Ice Cream Man

by Charles Puccia

  Of course, Ben had never raised any of these misgivings with either Dan or Ginny. He hadn’t mentioned that this was risky, or that he found Dan attractive.

  Ben rubbed his eyes, as if stupidity could be rubbed from his sight. He justified his actions by taking a dubious moral high road: If I go back on my word, then I’m the liar.

  Chapter 20

  Hide and Seek

  Trolling Bill Barrington’s iMac, Vinnie screwed his eyes. This was taking longer than he had planned. Luckily, the building was wilderness quiet. The last living person he’d seen was the lobby security guard, who had barely looked up from his TV, the Giants game blaring. Vinnie had scribbled the name of the Giants’ quarterback in the logbook. Blanca had said, “On the Sunday after Thanksgiving you can bet most Americans will be on a plane, highway, train, or in front of a TV.”

  Vinnie had found Bill’s audio collection, in a media directory with five subfolders. He’d selected a folder named “Office memos,” which was marked as being password-protected. But Vinnie had come back from his Vermont Thanksgiving with a secret weapon; his college roommate, a computer science major, had given him a USB stick with a hacker’s decode program—a welcome addition to the leftover turkey and trimmings that still filled his freezer. As a result, decrypting Bill’s folder had been as easy as apple pie.

  Unfortunately, the folder had a ton of files. Vinnie decided to start with the dates when Linda had been in New York. He checked Bill’s calendar. The first time Linda had been in New York this year was eight months ago, for two days. But there were no recordings on those dates. Of course, Bill was away.

  Three months later, Linda stayed for one day, joining the executive staff, including Dan, for the Orlando national department head meeting. Vinnie played the memos from that day. Nothing but boring conversations about agendas, presentation order, subcommittee assignments, guest lists, and on and on.

  Vinnie skipped ahead.

  Two months before the September date, Linda had stayed for an entire week. This time, as Vinnie went through the recordings, he immediately skipped out of any conversation that didn’t involve Bill and Linda alone. Even their one-on-one conversations were nothing but repetitious dull agenda litanies, but he forced himself to listen, hoping to find some helpful nugget of information. Bill’s executive chair made for easy listening; Vinnie reclined, feet on the desk, head bent back as if seeking guidance from the ceiling.

  Vinnie was so comfortable and the conversation so dull, he almost missed it. Removing his feet from the desk, Vinnie snapped to attention, checking the recording date. “Did they say a Northrop crisis two months before it happened? They fucking planned it.” He rewound the recording. And there it was: Bill suggested that Linda confirm her flight for Thursday from New York to San Francisco, then on Friday morning to LA. He would then meet her in LA to “solve the Northrop crisis.” Loud laughter cut the air.

  It was the proof he’d needed.

  There was nothing else of interest for the rest of that week, so Vinnie jumped ahead to the date of the actual Northrop crisis. Skipping around through recordings, trying to find another one with Bill and Linda alone, Vinnie stumbled across one that sounded garbled. Was that a moan? At first he assumed the microphone must have malfunctioned, but when he heard Linda telling Bill that his belt was caught, the meaning was clear: “They’re fucking their brains out.”

  The recording was filled with Bill’s deep baritone grunts and Linda’s higher-pitched ones.

  Grunt.

  Snort.

  “Har har, har har.”

  “Stick it here.”

  “You missed.”

  “Grab it yourself, you slut.”

  “Fuck you, Bill.”

  “No, fuck you, and that’s what I’m doing. Har har, har har.”

  “Like this big boy inside you? How’s it feel? Good and hard?”

  “Yeah, but how’s this wet cunt make your dick feel? Warm and sloppy.”

  “Wait. Don’t cum yet, Bill. I’m not there.”

  With his hand to his mouth, Vinnie held back his gagging. He loathed listening to sex as pretense of lovemaking or intimacy.

  Bill’s last words were, “Fuckin’ goo all over my finger. I’m going to go clean up.” This was followed by shuffling sounds and a slam.

  Vinnie glanced toward the executive bathroom at the side of the office; seeing it made the vision of Bill with his pants off too real for Vinnie. He almost missed Linda’s subsequent mumbling, but he did catch her final “Shithead.”

  Though Vinnie smiled, he was perplexed, too. Why is Linda fucking Bill? The man’s a pig. She even calls him Shithead.

  He knew that others at the office thought the same. Blanca surely did. Once, at an after-work klatch meeting, after a little too much drink, she’d told Vinnie, “Bill preys on women after gambling.” She’d found condoms in his pockets before sending his suits to the dry cleaners. Shocked, Vinnie had asked if Mrs. Barrington knew, and Blanca had burst out laughing at Vinnie’s naivety. “Really, Vinnie? She’s out in the Jersey boonies on a huge estate, nearest neighbor invisible… like her. Bill pays the hundred grand country club membership to keep Mrs. B from nosing around.”

  If Linda screwing Bill was a conundrum, Vinnie’s next question to himself complicated the matter. Why is Bill screwing Linda? She was too old for Bill’s tastes, having passed thirty a few years back, and not exactly a Vogue model. Bill was fifty-something himself, but his looks and six-foot-three trim body contrasted sharply with Linda’s heavyset five-foot-ten frame and long face.

  Nothing made sense to Vinnie. Linda’s disparaging remark. Bill’s mocking.

  Vinnie rubbed his eyes, stifled a yawn. But the recording continued to play, and Bill’s next sentence caused Vinnie to sit bolt upright.

  “Enough bitching. Let’s get down to business. What about on your end?”

  “Ready to go. My virus is already installed on the Northrop mainframe. Activation begins on Tuesday at four p.m. West Coast time. I’ll expect a voice mail from my team while I’m in-flight to JFK. Around nine I’ll call my office manager pretending to be surprised, and I’ll act upset.” Two voices chuckled. “I’ll call you afterward to have an official record of the ‘crisis.’”

  After more chuckling, the conversation moved on to another topic, so Vinnie once again skipped ahead to another recording. He chose the Wednesday when Bill had come to Dan’s office to change the date of the presentation.

  Bill’s voice, apparently calling to Blanca: “No calls, and I’m not to be disturbed.” A thud came from the slamming door.

  Rustling as Bill moved around his office. Vinnie skipped ahead a bit.

  “Babe, he was like a whining little kid about how it was unfair. Har har, har har. I told him you’d be in the same situation and worse. He wanted to talk to Gary. Faggot might’ve listened too, but I threatened to veto his proposal if he jeopardized Northrop.”

  “He couldn’t have liked that.” Linda’s voice. Bill must have had her on speakerphone.

  “He didn’t. You know Dan, a company guy. He tried to negotiate. Postpone until next Friday. He begged. No can do, I told him. Dumbass.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far. Dan lives for his economic models, not for the money they make. He’ll never reach for the stars like us.”

  “That’s what I meant.”

  “He underestimates me. My Trojan virus went off as scheduled. No one will know. You can bank on it.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m going to do. Har har, har har. Oh babe, I could do you right now. Shall we meet tonight?”

  “Bill, stop. Blanca might come in. Be cautious. Too much is at stake.”

  The sounds of a chair being pushed back interrupted the conversation. “I’ve gotta piss.” The now-familiar sound of the executive bathroom door shutting sounded in Vinnie’s ear.

  Apparently he just left Linda hanging on the phone, because Vinnie could hear her mumbling, although he couldn’t make out the words. Then the bathro
om door slammed again, followed by the screeching wheels of Bill’s desk chair. “I’m back, babe.”

  “You know, I’m going to lounge under blue skies at my private Cayman Islands resort with servants and gigolos,” Linda said. “I’ll be set for life. You too. This is big. But you have to be careful.”

  “Will do. We’ll screw our brains out in LA to celebrate. In the meantime, have you sent me your updated notes on our private plan?”

  “Not yet, but they’re ready to be uploaded to my private Dropbox folder marked Paris-Misc.”

  “Fine, I’ll get the details later.” Bill coughed. “Just so I have some idea, run through your latest version. We had been talking forty mill each. Does that still seem feasible?”

  A giggling laugh, not Bill’s guffaw, penetrated Vinnie’s ear.

  “Oh, much better than that. I reworked the model. The details are in the file. My revision puts us over one hundred twenty million—conservatively. Of course, don’t forget, we’re vulnerable to depressed markets and normal variations. But still, I think we’ll each walk away with fifty to sixty million. Happy?”

  “Happy? Fuck yes. And I won’t have to share a goddamn cent with my bitch wife. She won’t get a cent in alimony because she won’t find me. Har har, har har.”

  With tapping fingers, Vinnie said out loud, “Shithead would fuck the family dog for that amount of money.”

  Linda’s high pitch roused Vinnie. “Have the Swiss accounts ready for tomorrow, day after at the latest. We can set up the Caymans before I’m in Paris.”

  They proceeded to go over bank account details, itineraries, meeting points, fake passports. Bill would become British: Derrick Chambers. Linda would remain American: Lucille Pallo. Vinnie yawned.

  “And the European data you provided from IT in Paris is perfect,” Linda said. “I’ve made a few alterations to enhance my model predictions for my presentation.”

  “Dan would shit a brick if he knew I’ve withheld that data from him. He’s such a pussy.”

  Vinnie pressed pause. “What the fuck!” He thought about calling Dan immediately, but a crick in his stiff back held him back. So he listened to the recording for a few more minutes, but he heard nothing more of interest and decided he could hear the rest at home.

  The discovery—the proof of what he’d suspected—unnerved Vinnie. One copy wasn’t enough, he decided. He wanted a backup. Vinnie was flustered as he looked around the room. He would keep one USB on him and hide the second USB here at DV&N. Then he’d call Dan from home.

  He made copies on two USBs, then rushed out of Bill’s office. Still angry at what he’d found, and preoccupied with finding a hiding spot, Vinnie failed to notice that he’d left the interior windows darkened—or that a small USB microchip still lay next to the keyboard. He was a rookie PI, lacking training and experience.

  Now where to hide this fucking backup USB? Vinnie thought as he hurried down the hall. He stopped at Hector’s janitorial closet. As a DV&N administrative assistant, he had access. You never knew when you might have to clean up a spilled coffee.

  The shelves were stocked with cleaning fluids, spare light bulbs, and paper products, with a vacuum cleaner and mop and bucket in a corner opposite a stepladder. Vinnie climbed the stepladder and pushed the USB stick behind the cleaner fluid on the top shelf. Even if Hector removed several bottles, he’d be unlikely to notice the small device.

  Chapter 21

  Hacked

  It was an unseasonably warm Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, and a gust of wind blew across a sand trap on the Dunes Golf Course in Myrtle Beach. Sand blew into a golfer’s eyes. “Fuck!” The golfer sliced the ball, and it barely landed on the edge of the green before tottering to roll back into the trap.

  “Har har, har har” breezed across the green from the golfer holding the ninth-hole pole. Bill Barrington found misfortune amusing. The expletive reminded Bill that his wife had said the same word when she’d learned that an unexpected business meeting required he cut short his Thanksgiving weekend at her parents’ Florida condo in the tony, upscale Winter Park suburb of Orlando.

  “Unexpected” was, of course, not an accurate descriptor for Bill’s pre-arranged plans, but he’d have preferred to drop dead than to spend five days with his wife’s family. He’d made his announcement to his father-in-law as he’d walked through the front door: “Unexpected urgent business in Charleston on Friday. Can’t be helped… clients first. At least I’m here all of Thanksgiving.”

  “Fuck,” Joan Barrington had said, and would have said more had she known the unexpected business meant golfing. Bill had wormed a guest stay at the prestigious club from a member, a former Princeton football teammate. He’d planned to golf all weekend at The Dunes, departing Charleston Monday morning. The golfing was great, but best of all this itinerary allowed him to avoid his bitching wife and ungrateful kids over the long holiday break. They’d be taking an Orlando to Newark flight Sunday while he was playing the back nine.

  However, Bill had decided to change his schedule a bit after receiving a text on Saturday, announcing an impromptu Sunday night poker game in New York. This meant a chance to recoup some heavy losses—as well as scratch an itch that had been growing over the past two months without gambling, Bill’s longest period of abstinence yet.

  ****

  The taxi stopped curbside at the Hawthorne Building shortly before five p.m. on Sunday. Outside the cab window, a figure distracted Bill. Is that… Vinnie Briggs? Why’s the little faggot here on a Sunday? Nah, can’t be. These queers all look and dress the same.

  Shaking the image from his mind, Bill handed the driver two twenties. “Keep the change,” he said, which amounted to a two-dollar tip. The New York cabbie shot back, in a voice heavy with sarcasm, “Can ya spare it? Big shot’s afraid he’ll break the piggy?”

  “Fuck you.”

  The cab door slammed behind him and he headed for the revolving door. Bill figured he’d use the time to prepare for Monday’s meetings, knowing that after a late night of gambling he’d be lucky to arrive by eleven-thirty. After a few hours’ work he’d grab a pastrami on rye and make his way to the gambling table. This time he’d nab his lucky chair; he’d missed it last time and it had cost him dearly.

  As Bill entered his office, he immediately noticed the darkened interior window. What the fuck! Has Blanca been in here? I’m going to have her ass for this. Then he placed his carry-on luggage next to the coat rack and settled into his executive chair.

  While waiting for the computer to boot up, and still fuming over the darkened windows, Bill pulled the keyboard toward him. A small USB transmitter plug slid across his desk.

  “What’s this?”

  Bill held the micro-hub, already knowing the answer to his question. He leaned over his iMac and spotted the empty USB port.

  DV&N’s financial insight came from advanced technology and computer models—in fact, Northrop had dropped a competitor in favor of DV&N’s technological superiority—and this sophisticated expertise included safeguards against corporate espionage. Installed on all senior managers’ computers was a proprietary program called ToSec. The program monitored activity on client data files and downloads, and any unauthorized activity sent a notification to upper-level managers and executives and an alarm to IT and Shareen Cooper. ToSec could be personalized as well, allowing non-client files to be flagged—personnel data, budgets, technical data, and sensitive emails. Naturally, Bill’s settings monitored his recording subfolder.

  Vinnie had known that he could deactivate the alarm with the master password—he had done this many times on Dan’s computer. What Vinnie didn’t know was that at the senior executive level—Bill’s level—an additional safeguard ensured that even when the alarm was deactivated, monitoring continued.

  Bill opened his ToSec log file and searched his “audio” tags. The results flashed on screen. Son of a bitch.

  Date opened: Today (Sunday) 1:45pm

  Date closed: Today (Sunday)
4:43pm

  Copied location: Today (Sunday) 4:25pm, External USB port 2, transf 2.2GB

  Bill knew port 2 was the micro-USB hub port. He knew what had been copied and who had made the copy. The person he’d seen leaving the building.

  Two questions filled Bill’s mind: How much had the faggot Briggs discovered? And had the internal recording file password been compromised?

  Fuck me.

  ****

  The phone rang, midnight long past. Linda was packing for her Paris flight to New York for a busy two-week schedule: review the San Francisco clients’ needs with her replacement; report on initial European organization; propose modifications to her plan. It was too much for two weeks. Linda picked up her cell and groaned when she saw Bill’s number.

  She answered. “Bill, it’s Sunday after Thanksgiving. I’ll be there tomorrow, as planned. Can’t this wait? I haven’t finished packing.”

  “Yeah, fuck that. Sonofabitch. Bastard. Fucking bastard.”

  “Wait a minute. What did I say?” Linda’s voice was a high soprano.

  “We have a big problem. A fucking big problem.” Bill was staring at his computer screen. “My computer was hacked.”

  “What—what was hacked? Your emails? So what? We were careful. There’s nothing there.” Linda stopped picking clothes from her closet.

  “Not emails. The recordings. The goddamn recordings.”

  “Recordings? What recordings? We never talked on your office phone.”

  “Not the phone. The computer office recordings.” Bill had never told Linda, or anyone, about his office recording system. He closed his eyes and put his cell on speaker. He inhaled before giving Linda a full rundown. Silence interspersed with gasps. Linda cursed him, then cursed herself for working with a fool.

  “Why, Bill? Why recordings?”

  “It helped me keep everything straight. That’s why I hold meetings in my office. I’d later recall details that others had forgotten. It made me look like a genius.”