The Man of Maybe Half-a-Dozen Faces

by Ray Vukcevich

  Frank looked like he was working himself up to a really big explosion, but then he turned sharply and stomped off for the door. “Just bring him.”

  So we went downtown.

  So to speak. We were already downtown. My office is downtown. The police station is downtown. Most of the stuff in my life is downtown.

  At the police station, Frank put me on a pink plastic bench and disappeared.

  Ten minutes later, Marvin brought me a little paper cone of water. “This won’t take long once he gets started.”

  “I don’t like the sound of that.”

  “Relax, Brian,” he said.

  Frank made me wait on that bench for over an hour.

  At one point a guy with very short hair and a thin tie glanced at me as he walked by. Then he stopped and looked back over his shoulder at me. A little while later I saw him talking to Marvin. They both kept glancing my way, which made me very nervous.

  Before I could find out what all of that was about, Frank poked his head out of his office and called me in. Once inside he left me standing in front of his desk while he sat down and riffled through some papers.

  I wasn’t willing to play that game. I took a seat and waited him out.

  We went over everything one more time. The call. What Prudence Deerfield expected me to do. What I’d found out so far. Everything. It was all old stuff. I’d either said it all on-line or I’d told it to Marvin. From the way Frank kept checking out the papers in a file folder, I thought he knew it was old ground, too.

  He was just hassling me.

  Like old times.

  Well, not just like old times. This time I kept my cool. I wouldn’t be slouching home with a bloody nose today.

  I learned a few things, too. Nathan Ivanovich, like the others, had been strangled with a cable you might use to hook your printer to your computer. The words on the body were written with a fine tip felt pen.

  I decided Frank knew something about Pablo I didn’t know. He danced around it, but he always came back to it—the big question was where was Pablo Deerfield?

  I didn’t know, and I finally convinced Frank I didn’t know. He cut me loose.

  I figured Prudence would be gone by the time I got back to the office, and I figured right.

  At least she’d left a note. “Yuri called. Meet us at eight in The Rubber Room.”

  fourteen

  “We’ve decided to let the beans out of the bag,” Prudence said as soon as I’d settled into a chair at their table.

  Yuri rolled his eyes at her.

  “What?” she said.

  “It’s about time,” I said. I glanced around for someone to bring me a drink.

  The Rubber Room, in spite of the many off-color remarks you could make about its name, was a posh lounge, dim but not smoky, hooked on to one of the best fish places in town. I’ve heard Herman Goodwin say that when he told his wife he was thinking of opening a fish restaurant, she said, “Better you should check yourself into a rubber room.” The restaurant itself was called Goodwin’s Fish House.

  I got the attention of a young woman with a tray, and she hurried over to get my drink order. Ordinarily this would not be a choice point. I’d just order a scotch (neat) and that would be that, but lately I’d been decreasing the alcohol and increasing the mix in my drinks. Mostly the mix was juice. I ordered a screwdriver.

  “Does that mean you’ve been using the juice machine?” Yuri asked.

  “You can’t have it back,” I said.

  “We brought it for you!” he said. “We’re finding in Russia that drinking lots of juice helps with … er, well, with problems like ours. I have always meant to try it myself.”

  “I do have a lot more energy,” I said, and it was true. The last few days of juice and megavitamins had left me feeling like I could jump over buildings.

  “You look much better,” Prudence said.

  She was still wearing the hippie dress she’d had on that afternoon, but she had done away with the straw hat. Yuri was wearing a dark suit and red tie. I’d never seen him in a suit. He looked official in his business attire, like someone you should pay attention to.

  The server brought my drink and Yuri told her to put it on his tab and she smiled and went away. Yuri raised his own glass and spoke in Russian. I didn’t ask, just raised my own glass, and the three of us toasted something and drank.

  “So what about the beans?” I asked.

  “First, Yuri should tell you about chechyotka,” Prudence said.

  The Russian word for tap dancing.

  “I’d sort of hoped you were going to tell me all the things you’ve been hiding from me.”

  He pulled a small notebook out of his shirt pocket and wrote something. He ripped out the page, and pushed it across the table to me.

  I took a look at the single word written on the page.

  YeYëTKa

  “That’s the way we spell chechyotka in the Russian alphabet,” he said.

  I saw the connection right away. The name of the Russian remailer was from the first three letters of the Russian word for tap dancing. “Why just the first three letters?”

  “The committee claimed the whole word was too long,” Yuri said. “Besides they said everyone who reads Russian would want to know why we called it ‘tap dancing.’ This way the joke is only for those in the know.”

  “So, Evil Empire Software is a front for four-e-four-dot-com, the Russian remailer?”

  “We don’t say ‘front’ in the new Russia,” Yuri said. “Following your lead, we say ‘parent.’ EES is the parent corporation.”

  I looked over at Prudence. “What’s your connection?”

  “I facilitate operations in this part of the world for the remailing service,” Prudence said.

  “So are you Russian, too?”

  “Yes,” she said. She and Pablo had come to this country as teenagers. They’d taken the family name of their foster parents. It was a painful time. She didn’t want to talk about it. Tears threatened her eyes when she even thought about it. Was I satisfied now?

  Yuri gave her his handkerchief.

  I couldn’t believe it. How long would you have to carry a clean white handkerchief around before you got to offer it to a tearful woman?

  I gave her some time to pull herself together, and then I got back on topic. “Why all the secrecy?”

  “That’s what this is all about,” she said. “The integrity of the net.”

  “That’s true,” Yuri said.

  “How so?”

  Yuri took a sip of his drink before he answered. “Our purpose at four-e-four-com, as it’s called over here, is to maneuver ourselves into a position where we will be the anonymous rerouter for the whole world.”

  “Why is it always world domination with you guys?”

  “Again, we are just learning our lessons from you,” he said. “Your international corporations are the models. We saw that Russia was the perfect place for an absolutely free hub of information. It is deeply protected by the existing bureaucracy. The government is on our side. When you can say absolutely anything, you will say more interesting and significant things. Art and science will flourish. A new age of information exchange will dawn upon the Earth.”

  “And you’ll make a lot of money,” I said.

  “Isn’t that the idea?”

  I thought this whole free info business was a little naive, but I didn’t say so.

  When I didn’t reply he went on. “I don’t want to make it sound too easy. You don’t go from what we had to a functioning capitalistic system in one big jump.”

  “No?”

  “Factions have formed,” he said. “There is a power struggle between my faction, which wants the freedom business I just explained, and another faction that thinks we will have the world right where we want it when most information passes through our hands.”

  “Which one of you is the Russian Mob?” I asked.

  “We don’t like to say ‘Mob,’” Prudence said
.

  “Basically there is an invisible battle going on over what the net will ultimately be,” Yuri said. “There are very big forces at work. Conspiracies inside conspiracies inside conspiracies. Someone always sniping at you from the cybertrees. Everyone is looking over his shoulder.”

  “So, you’re the good guys?” I asked.

  “We think there should be an absolutely open net,” Prudence said. “It should be like a force of nature. Just what it is. A place. The fact that anything goes is simply a feature of that place. Information in an information age must flow freely.”

  “The other side wants to control it,” Yuri said, “and the trouble with control is the trouble with the old Russia. You’d think we would have learned our lesson. You’d think the whole world would have learned our lesson. If we can convince people that nothing can break their anonymity on our system, we can begin to build that conduit for the free exchange of ideas.”

  Yuri signaled for our server and ordered another round. I sat quietly while we waited for the drinks. Prudence gazed off into space. Yuri whistled a little tune softly until he saw me looking at him, and then he stopped. I knew he must be nervous to let a song come so close to the surface. For people like Yuri and me, humming a happy tune was dangerous. So was rhythmic finger tapping on the edge of the table. When I saw him return my pointed look with one of his own, I followed his eyes and saw my fingers drumming and folded my hands in my lap.

  The new drinks arrived.

  “It is a lot to ask for people just to trust you,” I said. “What you’ve just told me would make good ad copy but you’ll have some trouble selling it.”

  “So far selling it has been pretty easy,” he said.

  “People see they can trust four-e-four,” Prudence said. “You can see it all over the newsgroups. People like the idea of the remailer being buried deep in Russia where the FBI for instance can’t just pop in. Finland dropped the ball when their government busted up all the stuff going on over there a few years ago.”

  “That won’t happen in Russia,” Yuri said.

  “What about that other faction?” I asked. “I bet you don’t see a lot about them on the net.”

  “One problem is that the attitudes and much of the structure and many of the people of the old KGB are still in place,” Yuri said. “This other faction I spoke of is almost entirely made up of people like that. And criminals. Many criminals. When the killer appeared on the net using our service, someone over there told someone over here to take care of it.”

  A light when on in my head.

  “Your face just went red,” Prudence said.

  “Who is this KGB guy?” I asked.

  “Most likely it will be Matusoff,” Yuri said. “I know he has been operating in the Northwest for some time now.”

  “Big guy with a flat face and no fashion sense?”

  “Well, that could be a lot of people,” Yuri said, “but I suppose it could describe him, too. You’ve run into him?”

  This had to be the guy who had jumped me in my office. “Maybe,” I said. “Go on with your story.”

  “Here’s our problem,” Yuri said. “We want people to see that security on four-e-four is absolute. Even a murderer can be posting and we won’t turn him in. On the other hand, a murderer hiding behind us could be very embarrassing.”

  When it hit me, it hit me hard. I put my drink down. I looked at Prudence and then I looked at Yuri. Suddenly they were total strangers. I realized I didn’t know them at all. What a sap I was.

  “You know who the killer is,” I said.

  They didn’t deny it.

  Yuri and his people knew who the killer was and could have stopped him at any time by simply turning him in to the police. I wondered who on his list of victims would still be alive if they had done that.

  “After Gerald Moffitt was killed,” Yuri said, “the idea was to have you solve the case. That way it could be seen that traditional detective methods were sufficient for the problem. You were supposed to get your man before this.”

  “So, it’s my fault?”

  No response.

  “I can’t get over it,” I said. “I’m busting my butt looking for Pablo and the killer and you could have just told me who he was in the first place.”

  “We gave you lots of clues!” Prudence said. Her tone was entirely defensive and that made me feel a little better. At least she seemed to have the good grace to feel guilty about the people who might have died needlessly.

  “Was Nathan Ivanovich on the BOD list anonymously?”

  “Yes,” Yuri said, “and it’s just that kind of quick thinking that we need you for.”

  “But all bad documentalists can’t be members of BOD,” I said. “Otherwise the list would be very big.”

  “Bad documentation is everywhere,” Prudence said.

  “You guys could have just given me the full list any time you wanted,” I said.

  “We will now.” Prudence dipped into her bag and then handed me a printout.

  I took a look. Everyone on the list now had a name and an address.

  “What’s done is done,” Yuri said. “Now it’s time to end this.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s time to wrap it up,” he said. “We tell you who the killer is and you go catch him. You can have all the credit. In fact, we insist on it.”

  I lifted my glass but it was empty.

  “I suppose Pablo’s not really missing,” I said.

  “No, he really is missing,” Prudence said.

  “So, tell me who the killer is,” I said.

  “He called himself SOAPY on-line,” Yuri said. “We cut him off when he tried to take credit for Sadie Campbell.”

  “That’s how we knew about her so soon,” Prudence said.

  “I already knew it was SOAPY,” I said. “I already knew he’d been cut off at four-e-four-com.”

  “He called you,” Yuri said. “Prudence told me.” He wrote in his notebook again, ripped out the page, and handed it to me. “His name and address.”

  The name on the page was “J. Dotes.” The address was a south-side apartment. The telephone was probably the one the killer had used to call me.

  “Do you know this Dotes guy?” I asked.

  They didn’t.

  The name wasn’t as obviously fake as say John Doe, but I knew it would turn out to be an alias. Maybe the J was for John or maybe it was for Joe or James or Jack. What did it matter?

  I got out the BOD list and looked it over quickly.

  “Dotes isn’t on this list,” I said.

  “No,” Yuri said.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Prudence said. “We know all about him from his SOAPY identity.”

  I doubted that. They hadn’t thought it through.

  “Let me see if I’ve got the game plan down,” I said. “You’ve given me this name and address and you want me to drive over there and nab the killer?”

  “That’s right,” Yuri said.

  Prudence nodded in agreement. “It’s a good plan.”

  I gathered up the notes Yuri had written and folded them in with the BOD list. I stood up. I walked away, and I didn’t look back.

  I hadn’t decided what I was going to do. One option would be to call Marvin and turn the whole thing over to the police, but I wasn’t ready to do that yet.

  A couple of minutes later I was in my jeep heading south on Willamette. I’d considered becoming Tag, “the Average Guy,” in case I ran into anyone I wouldn’t want remembering what I looked like, but then I decided to remain Skylight Howells. If J. Dotes did turn out to be the killer, our encounter wouldn’t be one that demanded subtlety.

  There were apartment buildings on both sides of the street beyond Thirtieth, but it didn’t take me long to find the one I was looking for. It was one of those two-story apartment buildings that looked like they’d been designed as the setting for some sleazy episode of Cops on TV. If you were going to have a crime of passion or a drug deal go
ne bad, it would probably happen in a place like this. Fist fights over loud music. Conflicts over parking.

  I parked down the street from the address in question and walked back up to have a look from a safe distance first. I crossed to the other side of the street, but I couldn’t actually see the target apartment from there, so I crossed back again. I’d have to get a lot closer.

  By the time I actually could see the apartment, I was so close that I should have just walked up to it in the first place. Sometimes elaborate sneaking strategies come to nothing.

  The apartment was on the second floor. The curtains over the big picture window were pulled open. There seemed to be no lights on inside. I walked on up the stairs.

  When I got up there, I found a police department notice posted on the door. Crime scene. I was supposed to leave the place alone. That probably meant there was no one inside now. I knocked anyway.

  No answer. I could pick the lock in a minute or so, but maybe it would be a good idea to look in the window first.

  I wouldn’t need to pick the lock. There was no glass in the picture window. I could see now where the outside walkway had been swept up. Inside, no one had bothered. Light glittered from the shards of broken glass. I looked both ways then carefully stepped inside.

  I took out my penlight and had a quick look around. I found where bullets had hit the walls but I found no bloodstains. I wondered if Dotes had been shooting back.

  My thinking ran like this. Yuri’s “other faction,” who would also know about Dotes/SOAPY had told someone, maybe Matusoff, to eliminate the killer, and Matusoff had come here to do the job. Dotes must have gotten away, though, or he wouldn’t have been able to tell me someone had shot at him. So, why was Matusoff hassling me? It must have something to do with what I’d found at GP Ink—the DATAPANTS file that I no longer had. Or maybe I was just a loose end the other side was trying to tie up.

  I checked out the rest of the apartment, but I didn’t find anything that would tell me who Dotes might be. In fact, there seemed to be no personal stuff at all. I looked closely at the furniture and decided it had probably come with the apartment.

  In the kitchen there were only empty plastic pop bottles in a recycle basket. Big bottles. High caffeine. I assumed the police had checked them for fingerprints. But maybe not. This probably wasn’t a high-priority case, especially if there had been no one dead or wounded left on the scene.