Dire Means

by Geoffrey Neil

  One day he arrived at Mark’s place, bursting through the door and excited to the point of hyperventilation. He handed Mark a hollowed out novel with a bookmark antennae no thicker than a strand of angel hair pasta dangling from the bottom. Inside was a device that Carlos claimed could capture and reassemble the electromagnetic interference of computer monitors passively. It was the ultimate in undetectable electronic eavesdropping.

  Carlos had Mark turn on a laptop in the next room and told him to open some random programs, browse web pages, and type a document on it for two minutes. Afterward, Carlos connected his device to his own laptop in the next room and played back for Mark every one of Mark’s laptop screens in perfect clarity. Such electronic surveillance in and of itself was not earth shattering, but to do it passively, without any two-way connection to the source computer, was a breakthrough. Carlos had created his invention by building on a little-known technology called TEMPEST.

  “You’re out of control! This is bigger than you know!” Mark said as he high-fived Carlos.

  “No, it is exactly as huge as I thought it would be. Keep this quiet until the patent is finalized,” Carlos said. He took back the mock-book and left with it tucked under his arm.

  Over the next weeks Carlos continued to perfect his new surveillance device and included Mark in its development. He named the device the TellTale. They planned to market the TellTale through their company, with the goal of moving from a service-based business to retail sales.

  Life was on the verge of being as good as it could get for Mark, until the first in a series of misfortunes occurred. He discovered that his girlfriend of three years had siphoned off nearly all the money in both his checking and savings accounts and opened several lines of credit in his name. A misstep on her part prompted a creditor’s phone call to his apartment to verify the purchase of a $2,500 armoire scheduled for delivery to the home of another man. The painful and surprising end of that relationship galvanized Mark’s determination to control the elements of his life. His preoccupation became an obsession.

  A week later, he and Carlos were out on a new computer installation job, finishing their project ahead of schedule and grateful to be pulling up stakes early when Carlos’s phone rang.

  “Yes…What? Yes…Which hospital...I’ll be right there,” he said. His face was pale and his hand trembled as he flipped his phone closed and slid it into his pocket. “Beth and the girls were in a traffic accident,” he said on his way to the door.

  Mark hurried after him. “Can I drive you to the hospital?” he asked.

  “No, I’ll call you!” Carlos shouted over his shoulder as he ran to the parking lot.

  “What hospital?” Mark shouted, but Carlos was too far away to hear. There were twelve hospitals in a ten-mile radius from where Carlos and his family lived in West LA.

  Mark called Carlos’s cell several times during the next hour. He finished up the job, and called again. Carlos didn’t answer. Three hours later, as Mark contemplated driving to some of the most likely hospitals to find Carlos, the phone rang. A sobbing Carlos said, “They’re gone, man. My girls are all gone…”

  Two boys on a joy ride had blindsided Beth’s car, killing her and her daughters instantly, despite the fact that all people in both cars wore seatbelts. The teens had suffered only minor injuries from their frontal impact. Carlos was inconsolable and hung up on Mark after his words deteriorated into unintelligible sobbing.

  Mark rushed to his car and headed for Carlos’s apartment, a five minute drive from his own. Ironically, Mark nearly caused a collision as he stretched a yellow light to shave off precious moments. As he jogged the walkway to Carlos’s front door he could hear Carlos’s sobs coming out of an open kitchen window. When Mark entered the front door, he found Carlos sitting in the middle of the living room floor with his chin on his knees clutching a photo of his wife. He rocked it back and forth repeating, “My girls, my poor, poor girls…” Mark stayed with Carlos on his living room floor that night and did what he could to console and comfort his friend. Mark cried, too. He loved Beth and Carlos’s young girls. They were like family. They called him Uncle Mark.

  Mark’s inability to help his mourning friend frustrated him. His job—their job together—was to resolve problems completely, creating order and satisfaction for their clients. Now they were helpless to do so for themselves.

  Work during the next days was a struggle. Mark shouldered the load of their service calls, insisting that Carlos take time off. Carlos said he would take a road trip to come to terms with the loss of his wife and daughters. “Take it. Go,” Mark had told him. “I’ll cover. You take care of yourself.”

  Six days after the loss of his family, Carlos drove north on Pacific Coast Highway, parked his car on the Bixby Bridge, and jumped. A note in the car contained an apology to his family and to Mark.

  Mark sank into a deep depression. He neglected the workload he had promised Carlos that he could handle. He retreated into his apartment for weeks. Clients couldn’t reach him. He lost his appetite and twenty-two pounds that his relatively thin frame couldn’t afford to lose. He struggled daily to perform the basic functions of eating, dressing, and bathing. Nothing eased his mourning. It was only after six weeks of life-withering depression that the scar of his loss of Carlos began healing enough for Mark to venture out again.

  He kept one of two final prototype TellTales on a bookshelf beside his bed as a memento of Carlos. Further development of the TellTale project came to an end.

  Chapter Six

  IT HAD BEEN two months since Carlos’s death and Mark was on one of his first service calls after returning to work.

  At 8:47 a.m. his car came to a stop six cars from the intersection of Lincoln and Wilshire Boulevards in Santa Monica, California. The predictable rush hour gridlock socked in Mark’s blue Toyota Camry. Ahead, a woman in a late-model BMW leaned forward to within an inch of her rearview mirror, eyes and mouth opened wide, as she applied her makeup.

  Mark turned on his radio for an update on the biggest local news story in years. Seven people in Santa Monica had vanished, one a day for a week. The announcer reported that the first news conference by the families of the missing people was scheduled for 2:00 p.m. that day. Mark checked his watch and then drummed his fingers on his steering wheel, willing the red light to change.

  While waiting, he noticed a well-built black man walking much slower than the other people who hurried across the crosswalk. He wore a black baseball cap turned backwards and a ragged brown dress shirt ripped into a vest, fragments of torn fabric dangling around his bare shoulders. More unusual than the man’s appearance was his slow pace and the scowl he gave to the waiting drivers as he crossed inches from their front bumpers.

  Then he broke from the crosswalk midway and walked between the stopped cars. Drivers’ windows slid up. His scowl never left as his eyes deliberated on each driver.

  Between the first two cars, he leaned to demand eye contact from a driver who avoided it. All nearby drivers watched, following his every move like orchestra members locked onto a conductor. His pace was unrushed, steady, and purposeful. Despite the danger of walking among cars that would surge ahead the moment the light turned green, he didn’t look over his shoulder to check the traffic signal—he knew how much time he had. He peered into the windows of the trapped drivers with the confidence of a rancher inspecting cattle after corralling them in a stockyard holding pen.

  After he examined the first two cars, the man spit and then resumed his inspections of the next drivers. He slid his hand into his baggy pocket.

  He’s going to carjack somebody, Mark thought.

  Four more sets of cars remained before it would be Mark’s turn. The man paused beside a dark blue Mercedes convertible with the top down. He stepped to the front of the car, examined it, and then nodded with approval, the corners of his mouth turned down. Its driver was a white-haired woman, talking on her phone and enjoying some Santa Monica sunshine in her open convertible
before the morning air warmed. As the man went back to her driver’s side door her windows began to slide up—a useless act in the low profile convertible. The man bucked his head and laughed—erasing his scowl for a moment. She lowered her phone from her ear when he leaned over her driver window and grinned down at her. Mark saw the man’s lips say, “peek-a-boo.” He pointed to direct her attention to the side of the road as he said something to her.

  “Dear God, he’s gonna jack her!” Mark said out loud. He grabbed his phone from his passenger seat, placed his thumb on “9”—ready to call for police and then rolled down his window to hear.

  “One dollar! Jus’ one dollar, we outta gas!” the man said loud enough for all nearby cars to hear. He was panhandling with an appearance and posture that were more threatening than needy. A rusted and dinged, gray Chevy Impala sat on the side of the road where he pointed. Its rear end protruded partially into the street from a driveway so that cars in the right lane were forced to squeeze around it. A second man, wiry with much darker skin and a patchy beard sat on the car’s trunk. This thin man confirmed their desperate need for gas by nodding and clasping his hands together in a prayer sign for each driver who looked. A white gasoline canister the size of a suitcase rested on the roof of the car like a taxi ad. The canister was so bright and clean against the weather-beaten, gray finish of the Impala that it seemed to illuminate.

  The woman in the convertible gripped her steering wheel with one hand and reached behind her passenger seat, fumbling for something. She kept her eye on the man who continued to look almost directly down on her from above her raised convertible window. The man reached down into her car and cupped his hand in the narrow space between her steering wheel and her breasts. He said something that made her fumble quicker. She pulled out a checkbook, opened it and wrote in the air as if as if asking him for a pen. He swatted his hand at her check book. She then produced a fist of disheveled dollar bills from her purse and held it out to him. He took the cash and shoved it into his back pocket, spit and then continued his troll.

  The traffic signal hung from a long silver arm, stretched out high over the busy intersection. Only twenty-five seconds had elapsed. Mark knew that between eight and eleven o’clock a red light could last over a minute. This traffic signal had become an accomplice, granting these men a sixty-second, captive, well-to-do audience with whom intimidation could be lucrative.

  The gas-money-beggar reached the next set of cars. Dollar bills pinched between nervous fingers came out of drivers’ windows to be nabbed and tucked into the man’s back pocket.

  When a suit-wearing man behind the tinted windows of his Lexus refused to interrupt his phone conversation, the beggar gestured by pulling an air trigger at the driver and then turned to the car next to him. Another dollar slid through the window of a Land Rover and disappeared without thanks. Mark saw the relieved eyes of the Land Rover’s driver peering into his outside, rearview mirror. The driver’s face showed the relief of having dodged unknown harm—clemency purchased by payment of a small toll.

  The gas-money-beggar continued to the BMW in front of Mark’s car. Mark shook his head and then slapped his dashboard. Oh, don’t fall for it lady, he thought. The woman opened her window a quarter inch and fed a dollar through the slot before the man yanked it through and, in one motion, stuffed it into his pants. He bent over and kissed the woman’s window and she leaned away from the man’s lips—even though the glass was a barrier. His hand came out of his pants empty and he twiddled his fingers to her in a dramatic good-bye.

  Mark’s pulse quickened as he checked the traffic signal again. The bright new white gas can, the southern cusp of Santa Monica’s affluent suburbs, the intimidation, and the dollars flowing into this gas-money beggar’s pocket with each red light couldn’t have been a more obvious con—if not outright extortion. He wanted to confront these thugs. A green light would make doing so more comfortable. It would give him the option of fleeing the stockyard if a confrontation provoked this wrangler to anger.

  The man approached Mark with the same undistracted eye contact he had used on all the previous cattle. Mark returned the stare and kept his window down—hanging a relaxed arm outside to flaunt his lack of intimidation. He stopped beside Mark’s door. “Dollar for gas?” he barked, and leaned almost into Mark’s open window.

  Mark checked the traffic signal—still red. “I’ll buy you some gasoline,” he said.

  The gas-money beggar frowned. “What?”

  “Gasoline. You need gasoline. I’m offering to buy you some,” Mark said. The man stood up and scratched the back of his head as he processed Mark’s offer.

  “Can’t move the car to no pump. It’s outta gas. We just need money to fill the can,” he said. He pointed to his partner who clasped his hands and bowed to Mark on cue.

  “I’ll take your empty gas can to a station and bring you back a couple gallons—unless, you don’t really need gas,” Mark replied, slipping a bit more skepticism into his voice than he meant to. Each time the beggar looked toward the man on the side of the street, Mark used the opportunity for a quick glance at the traffic signal. The eternal light was still red.

  The hulky beggar stood up, interlocked his fingers and straightened his arms in a stretch that flexed his massive pecs and triceps while he considered Mark’s bizarre offer. Mark saw the frayed threads of his torn shirt dance with a sudden breeze and then fall against the man’s huge arms. The man turned and examined the other cars nearby. Mark felt the eyes of all the drivers around him as they, no doubt, wondered if Mark would pay up or be rescued by a green light.

  “Naa, Naa, we jess need a few dollahs,” the big beggar concluded. “Then we can get our own gas.” He held out his hand to Mark.

  “Just trying help.” Mark’s finger pressed the window button and the glass began to slide up.

  “Wait, wait, wait!” the man said, holding both hands up for Mark to keep the window down.

  “Hey, Ty,” he yelled over to the side of the street where the wiry man stood. “This dude wanna buy us some gas wit’ the can.”

  Ty frowned and cocked his head sideways like a dog that hears an unfamiliar squeak. Both men seemed puzzled by Mark’s offer to buy gasoline for men claiming to need gasoline. Ty scratched his neck and shrugged. “Cool,” he said, waving Mark to pull forward.

  The traffic light turned green and traffic began to move. The man stopped the driver of the car behind Mark’s and asked one more car for a dollar for gas. Mark saw the faces of a few drivers as they passed by, many probably tucking their safety tolls back into their wallets and purses. As the emancipated cars passed, the two men talked by the side of the road. The drivers glared at them, some the disdainful looks spilling over onto Mark, parked twenty feet ahead.

  He saw Ty and the muscular accomplice in his rearview mirror. They were in a heated discussion. The traffic light was still green. It wasn’t too late for Mark to change his mind about the gasoline. In fact, getting involved at all seemed stupider by the second. If he pressed his foot on the accelerator he could be rid of these posers—these cons—in a matter of seconds. The scam these guys were running was clear to him, and he felt compelled to make their lie obvious and to call them out on it. His offer to buy them some gas had yielded the confusion that proved they were nothing but cons.

  The muscular, sleeveless beggar’s knuckles rapped on Mark’s window, startling him. As the glass slid down, Mark said, “I’ll pop the trunk, put your can in and I’ll be right back.”

  At the same time Mark’s back door opened. In flew the gas can followed by the wiry man who got in and closed the door.

  “Just put that can in my trunk and I’ll be back with some gas in it,” Mark said.

  “Naaaaa. It’s all good. I ain’t gonna dirty yo ride. It’s only a few blocks. I’ll walk back,” the man said. He pointed his finger forward and lifted his chin for Mark to drive.

  Mark assessed his options. He could tell the man to get out, but then Mark would fee
l like a coward and risk provoking an angry reaction from men who look like they’d have no problem folding Mark’s body small enough to fit into something the size of the gas can. Or he could drive to the gas station, spend a few bucks and end this nuisance of a situation that he shouldn’t have gotten involved with in the first place. He looked back over the seat at the sparkling clean gas can. It wouldn’t hold more than five gallons.

  The big man headed back to the Chevy. Mark eased the car out into traffic with his passenger and the cleanest gas canister in Los Angeles County. In his rearview he saw the big beggar get into the driver’s side of the Chevy. Mark watched him as long as he could—to see if the Chevy moved. It didn’t—at least not while Mark could still see it.

  §

  While driving, Mark’s concern about the situation grew. He considered another plan. Maybe he could ditch the guy at the gas station. After all, if these guys needed gas, what better location to ditch them? Mark’s free ride was more than enough of a handout and a good deed for the day, he thought. But the con game irritated him. He still wanted their ploy exposed.

  “I’m Mark. I heard your buddy call you Ty,” he said, craning his neck to see Ty in the rearview mirror. Ty stared back and only nodded. Mark felt a hint of danger, but he brushed it off after considering that the drive was short and at no point would he be alone with Ty. Besides, Ty didn’t look strong. He was wiry, his scruffy beard was unkempt. His bad grooming didn’t match the clean sweatpants, new running shoes and blue windbreaker he wore.

  Ty’s attitude problem only strengthened Mark’s remorse for getting involved. Was there a chance that these men really needed gasoline? In a city where so many people had a true need for financial help, the thought of two men leveraging the kindness of people to con cash irked Mark.

  During the rest of the drive to the gas station on Wilshire at 5th, Mark made no more attempts at conversation with Ty. He looked back over the seat only once and saw Ty staring at him with the same steely gaze he had seen in his rearview mirror. The odor of alcohol exuded from Ty. Mark expected, but couldn’t detect, any scent of gasoline from the white canister that sat on the back seat.