by A. B. Jewell
“I didn’t say.” Absently, I followed him, scanning for bad guys, wary of the fuzz. I needed cover and to catch my breath. If I were a Tarantula, which way would I scurry? How had they disappeared so quickly?
The guy practically led me by the elbow and stopped in front of a shop I’d been in already. It was that damned bag store. Now the sign read: Number Won Test Prep.
“Look, college isn’t for everybody. Jobs dropped out.” Tuck paused. “Jesus, did you hear? He apparently Snipchapped this morning about user interface.”
The cops were ten steps away. I feigned interest. “Who?”
“Jobs. Like: from his personal account. Everybody’s saying it must’ve been hacked. He’s dead and he’s now got like twenty million followers.”
“Steve Jobs.”
He winced, like: Who the fuck else could I mean? Was I from the moon? He opened the door and I followed him in and saw a place transformed. What had been some retail outlet, with a few display shelves, now had six rows of kids sitting at computer terminals.
“Where’s the bag joint?”
“That’s the day scene. At night, we’re like everyplace else in test prep central. Well, I misspoke. Not like everybody else. We’ve got a track record, world-class—world-class instructors,” he repeated. “One board member sat on the SAT word-game subcommittee. He’s got that section cold and it’s where a lot of the difference gets made.”
At the front, beside one of those digital chalkboards, a woman stood with a laser pointer, her red light pointing to an image: a teenager with one hand on a keyboard and another on a phone.
“What,” she asked the class, “is the key to success?”
One teen shouted: “Having a great conference room name.”
“Shorter boot-up times.”
Another said, “Duh.”
“Well, yes,” the instructor said. She was so plain as to be nearly invisible; rail-thin, slumped shoulders, hair falling over her face and shoulders. “But I’m talking about something we can solve. The key to success is . . . being ambidextrous.” Dramatic pause. “If you can use two hands on two keyboards simultaneously, then you can do what?” She paused again for effect, suddenly lighting up. “You can take two tests at the same time!”
I looked back to the street and things fell into place. Everyone who walked on the street did so in pairs: a parent and a kid, or, more precisely, young teen. Most pairs came with one instrument, a violin in a case, digital keyboard tucked under an arm; two oboes walked by. I’d heard about this, Résumé Row.
I turned back inside and saw my possible escape route, a doorway leading to the rear of the shop. Standing in it was a vaguely familiar face—the wonky engineer type with the ponytail who worked behind the counter at Ben’s Bags. He looked perplexed, off balance, even shaken.
Tuck put his hand on my shoulder. “Oxygen shot? On the house.”
I made a beeline for the Ben’s Bag dude, eyeing a little stick dangling from his left hand. Tuck, holding tight to my shoulder like he was a car salesman in the death throes, nearly took flight rather than let go. As I neared the back, the guy in the doorway seemed to flinch. I made out the thing in his hand: a small flag, black and gray, with a tarantula in the middle of it.
“Where did you get that?”
“Fell out of the pocket of some weirdo who went flying through here. How was Froom? Was the CEO there?”
I pulled the flag from the dork’s hand.
“Hey!”
“Glad you want to look around,” Tuck said. “Our bathrooms promote ambidexterity.”
I shook him off as I accelerated down a short hallway, bathrooms on both sides, a small kitchen area to the left, and then a back door that looked like it might well lead to an alley. So was this where the Tarantulas went? Awfully coincidental.
“Not again,” Tuck said. “You with the guys dressed in leather? I can offer a package deal.”
“What?” I turned to face Tuck and the ponytail guy. “Did a guy come in here with a leather . . . with tattoos, spider deal?”
“I got him in here,” Tuck said. “Steered him right through. Big rush, that one. We understand. Time is ticking. If you’re with them, we’ve got a two-for-one family deal, includes the SAT, music, voice lessons, and basic Generation-Z social skills, including how to let your parents feel like they’re in charge.”
I’d had enough. I lifted Tuck up by the veritable lapels and pinned him against the wall.
He protested: “You are in charge. Of course you are. It’s just that we’re letting them think that—”
“The guys who came in here with the spider vibe—where did they go?”
Ponytail piped up: “Shot through to the alley. One of them dropped the flag, fell out of his back pocket.” He said he could show me where they went. I dropped Tuck to the floor, where he continued to pitch as I followed the Ben’s Bag guy through a glass door into a dark alley. He nodded to the right. Ran to a small car at the end of the alley, he said, and lit off.
Must’ve been a MINI.
“Does this have to do with Da Raj?” Ponytail asked.
“How do you know about that?”
“It’s trending. Was. His death was huge for more than two minutes.”
“Whose bike is this?” I looked at the motorcycle kickstanding near the wall. One of those Zero motorcycles, no emissions, specialized rear jack, top box and rack kit, soft leather saddlebags.
“It’s mine.”
“I need it.”
He laughed, like: you’re crazy.
“I’m a cop.” I paused. “Cop-ish. Those guys are bad guys. I need it.”
“I’ll make you a deal,” he said.
“The other guy already tried. I’m not signing up for classes. I need your bike.”
“I go with you, hear about Froom, you make an introduction to Danny, a good word, y’know, for relationship building, and I get twenty-five percent of the social media rights if this chase makes news.”
It was all I could do not to shove this guy’s head into the spokes. He picked that up instantly: “Okay, fine, yes. But I’m going with you.”
“Get on the back,” I said through my teeth.
Seconds later, I tore down the alley. Then skidded to a stop near the end of the alley as a teen walked crosswise into the opening playing an accordion while juggling a soccer ball on his knees. I looked left and right. No MINI in sight. But, realistically, it had to go right; to the left, middle of the road, a blockage, a big jam of people, bathed by streetlamps.
“SLS,” said the ponytail. “Spontaneous Lecture Series event. So much bullshit. They’re not even remotely spontaneous. Someone had to plan this or there wouldn’t be a banner.” It was hung over the street. It read: Midlife at 15. What’s Next?
Yep, the MINI had to have gone right, lest it pile over the middle-of-the-street lectern and the teen at the helm. I gunned the bike to the right. I crossed Onaniversity Avenue. No way any of the Tarantulas took the main drag, too crowded, unless they were on foot, and the ponytail behind me had professed otherwise. I kept straight, hitting the flatlands of Palo Alto, one beautifully manicured ranch-style house after the next.
“Wait. Go back,” said Ponytail. “I saw something.”
“In the dark?” I muttered. But I hit the brakes. Middle of a residential block, the cacophony of Résumé Row behind us, a hum of sirens over the top. “What kind of something?”
“Look.”
The ponytail pointed between two houses, and the fences that separated them. Even in the echoes of light from houses and garages, I could see something was on the ground back there. I shot the bike between the houses and, yep, something all right: lying right there in the alley between the houses.
A Tarantula. Flat on his back.
I flinched. Pulled out the pistol—I know, not loaded, but emotional support nonetheless—and whipped my head around. This was all wrong. I was moving too fast, getting yanked along, looking for the trap, trying to eye the guy on the
ground who was decidedly not moving. Froth bubbled from his mouth.
It was dark but not pitch-black. A garage just to my right had those movement-sensor lights on it and they’d gone on when I pulled the cycle up. I looked both ways in the alley for movement, shadows, a trap to be sprung if I leaned down to examine this Tarantula bait. But there was nothing. Not a peep.
I dismounted with gun trained on the dude on the ground wearing the gingham shirt. Brown hair matted against his forehead, eyes rolled up. I didn’t need to be a coroner . . .
I reached down to take his pulse and a sound exploded. I pulled back sharply.
Christ, it was coming from the Tarantula’s mobile phone, which was in his dead hand. It was a U2 song.
“At least his ringer survived,” Ponytail observed.
I reached down to snag the Tarantula’s phone. Then another sound, this one in the distance but closing in: sirens. And, behind it, a little farther out, helicopter rotors. Circling cops, by air and ground. I turned to Ponytail: “I recommend you beat it.”
“What?”
“Get on your bike and get lost. Otherwise you’ll spend the next ten hours downtown answering questions.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
I turned to go. “How does that software work? The thing you were telling me about—facial recognition?”
It took him a second to orient to my question. “You do investing? Weird time to talk about it, though. Can we meet later?”
It’s not what I was thinking. Actually, I wasn’t exactly sure what I was thinking. Maybe he could mask my identity, what with all these cops and the constant surveillance, the cameras on every corner. Jesus, what had gotten into me? This place, the nonstop optimism, like Hollywood but with engineers.
He pulled out his phone. “I’ll infrared you my contact info.” There was a beeping noise. Now I was connected to this freak too.
“When’s a good time to meet?”
But I was already halfway down the alley, heading to my truck, the Tarantula’s gadget in hand. Trouble in every single direction, including up.
Ten
I HOOFED IT TO my truck and stood outside it, key in the lock, wondering: Surely, they were tracking me everywhere, but who were they? Tarantulas? Someone else?
My phone, presumably, easy enough to surveil. My truck, maybe, also presumably. Unless tracking technology somehow got thwarted by rusty paint and a radio that now only picked up AM. On the other hand, if they were tracking me, how come they weren’t waiting for me here, six blocks from the sirens and oboes in downtown Palo Alto? Still, it seemed worthwhile to get a new ride. Hog time.
Thirty-five minutes later, keeping an eye over my shoulder, I was winding up the hills above Silicon Valley, unincorporated land. West of Woodside and Redwood City. God’s country, even to atheists. Green and quiet, curving roads, at least where there were roads. You didn’t need much of an imagination to picture the ghost of Sleepy Hollow. Too far out for the techies. Here, it was hippies, or wannabes, or freaks, what was left of them. Including Elron Lyme. Best chopper mechanic I’d ever met. On a Baja ride we took years ago, he resurrected Terry’s Harley from near death with a seashell, two pesos, and a tequila worm.
I parked a half mile from his pad to throw off any surveillance scent. With a deep breath, I loaded the gun and dumped some extra shells into my pocket. I checked again that my phone was off, discovered it so, and then remembered the phone I took from the dead Tarantula. As I suspected, it was a burner, a cheap text-’n’-talk-only device, the kind people got at the convenience store and bought the minutes in advance. I opened it up hoping just maybe there was some critical insight on this thing—a text with the name of cohorts, directions to my kill, that sort of thing.
Not to be had. Just a bunch of incoming calls from blocked numbers. Except for one—an outgoing call. An actual number. In the 408 area code. Didn’t tell me much. The question was: Who would answer when I called?
Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find out, not at that moment; there was no phone service up here, zero bars of coverage.
I turned off the phone as I walked onto a road so narrow it barely would accommodate a motorcycle. Trees bent in over me on either side, moonlight blocked, darker now than Hades but for a dim light beaconing from the house where I was heading. My thoughts turned, for no reason in particular, to Terry. Not his style, this aesthetic. Honestly, if he had his way, we’d probably have gone the other direction—full suburban, a pool, picket fence, the muted California seasons erring on the warm side, furniture from this-or-that upper-middle-class name-brand place and lots of emotions stuffed into them.
I learned early on that Terry didn’t much like talking about how he was feeling, or how the day went, or who said what to whom. There, we were birds of a feather. It’s just that my behavior came from not liking the sound of my own voice and his came from a classic conservative upbringing wherein emotions, like children, were meant to be neither seen nor heard. His family’s philosophy: We will solicit your opinion after you reach voting age or kill a member of the Johnson clan (latter part lost relevance after about 1850). Once, a famous client of Terry’s was audited, giving both him and his client ulcers, and I didn’t know a word about it until three weeks later when Terry wound up in urgent care. Even then, it was the hospital that called me; they handed the phone to Terry, who said: “Don’t waste your time coming down here. Make sure to tape Justified.”
I pulled open the gate of a five-foot-high fence surrounding a house that seemed more expansive than I remembered; woodland chic, not fancy exactly, more like perfectly blended in, two stories that melted into the trees, maybe because the structure was totally of this place. I took one step inside and heard: “Halt or I’ll shoot.”
I took the halt option.
“Your iPhone. I’ll nail it right in the app!” Thus continued a voice I immediately recognized as that of Elron Lyme, followed by his deep, resonant laugh, like he’d said the funniest thing in the world. “Lemme guess, you got your private dick stuck in the spokes again.”
“Howdy, Elron. It’s possible you’ve gotten less funny.”
The porch light went on. There stood Elron, tall and skinny and whiter than an albino who fell into yogurt in the British winter. “Honey,” he shouted inside. “Fire up the moonshine.”
The front-door screen opened and out walked Honey. That was Elron’s husband, who had been christened something else long ago, took the name Honey, and looked just like it—golden-skinned, smooth and lumpy in spots. A mama-san of sorts but Caribbean style. Once I asked Honey where he was from and he said: “Tough to name a place I’m not from.”
“I don’t have time to stay,” Elron said.
“What?”
“That’s what you’re going to say: ‘I don’t have time to stay.’ I know you, Fitch. If it’s late, you show up unannounced, carrying a piece, acting jumpy, you need a hideout or a bike.”
“Or both. I don’t have time to stay.”
Elron laughed. “That’s what Honey said after our first night together. And here we are like ten decades later.”
“I don’t have time to stay,” Honey said.
“I’ve got a way of persevering,” Elron said.
“I really don’t have time to stay,” I explained.
“It’ll take me at least thirty minutes to get your ride together. So come in and catch us up. How’s your better half?”
I sucked it up. No way around a little socializing. And so, forty-five minutes later, I’d caught them up and gotten their latest story, and had bathtub moonshine that tasted just like bathtub. But it did take the edge off. Elron sent me off, a bit miffed that I’d declined to tell them about the case I was working on; I’d denied them for their own protection. Honey handed me a chicken sandwich for the road.
The air felt great as I peeled out in a beauty, a Triumph Tiger from the mid-1960s, svelte bike, red on white, much too nice for the likes of me. Elron insisted and said it was the only thing h
e had handy and knew I was good for the $6,000 it would take to replace it.
I knew exactly where I was headed. No question about it at all. I was already in the neighborhood.
I just needed the address. That meant turning on my phone. Once I did that, how long would it take to triangulate my position if someone was tracking me? A few minutes. I needed to make this quick. I dial.
After two rings: “Hello, it’s Lester, do you realize what time it is?” said Lester Wollop.
“Lester, get off the phone!” Now Tess Donogue had picked up.
“It’s the landline, which is mine!”
“That’s not what the mediator said.”
“That was not legally binding.”
“Hi, this is Captain Don,” I said.
Sudden silence.
“Daddy?”
“No, sorry. It’s Fitch. Your friendly neighborhood detective.” I felt bad playing the dead-ish-guy card, but I needed to get their attention. “I’ve got news about your dad.” Another lie. Lie-ish. “I’d rather deliver it in person. What’s your address?”
Silence again.
“It’s nearly ten P.M.,” Lester said.
“Lester! Not everyone turns out the lights at nine thirty.”
“You have no respect for sleep hygiene.”
“It’s in your head, Lester. You sleep just fine when we’re on vacation.”
“That’s because you’re not sitting up in bed with the laptop.”
“Stop,” I muttered.
“It’s not a laptop. It’s a tablet. Jesus. And besides, someone has to manage our affairs!” Tess barked at her husband (ex-husband?). “I mean, my affairs.”
“Oh, that’s rich. I’ve got as much right to that ill-gotten gain as you do. Anyhow, that laptop light is just like the TV. It delays melatonin release.”
“Not if you’re wearing eyeshades. You can’t even see the light! Or tell that it’s a tablet!”