by Matt Richtel
I contemplate whether I might call the cops. But not before I know a bit more about whether I’m putting Meredith, and our ex-love child, in harm’s way. Hearty says I’ve got twenty-four hours; that buys me a little time to play with.
It takes me two minutes to squeeze into my car and get comfortable, 10 minutes to drive to the headquarters of Sandoval Political Consulting. It’s a single-story open-plan office, some Syrah-drunk architect’s idea of bringing Eichler into the 21st century by making everyone and everything transparent through glass walls that separate the offices. I’ll take old-fashioned cubicles; I like to overhear stuff and couldn’t give a damn if people overhear me. Offices are for guys with secrets and unmet ambitions, two things I hate.
The place is dark, which surprises me. Fred works late, especially now, the eve of a presidential-year national election. We’re gathering and making sense of mountains of data on the electorate, what they want and like, what they will want and like. We’re part of the emerging Big Data industry. It feeds off of, and tries to track and synthesize, billions of fresh data bits, filled with evidence of the human condition, that appear in social networks: fast-twitch media sites like Twitter, caches of anonymous Google searches. A ton of research ultimately backed up with old-fashioned phone interviews. We look to find truths and hope social and economic policy follows them, as opposed to following ideology.
Fred is one of those prodigal engineers with business sense who made it big first in the eighties on hardware, then again in the dot-com boom with an Internet start-up. He tried to run for San Mateo County supervisor a few years back but got disgusted by the insincerity of the political process. So, for a third act, well into his sixties, he’s turning his millions toward monetizing his passion for politics. He’s truly nonpartisan, and so is our firm, almost cynically so, which is why I took this over a job making hoagies. And, when Fred hired me, he promised I wouldn’t have to join him in the high-tech culture of burning the midnight computer monitor. Interview went like this:
Fred: You look like a snacker. The cheese fish are for the customers.
Me: Then why did you call me for an interview?
Fred: You come highly recommended. You’re smart. You’re fair and you’re tough. You can work your way up.
Me: From what? What does the job entail? What are the hours? What’s the pay?
Fred: You want a job or not?
Me: Job.
Fred: Do you plan to hit me if I edit your work?
Me: Not today.
As I disgorge myself from my car in the empty lot, I’m struck that I’m almost more curious about what’s going on than I am furious about being attacked. A part of me is glad to be back in the game, a game with evident stakes. Besides, I’ve moved well past the anger and into the opportunity phase. I’m going to talk to Fred, find out what’s up with this computer thumb drive, track down the guys who did this to me, return serve, then reconcile with Meredith and my as-of-yet-unmet son, and drive off into the sunset in the smart car.
I do have my doubts that I’ve got a son. I figure Meredith would tell me. I don’t doubt that there’s a computer thumb drive with potent information on it. Politics is, obviously, big business. Billions at stake. Who gets elected dictates who gets what dough down the line. So if Fred’s stumbled onto some powerful research, I could guess that someone might want it.
I slip inside the door. I pause. I listen. I’m betting the place hasn’t been this quiet since the day after the midterms. It’s quieter than a Mondale victory party. I look through the maze of glass walls, taking in a prism of shadows. We’re usually a nine-person shop but we’ve stocked up to twelve in the months leading up to the election.
Despite my lowly status, Fred graciously gave me one of the glass-enclosed offices, the smallest. It was more for him than me. He’d come by and sit and we’d chat; or, he’d chat, I’d listen. And he’d sneak a slug of the Dewar’s he kept locked in my bottom right drawer, and I’d tell him it was lucky that he didn’t make the desks made of glass too or everyone would know his secret.
My office is in the back corner. Fred’s is up at the front, right behind the receptionist’s counter. I’m anxious to call Meredith but Fred’s door is cracked open and so I go with life’s arrow theory, namely, follow the arrows. I knuckle rap the door, causing it to squeak and open a bit farther.
“Fred?”
No response.
I push open the door. I’m not sure what I see first: Fred’s safe on the wall behind his desk, open, or Fred, lying at the foot of his desk, crumpled. The grayish moonlight coming through the windows over his bookshelves provides sufficient cover to make out the knife in his chest and the blood seeping across the hardwood. It’s a murder in sepia.
I make a quick start over to him and lean over one of the few nice guys. I don’t need a GED in CSI to suspect the guy is long gone. And then he twitches. A gurgling noise. A hiss.
“Fred.”
Before he reacts further, or I can, I hear the noise behind me. I turn. Behind Fred’s door stands a looming figure. Almost certainly the guy who put the stick into Fred. Not the guy from the Pastime Bar, or his aide-de-camp. Another knockout artist. Some new danger. He and I both stand, four feet apart, then half crouch, assessing, veritable sumo positions.
When it comes to brawling, he’s doubtless got a better resume. The latest notch on his CV is prone behind me, in a death gurgle. But this jerk doesn’t have anything on me when it comes to pent-up fury. I was pissed off even before I got threatened and found my boss lying near dead. And this assassin already used up his sharp object on that attack.
“You want your knife back or do this the old-fashioned way?”
He cocks his head, a foreboding moonlit silhouette. He’s got a long face, horse-like. He takes a step forward. I see something in his hand. Another weapon?
A phone.
He holds up the screen, showing me the light, something I can’t see.
“Your friends aren’t able to answer,” I say. “They’re picking themselves off the pavement outside the bar.”
At the mention of friends, he looks a bit surprised. “Scum got their comeuppance.” Another punk with silky vocabulary. His low voice carries an undercurrent of chuckle.
We hear the siren, and I get it, instantly. He hasn’t called the other thugs. He’s dialed 911. Of course. It worked out perfectly for him. He got into Fred’s safe, killed the poor fellow, and then I showed up, the gift of a fall guy. Nice night at the office.
He pockets the phone. He takes another step forward. I just growl, something way deep, the bad Ezekiel-gene in my heritage waiting a lifetime for this chance to put someone in a justifiable sleeper hold. I can see his plan; he’s going to escape and he’s willing to fight his way out to do it. I’m about to lunge when I hear Fred moan. I start to turn my head, just start, but it’s enough for the guy to make his slip around the door. I’ve got no choice. Obvious priorities.
“Fred.”
I hear the killer escape. I kneel next to Fred. I can hear sirens. They’ve got to be less than a mile away.
“Cavalry’s on the way.”
He shakes his head. His breathing is shallow and fast, like a dog hit by a car. He’s still got that glint in his eye, the one I trusted, but it’s fading into infinity. Then he smiles. Almost toothy. With obvious effort and excruciating pain, he lifts his arm from across his chest and he drops it to the floor. His hand opens. A tiny key skitters from his palm onto the bloody hardwood.
I catch his eye and he seems to acknowledge and implore me, a look including something, weirdly, like victory. “Hang on, Fred.” He doesn’t. He makes a gurgling noise and his eyes roll back. Gone.
I scoop up the key. I know just what it belongs to. The sirens get closer. I’m going to have to work fast.
4
I pause before leaving my deceased friend. I turn back to him, pat the right pocket of his stylish jeans. I feel what I’m looking for: Fred’s cell phone. Might have his most
recent calls. And goddamn if I’m not out of my own prepaid minutes.
I do a quick sprint by the open safe behind Fred’s desk to assure myself that, as I suspected, it’s empty. Fred’s smarter than that. Or was.
Seconds later, sirens nearing, I’m awkward-ostrich-sprinting down the hall. I fling open my office door, working against seconds, skid to my desk. I lean down to the lower left-hand drawer. I fumble with the key. I always wondered why old man Sandoval locked up his Dewar’s. Just figured he was cautious, like anyone in the reputation business.
I fumble around inside the drawer, pushing aside the fine liquor. I see nothing. No thumb drive, no computer file, no folder, or papers. Just the Dewar’s. I lift the bottle, and I see it: a little drive, taped underneath. It’s even smaller than a thumb, at least my fat digit. I palm it, stuff it into my pants with the phone, and jam out the side door, around the side of the building and into my car.
I squirt away in the moonlight, my driver’s door not fully closed ’cause I can’t fold my body inside quickly enough. A block away, I pass a police cruiser, fast approaching, about to discover a dead body and evidence pointing to me as a killer. I’d better find an alternate theory.
Ten minutes later, I’m parking a block away from the Pastime Bar, just where this madness started. I’m flashing a bunch of obvious thoughts: Fred gathered some research that has so much significance to the pending election that someone’s willing to kill him for it, and to threaten the life of a six-year-old boy named Zeke.
More than one someone.
There were the two guys who accosted me earlier, and the guy who accosted Fred to completion. That guy must’ve done some pretty violent cajoling to get Fred to open his safe, only to discover the mysterious computer file was not there. The key to finding the file was somewhere on Fred, and Fred managed to palm it and pass it off to me.
I flash on a memory of Fred once proudly showing me a picture on his desk, a photo of him with six toddler grandkids, three of the kids crying. Fred told me that you’ve got a better shot at getting 50 percent of the electorate to agree with you than you’ve got at getting 50 percent of the toddlers in any given photo to simultaneously smile.
I push the image of dead Fred from my memory and replace it with another recollection, that breakup conversation with Meredith, my ex. I’m stung by something that’s shaken loose from the recesses of my brain: among the handful of reasons she gave me for splitting was that she said that she thought I’d be a great father, but only if I wanted to be. Those were her words, I remember. I had just assumed she heard her biological clock ticking and was baiting me to find out if I’d commit to the next step of our relationship.
But maybe there was one already in the oven. And she didn’t like my shrug response when she asked me about fatherhood. If I had known, would I have shrugged?
I’ve walked into the alley behind the Pastime, and I’m sharing standing space with two fetid metal trash bins and two equally fragrant smokers. They’re inhaling in silence. Springsteen’s “Rosalita” pumps through the back door. I ask one of the smokers, a tall, slump-shouldered lean-to with unkempt curly hair I can respect, if he could ask Nat to come chat with a friend. Everyone here knows Nat, my journalist acquaintance.
While I’m waiting for him to come back, I pull out Fred’s phone. I paw it until I bring up the Internet browser and I search for Meredith Canter, Santa Cruz. Before the search returns appear, Nat does. He’s a head shorter than me, but who’s not, with a confident walk, like a former athlete, a face that would be a little too pretty if not for the slightly pronounced ethnic nose.
“What the hell happened, Zach? I heard you had a scuffle.”
“Nothing Advil can’t solve. Did you get a good look at the guy who came in earlier? Have you seen him before?”
Nat takes me in. He’s doing his thing, which is studying people, and often identifying them and breaking them down by their medical conditions. Like, for instance, someone new comes into the bar and he’ll say: psoriasis, or torn left ACL, or pigeon-toed, or degenerative bone condition, or some nonsense like that. He went to medical school before he became a journalist and he just can’t seem to get past all that trivia he ingested. It’s helped make him one of the most authoritative journalists on how the high-tech lifestyle impacts people’s physiology, and their neurology. But Nat’s penchant for always seeing pathology is almost a pathology unto itself. And, while I generally find it amusing, I’ve got no time for it now.
“Funny you should ask,” Nat says. “Guy had me stumped. For a second, I could’ve sworn he’s got Pickwickian syndrome.”
“Nat, I . . .”
He thinks I don’t understand what he means. “Rare condition. Most people don’t survive it. Charles Dickens actually coined the name. There was something about that guy—a puffiness. Fat pockets that had been emptied out, like he might’ve overcome something as a child. Pretty unlikely, though. More likely that he’s got an autoimmune disorder and the treatment is bloating him, or he’s cushingoid, y’know, the puffy water retention that comes with heavy use of steroids . . .” He pauses. He looks closely at me, realizing something serious is going on. I see he’s focused on my pant leg. There’s a sticky stain from Fred’s blood. Nat says: “You’re not cut. So that’s not your blood.”
I ignore him. “So you haven’t seen him before.”
Nat shakes his head. I nod. No biggie, not unexpected, and that’s not really what I need his help with.
“Do you have your laptop?” I ask.
I’ve got to be among the tiny percentage of San Franciscans who don’t carry a laptop or even own one. I’ve got a desktop, which does the job fine, but no way I’m going back to my Tenderloin flat to find out who is waiting for me with a bat or a knife or a gun or the trifecta. Nat’s in the other 99.9 percent; he’s always packing electronics, having given in to modern journalism in a way that I just haven’t been able to stomach. Or maybe I’m just not cut out for it.
“In my backpack. You want to come in and use it?”
“Would it be okay if I use it out here?”
“Suit yourself.”
He disappears again. I pull up the phone. Google has returned my results. The third one is a Facebook page from Meredith Canter. But I can’t tell anything about her, or see her picture. Apparently, I’ve got to “friend” her first. Hey, Facebook, she’s not just my friend, she was the love of my life, and she may be the motherfucking mother of my child. I still gotta friend her to find out?
Nat returns and pulls his laptop out of a ratty black backpack. I ask if I might sit in my car and use it for ten minutes. He tells me to pop back in and grab him when I’m done.
I squeeze myself into the car, in a darkened parking spot on a residential street, where I can’t fathom anyone could think to find me. I insert the thumb drive.
5
Up pops some kind of multimedia file, maybe it’s a Word document or a PowerPoint, I can’t keep track of all the formats. It’s got a heading:
Then there is an image of a map of the United States. Each state is denoted simply by its shorthand initials, CA for California, OH for Ohio, and so forth. It looks meaningless, surely, on its face, nothing someone would kill for.
I run my cursor over the map, and, when I reach the first state, which is Maine, something happens: a little dialogue box pops up. Inside it reads: US SEN.: Andreeson (D) v. Sonol (R). Below that line, another heading in smaller font: HOUSE SEATS, and then a handful of more sets of names, like Johnson (D) V. Kyle (R), and Fern (D) V. Everson (R).
I’m looking at an electoral map of some kind.
I hear a noise outside the car and see a woman across the street with a barking dog on a leash. She’s glancing my direction, and it takes me a second to realize why. I’m stuffed into this car like a Boa constrictor in a snail shell, and with a laptop perched on my steering wheel. She looks away and keeps walking. In San Francisco, it probably dawns on her, there’s no length someone won’t go to check their l
aptop, no matter how uncomfortable the physical position required.
I return to the electoral map. I notice that each name in each of the elections is underlined, a hyperlink. I click on the first name, Andreeson, vaguely recalling that he’s the Democrat in a tight senate race in Maine.
A new window pops open on the right half of the screen. It takes a second for the format to come into focus. I’m looking at a document with four columns across the top. Left to right, the columns read: DATE, IP ADDRESS, SEARCH TERM DETAILS, HYPOCRISY POTENTIAL.
I increase this window so that it takes up the entire screen.
I look at the first few lines in the document:
The list goes on and on, pages upon pages. Hundreds of entries like this that cause my eyes to glaze over. I’m trying to make sense of it, looking for some handrail, when several entries catch my eye.
I’m drawn to these entries both because of the “hypocrisy potential”—the only ones I’ve seen so far that read “possible”—and because “POSSIBLE” is in all caps. This, evidently, is important.
I’ve covered business long enough to strongly suspect what the “Alt Min Tax” stands for: Alternative Minimum Tax. It’s a pain-in-the-rear tax that can really nail people in the upper-middle bracket.
I think what I’m looking at is that someone has done an Internet search about how to avoid paying this tax. Not just someone, but Dan Andreeson, the Democrat running for senate in Maine, or maybe someone using his computer.
I close this file. I go back to the map. I run my cursor over other states and wind up on South Dakota. Again, I get a dialogue box, with the senate race at the top and a handful of house races beneath.
In the senate race, the Democrat is Fisher, the Republican is Swan. I click on Swan. Up pops another huge laundry list. It starts.
