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by John Varley

  Then it hit me. What had Kluge found out about me?

  I hurried down the page, searching for my name. I found it in the last paragraph.

  "… for thirty years Mr. Apfel has been paying for a mistake he did not even make. I won't go so far as to nominate him for sainthood, but by default-if for no other reason-I hereby leave all deed and title to my real property and the structure thereon to Victor Apfel."

  I looked at Osborne, and those tired eyes were weighing me.

  "But I don't want it!"

  "Do you think this is the reward Kluge mentioned in the phone call?"

  "It must be," I said. "What else could it be?"

  Osborne sighed, and sat back in his chair. "At least he didn't try to leave you the drugs. Are you still saying you didn't know the guy?"

  "Are you accusing me of something?"

  He spread his hands. "Mister Apfel, I'm simply asking a question. You're never one hundred percent sure in a suicide. Maybe it was a murder. If it was, you can see that, so far, you're the only one we know of that's gained by it."

  "He was almost a stranger to me."

  He nodded, tapping his copy of the computer printout. I looked back at my own, wishing it would go away.

  "What's this… mistake you didn't make?"

  I was afraid that would be the next question.

  "I was a prisoner of war in North Korea," I said.

  Osborne chewed that over for a while.

  "They brainwash you?"

  "Yes." I hit the arm of my chair, and suddenly had to be up and moving. The room was getting cold. "No. I don't… there's been a lot of confusion about that word. Did they 'brain­wash' me? Yes. Did they succeed? Did I offer a confession of my war crimes and denounce the U.S. Government? No."

  Once more, I felt myself being inspected by those decep­tively tired eyes.

  "You still seem to have… strong feelings about it."

  '"It's not something you forget."

  "Is there anything you want to say about it?"

  "It's just that it was all so… no. No, I have nothing further to say. Not to you, not to anybody."

  "I'm going to have to ask you more questions about Kluge's death."

  "I think I'll have my lawyer present for those." Christ. Now I am going to have to get a lawyer. I didn't know where to begin.

  Osborne just nodded again. He got up and went to the door.

  "I was ready to write this one down as a suicide," he said. "The only thing that bothered me was there was no note. Now we've got a note." He gestured in the direction of Kluge's house, and started to look angry.

  "This guy not only writes a note, he programs the fucking thing into his computer, complete with special effects straight out of Pac-Man.

  "Now, I know people do crazy things. I've seen enough of them. But when I heard the computer playing a hymn, that's when I knew this was murder. Tell you trie truth, Mr. Apfel, I don't think you did it. There must be two dozen motives for murder in that printout. Maybe he was blackmailing people around here. Maybe that's how he bought all those machines. And people with that amount of drugs usually die violently. I've got a lot of work to do on this one, and I'll find who did it." He mumbled something about not leaving town, and that he'd see me later, and left.

  "Vic…" Hal said. I looked at him.

  "About that printout," he finally said. "I'd appreciate it… well, they said they'd keep it confidential. If you know what I mean." He had eyes like a basset hound. I'd never noticed that before.

  "Hal, if you'll just go home, you have nothing to worry about from me."

  He nodded, and scuttled for the door.

  "I don't think any of that will get out," he said.

  It all did, of course.

  It probably would have even without the letters that began arriving a few days after Kluge's death, all postmarked Tren­ton, New Jersey, all computer-generated from a machine no one was ever able to trace. The letters detailed the matters Kluge had mentioned in his will.

  I didn't know about any of that at the time. I spent the rest of the day after Hal's departure lying in my bed, under the electric blanket. I couldn't get my feet warm. I got up only to soak in the tub or to make a sandwich.

  Reporters knocked on the door but I didn't answer. On the second day I called a criminal lawyer-Martin Abrams, the first in the book-and retained him. He told me they'd probably call me down to the police station for questioning. I told him I wouldn't go, popped two Dilantin, and sprinted for the bed.

  A couple of times I heard sirens in the neighborhood. Once I heard a shouted argument down the street. I resisted the temptation to look. I'll admit I was a little curious, but you know what happened to the cat.

  I kept waiting for Osborne to return, but he didn't. The days turned into a week. Only two things of interest happened in that time.

  The first was a knock on my door. This was two days after Kluge's death. I looked through the curtains and saw a silver Ferrari parked at the curb. I couldn't see who was on the porch, so I asked who it was.

  "My name's Lisa Foo," she said. "You asked me to drop by."

  "I certainly don't remember it."

  "Isn't this Charles Kluge's house?"

  "That's next door."

  "Oh. Sorry."

  I decided I ought to warn her Kluge was dead, so I opened the door. She turned around and smiled at me. It was blinding.

  Where does one start in describing Lisa Foo? Remember when newspapers used to run editorial cartoons of Hirohito and Tojo, when the Times used the word "Jap" without embarrassment? Little guys with faces wide as footballs, ears like jug handles, thick glasses, two big rabbity teeth, and pencil-thin moustaches…

  Leaving out only the moustache, she was a dead ringer for a cartoon Tojo. She had the glasses, and the ears, and the teeth. But her teeth had braces, like piano keys wrapped in barbed wire. And she was five-eight or five-nine and couldn't have weighed more than a hundred and ten. I'd have said a hundred, but added five pounds each for her breasts, so improbably large on her scrawny frame that all I could read of the message on her T-shirt was "POCK LIVE." It was only when she turned sideways that I saw the esses before and after.

  She thrust out a slender hand.

  "Looks like I'm going to be your neighbor for a while," she said. "At least until we get that dragon's lair next door straightened out." If she had an accent, it was San Fernando Valley.

  "That's nice."

  "Did you know him? Kluge, I mean. Or at least that's what he called himself.''

  "You don't think that was his name?"

  "I doubt it. 'Kluge' means clever in German. And it's hacker slang for being tricky. And he sure was a tricky bugger. Definitely some glitches in the wetware." She tapped the side of her head meaningfully. "Viruses and phantoms and demons jumping out every time they try to key in. Software rot, bit buckets overflowing onto the floor…"

  She babbled on in that vein for a time. It might as well have been Swahili.

  "Did you say there were demons in his computers?"

  "That's right."

  "Sounds like they need an exorcist."

  She jerked her thumb at her chest and showed me another half-acre of teeth.

  "That's me. Listen, I gotta go. Drop in and see me anytime."

  The second interesting event of the week happened the next day. My bank statement arrived. There were three deposits listed. The first was the regular check from the V.A., for $487.00. The second was for $392.54, interest on the money my parents had left me fifteen years ago.

  The third deposit had come in on the twentieth, the day Charles Kluge died. It was for $700,083.04.

  A few days later Hall Lanier dropped by.

  "Boy, what a week," he said. Then he flopped down on the couch and told me all about it.

  There had been a second death on the block. The letters had stirred up a lot of trouble, especially with the police going house to house questioning everyone. Some people had confessed to things when they w
ere sure the cops were clos­ing in on them. The woman who used to entertain salesmen while her husband was at work had admitted her infidelity, and the guy had shot her. He was in the County Jail. That was the worst incident, but there had been others, from fistfights to rocks thrown through windows. According to Hal, the IRS was thinking of setting up a branch office in the neighborhood, so many people were being audited.

  I thought about the seven hundred thousand and eighty-three dollars.

  And four cents.

  I didn't say anything, but my feet were getting cold.

  "I suppose you want to know about me and Betty," he said, at last. I didn't. I didn't want to hear any of this, but I tried for a sympathetic expression.

  "That's all over," he said, with a satisfied sigh. "Between me and Toni, I mean. I told Betty all about it. It was real bad for a few days, but I think our marriage is stronger for it now." He was quiet for a moment, basking in the warmth of it all. I had kept a straight face under worse provocation, so I trust I did well enough then.

  He wanted to tell me all they'd learned about Kluge, and he wanted to invite me over for dinner, but I begged off on both, telling him my war wounds were giving me hell. I just about had him to the door when Osborne knocked on it. There was nothing to do but let him in. Hal stuck around, too.

  I offered Osborne coffee, which he gratefully accepted. He looked different. I wasn't sure what it was at first. Same old tired expression… no, it wasn't. Most of that weary look had been either an act or a cop's built-in cynicism. Today it was genuine. The tiredness had moved from his face to his shoulders, to his hands, to the way he walked and the way he slumped in the chair. There was a sour aura of defeat around him.

  "Am I still a suspect?" I asked.

  "You mean should you call your lawyer? I'd say don't bother. I checked you out pretty good. That will ain't gonna hold up, so your motive is pretty half-assed. Way I figure it, every coke dealer in the Marina had a better reason to snuff Kluge than you." He sighed. "I got a couple questions. You can answer them or not."

  "Give it a try."

  "You remember any unusual visitors he had? People com­ing and going at night?"

  "The only visitors I ever recall were deliveries. Post office. Federal Express, freight companies… that sort of thing. I suppose the drugs could have come in any of those shipments."

  "That's what we figure, too. There's no way he was dealing nickel and dime bags. He must have been a middle man. Ship it in, ship it out." He brooded about that for a while, and sipped his coffee.

  "So are you making any progress?" I asked.

  "You want to know the truth? The case is going in the toilet. We've got too many motives, and not a one of them that works. As far as we can tell, nobody on the block had the slightest idea Kluge had all that information. We've checked bank accounts and we can't find evidence of blackmail. So the neighbors are pretty much out of the picture. Though if he were alive, most people around here would like to kill him now.''

  "Damn straight," Hal said.

  Osborne slapped his thigh. "If the bastard was alive, I'd kill him," he said. "But I'm beginning to think he never was alive."

  "I don't understand."

  "If I hadn't seen the goddam body…" He sat up a little straighter. "He said he didn't exist. Well, he practically didn't. The power company never heard of him. He's hooked up to their lines and a meter reader came by every month, but they never billed him for a single kilowatt. Same with the phone com­pany. He had a whole exchange in that house that was made by the phone company, and delivered by them, and installed by them, but they have no record of him. We talked to the guy who hooked it all up. He turned in his records, and the computer swallowed them. Kluge didn't have a bank account anywhere in California, and apparently he didn't need one. We've tracked down a hundred companies that sold things to him, shipped them out, and then either marked his account paid or forgot they ever sold him anything. Some of them have check numbers and account numbers in their books, for accounts or even banks that don't exist."

  He leaned back in his chair, simmering at the perfidy of it all.

  "The only guy we've found who ever heard of him was the guy who delivered his groceries once a month. Little store down on Sepulveda. They don't have a computer, just paper receipts. He paid by check. Wells Fargo accepted them and the checks never bounced. But Wells Fargo never heard of him."

  I thought it over. He seemed to expect something of me at this point, so I made a stab at it.

  "He was doing all this by computers?"

  "That's right. Now, the grocery store scam I understand, almost. But more often than not, Kluge got right into the basic programming of the computers and wiped himself out. The power company was never paid, by check or any other way, because as far as they were concerned, they weren't selling him anything.

  "No government agency has ever heard of him. We've checked him with everybody from the post office to the CIA."

  "Kluge was probably an alias, right?" I offered.

  "Yeah. But the FBI doesn't have his fingerprints. We"ll find out who he was, eventually. But it doesn't get us any closer to whether or not he was murdered."

  He admitted there was pressure to simply close the felony part of the case, label it suicide, and forget it. But Osborne would not believe it. Naturally, the civil side would go on for some time, as they attempted to track down all Kluge's deceptions.

  "It's all up to the dragon lady," Osborne said. Hal snorted.

  "Fat chance," Hal said, and muttered something about boat people.

  "That girl? She's still over there? Who is she?"

  "She's some sort of giant brain from Cal Tech. We called out there and told them we were having problems, and she's what they sent." It was clear from Osborne's face what he thought of any help she might provide.

  I finally managed to get rid of them. As they went down the walk I looked over at Kluge's house. Sure enough Lisa Foo's silver Ferrari was sitting in his driveway.

  I had no business going over there. I knew that better than anyone.

  So I set about preparing my evening meal. I made a tuna casserole-which is not as bland as it sounds, the way I make it-put it in the oven and went out to the garden to pick the makings for a salad. I was slicing cherry tomatoes and think­ing about chilling a bottle of wine when it occurred to me that I had enough for two.

  Since I never do anything hastily, I sat down and thought it over for a while. What finally decided me was my feet. For the first time in a week, they were warm. So I went to Kluge's house.

  The front door was standing open. There was no screen. Funny how disturbing that can look, the dwelling wide open and unguarded. I stood on the porch and leaned in, but all I could see was the hallway.

  "Miss Foo?" I called. There was no answer.

  The last time I'd been here I had found a dead man. I hurried in.

  Lisa Foo was sitting on a piano bench before a computer console. She was in profile, her back very straight, her brown legs in lotus position, her fingers poised at the keys as words sprayed rapidly onto the screen in front of her. She looked up and flashed her teeth at me.

  "Somebody told me your name was Victor Apfel," she said.

  "Yes. Uh, the door was open…"

  "It's hot," she said, reasonably, pinching the fabric of her shirt near her neck and lifting it up and down like you do when you're sweaty. "What can I do for you?"

  "Nothing, really." I came into the dimness, and stumbled on something. It was a cardboard box, the large flat kind used for delivering a jumbo pizza.

  "I was just fixing dinner, and it looks like there's plenty for two, so I was wondering if you…" I trailed off, as I had just noticed something else. I had thought she was wear­ing shorts. In fact, all she had on was the shirt and a pair of pink bikini underpants. This did not seem to make her uneasy.

  "… would you like to join me for dinner?"

  Her smile grew even broader.

  "I'd love to," she said
. She effortlessly unwound her legs and bounced to her feet, then brushed past me, trailing the smells of perspiration and sweet soap. "Be with you in a minute."

  I looked around the room again but my mind kept coming back to her. She liked Pepsi with her pizza; there were dozens of empty cans. There was a deep scar on her knee and upper thigh. The ashtrays were empty… and the long muscles of her calves bunched strongly as she walked. Kluge must have smoked, but Lisa didn't, and she had fine, downy hairs in the small of her back just visible in the green computer light. I heard water running in the bathroom sink, looked at a yellow notepad covered with the kind of penmanship I hadn't seen in decades, and smelled soap and remembered tawny brown skin and an easy stride.

  She appeared in the hall, wearing cut-off jeans, sandals, and a new T-shirt. The old one had advertised BURROUGHS OFFICE SYSTEMS. This one featured Mickey Mouse and Snow White's Castle and smelled of fresh bleached cotton. Mickey's ears were laid back on the upper slopes of her incongruous breasts.

  I followed her out the door. Tinkerbell twinkled in pixie dust from the back of her shirt.

  "I like this kitchen," she said.

  You don't really look at a place until someone says some­thing like that.

  The kitchen was a time capsule. It could have been lifted bodily from an issue of Life in the early fifties. There was the hump-shouldered Frigidaire, of a vintage when that word had been a generic term, like kleenex or coke. The counter tops were yellow tile, the sort that's only found in bathrooms these days. There wasn't an ounce of Formica in the place. Instead of a dishwasher I had a wire rack and a double sink. There was no electric can opener, Cuisinart, trash compacter, or microwave oven. The newest thing in the whole room was a fifteen-year-old blender.

  I'm good with my hands. I like to repair things.

  "This bread is terrific," she said.

  I had baked it myself. I watched her mop her plate with a crust, and she asked if she might have seconds.

  I understand cleaning one's plate with bread is bad man­ners. Not that I cared; I do it myself. And other than that, her manners were impeccable. She polished off three helpings of my casserole and when she was done the plate hardly needed washing. I had a sense of ravenous appetite barely held in check.