The turn of this conversation was giving Paul a powerful warm furry urge to tear off all that L.L. Bean, peel his lady like a grape and throw her on the guest bed, so he put down the bag of marijuana and said, “I’ve got the water and heat back on, and the hot tub is warming. Is it time to go next door—wherever the hell that is—and start establishing our cover, so nobody has the cops swing by?”
She shook her head, and dropped a large chunk of hashish on top of the cocaine in the drawer. Coke was just money one shouldn’t flash, to both of them. “That’s covered.”
“What, you mean Mo’ Like It? We don’t even know how far away he lives; he could be a hermit at the other end of the island.”
“Doesn’t matter. On an island this size, the jungle telegraph is like the Internet: all users are equidistant. Twenty bucks says at this moment, one of the neighbors is asking what the world is coming to, when even decent people are shaving their heads.”
“Twenty Canadian? Or American?”
June shut the drawer. “Whatever. And I have a much better idea than borrowing a cup of credibility.”
“Go.”
“Why don’t you tear this goddam L.L. Bean off me, peel me like a grape, and carry me upstairs to the master bedroom?”
Don’t ever let anybody tell you enough money can’t heal, sometimes, Paul thought. “That bed there’s a lot closer,” he pointed out.
“Yeah, but I want to be carried further than that.”
He shrugged. “Works for me.”
Even for a strong man in love and his prime, yuppie clothing is oddly hard to tear; Paul had to settle for merely rumpling everything but the panties. June didn’t seem to mind.
He was very careful, very alert, until she signaled clearly that he did not need to be; then he burst open and died and was annihilated and, timeless time later, painstakingly reassembled from a kind description. Perhaps it should have been disappointing to both of them that she didn’t come, too. But she did not always, when they made love, and often didn’t care, and could be relied on to cue him if she did. He offered anyway, licking her throat in a way that was one of their signals, but she declined with a warm hug and an uncounterfeitable kiss, and reached for the remote.
“That’s why you wanted to come up here,” he said sleepily. “Better TV.”
“You know me so well,” she said, and gave him a friendly tweak.
He fell asleep watching a genuinely astonishing commercial, in which an immensely fat hairy jolly man (immensely all those things) wearing only a jockstrap and a skipper’s cap did—for a Pacific Rim audience—a sumo shtick that must have been to a Japanese what Step’n’Fetchit is to a brother. It turned out he sold junk. What a country! was Paul’s last coherent thought.
Then he slept, and dreamed that he was Gnossos Pappadapolous, and the monkey demon was chasing him and his buddy Heffalump through New Mexico desert. When it turned into Batista’s Cuba and guns started going off, Paul tried what Gnossos had done in the book—run in circles; scream and shout—and it worked: he became Exempt. But not Heffalump, the only human being Gnossos ever genuinely loved: Heffalump was down, and Gnossos was hip too late. He tried to change the dream channel, and found himself in Heinlein’s JOB: A COMEDY OF JUSTICE, he and Margrethe on an ocean liner, suffering from mal de merde. This was insufficient improvement: Margrethe was stacked but so was the deck, which promptly sank out from under them. So he went deep, and found darkness and quiet for awhile.
June switched to headphones when she saw he was asleep, found the satellite channels and watched a Japanese porn movie dubbed into Chinese for an hour, marveling at the endless variety of ways different cultures have evolved to make idiots out of themselves while doing something necessary, all in the name of a little quiet in the pants. Hasn’t there ever been a sexually sane culture? she wondered for the thousandth time in her life. Will there ever be one?
Just before she drifted off, she thought, I almost came. Next time I will. I won’t let the bastard take that away from me, too.
Her sleep was dreamless when it came, and she woke hungry.
Chapter 8
The Fans Hit the Shit Back
Pacing in his bedroom, the evening after the con, Wally said, “Let’s total up everything we know for sure about the son of a bitch.”
He’s uncircumcised was Moira’s first thought, but she probably would not have said that even if her husband had not been armed. “He’s very smart; he probably has five o’clock shadow all over his body right now; he has our lives, AKA ninety-eight thousand dollars, in a big brown bag; and with his head shaved he looks a little like Captain Picard. And he was raised in America. That’s all I’m sure of.” She rearranged the pillows behind her.
Wally stopped pacing. “You think he’s American?”
“I didn’t say that. Maybe he’s a Canadian citizen, maybe he’s a Landed Immigrant, maybe he’s just a visitor come north to shear the fat stupid sheep of Niceland for a few weeks. But he was raised in the Untied Snakes.” The pillows were giving her trouble.
“What makes you say that?”
She burrowed her shoulder blades into the pillow mass, and finally achieved comfort. “He used the word ‘table’ to mean ‘temporarily remove from consideration,’ rather than the correct, rational, AngloCanadian meaning, ‘put forward for immediate consideration.’ He was raised in America, all right.”
Wally smiled. “By God, I think you’re right. He did say that, I remember. It didn’t take at the time. Very good, love.” He frowned. “Wait, now. What about that G.S.T. line?”
“Misdirection,” she suggested. “He’s subtle.”
“Which one?” he argued. “‘Table’ or ‘G.S.T.’?”
She echoed his frown.
“Let’s mark that one ‘tentative,’ for now,” he said. “I’m considerably more confident that he’s a fan, possibly even a Truphan. Inactive, maybe—about as gafiated as you can get, now, thanks to us—but at some time in his life he smelled corflu, I’d bet my collection on it.”
“Not necessarily,” she insisted. “Ten or fifteen years ago, I’d have said anybody who could sting us like that would have to be a fan. Who else would try? But fandom’s had a lot of media exposure, the last decade or so. A lot of mundanes have noticed us going through hotel lobbies in costume and asked the desk clerk what was going on. Anybody on the Internet could have stumbled over all that PR we tried so hard to make eye-catching, and found out about VanCon. From the membership data he could infer the size of the nut in the bank, and even the bank…and the names of the only two chumps with signing authority.”
“Sure, maybe,” he said. “But constructing the scam itself…”
“—doesn’t even require that the bastard ever read a book in his life,” she said. “The movies are full of time travel these days.”
“He used the word ‘ficton,’ I’m sure of that,” Wally said.
“True,” she said. “Okay, so he’s read Heinlein. That just makes him literate and lucky. It doesn’t mean he reads sf for pleasure, let alone make him a fan. Much less a Truphan. No fan could be capable of this. Not even Splatt.”
Wally resumed pacing. “Dammit, you may be right. But even so, I think we have to put out the Word.”
“To fandom? Come clean? Why? Didn’t we just get through begging Steve and Sybil in Toronto to keep the story to themselves? And apologizing to a dozen friends for terrifying them with hallucinatory warnings about an earthquake? They already all think we’ve started taking drugs.” Suddenly Moira’s stomach hurt.
“Moira, our fannish reputations are dead, forever, the moment the first major VanCon bill comes due. We have no other explanation for where the money went. We can’t even say we stole it, unless we can explain why we haven’t got it any more. There’s only one way we can prevent our names becoming the fannish byword for Stupidity for the next century, now. The only hope we have in the world of ever being allowed in a Con Suite again, the rest of our lives, is to catch that hairless
ape, ourselves, personally, and get back every cent we handed him—in time for the con to go on. That gives us two weeks, absolute max. And I think fandom is our only lead.”
“Beatles,” she said. “Internet Beatles forums—chat groups—”
He shook his head. “You don’t have to leave traces anywhere to know all about the Beatles. The information’s in the water supply. I mean, there are probably starving hermits in Pakistan who know what the original title of ‘Get Back’ was, for—”
Moira’s choices were, get up and get the Pepto Bismol, or come up with an idea. “I got it!”
Wally misunderstood. “Okay, I was just trying to—”
“No, no, I mean I got an idea. Another lead, besides fandom!”
Wally stopped in his tracks. If he had been the protagonist of Jack London’s “To Build A Fire,” suddenly confronted with a Zippo, he could not have become more alert, more hopeful, more frightened. “…tell me,” he whispered.
Moira began to—and from nowhere came the thought that it would be kinder to let him guess it himself, and that her husband could use some kindness now. “‘Fool, fool—back to the beginning is the rule,’” she quoted softly from their favorite bedtime story.
For a moment she could hear his neurons firing…and then his eyes began to glow, as if in illustration of the memory behind them. “Yes!” he cried. “Magnesium…”
“How many places could there be in the greater Vancouver area where a man could buy that much?”
The question hung in the air for a moment. And then they chorused together: “I don’t know, but I know somebody who’ll know somebody who will!” and raced for their computers.
Wally, having been both standing and nearest the door at the starting gun, won the race handily; Moira arrived (looking not unlike the Bowen Island ferry) just in his wake, to find that he had already booted both their machines. She slapped her modem to life and waited for her Finder to load.
“I’m tryin’a think, but nothin’ happens,” it reported truthfully, in the voice of Curly (the real one), and began rebuilding her virtual desktop.
As always, it took too much time. By the time the desktop appeared on-screen, she had begun to leak helium. “This may not work out as well as we hope,” she said slowly.
Wally’s system had loaded faster; it just took much longer to do anything. “Why do you say that?” He moused like Monk taking a solo, off-rhythm but strong.
“Think about Jude. Or whatever his name is. That’s my point: can you see a con-man that good buying a kilo of magnesium in this town? Under his own name? And leaving a valid address?”
Monk let the bass player have it. “Oh shit.” Wally pushed his chair back from the desk, and rubbed his eyes. “Any two, possibly, but not all three.” He looked like he was going to cry.
“We should still try, though,” she said hastily, and opened her Net browser. She wished she had gotten the Pepto Bismol on the way there.
“Yeah, we will,” Wally agreed, his voice tired and defeated. “And we’ll check the Beatles forums, and we’ll search the Net for ‘con-man’ and ‘grifter’ and strings like that, and maybe we can even get Vicki’s brother Jack to hack us into the cops’ network and look for Jude’s footprint, and none of it is—”
“Genius,” she said. “I married an intuitive genius.”
Wally blinked. “Certainly. What I say?”
“What does Vicki’s brother do for the cops?”
Wally was hesitant to let hope return, but this was good. For the second time, he chorused along with her: “He draws pictures of people you didn’t think you remembered!”
Jack was a police sketch artist—one of the first to realize that the WYSIWYG revolution had transformed his profession as much as any other, for no other image-medium can be as quickly and easily changed, fine-tuned, as a computer paint document. He was by training as good a psychologist as he was an artist: he had once, as a parlor trick, drawn Wally and Moira a sketch on his Powerbook of a waiter who had served them the night before, using only the memories he drew out of them with his questions and his trackball. An hour later, a friend who’d had the same waiter a week earlier had ID’d him from the sketch.
“That’s really good, love,” Wally went on, excited again. “He can even add hair and stuff, or show ways the guy could disguise himself, beard and glasses and like that. We could show them to the clerks at all the chemical supply houses, and—” He broke off.
“And?” She didn’t want to ask, but it was the only question she had.
He took his time answering. “And let’s face it: unless and until some clerk says, ‘Sure, I know that guy; I got his address and his Visa number, and come to think of it, his fingerprints are on the slip,’ we still have shit.”
For the first time in decades, Moira searched for words.
Wally switched his computer off cold, swiveled his chair to face her, and when he spoke his voice was awful to hear. “Let’s admit it. We’re screwed. The Yankee son of a bitch is just too smart for us.”
CHIRRRRRRUP, said the phone.
Oh Finagle, NOW? Moira thought. Five seconds earlier and whoever it is would have gotten a busy signal on that line. When the luck goes bad, boy—But almost instantaneously she flip-flopped. Nuisances have their place. When your husband has just made the most terrible, humiliating admission he has ever made or could make, perhaps a good distraction is not unwelcome. Even a poor one. “I’ll get it,” she said, and started to rise.
“I’ve got it,” he said bitterly, and picked up the phone. “Yeah, who is it?”
The caller ignored the perfectly reasonable question, but identified himself nonetheless. “Enough I had,” came a voice with what Moira had always called a pronounced Martian accent. “No more, you are hearing? Any more shenanigans like the last night, police I call, yes? My wife is upset, I am upset, you should be disgrace. You are hearing me, flying saucer boy?”
“Gorsky!” Wally groaned.
Well, I asked for a nuisance, Moira thought. I hit the Lotto.
“Dem right Gorsky. Too much, too long I put up. This is decent neighborhood, Kemp, till you come with science fiction condom people. No more! I tell you: you tell wife who has different last name: police come next time. You tell naked Metkiewicz too: police come his house too—and one more thing: my dog puke one more time, I come punch you face. You got no right poison lawn where dogs live around, you—”
Moira had turned to stone. It was Wally who found his voice first: an eerily calm, peaceful voice. “Naked who?”
“Naked Metkiewicz—how many naked men play big joke with you last night? You tell him I know where he lives: they got special prison for naked men, what is call? fleshers. He will—”
“You know where Medgawhatsis lives.”
“Metkiewicz, Jesus, M-E-T—” Gorsky spelled it, contempt plain in his voice for anyone who needed to be told how to spell Metkiewicz. “You bet I know where he lives. Ha ha. He is not so smart he thinks, yes?”
“How do you know where he lives?” Moira heard herself say, and cursed herself because it was the wrong question.
He answered it anyway. “Ha ha. Big surprise, yes? He buys chemical for big boom from my warehouse in Surrey. His Visa I have…address I have, God damn, from sign for chemical…his fingersprint on paper. Police find easy. No more naked Peeping Dick nonsense, you tell him, are you hearing?”
Wally asked the right question. “What address did Mr. Metkiewicz give you, Mr. Gorsky?”
“What?”
His voice had been too dreamy; Moira repeated the question.
“How do I know what address? Is in warehouse. Why you don’t know where your friend lives?”
For a fraction of a second Moira debated telling Gorsky that “Metkiewicz” was a thief, who had stolen their money. The scent of a burglar in the neighborhood would elevate even her and Wally to the status of provisional human beings in Gorsky’s eyes. But he would insist on handing over his evidence to the police at o
nce. “He’s not a friend, Mr. Gorsky. He’s an acquaintance. Someone we know from science fiction. He’s having trouble with his mind, you understand?”
“I understand good, you bet it. Big trouble, sure.”
“He was acting so crazy last night, after he left we thought maybe we should make sure he got home all right, but we don’t know where he lives.”
“He go home naked, I know where he lives now. In hose goo.”
He couldn’t say “hoosegow” when I had time to laugh, Moira thought. “No, he wasn’t that crazy. But I really think we ought to check on him. Is there someone at your warehouse at night?”
“Is watchman. But he can not get paper. Is lock.”
Moira briefly explored her decision tree. Branch A: try to persuade Gorsky to give them the key to his Restricted Substances records and phone the watchman to expect them; rotsa ruck. Branch B: try to draw the address out of Gorsky’s murky memory; forget it. Branch C: give up and hand the whole thing over to the police, like a civilian; make herself and Wally—and by extension, God help them, VanCon and the entire Lower Mainland Science Fiction Association—international laughingstocks within and without fandom.
Without fandom…
“But crazy naked man is bad thing. Hokay. You come over, I give you key, phone watchman to wake up.”
Absurdly, Moira found herself thinking of the silly joke Wally had once made after they’d seen a video of Stallone as a mountain-climber, endlessly going up and down ropes to display his biceps. Wally had held up the video box, moved it up and down a few times, pointed to Sly’s picture, and said, “Yo. Yo. Yo. Yo—” Up, down; up, down—“That’s very kind of you, Mr. Gorsky. Thank you very much. We’ll be right over.”
“No crazy nakeds in this neighborhood I want.”
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