by Mike Stewart
Next, Ellroy had named Peter Budzik, saying, “This is the guy for you. Georgia Tech undergraduate. MIT graduate school till he got the boot. Budzik's on the shady side, but he's not physically dangerous. Piss him off, he'll ruin your life. But he'll do it with his mind and a computer. Yes, yes, yes. More I think, yes, yes, yes, you need Budzik.”
“Ruin my life?”
“Well, yes. Legend is, probably true . . . yes, yes, yes, probably true . . . legend is Budzik got pissed at some girl in a freshman class he was teaching. Seems Pete had the hots for the girl and she wasn't interested. Told him to fuck off, called him some names in front of other students. Anyway, word is Budzik canceled the kid's credit cards, changed her grades on the mainframe, emptied some bank accounts. You know, stuff like that. Even put her name and phone number on an Internet dating service, with her interests listed as something like, uh, ‘blowjobs and threesomes.'”
“No wonder they booted him.”
Ellroy swallowed half a glass of Coors Light in one gulp and shook his head. “Well, yeah. Maybe. Wasn't all that so much as, well, this girl goes nuts and kills herself.” He'd then taken a second to drain the rest of his beer. “Lucky old Pete didn't go to prison. Ruined his life, though.” The master geek had then belched loudly. “Crazy as hell. Budzik I mean, not the girl. Crazy as hell, but he's the man you need. Old Pete's the best I know.”
Scott had smiled. “Good as you?”
The big man had grinned broadly. “Nope. But I'm an academic. Budzik is pure hacker.” Ginger had walked over to bring more Coors Light. When she'd left, Ellroy added, “I'll tell you how good he is. Pete's close to what I'd be on the dark side of the force. And”—he'd paused to roll out another aromatic beer belch—“I know how to find him.”
CHAPTER 17
Spinnaker Island, a thick green worm of land in the upper third of the Outer Banks, had been abandoned by everyone but environmentalists for half a century. Charles Hunter had lobbied for most of a decade to build his town of the future there—arguing that he would protect and enhance the beaches and wildlife, that the state of North Carolina would never find another developer who was more interested in perfection than money. He had contributed to political campaigns; he'd hired the state's top lawyers and flown down from Boston at every opportunity to smooch the backsides of every city, county, and state official he could find. The whole process had been expensive and exasperating and often demeaning.
But it had worked.
On this bright afternoon—only one day after Scott Thomas had gotten his balls stroked by Ginger's toes in a Boston bar and three short weeks before the vernal equinox—Charles Hunter was standing on a undulating beach outside his North Carolina home. All around him black-headed laughing gulls cawed and dove in jumbled clusters; pelicans soared the coastline, fishing in groups of three and four; and tender new growth pebbled the limbs of wind-tortured oaks and dark-fingered brush.
Inland—worked carefully into natural spaces beside dense patches of trees, shrubs, and sea grass—lay a scattering of perfect buildings. At least, they seemed that way to the man who had designed them. Cedar siding to withstand decades of Atlantic storms and blend with the island's vegetation; copper roofs that would age gracefully to reflect the green of the sea; walkways, natural spaces, and manicured squares—all forming the framework for the perfect town that would follow.
Charles stood on the beach in worn khakis and a nylon windbreaker. He breathed in ocean air and shuddered just a little. He was too content even to smile.
A cell phone jingled in his pocket. “Charles Hunter.” He listened, said, “On the way,” and clicked the flip phone shut. He lingered for three long minutes before walking up the beach to his home, where he climbed into a convertible Jeep and headed down a sandy roadway.
His office had been the first building erected on Spinnaker Island in a hundred years. That had been a year ago. Now he drove past five new houses in the space of the mile that separated his home and office. In the town proper, at the island's highest elevation, the Jeep's tires slid to a dusty stop on an oyster-shell parking lot. He stepped out of the Jeep, leaving his keys in the ignition. It was a purposeful act.
Like every structure on Spinnaker Island, the offices of Hunter & Petring were at once modern and traditional. Charles pushed through tall doors into a central open space, reminiscent of the dog runs found in old Southern homes. The room rose two stories high and ran straight through to a bank of windows at the rear overlooking the North Carolina coastline.
Turning right, he walked into the drafting room. Three young professionals—two builders and a freshly minted architect—were huddled around his junior partner, Carol Petring.
The group stopped in midconversation as the great man approached. Carol asked, “Nice late lunch?”
Charles, who hadn't stopped to eat until past three, said, “Drove home, grilled a shark steak and vegetables out on the deck, ate, and took a walk on the beach.” He paused. “And left here less than an hour ago.”
Everyone but the new architect laughed. One of the builders, a beefy guy with blond hair and permanently sunburned jowls, said, “We get it, Charles. It's a nice place.”
Charles grinned. “Bullshit. It's perfect. Anyway, Sarah's coming out tonight. Let's do whatever we need to do. I've gotta cross over to the mainland and get to the airport by seven.”
The young architect, a guy named Olivetti, asked, “I thought Sarah was like ten years old.”
Charles's smile faded. “She is. Obviously she's not flying alone.” An uncomfortable silence settled over the group, and Charles behaved uncharacteristically by filling it. “My wife Patricia's former nurse, a young woman named Kate Billings, is bringing her down.” He turned to Carol. “Ms. Billings will be staying on as Sarah's nanny, at least for the time being.”
Carol nodded. “I understand, Charles. That's very kind of you.” The group grew quiet again, and Carol realized that the North Carolina builders had no idea what she was talking about. Quickly, she reached under a stack of drawings on a nearby work table and extracted a topographic map. “Charles. If you'll look here. Killian, the commercial artist who bought lot fifty-seven, is being a pain in the ass about the orientation of his house. Insists he needs northern light at the rear elevation . . .”
Cold air had rolled in behind yesterday's rain, and Scott Thomas could see his breath inside the car. He leaned down to push against a heater control that was already at its highest level. Outside of Cambridge now, he drove through Boston proper as dusk enveloped the streets like a black mist.
Following directions happily supplied by a drunken academic, Scott passed along monotonous queues of ancient brick warehouses, searching for a numbered intersection and a faded electrical parts sign. He missed the intersection, but spotted the vertical sign suspended from the corner of a pollution-stained brick cube.
Here he found parking. No one wanted to come to this neighborhood, not even the residents. As Scott popped open the driver's door and stepped out onto wet pavement, the oily, briny scent of commercial docks filled his sinuses. Here, in these brick caverns with asphalt floors, the cold seemed sharper, the dark more profound.
He turned, reached under the driver's seat, and pulled out a messy bundle that looked something like a paperback novel wrapped in newspaper and rubber bands. Unzipping his Marmot shell, he slid the package into a webbed inner pocket.
At the front of the brick warehouse, an eight-foot cube had been left out of the larger cube formed by the building. A heavy metal door, replete with four or five oddly artistic spray-paint tags, was set into the back of the entrance cube. On the left, the brick wall held three brass buzzers, plus one raw wire where a former buzzer had died. Scott looked for a name, but saw only the numbers 3, 4, and 5. The second floor had to make do with the bare wire.
Scott glanced at his watch. It was a few minutes past six. Dinnertime. A normal time for lost keys, for visitors, and for armloads of groceries and takeout that would make it more
convenient to push a buzzer than to fish in pockets for a key. It was a good time to push buzzers; so he pushed all three. The security door hummed at him. Scott shoved through the door and heard it slam shut as he stepped inside.
The lobby, if it could be called that, seemed to have been some kind of light manufacturing plant at one time. Bare lightbulbs centered on each of the four walls cast a yellow glow across rows of metal workstands. Some still supported the heavy bases of drill presses; others held the dark shapes of gears and wires, beer cans and waste paper. Intersecting layers of pipes—some no thicker than a thumb, others a foot in diameter—squirmed across the ceiling like steel serpents.
In the center of this harsh dreamscape, open metal stairs pushed upward through the tangled ceiling. Scott started up the steps and banged his forehead on the dark boards that closed it off.
He stepped back down to the floor. In a dark back corner, he could just make out the metal cage of a commercial elevator. He crossed through dead workstations, shoved open an accordion gate, and stepped into the elevator.
And jumped inside his skin.
“Who are you?”
The disembodied voice sounded calm. Scott looked around for a camera, and the voice came again. “Over your head.”
He looked up into the lens of a Radio Shack security camera. “Oh.”
“Do you have a name?”
“I'm Scott Thomas. Victor Ellroy, over at MIT, told me to come by.”
“Vic called. Hold up your driver's license.”
Scott fished out his wallet and did as instructed.
“Okay. Close the gate.”
Scott shoved the metal accordion gate shut. “What now? Do I . . .”
The elevator shuddered and started and began to creep upward. He counted two floors, and the lift stopped on the third. Scott pulled open the gate and stepped out into a square foyer. The floor was coated in black peel-and-stick tiles. Scarred walls and a patterned tin ceiling had been painted flat white. It was not a professional job. Smears of other, earlier colors showed in places where the paint roller had begun to run dry.
Straight ahead, beneath a wash of blue light from a wall fixture, an industrial steel door opened, and a little bald man stepped into the doorway. “Dr. Thomas?”
“I'm not a doctor.” Scott walked forward. The little man stepped back to let him pass through into a cavern of exposed brick and open space divided by white canvas walls on little rollers. “Nice of you to see me.”
Peter Budzik shut his front door. “Vic said you needed the best.” He grinned, and his left eyelid made a spastic, fluttering movement. “I crave recognition.”
Scott smiled back, not because he wanted to but because it was expected. He studied the little hacker and something tugged at his memory. His eyes moved over the man's egg-shape head and thin-lipped smile; he looked hard into pale blue eyes that peeked out from oversized, horn-rimmed glasses. “Do we know each other?”
“No.”
“Are you sure we've never met? There's something about . . .”
“Moby.”
“What?”
“The musician Moby. I look like him. I've had to sign autographs in town to get kids to leave me alone.”
Scott nodded, and the little man motioned at a black leather chair.
Scott sat down. Budzik perched like a nervous parakeet on the edge of a yellow and red sofa that had suspended round cushions for a back. Scott couldn't place the designer, but he knew the thing was expensive. He started, “Victor Ellroy spoke highly of you.”
Budzik's smile faded, and his spastic twitch went into overdrive. “Vic is a useless blob of beer-soaked lard. His opinions are of no value to me.” He leaned back against the suspended disks, feigning a relaxed attitude despite the jittery eye. “You told Vic some story about a doctoral thesis on the psychological effects of technology on society.”
Scott tried to focus on Budzik's one still eye. It was easier to ignore the blinking. He didn't want to start twitching himself out of some kind of strained empathy—the way a cough or an itch can be contagious. He grinned. “I guess that's been done.”
The little hacker may have been a walking dictionary of neuroses, but he wasn't buying any of Scott's bullshit about a thesis. “No more than a few thousand times, not to mention a dozen articles a year in Time and Newsweek.” Budzik shrugged and pointed to a barely noticeable lump under Scott's coat. “What'd you bring me?”
The little geek didn't miss much. Scott unzipped his coat and pulled out the bundle. “It's a hard drive.”
Budzik reached out. “Let's have a look at it.”
“I need to explain . . . to get you to understand what's happening to me.” Scott looked down at the package. Inside was the hard disk he'd removed from the computer at the porno country house. “There's some disturbing stuff on here.”
The little Moby look-alike reached back to lace delicate fingers behind a smooth egg of a head and crossed an ankle over a knee. His toes began to bounce with nervous energy, echoing the spasms in his eyelid. “I'm sure poor sloppy Victor told you about my suicidal student.” He smiled—not a calculated smile. It was a real smile. Thinking of the tragedy made the man happy. “I've learned that it is that very point where most allegedly normal people become disturbed that I just start to get interested.” He pointed at the wrapped hard disk. “You have me intrigued. This sounds like something I'm going to enjoy.”
Scott held the package out, and Budzik accepted it. Scott started to stand. “Should I check back tomorrow or what?”
Budzik's smile disappeared. “This is fifteen minutes' work. You should sit and wait.” The little hacker smiled again. “I'll bet Victor told you that I'm on the ‘dark side of the force,' didn't he?” He waved his hand in dismissal. “No need to answer. The man's a Star Wars loser from way back. Finds all his analogies for life in Obi Wan and Yoda, mostly because he's never read anything but computer code in his life. Anyway”—he stood—“right now, you need help from someone on the dark side. Otherwise, you wouldn't be here. So sit there and read one of my magazines. Turn on the television if you want. But you aren't going anywhere. Not until I take a look at this hard drive and figure out exactly what it is you're up to.” He pointed at the door. “Try to leave before I say it's okay, and you'll find out just how dark life can be.”
Time slowed as Scott studied the mini-asylum he'd wandered into. Budzik stood very still now, watching—waiting to see what effect his words were having. Scott understood that the little man wanted to see how much shit he would eat. Unlike the little hacker, Scott didn't have anything to prove, but he did need the man's help. What he didn't need was to look vulnerable to a neurotic, possibly psychotic criminal.
Scott stood. “You've got two choices. You can look over the hard drive, analyze what's there, and I'll pay you very well for your time. Or you can give me that package back right now, and I'll walk out of here and leave you alone. But telling me what to do and when to sit are not things you're going to get to do.” He stopped to watch the little man's face grow red. “This is a business deal. Nothing else.” Scott paused. “What's it going to be?”
Budzik spoke through tight lips. “I don't think I'm in the mood to do this tonight. Come back tomorrow.”
Scott nodded and walked out.
When he was back on the street, Scott paused in the dark to catch his breath. The cold felt good in his chest. The sidewalk felt substantial, as if he'd just stepped off a carnival ride and back onto solid ground.
There had been something uniquely disturbing about Peter Budzik, something that continued to both pull at Scott's thoughts and stir an uneasy feeling in his gut. Some people shake your hand and you can't wait to wash off the imagined residue of their contact. After sitting in that strange man's chair—after talking with him and breathing his air—Scott needed cool wind in his face. He needed clean thoughts. Maybe a shower. He needed to wash away the residual filth of Peter Budzik.
As Scott turned the corner, he found
two teenagers in baggy clothes and knit caps leaning against his Land Cruiser. He stopped. One, a wiry black kid in unlaced hightops, flipped a lit cigarette at Scott's chest. Without thinking, Scott reached out and caught the cigarette between his thumb and forefinger. The kid's smile faded.
Scott rolled the still-burning cigarette between his thumb and middle finger and flipped it hard between the two boys. It hit his car door in a spray of embers. He reached into his hip pocket, pulled out a twenty, and held it up. “Twenty do it?”
The wiry kid nodded.
Scott stepped over to the side of Budzik's building, where he folded the bill twice and pushed it into a crack in the bricks. “Step away from the car.”
The second one, a fat kid who hadn't spoken before, said, “Fuck you. You give up a Jackson that easy, you gonna give up more if we beat on yo' white ass.”
The wiry kid pushed off the car. “Twenty's enough.”
The fat one's head snapped around. “I'm tellin' you—”
“Shut up, Beebo. I said twenty's enough.” He motioned at Scott with his chin. “Man's down here to do business. And . . .” He shrugged. “Looks and moves like a fighter. Two of us, though.” He walked over to lean against the building. “Jus' business. Twenty a businesslike number.” He raised his chin again in Scott's direction. “Move away.”
Scott crossed the sidewalk and stepped into the street. He kept both kids in view as the skinny one retrieved the twenty and walked away. The fat boy glared at Scott, mumbled something or other, then followed.
When they were half a block distant, Scott unlocked the Land Cruiser, stepped inside, and immediately relocked the door. He didn't realize he'd been holding his breath until the engine turned over and he let out a chestful of air. As he pulled out and passed the two teens, the fat one flashed a hand signal that looked like a gang sign. Probably bullshit to scare the white guy, but you never know.
Scott glanced in the rearview mirror and saw a third guy step out of a sheltered doorway. The dark figure hunched his shoulders against the cold and hurried down the sidewalk, his gaze seemingly fixed on the two teenage extortionists.