by Ray Daniel
Dmitri called out, “You are a dead man, Mr. Tucker!”
fifty-two
I squatted in the filthy water under the Swan Boats, trying to hear Dmitri over the rush of the rain. I peeked from between the pontoons, but the Public Garden was empty.
“Are you OK, baby?” asked Carol.
“My arm hurts,” I said. I could feel blood on my triceps and my side. I was struck with an irrational fear of sharks being attracted to blood in the water. It passed. I closed my eyes and listened, holding on to the boat.
“You were very brave,” Carol said.
“I was very stupid.”
“That too.”
“I can quit now,” I said. “I know what happened to you.”
“No,” Carol’s voice faded. “You don’t.”
“Tucker!” It was Nate.
I looked out between the boats. Nate Russo was standing on the shore with three uniformed cops and Bobby Miller. Rain splashed off Nate’s umbrella. He called again, “Tucker? Are you in there?”
I swam out from under the boats and waded ashore. When I reached the grass, I fell to my knees and puked. My expensive dinner splashed across the grass. I was about to pitch into the puddle when Bobby’s strong hands caught me by the shoulders and pulled me upright. He walked me over to a police car that was flashing next to the pond and put me in the back seat.
“Where’s Jael?” I croaked.
Miller said, “She called me and told me where to find you. I called Nate.”
“She saved me,” I said. The scene dimmed, and I heard a distant order: “Get him to Mass General!”
fifty-three
From the taste in my mouth, I expected to find myself in the gutter. My lips were stuck together, and my tongue felt as if I had dragged it through a pigpen. I opened my eyes and saw a blurry head. The head moved and I heard a voice.
I sat up, feeling like crap. I said, “Errrgh.”
Bobby’s bald head reflected the hospital lights. He said, “You lost a lot of blood. But the doc said that was a good thing. All the bleeding kept the duck shit out of your system.”
I wasn’t wearing a shirt, and my left arm was bandaged. It burned where the bullet had grazed me.
“Where’s my suit?”
“You mean the one with the bullet holes? They cut it off you. It looked expensive.”
Bobby surveyed me in the bed. In addition to the bandage around my biceps, I had another bandage on my ear where the bullet had nicked me, and real stitches in my side. I reached up and felt the stitches in my forehead. They were unchanged. My hands were scraped and I had skinned my knee.
Bobby said, “Jesus, you’re a fucking mess. What the hell happened?”
“Your plan worked. They tried to kill me, just like you said, and Jael saved me just like you said. You can arrest them now.”
“Who?”
“Roland, Margaret, and Dmitri—that Russian guy with the machine gun.”
“What are you talking about? Start at the beginning.”
So I did. I told them Roland had turned Margaret’s company into a sales channel for my code. How Margaret had recruited me to help her, and how the Russian guy not only made porn with Alice, but also loaned Margaret the money to save her business, and was planning to sell Rosetta to the Russians.
“It’s convergence,” I said.
Bobby said, “What?”
“Convergence. When different businesses get fused together.” I ticked businesses off on my fingers. “Dmitri has fused drug dealing, pornography, loan sharking, and prostitution into one big business. Then he put a legitimate front on it with programming services. The engineers who make his website probably also work in his consulting business.”
“So how do they get the code out of MantaSoft?” asked Bobby.
“Hell, the whole project fits on a single thumb drive. That’s all it takes to get the code out. The hard part was writing it so that other engineers could work on it. Usually, we have the designer around and we can ask questions. Otherwise the code needs to be very clear.”
“And you say it was all messed up?”
“Yeah, but Dana got me to fix it.”
“That’s why Margaret offered you a job?”
I said, “Yeah.”
Bobby crossed his arms. He breathed in through his nose, then blew it out through pursed lips. He seemed to be getting himself under control. He said, “But you fucked up.”
“How did I fuck up?”
“You should have taken the job.”
“I wasn’t going to help them. I told Margaret to go to hell.”
“Yeah, noble of you,” said Bobby. He pointed at my bandaged arm. “How did that work out? If you’d taken the job, they wouldn’t have tried to kill you. You could have gotten us some evidence. Now all we’ve got is he-said/she-said. I can’t arrest anybody based on that.”
Bobby stalked to the hospital window and looked out into the night. I sulked. He was right. If I’d just told Margaret that I’d take the job, Dmitri wouldn’t have tried to kill me. I’d have been able to package up the code to send to Bronte and then tipped off the FBI. He could have arrested them all even if the show had ended. I would have been in the inner circle.
There comes a time in the debug process where you give up on solving the puzzle intellectually. You’ve tried examining the problem; you’ve tried gathering data; you’ve tried theory after theory and had none of them work. When that time comes, you get desperate and start randomly making changes based on the barest of hunches. I wonder what this will do? I had reached that point. It was time to do something rash.
I told Bobby, “Get me out of here. Drive me back to my apartment.”
“What are you going to do?”
I told him. He wasn’t happy.
fifty-four
It was two in the morning when I got home. Jael was waiting for me in my apartment. She sat on one of the tall chairs in front of the galley kitchen drinking Lagavulin. Apparently, she had developed a taste for it.
I had been expecting a hug when I saw her again. I would have settled for a handshake. I was disappointed on both counts. Jael looked at me as I walked into the door. She said, “I have checked the apartment. It is safe. No one has attempted to enter.”
I said, “Did you pick the lock again?”
Jael said nothing.
“Dumb question,” I said, eyeing Jael’s handbag. “Thank you for saving me.”
“You had put yourself into a dangerous position.”
“I know.” As I talked, I dismantled my pond-soaked BlackBerry. I took out the battery and checked the moisture indicator. It had turned black. The swim in the Public Garden Lagoon had voided its warranty.
“You were drunk.”
“I was.”
“Do you have a drinking problem?” she asked.
Drinking problem? I had always thought of it more as a drinking solution. Alcohol took the sharp edge out of life. It helped me focus on the present, and in a world where I’d lost Carol in the past and was facing a future without her, the present looked pretty good.
I said, “No, I don’t have a drinking problem. I’m just stupid.”
“That is too bad. They do not have meetings for stupidity.”
Jael had just made a joke. I smiled and said, “Hello, my name is Tucker and I’m an idiot.”
Jael said, “Yes.”
“You’re not supposed to say ‘Yes.’ You’re supposed to say ‘Hello, Tucker.’”
Jael sipped her drink and said, “They have made their first attempt. They will not give up now. I will take you to a hotel tonight.”
“Let me take a shower first. My hair feels like it’s full of duck shit.”
I stood in the shower, being careful not to soak my arm. The bullet had just grazed me, but the cut still hurt l
ike hell. I dried off, and wrapping the towel around my waist, went into the bedroom to get dressed. I put on a collared blue shirt and black chinos. Then I called the Hilton, got a room for the night, put my toothbrush in my pocket, and was ready to go.
We walked downstairs to where Bobby was watching Jael’s car. As we got in, he nodded and drove away.
The Back Bay Hilton shares the parking garage with Bukowski Tavern. It was next to the convention center, MantaSoft, Margaret, Roland, and Dmitri. It was a risk to stay so close, but I wanted to be able to get to the Boylston Suites early in the morning. As Jael drove me to the hotel, I told her my plan. She hated it as much as Bobby did.
I didn’t care. I needed closure, and I didn’t want Margaret to get away with stealing my code. I didn’t want the people who killed Carol to live happily ever after. I wanted Roland’s ass to be traded for cigarettes in a federal prison, and I wanted Margaret’s next dinner to be in a cell with an open toilet.
“I’ll do it on my own,” I said. “You don’t need to be involved.”
“I cannot leave you now. Still, this plan is too dangerous.”
“I don’t care.”
“That is what makes it especially dangerous. I can see it in your eyes. Something changed in you tonight.”
I had nothing to say.
Jael continued. “A man tried to kill you. It distorts one’s attitude.”
I looked at Jael, and it was clear that she spoke from experience.
“Yes. It did change my attitude. Now I’m angry.”
“Anger will get you killed.”
thursday
fifty-five
The hotel name tag on Jael’s blouse read Raphael. I didn’t ask her where she had gotten it. If Margaret read it closely, there would be a problem. That was unlikely, so we were ready to go.
This was the only part that I couldn’t do alone. I needed to know Margaret’s room number, and the hotel wouldn’t give that information out at the front desk. We had to improvise. We waited, tucked into a corner of the lobby where we could watch the glass elevators.
“There is still time to leave,” said Jael.
“No,” I said, watching the elevator fill with businesspeople coming down to the lobby for breakfast.
“I cannot protect you if I am watching the Bronte woman.”
“If you are watching Margaret, I won’t need protection.” I pointed at a glass elevator. Margaret was standing in it, surveying the lobby as she descended. I hid behind a plant and said, “It’s showtime.”
Margaret exited the elevator and headed over to the restaurant. I moved to the stairwell I’d be using to climb to Margaret’s floor. I couldn’t use the glass elevators, because the Boylston Suites lobby was a huge atrium. The rooms were tucked into the atrium’s walls, and the hallways were really long balconies that ran around the building. If I tried to take the glass elevator, Margaret would see me.
I sat in the stairwell and waited for Jael. My phone was drying at my apartment, so Jael wouldn’t be able to text me the information I needed. I sat on the third step from the bottom. I closed my eyes and relaxed on the step.
“You don’t need to do this, baby.”
I opened my eyes. Carol was sitting next to me. “Yes, I do,” I said.
“For what?”
“I know they killed you. I can’t let them get away with it.”
Carol got up and stood in front of me. Her black hair framed her pretty face. It brushed against her funeral dress. She said, “So this is all for revenge? You’re going to get yourself killed to avenge me?”
“I’m not going to get killed,” I said.
The stairwell door opened. Carol was gone, and Jael was standing in her spot. She handed me Margaret’s breakfast check and went back into the lobby to track Margaret. The room’s number was written on the check: 1411. I needed to get climbing. It was on the top floor.
Lightning flashed in the hotel’s skylight above me as I left the stairwell, puffing only slightly, thankful for the running I had done along the Charles. I stationed myself away from the edge of the balcony. Just as I had expected, the housekeepers were at work. I watched one as she worked her way down the hallway toward Margaret’s room.
The maid was just finishing up with 1412. I started walking as she moved to 1411. She opened the door and placed her cart in front of it. When she was out of sight, I jogged the last few feet and slipped between her cart and the doorjamb, surprising her.
“Ay, Dios mío!” she said, putting her hand to her throat.
“Oh hell, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you,” I said. “Would you come back later? I need to get some work done.”
The woman looked hesitant. I made an ushering movement with my hands.
I said, “Please.”
She recovered herself and moved to the door. “Yes sir. Sorry, sir.”
“No problem.”
She hustled out of the room, and I closed the door.
Like Dana’s room, this was a two-room suite with a front living room and a bedroom in the back. Margaret apparently considered closets to be optional, and had flung her dress onto the couch. The room was bare. I looked through the bedroom door and saw a laptop sitting on the desk. I’d get to it in a minute.
I looked around. Now that I was in her room, I didn’t know how to search it. Did I start with the computer, or did I paw through Margaret’s underwear drawer as I did Dana’s? Where would the evidence be, and what would it look like?
“I don’t like it here, baby,” said Carol.
“You don’t have to be here,” I said.
“Neither do you.”
“I’m not letting them get away with it.”
“With what? Killing me? I told you to leave that alone. Why can’t you listen to me? You never listen to me!”
“I do nothing but listen to you. You’re dead and I still have to listen to you.”
“You hear me, but you don’t listen.”
“Oh God, here we go. The ‘You never listen to me’ fight.”
“Fuck you. It’s true. I talk and talk, but you’re always off doing your own thing.”
“I’m trying to make things better for us.”
“Better? Better how? I’m dead.”
I started walking toward the bedroom. “I mean I was trying to make things better when we were married.”
Carol followed, her voice rising. “No you weren’t. You were trying to prove yourself. You’ve always had to show that you’re just a little better than everyone else around you. Well, congratulations, you are better. Where did that get you?”
“It got me designing software worth a billion dollars.”
“You’re not designing software now. You’re a bum. Haven’t you noticed that you’re unemployed?”
“Shut up.”
“You let that fucking job take over your life and ruin our marriage. I told you to stop. I told you to quit and run away with me, but no, you couldn’t do it. You just had to prove that you were the smartest asshole in the world.”
“You could have supported me.”
“Supported you? I cleaned up your goddamn code, I worked on your project. You’d think that would’ve gotten me a little love. A kind word. A dinner out. Maybe a present now and then. Instead, I got nothing. I got less than everyone else on that fucking project.”
“Look, you’re hysterical.”
“Don’t you go all hyperlogical on me, you bastard. You always do this. You get me so angry and upset, and you act like you’re so fucking cool. You treated me like shit! You ignored me. Hell, you spent more time playing Ping-Pong with Huey than talking to me.”
Carol was sobbing. I reached for her.
“Don’t you fucking touch me! That’s all it ever was to you. Sex. Sex. Sex. If you were horny, then I got your attention. Take off my top, p
rance around a bit, and suddenly I was more important to you than that fat idiot Huey. A little T&A and you were mine, until you came, passed out, and then went back to work!”
I looked around the room. I needed to search it.
“Look, I don’t have time for this. I have to search the room.”
“Go! Go then, you fuck. Go! Go to work! Isn’t that what you were always good at? Isn’t that how I lost you?”
I squeezed my eyes shut. “Just leave me alone!”
I opened my eyes. She was gone. My heart was racing, and my stomach felt like a fist. She had never gotten it, never realized how important my job was. She had never seen how happy I was at work. I loved her, but dammit, I needed to lead a life. My breath was coming in shallow rasps. I took a deep breath and got to work searching Margaret’s room.
My fight with Carol had shaken me. I needed to do something familiar, so I broke out my Ophcrack USB drive and flipped open the lid on her laptop. It would be password-protected, but if she were running Windows XP, I’d be in there in a couple of minutes.
Then things became very wrong.
The first thing was that the PC didn’t need a password. It came up directly to the desktop. Its background popped into place. Icons ran down the right side of the screen. There were three pictures under the Windows recycling can. No password?
The second thing was the background itself. The computer’s desktop featured a pouty young girl in a knit halter top. Her long, red hair cascaded over her shoulders and between her small breasts. She posed with her flat belly, exposing a virgin, unpierced navel. The screen showed some Greek letters and a red, white, and blue rendition of the Windows icon.
This made no sense. Why would Margaret have a girl on her computer? And why the Greek? As I looked more closely, I realized that the icons also had Greek lettering. I double-clicked on one. It was a picture of another girl, tied to a pole, her arms stretched over her head and nipple clamps affixed to her breasts. Oh, shit! This wasn’t Margaret’s room.
I scrambled away from the laptop and opened the closet. Three striped shirts hung alongside three dresses. I glanced into the bathroom and saw shaving implements, aftershave, and deodorant with foreign lettering. But now I knew it wasn’t Greek lettering. It was Cyrillic. The guy in this room was Russian.
