t so sure.

  “That’s quite an accusation,” he said.

  “Captain Perry’s been your go-to guy all along. He’s your dear friend at the bureau. You’ve been feeding him information about us in return for getting back on the inside. You sold us out for a bagful of ego.”

  “The young man on the other end of this phone can crack you in half with one hand,” he said.

  “You knew about Joselito all along. But no warning. How come?”

  “I’m not in the position to discuss national security with you, of all people.”

  “You knew what Joselito planned to do to me. And to Natsumi. That doesn’t bother you?”

  “My personal feelings have nothing to do with this. And don’t be so quick to condemn. I could have had you collared whenever I wanted to.”

  “But you didn’t. Though not out of the goodness of your heart. We were supposed to operate freely. Why?”

  “Your sister is safe,” he said. “I made sure of that.” He picked up the phone and redialed the security guy. “My visitor needs to be escorted from the building.”

  I stood back from the door with my arms held parallel to the ground. Moments later the dark-skinned man with the light blue eyes was a few feet away from me in a semi-crouched stance.

  “Stay cool, sergeant,” I said to him. “Just leaving.”

  He followed me through the museum, past the big woman who held a hand to her heart as she watched us go through the front door. The young military man stood there until I was through the gate and on my way to my reticent, but honorable limo driver.

  CHAPTER 26

  Instead of going all the way to the city, I asked the driver to drop me off in Stamford. It felt good to be back on home turf. Good, though a bit strange.

  There was little danger anyone would recognize me, since I didn’t look much like the guy who disappeared off the face of the earth several years before. Never a very social person, the few people I chatted with around the neighborhood were out toward the suburbs, and thus several socioeconomic light years from the tired city street where the limo driver dropped me off.

  But it was where the home advantage mattered. In the midst of the AIDS epidemic, I’d done some pro bono work for a nonprofit which was trying to distribute clean needles to a community the group tactfully described as highly disorganized. After a few weeks of face-to-face interviews, I’d learned how well organized their daily commerce actually was.

  It taught me a lot about secure communications, transportation and housing. The last in the form of a motel that took cash for time increments beginning by the hour. No one stayed there long enough to determine limits at the other end.

  I paid a week in advance and wrote the name of a famous baseball player in the register.

  “Good luck with the season,” said the old lady behind the counter.

  I asked her where I could buy a ride, cheap. She directed me to a gentleman named Mo, who operated out of a muffler shop a few blocks over. Mo was about the same vintage, his hair mostly white and his skin reminiscent of weathered Naugahyde.

  “I don’t want to have to change the plates,” I told him, when he asked for my specifications.

  “Then you’re talkin’ a rental. I don’t do rentals.”

  “Not exactly. I’ll buy it, drive it, then give it back to you when I’m done.”

  “Hm,” he said, pondering the opportunity. “That sounds like a pretty good deal for me, till the po-lice are here wonderin’ what my car’s doin’ somewhere it ain’t supposed to be.”

  “How about a combo? You rent it to me, then I steal it. Like a week from now.”

  “Innovative,” he said.

  “You’ll probably still get it back. Either way, you’re ahead.”

  He bought the logic and I bought a ’95 Toyota Corolla, probably the closest thing to a generic car ever produced. It was clean and in good repair, despite the odometer reading that approached 200,000.

  “Is that the actual mileage?” I asked the guy, as he handed me the keys.

  “Probably not, actually. Do you care?”

  “No.”

  I used the car to drive to a menswear shop specializing in business suits about as eye-catching as the Toyota. A few doors down, I bought an attaché case to match. The third purchase was more difficult, since the number of places you could buy a fake moustache in Stamford wasn’t unlimited. The result was a mighty walrus affair that went with a Civil War uniform on sale at a costume shop.

  The young girls in the shop convinced me their giggling shouldn’t be misinterpreted, that in fact the moustache made me look quite distinguished. We used a high quality adhesive, which helped me to bring the thing under control after just a few minutes in front of a mirror with a pair of sharp scissors.

  I drove to Greenwich and located the offices of Calle, Cowles and Espinoza.

  They were just outside the denser part of town in a low, freestanding building. Across the street was the landscaped corner of another office complex, this one much larger. There was no easy place to park or lurk, though you could watch the entrance to the firm’s building from an enclosed bus stop about fifty yards down the street.

  Not good enough.

  So I parked in the parking lot and found their office, which only occupied about a quarter of the second floor, though they’d dedicated a fair amount of floor space to the enclosed reception area. A man with a large head covered in a mat of buzz-cut white hair sat at the raised desk, on the front of which the name of the firm was elegantly etched in frosted glass.

  “Can I help you?” he asked, as if that was the last thing he wanted to do.

  “I’m here to talk about your documents.”

  “Do you have an appointment?”

  “There’s someone in this office who wakes up every night at three a.m. worrying about document security.”

  “That could be,” he said, “but you won’t be putting them back to sleep without an appointment.”

  “In an office this size, that person is probably the managing partner. And I bet you’re his direct report.”

  “Hers. If you leave me your card, I’ll get it to her.”

  I imagined a wastebasket under his desk filled to overflowing with business cards.

  “We’re supposed to give it to the person directly,” I said.

  He looked at me as if deciding between a polite refusal and a swift kick. Then a door well hidden in the wall opened and a roundish young woman with pale troubled skin walked into the room.

  “Ah, perfect timing,” I said, “You must be the managing partner.”

  “That’ll be the day,” she said.

  “Oh,” I said, disappointed. “We were about to give her a call.”

  “Wait a minute,” said the guy.

  “Do you mind bringing me back?” I asked. “I just need to give her some documents. I’m not allowed to leave them at the desk. Chain of custody.”

  “Whoa,” said the guy. “Hold the phone.”

  The woman looked at him with ill-disguised annoyance.

  “I can handle this,” she said. “Ms. Franklin is in her office, but she’s probably busy.”

  I held up my briefcase.

  “Two seconds. I hand her the documents and walk right out the door. On tippy-toes.”

  “Hey,” said the guy.

  The woman smiled at me in a way clearly meant for him.

  “Not necessary. Follow me.”

  We went through the secret door i
nto an open area with more reception seating surrounded by private offices.

  “I’m assuming Ms. Franklin handles electronic discovery for your office. But maybe I’m wrong,” I said.

  “That’d be Miguel Ángel. He’s our man in security.”

  “Hah. Can we bother him instead?”

  She stopped and turned toward me.

  “That’d be a lot easier,” she said. “Even I outrank Miguel.”

  “Then lead on.”

  She took me to a door marked “Server Room.” I could hear the whir of cooling fans and air conditioners. Inside the windowless room were metal racks filled with blinking electronic equipment and a flabby-looking dark-haired man staring into a monitor. Pulling his eyes away from the screen, his face went from curious annoyance to something entirely different, though likely unnoticed by my escort.

  She introduced us and he reflexively reached around the monitor and took my hand. The grip was as soft as a jellyfish.

  “I have some pretty interesting stuff on document security I’d love to share with you,” I said, “if you could just give me a few minutes.”

  “That’s up to you,” she said to the man. “You busy?”

  “I’m willing to bet that nobody in the world is more interested in what I have to say than Miguel,” I said.

  He nodded.

  “We can talk in here,” he said, in a low voice, gently graced with Spanish inflection.

  “Suit yourself,” she said, pulling up a chair for me and leaving us alone. When I heard the click of the door, I said, “Hola, Joselito.”

  “El Timador.”

  The only time I’d seen him was in the midst of extreme circumstances, but I’d never forget his face. What I saw sitting in the server room was a much more pallid and deflated version of the grandiose cyber desperado I thought I’d flushed down the drain.

  “Federal maximum security is even cushier than I thought.”

  “You won’t get away with it,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Hurting me.”

  “Any hurt to you will be entirely self-inflicted. I just want to know how you did it. Not the money. I know all about that. I’m more curious about why you aren’t in the deep dark hole you’re supposed to be in.”

  “I’m not telling you anything,” his voice hardening, as hate reemerged from alarm.

  “I know that. Just had to ask. By the way, your access has been cut off.”

  A pink haze started to relieve his pasty complexion.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “The code that gave you access to the funds. It’s been changed. You’re locked out.”

  His fingers flew over the keyboard for a few minutes, his eyes narrowing at the screen as he worked. I watched impassively, ignoring the little twist of fear that perhaps Strider had been too optimistic, or maybe too tired, to have actually slammed the door. Or doors.

  The fear lifted when Joselito banged his fist on the keyboard and looked up in a blaze of panic and fury.

  “Estúpido, do you know what you’ve done?”

  “You convinced them I took the money. The only reason you’re free is you promised to track me down and get it back. But you still had it, neatly tucked away. In a digital sense,” I said.

  The implications, the cascade of eventualities, and likely a surge of faith that his shrewdness and determination would yet prevail, flew across his face. Or maybe it was the face of a cornered rat, if the rat had plenty of experience finding trapdoors.

  “You won’t survive this,” he said. “You can’t.”

  “I’ve noticed something about constant reminders of one’s mortality,” I said. “After a while, you stop caring.”

  I DIDN’T see much point in going back to my room in Stamford, since everything of importance was in my backpack, so I just drove on from Greenwich through New York City and down the Jersey Turnpike, and eventually to Washington, DC, where I found another flophouse willing to take cash and waive the nuisance of identification.

  But then I needed some computer time—there was no way around it. It was an obvious necessity, and anyway, the withdrawal from a laptop with wireless broadband Internet access had become unbearable.

  I bought the equipment I needed with cash, so no credit card exposure. All I needed after that was a coffee shop with free wireless and a screen angled away from prying eyes.

  Thus established, I eased into familiar applications with a joy akin to what a soldier might feel returning to the bosom of his loving family.

  I loved everything about my old job as a researcher, but nothing compared to the sheer delight of tracking people down. It combined a lot of appealing elements—primary and secondary research, detective work online and in the field, even a bit of psychoanalysis as I divined the person’s location based on past behavior and known peccadillos. And it was, by definition, personal. The end of the search wasn’t just a hunk of data or executive summary, it was a flesh-and-blood human being.

  Working in the coffee shop, I felt the familiar pull of the process, though I was still in the throes of hypervigilance. Little bolts of fear, like I’d felt with Joselito, struck at my nervous system. But they got easier to ignore as I reminded myself that if the next project failed, none of the exposure would matter.

  There’d be nothing left to save.

  THERE ARE places within commuting distance of Washington, DC, that remind you how southerly the capital’s location really is. It was meant as a compromise by the original colonies, an approximate midpoint to ease the burdens of travel to all, and the possibility of dominance by either region. In fact, the indigenous culture of the surrounding countryside was far more reminiscent of antebellum Kentucky than the industrial North.

  I reflected on this as I drove past endless rows of white fencing enclosing thoroughbreds and established privilege, consumed as I was by upcoming timing and logistics. The usual mental movie reel of scenarios, what-ifs and possible outcomes.

  In the midst of the analysis, however, I decided to just act without a lot of thought and see what happened. Given all that had come before, it seemed most appropriate for a last act.

  The house was at the end of a long driveway shaded by big oaks to either side. A giant willow was in the front yard, its long feathery fronds swept haphazardly by the breeze. A silver Lexus was parked out front. I felt the hood as I walked past. It was warm.

  I’d put on my business suit and carried the attaché, but left off the moustache, believing a pair of dark sunglasses was the better disguise and least likely to disturb the occupant of the house.

  I put the attaché, open at the top, under my left arm and rang the doorbell. This way, when the door opened I was able to reach in and remove the ceramic pistol in a fairly fluid motion, sticking the end of the blunt barrel into the forehead of the tall man standing there in a dress shirt and loosened tie.

  “Captain Perry, I presume?”

  HE SLOWLY stepped backward into the house, prompted by the pressure of the gun at his head. His face was stern, but cautious, in keeping with a man who’d seen his share of perilous situations.

  I maneuvered him into the living room and pushed him down into the sofa. I sat across from him in a stiff wooden chair, an antique reproduction that fit in perfectly with his sumptuous Colonial décor.

  “Did you hire a decorator or do all this yourself?” I asked him.

  “What do you want?” he asked.

  “My life back.”

  “Do you know who I am?”

  “You’re Stephen Holt, the FBI’s Assistant Director for International Operations. Though to me you’ll always be Captain Perry.”

  “Then you know how serious it is to threaten me.”

  “What makes you think this is a threat?”

  He looked to be in his fifties, but clearly the type who shamed much younger men around the gym. He had all his hair, longer than you’d think for a federal man, and his face, while handsome, looked like it could t
ake a punch.

  “I have a wife and children.”

  “I had a wife once. Yours works in New York, home on the weekends, am I right?”

  He saw no advantage in answering, so he didn’t.

  “What were you going to do with all of it?” I asked.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “The money. A billion dollars. How would you even spend it all?”

  “If anything happens to me, they’ll know who did it. You’ll never get away.”

  I wanted to smile at that, but I’m not sure I did.

  “That’s what’s so great about this,” I said. “Nobody knows but you. This is your own private project. Joselito is probably halfway to Argentina by now, Andalusky is dead and Albalita is cowering in Zurich, waiting for a loud knock on the door. This gun is completely untraceable. I’m still officially a dead man. You might have pulled a few strings around the bureau to chase us around, and convinced Shelly Gross and Jersey Mitchell that you were working a legitimate case, but that won’t matter when they find out what you’ve been up to. Will they really want to get your killer? Why kick up a bunch of unwanted publicity when I’ve essentially solved their problem?”

  He remained tense, but poised, calculating the odds.

  “If you make the slightest move in my direction,” I said, “I will shoot you in the midsection. You won’t die right away, but it’ll be messy.”

  He seemed to settle back a bit in the couch.

  “You talk a lot about killing me, as if there’s no other way to work this out.”

  “What, with the billion bucks? You’ll be interested to know Joselito had it all along. He pinned it on me as a bargaining chip to keep his ass out of enemy combatant no-man’s-land. But that’s been fixed. Now I’ve actually got it, well out of Joselito’s grasp. And all the bargaining chips are off the table. Any other ideas?”

  He didn’t react as poorly as Joselito, but a trace of desperation managed to break free of his professional reserve.

  “You said you wanted your life back.”

  If a person’s life exists within his mind, I wondered if such a thing could still be possible for me, given what I’d become. As I weighed the possibilities, indulging for a moment a return to analysis and calculation, I couldn’t help observing myself taking more careful aim at Captain Perry’s head, focusing the bright red gun on a spot just above his right eye.