In for a Ruble

by David Duffy

  That’s where I spent the night.

  CHAPTER 31

  Dawn would’ve just been lighting the sky, had there been any sky to light, when they came out. Snow had fallen hard all night, starting about the time I moved the car. Six inches or more now on the ground. I’d been dozing on and off, but you learn to keep one eye half awake. Foos had called a little after 2:00 A.M.

  “Weird shit. BEC’s back online.”

  “You sure?”

  “I’m calling at two a.m.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Could be anything. Technical difficulties. Somebody—maybe Andras, like you suggest—screwing around inside, but they fixed the problem.”

  “Could Andras do this?”

  “Technically feasible. There’s still the question of why.”

  “I’ll tell you this. I’m sitting outside some kind of crash pad he’s got in the next town to his school. I’m pretty sure he’s inside. I know the Russian girl is. Guess who else is watching the place?”

  “He suck blood?”

  “Not mine, I hope.”

  “You got a plan?”

  “Not beyond figuring out what’s going on. And keeping Nosferatu away from the kids, if I have to.”

  “I’ll hang here. Let me know if you need anything.”

  When the door opened, Irina and Andras stopped under the naked bulb just long enough for me to get a look, before they hustled through the snow to her car. Neither looked around nor looked worried. Neither appeared sleepy either. Irina took the driver’s seat, and the BMW backed out and pulled away. I waited for the Escalade to follow, but it didn’t. The BMW pulled into Main Street and disappeared. I couldn’t follow. I couldn’t move without being spotted.

  Wait … and wait some more. Five minutes before the Escalade’s doors opened, and the tall man’s head rose above the car. He wore a broad-brimmed hat and the same overcoat I remembered from Second Avenue. He removed something from the back of the SUV and walked toward the building. A short man got out of the passenger side and followed. He wore an overcoat, no hat, and had a large messenger bag strung over his shoulder. With a quick glance around, Nosferatu used a crowbar to pull down the fire escape ladder. He and Shorty climbed to the second floor, and Nosferatu spent a quick minute fiddling at the window. Then he pushed it up, and they climbed inside.

  I flipped another mental coin. On the assumption Nosferatu’s attention was now focused inside the building, I put the Valdez in gear and drove as fast as I dared toward Gibbet. The road was a mess. The plows hadn’t reached it yet, and the Valdez made its own free-form progress. No other cars, the only reason I didn’t hit any, but we came close to the ditch three times. When not pumping the breaks and spinning the wheel, I told myself Andras and Irina couldn’t be going much faster, but they had a big head start. The single set of tire tracks ahead of me made generally straight progress, an indication they were taking it easy or the Bimmer had all-wheel drive. The tire tracks turned into Martin Lane. They stopped at the door of the barn.

  I left the Valdez by the main road and followed footprints. At the back of the barn, I was just able to reach the sill of a high window. I pulled myself up. The glass was dirty, the interior dark, but parked inside was a 3 Series BMW.

  I dropped to the ground and ran along a well-traveled path through earlier snows across the corner of a field toward the woods. The footing got more treacherous in the trees but I kept up a good pace until I emerged, a quarter mile later, at one end of a Gibbet School soccer field. The footprints led around the goal toward the school’s buildings. A hundred yards in the distance, through the screen of falling snow, I could make out Andras and Irina walking quickly, heads down. Just a couple of prep school kids returning to campus at the crack of dawn.

  I retreated to the woods and ran for the Valdez.

  * * *

  The Escalade was still in the parking lot. I parked in the same spot and slid down in the seat.

  I’d been gone a half hour and sat another forty-seven minutes before Nosferatu and the short man came out the front door. They walked straight to the SUV without looking around. Nosferatu carried a backpack by one strap. Shorty still had his messenger bag. They climbed in and drove off. When he got to Main Street, Nosferatu turned right, away from the road to Gibbet, but that didn’t mean anything.

  Daylight was still trying to gain traction, the snow fell thickly. A good time not to be seen. I got a screwdriver, flashlight, and crowbar from the trunk—the same tools Nosferatu had used. I hooked the fire escape ladder with the crowbar, as he had done. The ungreased iron creaked, but the snow muffled the noise. I didn’t wait or look around but climbed the rungs to the platform and took the stairs above two at a time. An old-fashioned wood-framed, double-hung window with a half-moon lock and plenty of give. I slipped the screwdriver through the crease and pushed the lock around. The lower window opened easily. A blanket inside hung from ceiling to floor. I stepped in, closed the window, and listened.

  Silence. I waited a minute to be sure. The place felt empty. I pulled the hanging blanket aside.

  Pitch black. My flashlight fought darkness down a long hall that ran the length of the building. Eight or ten doors on either side. I stayed where I was for another minute before I tried the door on my left. It opened with the squeak of old hinges. A small, empty room. Cobwebs and dust illuminated by the flashlight beam. Another blanket hung from the ceiling against the far wall, a window behind it. I closed the door and tried the next one. Empty room, the same size, blanket over the window. Same story in the two rooms across and the two on each side after that. Sixteen rooms in all. Two bathrooms faced each other mid-hall. One had two grimy toilets, two dirty sinks and a shower that hadn’t been used in years. The fixtures in the other were new and relatively clean.

  The place had been a flophouse, cheap rooms for rent by the night, week, or month. At some point, business had dried up or the town fathers decided this wasn’t the kind of operation they wanted on Main Street. Probably vacant for years before the kids took it over.

  The room near the new bathroom had been converted into an outsized closet. A half-dozen hanging racks on wheels, holding vintage costumes for men and women with an emphasis on undergarments and nightclothes. Across the hall was a dressing room. Three tables with mirrors, two full-length mirrors on the wall, lots of makeup and wigs. The drawers of two bureaus held a selection of sex toys as well as handcuffs, riding crops, chains, boots, chaps, ropes, masks, and nylons. The room next to that was furnished to look like a bedroom, but it was more a bedroom set, with a video camera on a tripod in the corner. The Sheetrock walls were scratched and marked, roughly used. A double bed against one wall, unmade. A beat up wing chair against another. A desk in front of the third, next to a blanketed window. Laptop on the desk, cable running to the camera in the corner. The camera was positioned to take in both the chair and the bed.

  Three more rooms were set up in similar fashion—bed, chair, desk, computer, camera. Two of the beds were four-posters. A studio for multiple productions, all going on at the same time. At the end of the hall was an open area with a counter and three doors. One door was closet-size. A hanging blanket covered the second with stairs behind, descending to the outside. A rack of hooks by the third, labeled 1 to 16, confirmed this was indeed an old flophouse. Inside, an office with a desk, sofa, table and chairs, a computer on the desk next to a rack of servers. One more blanket over the window. I pulled it back to check the parking lot. Empty except for falling snow.

  The table was littered with a pizza box, beer and soda cans, and a full ashtray. Stale smoke hung in the air. I pushed the butts around with the tip of my screwdriver. Tobacco and marijuana.

  The computer was asleep. I hit a key and it came to life. A Web browser contained the home page of WildeTimePlayers.com. Oscar Wilde himself stared out from the screen with long hair and Victorian frock coat, his arms outstretched, holding a collage of photographs showing bodies, no faces, in various stages of u
ndress. None were outright naked, none were overtly pornographic. None looked to be over eighteen either.

  A menu bar gave me multiple options—SIGN IN, REGISTER, PERFORMANCE SCHEDULE, MEET THE PLAYERS, PAST PRODUCTIONS, MY ACCOUNT. Just like Amazon or Netflix. I clicked on MEET THE PLAYERS and a dialogue window popped up—PLEASE SIGN IN. I clicked on SIGN IN and was asked for a user name and password. I clicked on REGISTER and was asked to designate a user name and password and pay a fee of five hundred dollars. To do that I had to establish an account at ConnectPay.

  I tried the HISTORY bar. Someone had been working the pages. The clock in the corner said 8:06 A.M. I called the office on my cell phone, hoping Foos was true to his word. Six rings before he answered. His voice was grumpy.

  “This better be good.”

  “It’s not. Bad, getting worse. I need a keyboarding bug—pronto. I’m sending you an e-mail.”

  “That it?”

  “We need to check out a Web site. We’re going to want zombies and a straw man.”

  “That bad?”

  “Worse, like I say.”

  “Give me a minute to hook up a zombie. I’ll send the e-mail back through that.”

  I opened the e-mail program and sent a blank message to pigpensboss@pigpensplace.com. A minute later, I got a reply. I clicked on the attachment, which launched itself, installed itself and disappeared. A second later my e-mail and the reply self-evaporated as well.

  “Done,” I said. “Straw man?”

  “How much we need?”

  “Five hundred to open. Don’t know after that. Figure a couple grand.”

  “Hold on. I’m sending you a parallel screen app. Click on the attachment and you’ll see what I’m doing.”

  “Great. Get rid of it when we’re finished.”

  “Why is it you constantly assume you’re dealing with Homer Simpson?”

  I ignored the rebuff—not undeserved—and clicked on his e-mail.

  The financial history of one Malcolm Carver appeared on the screen. He had checking and savings accounts at Citibank with balances of $2,315 and $3,356, respectively. He also had a Citi Visa debit card and an American Express gold card. His address was in Bethpage, New York.

  “He’ll do,” I said.

  “I’ve got zombies lined up in Hungary, Italy, and Indonesia. That enough?”

  “Should be sufficient. Address is WildeTimePlayers.com. Wilde with an ‘e’, as in Oscar.”

  The zombies were an extra precaution. I doubted the Crestview cops had the technology to monitor online activity, but Victoria and the FBI could be monitoring ConnectPay. I don’t know much about the laws governing child pornography, but I assumed we were about to break a few.

  Foos typed in the address. The home page of WildeTimePlayers appeared on the parallel screen I was watching.

  “I see,” he said.

  “It’ll get worse. Malcolm has to register. That triggers the five bills.”

  He did as instructed, creating a username, MalMalware@yahoo.com, and opening an account for Malcolm Carver at ConnectPay tied to his Citi debit card. By this afternoon, his account would be five hundred dollars lighter.

  “Now what?” he asked.

  “Try MEET THE PLAYERS.”

  A new screen appeared with photos of Andras Leitz, Irina Lishina, and three others, dressed—or more accurately, mostly undressed—in the vintage costumes I’d seen down the hall. There was no attempt to hide the essentials here. Andras wore pantaloons dropped around his knees and a codpiece pulled up to his stomach, exposing his genitals. His penis was partly erect. Irina’s breasts showed clearly through a sheer camisole, the hem well above her shaved crotch. The other kids were similarly exposed. Below each was a name—Salomé, Dorian, Algernon, Basil, and Sybil.

  I could almost see Foos shaking his gray-black mane. “Shit, that’s Andras.”

  “Afraid so.”

  “You know the others?”

  “The girl in the see-through is the Russian. I’m guessing the others are kids at Gibbet School.”

  He grunted. “The names are all Oscar Wilde characters, right? Not that it matters.”

  “They’re not Dostoevsky.”

  “You want to see more?”

  “No. But we need to know how bad this is.”

  “We do?”

  “I do. Sorry you’re along for the ride.”

  He grunted again.

  “Click on one of the other kids. Keep it as anonymous as possible.”

  “Oh, that makes it much better.”

  Fifteen minutes later we had a complete picture of the Web site and the WildeTimePlayers’ operation—or as complete as we wanted to get. The Players offered an à la carte menu of content, charging different rates for photos, videos, and “private auditions.” The photos and videos, which set Malcolm Carver back another three hundred dollars for a quick and perfunctory survey, came in solo, duo—boy-girl, boy-boy, girl-girl—and three-way packages. Not much, as in nothing, was left to the imagination. No private auditions available at the moment—they were strictly live and priced accordingly.

  Foos said, “I need coffee. Back in a few.”

  I got up from the computer and checked the window. Still snowing, no action in the parking lot. Growing up in the Gulag, I saw more than my share of depravity. Starvation. Murder. Exploitation. Rape. The worst was babies turning on their mothers, pounding their chest with fists too tiny to hurt, because the mothers were too emaciated to feed them. Forty years later, they still haunt the occasional nightmare. As a spy, I was taught to prey on human weakness—psychological, emotional, sexual, professional, financial. I don’t harbor many illusions, the world is an ugly place, and I can’t say I felt any particular shock or outrage at what we’d seen. But in a place I didn’t want to be, couldn’t wait to get out of, in the middle of a northeast blizzard, I tried to fight off a profound depression. It wasn’t just the sleaze. Porn by definition involves exploitation. These kids, who had everything, were exploiting themselves, or each other, or both. They wrapped their brand with an ersatz Victorian theatrical veneer and convinced themselves that somehow this made it all okay—a good or productive or funny way to spend their time. For what? The money? That explanation still didn’t work, and I couldn’t see one that did. I’d dealt with lots of twisted people with fucked-up motives, but it was beyond my ability to imagine where and how these kids had gone so far off the rails. I don’t know how much depravity Foos encountered as a California-raised child genius, but he’s one levelheaded dude, as they say these days. Even across the ether, I could feel the Web site sucking his energy.

  I returned to the computer.

  “You back?”

  “Yeah.”

  He said, “You think Leitz has any idea?”

  “Nope.”

  “You gonna tell him?”

  “That’s one of many questions I can’t deal with right now. I gotta get out of here.”

  “I’ll clean up the electronic trail.”

  “Check something first—recent activity on these servers, between seven and eight this morning.”

  “Hang on.”

  The screen in front of me filled with lines of computer code, which scrolled, flashed, disappeared, flashed and scrolled again.

  Foos said, “Somebody spent the better part of an hour looking for outgoing activity. They found it and copied it.”

  “Can you tell what it is?”

  “It’ll take a while.”

  “Do it. I’ll call once I get out of here.”

  “On it.”

  I put the computer to sleep, wiped off any surfaces I’d touched, pulled the hanging blanket in the reception area aside, took a final look around and started down the stairs.

  If I’d come in the front door, I would have missed it. A strand of monofilament stretched across the stairwell, third step from the bottom, ankle level. It shone with the dancing dust against the light outside the door. Coming in the other way, no light behind …

  M
y flashlight beam tracked the strand through a staple in the wall back up the stairs.

  Scanning each step, I reclimbed the stairs. Another strand of monofilament across the second from the top, in case whoever came in missed the first one. I’d chanced to step over it on the way down. I stepped over it again back to the lobby and followed both strands to the closet. They ran under the door. I reached for the knob and stopped.

  Options. I was looking at an obvious booby-trap, Nosferatu the trapper. He could have rigged the closet door as well. But he expected whoever came up the stairs to trip the string. Still …

  I took out my phone and called Foos.

  “Update. Activate the zombies and download everything you can from the WildeTime servers.”

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah, but Nosferatu’s wired this place to blow. I’m now a one-man bomb squad, so if I don’t call back…”

  “Pig Pen will mourn.”

  “He’s in my will. How long you need for the downloading?”

  “Wait a minute.”

  “Waiting may not be a good idea here.”

  “Right. Lots of data. Terabytes. Few hours minimum.”

  “I’ll buy you as much time as possible.”

  “Keep me posted.”

  “If I can.”

  I went back through the space, carefully this time, opening every door, looking in every corner. Every hair on my back stood straight up—all telling me to get out while I could. I tried not to listen.

  I found four wastebaskets in four bedroom closets, all filled with gasoline. The fifth closet held the kind of five-gallon can you get at any gas station. It was half full.

  Nosferatu had improvised. He’d set the trap to kill the next person who entered, presumably one of the kids, then burn the place to the ground. Why? Time enough to worry about that later—or so I hoped.

  I moved the five-gallon can to the working bathroom. I filled it from one of the trash cans and carried it out to the Valdez, careful to avoid both tripwires, and poured the contents into the tank. A messy operation, environmentally incorrect, but nobody would die. Two more can-fulls, two more trips to the car. One more survey of the space. No more improvised Molotov cocktails. Still the closet door to deal with.