“What about you?” I asked with my eyes pinned on the reporter.
“I’m Skip Hask.” His figure was as slim as a sheet of paper and the sprig of neon green cutting into his jet black hair gave him an otherworldly appearance. “I’m here on behalf of Zipped Magazine.”
I shook the ice cubes in my glass and responded, “A writer, how fascinating.”
“A journalist,” he corrected.
“I think I’ve browsed a few issues of Zipped, it’s mostly a web 2.0 kind of technology magazine. You cover topics like iPod upgrades and patches for your PC, right?”
“Yeah, we cater to a tech-minded audience.”
“What publications did you write for before you starting working at Zipped, Mr. Hask?”
“Mostly freelance.”
“Freelance? Sounds riveting. Have you always written for technology publications, or do you do a full spectrum?”
“I have done features for National Geographic, TIME, the Atlantic, and shamefully, even some of the gossip rags. My most read piece was a feature for The Daily Mail, an enthralling exposé on how much Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt pay their dog walker. It wasn’t exactly Pulitzer caliber, but whatever pays the rent, right?”
Our eyes locked and neither of us said anything. Skip sensed I didn’t trust him, and he was equally as suspicious of me. We both stuck out like sore thumbs among the nerds.
Paul pushed his glasses onto the bridge of his nose. “Okay, guys,” he said, “if I wanted to chitchat I would have logged onto a Dungeons & Dragons forum. There are important matters to discuss tonight.” Everyone at the table nodded in agreement. I settled in my chair, sliding back and crossing my legs. The job tonight was simple, I would just make sure they weren’t on Motley’s trail and that they had no real lead on the hands the dynamite stick had changed into. I would throw them off and make them think the dynamite stick was myth. If they leaked anything that looked like they were heading in the right direction, I would steer them away with bogus intel. Bogus, but believable intel. I liked to think that I was proficient enough with the dynamite stick to weave a believable lie. Definitely I knew more about it than anyone sitting at the table, considering I had held it in my very own hands.
I would watch the so-called reporter closely, too, since he was American, and as a rule, I distrusted Americans. A liar only had one reason for cooking up reporter’s credentials and using hackers as a source for a so-called story. My guess about Skip Hask was that he was a shill. He was after the dynamite stick for himself and probably published dis-information in his articles to throw everyone else off and get the disk himself.
The longer I listened to the geeks drone on, it only confirmed that the hackers were all off track. Lars was building a complicated bug that traced library books with any mention of the Social Security Administration, in order to trace back to people with a high level of interest in the topic in the days leading to the November Hit. He thought it possible that the hackers who created the virus might be the same people who created the dynamite stick. The best Evan had going was a theory that the data contained on the stick wasn’t in the English language at all, but was possibly Russian. He built this huge translation application that was devastatingly useless.
Skip got up from the table and announced he needed a drink. I followed him. I wedged into him as closely as I could at the crowded bar. “So, I bet your editor back home is chomping at the bit for this stuff?” I asked him over the chatter of the bar.
He gave me a look usually reserved for pesky house flies. “Not really. The dynamite stick is fringe theory. It’s like a digital Big Foot. Sure it has an audience, but mostly it’s the lure of the lore. People love legends, you know what I mean?”
“Well, I’m a believer in the dynamite stick, and while I think it’s legendary, I don’t think it’s a legend.” Skip handed the bartender money and scooped up his vodka tonic and started heading back to the table. I placed myself in front of him. “Hey, you don’t offer to buy a lady a drink too? Where are your manners, Mr. Reporter?”
He rolled his eyes and turned his heels back to the bar. “What are you having?”
“Rum and coke.” I put my elbows down on the bar and leaned into him. “Mmm, good old American Coca Cola. I miss it like I miss apple pie and football games. Hey, you’re American, right, Skip?”
“Obviously, Alice.” He gave me a nasty sidelong glance and relayed my order to the bartender. The bartender handed it to him and he turned around and handed it to me. I took one fast sip and then fell forward, quite intentionally, over a barstool and splashed the drink all over Skip’s argyle sweater vest.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” hollered Skip.
I bit my lip, projecting a Bambi-like shyness in my eyes. “I’m so sorry,” I lied.
Skip looked down at his dripping shirt, an inglorious snarl taking shape on his lips, and began scanning the corners of the club for the men’s restroom. Spotting it, he started digging his way through the crowded bar, and I aggressively, yet discreetly, crept behind him. I let him go into the bathroom first and waited a minute before swinging open the door and charging inside.
Skip was curled over the sink, vigorously blotting the spots on his sweater with a paper towel when he watched me burst into the bathroom. The bathroom was dank and it probably contained a case of hepatitis waiting to happen. I grabbed a frayed janitor’s broom that was propped up against one of the urinals and slid it across the door jamb to prevent the door from being opened from the other side.
“What are you doing in here, Alice? This is a men’s bathroom. Why are you fudging the door like that?”
I coolly swayed over to him and noticed that we were the same height, about five feet and five inches. Not that height mattered, since I had the distinct advantage of powerhouse training by David Xad. “Because I need to talk to you in private,” I replied. “You aren’t who say you are, Skippy.” I noticed that his face went a little pale and I didn’t think it was the ghoulish lighting in the bathroom. I pushed my face into his, and let my fingers play with his shirt buttons. “You’re not a reporter. So tell me who you really are and what you want with those nerds?”
“I am a reporter,” he said, shooing my hands away from his buttons. “Well, at least I was a reporter, until my editor caught me plagiarizing.”
I hoisted my butt up onto the sink and lit a cigarette. I offered one to Skip. “Tell me what happened.”
He slid the cigarette from my fingers and bit it between his teeth. “I just did, that’s pretty much all there is to the story.”
“Okay, so you got caught plagiarizing, which means it was a good thing when your Social Security number got smashed by the November Hit, right? Without a tainted reputation to follow you, you can write under a different name. Freedom of the press for sure.”
“Yeah, except it’s not easy like that. I didn’t really plagiarize anything. I think my editor got scared into accusing me of it by some government goons.”
“What did government goons want with a hipster reporter?”
Skip laughed. It was a despondent laugh, a traumatized laugh, and he shook his head like he was still in disbelief over whatever it was that happened to him. “I guess I got a little too close for comfort on a particular story. It wasn’t bad enough that I got unfairly canned for plagiarizing, but then I got a call from the feds, you know, the spooks.”
“What was the topic of the news story you were working on?”
“I was a writer for a well-known magazine at the time, and my story revolved around unpublicized juice about some U.S. nukes moving around the country. My source, an ex-CIA guy, real bitter over a pension dispute, got chatty with me. I guess the feds didn’t like some of the juicy bits I put in the story, and they showed up on my doorstep to let me know. They said they were going to investigate me and that I would probably be tried with giving away State secrets.”
“Did they make good on their promise?”
“Soon after they banged
on my door, the crap really hit the fan. When I tried to pay my rent, the check bounced. My bank account was frozen. They messed with everything, right down to my gym membership. There’s a movie like that but I forget the name. Anyways, this was all about six months after the November Hit, so once I realized I was in danger, I didn’t sit it out like I might have before the attack. I went underground.”
“You just disappeared?”
“Yeah, I bought a fake Social Security number, thought up a new alias to write under, and I started covering technology stories since the cyber attack was big news and everyone wanted articles about cyber security.”
“It sounds like being able to run away, thanks to the cyber attack, was like Christmas morning for you, I mean in terms of keeping you safe from the feds. Why mess with a good thing? Why pump the nerds for info on the dynamite stick? Unless you’re out to destroy once you find it?”
“I’m out to find the dynamite stick, but not because I want to destroy it.”
“Why then?”
“Because I plan on turning it in.”
“Turning it in? You mean to the feds? That’s crazy. Why would you want to do that?”
“You see, I was fishing on a story for Zipped a couple months back, and I stumbled upon a real pretty tidbit of information. Turns out, the government is making secret propositions to liars like us.”
“Liars us like us? Hold up. What makes you think I’m a fraud?”
Skip looked me up and down. “Don’t insult my intelligence. There’s an ancient Latin saying, I think it goes, takes one to know one.”
“Fair enough,” I told him. “Now go on with the story.”
“Anyway, the government has begun a practice of making offers to liars. Even the nasty ones, the drug runners, homegrown terrorists, and etcetera.”
“What’s the offer?’
“Freedom.”
“Freedom from what?”
“Find the dynamite stick for the government, and when the Social Security numbers are restored off the disk, get full immunity for whatever crimes or offenses we have under our real name, plus a new government-generated Social Security number that comes with a lot of perks like good degrees, automatic high paying job, and a money stipend. Whoever delivers the bacon gets the whole pig. I want to be that lucky bastard. I’d ask for a Pulitzer in journalism just so I can light it on fire and stuff it up my old editor’s ass.”
I snuffed my cigarette out in the sink and bounced down to my feet. “Skip, why would you want to cooperate with the government who wrecked your reputation and cost you your career?”
“Because it’s the only shot I have. You don’t argue with the executioner when he adds a few inches to the rope.”
“I hate to tell you this, but you can quit searching because the dynamite stick is already accounted for, and it’s not going anywhere near Uncle Sam’s pocket.”
I could tell by the look on Skip’s face that my revelation was rubbing him the wrong way. He cut me off when I started leaving for the door. “Wait a minute, you never told me where you fit in to all this. What do you want with this nerds and the dynamite stick?”
“Listen, Mr. Reporter, I’m not about to spill my guts for the front page.”
“This can be off the record.”
“Sounds to me like the only way you operate is off the record, and I don’t trust it. No deal.”
He moved aside to let me pass. With a conniving ring in his voice, he called out, “Oh Alice, one more thing.”
“What?”
“It’s not just liars like us the government will make a deal with.”
“Oh?”
“It’s corporations, too.”
“Isn’t that usually how the story goes? Corporations always get the advantage over us regular Joes.”
“Yeah, but this part is juicy, you’ll want to hear this.”
I cuffed a hand over my hip. “Okay, go on.”
“You ever hear of the software company called Cibix, Alice?”
“Maybe.” I pursed my lips.
“Last year Cibix got caught in a nasty tax evasion scandal, they chumped the government out of millions.”
“Tell me why this has anything to do with the dynamite stick.”
“I’m getting there, don’t worry. See, I have a couple employees at Cibix headquarters on my informant list willing to be a source, strictly off the record, of course. They told me that instead of pressing charges against Cibix or making them pony up the money, the government offered the corporation the option to use their technology capability as recompense.”
My eyes gleaned our reflection in the mirror and I noticed that the gritty lighting, fair skin, and video game hair all conspired to make me look edgy. The same went for Skip and his green and black hair. We both looked a little clammy and nervous and strung out on adrenaline. “Listen,” I cut in, “I was just here to meet some geeks and I don’t care about this. I think I have to piss, excuse me.” I busted into one of the toilet stalls and pissed my one and a half drinks worth.
Skip made a lingering sigh on the other side of my stall and kept talking. “But, it’s fascinating. I didn’t put much stock into it until some news came down the geek wire that Cibix recently got their servers trashed vigilante-style by a perp they couldn’t finger. I talked to a couple employees last night, you wouldn’t believe what one of them told me, Alice.”
“Try me.”
“The source said he wasn’t at all surprised Cibix was having problems getting their tax figures straight. Lately they had hired, and I quote, nothing but straight-out-of-college pips. Can you believe that?”
“Nothing all that hard to believe about it. Cheap labor is good business.”
“Oh yeah, I remember now, there was one funny thing she told me. She said there was even a new accountant spotted walking around with blue hair. Can you believe that, Alice?” He did a big cackling laugh and then he cleared his throat. “You don’t know anyone who dyes their hair wacky colors, do you, Alice?”
I flushed the toilet with the heel of my boot and then I flew out of the stall and shoved into Skip, busting him up against the bathroom mirror. “That doesn’t sound like news that’s fit to print.”
“Nervous about something, Alice?” he asked, with a jerk smirk going in full effect. With one hand shaking the scruff of his collar, I reached into my boot with the other and pulled out my snub-nose revolver and pressed it to his temple.
“Don’t make me scribble your obituary all over the wall of this bathroom,” I said through clenched teeth.
“Let me ask you something. What’s a cute punk-rock chick like you doing tangled up in this nasty story?”
I dug the gun’s mouth deeper into his temple. “I’m not part of the story, I’m the one writing the story. And you’re just a little ant who thinks he’s found something to carry off to his little hive and so he can rebuild his little ant hill. But you’re wrong.” I chopped the borrowed cigarette out of his mouth and crushed it into itty bitty pieces with my heel. “Dead wrong.”
Someone jostled at the jammed door handle. I shoved my gun back into my boot and slyly walked over to slide the broom out. A rough-looking guy came in to use the urinal. He gave us an awkward look and then unzipped and did his business. Probably he had seen worse in a bar bathroom before. I tapped my cigarette ash into the sink and waited for him to leave. He pissed a gallon and left without washing his hands.
“No need to get testy here,” Skip said, looking at the door like he wanted out too.
“Just do both of us a favor and trash the story. Give up on your pipedream about getting the dynamite stick into your grubby hands.”
I saw Skip reach for his pocket and my hand shot down to retrieve the revolver from my boot again. He put both hands in the air. “Calm down, I’m just getting one of my business cards for you.”
“Alright,” I said. “Do it slowly.”
“If you ever change your mind about sharing whatever it is you know, give me a call.”
He extended a card to me. He was so used-car salesman about the whole thing.
I took the card, stormed out of the bathroom, and found my way through the crowded bar to the exit. It was practically freezing outside, so I made a judgment against walking the whole way home, instead taking the train a half block to my flat.
When I got inside I boiled water for rose hip tea and leaned against the breakfast counter smoking a cigarette. It was 4 A.M. by then, and as I glanced over at the empty couch, its cushions in disarray, it was hard to believe it was the still the same night I had spent with Ben intimately cozied on the couch. I raked my fingers through my hair, dragging with them the dreggy stench of the bar bathroom.
I dialed Rabbit’s number.
“Our secret it still safe,” I told him.
Chapter Twenty-five: Scrubs
IT WAS HELL to wake up the next morning.
I had tossed and turned all night thinking of Skip and his busybody questions. His innuendo regarding my unusual hair color and a connection to Cibix was making my stomach feel violently ill. But I consoled myself by remembering that he was just an amateur loser with maybe ten readers, and that was on a prime month. Plus, my hair, though still unorthodox, was distinctly pink now, and not blue, so that removed me from any distinctive description of the perpetrator at Cibix.
I threw the covers off my body and told myself I had better things to think about. Like Ben, for instance. The thought of Ben was enough to rocket me out of bed.
I padded down the metal spiral steps that led down from my bedroom loft to the kitchen. I swung open the refrigerator door and took note that the situation inside was dire. There was club soda I had used to soak the blood stains out of my black mini after getting shot by Pressley on the Eiffel Tower, plus some chutney packets from the takeout the night before. I slammed the door shut and decided that I would have to grab lunch on the go. I spent some time in the bathroom getting dolled up by gunking up my eyelashes with jet black extra volume mascara. I got dressed in skinny jeans, a pink stretchy top to match my hair, and a red feathery scarf.
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