by James Calder
“Bill?”
I turned at the door. Rupert hurried after me. He thrust the photos and a copy of the letter into my hand. His voice was as earnest as it could be. “When you find out I’m right, you’ll let me know, won’t you?”
I couldn’t give him the satisfaction of a nod. The truth was, he’d sown plenty of doubts about Rod in my mind. I said, “I’ll be in touch.”
» » » » »
Rod was in meetings the rest of the day at Algoplex. A workstation had been improvised for me near his office. I tried to do my job, which at the moment meant searching for Wendy. But I couldn’t concentrate. I kept wondering if Rod really had forced himself on Alissa. It didn’t fit with what I knew of him.
The pictures told a different story, though. The only times I’d seen the same unbridled emotion were the day he yelled at Rita for blowing the lights and the moment on Monday night when he found out Wendy’s true identity. Both incidents involved Alissa.
Five o’clock came and I asked Rod’s assistant to let me into Rod’s office. Rod kept a recliner in the corner where, he said, his best ideas came to him. I told the assistant I wanted to take a nap while I waited for Rod to return. Naps were an approved part of Silicon Valley culture. The assistant let me in.
There were plenty of reasons Silicon Glamour would want to frame Rod: To cover up their own crimes in relation to Alissa and to get back at him for “cheating” with her were two that came to mind. I tilted the chair back and looked carefully at the photographs. They hadn’t been doctored. The letter had the scent of authenticity, too.
The kiss was forceful, passionate. It was hard to read Alissa’s response—most of her body was hidden by Rod’s. Tentative fingers touched his shoulder blade. I thought about Rod’s secret urges and how he might be overcome by a wave of longing for Alissa. Touching her hair, smelling her skin, after so many years in his wilderness of code: Silicon Valley was a cauldron of pent-up desire, the lid clamped tight by disciplines of command language and deliverables. If Alissa gave Rod a glimmer of hope, he may have seized on it and seized on her.
His laptop sat mute near his desk. A fractal screensaver displayed ever-new self-recursive patterns. I considered getting up to snoop into what dreams lurked on his hard drive. Most likely I’d find the same kind of thing as on ninety-five percent of single engineers’ drives in the Valley. It would tell me nothing. He was careful about exposing his desires; unauthorized access would leave me feeling dirty.
I was dozing when he came back. He said his head was pounding and he wanted to get out of the office. I suggested we go for a beer: I wanted him to be relaxed when I showed him Rupert’s pictures.
“Isn’t that what they call the hair of the dog?” he said. “It’s like curing anemia with arsenic.”
We ended up at a Chinese restaurant with semiprivate booths for an early dinner. Rod ordered a Coke and sweet-and-sour pork. I told him sugar worked as a temporary treatment for his hangover. He asked me what Rupert had wanted.
I slid the photographs across the mint-green Formica to him. The look on his face was not quite guilt; regret pulled down the corners of his mouth and eyes, and there was a small twitch of longing at the sight of Alissa. He threw them back at me and said, “Those bastards.”
“Rupert’s got a story that goes with them. Did you have sex with Alissa, Rod?”
“God damn Rupert and Trisha. I swear to you, Bill, if I knew anything about how to get someone killed, I’d do it. They’re worse than pimps.”
“Who’s Trisha—the woman we saw at the end of the hall when we visited Rupert?”
“Yes. She’s Rupert’s sister. She’s the boss at SG.”
I tapped the kiss photo. “Did Alissa enjoy this?”
Rod stared at me, his jaw slack, before he exploded. “What kind of question is that, Bill?”
The waiter, arriving with a steaming plate of pork, jumped back to avoid Rod’s waving arms. I said, “Just tell me straight, Rod, what you and Alissa have done together.”
Rod momentarily lost his ability to speak. The food was slipped under our noses. I had Szechuan beef. Rod stared at his sweet-and-sour. His mouth quivered.
“We did make love. She—I couldn’t stop myself. She said she was in love with me. That kiss—I don’t know, it was a moment when I let myself go. We both did.”
It was my turn to be speechless. A chili pepper stung my mouth. Rod dabbed the moisture from his eyes and said, “I know it seems implausible that she was in love with me. That’s why I didn’t mention it before. It was too . . . ridiculous.”
“She said it in a way that wasn’t convincing?”
He speared a pineapple. “No, it was very convincing. She said she’d finally found a man she could trust. She herself was surprised, but it was true. I can show you little notes and drawings, if you don’t believe me. It still seemed improbable. She’s a woman who could have any man in the world. Why me?”
“Women aren’t as shallow as men. They’re better at seeing beneath the surface.”
“I don’t know, Bill. Maybe I made the biggest mistake of my life.”
“You have absolutely no idea where she is?”
Rod’s eyes opened like saucers. “Are you some kind of idiot? What did I hire you for?”
“A program for which you never revealed all the initial conditions. Garbage in, garbage out.”
Rod’s head sunk. “This is not easy for me. I thought you’d laugh if I told you what she said. She claimed she wanted a life with me but SG wouldn’t allow it.”
I showed him the picture in which he was pulling her back into her car. “Did you two have some kind of fight?”
He inspected the picture, then played with his food. “I don’t know what got into her. We were on a drive in the country. She picked a fight with me and demanded I pull over. She tried to get out and walk home. It was ridiculous. We were all the way up on Skyline Drive.”
I showed him the letter last. As he read it, his features curdled and the blood drained from his face. It was as if a plug had been pulled. His shoulders shook, and after a long pause, he said in a small voice, “I guess that seals it. She was—what was the word?—diddling me. That’s what it divides down to. I paid her to use me to steal my technology.”
“We have no direct evidence she pilfered files.”
“Deduce it, Bill. Why else would she go beyond the requirements of her job? Why add the ‘Girlfriend Experience’? I’ve thought about how accommodating they were to us at the signing dinner, letting you stay. They wanted to lock me into the deal. Now they’ll lower the boom, using whatever they got from Alissa.”
I couldn’t say he was wrong; his theory was too plausible. He halfheartedly ate a few bites of food, then put down the fork. “I’m not going to the club tomorrow night,” Rod said. “Even if Alissa herself is there—especially if she is. I don’t want to be humiliated again.”
“I can’t make you go, Rod. But it’d help us nail her—or whomever.”
He conjured up a twisted grin. “I make good bait, don’t I?” The grin disappeared. “Let’s just drop it, Bill. Let’s admit that I’m a sucker. Focus on controlling the damage instead.”
I let him sit with his emotions. It was not a time to talk him into anything. He pushed his plate aside and jammed his chin down into his palms. The faraway look that so often glazed his features returned. When he looked back at me, his face was vacant. It was the look of a man who’d lost hope.
“Beauty,” he said. “What a trick. I presumed it impossible that someone as beautiful as Alissa—not just her exterior features, but the intelligence behind her eyes, the glow inside—could not be good all the way through. She spoke of children and pets. What she wanted more than anything, she said, was to get off the treadmill and have a quiet life in a snug house with a few trees and a hammock in the back yard. She spoke of me as being the one with her in that house.”
He shook his head. This man who’d been such a believer in the power of the mind now
trusted nothing and no one. “All of it was conjured from her grimoire. An algorithm coded to produce an utterly predictable effect in simple-minded organisms like me. I’d presumed there was a law of physics that made her incapable of double-speaking. Even with the ‘Girlfriend Experience,’ I thought she was doing it as a favor, to make me feel good. All right, so she’s no different than the other operators and schemers in the Valley. And I guess beauty’s like any other code: It can be put to whatever application the owner chooses. It’s as opaque to me as any nonlinear system.”
We sat in silence. There was no point in confirming his naïveté by asking if he’d never seen Barbara Stanwyck in a noir role. The fluorescent lights buzzed. A busboy took our plates. The waiter hovered, then left. I thought back to my conversation with Rupert, to my own suspicions about Rod and how I’d put them to him, how hurt he’d looked. It seemed he was speaking truly to me now.
And yet I thought back to the times I’d felt equally certain of someone and had been ambushed all over again. A shred of skepticism remained; it refused to dissolve now and perhaps it never would. How sad, I thought, I couldn’t give my whole trust to this devastated man. Melancholy as it was, I could not shake the notion that no one in this mess was innocent. It would not be the first time in Silicon Valley.
9
The Cheshire Cat club was not what I had pictured. If it was Alissa’s choice, to match her enigmatic smile I figured she’d summon Rod to a mod place done in minimalist black and white, or else to a cozy English-style pub. Instead we got burgundy velvet curtains, Tiffany lamps, Naugahyde banquettes, and corseted cocktail waitresses.
“Yeah, this joint sure has class,” Wes said as we tucked ourselves into a corner at the end of the bar. It did seem more like Wendy’s style than Alissa’s—unless Alissa was the predator Rod feared she might be.
Rod had not arrived yet, but he had changed his mind about coming. He admitted he couldn’t stay away. A part of him still wanted to believe in Alissa: to believe she would come and that there’d be a good reason for everything that had happened. “I know it’s a long shot,” he’d said to me this afternoon. “But hope plays its tricks on everyone. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, Bill, it’s that I’m not immune to human emotions. It was an illusion that I could think my way around them.”
I’d spent most of the day trying to get more on Wendy, and failed. I couldn’t get past the front desk at Plush Biologics. Connie must have posted my mug shot or something. Rupert continued to claim ignorance. That left me to snoop on the net for Wendy Bevins, of whom there are plenty in the United States. None of them was our woman. She and Alissa might not share the same last name, anyhow.
Wes ordered a Manhattan and faced outward on his stool, blocking me from view. I doubt I would have been recognized, anyway. I wore long, black curly hair, a goatee, shades, and a studded jean jacket. The original intention had been a latter-day D’Artagnan, but Wes said I looked more like Frank Zappa. A mirror in back of the bar allowed me to keep an eye on the room and the entrance. A full-length curtain divided the bar from the dining room. Every few minutes Wes got up to check inside, in case Alissa or Wendy had slipped in the back way.
The stage was empty now, but we were told when we came in that a go-go show would commence at eleven. That apparently justified the three-drink minimum.
“We can bring our Silicon Glamour dates here,” Wes said. “I think I’m in, Billy. They’re setting me up with Erika and a friend on Friday.”
“Oh yeah, this’ll impress them.” Friday was two days away and a lot could happen between now and then. “Did you ever talk about dating or girlfriends with Rod?”
“Sure. He had a wicked crush on someone at every conference we went to, but he was always too shy to do anything about it. It got a little tedious. I wouldn’t think he’d go so far as to pay for it, but maybe he was lonelier than I realized. The girlfriend interface can be a tough one.”
“Alissa told her mother she was giving him the full Girlfriend Experience.”
“Hey, experience is the latest commodity. The Explorer experience—as if you become one by getting into an SUV. You can make a lot of money selling simulations.”
“Well, reality has its ways of biting back. All I need to know right now is whether Alissa’s safe. And then I want to find out if she diddled Rod.”
Wes drained his glass and ate the cherry. “Ready for another?”
“Sure. But I’m sticking to two parts H and one part O, with bubbles.” I checked my watch. “Damn, Wes, it’s ten-thirty. Where’s Rod?”
“Maybe he wants to make sure Alissa shows first, so he’s not stood up.”
“Like she’s going to sit around waiting for him.”
Wes swatted my arm. “Here we go. At two o’clock, headed for the dining room.”
“Don’t be so obvious,” I said. I took off the shades to track her in the mirror. The hair was piled high. The cashmere minidress, the knowing walk: It was Wendy, dressed to be noticed. She made no secret of inspecting the bar patrons.
I told Wes to follow her around the curtain. She came back into my mirror view sixty seconds later. I turned in time to see her exit the front door. Wes sat down next to me.
“No Alissa?” I asked. He shook his head. “Follow Wendy,” I said.
Wes went out the door. He returned, breathless, two minutes later. “She took off in a Toyota. Do we go?”
“It’s too late. Shit. Rod’s still not here. He may have blown it.” I got out my cell phone and dialed him. His voicemail answered. I warned him that Wendy had come and gone and he’d better get over here. Then I turned back to Wes. “You’ll have to give him the bad news when he comes in. Tell him to stay put and eat dinner or something.”
We went back to our drinks. Wes finished his second and I drank my six-dollar soda water. At eleven, a few bass thumps from the drummer announced the start of the show. The band members took their places and the house lights went down. I decided it was safe to turn around. The dancers wore suede outfits tiny enough to have come from the same small patch of steer.
Strobes flashed and the band cranked up the volume. The minutes stretched on. Still no Alissa. Still no Rod. Still no answer on his phone.
After his third Manhattan, Wes plucked the cherry and showed me the stem. “Ever had a girlfriend who could tie one of these in knots with her tongue?”
“You’ve got to chew on it first. Softens it.”
Wes leaned away from me in mock amazement. “You’ve got skills.”
I checked my watch. Eleven-thirty. “Let’s take one more look around, then go,” I said.
We had to dodge beer-slopping patrons to make our search and get out of the place. I held out my hand for the car keys. We’d come in Wes’s Jeep in case Wendy knew my Scout. “I’m all right,” he said.
“You still working on that cherry stem?”
His tongue did a quick inventory of his mouth and came up empty. He gave me the keys.
» » » » »
Rod’s Volvo was in the driveway. The front porch light was on, and a dim glow slanted from the rear of the house. I rang the bell. There was no answer. I rang several more times, then tried the door. It was open.
Wes started to say something. I signalled for him to keep quiet and stay at the door. The only sound in the house was the lonely tick of a clock in the dining room. I took a few careful steps inside. The smell of coffee came down the hallway.
I motioned Wes to close the door. “Stay here,” I whispered. “He might have freaked out or something.”
The living room was empty, the hearth dark. In the dimness I could see that items on the shelves had been knocked over and the sofa cushions were disarranged. Lights came from the bathroom and kitchen down the hall, along with a sound of faint static. I had a sensation again of peering into recesses of Rod’s psyche he wanted no one to see.
“Rod, are you all right?” I said before turning left into the bathroom.
No answer. The sink t
ap was running. It was the source of the static. I turned it off.
The bathroom was a mess. Dirt was spread across the floor. An amaranth plant and its pot—an Alissa item, I was sure—lay broken on the floor by the toilet. The idea came to me that Rod had learned the truth about Alissa and had smashed the plant. A crumpled towel lay next to the shower. I found a nail file next to it. It had made small tears in the towel. The cabinet drawers had been pulled out. Antibiotic ointment lay on the sink counter.
If Rod did this, he was in bad shape. If he didn’t, he was in worse.
I looked into the bedroom. His best shirt, jacket, and tie were laid out on the bed. He’d been getting ready to go to the Cheshire Cat and for some reason had stopped. The chest drawers were open, as if he’d been searching for something. A pair of dress slacks hung on a closet doorknob. The bed was made neatly. I glanced at a pair of books on the bedside table: How to Romance a Woman and Why Sex Is Fun. A bottle of massage oil sat next to them.
I called Rod’s name again as I came into the hallway. He might be in the basement, taking refuge with his computer, if something had made him decide not to come tonight.
But he wasn’t, and the laptop he usually brought home with him wasn’t there, either.
I found him in the other room with a light on, the kitchen. Coffee was splattered over the floor and on the wall. The phone had been ripped from the jack and the line was tangled in his socked feet. The handle of the coffee pot, with some Pyrex still attached to it, was near the back door. Other shards were close by. So was a dented toaster.
Rod was in the middle of the floor, on his stomach. He was wearing only a pair of boxer shorts. His back was a mottle of pink scalds and brown stains, like temperature zones on a weather map. His left arm was crooked so that it touched his waist. A series of cuts marked the arm like a broken alphabet, along with a dark ruby port-colored streak.
In his right hand was a cutting knife. The seven-inch blade was stained crimson. His carotid artery had been severed. Blood had spurted on the floor to form a glistening maroon lake. I could only bear a quick glance at his face. Smears of shaving cream ran down the jaw. The eyes bulged with surprise and the lips were stretched in a scream. The skin was drained a worm-white that told me it was too late to call an ambulance.
