The Hunt

by Jennifer Sturman

  “I can check that out later,” said Peter. “I might be able to figure out how to decrypt it. What was the other file?”

  “That one’s text-a beginning draft of Hilary’s article,” she said. “And it looks as if she definitely intended to focus on Iggie’s company. There was only the title and an opening paragraph, but what little she’d written is all about him and Igobe, and it’s quite provocative.”

  “Provocative?” asked Peter. “How?”

  “Does she say anything about Iggie’s wardrobe? Or about how he calls himself the Igster?” I asked.

  “I think the working title says it all. Ready for this?” We waited expectantly as she exhaled a stream of smoke. “‘Igobe: Naked Emperor 2.0?’”

  “Question mark included?” I asked. She nodded.

  “‘Naked Emperor 2.0?’ What’s that supposed to mean?” asked Ben.

  “I would guess it’s a reference to ‘the emperor has no clothes,’” said Luisa, omitting the “obviously” with which I would have started my own response to that question.

  “And it’s a play on Web 2.0, which is how people are referring to the most recent wave of Internet companies,” I added. “What does the rest of it say?”

  “As I said, it’s only the first paragraph, but it makes clear from the outset that she thinks there’s more spin than substance where Iggie and Igobe are concerned,” said Luisa.

  “He won’t like that,” I said.

  “No, he won’t like that at all,” she said.

  “If his ego is everything you two have said,” added Peter, “he especially won’t like that being printed in a national magazine.”

  “It’s not just his ego,” I pointed out. “Negative press could make it difficult for Igobe to sell shares to the public at the high prices people are talking about. Which means Iggie won’t be a billionaire, and his investors won’t be able to recoup their investments with astronomical profits. The markets are still skittish about Internet companies after the dot-com bust-investors tend to flee from anything even the slightest bit questionable.” And getting Winslow, Brown involved in an unsuccessful IPO could be a career-limiting move, but I kept that thought to myself.

  Ben started to say something then, but his words were drowned out by an exhilarated whoop from behind us.

  We all turned to look as a girl on a skateboard launched herself off the top of the granite steps on the north side of the plaza. Her feet separated from the board as she soared into space, tucking her body into a ball and somersaulting in midair. I watched with a mixture of wonder and horror, certain we were a split second away from seeing her smash headfirst onto the pavement.

  But the board landed with a clatter at the bottom of the steps, and she landed lightly on top of it, and together they hurtled our way at maximum velocity. Just when I thought she would collide with our table, she flipped the skateboard out from under her feet and caught it neatly with one hand, alighting right next to my chair.

  “Are you Rachel Benjamin?” she asked me, not the least bit winded.

  I nodded, too stunned to speak.

  “Some old dude gave me twenty bucks to give you this.” She tossed a small package onto the table.

  And then she sped off, across the square and out of sight.

  9

  While the rest of us were still gawking after Skater Girl, Peter sprang to his feet and sprinted in the direction from which she’d come, bounding up the stone steps as if he hadn’t already done more of a workout today than most people did over the course of any given month. He paused at the top, scanning first one side of the square and then the other, but after a minute he shrugged and rejoined us at the table.

  “I thought the guy who paid her might have been watching to make sure she gave it to the right person,” he explained. “But I didn’t see anyone. At least, not anyone familiar or anyone who seemed to be taking any notice of us.” It was a good thought, and I appreciated how quickly he’d both had it and acted on it even if it hadn’t yielded any insight.

  There would be plenty of time later to comment on the death wish a person must have to make a habit out of skate-boarding in a city like San Francisco, with its steep downhills, impossible uphills and pedestrian and vehicular traffic, much less debate whether or not skateboarding was hopelessly passé. Instead, we turned our attention to the package Skater Girl had left behind. It was the sort of generic, padded brown-paper envelope that could be found in any drugstore, about the same size as a paperback book. My name was printed on the front in black felt-tip pen-large block letters in a hand none of us recognized.

  “Open it,” urged Luisa.

  “What if it’s a bomb?” I said

  “Don’t be absurd. Why would it be a bomb?” she asked.

  “Why would somebody drop a padded envelope in my lap in the middle of Union Square?” I countered.

  “I don’t think it’s a bomb,” said Ben.

  “Me, neither,” Peter agreed. “Especially not given the way she chucked it onto the table.”

  I gingerly held the package up to one ear. It wasn’t very heavy, and I couldn’t hear anything ticking, but I was fairly certain bomb science had advanced beyond the point where an alarm clock was required to detonate an explosive. I’d learned the hard way that airport security believed a simple lip gloss could take down a plane.

  Luisa heaved a sigh of impatience, grabbed the envelope from my hand, ripped it open, and dumped the contents on the table. “See,” she said, when we weren’t all blown to bits. “It’s not a bomb. Although,” she said, checking inside the envelope to make sure she hadn’t missed anything, “a bomb might have made more sense.”

  We all looked at the item that had fallen out of the envelope. It was a model of the Lincoln Memorial, roughly two inches long and an inch high, molded out of plastic and with a handy ring attached to the top so it could be used as a keychain. A tiny Abraham Lincoln looked out from behind the front colonnade, his expression grave.

  “This just might be the most random thing that has ever happened to me,” I said.

  “Even more random than what happened over spring break our senior year?” asked Luisa.

  “I thought we’d agreed not to discuss that,” I said.

  “No,” said Luisa. “You agreed not to discuss that. The rest of us have been saving it for the right moment.” Peter and Ben looked from Luisa to me, clearly wondering what long-ago impropriety could trump this anonymous gift on the randomness scale.

  “Well, now isn’t the right moment,” I said, making a mental note to forbid toasts of any sort at my wedding. That spring break was just one of several things Peter would be better off not knowing anything about. “We should be focusing on the keychain.”

  Luisa looked bemused, but at least she didn’t giggle.

  We took turns examining the model, passing it around the table. Peter was last, and I watched as he turned it over in his hands. “Is it secretly a gadget of some sort?” I asked hopefully. The molded plastic didn’t weigh more than a few ounces, but perhaps the top opened up into another memory stick somehow.

  But he shook his head. “I don’t think so. What we see seems to be what we’ve got. Does the Lincoln Memorial have any special meaning for you?”

  “Not that I’m aware of,” I said.

  “Why don’t we all free-associate?” suggested Luisa. “Just say the first thing that comes to mind when we think of the Lincoln Memorial.”

  It was a strange idea, but nobody had any better ones, so we agreed it was worth a try.

  “‘Four score and seven years ago,’” said Peter, who’d done a double major in history and engineering.

  “Ford’s Theatre and John Wilkes Booth,” said Ben, the federal agent.

  “President’s Day weekend, white sales and hot tubs,” said Luisa. She was trained as a corporate lawyer, but shopping and skiing, particularly the après-ski lounging part of skiing, were two of her favorite pastimes, and she’d always appreciated Washington and Lincoln for
the role they played in making these activities possible.

  “The penny. And the five-dollar bill,” I said. I did work in finance, after all. “Oh, and mustard.”

  They stared at me. “Mustard?” asked Luisa.

  “We went to Washington, D.C., on a school trip when I was in high school. I bought a soft pretzel from one of the snack carts just before we went to see the Lincoln Memorial, and by accident I got mustard on my shirt,” I explained. “But then it made it easy for me to remember that Daniel Chester French was the sculptor who did the Lincoln statue. Because of French’s Mustard. Which was good, because that was a question on the pop quiz our teacher gave us on the bus ride home.” They continued to stare at me. “We are free-associating, right?”

  “I hadn’t realized just how dependent you were on Diet Coke to think clearly,” said Luisa, lighting yet another cigarette.

  This was more of a simple observation than anything else, and there was more than a grain of truth in it, but in my delicate state I found it hard not to be provoked by her words, especially given the direction in which her own free associating had led her. “Listen, Little Miss Hot Tub, I’ve now gone-” I checked my watch “-eight full hours without caffeine. I may be a little bit grumpy, but I think I’m holding up well, all things considered.”

  “Of course you are, Rachel,” she said, her tone soothing, as if she were speaking to a small child. “And we’re very proud of you.”

  Maybe if I hadn’t been in withdrawal, I wouldn’t have taken offense. As it was, I took her tone as the verbal equivalent of throwing down the gauntlet. “I’d like to see how you’d do without cigarettes for eight full hours.”

  “I’d do fine, thank you,” she said.

  “Then I dare you,” I said.

  “Dare me what?” she inquired, simultaneously arching one eyebrow and breathing out smoke.

  “No cigarettes for eight hours.” Then I had an even better idea. “No-wait-how about no cigarettes until ten on Tuesday morning?”

  “Tuesday?” she said. “Why Tuesday?”

  “That’s when my dare runs out. It’s only forty hours away.”

  “You’re really daring me?” she asked, a note of trepidation creeping into her voice.

  “You can turn it down, of course. I mean, that would be the wussy thing to do, but you have the option.”

  She glared at me. “I’m not a wuss.”

  “Prove it,” I said.

  “Why should I have to?”

  “Why should I have to?”

  “This is a very unattractive side of you, Rachel.”

  I couldn’t disagree. Withdrawal was definitely not bringing out the “attractive” in me. But I’d backed her into a corner and she knew there was only one way to escape with her dignity intact. “Do you accept the dare?”

  “Fine,” she said eventually, but she didn’t sound like she thought it was.

  “Good,” I said. “So no more cigarettes until Tuesday morning at ten. Starting now.” I held out the cup with the remains of my seltzer.

  She glared at me some more, but then she closed her eyes, took a final deep drag and exhaled a final stream of smoke. Wistfully, she dropped the half-smoked cigarette into the cup. There was a soft sizzle as it hit the liquid and went out.

  I smiled at her. “This will be fun.”

  “How, precisely, are you defining fun?” she asked.

  10

  The four of us cleared our table and headed back toward the hotel, and along the way we summarized what we thought we knew: Hilary had gone off with Iggie to interview him for her article, with Iggie potentially misinterpreting her overtures as a chance to realize his long-unfulfilled romantic aspirations. But once he found out what she was actually planning on writing, he must have flipped and decided to hold on to her until she changed her mind, at which point Hilary had managed to send out the SOS signals. So we still needed to track down Iggie if we hoped to find Hilary.

  This all would have sounded bizarre to the casual listener, but its bizarreness had been nearly eclipsed by the appearance of my new Lincoln Memorial keychain-the Iggie-Hilary scenario now seemed almost dull in contrast. It was possible that bestowing keychains of national monuments on unsuspecting people was part of some exercise in avant-garde street theater, but as it was I had no idea why “some old dude” would have paid twenty bucks to give me something so peculiar and in such a peculiar manner, much less whether it had anything to do with my missing friend.

  Luisa and Ben had decided to postpone their respective trips home until we’d extricated Hilary from Iggie’s grasp, which was an especially generous gesture for Ben to make given his role as recent dumpee. I suspected he saw rescuing Hilary as an opportunity to win her back, which was likely doomed as a strategy-she had strict rules about treading the same ground twice when it came to relationships. Regardless, he’d already proven himself useful, and I was glad we had his help. I was also confident that Luisa had her own reasons for sticking around, reasons only partially related to any concern for Hilary’s safety.

  Peter and I were due to meet his parents in Chinatown shortly, but Luisa and Ben said they would check with the hotel doormen to see if they could confirm it was indeed Iggie who had chauffeured Hilary to and from the hotel the previous evening and ask if by any chance they’d mentioned where they were going when they left. They would also contact the tech-support center at Berkeley to attempt to identify the mysterious Leo-from the comments Caro and Alex had made the previous evening, it seemed as if it would be easier to find him than to find Iggie’s disappeared-from-the-planet ex-wife, and perhaps Leo would know how to reach Iggie. He might even know why Hilary had thought it necessary to stash that photo in the hotel safe.

  “Is there a way to get a picture of the other man you saw on the tape?” I asked Ben as we reached the hotel entrance on Market Street. “The one from the party?” I was curious as to whether it was, in fact, Alex Cutler or if it had been someone else entirely.

  He shook his head. “I tried to freeze the recording and print some still shots, but they came out really grainy. I could probably convince the security guys to let you take a look at the tape, though.”

  “If you really want to know, I’ll just call Alex and ask,” said Peter. “I doubt it was him, but I’m sure he’ll tell us, one way or the other, and if he was there, he’ll tell us why. And once I get to my computer, I can try to figure out how to decrypt the other file on the memory stick.”

  “What about your ‘friend,’ Luisa?” I asked, knowing full well who her “friend” was. “The one who thought she might know how to track down Iggie?”

  “Oh, I’m supposed to catch up with her in a bit,” Luisa said breezily.

  “Good,” said Peter, before I could comment on Luisa’s breeziness. “We’ll call you when we’re finished with my parents.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Ben agreed.

  Chinatown was just far enough away to be a longer walk than I was up for since I was still feeling the aftereffects of the half-marathon Peter had bullied me into that morning. I gave him the choice of either carrying me or driving, and he opted to drive.

  Once in the car, Peter put in a call to Alex Cutler, but his number went right into voice mail. He waited for a long moment, listening to the recording before leaving a message. “Alex, it’s Peter. This is going to sound like a strange question, and I’ll explain when I talk to you, but did you happen to swing by the Four Seasons after the party last night? Give me a call when you get a chance. Thanks.”

  I checked my own messages while Peter was on the phone. I’d been monitoring my BlackBerry throughout the day to make sure there were no further communications from Hilary, but I hadn’t paid too much attention to the other e-mails and voice mails that had accumulated. Most were from work colleagues, and none required an immediate response. The exception was a message from Laura Taylor, the junior-most person on the team that had worked on the materials for Tuesday’s presentation to Igobe.

&nb
sp; “Hi, Rachel, it’s Laura. Something came up on the Igobe pitch, and I wanted to run it by you.” Her tone was apologetic and slightly nervous-she was only a year out of college, and difficult as it was for me to accept, in her eyes I probably appeared senior enough to be intimidating. But I couldn’t help but wonder if the nervousness had something to do with the deal itself. It wouldn’t be surprising, given what I now knew about Hilary’s article. Perhaps I’d been a bit hasty in concluding it would be just the thing to put me firmly back on the partner track.

  I dialed Laura’s number. “What’s up?” I asked in my most friendly and least intimidating voice.

  “This is going to sound sort of strange,” she said, and then she hesitated, as if she were wondering if whatever she had to tell me was too strange to share. She had no way of knowing that strange was well on its way to being the theme of the day, and I told her as much.

  “I was doing some final preparations for the Igobe meeting on Tuesday, making sure I had all of the background information,” she said. “And I’d gone through the file of press clippings on the company when it occurred to me it might be a good idea to check out what people are saying about Igobe online, too.”

  This made perfect sense-some of the most informed commentary on tech businesses came from bloggers, not mainstream journalists. I complimented Laura on her thoroughness and initiative, two qualities the firm appreciated in its junior bankers, along with the willingness to obey all orders, work hundred-hour weeks and otherwise uncomplainingly relinquish one’s personal life to further enrich the partners of Winslow, Brown.

  “Did you learn anything interesting?”

  “I’m not sure,” she said. “Most of the well-known bloggers agree with everything the mainstream press has been saying-that Igobe’s technology is revolutionary and breaking new ground and everything. But then I found some blogs written by hackers-it’s like they have their own online subculture-and they’re circulating an odd rumor.”