Drawing Amanda

by Stephanie Feuer

  He opened a fresh document. First he copied all the key data, lining up strings of numbers, guessing the IPs surrounding Megaland. Then he wrote down the facts he knew. Woody. Recording studio. Megaland game. The page was not full. He must know more.

  The guy knew his way around computers. He was good with 3D programs. He’d posted to boards—that was another clue. Then there was the email from his friend at Dalton with the snip of the posting asking for game testers, the post with the information he’d passed on to Inky. That could tell him something, too.

  Rungs searched through his messages and found the months-old email. He copied the post to his page. He laid the message next to the IP information he’d pulled at Inky’s house. There were four groupings of numbers, just as there should be. He tried some of the jailbreaks known to unlock the dark net. Even the U.S. government could get into Tor with them, but it wasn’t working.

  He stared at the numbers for awhile. It seemed to him that someone had taken pains, then and now, to scramble the IP, but it didn’t look like he was using proxies purchased from a list, and it wasn’t one of the known anonymizers his father’s programs could detect. There were plenty of reasons not to use them. Some proxies were super slow. Others came from services run for crooks by crooks, which left you open to as much trouble as the anonymity avoided.

  Still, he’d taken pains to write a proprietary piece of code to mask his computer. And it was pretty good. Rungs wanted to know what this guy was hiding and why. But first, he knew, he needed to find out how he was doing it. He rubbed his hands together in excitement.

  Rungs had a code cracker program he sometimes played with. It used rudimentary scrambling and substitution. He ran the numbers through the program. It returned a long list of possibilities.

  He stared at the page-long list. Running each number through a lookup program would be tedious, time-consuming and more trial and error than deductive reasoning. Monkey at the keyboard stuff. He wanted to think this one out. He could picture sitting in the kitchen with a cup of coffee telling his father just how he’d gone about it, their roles reversed this time, with his father in rapt attention, appreciating Rungs’s cleverness. Sweet.

  But he wasn’t there yet. What else did he know?

  Recording studio. Music. What else? “Think, Rungs, think,” he said to himself. His father would say everything’s important. Even the little things. Especially the little things. That’s what makes people individual—the unique things they do, their habits, their quirks—their peccadilloes.

  OMFG, bam, Rungs thought. Peccadilloes. Woody had used that word in his chat with Inky. Said it was from the Sixties. Somewhere in that fact was a clue that would help him crack the code. He put his palms together and lowered his head to thank the universe and ask for guidance in finding his solution.

  A recording studio guy would be into music, he figured. He put that together with the Sixties, and on a hunch, Rungs Googled “Sixties music,” “popular Sixties songs” and, just because he was dealing with code, “songs with numbers in the title.” He copied the top results into a master list. He scrolled down the list: “In the Year 2525” by Zager and Evans; “When I’m Sixty-Four” and “Revolution 9” from The Beatles; “Eight Miles High” by The Byrds; “2000 Light Years from Home” by The Rolling Stones; “If 6 Was 9,” by Jimi Hendrix.

  That last song sounded like a key to crack a simple cipher. Perhaps that was it: if 6 was 9, the key to how Woody distorted his proxy to obfuscate his IP. Rungs went back to the information he pulled at Inky’s. What if he transposed the numbers with the base assumption that 6 equals 9?

  Rungs wrote the numbers 1 through 9 in one column. Next to the 6 in the next two columns he wrote 9. If he followed the code, 7 would either be 8 or 1; 8 either 7 or 2. He filled in his two columns and came up with options—Woody’s IP was either 96.232.14.62 or 93.767.85.37.

  It was late. Rungs was hungry and a little jittery from all the sweet Thai coffee he’d been drinking. But he’d only just begun. Now he was sure that this Woody guy was doing something he didn’t want detected. Something more than developing an interactive game.

  Armed with the two possible IP addresses, Rungs ran a “Whois” on each one, careful to check all five Regional Internet Registries. When one came up as malformed, he knew he had the key to Woody’s identity. Now it was easy. Almost too easy. With some clever tracing and tunneling, Rungs found out the IP hooked back to Megaland Studios. Its owner: William “Woody” Turner. Rungs mentally chided himself. He might have saved himself a bit of trouble if he’d guessed that the guy’s studio had been called Megaland. It seemed an unlikely choice for someone covering his identity, which suggested that he didn’t think he was doing anything so wrong. Intriguing. Was it ambivalence or self-righteousness?

  Even if he’d guessed the studio name, Rungs told himself, he’d still have reasonable doubt, and that was the kind of sloppiness that his father warned against. Procedure, facts, method, it was a discipline in itself, like the Muay Thai kickboxing moves they practiced each morning. Guessing and brainstorming had their place when you were stuck. But, Rungs smiled to himself, he was not stuck. He was only beginning. He decided he’d devote the weekend to looking into William “Woody” Turner.

  *

  On Saturday morning, Rungs started with the broadest search, simultaneously running Google and his father’s copy of a proprietary search tool. This Woody guy had a lot of Google juice for an old geezer. The studio must have been hot in its day.

  The first couple of pages of results were all the same—album credits, links to Amazon and music databases, references to the studio and the musicians who recorded there, many before Rungs was born.

  It was tedious to open them and read them all, but that was the disciplined way. He found links to a couple of photographs of the studio, and several to Woody either working at the studio or posing with musicians. He looked like a menswear model compared to the flamboyantly dressed frontmen he posed with. Rungs dated the pictures as best as he could and saved them to files.

  The pictures were a nice break from the tedium of the liner note mentions. His tailbone ached from sitting all day and his head hurt from so much screen time. He scrolled through the next page. More liner notes to check, and some announcements for a talent show. Rungs was frustrated. Somewhere in this list was something useful, but where?

  He went for a run and heated some dinner. When he set back to work, he pulled up the screens he’d been working on. He clicked a few pages forward. More liner note mentions, blurbs about a talent contest, and then legalese in documents pertaining to creditors. He bookmarked a few. He found stuff related to Woody’s divorce. These he’d read first. His father always said, “The people closest to us know us best—and know us least.”

  Rungs’s eyes crossed at the court notices, useful only for their dates, he thought. He went back to the liner notes results. The list didn’t look off in any obvious way, but something was driving him to keep looking. He had a hunch—or maybe just a taste for action. Just a few hours, he promised himself. He’d quit by midnight if nothing else turned up. He clicked on to the next page and scanned it. More of the same.

  He sent a bunch of the links to Inky, starting with one from the archives of a music fanzine called Metal Matters, and asked him to check them out. He continued to research, following the threads from the article, delving into court records and public records where he could, and looked for Woody’s other peccadilloes.

  Chapter 25

  Inky Feels Betrayed

  INKY FLIPPED THROUGH THE DRAWINGS in the big sketchpad his father had bought for him years before. Once he’d been so proud of his drawing of the Central Park carousel. Now he could see how the perspective was off; the toothy carriage horse looked like a reflection in a fun house mirror.

  He sat down in the beanbag chair and observed how the morning light hit the paper. He’d read an interview with a famous sculptor who said he let his stone suggest what it wanted to be. Inky cl
eared his mind, or tried to, to see what the paper wanted his drawing to be.

  He drew a long arch, then stared at the space around it. It suggested a neckline of a reclining figure. He penciled in the two bones across the neck. It was definitely a girl. What did he know about girls? That was a subject he didn’t want to explore. It was the spring semester just after his father’s crash that his classmates began dating for real, and making lists of who they liked and wanted to hook up with. But Inky had retreated into his own grief, neither doing the liking nor being liked. He was on no one’s list—invisible like a ghost. Until now.

  He drew the lines of a torso, thinking how odd it was that Amanda liked someone who she thought was him, but was really nothing like him at all.

  He was interrupted by a text from Rungs and reluctantly set aside his drawing.

  Rungs: Megaland dude = megabad. Check link I sent and call me.

  Inky had ignored the article Rungs had sent, thinking it would be about an all-ages show or something about how famous Woody had been. He remembered their chat when Woody had said he’d had it all. Probably Rungs had stumbled on evidence of his fame, and that’s what he’d meant.

  K, Inky texted back. He opened the link and saw that Rungs had sent him to a heavy metal publication—not his thing; metal was only big with the Kimchi Clan at school. As he started to read the article from the archives of a music fanzine called Metal Matters, “XTreeme Producer Leaves Session in Cuffs,” he realized Rungs did not mean bad in a good way. He maximized the type on his phone and kept reading.

  “Crash Mackenzie, lead singer of metal gods XTreeme, told Metal Matters in an exclusive report that legendary producer Woody Turner was led from his studio in handcuffs, interrupting the production of the long-awaited comeback recording from XTreeme.”

  “What?” Inky said aloud even though he was alone. He raced through the information about the time between the band’s albums, then focused on the part about Woody.

  “Mackenzie reports that Turner was charged with sexual abuse in the second degree. The complaint was filed by former model Vanessa Pearl, now separated from Turner, in conjunction with the couple’s divorce proceedings. Pearl charged Turner with consorting with a minor. Sources indicate that minor is none other than the winner of Megaland Studios’s Rising Stars contest.”

  “Turner declined to comment, saying his lawyer ‘would have a coronary’ if he discussed this matter. Crash Mackenzie told Metal Matters that the band will find a way to finish recording, and predicted Turner would not be stopped by ‘some washed up model who is now his ex and jealous that Woody Turner is still attractive, even to a young rising star.’ Metal Matters has confirmed that charges against Turner have been filed by the 15-year-old contestant. Turner entered a plea of no contest.”

  What was Rungs trying to do? Whatever had happened between Woody and his ex-wife was no business of his. These were just people who had kicked Woody when he was down; he was trying to make a comeback with this XTreeme band.

  Inky felt a wave of nausea come over him. He read the article over again, not skipping over anything this time. How awful. Imagine, the person closest to you turning you in! Didn’t the article say his ex-wife was jealous?

  Sometimes people were like vultures. He’d have to set Rungs straight. He should know better than to believe everything he read, especially on the Internet.

  But when Inky called, Rungs didn’t give him a chance. “Meet me at 25th and Lex at ten and we’ll talk about it. I can’t believe who we’re dealing with.”

  *

  Inky quickened his pace when he saw Rungs, who was wearing dark sunglasses even though it was a raw and gloomy Sunday. He reminded Inky of a character from a TV movie.

  “What’s with the shades?” Inky asked.

  “Late night. The more I looked, the more I found. This dude …”

  “You’ve got it all wrong. Those were just people trying to bring Woody down. It’s not like he did any of that stuff.”

  “DGT, dude. Don’t go there.”

  “What, you can’t admit you’re wrong?” Inky said.

  “Wish I was. He accepted the charges.” They had been walking downtown, but Rungs turned east at the corner, in the direction of Amanda’s building.

  “Well, we don’t know the circumstances,” Inky said.

  “I’ve seen more than enough. Let me tell you—” Rungs said.

  Inky cut him off. “Where are we going?”

  “There’s a bench with our names on it at the Nth Factor, dude. We have to find out what’s really going on with this Woody dude and Amanda.”

  Inky stopped walking. He hadn’t thought about the article in terms of how Woody was acting towards Amanda. He’d been too concerned with the idea that Amanda thought he was Woody to question why Woody wanted to take her picture. How completely lame; here he was all worried about whether she liked him, when he should have connected the dots. But Woody seemed to be such a great guy.

  They turned into the courtyard of Amanda’s building. Inky sat down reluctantly while Rungs started working with his tricked-out signal finder.

  “Let’s hope she’s like the rest of us and chills on her computer all Sunday,” Rungs said.

  Inky was not looking forward to spending a gray day on a bench snooping on Amanda’s online chat. It made him feel kind of pervy, and he hadn’t adopted Rungs’s attitude that it was all about the information. He hoped to catch a glimpse of Amanda, maybe have a chance to chat with her, although he had no idea what he’d say. And he certainly hoped that the weather would keep the skateboarders away. Running into Hawk would make the day even more completely awful.

  “OK,” Rungs said, the satisfaction in his voice suggesting some computer success. “Now we wait for her to chat with the creep.”

  “You don’t need to call him a creep. There’s more to it than the link you sent,” Inky said.

  “Oh, is there?” The tone in Rungs’s voice sounded sarcastic or pandering.

  Inky tried to catch his eye, but he was glancing down at the computer screen. “So he had a thing with a girl who wasn’t old enough to do whatever they did. It’s not like kids don’t sneak into clubs or buy liquor and stuff that the law says they’re not old enough to do. Maybe he didn’t even know how old she was,” Inky said. He couldn’t help himself; he had to defend Woody, like he would any friend who was dissed. And the more vigorously he defended him, the more he could stave off the truth.

  “An accidental creep.”

  “I read the same article as you. But I know the guy, all right. You don’t. He admitted he’d messed up in his life. I even knew about the divorce. Bet you didn’t know that, Mr. Detective.”

  Inky didn’t like how Rungs glanced up at him—not with anger at the venom in his words, but with pity. He continued defending Woody.

  “He was starting over. This game, it’s his second chance. He’s trying to make a comeback.” There was something about the way Rungs was looking at him that reminded him of how everyone looked at him right after his father’s accident. Sympathy like that made him feel like a loser.

  “And I was helping. You saw the graphics.” As he said that, Inky felt his heart sink. He’d believed in Woody. This all had to be some kind of mistake. He thought the game would be successful. He was counting on it working out.

  “Do you think a design-your-dream-date game is really enough to make a comeback?” Rungs asked.

  “It’s for girls.”

  Rungs looked down at the computer screen. The silence between them was palpable. Inky had been concerned about his art, but he never really tried the game. He really only knew how Woody thought of it, not what the game was like to play.

  “So maybe the game is too lame for us in New York. And we don’t really know about girls’ games,” Inky said. “Besides, people are entitled to try to crawl back out of the hole they dig for themselves.”

  “The comeback creep.”

  “Stop calling him a creep. He did the crime. He ser
ved the time, and now it’s over.”

  Rungs looked up, about to speak, but Inky cut him off and said, “Are you saying you don’t believe in second chances? One strike and you’re out?”

  “Not quite,” Rungs said quietly, with that perfect control in his voice. “What you read, that’s just what he got busted for.”

  Rungs pointed at the computer screen. “Here we go.” Amanda had signed on to Megaland. Inky was tense, waiting to hear what Rungs had found out.

  In a few moments, Amanda was playing a dress-up game. She picked skirts out of an animated closet.

  “Check it out. The effects are decent. Good animation, too. ” Inky said. “Maybe the game’s not that bad.”

  “Seems your friend Woody has been a busy boy, honing his coding skills and trading pictures on the Internet. Has a particular taste for young girls in pom poms and costumes.”

  “How can you know that?” Inky asked.

  Rungs took off his sunglasses. “I was up all night chasing this stuff down. When you first told me about Amanda getting the haircut you drew, I figured it was Hawk playing a prank on you. Then I liked playing at detective. Unscrambling the IP, that was a nice bit of work. I thought I’d have a good story to tell my dad.”

  On the screen, the outfits in the closet changed again, and Inky caught a glimpse of his first drawing, now animated. He had to struggle to pay attention to what Rungs was saying.

  “But then I probed a little more. I checked out a couple of those pervert sites. My dad has a list of them. Same creeps come to Thailand for sex tourism. Your man was all over the blue sites, plain to see, if you decoded his IP.”

  They both watched as Amanda selected another outfit and how the model strutted around in it. Despite all that Rungs was saying, Inky liked seeing his drawing come to life, which made him feel incredibly shallow.

  “Look. It’s serious. I didn’t expect it to be. But Woody is a creep. A real creep. You don’t have to believe me now. I put together a whole file and emailed a copy to you. Look it over tonight.”