Rascal could protect Dolly from a lot of people, but not once they had been allowed inside the house. That had happened, years before. Dolly never knew why that foul young man had been so “disturbed” that he’d blown himself up with a rudimentary pipe bomb he had been building in his bedroom. Some of her girls even cried when the news got out.
Dolly wouldn’t have expected tears from me. My wife had no respect for my knowledge in some areas of life—every not-for-work piece of clothing I owned was something she’d bought for me. But she knew I’d seen that young man in our house, more than once. She knew I’d lied, cheated, stolen, burned, killed. All in my past, but not erased from my skill set.
Dolly knew I didn’t do any of that work for fun. And she knew that if a roomful of people contained one person who might harm her, and I was short on time, blowing the whole place up would have been my solution.
I knew she was already kicking herself for just saying the name “Benton” to me.
—
There’s always more to any town than its image on a tourist’s postcard.
Who would advertise that the underbelly of their little village is no different from that of any big city? Clean air, pure water, no traffic congestion, friendly people, sights to see—that was the picture they wanted to paint.
But if you were tuned to the right frequencies, you’d know that picture wasn’t so much altered as it was selective—what it would never show was what every spot on this planet has in common: predators and prey.
I don’t mean “crime.” If you read the local newspaper, you’d be so confident of your own safety that you’d never close your windows or lock your doors. But nobody with functioning brain cells would confuse promotional swill with what Parisians would call reportage.
The collective who put Undercurrents on the Internet had built a reputation for telling the truth, and anyone who cared about “news” went there for it. That’s probably one of the reasons for its reputation: not just that it was free, but that it wouldn’t run ads or endorse candidates. “It doesn’t even demand you feed it cookies,” I once heard one of Dolly’s girls say, amazement in her voice.
Later, when I asked Dolly what that meant, she told me that all these “free” Web sites always got something in return, some little packet of information that was worth money to someone. “Data mining,” she called it. “Most kids are so used to it that they set their browsers to accept cookies and run Java scripts, so they don’t have to wait to log on to some site.”
I just nodded.
“Why are you asking me, Dell? I know you have…I mean, you know all about this stuff, don’t you?”
“Only secondhand,” I told her. And that was the truth: Once I’d answered his coded questions, the cyber-ghost who prowled through “secure” networks undetected had helped me many times. First, he told me I would be getting something in the mail.
Not mail at the house: I had to drive almost three hours to pick up a key hidden exactly where the instructions said it would be waiting. I used that key to open a box in a little post office that stayed open around the clock. Not to sell stamps or anything: the only part that stayed open was the area where the boxes were.
Inside that box was an envelope with four more keys. Each one opened a different box—the largest size they had—in that same place. When I was finished, I had four sealed packets, each bubble-wrapped inside one of those Priority Mail cardboard boxes.
Back in my basement, I put all five keys in my little hydraulic press, and waited until they were fused into a single lump. Careful work with a scalpel opened each of the boxes. The four pieces inside snapped together like one of those Lego sets, then became two halves. There was no way to make a mistake; every connector was color-coded. Still, I worked slowly and carefully.
When I was done, I had some kind of little computer. Besides a keyboard, it only had two buttons: an orange disk at top left, and a yellow one at bottom right. Like some kind of fax machine that could only dial one number.
The first time I pushed the orange disk, the screen lit up.
|
I typed in one letter.
|>Y<|
And hit the yellow button. The response was instant; the instruction explicit.
|
As before, I just typed:
|>Y<|
Then I saw:
|
I had to read that a couple of times before I understood that the ghost could send messages to me through our local cable network, but any attempt to trace the source of what I’d receive would be futile.
As soon as I typed in |>Y<| the little screen went dead.
I disassembled the machine. The fused-together post-office keys went into an acid bath. When it cooled, I pulled the container out of its housing by the handle. After dark, I put it into a channel I’d cut into a big rock in the woods behind our house, then poured metal-eating liquid over the whole thing.
—
I would never waste the ghost’s time on anything I could do for myself.
Apparently, this guy who’d said something to Dolly was considered a great catch for the village, a big fish they’d lured in. There’d been plenty of newspaper coverage a few years back. George B. (Byron) Benton was born in 1969, to John and Barbara Benton of Bethesda, Maryland. Graduated from Princeton 1988, then an M.B.A. at the Wharton School in 1990. Worked at Thackery & Associates in New York City until 1999, when he moved to Portland and founded PNW Upstream, a hedge fund.
According to the newspaper’s back files, he had a waterfront house on Lake Oswego—about as upscale as it gets—but he’d visited this place a few times and “fallen in love with life on the Coast.” Permanently relocated here in 2006.
The photograph they ran with the story wouldn’t be what he looked like today. A studio shot, white male, late thirties, stylish haircut, carefully trimmed mustache, very nice suit. Whatever he looked like now, he wouldn’t have that mustache—nobody around here wears one unless he also has a beard in a matching color.
All I could find out about Thackery & Associates was that it was an investment bank with a long, unsullied history. Never had to be “bailed out,” like some with bigger names.
Typing “PNW Upstream” and “Hedge Fund” into the search engine got me the simplest Web site imaginable—the equivalent of a listing in the phone book. But it confirmed the date it was opened, its managing director—Benton—and a street address in downtown Portland. There seemed to be no way to invest, or even to ask about investing.
That was as far as I could go on my own. I activated the machine in the basement, typed in everything I already knew, then:
|>Connect 2?<|
I didn’t know who the cyber-ghost was, much less what time zone he’d be sending from, so I never expected a message at any particular time, unless I asked for a reply ASAP. This time, I did.
—
The response was waiting an hour later, the info all loaded onto the little screen.
I copied it off as quickly as I could, knowing that I couldn’t leave the line “live” for long. And that as soon as I touched a single key, any key, the message would disappear.
|
Then came a long list of names. A couple I recognized, most not. I tapped three keys:
|>Thx<|
…and watched the screen go blank before I took it apart.
Then I sat down and looked over the notes I’d taken. I knew that “verified” connections meant Benton had contacted all the names on that long list using some “anonymizer” program. That didn’t mean they were connected to each other, just to him. Not encrypted, just not easily traceable to any specific ISP.
I took my list upstairs and showed it to Dolly.
“This is a ‘Who’s Who�
� of political power in the whole county,” she told me. “I can tell you that much without even going online. Some of the names I don’t know, but I’m guessing they’re heavyweights—not the kind of people who run for office, the kind who finance those runs.”
“Could you…?”
But Dolly was already banging keys on her laptop before I could finish asking her.
—
“Everything from dentists to architects,” Dolly said, pointing at the screen of her tablet.
“Some small fleet owners, a café—the big one, where they do those readings by local writers—even a bed-and-breakfast.”
“But they all have money?”
“I…guess so. I mean, to get on this list, it’s like joining a club. And the membership requirement would be either money or power.”
“Not the same?”
“I don’t think so, Dell. Not necessarily, anyway. Like, say, somebody could run for Town Council, that’s some power, sure. But if he was just a tool of people who put up the money to get him elected, and he had to do what they told him to…”
“How much?”
“How much?” she repeated my question, making it her own, to me.
“Money.”
“Oh. I guess that depends. This place, it’s like, I don’t know, in a permanent state of détente. There’s hard-core right-wingers, and there’s some just as committed to peace-and-love, even if they have to wage war to bring understanding to the unenlightened.”
“Fringes, then?”
“Fringes with overlap, Dell. If the liberals who write those ‘ban all guns’ letters to the paper don’t actually try and make that a law, the right-wingers content themselves with writing letters calling the liberals a bunch of wimps. Ignorant wimps. See?”
“No. I really don’t, Dolly. You’re saying…what? It’s like some argument in a bar where people call each other names but never throw a punch?”
“Sort of. The really rich people have more than one home—they only live here for part of the year. And the really poor people don’t vote. There’s some businesses that make money, but there’s just as many, maybe more, that are really just…hobbies, like. You know, those stores that sell used books, or the artist studios that don’t sell enough to pay the rent.”
“But even those, they depend on tourists?”
“Sure. That’s why they brought Mack out here. In fact, he’s a perfect example: The liberals say ‘homeless’ like it’s some sacred status, and the conservatives say it like they’re all a bunch of bums too lazy to work. Mack keeps track of them. The homeless. So he’s helping them and keeping them from making a scene outside any of the businesses at the same time. That pretty much sums up this place.”
“So you don’t need money to get into politics?”
“You need some money. Not much. Not unless you have an opponent, and most of the time, you don’t. That’s where the money comes in—making sure everyone knows who their candidate is. No point putting your own money against much bigger money.”
“So why would he say you shouldn’t be running around half cocked?”
“Who?”
“Benton, Dolly,” I said, very patiently. I was calm and soft-voiced, but my wife knows me better than anyone.
“Oh! I don’t know, actually. I mean, it was no secret that some corporation was buying up that whole strip of worthless land. Like I said, it was in—”
“Right. And you wanted to know—?”
“Those are public records, Dell. It isn’t like this corporation was trying to cover its tracks, anyway. The only thing people are wondering about it is why. And that’s just gossip, not some…investigation.”
“Not like whatever you and those girls have tacked up all over the place, then?”
“Dell, it’s nothing.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You don’t believe me!” she said, putting that little pout on her face that she knew always worked with me.
I pulled her onto my lap, put my arm around her, said words I know she loves to hear.
But I didn’t believe her, not for a second.
—
Rascal made a little growling sound.
Dolly hopped off my lap, just in time to open the back door for three girls. I knew there would be more of them on their way, so I went downstairs.
Buying up a tract of worthless land didn’t make sense. It couldn’t be what was underneath it, like that patch of dirt calling itself the Central African Republic where Hutu génocidaires might find more hospitality than in the Congo—provided they picked the winning side.
But I knew the Darkville Rules: When it comes to land, there’s no such thing as “worthless,” it’s only a question of what it’s worth to take it. Or keep it.
And whoever was buying up all the land knew that not hiding himself was a good way to hide his objective. A Judas goat never gets to make up his own mind, so you couldn’t call him a traitor. But the trick worked just the same.
I spent a lot of time thinking about that.
I knew there were ways for any Web site to collect information about anyone who clicked on it. Not a lot of information, probably. But maybe enough to finger Dolly as the instigator, working backward to the source. Maybe this was how Benton had known Dolly and her crew were poking around. Only I couldn’t see why Undercurrents would be cooperating with anyone seeking their sources.
Was he just guessing? Or carpet bombing, covering all the possibilities? Dolly said he hadn’t really warned her off. He was just being friendly, asking her to get all the facts before she made up her mind.
I didn’t believe that, either.
—
“There’s a way to tell if a hedge fund is open to the public?”
“Sure,” the lawyer answered. “Take me a minute.”
Ever since he’d won an acquittal for MaryLou in a trial that had all the elements for national news coverage—“Star Softball Pitcher in School Shooting!”—Bradley L. Swift occupied the top spot on the statewide criminal defense pyramid.
It had been an unwinnable case: MaryLou walked up to the high school’s heartthrob, shot him in the head, put down the pistol, and sat there waiting for the cops. But Swift had proved the “victim” had been the leader of a rape-initiation gang, targeting the school’s low-hanging fruit by sniffing out absence of self-esteem like predatory bloodhounds. And MaryLou had believed her little sister was next in line.
Dolly had used her local network to dig up some ugly truth; I’d used my past to put some heads up on stakes. The town had changed, and so had Swift.
“I’d appreciate that,” I said.
It didn’t even take that minute.
“No. In fact, it even says that the fund is currently oversubscribed—they won’t be open to new shareholders for at least another year after it declares earnings. And, so far, they show nothing but some minor expenses. Not exactly an encouragement.
“You could put yourself on an e-mail list, and they’ll notify you when they’re ready to sell more shares. If they ever are. I figured you wouldn’t want me doing that.”
“You were right. Thanks.”
“You…heard something?”
“No,” I told the lawyer. “Neither did you.”
—
Just one more set of questions for the ghost.
You can put all kinds of security on a Web site, but if anyone with higher skills than yours was looking, your security would be about as effective as trying to dam a river with barbed wire. So I opened up my little machine.
|>HF capital? Share ownership?<|
I didn’t expect an instant answer, so I disassembled the machine and went back to work on something I was building. I could feel Luc nodding his approval of my design…and that old man’s approval never came easy.
It looked just like a golf bag. But I could unsnap the top and pull another bag out from inside it. The outside bag was gaudy, red and white, with some big logo on it. The inside one was black and gray, in a blotch
y pattern. In darkness it had the trick-the-eye quality of the best trompe l’oeil.
One pattern for transporting to and from the job, the other for actually doing it.
The bottom of the workbag was a spongy foam that would safely cushion even a piece of fragile glassware dropped into it. The inside walls were a series of Velcro flaps, set so I could cover the first thing I dropped in with another flap, and close it as firmly as I needed each time. The top of that first flap would be ready to silence the next thing dropped into the bag, and so on, all the way to the top.
I could carry a thirty-kilo load of loot with the shoulder strap, and the contents wouldn’t make a sound.
That would leave one arm free. And both hands.
—
“He followed her here. He says he’ll follow her no matter where she goes.”
“And she doesn’t want that?”
“Dell! Sometimes I don’t know what’s going on in your mind. Laura’s my friend. I was just telling you what she told me.”
“Why tell you in the first place?”
Dolly spun and walked away from me. I expected her usual three steps before she whirled and started in again, but I was wrong—it took four this time.
“I said she’s my friend. Friends tell each other things.”
“If she’s your friend, she knows you.”
“I just said—”
“I don’t mean know you like to say hello to, Dolly. I mean, if she’s a real friend, she knows you. Knows how you are inside.”
“You think Laura wants me to do something—is that what you’re saying?”
“I don’t know,” I said, throwing up my hands, palms out, to ward off whatever she was going to say next. “All I’m saying is, I don’t know how well she knows you.”
“And…”
“And that’s why I asked.”
“Asked what?”
“Dolly…Dolly, just sit down and listen for a minute. I know you really like Cordelia. I’m not saying anything against her. Or Laura. I’m just asking, how does this guy always manage to find Cordelia, every time?”
“You think she…No! She’s a beautician. Or a hair stylist. Or whatever it’s called. But, to do what she does, she has to have a license, okay? She has to register with the state. That’s public information. He doesn’t exactly need CIA connections to look it up.”
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