by Greg Barth
I leaned across the counter and pointed a finger at her. “One of these days, probably someday real soon, you’re going to realize just who I am. And you’re going to shit yourself when you do.”
“Well, there’s no cause for that kind of—”
I was out the door before she could finish her sentence.
I got in the car, shifted it into gear, and we were back on the highway. I handed Chris the camouflage phone.
“What’s this?”
“Timmy’s phone.”
“Oh, no. I’m not watching anything on this thing.” She tried to pass it back to me.
“Keep it. We don’t have to watch it.”
“We should destroy it. I’m on there. You’re on there.”
I took my eyes from the road to glance her way. “Chris, if we get caught, that phone could help you. Think about it.”
“I killed that guy,” she said.
“I doubt that part made the recording.”
She opened the glove compartment and put the phone inside. “We got out of there. Alive. That’s something.”
“It’s like you were an animal,” I said.
“A beast,” she said.
“You’re more like a pretty little kitten.”
I took the entrance ramp to get on I-85 toward Charlotte.
“We going after another one of the brothers?” Chris said.
“No. I don’t want to see another Blake unless it’s Bucky himself.”
“What’s in Charlotte then?”
Nothing was in Charlotte. I-26 would have been a more direct route, but that part of the country, Asheville and Johnson City, were the last places on earth I wanted to go through. I didn’t want to explain to Chris.
“I think maybe I know where Bucky is going.”
“The prosecutor?” Chris said.
“I think so.”
“Are you crazy?”
“Remember, Ira said something about me thinking we had all this time to stop Bucky, but I was too stupid or something to know what was really going on?”
“He mentioned something about a bamboo coon, too,” Chris said.
“Well, he said a lot of things. A lot of crazy things. But he might have given something away. Something we can use.”
“I don’t see how you’re connecting any dots based on that ugly man’s gibberish.”
“Bucky knows something we don’t. Something that’s going to get him in front of Harding before his office opens on Tuesday.”
“And that helps us how exactly?”
“Simple. We need to figure out whatever it is that Bucky knows and we don’t. I’m thinking he knows how to get to Harding over the weekend or on Memorial Day Monday.”
“And going to Charlotte is going to help us how?”
I sighed. “It’s complicated. Get on that phone and see if you can figure out where Harding’s going to be for the next couple of days.”
She attached her charger cord to the cigarette lighter and started tapping away at the screen.
I turned on the CD, lit a cigarette, and put the miles between me and Spartanburg.
EIGHTEEN
“I’VE GOT NOTHING,” Chris said. She’d been searching an hour.
“Keep looking.”
“I’m serious. There’s nothing that’s going to help us. I mean…I’ve found his office address, his professional bio, news articles of his cases—lots about you in there, none of it very flattering, I might add—but nothing that tells me where he lives, where he has dinner, what he’s doing for the holiday. There’s nothing here.”
“There has to be a way,” I said.
“I’m not a computer hacker.” She held up her phone. “And this is not a computer.”
I flipped my cigarette butt out the window. “Then find one of those.”
“A computer?”
“No. A computer geek.”
“Seriously? Like someone close to wherever the hell we’re at on the interstate?”
“Sure. Just ask your phone how to find one. Shit, it’s told us everything so far.”
“Worth a try.” She tapped away at her screen.
After a minute I said, “You get anything?”
“This might work,” she said. “How do you feel about going on a date?”
I laughed. “Are you serious? I’ve already had a finger up my ass once today, and my tummy has blisters from getting fucked in the kitchen.”
“Well, there’s some lonely geeks out there that want dates. A whole website dedicated to making it happen. First thing that popped up in my search. Besides. Nobody said you have to put out.”
“Okay, find one who’s up this late and ready to hook up nearby. Make sure he brings his laptop.”
She pointed her phone at me.
“What the fuck?” I said.
“Whoever he is, he’s going to want a picture.”
I flashed my prettiest smile and said, “Hi mister hacker. Please make sure you take a shower and bring your laptop.”
“Okay, now to get to work,” she said.
“I’m starting to think this might work. You really think you can set something up for tonight?”
“Oh, trust me. The kind of hacker we need will be up and online.”
***
I met Vinton, my hacker, at an all-night coffee shop that catered to a technical campus a few blocks up. We both figured the meeting should at least start out in public.
Chris sat alone at another table, drinking coffee and alternating between a literary magazine and her phone. She looked miserable, but she was being a good sport.
I saw a guy off to himself, thought he might be my geek. He didn’t look nerdy, didn’t wear glasses, and wasn’t chubby. He was slim and short, not much taller than me. He wore a blue polo shirt and faded jeans. Looked like he made some effort with his hair, but it was long enough to look unkempt regardless of what he did with it. Getting a trim probably wasn’t very high on his list of priorities.
I ordered a coffee and waited for him. He kept looking my way, but made no move.
Okay, a shy student type.
I got my coffee and went over to him. I turned my head sideways, raised an eyebrow. “Vinton?”
He stood, extended a hand. We shook.
“Hi,” he said. “You must be Anonymous.”
“Indeed I am.”
“You wanna…” He gestured toward his table.
“Nah, let’s talk outside.”
“Sure.”
I winked at Chris as I went out the door.
She gave me a thumbs up.
I led Vinton over to the car.
“So, you said you need my skills?”
“I do. But you didn’t bring your laptop.”
“Well, no. I figured…I don’t know. Just wanted to make sure things were on the up and up first.”
I grinned at him. “Well, do I look up and up?”
He blushed a bit.
“Go on,” I said. I raised my arms, turned around so he could see me good.
“Yeah. You’re great. And you want to…spend time with me?”
“I do. I need your help with something, and we’re gonna need a private place and your laptop.”
“I’ve got an apartment. Off campus. It’s really small, but it’s close.”
“You get to drive,” I said. I tossed him the keys. He missed.
He picked up the keys from the ground, looked at my car. “For real?”
“Yeah, it’s an oldie, but it gets me where I want to go. Mileage is horrible.”
We got in. He carefully drove us away from the coffee shop. The streets got narrower the closer we got to the campus. An old, cramped, residential neighborhood, mature trees lined the road, massive limbs forming a tunnel overhead.
“You mind if I smoke?” I said.
“Uh…sure. I mean, no. Hey, it’s your car.”
I lit up. “So I need you to help me find a guy. But I don’t know where he’s at.”
“Ah. Like a P.
I.” He sounded disappointed. “You’re looking for an old boyfriend?”
“Oh, no. Nothing like that. Just somebody I want to know where he is.”
He turned in at an apartment complex. We sat there in the dark a minute. I could tell he wasn’t comfortable with me.
“Do I need to worry about telling you where this man is?” he said.
“No. But you do need to take precautions. Search for him in a way that can’t be traced back to you. Can you do that?”
“Sure. It’s easy enough. I won’t use Google and I won’t access the internet as you know it, but I can most definitely cover my tracks.”
“That’s exactly what you need to do.”
“Is this a criminal thing?” he said.
I put my hand on his. “It is.”
“Ah. I see. So this isn’t exactly a date.”
I moved my hand and placed it on his thigh. “It’s most definitely a date, Vinton. We just might not see each other for a while before our next date, so we should make the most of it.”
“Uhm. Yeah. Okay.”
“We need to get started. I don’t have a lot of time.”
He led me up to his apartment. It was a small efficiency. A couple of large desktop PCs and monitors took up much of the living room. A laptop, a Mac, sat on the coffee table. I sat my purse next to it.
He pushed a second chair over to the desk. “You want something to drink?” he said.
“Oh god, do I. This coffee is the worst.”
“Sure. No problem. You like diet or regular?”
“Huh?”
“Diet Coke? Regular Coke?”
“Oh. Just the regular kind. Or whatever you’ve got.”
I sat in the chair. He came back with a glass and sat next to me.
“Where do you want to start?” he said.
“Are you able to trace a cell phone?”
“Sure. Anybody can do that. Private investigators do it all the time. Not exact location, but in the neighborhood. You just go to a site, pay a fee, and—”
“You’ll want to do this anonymously.”
“It can be done.” He tapped at the keys. “Just have to find a site that accepts blind transactions that’s secure…”
I took out the slip of paper with my phone number on it. I handed it to him.
He took the paper. He was making some kind of transaction on the computer.
“I’ll pay you for that.”
“Oh, no worries…let’s see…okay, here we go…”
There was a series of dots running from side to side across the screen repeatedly.
“What’s it saying?”
“Just a second…” He squinted at the screen. “Hmm. Looks like the phone is turned off, or maybe the battery is dead. Last signal was Franklinton, Louisiana. Couple of days back.”
“Can you do anything to locate it with the battery dead?”
“Maybe if I was in the NSA, and it was infected with special software. Maybe. But there’s no way I can get a ping right now.”
“Okay. Well, I thought it was worth a shot.”
“Oh, definitely. But we can try other searches. Tell me what you know about this guy.”
“Federal prosecutor. At least he was. His name is Albert Harding. I don’t know the district, but it’s basically this part of the country.”
“Okay. Let’s see.” He tapped at the keys for a bit. “This him?”
Harding’s ugly face started back at me. “Yeah.”
He tapped a bit more. A picture of me at my trial flashed up.
“Hey, that looks kinda like—”
I put my hand on his thigh, slid it up a bit. I leaned close against him. “Well we know where she’s at, now don’t we, silly?”
He looked at me. Swallowed.
“Shit just got real, didn’t it?” I said.
He turned back to the PC. His fingers tapped at the keys furiously.
“Here’s his office. His address.”
“I know those already. I’m trying to find where he’s going to be the next few days.”
“Looks like the office is closed for the week.”
“You’re fucking kidding me.”
“Here it is. They take the week of Memorial Day off.”
“Yeah. Okay. But where is he going to be? Where does he live? Is he traveling?”
“Well, I don’t want to hack into a federal prosecutor’s office system.”
“No, I can see that.”
“Who is he close to?”
I thought for a minute. “There was this assistant prosecutor. I thought of him as the Little Prick. Harding was the Big Prick.”
“Let’s try that. What’s the Little Prick’s name?”
I was really starting to like Vinton. He looked cute and smart sitting there at his PC in the dim room. “Scott Howard.”
I drank my soda while he did his computer thing. The guy was able to make quick work of it. I was glad. Chris would be tiring of the coffee shop. And we needed to get on the road.
“So, Howard’s out,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“Scandal. He was found to be having an inappropriate relationship with someone that reported up to him.”
“He was always so clean cut.”
“He was playing.”
“Yeah, it’s the sneaky ones you’ve got to watch for. Well, this doesn’t help then. What else do you have?”
“No, this could be it. Don’t you think Scott Howard would know how to find Harding?”
I considered it. It made sense. “Go with it.”
He worked a bit longer. I finished the Coke, crunched on the ice cubes, and watched my geek dig for life-saving gold.
“Check this out,” Vinton said.
I leaned in to get a closer look at the monitor.
“Basically Scott’s whole life fell apart because of the scandal. The woman he was involved with sued the office for sexual harassment. Howard was ousted. His marriage fell apart. Wife destroyed him. Got the kids.”
“Oh that poor little fucker.”
“He wasn’t disbarred. But he was humiliated enough apparently. He didn’t land on his feet.”
“How do you know this?”
Vinton cocked his head, tried to restrain a grin. I loved the energy he was putting out. He was about to reveal a trick. Something he was good at. “This happened fairly recently. Just a month ago, there was an article online about the harassment case.”
“Yeah?”
“Well, people that read these articles can post comments at the end.”
“So?”
“Look at this one.” He pointed at the screen.
I read the comment. “Holy shit.”
“Yeah, this woman used to work with him. She says rumor has it he’s hitting this nightclub, this stripper nightclub, every night it’s open, throwing his life away.”
The club’s name was The Platinum Palace.
“They link the site to the comment.”
“I see that.”
“And then this girl from the club gets pulled in, because of the link, and here’s what she says.”
I read her words aloud. “Yeah this fucking loser is in here every night. Don’t tip worth shit.”
“Does this help?”
“Bring up the address of the club.”
“I’ll print it for you.” He clicked his mouse and a piece of paper ran through the printer on the other side of the room.
“That’s a big help,” I said.
“And there you have it, Miss Anonymous. My special skills.”
I sucked an ice cube from the glass into my mouth and turned to face him. I looked at him in the dim light from the computer monitor. I ran my hands up his thighs.
“Uh…what are you doing?”
I slipped out of my chair onto my knees. I crunched the ice cube between my teeth.
“What is this…?”
I tugged at his pants. “My special skills, silly.”
His pants
slipped down. I worked at his boxers.
“Oh, no…” he said.
I had him out. Leaned in, swallowed the ice cube pieces, and took him.
He mumbled a few things after that, but the word ‘no’ wasn’t mentioned again.
NINETEEN
I TOOK A mouthful of Jack Daniels and gargled.
“I cannot believe you just did that,” Chris said.
We were back in the car at the coffee shop.
I swallowed the whiskey. “Did what?” I rinsed and swallowed again.
“With that nerd. That guy. You know what you did.”
I took a baby wipe from my purse, used the rearview to clean my chin. “First and only date. Had to make it good. Besides, honey, I’ve done so much worse.”
I started the engine and backed out of our parking space. I pulled the printout from my purse and handed it to Chris. “Navigate,” I said.
She unfolded the paper. “A strip club?”
“Yeah. Ever been?”
“Uh…no. Duh. Have you?”
“Like I just said. I’ve done worse. So much worse. Worse than you’d ever believe.” I held up a finger. “But, for the record, I’ve never fried a guy’s penis in a restaurant fryer before. Now that’s some extreme, freaky shit.”
“Hey, you can’t hold that against me. I did that under duress.”
“And you’ve got the neck brace to prove it.”
She sighed. “What a fucking day.”
I’d never heard Chris Friday say ‘fucking’ before. It made me think. “Am I a bad influence on you?”
She took the bottle of Jack Daniels, took a swig, coughed.
“Easy. Your throat,” I said.
“Except for the coughing, it helps.” She took another swig. “Today changed me, maybe. But there’s still a huge difference between you and me.”
“What’s that?”
“I hate men. You don’t. Otherwise you wouldn’t have done that to him. That computer hacker.”
“He was just a normal guy. A student, I think.”
“I hate him anyway,” Chris said.
“Nah. You don’t hate men. You just met a couple of bad ones today.”
“Today was bad, yes. Those guys were going to kill me. But it’s not just today for me. I’ve never liked men, grown men anyway—always been afraid of them. But you? Not you. Even after today, you just…I don’t know. Run off with a strange man. And then you do…you know…that to him.”
