by Neil Plakcy
That made me wonder if there were more connections between Doug Guilfoyle and Alex Vargas. I opened my laptop and put their names together in quotes, but nothing came up. I went back to Tiffany’s Facebook page and scanned through all her photos again, looking for Doug’s face, in case he’d been in the background of one of her bar shots.
No luck there either. The idea that the connection had to matter kept tantalizing me, though. But how could I get Rick to ask Tiffany about it? And was it worth the danger of putting him back in contact with his ex?
16 – Kids Code
Soon after Rochester and I arrived at Friar Lake on Friday morning, the first of two yellow school buses pulled up. I put Rochester on his leash and walked out to greet the clusters of chattering excited kids, a mix of boys and girls from around ten to twelve, predominantly white, but with a couple of Asian, Indian and African-Americans as well.
With a pang, I realized that if Mary’s first pregnancy had come to term, I’d have a child of about that age. Would he have been a boy like that one there, with floppy brown hair like I’d had as a kid? I’d been skinny then, awkward in my own skin, but these kids seemed supremely confident, talking and laughing with each other. Would Doug’s kids grow up that way, or had his death scarred them too much?
Rochester tugged on his leash, straining to back away from the buses, and I was surprised. He normally loved kids and attention, but maybe the presence of so many of them was freaking him out.
“I guess you don’t want to be part of the welcoming committee,” I said. “Fine, be that way.” I took him back to the gatehouse, where he took up a position under my desk.
Once he was settled, I walked out to the computer classroom, where I found Joey had already opened the door and was helping Yesenia make sure everything was working properly. I stood in the doorway and scanned the crowd of kids. Some had brought their own laptops, while others carried thick books about programming. A couple of them were talking eagerly about Boolean data, the basics of if/then statements in computer languages. Another boy was explaining the concept of reverse ciphers to a small group – the way that the letters of the alphabet were reversed – A swapped for Z and so on.
Yesenia had opened a presentation about Python, an open-source programming language, on the screen beside the podium. I was impressed. These kids were way more advanced than I’d been at their ages.
I sat through most of Yesenia’s introduction to Python, and it was cute to see the kids taking notes so industriously, writing down maxims of the language like “simple is better than complex” and “beautiful is better than ugly.”
It reminded me of my own training in HTML, where I’d been taught to make my code as readable as possible, indenting tables and rows so that it was easy to follow the structure visually.
I missed doing that kind of coding, and I wondered how I could get back to it. In my Silicon Valley days, I’d been able to go deep into the zone as I coded, shutting out everything else as I typed and visualized, tested and corrected.
After an hour or so, I slipped out to the chapel, where I helped one of the volunteer moms set up mid-morning snacks and box lunches, but I kept thinking about how I could return to the simple coding I had enjoyed so much.
I’d done some freelance web design work back in the day, before the advent of the more complicated technology. It was doubtful that I’d be able to go back to school and learn all that, but maybe I could do some work on the Friar Lake website myself instead of relying on the college’s programming team.
It was nearly ten o’clock by the time I returned to my office, where Rochester was skittering around the room anxiously. “What’s the matter, puppy?” I sat on the floor beside him and scratched under his neck. “Too much excitement for you?”
He nuzzled my face and I laughed. After I rubbed his belly for a while he spread out on the floor and went to sleep, and I got up, my joints creaking, and sat at my desk. But Rochester’s fidgetiness had infected me, and I worried about all those kids using the brand-new computers the college had sprung for in setting up Friar Lake.
I walked back to the classroom and peered through the window. The kids were all working industriously, some typing on their own, others clustered in small groups.
Was Yesenia training the next generation of hackers? She’d been born in Cuba, after all, and I remembered all the material I’d read about how many Cuban-Americans were involved in illicit activities.
I shook my head. I was stereotyping and letting my imagination run away with me. Yesenia Cruz was simply a mom with computer skills who wanted to pass her knowledge on to the next generation. I ought to be praising her, not suspecting her motives.
As I watched, she called a lunch break, and I followed the kids over to the chapel, where I sat with Yesenia at one of the small round tables we used for cocktail receptions. To atone for my sin in assuming she was doing something criminal, I thought I’d get to know her better.
“You have such a pretty name,” I said. “Does Yesenia mean something in Spanish?”
She shook her head. “When I was born, during the Cold War, lots of parents used Russian-inspired names starting with Y, like Yuri and Yulia,” she said. “And then the trend spread, so that when I was in school almost everyone I knew had a name that began with Y. My best friends were a boy called Yadinnis and a girl called Yoani.”
That name rang a bell, and it took me a moment to remember that Yoani was the name of the woman who had preceded Tiffany at the Center for Infusion Therapy. “So someone named Yoani would be Cuban?” I asked. I didn’t know why that mattered—after all, the CIT was in Union City so it wouldn’t be unusual if there were Cuban-Americans working there.
“Almost certainly,” she said. “You know someone by that name?”
“Not directly. A friend of a friend.” I picked up my sandwich. “I think it’s awesome that you’re providing this opportunity for kids. Are you a programmer?”
“I have my own computer consulting business,” she said. “I present a lot of seminars to corporations about email security. You’d be astonished how many computer savvy people still click on links that can install malware on their networks.”
I wouldn’t be surprised at all, because I’d taken advantage of that myself, but I wasn’t going to come clean about it to Yesenia.
“For one client, I send out a message every month or two that has a link in it that downloads a program, and even though I’ve lectured and lectured, still about five to ten percent of the staff click on it.”
“Did you learn all that in Cuba?” I asked.
“At first, yes. I went to a special school where a teacher from Moscow taught us how to use Russian ES EVM computers. Then I came to Philadelphia as a teenager, and I tried to sign up for an advanced course. I was told girls did not use computers. Especially not Latina girls.”
I heard the gentle lilt in her voice, the lack of contractions that was often typical of a second-language learner. “Wow. Someone actually told you that?”
She nodded. “The principal of the Catholic school thought I was Puerto Rican, because most of the Latins in Philadelphia come from there. He said I was just going to get pregnant before I even graduated so why bother? I had to tell him that I am Cuban, that my people are smart and hard-working. Eventually he let me take a very basic course. It was hard because it was in English but I already understood how computers operated so I was able to do very well. By the time I graduated I knew several languages and a lot of very high-level math.”
“Sounds like you got a good preparation,” I said. “And you had good mentors.”
“It’s a shame, because in many places Cubans have a bad reputation,” she said. “There is a lot of economic fraud committed by my people, so Anglos are still suspicious of Cuban programmers. I hope to make good changes with Kids Code.”
“I’ve been a high school teacher and an adjunct professor, so I’m all in favor of education,” I said. “If you need to, I hope you’ll come bac
k to Friar Lake in the future. Maybe we can even involve some of our students as mentors to yours.”
“That would be great,” she said. “This afternoon they are going to put together their own routines in Python, and it would be great in the future to have a peer to check them.”
“What kind of routines?”
“I give them about two dozen choices, everything from simply adding two numbers to checking to see if a phrase is a palindrome or not, depending on if their interests are in math or in computer language in general.”
After lunch I went back to my office and opened up a web browser to look at the Friar Lake webpage. It was laid out like every other page on the Eastern College site—same header and footer, same links down the left side.
I had written the text, and the programmer I’d worked with had put together the list of courses and online registration forms. But the overall effect was bland and corporate, and I started brainstorming ways I could make it more interactive. As I had a roster of programs behind me, I could include seminar photos and testimonials.
I needed to beef up the information on faculty I had recruited to lead programs. Right now the links simply led to their computer-generated faculty pages, which listed their credentials and the courses they taught.
It was great to get so involved in my work again, in a way I hadn’t felt since I’d begun creating the programming. It was good to focus my attention on something other than mortality and malfeasance, though Doug Guilfoyle and the circumstances of his death still floated in the back of my mind.
17 – Skid Marks
Rick called me that night soon after I got home. “This morning we got a call from one of the store owners at the Old Mill,” he said. “There was a break-in last night, and some cash and small items were stolen from a couple of the stores.”
I wondered why Rick was calling to tell me. Surely he didn’t think I knew anything about such an event?
“While I was there, I walked back to the canal. I watched the current for a while and then back-tracked from where Doug Guilfoyle’s body surfaced. I found the place where it looks like he slipped into the water. I talked to the chief and based on his personal situation and the consumption of alcohol at the bar, we’re calling this a suicide.”
“I don’t believe that.” It just didn’t make sense to me that he’d kill himself while he was right in the middle of figuring out what was going on at Beauceron, just as he’d moved to town and reestablished his relationship with his kids.
“Believe what you want, pal. That’s the official line. I’m sorry for what this might do to Catherine and her kids, but I can’t help it.”
I couldn’t just let it go, though. If someone had killed Doug because of what was going on at Beauceron, I owed it to him to follow through on his suspicions. And even if he’d killed himself, or slipped into the canal by accident, what I discovered, and the possibility that innocent people could be protected from nefarious actions, would give Doug’s death some meaning.
I was about to bring up those points, but Rick surprised me by asking, “Say, are you busy on Sunday?”
“Not as far as I know. Why?”
“Tiffany wants to get together, and honestly, I don’t want to see her on my own. I’d ask Tamsen to go but she’s helping Catherine with the funeral arrangements.”
I was intrigued. I’d heard about Tiffany ever since Rick and I reconnected and I was curious to see what she looked like. “Sure. When and where?”
“She wants me to come up to this place where she’s living in Weehawken,” he said. “Suppose I pick you up at eleven?”
“We taking the dogs?”
“Not a chance. Tiffany hates dogs. I was hoping I could leave Rascal with Lili.”
“That’s something I need to clear with her,” I said. “Hold on.”
Lili said she could manage Rascal for a couple of hours on Sunday, and I relayed that information back to Rick.
“Good deal. Catch you on the flip side.”
He hung up, and I wondered what kind of drama he was about to get into. At least I’d have a front row seat to it.
Lili motioned to a place on the sofa beside her and put down the book she’d been reading, a mystery novel I’d recommended to her, about a policeman determined to do his job in the face of an oncoming asteroid that was going to destroy the planet. “Where are you and Rick going? Investigating something?”
“Not really.” I told her that Tiffany wanted to see Rick in person, and that he’d asked me to go along.
“Is he scared of her? He doesn’t want to see her by himself?” she asked.
“How would you feel if I said I was going to see Mary?”
“You’re a different story,” Lili said. “You’re over Mary, and she’s over you.”
I turned sideways to face her, and we twined our legs together. “Really? You don’t think Rick is over Tiffany?”
“I think Rick and Tiffany are tied together in a co-dependent relationship,” she said. “At least that’s what I get from talking to him, and to Tamsen. Tiffany sounds like one of those heroines from a telenovela who’s always getting into trouble. I wouldn’t be surprised if she tried something with Rick.”
“Rick’s a good guy. And he’s too smart to get tangled up with Tiffany again.”
Rochester settled on the floor beside us. “Rick’s a guy,” Lili said. “And Tiffany’s pretty, and needy. Guys like Rick fall for that damsel in distress business.”
My mind was racing. “How do you know that Tiffany’s pretty?” I’d seen her photo on Facebook, but hadn’t paid much attention to it.
“Rick has a picture of the two of them in his house. You never saw it?”
“Oh, yeah. That one where they’re at the Grand Canyon.” I shrugged. I remembered the picture, but I hadn’t realized it was Tiffany beside Rick. “Honestly, she’s not my type so I never noticed her.”
“Really?” she asked, stroking my thigh with her bare foot. “What is your type?”
I smiled. “Tall. Beautiful. Smart.”
She pulled her foot back in mock anger. “Like Tamsen?”
I reached across and moved her foot onto my thigh again. “Tamsen’s great. But she can’t hold a candle to a certain woman I know.” I began massaging her foot, and she sighed with pleasure.
Then Rochester jumped up on the couch between us, settling his big hulk over our legs. We extricated our limbs from beneath him, and he woofed once and then rested his head on my lap. “You want your dinner, boy?” I asked.
He jumped up and raced across the floor to the kitchen. “There’s my answer.” I leaned down to kiss Lili. “We’ll have to continue this conversation later.”
“I’ll look forward to it,” she said, and picked up her book again.
As I walked to the kitchen, I thought about relationships and neediness. We were willing to accept that kind of behavior from Rochester—his desire to cuddle with us, his demands for food and walks. But we frowned at such overt demands from the others in our lives. Would Tiffany always have a hold on Rick because of her personality and his need to take care of her?
***
Saturday morning Rochester and I walked into downtown Stewart’s Crossing, pausing at the Chocolate Ear for a grande raspberry mocha and a dog biscuit to go. Then we continued down Main Street to the corner of Ferry, where the Drunken Hessian occupied the northeast corner. It was a three story building in the old Colonial style, wood-framed with a chimney along one side and a door in the center of the façade, leading out to a broad porch. Three dormer windows stuck out of the high-pitched roof.
The bar wouldn’t open until eleven, so its parking lot was empty, just a few cars spilling over from the drugstore and the IGA grocery. So Rochester and I took a shortcut through the lot, down to the water’s edge.
If I were Doug, out for a walk to clear my head, where would I go? It would have been dark on Tuesday night, and there were no street lights down by the canal. The only light would have come from
the windows of the bar and the houses on the other side of the canal.
Rochester and I walked along the far edge of the parking lot toward the Old Mill. When Rick and I were kids, the stone-faced grist mill in the center of Stewart’s Crossing had been a wreck, but during the eighties a developer had renovated it into a mini-mall. I’d been inside once, years before, but since I didn’t need handmade jewelry, postcards of ducks crossing Main Street or tie-dyed T-shirts, I’d never been back.
A thin screen of sassafras and skinny maples just coming into leaf stood between us and the water. A weeping willow marked the boundary between the Drunken Hessian’s lot and the one belonging to the Old Mill.
Rochester pulled forward until we reached a break in the tree line, where he sat down and scratched his flank with his hind leg. Just beyond him, the pavement disintegrated into a rough scree of tiny pebbles and dirt, and when I looked closely I saw faint footprints, a bit elongated, as if someone had slipped through. That must have been what Rick found.
Satisfied that he’d scratched that itch, Rochester stood up and nosed around the area, keeping well away from the canal and its fast current. The water was too murky to see the bottom clearly but I figured it was pretty deep there as the mill race spilled into the canal.
The water continued to flow over a mossy lip, tumbling into a tiny waterfall. If Doug had slipped a few feet either way, he might have fallen down the slope to the stream below, rather than into the canal. He might have broken an arm or leg, but he wouldn’t have drowned.
Was it just bad luck that he’d lost his balance right there? Why hadn’t he heard the noise of the water, as I did? Had there had been music coming out of the Drunken Hessian that masked it?
Doug was skittish around water, so he wouldn’t have gotten that close to the edge of the mill race. Could he have lost his way in the darkness, not realized he was so close? He might have felt he was far enough from the canal to be safe.
When I looked around for Rochester, he was sitting on his haunches once again, this time chewing something. “No sticks or rocks,” I said. I reached down and pried his jaws open, and retrieved a small plastic llama, about two inches wide. He hadn’t had a chance to destroy it—there were just a couple of teeth marks on the llama’s legs.