A Perfect Life

by Mike Stewart

  “Thanks.” Scott turned to the sink to brush his teeth.

  Kate turned off the water just as he dropped his toothbrush into a plastic cup on the basin. “Toss me a towel, please. One of the big ones on the chrome shelf, there.”

  Scott pulled down a towel off a head-high shelf and placed it into a slippery wet hand that reached through the space over the shower door. He watched through frosted glass as Kate patted herself dry and carefully wrapped the towel low around her waist like a sarong. She pushed back wet hair with her fingertips before opening the door and stepping out.

  Scott's eyes fixed on Kate's breasts, which was what she had intended. The towel-sarong was designed to hide the imaginary extra pound or two that Kate carried on her hips. A dim bedroom lamp had been one thing, but this was harsh bathroom lighting. Scott understood without giving it a second thought. For years, he'd seen throngs of slim, beautiful girls at the beach hurrying to tug on shorts or wrap towels around their hips the second they emerged from the water. He was sorry, though, that the towel was there. Men are visual.

  “You're really beautiful.”

  Kate smiled. “You're not looking at my eyes.”

  “I've seen your eyes.” He kissed her lightly on the lips. “Thanks for letting me stay. I feel a hundred percent better.”

  “Glad you enjoyed your stay. We're a full-service inn, here.” Kate reached up to scratch against Scott's whiskers with the backs of her fingers. “Get in the shower. I've got some disposable razors around here somewhere. I'll put one on the sink for you.” She lingered, unabashedly watching him turn on the shower and step out of his boxers. “I see you're wide awake.”

  “Naked women have that effect on me.”

  “Good for you.”

  “Yeah,” he said, “I'm pretty happy about it. Look, why don't you step back into the shower with me for a few minutes and help me find the shampoo and conditioner?” He leaned into the shower and glanced around. “Looks complicated in there. I could use some help.”

  Kate stepped forward and softly kissed Scott's mouth. As their lips parted, she reached down to take him into her hand. “I'm going to make a nice brunch for us.” She gave his erection a playful squeeze. “You can help yourself.”

  And she walked out.

  When Scott mounted the wooden steps to his apartment a few minutes past noon, he found an envelope taped to the front door. His name was written across the front in blue ballpoint. The embossed return address was that of the Ashtons—the address of his landlords who lived forty feet away in the big house facing Welder Avenue. Obviously, they were back from skiing in Colorado.

  He worked the key in the lock, stepped inside, and quickly shut the door against the cold. Then he examined the envelope and his stomach tightened. He ripped it open and unfolded one sheet of paper. The lady of the house had written a short note with the same cheap ballpoint.

  Scott—

  We were so very sorry to hear about your problems at the hospital. Steven ran into Dr. Reynolds last night and heard about the whole mess. I know you must be devastated.

  Unfortunately, this situation places us in a delicate position. While both Steven and I are certain you will emerge from this problem vindicated and stronger for the experience, we cannot come to terms with the idea of someone involved in a murder investigation living so close to our home and our children.

  Please vacate the apartment no later than one week from today.

  God Bless,

  Michelle Ashton

  Scott spoke one word out loud. “Perfect.” Then he walked into the bedroom and found the red message light blinking on the answering machine next to his unmade bed.

  The first message was from Dr. Reynolds. “I'm calling to inform you, Scott, that you've been placed on administrative leave. And let me tell you up front that this is no reflection on you or your value to the hospital. This is standard operating procedure in matters of this kind.” The good doctor went on from there, attempting to salve Scott's feelings. It was all prattle. Scott wondered how stupid someone would have to be to believe that the hospital had a “standard operating procedure” for handling staff members accused of murdering patients. Alternatively, if the hospital really did have such a policy, how scary was that?

  He punched the SKIP button in the middle of Reynolds's soliloquy. The next message was from Cannonball Walker. All he said was “You need help on this. Think about it. Don't do it alone. Cops gonna eat you up.”

  Finally, Kate's voice came teasing and breathless from the tiny speaker. “Late for work. Just wanted to say ‘Great night.' Call me and we'll—” The phone rang, shutting off the message in midsentence.

  Scott picked up the receiver. “Hello?”

  “How'd you like your house?”

  “What?”

  “How'd you like the way we decorated your country house?” The voice had a mechanical, singsong quality—as if it were being spoken through some kind of electronic filter—yet the tone sounded vaguely familiar. “I thought it came off pretty good. Not the picture of you from the Harvard yearbook. The pixels couldn't handle that kind of enlargement. But the other pictures? How'd you like the pictures we picked out for you, Scotty?”

  It's amazing how frightening an unknown voice can be. An old saying ran through Scott's mind: Nothing's more frightening than an unseen knock on the other side of a lonely door. He tried to sound assured. “Who the hell is this?”

  “We've got better pictures of you now, Scotty. Shots of you on the porch and standing in the front hallway. Even got a couple through the window. I like the one of you working at your computer.”

  “Are you the same asshole who broke into my apartment?”

  “What'd you do with your hard drive, Scotty? That was irritating. We spent a lot of time building it, making it reflect your personality. It wasn't nice to tear it out that way.”

  Scott scrambled to identify the memory triggered by the synthesized voice, and it came to him. The guy sounded like the caller who terrorized Doris Day in Midnight Lace. Still, something in the voice was more familiar than a half-remembered late-night movie. “I've heard your voice before.”

  For the first time, there was hesitation. Finally, the caller simply said, “No.”

  For the first time, Scott felt some control flowing his way. “I know you, don't I?”

  Again, seconds passed before the caller spoke. “No. But you will, Scotty. You will.” The line went dead.

  Scott's breathing had grown quick and shallow; he struggled to control it, as he realized the phone was trembling. It was trembling because he was.

  Seconds passed. He pressed the OFF button, punched in *69, and pressed the PHONE button again. Three beeps, and a different mechanical voice informed him that the number he was seeking was unavailable. He dropped the receiver into its cradle and sat on the bed. He'd had a full night's sleep; he'd eaten a great breakfast; hell, he'd even gotten laid. It was time to focus. Time to think.

  Scott walked to his desk, sat down in the straight-back chair, and pulled a yellow pad from the top drawer. He grabbed a pen from the Harvard mug on the desktop and started to write.

  1. 2 gangbangers break into apartment, take nothing.

  2. Early next moring, unidentified caller tells me to come to hospital.

  3. Patricia Hunter murdered.

  4. Same 2 gangbangers (I think) break into apartment again. Trash living room. Still take nothing. Cops flood place with investigators.

  5. Country house found full of pornography—pictures from the Internet. My face. Patricia Hunter's face.

  6. Caller with mechanical voice knows I took hard drive. (Maybe) has pictures of me at the house. Knows how to electronically disguise voice. Knows how to block *69.

  Out loud, to the empty room, he said, “Too complicated.” Even if someone wanted to frame me for murder, he thought, this is too complicated. There's too much that could go wrong.

  He pushed back and propped his feet on the corner of the oak desk. His e
yes raked the brief list.

  In undergraduate school, his advisor had told him early on that life is like anything else—a math problem, a poem, whatever; things that appear complicated only look that way when you don't understand them. It had seemed obvious advice to a freshman psych student. But the idea had stuck, especially as Scott began to work with patients in therapy. After all, the whole basis of his profession was that complicated emotional problems cease to be complicated, and in fact become solvable, once you understand the root causes.

  He looked back down at his list.

  He had it. Not much. Just something. Something that was worth pursuing. He grabbed his coat, rushed through the outside door, and ran down icy steps to his Land Cruiser.

  CHAPTER 16

  A morning thunderstorm had washed the city clean, leaving a silvery sheen in its wake. Scott maneuvered through a series of narrow, rain-slicked urban canyons to Harvard Square. Turning onto Massachusetts Avenue, he headed east through Central Square to the fire station where he forked left onto Main. Four blocks later, he bumped across railroad tracks and started looking for somewhere to park. He found the Charles River Basin; he found lots of ugly buildings; he did not find a parking space.

  Scott made a quick U-turn, rumbled back across the tracks, and finally found a road that cut between a new glass-and-steel building on one side and an older academic building on the other. There is no parking in Cambridge. He invented a place next to a construction dumpster and walked through a glass door into the older building. A receptionist manned a built-in desk in the foyer. On the wall over her head hung the letters LCS. Beneath that, in smaller print, a stainless steel sign read: MIT LABORATORY FOR COMPUTER SCIENCE. The sign had a high-tech–looking abstract design in one corner.

  “Good afternoon.”

  The twenty-something receptionist wore a pair of severe, Teutonic glasses and a wrinkled sweatshirt. Frizzy brown hair, parted in a wandering, topographic path, started low on her forehead and ended just past a blue scrunchy at the base of her neck. She didn't speak. She glanced up. She looked tired.

  “Can you help me?”

  She closed a thick book on the desk and sighed. “How much help do you need?”

  Scott smiled. “Not much.” He produced his wallet and fished out a Harvard student ID. “I'm a doctoral student at Harvard.”

  “Higher education for the mathematically challenged.”

  He smiled again. “I'm working on a doctorate in psychology.”

  “Like I said.”

  “You see, my dissertation is about the psychological effects of technology on modern society.”

  She opened her book. “Sounds unoriginal.”

  “Yes, well, my advisor spoke to someone at the lab here and said there was a guy I could talk to about all this. I don't have a name.”

  “Then how do you expect . . .”

  “He's supposed to be in some bar around here. Someplace where all the computer geeks—sorry, that's the way it was described—somewhere all the MIT computer geeks hang out at night.”

  She didn't look up. “Geeks are running the world. I don't guess they've heard about that in the psychology department at Harvard.” The name of the school seemed to leave a bad taste in her mouth.

  “Like I said, no offense. If you could just . . .”

  “It's closed.”

  “What is?”

  “The restaurant. You know, Colleen's Chinese Cuisine?” She waited for the ah-hah and didn't get it. “Grokking Chinese. Surely they've heard of that even at Harvard.”

  “Sorry, I really don't know . . .”

  “Bill Gosper, Richard Stallman?” She waited again. “It's famous, okay. Back in the seventies, a group of MIT grad students used to meet a Colleen's Chinese Cuisine. Over time, they noticed that they never got the same dishes as the Chinese customers, even when they ordered the same thing. So, they started Grokking Chinese.”

  “Grokking? I'm sorry but—”

  “What do they teach you people? Grok refers to Martian understanding. It's from Stranger in a Strange Land.” She huffed. “By Robert Anson Heinlein?” She shook her head in disgust. After all, making a Harvard student feel stupid was the only reason she was telling any of it. Scott knew that if he had known what she was talking about, she would have been sorely disappointed. “Forget it. Suffice it to say that these MIT guys started mixing up Chinese characters from the menu and insisting on whatever combination they came up with. Sometimes they'd get sweet and sour bamboo shoots. Other times stuff like fried rice with peaches. But, little by little, they figured out the characters for all the ingredients on the menu. You know, so they could get the same dishes the Chinese customers were getting.”

  Scott smiled. “But it's closed.”

  The girl sighed. “Yeah. Now it's called the Royal East Restaurant, over on Main Street.”

  “So that's where I need to go.”

  “No.” She looked back down at her book. “Try P.J.'s”

  “What?”

  “It's a bar. You can find it in the phone book.”

  “Then why did you tell me—”

  She tilted the book up. “Look, I've got to study. Are we done here?”

  “Sure. Thank you.”

  She didn't respond. Apparently, he wasn't all that welcome.

  P.J.'s served a decent clam chowder. But then, every bar in Boston with a menu served a decent clam chowder. Scott had located the place off Vassar Street, near the MIT campus, just after three o'clock that afternoon. Now he occupied a back corner booth.

  Hexagonal oyster crackers floated in half a bowl of white chowder. He'd gone through three packages. Every few bites, he'd tear open a new wrapper and dump in more crackers. It was good chowder; he just liked crackers.

  A blond waitress dropped another handful of the little packages on his table. “Want some soup with your crackers?”

  “Maybe another Guinness.”

  She said, “Sure,” and walked to the bar. When she returned, Scott invited her to sit down. “Can't. I'm working.”

  Scott looked around. “I'm the only one here.”

  She glanced back at the old-fashioned oak bar. “I live with the bartender, honey.” The blonde lowered her voice. “Maybe I could just give you my cell number. We could get together somewhere else.”

  “Your boyfriend mind if we just talk? I'm here to meet someone, and I really don't know who.”

  She set her round drink tray on the table and slid into the other side of the booth. “How do you meet somebody . . . Oh. You mean like a blind date? You answering a personal or something?”

  “No, no. I'm a graduate student. My advisor told me about some computer whiz who hangs out here. He didn't have a name. Just said to stop by tonight, and the guy would be here.”

  “Oh, sure. This place is geek central.” She swept a highly manicured hand in a circle to indicate she was talking about the bar. “Don't ask me why. You're the first guy in here in a month looks like he might have enough dick to get my number.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Look. I don't want Freddie to see me give you anything. You got a pretty good memory?”

  Scott nodded.

  “Good.” She recited her number. “Wait till I leave to write it down, okay? And use some judgment. Freddie's here till two in the morning. I get off after dinner. So use it sometime between, say, seven and midnight and I'm all yours.” She picked up a package of crackers, tore it open with tiny white teeth, and dumped the contents into Scott's chowder. “My name's Ginger.” Scott felt a strange pressure and looked down to see five stockinged toes massaging his crotch. He moved back, and the tickling toes followed. Scott swallowed. Ginger met his eyes when he looked up. She bit down suggestively on the tip of her tongue, then said, “How's the service?”

  “Who”—Scott struggled to concentrate—“ah, who should I talk to about my project? I need the head geek, if you know what I mean. Somebody who knows about hackers and computer theft, that kind of thing.”


  “Oh, sure.” She shot a furtive glance at the bar. “There's this guy comes in here for dinner every night. Eats the same damn thing every night, too. And we're talking the king-fucking-geek of all time, here. His name's . . .” She looked into the distance and tapped a long glossy nail against her lips. “His name's, uh . . . it's Victor Ellroy.”

  Ginger talked about Ellroy and his alleged geekiness for another couple of minutes. To Scott, it seemed much longer. By the time Ginger left the booth, she had recited every piece of information she knew about Victor Ellroy. And Scott had gotten his first and last toe job.

  Two beers and a sandwich later, Ginger caught Scott's eye and nodded at a bulbous man sporting an oily pageboy and black-rimmed glasses. Scott mouthed the name “Ellroy,” and the waitress nodded. Scott immediately stood and waved to the man as if greeting an old friend.

  “Victor?”

  The master geek waddled in Scott's direction, his eyes narrowing to slits as he tried to place the smiling face. “Uh, yes, yes, yes. Great to see you again.”

  Some clichés have no basis in fact. That computer geeks have poor social skills is not one of them. Ellroy refused to believe that he did not know Scott from somewhere, and he was thrilled to have been recommended as the preeminent computer geek at MIT.

  It took an hour.

  Scott left P.J.'s with two names, not including Ginger's. Ellroy had first selected a guy in South Boston named Darryl Simmons—a hacker who was reputedly some kind of master computer criminal. Class brain turned gangbanger, Simmons was fast becoming a legend among self-taught “street geeks.”

  When Ellroy had finished describing Darryl Simmons, Scott grimaced. “Sounds like the kind of guy who might decide to kill me during the interview.”

  Ellroy's round features had slackened in thought. Finally, he'd said, “I was just trying to get you the best person for your interview. Uh, don't guess it'd do much good if . . . Yes, yes, yes, you're right. Guy's supposed to be a little psycho.”