Black's Beach Shuffle: A Rolly Waters Mystery

by Corey Lynn Fayman

  “Oh yeah. They were having a party there last night.”

  “That’s the one.”

  “Well, I don’t know who lives there. Leslie might. I think maybe that’s the one that used to be owned by that guy who ran off with everyone’s money.”

  “Who?’

  “I don’t remember his name. This was about fifteen years ago. He had some sort of computer company. It turned out to be just a Ponzi scheme, though. A lot of folks in town invested money in the company. A couple of doctors I know up at Scripps lost their shirts.”

  “You don’t remember his name? How about his company?”

  “K-Tel or something? Nah. That was the company that made those greatest hits records you’d see on late-night TV commercials. I can’t remember. I was back east in med. school at the time. Leslie told me about it when we were walking around the neighborhood one day.”

  “Hmm. Anything else?”

  “That’s all I know. You working some kind of case?”

  “Maybe.”

  “You need me to report any suspicious activities?” Joe laughed. Even rich doctors liked to play gumshoe.

  “Nah. Thanks. I’ll see you later. Tell Leslie I stopped by. And have her call me if she remembers the name of the guy.”

  “You bet, Rolly. Give us a call. Come out for dinner sometime.”

  “Sure will.”

  Leslie was a great cook, but the thought of sharing dinner with both Leslie and Joe in their home was not all that appetizing. Rolly put the car back into gear and drove the rest of the way around the circular driveway, exited back on to the street. He was going to go home and lie down. He had to think this thing through before he went back to the mansion on the cliffs.

  Guitar Break

  When Rolly pulled into his driveway, his mother stood in the garden, wearing gloves and holding a trowel. She wore her gardening smock—a long t-shirt printed with oversized sunflowers in yellow and black that was tied in a knot just at her knees. Doug and Will, the gay boys who shared the apartment next door, stood across from her. His mother laughed at something Doug said. Doug and Will laughed along with her.

  Rolly got out of his car, waved at them, continued on into his house. He stopped on the porch, picked up his mail. There were a couple of bills and a copy of Guitar Player magazine with a white wrapper folded around it. Bold print on the wrapper warned him this was the last copy he would receive before his subscription was cancelled.

  He threw the mail on the table, walked to the kitchen, and opened the freezer. He wanted something to eat. He hadn't slept much. His stomach rumbled. He had a lot on his mind. A pint of coffee ice cream or chocolate mint would be just the thing for it. But the freezer was empty.

  He looked in the cabinet, found some saltines and peanut butter, grabbed a knife, and stood at the sink, snacking on crackers and Jiffy, drinking water from the kitchen faucet with a cupped hand. It was okay to be poor. He wished there was a way to get rich without getting himself into trouble.

  He sifted through the events of the last twenty hours. This was a very different case than any he’d handled before. It was like reading a song chart without any melody, only the chords. There were a thousand combinations of notes you could use to connect them, but only one of them was the way the song had been written.

  Rolly liked to think that solving cases was like writing songs. Most of his cases were simple blues tunes. You started with the basic structure. Somebody did somebody else wrong. That was the easy part. Cases like that started with the same bunch of notes, the same basic chords, but each client had their own special way of playing it. At least that's what it was like when you were dealing with missing husbands or wives, runaway teenagers. But this case was different. This one was more like a concerto, with an inviolable score written in tiny black notes. The orchestra had started playing before Rolly arrived. All he had was a triangle to play.

  He took a last sip of water, wiped the knife clean, and put the peanut butter back on the shelf. The saltines were stale. He threw them away.

  He walked into the bedroom and lay down on the bed. Getting excited, getting worked up was just the kind of thing that used to lead to drinking, then worse. It was important to keep his perspective on things, bring it all down a notch. He decided to play guitar. He sat up, reached under the bed and pulled out the ES-335 guitar case. A little playing would be good for his mind. It allowed him to ruminate. Something about working through the chords, running a few riffs, helped him see more clearly, set his mind into order. Besides, the band had a gig at Patrick’s tonight. He liked to spend a little time warming up before a gig, something he never would have considered when he was younger, more arrogant.

  He cradled the guitar in his hands, felt the smooth wood, comfortable and familiar. He tossed off a few licks, bent the B string way up to a minor third. It twanged for a split second, then snapped, curling up around his right hand near the bridge. At least it had lasted through last night's performance. He put the guitar down, reached into the case, searching for a replacement. He popped open the small compartment in the middle of the case, sorted through the various strings in their paper envelopes, found one the right size. As he did so, he caught a glimpse of unfamiliar black plastic under the envelopes. His heart skipped a beat. He pulled out all the envelopes. There at the bottom of the compartment lay an item he had never seen before—a three-inch-long black plastic ellipse with a small metal extension at one end. It looked like the kind of gadget that might fit into the slots on the back of a computer. It fit the description that Ricky had given him. It looked a lot like the Magic Key.

  Marley’s Loft

  Marley Scratch lived in a loft on Broadway and Seventh Avenue downtown. He had long dreadlocks touched with a little shimmer of gold at the front edges. It was hard to say what he did for a living, a little bit of everything, as far as Rolly could tell—technical writer, concert promoter, web master, and reseller of vintage toys. He was also a respectable trombone player, and could pull a horn section together in a hurry if you needed one for a high-paying casual gig, the kind where they’d throw you an extra grand to bring along the horn section. Marley knew more about gadgets and mechanical things than anyone else Rolly knew.

  Marley's loft covered the second floor of the Apex building. There wasn't much on the first floor anymore, a used bookstore, a greasy café, and the empty remains of Ace Music, at one time the largest music store in San Diego, where Rolly's father, at the insistence of Rolly’s mother, had taken Rolly to buy his first electric guitar. Rolly had been twelve. It had been an infamous day in Waters family history, a kind of personal Pearl Harbor for all of them, the start of the war years.

  To get in, you had to ring the doorbell on the west side of Seventh, wait for Marley to buzz you in, then walk up the fifteen steps to Marley's loft. It was a real loft, not like the new condos springing up like California poppies on the edges of the Gaslamp Quarter farther downtown. Marley's place was smelly, greasy, a little scary, with huge windows that started about eight feet off the floor and extended another eight feet to the ceiling. Rolly rang. Marley looked out from the window above. The door lock buzzed. Rolly walked up the steps.

  “Maestro Waters, of the silver hands and leather heart.” Marley bowed to Rolly at the door. “We are honored to welcome you.”

  Rolly wondered how old Marley really was. He could be thirty, he could be fifty. His skin was smooth and dark as a brand new Hershey bar, but the wrinkles on the skin at the edge of his eyes indicated at least a little hard time forcing a laugh onto a life's regrets. Hard to tell.

  “What brings you here on a Sunday afternoon?” Marley asked.

  Sunday afternoon at Marley's was always a ruckus of activity, filled with happy, screaming children of various hues. They chased each other around in the big open space, brandishing brightly-colored foam tubes as if they were broadswords. Some of them played video games on Marley's big screen TV. There were several women, as well, of varying ages and relations to the
children. Rolly never asked whose kids were whose. Some were certainly Marley’s. There were usually three or four guys gathered around some electronic gadget in back, taking it apart or putting it back together.

  A tan-skinned boy with auburn hair, about six years old, ran up and hugged Rolly’s leg, held on tight.

  “Hey, little Rufus,” said Marley,. “What'cha doing?”

  Rufus smiled and peeked at Rolly from behind his leg.

  “I've got something I need you to look at,” Rolly said. “I think it’s something for a computer. Is there someplace we can talk privately?”

  Marley turned. “Follow me, Maestro. We’ll go to my private domain.”

  Rolly followed. Rufus grabbed his hand and they walked along the brick wall to the far end of the room until they reached a large desktop, the size of a door, laid over two wooden sawhorses. A computer monitor and other pieces of electrical gear were strewn all about. Marley reached up, grabbed the edge of a gray curtain strung along a section of PVC pipe above them, pulled it closed. Rufus lost interest, let go of Rolly’s hand and slipped out under the curtain.

  “Whattya got for Marley today?”

  Rolly pulled the plastic ellipse from his pocket, held it up in front of his face. “What is this?”

  “That’s a USB mini-disk for a computer. Where did you get it?”

  “Someone gave it to me.”

  “I see. Who might this someone be?”

  “I don't know. That's part of what I'm trying to figure out.”

  “Well,” Marley began, “these are kind of new gadgets. They’re not in the stores yet. I thought I had the only one in town. PC World sent it to me, asked me to test it, write a review.”

  “So it’s something you could keep algorithms on?”

  Marley laughed. “Algorithms? You been studying computer programming in your spare time?”

  “But it is something you could store electronic files on?”

  “Sure, algorithms, whatever. That’s what it’s for. Do you want to take a look at what’s on there?”

  Rolly handed the disk to Marley, who reached behind his computer and inserted it into a slot in the back.

  “There it is,” Marley said, pointing at the computer screen. Rolly followed Marley’s finger. A small Eyebitz.com logo had appeared on the desktop. There was a long set of letters and numbers below it.

  “Is that an algorithm?”

  “No, no. That’s just the name of the disk, maybe some internal tracking number from the factory. Let’s take a look at what’s on the disk.”

  Marley clicked twice on the disk icon and a window popped up. A list of numbered files appeared in the window. There was no apparent sequence to the numbers, but there was one file named “Start.” Marley double clicked it. A message appeared on the screen: “Computer unknown. Encryption key not available.”

  “What does that mean?” Rolly said.

  “It means the file is encrypted. It won’t open unless I have the public key.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s a digital key, basically a big, long number that’s stored on the computer. When someone encrypts a file, only people who have that number can translate the file. If you don’t have the number, you can’t see the file.”

  “How do you get the number?”

  “Well, usually, whoever gives you the file also gives you the number. He can give it out to whomever he wants. That’s why it’s called the public key. Once you have it you can read any encrypted files that person gives you.”

  “Can you open any of those other files?” Rolly said, pointing at the numbered file names. Marley clicked one. Another window popped up. This one was filled with a long set of numbers and letters in rows of pairs.

  “Hex,” said Marley.

  “Hex?” repeated Rolly, wondering if Marley was talking voodoo.

  “Yeah, hex code, that’s what this is. It’s programming code, the guts of a program.”

  “It’s a computer program?”

  “Yeah, or part of one.”

  “What does it do?”

  “Hard to tell until you put it all together. This stuff is pretty meaningless unless you know what the program’s designed to do.”

  “Could you figure it out?”

  “I don’t know. It would take me awhile. Where did you get this?”

  Rolly considered his client’s confidentiality for about two seconds. He needed to protect himself first, not Ricky or Fender or Curtis Vox.

  “You’ve heard of Eyebitz.com?” he asked Marley.

  “The guys with the video data stuff? What’s this got to do with them?”

  “They hired me to find this disk. At least I think this is what they hired me to find.”

  “You planning to give it back to them?”

  “I haven’t decided yet.”

  “Mmm, sounds like a dilemma. Do they know you have it?”

  “No,” Rolly lied. Somebody knew he had it. He just wasn’t sure who it was. Rolly and Marley sat for a minute, thinking things through.

  “Well,” Marley said, “it’s Sunday. How about if I take a look at this stuff tonight? You can have the disk back tomorrow.”

  “Thanks, I appreciate it.”

  Marley opened the curtain to the room. Rufus and the other kids were splashing their hands in the industrial-size sink that stood against the wall. Rolly heard the sound of pots and pans in the kitchen, smelled garlic and onions frying in olive oil.

  “Want to stay for victuals?” Marley asked.

  “Thanks, but I’m playing at Patrick’s tonight. I need to get over there and set up.”

  “All right, I’ll call you in the morning. Have a good gig.”

  Rolly walked down the stairs, got into his car and headed over to Patrick’s. He could’ve stayed for dinner with Marley, but parking in the Gaslamp Quarter at night was a real pain these days, now that they’d made the place respectable, full of upscale restaurants and clothing boutiques. He hoped he could find a good parking spot before it got late, then grab a piece of pizza at Little Joe’s with the guys, Bruce and Gordon, maybe Moogus. He wanted to lose himself in the familiar ritual of shooting the shit with the guys in the band, debating the merits of Clapton and Cray and the Vaughn brothers, retelling stories of road-trip disasters and wild-woman encounters. And he wanted to commiserate with them for the ten-thousandth time about all the miserable musical hacks who’d made it big like they never would.

  Patrick’s Club

  Sundays at Patrick’s were relaxed. Easy. There was just enough of a crowd to keep things lively, but not enough of them drunk to ruin the vibe. It was a neighborly time of the week, mostly locals making the scene. Harry and Gina, the owners, were generally in some sort of recovery mode from the weekend craziness and couldn’t be bothered with minor infractions. They weren’t nearly as tight about managing things as they could be on Friday or Saturday.

  Rolly liked playing at Patrick’s. It felt like his own personal club. The room was small with a dark wooden bar that ran the length of the floor, a worn brass railing along the front, and red leather stools. There were about a dozen small tables. Fifty people would fill up the room. From the stage the entire audience, the open front windows, and the street were visible. A lot of the patrons were regulars who came for the music, unlike most of the clubs in town. It was a real music joint, not just a place for trying to score with the opposite sex.

  It had been a good night. The guys were playing well, paying attention. It was just after one in the morning. A modest crowd still remained as the band launched into the last number, Sam and Dave’s “I Thank You.” Halfway into it, Moogus started rattling the silverware, throwing all sorts of cymbals and syncopations into his beats. Rolly turned around to give him a disapproving look, saw Moogus staring out into the crowd with that ravenous look Rolly knew only too well. Moogus had spotted some woman who was making him stupid.

  It was a drummer’s disease, controllable but never cured. The best Rolly could figu
re was that a drummer was vulnerable because of his position on stage, sitting all night at his kit, hidden behind the rest of the band. All a drummer gets are quick glimpses of women down on the floor—a bare shoulder, a swish of blonde hair, a quick shot of cleavage. The women flash by like the girls in an MTV video, promising glimpses of erotic daydreams. Moogus handled his affliction worse than most. All through the set he’d be scouting the floor for the opposite sex, lining up targets. Then he’d get frustrated, start to lose focus. He’d start pushing the beat and throwing in all sorts of extraneous crap on the tom-toms and cymbals.

  Moogus looked back, caught Rolly’s eye. He shrugged his shoulders and laughed, settled back into the beat. Rolly turned back to the audience. Alesis was there. She was with Fender, at a table just off stage left. He hadn’t seen them come in. Fender waved at him. Alesis gave an encouraging smile. Rolly started his solo. Alesis locked eyes with him. He let it go to his head.

  Before long he was laying out every super-charged rock 'n' roll riff he could think of, pulling off the notes, trilling repetitive triplets, running way up the fret board. It was showoff, hackneyed, completely unoriginal, something he’d committed himself never to be anymore. Worse, it encouraged Moogus, who started throwing out all sorts of drum rolls on the tom-toms again. The audience ate it up.

  Bruce and Gordon went along for the ride, but they tired out pretty quickly. Rolly saw them exchanging the look, the when-is-this-guy-going-to-get-over-himself sidelong glance that every guitar player has seen at least a hundred times in his life. They were ready to put an end to the evening, pack up their gear and go home.

  Rolly made a dramatic gesture with his guitar and wound up the solo. The band finished the song with one of those big noisy endings that doesn’t mean much, except that the evening is over. The audience applauded, let out a few yells, then headed for the front door. You don’t get many encores on Sunday. The audience has to wake up in five hours and go back to work.