In My Memory Locked

by Jim Nelson

  In My Memory Locked

  Jim Nelson

  Copyediting: Beth at bzhercules.com

  This is a work of fiction. Any similarity between the characters and situations within its pages and places or persons, living or dead, is unintentional and coincidental.

  No parts of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

  Copyright © 2020 Jim Nelson

  All rights reserved

  ISBN 978-0-9904802-6-6

  The Bridge Daughter Cycle

  Bridge Daughter

  Hagar's Mother

  Stranger Son

  Other books by Jim Nelson

  Edward Teller Dreams of Barbecuing People

  A Concordance of One’s Life

  Everywhere Man

  Contents

  1.

  2.

  3.

  4.

  5.

  6.

  7.

  8.

  9.

  10.

  11.

  12.

  13.

  14.

  15.

  16.

  17.

  18.

  19.

  20.

  21.

  22.

  23.

  24.

  25.

  26.

  27.

  28.

  29.

  30.

  31.

  32.

  33.

  34.

  35.

  About the author

  ‘Tis in my memory lock’d

  And you yourself shall keep the key of it.

  – Hamlet, Act I Scene 3

  1.

  The city wore the rain well. Drops tapped against my apartment window like telegraph clicks coming down a wire. Downstairs, a bus roared past, its tires sizzling in the slick of water coating the street. I rose from my floor futon and started the coffee brewer. Outside the sink window, I witnessed a dour, bleak Thursday developing, hat and raincoat weather. That day I wore a cream-colored cotton shirt with a monogram not mine on the chest pocket. When I reached the sidewalk downstairs, it was raining as hard as the day is long, but that's nothing remarkable. By 2038, it rained every day in San Francisco.

  The Palace Hotel was a ten-minute stroll away. When I arrived, New Montgomery Street was fenced off by black-and-white cruisers. Beat cops in long wool overcoats and flat caps directed the sparse morning traffic toward Third Street. Six or eight onlookers stood at the police line braving the downpour for a better look. Uninterested pedestrians continued past on their way to work.

  The cops behind the rope were expecting me, which was funny because I wasn’t expecting them. When I gave my name and said I had business at the Palace, he called to his partner.

  “This guy says his name is Naroy. Didn't Talley say to send him through?”

  “Send him through,” his partner called back.

  The cop held up the bright yellow rope for me. I ducked under it as a boxer entering the ring. A clump of unmarked SFPD cars and an emergency truck stood at the mouth of Stevenson Street, a one-lane alley punching a hole in the eastern face of New Montgomery's high-rises.

  The overgrowth on Stevenson was magnificent. Leafy vines, kudzu, and wisteria wallpapered the buildings along the alleyway, a sheer lush green cliff forty feet high. The streetlamps down the alley were covered in growth like a giant chess topiary in a lush garden. Weeds sprouted from every crack in the street, pushing through any unsealed crevice.

  Cockroaches the size of golf balls thrive in San Francisco now. In the summer, when the rain takes a break in the afternoon, grasshoppers can overtake a steamy western neighborhood like a plague of Moses. At the moment, the only pest in Stevenson Alley was the incessant rain spitting down on me.

  Down the alley stood a huddle of plainclothes detectives in long dripping coats and rain hats. They stood in a circle talking with their hands on their hips like umpires hashing out a bad call. At the head of the huddle stood Talley Whitcomb, the only detective not staring downwards. She craned her neck to peer up at the top floor of the Palace Hotel across New Montgomery. Her lips were crimped in a suspicious, disdainful jagged line. Her expression softened when she noticed me approaching.

  “All right, Naroy’s here,” she said to the others. “Let’s get some answers.”

  The huddle parted to reveal the object of their collective interest. A doughy middle-aged man lay on his back in the gutter. One arm hung loose into the street while the other was propped up on the weedy curb. His brown wing-tipped shoes touched at their heels. The rococo toes hung askew, making a careless leather V. His suit and shirt were wrinkled and soaked through, and his tan raincoat was splayed beneath him like a thin wet blanket laid out picnic-style. His head lolled to one side. His two gray eyes shone the color of the gray sky.

  “You can identify this guy,” Whitcomb said. It was not a question.

  “Michael Aggaroy,” I said, although I guessed they knew as much already. “I forget his middle name.” I crouched and put a hand out to him. "Ah, Christ, Agg," I said, shaking my head. I peered up at the cops. “You couldn’t be bothered to put a tent over him?"

  “You worked with him,” she said.

  “Years ago,” I said. “He’s a competitor now.” I gazed upon his soaked limp body with weary eyes. A golf-ball-sized lump was forming in the back of my throat. “You know what I mean.”

  One of the detectives turned his back. He whispered to the other men and made a slight nod backwards toward me. Grins appeared, mouthfuls of teeth. The others struggled to stifle their laughter. I knew what it was about. I ignored them as best I could. Aggaroy was dead before me.

  Whitcomb crouched on the other side of the corpse.

  “He was discovered before dawn,” she said.

  “By who?”

  “Garbage men,” she said.

  “Any idea what happened?”

  Whitcomb, hands in blue medical gloves, lifted Aggaroy by the shoulders and twisted him up and around to reveal the back of his skull. It was a hairy, bloody mess from crown to neck. She carefully lowered his head back to the asphalt. She gently pulled at his collar. Thick purple bruise marks wrapped his throat from jawline to chest.

  “Seems kind of brutal for a mugging,” I said.

  She shook her head. “His wallet was still in his jacket. At least four hundred dollars on his money clip. Wristwatch, gold chain, bank cards—all here. We’ll need more time to determine if anything is missing. We’re still working out the other details.”

  “What about his—?” I motioned to the back of my neck.

  She shook her head once. “Destroyed. Smashed up. Useless to us.”

  I returned to full height. Garbage cans and a dumpster stood not far from Agg’s body. A couple of steel doors along Stevenson appeared sealed shut by the overgrowth. With the overgrowth choking the streetlights, it would have been a dark night to be walking down this alleyway.

  “That’s Agg’s car.” I pointed it out to Whitcomb. “At the corner. The dark blue Tesla.”

  She told one of the detectives to get the license and vehicle ID and call it in.

  The entrance to the Palace Hotel stood on the western side of New Montgomery. It directly faced the mouth of Stevenson Alley. Under the shelter of the overhang stood a pair of doormen with chest-of-drawers buttons running up the front of their long coats. Up the steps stood a thick-necked beefy man. He wore a navy blue business suit tailored one size too tight and a cream-colored tie. The tight suit only served to accentuate his physique.

&nb
sp; I imagined the hunk was the hotel day manager. The police were not helping his business. With New Montgomery blocked at both ends, no taxis were dropping off or picking up, meaning no guests were arriving or departing. The Palace had side entrances, of course, but Talley Whitcomb had blocked off their grand and historic entryway. People paid good money to arrive at that entrance.

  “Okay, I bite,” I said to Whitcomb. “The cop at the line said you were expecting me.”

  Whitcomb snapped off the gloves. “We spoke briefly with Aggaroy's employers. When he applied for his current job, Aggaroy put your name down as a reference.”

  I shrugged. “I'm not surprised. He puts in a good word for me, I put in a good word for him. Professional courtesy.”

  “Were you chummy with him?”

  “Depends on your definition of chummy.”

  “You were partners back in the day.”

  “Call it an internship,” I said. “It’s how I got my start in the business.”

  “Leave on good terms?”

  “As far as that goes. We stay in touch, if that’s what you’re after.”

  “When’s the last time you saw him?”

  “Last night,” I said with a big exhale of air. I could guess where this conversation was leading. “We had dinner at Tadich Grill.”

  “You two break bread often?” one of the other detectives called to me. All four of them were listening in.

  “Once a month or so."

  "Why?"

  "Grab some chow, catch up on business, swap stories about clients and the crap they put us through.”

  “Sounds delightful,” another of the detectives said.

  “It’s not a cutthroat trade,” I said back.

  “You don’t seem terribly broken up,” the third said. “Not one tear for your friend.” He motioned down at Aggaroy’s sizeable corpse.

  The detectives were all younger than me, in their thirties. I found this sort of snappy banter amusing when I was their age. That January morning in 2038, age fifty-five, I was not so impressed. A man their age sees a guy like me as gray and weathered, sagging and homely. A man their age thinks he just found a way to get well and earn back some of his lost vitality. He throws a few stones at me to see if a window will break.

  That’s what time does to a man: It steals his vitality. Every day those men felt an ounce more of their vitality drain away. Some of it was taken by their wives, some of it was spent on their children, and some of it was appropriated by their bosses. Some of their vitality evaporated in the hours wasted behind a desk, along with the fading dreams they cobbled together in their twenties of a rich, comfortable future populated with luxury cars and a stable of women in their thrall. Time and memory ride twin pale horses.

  "He was your friend," Whitcomb said.

  "I wouldn't go that far," I said.

  "You look a little pale."

  "Do I?"

  "Yeah," she said. "You do."

  Rain from above plunked me hard. It made a hollow sound when it struck the crown of my hat and a flat click when it struck my brim. The morning was growing muggy and Stevenson Alley felt steamy and moist. I took off my hat and shook the water off, a useless activity standing in San Francisco’s perpetual rain.

  “I was supposed to meet Agg at the Palace Hotel for coffee and eggs at nine sharp." I motioned toward his body. "This is the last thing I expected."

  Whitcomb exchanged glances with the other detectives, each souring a bit from my answer. They shrugged the water off their shoulders and dispersed to the forensics wagon at the mouth of the alley.

  She came close to me with her chin up, a bit haughty. “We knew you were meeting Aggaroy. A couple of the detectives wanted to drag you out of bed the moment we learned about the meet. I told them patience, you’d make the appointment. You’ve worked with us in the past. I’ve no beef with you. I trusted you to make it.”

  “How’d you know I was meeting him?” I asked.

  “You won’t believe it.”

  She produced a wax paper evidence bag from the van nearest us. She unwrapped the top and allowed me to peer inside. A paper-and-ink appointment calendar rested inside.

  “Apparently, Aggaroy was a little on the old-fashioned side,” she said.

  “He didn’t exactly trust the machines,” I said. “Being in the computer security field does that to you.”

  She sealed the wax paper envelope and tossed it back inside the forensics van. “What did he want to talk to you about? His scheduler has something about ‘fatherly advice.’”

  “Oh, that was Agg’s way of talking. He liked to think of me as his kohai—he’s the mentor, I’m the mentee. When I worked for him, he’d take me aside for a little of his ‘fatherly advice.’ I mean, the guy’s only a few years older than me.”

  “What kind of fatherly advice was he going to impart this morning?”

  “Don’t read too much into it,” I said. “Sometimes he would turn the phrase around. When I told him something he didn’t know, he would say I was giving him the fatherly advice.”

  "Why not talk to you about this last night over dinner?"

  "I'm not sure," I said. "We were having drinks. He said he wanted to talk when we were both stone-cold sober."

  “You think he wanted professional advice from you?” she asked. “What kind?”

  “Maybe his employer knows.”

  Whitcomb’s response was dodgy. “We have a request to them pending.”

  “And who is his employer?”

  “Don’t you know? You were a reference.”

  “No one contacted me. Certainly Agg never mentioned it. Agg played his cards close to his chest.” I motioned down toward his soaked corpse. “I wonder if what he wanted to ask me has anything to do with this.”

  Whitcomb’s next response was not so hard to read. “Aggaroy’s employer has categorically stated his death is unrelated to their enterprise.”

  “What else would they say to the police?”

  “It’s good enough. For now.”

  The discussion hit a standstill. We both waited for the next person to speak. The smart play would have been to let her lead off. I gave Whitcomb the benefit of the doubt on this one.

  “I’ve helped you in the past, I’m glad you remember that,” I said. “So believe me when I tell you I have no idea what Agg wanted to discuss. He doesn’t come to me for help often. He’s the best security expert on the West Coast. Whatever he wanted to ask me, it would have been something outside his skill set.”

  “And within yours, I imagine,” she said. “So when it comes to computer security—”

  “What would he come asking me about?” I needed a moment. “I can think of two areas Agg’s lacking in.”

  Across the street, the doormen and the muscular day manager remained staring at us, as though stern glares were enough to close a police investigation. The doormen’s line of work meant standing outside in the rain all day. They were dressed for the weather. The day manager hovered at the top of the steps in his thin suit. His beefy arms were crossed pretzel-like. His face betrayed nothing.

  “Aggaroy doesn’t have a solid understanding of the Internet,” I told Whitcomb. “The Old Internet.”

  “You mean, what we had before the Nexternet came along,” she said.

  “The Old Internet—the World Wide Web, browsers and search engines and the old social networks. Facebook and Twitter.”

  “Before all that went the way of the dinosaur,” Whitcomb said.

  “That old technology was beyond him,” I said. “Before the Nexternet came along, Agg was in physical security. Bodyguards, executive security, that sort of thing. When the Nexternet was announced, he thought he might be able to get in on the ground floor of the next big thing. So he took a crash course in the technology and taught himself the ropes. Since no one uses the Old Internet anymore, he had no reason to go back and learn about its security models and threat analyses. He jumped into Nexternet security feet-first and did well.”
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  “But you understand the Old Internet,” she said.

  “Thirty years ago, sure, the Old Internet was my career. The Internet was my life. I worked every layer of software, from web applications down to the code driving microcontrollers. Don’t get me wrong. Agg understood the basics of the Old Internet. But the deep protocols and technologies were beyond him.”

  That settled in the air for a moment. She caught me staring down at Agg’s damp corpse. I suppose I wanted to hide my feelings from her, the despondency of seeing a mentor you respected lifeless and blue and soaked-through.

  “What was the other thing you knew Aggaroy didn’t?” she asked, snapping me out of it.

  The day manager remained statuesque at the top of the entrance stairway, arms still crossed. He looked like Samson up there. His Marine crew cut did not seem to sap his strength one bit.

  “People,” I told Whitcomb. “I understand people better than Aggaroy does.”

  She looked at me as though I’d started a joke and held back the punch line. Finally, she cleared her throat.

  “I thought he was going to ask you a technical question,” she said. “A computer question. Not a ‘people’ question.” She said people as though she found the topic mildly distasteful.

  “His planner said ‘fatherly advice,’” I said. “He probably wanted to ask about computer security, not about computers themselves.”

  Again she waited for me to continue. “Alright, you lost me.”

  I stared down upon Aggaroy’s crumpled, soused body one more time. What a goddamned waste. The medical examiner had arrived while we talked. He pulled a crinkling tarp over Agg’s mass. The M.E. and his men prepared to transfer Aggaroy onto a collapsed stretcher waiting beside his corpse.

  “Computer security today is about people,” I told her. “It used to be about the machines and networks and protocols. Today, computer security is about us and our flaws. Agg never really understood that.”

  2.

  The noon ferry jounced over the churning bluish cream of the bay waters. Salt sprays shot up the bow and hurled themselves across the top-deck. Standing alone with my hands buried in the pockets of my mackintosh, the spray dappled my cheeks with cold saltwater pinpricks. Ahead of the ferry, the rocky island concealed itself in the sloshing bay water like a hunched man lying in wait. With every tilt and sway of the ship, we inched closer to Alcatraz Island.