The Man of Maybe Half-a-Dozen Faces

by Ray Vukcevich

  “You’d better believe it!” Here at last was the true personality coming out. His fire was like the fire of an evangelical preacher. He had absolutely no doubt that the documentalist who had neglected to tell the user how to quit was among the lowest of life forms. It was not only his pleasure to snuff out such a person, it was his duty. He would send a message that other documentalists would ignore at their own risk.

  “Say you just want to poke around,” he said, “so you fire up the program and you do one thing or another, exploring or following the directions or whatever, and then you want to just stop and go do something else. What happens?”

  “You can’t stop.”

  “Exactly!” he shouted. “So you start guessing. You type ‘quit’ and you type ‘exit’ and you type ‘stop.’ You try control Q. In short, you try everything, and nothing works!”

  “That’s pretty irritating I’ll admit,” I said, “but it still doesn’t seem like enough to kill a person over. You can always just reboot.”

  There was a long silence, and I thought he might have hung up.

  “Are you still there?” I asked.

  “I didn’t call to convince you what I’m doing is right,” he said. “I don’t care if you agree or not. Nothing you can say will stop me from zapping number four. You’ll have to actually catch me to stop me. And I’m not going to tell you how to do that.”

  “But wait a minute,” I said, “that’s no different than your documentalist who didn’t tell you how to stop!”

  “Hey! You’re right,” he said. “Pretty neat. Well, the only other thing I have to complain about is how long it’s taking you guys to find the bodies.”

  “Actually, I haven’t been looking for the bodies.”

  “Maybe I’ll start having them delivered,” he said.

  “Maybe you could bring one by in person?”

  “In your dreams,” he said. “Happy hunting and so long.”

  “Wait!” The more he talked the greater the chance that he would let something slip. “Why did you break into my office to shoot me?” I asked quickly.

  “Someone tried to shoot you?”

  “As if you didn’t know,” I said. I had his attention again, and I was pretty sure from his reaction that he was, in fact, not the guy who had broken into my office, but maybe I could string him along.

  “Look,” he said, “we obviously have a third player in this.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Someone shot at me, too,” he said.

  I waited for him to go on. I waited for what seemed like a long time, but then just before I could make a “please continue” noise, he said. “I thought it was you at first.”

  “Why would I shoot at you?” I asked. “In fact, if I knew who you were, why wouldn’t I just turn you in, collect my fee, and call it a case?”

  “My thinking exactly,” he said. “I’ll admit I was wildly confused at first. But then when I thought it out, I decided it wasn’t you. Nevertheless, it’s just too much to believe that someone shooting at me doesn’t have something to do with my … how shall I put it? My attempts to improve the quality of computer instructions.”

  “I think you must be right about that,” I said.

  “Well, you give it some thought,” he said. “Next time we talk, I’ll be interested in hearing what you come up with. So bye for now.”

  “Not yet!”

  “What is it? I’m running out of helium.”

  “Can’t you postpone that other business?”

  “Other business?”

  “Number four.”

  “Absolutely not,” he said. “In fact, I’m going out right now. I can hardly wait!”

  He hung up.

  twelve

  I rejected one dumb course of action after another and finally came down to the one that most people probably would have thought of in the first place. I called the police. I asked for Frank Wallace. I liked to work alone (well, you know what I mean), but this time I just couldn’t afford to take the chance that I might not be up to it.

  Who’s calling?

  Why lie? It’s not like I could get away with it. My number would be clearly displayed already. I was in no position to make an anonymous tip. I gave the police Sky’s name and the office number. They put me on hold, and I settled back to listen to a Beatles tune whose teeth and claws had been removed. I didn’t wait long.

  Lieutenant Wallace was not immediately available, which meant they would page him if my call was sufficiently important. Could I explain myself?

  I wasn’t sure I could, so I asked for Marvin Zivon. He wasn’t on at this time of night either. I just didn’t think I could go through the case from ground zero, starting with where I fit into it all. I could probably do more good trying to figure out who the fourth victim might be. I said I had information on a current case. I asked that Frank or Marvin give me a call. I’d probably be out when they got around to it. It would probably be too late anyway. I hung up.

  I figured that would be that, but I hadn’t even spun up to a full-fledged panic attack before the phone rang again.

  Marvin must have been easier to find than Frank.

  “Brian Dobson?”

  I peeled off my mustache and said, “Speaking.”

  “Sergeant Zivon.” His official way of speaking tonight made me realize that everyone wouldn’t regard Marvin as a buffoon; in fact, he was probably pretty good at what he did. Maybe I should be giving him more respect.

  “Marvin,” I said, “I’ve got a problem.”

  “The message says you have information on a case,” Marvin said.

  “A guy just called me up claiming to be the killer.”

  “Your Graffiti Killer?”

  “That’s the one,” I said, “but don’t you guys ever surf the net?”

  “Is this a new subject?”

  “Marvin, Marvin,” I said. “You should be following my theories. I passed that Graffiti Killer bit a long time ago. What the killer is doing is killing people who write bad documentation. That’s what he’s saying with the messages he leaves. Tell Frank I told you that. I’ll give you guys that one.”

  “And he called you up? Could you tell who it was?”

  “No,” I said.

  “So what did the voice sound like?”

  “He disguised his voice,” I said.

  “So what did it sound like?”

  “Well, like a guy sucking on helium,” I said. “You know, like a cartoon.”

  “So this guy sucking on helium calls you up and says he’s the killer.”

  “That’s right,” I said. “He admitted I was right about his motivation, and he said he was going to do number four right now. As we speak. Something to do with the documentation not telling the user how to quit.”

  “Don’t take this as a crack, Brian,” he said, “it’s too important. Are you sure you, well, I mean are you sure you know what you’re talking about?”

  I felt suddenly tired. And cold. I hoped I sounded cold. “Sergeant Zivon,” I said. “I decided the right thing to do was call the police, so I called. You can take it from here. I have certain responsibilities to my clients, and I need to get back to those.”

  “Yeah, okay, I had to ask. You understand.” Marvin got down to business. He asked the right questions. I told him what I could. By the time we were done, I thought he knew everything I could tell him about the call. I read him the BOD list. I told him what I could about the four names we knew were local.

  “I’ll send a car around to the addresses we know,” Marvin said.

  “Is that going to be enough?”

  “Brian.”

  “I know. I know. I shouldn’t tell you how to do your job.”

  “More than that,” Marvin said. “I’ll be sending the car. I don’t want them to be running into you sneaking around in the bushes. You understand?”

  “I don’t sneak around in bushes!” I said, but then it hit me that I certainly did sneak around in bushes, not that
it was any of Marvin’s business. Okay, in this case, it was his business.

  Marvin wanted me to stay away from Leo, Lucas, Bernie, and Ramona. I wasn’t sure we could do that.

  “Do you hear what I’m saying, Brian?”

  “Okay!” I could hear the frustration in my voice. I hated letting Marvin hear it. “I’ll leave this part to you. Don’t screw it up.”

  He hung up. I felt like I’d done my duty. I also felt like I’d wasted my time.

  Marvin would send a car to the addresses of the known locals. It probably wouldn’t do any good. Marvin was right about me going out prowling, though. I couldn’t be at four places at once, but there had to be something I could do.

  I pushed my mustache around on the desk with a pencil. It looked like a dead caterpillar.

  Wait a minute, I thought. This negativity is not the kind of thinking that built the Skylight Howells detective agency. I put the mustache on.

  Hey, maybe we could find out which of the four locals committed the sin of not telling the user how to quit. I picked up the phone again.

  I didn’t have Leo’s home number and it wasn’t listed. I kicked myself for not getting it when I interviewed him. I called Challenger. Leo might still be there; in fact the whole staff could be there. It isn’t easy to get computer people to go home at night. You stop paying them, and they just go on working. Amazing.

  The phone rang and rang. I was beginning to think it was probably a matter of policy to ignore the phone at night, but then some guy answered. A moment later he told me no, Leo wasn’t there, and no, he wouldn’t give me Leo’s home phone number, and yes, okay, he’d leave a message on Leo’s desk. If Leo turned up dead before morning, I guessed he wouldn’t get my message.

  I had no home phone for Lucas Betty either. What was with these guys? People could still make themselves pretty scarce in this information age. Maybe elaborate secrecy schemes were the wave of the future. I called Experimental Support Services at the university and got a recorded Ms. Divey telling me no one was home. I hung up. If Lucas were able to pick up his messages in the morning he wouldn’t need one from me.

  I got Ramona’s machine next. She’d changed the message. Today it said, “Wait for the beep then leave a message if you simply cannot contain yourself.” I left another message saying I had information she needed. I doubted she would call me back.

  I called the number I’d chased down for Bernie and got his mom. I told her I was calling about a software bug. She said Bernie might be working in the cave.

  “The cave?”

  “The dungeon,” she said. “The basement, his little world. I don’t go down there.”

  “Can you check?” I asked. “Call down the stairs or something? I really need to talk to him.”

  She sighed a heavy sigh and put down the phone.

  A couple of moments later Bernie said, “Hello?” Too fast for his Mom to have gotten even to the cave stairs? He must have had a phone down there. Come to think of it how else would a computer guy get on-line if he didn’t have a phone line down there? Wireless maybe. A lot of the city was wireless these days. “Hello?”

  “Listen and listen carefully, Mr. Watkins,” I said. “I’m working for Prudence and Pablo Deerfield from the BOD list. I need to know what your last documentation project was and I need to know now.”

  “I was part of the team for the Bumblebee,” he said. “Hey, who is this?”

  “Never mind, Bernie,” I said. “Listen. This is very important. Did you tell the user how to quit in the Honeybee? Think carefully.”

  “The Bumblebee,” he said. “Well, sure. I think so. I don’t know. That wasn’t the part I did.”

  “Was your name on the manual?”

  “Well, no,” he said. “But Mr. Clark said if my work keeps improving it won’t be long before I’m listed right there with all the others.”

  “Who’s Mr. Clark?”

  “The Bumblebee guy,” Bernie said.

  “So, have you ever done one that anyone would know about? I mean that they would know you did?”

  “Well, not a big one like that. Not yet,” he said, “but, hey, lots of people know about me! How do you think I got on the BOD list?”

  I was pretty sure Bernie was safe. Why would the killer skip all the names on the documentation and chase down a kid who didn’t even do the part that pissed him off? The only danger was that the Bumblebee wasn’t the software in question. Maybe Bernie forgot to explain the exit procedure in some other piece of documentation.

  “Think about this, Bernie,” I said, “have you ever written documentation where you forgot to tell the user how to exit the program?”

  “How smart do you have to be to figure out how to quit?”

  “Is that a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “The only stuff I’ve done besides that thing I did for Mr. Clark was released on the net. Small stuff. Instructions for shareware mostly. Programs my friends write that maybe two or three people in the whole world see. What is this all about?”

  “I don’t want to worry you,” I said, which probably worried him quite a bit.

  “Are you the police?”

  “Let’s just say I’m in touch with the police,” I said. “It would be a good idea if you didn’t leave the house tonight.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  “By the way, just what is the Bumblebee?”

  “If you need to ask,” he said, “you wouldn’t get it anyway.”

  Since Bernie was the only one I had managed to contact, I felt a little reluctant to let him go, but after a moment of silence, I said, “Yes. Okay. Right. Well, watch yourself, Bernie.” I hung up.

  One out of four. Not a very good score.

  Marvin had said not to poke my nose in, but maybe I would at least drive by. I mean I could swing by Challenger Video and just look. Cruise by Ramona’s and see if all the lights were off. I got up, but before I was fully committed to walking out the door, I realized there was maybe one more thing to do.

  I sat down again and dug around in the top desk drawer until I found Yuri’s card—the one he’d left with the juicer when he and Prudence had slipped out of my life like thieves in the night. I still had no idea what the two of them had been up to. I should have heard from one of them by now. Unless they’d just moved on to plan B. It was their move, but as far as I could see, they weren’t making any moves. I was afraid they’d cut me out of the loop.

  I picked up the phone and dialed the number on Yuri’s card.

  A couple of rings then a deep male voice with a thick accent—you’d probably call this guy Boris if you got to name him—said, “Evil Empire Software. We know who you are. We know where you live. We know what you like. Resistance is futile. For world domination, press one; for evil laughter, press two; for the department of nefarious schemes, press three; for the division of misinformation, press four; for the workshop of foul devices, press five; for the office of double-dealing, press six; to speak with a secret agent, press seven.”

  I figured I’d better get a person right away and skip the voice mail game. I pressed seven.

  “No agent is available to speak with you.” The voice this time was female. I was given the list of buttons to push again. I wondered if Evil Empire Software had gotten Russians with accents to do these voices in which case the accents would be real, or if the voices came from whoever installed their phone system or maybe their advertising agency in which case these might be actors and the accents might not be Russian accents at all.

  I’d been thinking about her accent as the female voice read me the list of buttons, so I thought I might have simply been mistaken when it hit me that the list had changed. I pushed seven thinking I’d hear her message again.

  “We told you,” a male voice said, “no one can talk to you. For the secret headquarters, press one; to be double-crossed, press two; for a list of heinous weaponry, press three; for the department of despicable plots, press four; to hear a
trocious lies, press five; for evil laughter, press six; to speak with a secret agent, press seven.”

  It was different. In fact the only things I remembered being on the other two lists were the options for evil laughter and speaking to a secret agent. Maybe the whole system was set up like a game—you had to play your way to the person you wanted to talk to. Could making customers navigate a maze on the phone possibly be good business? Well, gamers were weird, you could say that much for them. Maybe there was another number for regular people.

  If this system were indeed a labyrinth, then I probably never would get a real person by pushing seven. In fact, seven might be a false option. That is, there were probably never any secret agents available (well, it did occur to me that the agents might be available during regular business hours—but maybe the hypothetical phone system for regular people might be active then, too).

  Although it seemed to be numbered differently every time, the other constant was evil laughter. I pressed six.

  I heard some evil laughter and another list of options.

  I pressed buttons at random until I got what I believed was a list I’d heard before. That made some sense, the system must be finite. In fact, it would have to be fairly small unless they were willing to devote a lot of resources to it. And why would they do that? I was dubious about the value of this system as a capitalist tool. If I were an Evil Empire Software customer with a problem, I would not be amused.

  I listened to the list again. Yuri was hidden in there somewhere. The options all fell into categories. I decided to follow one until it came around. Plans and such first. I pressed two for the division of unwholesome designs. I listened to the new list, and then I pressed three for the department of nefarious schemes, which sounded familiar. I pressed one for hateful projects, and then I pressed four for the department of despicable plots (now I was getting somewhere!). I pressed five for the office of obnoxious systems and got what seemed to be an actual person. Well, not the person himself, of course!

  “Systems. We’re not in but if you’ll leave your name and number we’ll get back to you.” Beep.

  So I hung up and started over. I followed the devices/weaponry track down to the office of a man named Bob who said I could leave a message if I needed help with peripheral devices.