by Jim Nelson
“I didn’t want to leave the blue lounge at first,” she said. “We were having such a good conversation, you and me together. You're the first man I've met who listened more than he spoke when it came to computers. You’re a good listener. And you told me something about ICMP I’d never heard before.”
An ancient Old Internet protocol. “Let's get to the part about Lands End,” I said.
“But you have to hear how we wound up there,” she said. “At the lounge, we talked about our lives. You told me what it was like when you were younger. And I remember when you began crying.”
“What?” I straightened up. “The hell you say.”
“You were in the film I was studying,” she said warmly. She reached across the table and squeezed my hand. “You told me about being in Detachment.”
I pulled back my hand. Her squeeze felt condescending. “We were drinking Pharjé. I couldn’t have told you about Detachment while I was under. I wouldn't remember it.”
“I think that’s the one memory you have Blue Pharjé can’t suppress,” she said. “Its footprint is so heavy. You told me everything about making the movie. You told me about being approached by the director in the hotel bar, and you told me about the audition you went to. You were at the film screening when everyone began laughing at you. You told me you left America because you couldn’t go anywhere without being recognized. The Internet made you famous, but in a bad way.”
“I told you all that.”
A faint pink smile drew from dimple to dimple. She was not being smug. She was being sympathetic. It felt as bad as if she was being smug.
“You couldn’t help crying.” She added softly, “It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
It was plenty to be ashamed of. I rose from the breakfast nook table. My clodhoppers stamped across the hardwood floor. The ground coffee I’d located in the cabinet was old and dry and the brew it produced wasn’t particularly good. I poured myself a bitter cup.
“I’ve never met a man who could open up to me like you did,” she said. “You weren’t asking for my pity. You weren’t trying to get something from me. It just erupted from you. You told me the story in such detail. You told it to me like it happened yesterday. You could remember every little bit of the audition. You'd forgotten to shave that morning. You'd walked from the bus stop and were perspiring when you arrived. You even told me what the actress said when you first lay close to her—”
“Enough,” I said.
“You were wronged,” Leigh said. “The next morning, I realized I was researching the wrong subject. I should do a paper on how the Internet ruined you.”
I could barely manage words. “Don’t—just tell me—Lands End.”
She set aside her half-finished plate of pasta and dabbed her napkin to her lips. “We walked there from the blue lounge. It seemed to take ten hours.”
Time is distorted under the influence of the blue.
“Talking to you about Detachment and the Old Internet completely took my mind off of Gannon,” she said. “That’s why I went to the blue lounge. I wanted to forget about him and what we’d—what Gannon and I did.” She said his name with some disgust now. Just as swiftly, her face returned to emanating warmth. “I’ve lived in San Francisco for three years and I’d never been to Lands End. It was beautiful in an awful kind of way. The wrath of God.”
“Bad climate engineering,” I said. "The hubris of Man."
“I was so happy we were sharing the experience. I was so happy to have found a friend, even if I never saw you again. When we stood on the cliff watching the electrical storm, I reached over and held your hand. It was spontaneous. I knew it would make me feel good to connect to you, and it did. It made you happy too, I think. You smiled for the first time then." She sighed. "The awful beauty before us.”
"Do you remember Gannon arriving?"
“I don’t know how he found us,” Leigh said. “He pulled me away from you. He was in an absolute rage. He could go from calm to fury in no time at all. His mother always helped him out of trouble when his temper got the best of him. Oh, Cassandra…” She shook her head with a deep frown. “Gannon loved her so much.”
“Go back to what happened that night,” I said.
She sighed. “Well, suddenly, there was Gannon. He yanked us apart. One moment you were beside me looking confused. We were both confused. When I looked again, you were gone. Gannon hit you in the face and knocked you down under a tree. I think you banged your head on an exposed root. I went to help you. You passed out, but I didn’t feel any blood, fortunately. It was dark, so I couldn’t see your face. I remember I called out your name and you didn’t respond.” Her face darkened with her next memory. “When I stood, Gannon was gone. I thought he’d run off.”
“That doesn’t sound like Gannon to me.”
“It wouldn’t have been like him at all. It was only the next morning when I began to wonder if you'd hurt him somehow.”
“What did you do after that? When you left Lands End?”
“I…I was pretty far gone by that point,” she said. “The Blue Pharjé really did a number on me that night. I wandered off thinking I would find help for you. I’m ashamed to admit I forgot about you. There’s nothing out there by Lands End, just blocks and blocks of abandoned old homes. I kept walking, thinking I would find a clinic or a police station. Of course, there's nothing out there. And then—” She brightened. “Then Maximilian was there. He appeared out of the blue. He’s such a nice guy. He got us a taxi and took me back to his house.”
“Where did he pick you up?”
“I'm not sure. Forty-second Avenue?”
That’s only a few blocks from the ocean. That’s no man’s land. There was no reason for him to be out there. "You don’t find that suspicious?”
“Not in the least. He was a perfect gentleman.”
I let it slide. “What did he do?"
"He took me to his home. It's beautiful. It looks out over Lafayette Park. There's a Japanese garden in the front with these lovely koi in a—"
"What did he say to you?"
"Say?"
"You would've been pretty fragile at the tail end of a blue-out," I said. "Did he suggest anything to you that night?"
"No," she said. "He talked about life with George Drake, a man I respect a great deal. Gannon's father was a visionary. Max said George Drake is thinking about living in Italy for eighteen months. He wanted to know if I would join them."
"That doesn't add up," I said. "Would you?"
"I said I couldn't," she admitted with a pout. "Now I'm thinking it would do me a world of good to get away from here." She huffed and threw up her hands. "I don't know what to do."
"What about Gannon?"
“I was pretty relieved not to hear from Gannon the next morning," she said. "If you think he was violent at Lands End, he would have gone berserk if he learned I'd slept at Max's that night. As I said before, though, nothing happened between us."
“You didn’t say that before.”
She started to speak and caught herself to give me an odd look. “Well, Gannon never answered my messages and he didn’t call me.” She soured as though her water glass held turned milk. “It was like a little vacation from Gannon.”
She went silent.
"Did Max say anything to you in the morning?"
"He was gone," she said. "He's a busy person. Mr. Drake runs a tight ship. If you didn't know, George Drake is Max's employer—"
“I didn’t kill Gannon,” I said. “You see that, right?’
“Now I do. Max sure thought you did, though."
That was what I was hunting for. "Max told you I killed Gannon?"
She shrugged. "He seems pretty sure of it." She pouted and looked away. "He convinced me, I admit…" She added, “It was only you and me out there. Who else could it have been?" She spoke like she was debating herself. "I suppose it was dark out. He might have slipped off the edge.”
“It’s possible.”
&n
bsp; “You sound unconvinced.”
“I am.”
I drank my coffee and dissected Leigh’s story. She yawned and slumped back in the breakfast nook bench. She would be out in minutes. She inserted her memex and murmured something about checking messages.
“What happened to the brick,” I said. “The data brick holding every copy of Detachment.”
The change in subject took her off-guard.
"Did Gannon steal it? Or did you?”
“I don't know where it is,” she said softly.
“Which is it?”
I leaned against the kitchen counter and sipped my third cup of coffee. The cups were dainty and measured, like everything in that apartment.
“Gannon doesn't strike me as the kind of man to get his hands dirty," I said. "The world is his oyster, but he pays for someone else to shuck it open."
“People say all kinds of unfair things about Gannon.”
“Gannon’s death gives you an out,” I said, standing over her. “If the theft of the data brick comes back to you, you can blame Gannon. He tossed you around and bruised you up. And yet you carry the torch for him.”
"Whatever you think of Gannon, he always supported me. He never told me I had to stay home and raise a family or pamper him. And I never once caught him looking at another woman.”
“You can thank your mother-in-law for raising him right.”
“Ms. Chancellor." Leigh said the name with some disgust. "I used to look up to her so much. She's a legend. It was such an honor to meet her. Gannon told me on our first date his mother was Cassandra Chancellor. I thought he was only saying that to impress me—"
"But Gannon doesn't say things to impress you, does he?"
She shook her head.
"Cassandra Chancellor told me you agreed to be her spy on the island.”
Leigh twisted in her seat. "Look, having direct access to the Old Internet was a dream come true. But…I never wanted to spy for anyone."
"And yet you did."
She'd shrunk in her seat, her body compressing in on itself. Upright and rigid, she nodded once.
“Where’s the data brick?"
“I honestly don’t know. I didn't take it. Gannon came out to the island for the New Year's Eve party. When Dr. Clift and Brill weren't around, he was going to wander off to the other cell block where the other servers are kept. There’s no security on the island. There’s no cameras watching. It was just the gray beards, Brill, the chef, and me. None of the other staff are allowed in the main prison house.”
I remained standing over her. “The police might buy that.”
“It’s true. Every word.”
“Dr. Clift might buy it too.”
“He’ll believe me. I know he will.”
“He’ll look you up and down and lick his chops and believe you, sure,” I said. “The problem is, I don’t believe you.”
I pulled a chair over from the dining room table. I pressed in close on her.
“I don’t know exactly how the Old Internet is organized over on the island,” I said. “I know how I would do it, though. Clift showed me there were thousands of copies of the film strewn across the Internet. People had posted copies of the video in different formats. They produced different edits and remixes. People spliced in scenes from Star Wars and Harry Potter. Versions were floating around that, you know—"
I swallowed a bitter slug of the coffee.
"That accentuated my physicality in the film," I said. "As well as my amputation. All those copies would not have been located to a single data brick. They would have been scattered across the servers. Copies of Detachment in North American circa 2011 would be on different servers than copies of the film located in Russia in 2015. There are servers for all time periods and for all continents. Gannon couldn’t have pulled a single data brick from a single server and stolen every copy of the film. As a researcher who studied the film as a cultural event, certainly you would have known that.”
Leigh didn’t bother refuting me now. She stared at me with a distressed, pleading expression.
“In order to get every copy of Detachment on a single data brick, someone had to move them. That person would have to know the inner workings of the storage system intimately. A person on the inside.”
She broke down. She was exhausted from the Pharjé, I give her that, but she was also exhausted carrying all that guilt around her neck.
“Gannon had me do it.” It erupted from her. “He told me to relocate every copy of the film to a single data brick and bring it to him. I wouldn’t do it, I promise, I swear, I told him I would not steal the brick. So the plan was for me to prepare the data brick and he would have it stolen. So I wouldn’t be guilty.”
“His outburst at the party, did he stage it to get access to the data brick?”
“When I introduced Gannon to the gray beards, Clift put his hand on my lower back and told Gannon I was doing wonderful work there. Gannon exploded. It was only a small gesture, Dr. Clift meant well—”
“Clift knew exactly what he was doing,” I said. “Don’t you think otherwise.”
“Well, Gannon made quite a racket and began to get physical with Dr. Clift. Have you met Brill, Dr. Clift’s assistant?”
“I know Brill.“
“Well, don't underestimate him. He practices the martial arts at the gym on the island. When Gannon started to go at Dr. Clift, Brill put Gannon in a headlock and pinned him to the ground. He moved like lightning.”
I leaned back. “That is interesting.”
“Dr. Clift seemed to find all of this…humorous.” She leaned forward. “You asked if it was staged. I think Dr. Clift staged it. To get a rise out of Gannon.”
Like I said: Clift knew exactly what he was doing.
“Well, when Brill released Gannon, Gannon walked out of there screaming he was going to sue the Commission into the ground. I found him outside the prison house steaming. I had to talk him down. I walked him down the hill to the ferry landing and saw him off.”
"You didn't take the ferry with him?"
"I was scheduled to stay on the island another two weeks," she said. "This was before I quit."
"Did he take the data brick in the confusion?"
"No," she said. "I thought he might try, so I checked after he was gone. The brick was intact."
“Tell me why he wanted the film.”
“Don’t you know?”
“I want to hear it from you.”
She took a moment to compose her answer. “The woman in the movie is the wife of our mayor. He’s running for the Senate and Gannon works for his campaign. If anyone connected her to that film, it would be over. It's a tight race.”
I pressed close to her. “I want to know who told Gannon about the film.”
"It was available to anyone on the Old Internet," she said. "Anyone could watch it."
"If they knew what to look for." I lowered my voice. “It was you, wasn’t it.”
She recoiled. “It wasn’t me, I swear. Not exactly. I was more interested in the director. A woman named Cline Mayall-Martin. Do you know her? Oh—" She blanched. "Of course you do. You worked with her."
"Just keep going."
"I reached out to interview her, but she refused every request I made to her.” She swallowed. “And I wanted to interview you, but you were gone. I thought maybe you ran to Mexico or Canada, I don't know, but a year after your trial, you just disappeared. You were very good about covering your tracks."
“Not good enough,” I murmured.
"Gannon was so involved in the campaign, he didn’t have a minute of time for my work. To him, studying the Old Internet was a waste of energy.” She shrugged. "I was okay with that, I suppose. So long as I kept his mother informed on what Dr. Clift was up to, Gannon was happy." She shrugged again. "When she was happy, Gannon was happy."
“Let's get back to that 'not exactly.'"
Bitter, frowning, she couldn’t look up at me. "I did tell Gannon about the film.
It was my research project. I spent two years studying it and the culture that developed around it. The various digital manipulations and the way it spread across the Internet. It was converted into animated GIFs and the audio spliced into digital music—so much of that short film could be re-adapted into other forms. I tried to locate everyone involved with producing the original film. But I never figured out the mayor's wife was Melody Purcell. A man who worked for Gannon, he figured it out."
Suddenly, I knew. "Which man?"
"A man named Aggaroy."
Something inside me popped. “Aggaroy put it together?"
"Mr. Aggaroy was more interested in my work than Gannon ever was. He and Gannon would meet in private at the apartment on Lake Street. When I was there, Mr. Aggaroy always made a point of asking me what I was working on out at Alcatraz. Not prying questions, questions of idle curiosity. I thought he was naturally interested about the Old Internet the way I am. Well, one night, I showed him the film. Everyone else I showed Detachment to, they were disgusted or horrified at what they saw. You know, because—" She froze. "I'm so sorry. That didn't come out like I meant."
"What did Aggaroy see?"
"He just—he was fascinated. One look at the actress and he knew right away. I mistook it, to be honest. I thought he was being, you know, a lech. Ms. Justin was a very beautiful young woman, and when she takes off her clothes in the third act—but it wasn't that." She washed the air with her hands to wipe away the conversation's direction. "He was staring because he knew right away Melody Purcell was Faye Justin."
"And that's when Aggaroy told Gannon."
Leigh said, "Not only that. Stealing the data brick was Mr. Aggaroy's idea."
If the combined data points of this case were arranged like an erector set model of the Eiffel Tower, Leigh smashed the entire structure on the floor and sent the pieces spraying two dozen directions.
“You’re certain about that,” I said.
“I was there when he suggested it. Did I mention Mr. Aggaroy was working for the campaign? I mean, not officially, but—"
