Bet Your Life

by Richard Dooling

After we finished the wine, she gathered up the glasses and took them away. I kissed her good night and curled up in my designated place on the couch and waited. Every time I heard her clear her throat or click off a light switch, I looked at my watch and started counting again. Her machine was still on, but if I started clicking and clacking around on her keyboard, she’d come and find me pawing through her e-mails.

  Instead, I had an idea, a bad one, but after lunching on scotch and downing my half of two wine bottles, how was I to know good from bad when it came to wee-hour ideas like wondering if the gal I’m chasing is a fraudster or a murderer?

  I waited, and counted.

  At 1:16 A.M., she’d been quiet for an hour.

  I put my boots on, grabbed the sport coat I’d worn to the wake and my parka. I found her leather handbag on the table in the entryway. I drew her keys out in slow, silent motion, made sure the one rimmed in red and the one rimmed in green were still there, then slipped out into the winter night.

  14

  JEHOVAH’S WITNESSES

  THE YELLOW POLICE TAPE was still up, but the weight of it had peeled back half the adhesive on one side of the doorjamb. I put on my wool gloves and touched it, then, whoops! It fell, and how was I to know if it was still off limits? Becker’s computer man and the evidence people had surely already been there. Hadn’t Becker said that he wanted to turn the place over to the family in a few days? Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, early Tuesday morning? That was more than a few, and I was practically family to Lenny.

  I cranked the green-rimmed key in the slot, pushed open the raspy door, and went inside. The place was still colder than Satan’s frozen butthole, as if Lenny’s furniture and belongings were made out of cleverly painted dry ice that would start smoking any minute. The machine was still off, or more likely Becker’s computer techs had powered it down after they finished copying the hard drive.

  I powered it back up with a gloved fingertip and took a look around while I waited for it to boot. The pill vials, the razor blade, and the mirror were all gone. Everything else appeared undisturbed, not that I remembered much about that night, other than finding Lenny half naked, dead, and as yet uncovered in shame.

  I sat down at his machine. Wearing gloves while working his pointing device and keyboard was going to be a chore, and I didn’t plan on sitting in a condo roped off with police tape reading a dead man’s junk e-mails in the dead of night. All I wanted to do was copy one big file and a few folders and take them with me.

  I didn’t know Lenny’s passwords, so I had to log on as a new user. From the desktop I went straight to Windows Explorer.

  Love or hate Microsoft, they make it easy to quickly locate the nexus of the entire electronic personality. The program is called Outlook, and those who use it have their calendar and scheduler, their contacts, their to-do lists, their memos, and above all their e-mail all contained in one personal folder file, a .pst file, usually called “outlook.pst.” If I opened the Outlook program, it would open Lenny’s personal-file folders, and it would change the date and time of his .pst file. Copying the whole file onto a removable disk wouldn’t change the date or time or any other file attributes, and then I could just take them all home where I could peruse them at my leisure. Only trouble is, like any file associated with a Microsoft application, it was a fat hog: in Lenny’s case a file called “AttilaTheHun.pst” weighing in at 150 megabytes.

  Personal-folder files, like any other files, are easily password-protected, but most users don’t take the trouble. At most, the typical Outlook user may have a hidden or password-protected folder set aside inside the program, where he keeps e-mail from the latest object of his affections at the office, but everything else is wide open. Why? Because nobody likes to be nagged by password dialogue boxes every time he opens his e-mail program.

  Go through someone’s personal effects after he or she dies; there’s no better proof that people live entire lives convinced of their own immortality. Otherwise they’d be a lot more careful about the stuff they leave behind for their loved ones to find. Lenny had gobs of subscriber e-mails from sites promising Hot Asian Teenage Girls, Barely Legal Pussy, XXX Top 100 Hot Web Cam Sex, everything including Kurt Vonnegut’s “Wide Open Beavers Inside!” And, sure enough, e-mail aplenty from the Center for AIDS Prevention Studies, the CDC, and other AIDS information sources.

  I read somewhere that the human brain contains one hundred billion neurons, about the same number of stars clustered together in the large spiral galaxy we live in called the Milky Way. When those hundred billion neurons hook up via synapses to make a person—like Lenny, or Miranda, or even Norton—what you get is a galactic-scale persona of neurons and neuroses. But instead of being a hundred thousand light-years wide, like the Milky Way, the vast, deranged Lenny Way had all fit inside a single human skull. Saying I “knew” him because I’d worked with him, talked to him, e-mailed him, had yucked it up over beers and joints with him, was like saying I knew the Milky Way because of the time I’d spent in West Omaha.

  Now all that was left of the galaxy formerly known as Lenny was the text he’d typed into his computer. It was as if the Milky Way and all of its vast majesty had vanished, leaving behind only a few insect fossils in a limestone cut along Interstate 80.

  Lenny had archived his MP3 music files on a collection of Iomega Zip 250 disks, and I needed one or more blank disks to put his files on. I grabbed one from the little carousel, stuck it in the drive, and erased it by doing a quick format. According to the label on the case, Gomez, Liquid Skin, Ryan Adams, Heartbreaker, and the Hangdogs, Beware of Dog, had all just lost their magnetic lives in the name of copying Lenny’s electronic identity. I copied AttilaTheHun.pst onto the Zip disk, and then I copied all of the session.log files from his Web Cam Commander folder, his “My Documents” folder, his “My Pictures” folder.

  I did file searches using the various text strings: “Heartland Viatical,” “Crogan,” or “GothicRage86.” While the searches progressed, I had another thought. I’d originally planned to get into Miranda’s system from my home machine and copy her Outlook.pst file, as well as the session.log file I’d found in her Web Cam Commander folder. But here I was on Lenny’s machine, and I realized that if I accessed her machine right now, from Lenny’s place instead of mine, then I could do so without leaving any traces of my home machine or its address. If she checked her firewall logs or had somebody else do it for her, they’d find traces of Lenny’s machine, not mine.

  I got past her software firewall okay using the Rubicon.exe program I’d left on her machine. I formatted another Zip disk (good-bye to what looked like the complete works of Alison Krauss and the Fountains of Wayne’s Utopia Parkway). Miranda’s.pst file was ninety megabytes, which would take a good ten minutes to transfer. While I waited, I went back to look at the results of my file search and found that most of the text string hits were in the .pst file I’d already copied. The “GothicRage86” hits were all in his Delta-Strike folder; GothicRage had to be a team member or a frequent opponent, from the looks of it. I copied the most recent of those and headed back out to the desktop to monitor the transfer of Miranda’s Outlook file.

  Then Lenny’s instant-messaging window popped open:

  GothicRage86: SnowKiller, what happened Friday night, did you morph into a fucking pussy, again? Where you been?

  I decided typing was the best policy, or maybe even loading a map for a game, until I figured out how to handle this one. How well had GothicRage known Lenny if he didn’t even know he was dead? Not unusual for a gamer—he could have “known” Lenny for years and never met him. Suppose I told him who I was and what had happened to Lenny? It might spook him and he’d vanish. I wouldn’t know who he was or where to find him. Instead I played along, at least until I could find out if GothicRage was physically at Lenny’s place the night he died, or if he had just cut into our game somehow. Or maybe Lenny had played on a team that night just before hooking up with me, and GothicRage had still been l
urking somewhere in the map?

  I panicked for a second, because I wasn’t sure if I had to log in before using his instant messaging. I didn’t know the AttilaTheHun password.

  I started typing anyway, and Lenny’s Attila profile popped right up. Whew. Now I could just be Lenny.

  AttilaTheHun: Friday I was impaired by substances beyond my control, but I can empty a few clips into your gizzard tonight if you’re ready. I conked out early Friday night, and next day I heard you kicked my buddy’s ass, too. Dirk Stone, Seal Team 6?

  Thirty seconds is a long lag in instant-messaging land, and I thought maybe GothicRage had taken off, but then there he was.

  GothicRage86: Dude, you passed out at the keyboard. After that, I played your buddy Dirk, and he was a fucking pussy, just like you. Who was Senorita Silk Fox who turned me off of the Attila-at-Home web cam?

  AttilaTheHun: Friday night? On Attila cam?

  GothicRage86: Yeah, 11 or so. You were bobbing and weaving at the keyboard and then Beauty Betty comes over and switches me out.

  AttilaTheHun: Keep describing. On the weekends I got hot and cold running babes in this place. Blonde? Brunette?

  GothicRage86: Brunette, lipstick, big ones. Dressed for it. She switched me off the cam.

  AttilaTheHun: I think I know who you’re talking about. If you were on Attila cam Friday night, you probably still got a shot of her in the cache of your temporary files?

  GothicRage86: Maybe.

  AttilaTheHun: I wanna pimp her. Send me the image and I’ll pull it up in my graphics program. I’ll make a cartoon out of it and mail it to her and say, “Bitch, what the fuck you doing switching my friends off Attila-at-Home cam?”

  Another pause that lasted way too long.

  AttilaTheHun: Never mind if it’s a pain. It’s just a joke I wanna play on her.

  GothicRage86: Not a problem. I was just searching the cache for the Attila images. I only got one of her. You must have had it set on a thirty-second refresh rate. Hey, bring her along as the VIP next time you hole up inside a 747 map.

  AttilaTheHun: Cool, send it. Hey, wait a sec, send it to my buddy. He’s got FreeHand graphics on his machine. Send it to CarvedMeat@home.com and I’ll work on it at his place.

  GothicRage86: Got it. Shall I splatter thy brains now fuckface? You pick the map, SnowKiller, and I’ll come find you and take you out.

  I picked Cartel Headquarters, a map that I’d played Lenny in many times, so I could try to remember how he had played it as we went along. Otherwise, I was going to start doing shit Lenny had never done, and maybe if GothicRage had played Lenny a lot, he’d start to notice. Not to mention I might get killed right off trying to work a Razer Boomslang with wool gloves on.

  I took the SnowKiller skin and the Mac-10 and went up to guard the entrance through the vent on the roof. I waited for GothicRage to open the vent and give me a clear head shot.

  GothicRage86: Hey, why isn’t Attila-at-Home cam on now?

  I looked up into the dead eye of the Intel camera.

  He was just distracting me while he made his move. I heard his boots clanging on the metal fire escape stairs, but I also heard something else.

  A doorbell, and it wasn’t sound effects coming from inside the map; it was Lenny’s real-world doorbell, which meant that somebody was at Lenny’s door at 2 A.M. Why? To check and see how he was doing the night before his funeral? Miranda? Had she noticed the keys were gone? Knew that I’d taken them? Lenny’s mom? But why would his mom be ringing her dead son’s doorbell? Becker’s computer guys? In the middle of the night?

  I tiptoed over to the door and listened. I heard a male clear his throat outside, then a peculiar series of grunts and unintelligible speech.

  The bell chimed again.

  The door had a peephole with a little silver cover.

  I leaned up close and slid the cover away. I peeked in the lens, where I could see two well-groomed young guys in suits and thirty-dollar ties of the sort not even lawyers wear anymore. They looked like University of Nebraska Omaha students or Eagle Scouts out raising money for a good cause. The one on the left carried a briefcase and was a tall, wiry blond with a long lean head that drooped forward slightly on his knobby frame. The guy on the right was shorter and even slighter than his companion. Both the savoriest of characters. And the short guy had newsletters and pamphlets or papers of some kind in hand.

  Copies of the Watchtower, I thought, that’s it! If I opened the door they’d offer me a free Bible study session, invite themselves in to share their faith with me, and when I said no thanks they’d leave me a pamphlet warning me about the dangers of blood transfusions. Jehovah’s Witnesses made perfect sense. Except it was two in the morning, and they were inside a building with a locked front door and frosted lettering on the glass that said NO SOLICITATIONS? I reared back and refocused, and lost my grip on the silver cover, and it slipped back into place with an audible click.

  “FBI,” a voice said, “We have a search warrant for this address. Open the door.”

  Shit. I tiptoed back to the machine and popped out the Zip disk, grabbed the other one with Lenny’s files on it, and put them both in the crotch of my underwear, right on top of Mr. Shriveled-in-Panic. Then I powered down the machine.

  I went back to the door and carefully slid the cover open again and watched them.

  “Federal agents,” said the short one on the right. “Open the door.”

  Or what? I thought. You’ll hold up my tax refund? Lenny had a steel door. Unless they had six more agents with Plexiglas shields and a battering ram waiting in the wings, I could go lie down and pretend I fell asleep drunk.

  Then I saw the tall one lift a set of keys, and I opened the door quick.

  There were three of them. Instead of a battering ram, they had a technician’s cart in the hallway to the right, with hardware shelving and plastic bins scattered with computer parts and tools: external Iomega drives, external media for the most likely super-floppy and external drives, backup tape machines.

  Maybe the FBI had gone into the PC repair business?

  A third guy with movie-star, blond good looks manned the cart. He had a thin tan cord that came out of his collar and hooked up to a little, oval, flesh-colored disk that appeared to be stuck to the side of his head. At first I thought it was one of those secret agent earphones, but it didn’t go into his ear, it was stuck to the side of his head behind and slightly above his ear.

  The short guy arranged a stapled clutch of papers on his clipboard.

  “I’m case agent Todd McKnight, Federal Bureau of Investigation,” he said. “I have a search warrant for the premises: 1325 Jason Street, number 232. This is Agent Michael Mutton, Evidence Response Team.”

  His taller partner nodded, and McKnight kept talking.

  “And this is Nate Langdon,” said McKnight, indicating the handsome guy with the cart. “He’s a computer forensic examiner—Computer Analysis Response Team.”

  Langdon made an odd inarticulate sound in the back of his throat. He interrupted McKnight’s introduction, as if he hadn’t heard him talking.

  “Nate Lahng-DUN,” he said.

  He didn’t seem a bit self-conscious about his speech impediment. Instead he was loud and almost pushy, then he said, “Cahm-pew-tuh For-en-zic Zaminah,” accenting all the wrong syllables.

  “He’s deaf,” said McKnight, “but he wears a cochlear implant.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  McKnight turned the clipboard around, showed me the search warrant, and pointed at the list of items they were entitled to seize: computers of any kind, disks, diskettes, storage peripherals…the list went on, but it all seemed to be computer-related.

  He flapped open his federal ID, where I could read his name: Todd D. McKnight.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Are you Mr. Leonard Stillmach?” asked Mutton.

  I don’t know why I said it, but I did. Maybe it was because I’d just been pretending to be Lenny with GothicRage.


  “Just Lenny,” I said.

  I figured if he asked me for identification, I’d tell him that Lenny was my nickname. Sure. It was unconscious, a brain spasm and desperate ploy to avoid having to explain why I was there and how I’d gotten in. Mainly it was Charlie Becker I was thinking of, and how I didn’t want to explain it to him. These guys didn’t even know Lenny was dead, which meant they weren’t working with Becker, probably didn’t even know Becker.

  From the average citizen’s point of view, the police are a unitary organization working together at the federal, state, and local levels to apprehend lawbreakers, but I’d worked enough with all three levels of cops to know that wasn’t so. The few times I’d worked with FBI on a fraud case, if you mentioned the local cops, they looked right past you, like, Why would we want them involved? FBI guys have a college grad’s contempt for local cops, who maybe went to a community college. Plus they hadn’t said anything about an arrest warrant, just a search warrant. I was betting that if I gave them their search, they wouldn’t care if I was Lenny Stillmach or Jimmy Hoffa.

  “Have you been drinking, sir?” asked McKnight.

  Goddamn! Sober people have such sensitive sniffers.

  “Yes,” I said, “I drank some wine with my girlfriend.”

  Mutton looked at the police tape.

  “The tape was down when I came back home a while ago,” I said. “I was out.”

  The deaf guy with the cart didn’t seem to hear me, cochlear implant or no.

  “It’s not our tape,” said McKnight. “We don’t care about the tape.”

  He looked over my shoulder toward Lenny’s computer table.

  “We’re here for the computers,” said McKnight, and handed me the stapled papers. “Here’s your copy of the warrant.”

  Langdon, the deaf guy with the robotic speech, had a persistent stare that was annoying. I noticed that he reached up and pulled off the disk that was stuck to the side of his head and let it dangle on his lapel.