by Tom Fowler
“Not bad,” said Tony. “We do better at dinner. Lots of places aren’t closing between lunch and dinner anymore. Pisses me off.”
“You still close?”
“Yeah, from three to five. Used to be two-thirty until a bunch of people bitched about it.” He paused. “How come I can’t get a steak at two-thirty?” Tony said in a higher, mocking tone. “Because it’s two-thirty, you asshole.”
“Ah, the demands of a younger clientele,” I said.
“It ain’t the same neighborhood anymore. We all gotta change with the times.”
The waitress returned with my lunch. Another perk to sitting at Tony’s table was the ginormous portions of food I got. The large plate struggled to hold the side of veal set atop it. Cheese bubbled and fragrant steam rose from everything. The salad came in a bowl befitting a full-sized offering. The greens and reds popped. A cup of the house creamy Italian dressing sat off to the side.
I put some on my salad and cut about half the veal to let it cool. Tony sat in silence while I ate the greens. He and his goons shared a few looks. One came up, whispered something in Tony’s ear, and left when Tony nodded. I wouldn’t ask, and Tony knew it. After a moment, he said, “I know you didn’t come here for the food and company. What’s on your mind?”
“Alberto Esposito,” I said after taking the first bite of my veal parmesan. It almost cooled enough.
Tony kept his expression neutral. “Who?”
“Tony. Really?”
It took a minute, during which I kept eating, but Tony smirked. “Fine. I guess I can’t play dumb with you. What about him?”
“You sent him away.”
“Yeah. To Cleveland. He had stuff to learn that he couldn’t learn from me. And I had stuff to teach him he didn’t want to learn.” Tony shook his head at the memory. “So I sent him to Cleveland. He could learn there. Besides, it’s fucking Cleveland. Maybe it’ll teach him a little respect.”
“I don’t think it worked.”
It took Tony a second, but he caught the meaning. “What? He’s back in town?”
“I’m guessing he didn’t come by and say hello,” I said.
“Not exactly,” Tony said. “Ain’t heard a peep from him for months. I figured he was working.”
“He probably was. Now he wants to work on taking your job.”
My remark made Tony chuckle. I didn’t expect his reaction. I anticipated seething anger and maybe a minor outburst to make all his lunch patrons remember just who owned this restaurant. He kept chuckling as I ate another bite.
“I didn’t know I brought jokes,” I said.
“That dumbass . . . taking over for me?” Tony said. “Shit. Better people than him have tried. I’m still here. Wanna guess where they are?”
“I have a good idea.”
“Of course you do. You’re a smart kid, C.T. I thought Esposito was smart, too. Thought he had potential. I guess not.” He paused. “Wait, how do you know this asshole?”
“He came to see me.”
“Why?”
“Said he remembered me from your poker games,” I said.
“What did he want?” said Tony.
“I think he wants to modernize things. He asked me to write some ransomware for him.” I wondered if Tony knew what ransomware was.
“What’d you say?”
“What do you think? I told him no.”
“Did he take no for an answer?”
I shrugged. “He said he’d let me think on it. My answer isn’t changing.”
“You need help with Esposito?” Tony said.
“I can handle him,” I said. “My concern is I think he’s still looking for someone to write his ransomware.” I told Tony a little about Brian and Chris Sellers. “I saw Esposito’s car speeding away from a coffee shop the guy frequented. Our former friend is definitely on the hunt.”
“You think the kid wrote the malware for him?”
“I’m not sure. Esposito wants to find him. I have to think it has something to do with the ransomware.”
Tony frowned in thought. I took another bite of the veal. It would be my last after eating just over half of it. It probably constituted the normal dinner portion. I signaled the waitress and told her I would need a box. Only after I packed up my lunch for tomorrow did Tony say anything. “You think he’s coming for me?” he said.
“You know how these things work better than I do,” I said. “But if I had to guess, I would say he wants the ransomware to raise some quick cash. He’ll use the funds to get some men . . . and then he’ll come for you.”
“I want your support,” Tony said.
I frowned. “Meaning what?”
“What do you mean?”
“We’re friends, Tony. Have been for years. I like you, and I want you to stick around. But I’m not one of your soldiers.”
“Fair enough.” Tony nodded. “Then I’d like you to stay out of it.”
“Exactly what I’d like to do.”
“But you came here today,” Tony said.
“I wanted to warn you. I’m sure people have gone after you before. It must come with the job. This is the first one I’ve seen, though. Esposito is determined, and if he gets the right ransomware, he can pay enough people to come after you.”
Tony nodded and looked at something in the middle distance. I finished my tea. “Thanks, C.T.,” he said.
“Sure, Tony,” I said.
“Keep me updated on Esposito. If you see him, if he calls you, whatever.”
“Not what I’d call staying out of it.”
Tony smiled. It didn’t reach his eyes. “I don’t want you to do anything you don’t want to do.”
“I don’t mind.”
“Good. Thanks for coming in. Always good to see you.” This time, Tony’s smile included his eyes.
“You too, Tony.” We shook hands.
I left.
I arrived home to find Gloria Reading waiting. Like me, Gloria hails from a wealthy family. Unlike me, she never learned to mingle with people outside her tax bracket. Despite this, I found Gloria endearing in her own way. We enjoyed a relationship of convenience. My last case had been a tough one, and Gloria confessed to being worried about me. I gave her a key in case she needed it and never got it back. One of these days, I would ask for it Today, however, a beautiful woman in a small tennis outfit sat on my couch. There were worse fates.
Gloria grinned at me. “You need a shower?” she said.
“I’m good,” I said.
“I just came from practice. I definitely need a shower.” Gloria stood. “I guess I’m taking one alone.” She started for the stairs.
“No need to waste water,” I said, following her. “I’m sure I sweated a few drops somewhere.”
“That’s why you want to shower with me?”
“It’s on the list somewhere, I’m sure.”
It didn’t take long for her to remind me of the other reasons.
Later, I sat in my office, nursing a decaf coffee and looking for any recent online activity from Chris Sellers. I could find none. He hadn’t posted code in any of the usual online haunts. All his social media pages remained dormant. His cell phone hadn’t been used or even talked to a tower in days. I didn’t want to speculate about his well-being—it wouldn’t do his brother any good—but if Chris were still alive, he took care not to be found.
I noticed a change in the light from the hallway. Gloria stood in the doorway. “What are you working on?” she said. She walked into the office and sat in one of my client chairs. Gloria never made it past the doorway before. I figured her allergy to working kept her at bay.
“My most recent case. A guy has gone missing. His brother hired me to find him.”
“How old is the brother?”
“Sixteen,” I said.
Gloria winced. “That’s young to lose a brother.”
“Or a sister.”
She gave me a delicate smile. “You saw something of yourself in this kid?”
I nodded. “Unlike me, their parents are dead. They have each other. I’m trying to make sure they still do.”
“You think the missing brother is alive?”
While I thought about my answer, I watched Gloria. She could feign interest well, and she did for a while whenever we talked about my cases. She would look away here and there and twirl her chestnut hair around a finger. This time, she sat and looked at me. No fidgeting. No distractions. No faking. She was actually interested this time. “I hope he is,” I said. “No one’s seen him for a few days. No sign of him online.” I told her the basics about the code repositories and how he’d gone dark even there.
“What about offline?” she said.
“I’ve checked out his usual haunts.” I left out the parts about Alberto Esposito and seeing his car speeding away from the coffee shop.
“How old is this guy?”
“Twenty-four, I think.”
“He has to be more plugged in than you think. You talked about his code thingies. Don’t people talk about stuff like that anywhere?”
Of course they did. And I hadn’t looked there. I smiled. “I didn’t check yet,” I said. “Thanks.”
Gloria smiled, too. “I hope that helped.”
“Me, too. You seem way more interested than usual in my case.”
“You do good work,” she said. “For a while, I kept waiting for you to ditch the job, but that’s not you. You’re good at this, and you’re helping people. That’s important.”
“Have you seen Invasion of the Body Snatchers?” I said.
Gloria chuckled. “I’m not a pod person.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Might require some close inspection later.”
“Closer inspection than the shower?” she asked.
“Water makes a proper inspection impossible.”
“Is that a fact?”
“It is.”
“Well,” she said, “right now, this pod person is hungry. I don’t think I could be inspected on an empty stomach.”
“We’ll have to eat, then,” I said.
The contents of my refrigerator and pantry would not combine into an adequate dinner, so we went out. Gloria had a jones for Italian. I ate it for lunch but didn’t mind having it again. I didn’t need a repeat of seeing Tony, however, so we chose one of his competitors in Little Italy: Della Notte. Even though I had been there with Joey, I didn’t mind going back. Because Gloria’s ghost would haunt me if she were seen dead in the Caprice, she drove her Mercedes coupe. The valet accepted it with a wide smile. It wasn’t often a college kid got to drive a car shaped and colored like a rocket.
We got a table and perused the menu. Gloria ordered a bottle of wine I sampled once and found decent but not great. I ordered a Caesar salad appetizer and salmon linguine for dinner; Gloria opted for veal parmesan. “You’re going to have to play a lot of tennis to work it off,” I said when the waiter left with our menus.
She grinned. “I figure we’ll work off some of the calories later.”
“Maybe I’ll order dessert, then.”
“Maybe I’ll help you eat it,” Gloria said.
The waiter dropped off my salad. Like a proper Caesar should, it came with anchovies. Gloria picked up her fork and eyed my salad, then frowned when she saw one of the tiny fish. “It’s authentic,” I said.
“It’s gross,” she countered.
I found anchovies on pizza gross—one anchovy was sufficient to ruin an entire pie—but in a Caesar salad, they were quite good. I drank mostly water with the greens, wishing I had a better wine to wash it down with. Gloria showed a greater interest in my work. Maybe we could improve her wine label snobbery next. Of course, like me, she enjoyed several kinds of snobbery. It must have helped us get along so well: on some level, we understood each other.
“You’re going to look for this guy online?” said Gloria as the waiter cleared my small plate and freshened our waters.
I nodded. “I got a good suggestion.”
It made Gloria smile. “I’m glad I could help.”
If she’d said those words a couple months ago, I would have chalked it up as a trite remark. Today, I believed her. “I’ll start tonight,” I said.
“Tonight?” Gloria said. Her eyes shone, and the corner of her mouth turned up.
“Schedule permitting,” I said. “There’s always the morning.”
“You think you’ll be able to find him?”
“I hope so. I’m sure he has a large presence. When I did a lot of coding at his age, I was all over the Internet.” I kicked myself again for not thinking of this. Because I identified with Brian Sellers, I overlooked the fact Chris Sellers and I had quite a bit in common. He might even be as good a coder as I.
“Will all of that help you find him?” Gloria said.
“Someone has to know something about him.”
“And they’ll talk to you?”
“I might have to show off my coding bona fides,” I said. “If they think I’m one of them, they’ll talk to me.”
The waiter returned with our dinners. Steam rose from both plates. I took a deep breath and inhaled the wonderful aromas of salmon, pasta, tomato sauce, garlic, and spices. Gloria and I scrapped conversation and ate. We drank some more wine—it proved to be a decent pairing with my meal, at least—and scarfed down our dinners.
So far, Gloria knew I was looking for a missing fellow with a younger brother. She didn’t know about Alberto Esposito and his interest in Chris Sellers. I debated telling her as the waiter took our plates away and promised to return with a dessert menu. While Gloria and I had grown closer, we still didn’t have a traditional relationship. The evening we spent together involved a meal, conversation, and sex. During a recent case, however, I needed to stay at Gloria’s house for a few nights. I think the occasion made us closer. We hadn’t talked about it, however. Maybe one of these days, we would.
I ordered two cannoli for dessert. Gloria looked at me over her wineglass. “There’s a complicating factor in the case,” I said.
She put her glass down. “What’s that?”
“Someone else seems to have an interest in the missing brother.”
Gloria frowned. “Who?”
I lowered my voice and gave her an abbreviated version of the Alberto Esposito story. “I don’t know how he fits in,” I said, “but I know he’s involved, and I’m sure I’ll see him again.”
“Be careful,” Gloria said. She grabbed my hand. I didn’t resist. When she looked down and saw what she had done, however, Gloria pulled her hand back and hurried it into her lap. The waiter spared us any further awkwardness by bringing out our cannoli. The shell was light and flaky, with fresh, sweet ricotta inside, and a sprinkling of chocolate chips on top. I ate mine in a few bites. Gloria nursed hers. I didn’t know if she wanted to savor it or if the recent tenor of our conversation made her concerned.
Even after she finished her cannoli, Gloria remained quiet. I spooked her by mentioning Esposito. She downed her remaining wine in a single swig and added the last couple ounces from the bottle to her glass. I paid the check. When we got outside, Gloria handed me her keys. “I drank more wine than you did,” she said. I loved the pickup and sportiness of her car but didn’t care for the smallish driver’s seat. If I wanted to drive something shaped like a rocket, I would have been an astronaut.
I tipped the valet and adjusted the seat and steering wheel. Before I could take off, Gloria grabbed my face and kissed me hard. “Drive fast,” she said.
The Benz complied.
Chapter 6
Back at my house, I intended to work on the case. Gloria, however, had other plans. I no sooner closed and locked the front door when she shoved me against it and kissed me. “So aggressive,” I said when I got a chance.
“You mind?” she said in a breathless tone.
“Nope.”
I tried steering Gloria toward the stairs, just inside the front door. She had other ideas again, instead steeri
ng me into the living room. She shoved me onto the couch and slid on top of me. I didn’t resist.
Later, Gloria padded upstairs while I tossed some clothes back on and went to work in the office. In my college days, both undergrad and grad, I availed myself of forums where coders of all skill levels would come together, talk about their programs, solicit help, and sometimes carry on about life. One of the people I met there ended up as a colleague in Hong Kong. I hoped Chris Sellers made at least one such e-friend, and I hoped I could find him or her—I knew a lot of girls who were great coders—and get the person to talk to me. If I got lucky, I might even find Chris himself.
I looked up the most popular online hangouts for coders. To my non-surprise, they’d changed since the days I posted my Python ramblings for the world to see. None featured an easy way to search for a member without knowing the user name. I signed up for the most popular three and looked for Chris Sellers under any handles he might use. I found him on all three.
Did I reach out to him directly? What if his accounts were inactive? I checked his profile on one of the sites.
He logged in three days ago.
He was alive then.
I had to contact him. His profile on codingchat.com showed him to be an active user with more posts and more recent activity than on the other sites. I opened a new message. Now I only needed to figure out what to say. Other than this blip of online presence, Chris Sellers disappeared. He had to have a reason for doing so. I couldn’t come on too strong, or he’d blow me off. While I’m often a fan of lying, I didn’t want Chris to see through a lie and blow me off there. I settled on a version of the truth.
Chris,
Your brother is worried about you. You don’t know me, but I’m helping him find you. He’s safe but worried. Reply to this message or to my cell, 410-555-7274.