Even the Wicked

by Lawrence Block

Page 25

 

  "Didnt have any money, did he?"

  "Actually," I remembered, "he had more money than he should have. He cashed in his insurance and he died with something like forty thousand dollars in the bank. "

  "Aint that a motive?"

  "He left it all to some AIDS charities. Some of those organizations are a little aggressive in their fund-raising, but Ive never heard of them going out and killing for the money. "

  "Besides, all they gotta do is wait, right? Cause the man already dyin. " He frowned. "You know whatd be nice? Piece of pie. " I beckoned the waitress over and he asked her what kind of pie she had, giving her response some careful attention. "Pecan," he decided, "with some of that whatcha-call a la mode on it. Say chocolate?" She looked at him, confused, and the street went right out of his speech. "Ill have a piece of pecan pie," he said, "with a scoop of chocolate ice cream. " She nodded and went away, and he rolled his eyes. "Now she be thinkin I a doctor. She be after me to take out her appendix. "

  "Tell her your doctorates in botany. "

  "Thats just as bad, Tad. Shell have me talkin to her plants. If killin Byron didnt put no money in nobodys pocket, whod hire somebody to do it?"

  "I dont know. "

  "He had AIDS, right? But he wasnt gay. "

  "He got it from a needle. "

  "He keep it all to hisself? Or did he pass it on?" I must have looked puzzled. "The virus, Cyrus. Whod he go and infect?"

  "He could have spread it around," I said. "Years ago, before he even knew he had it. "

  "So he gives it to some woman, and then her husband or her boyfriend or her brother wants to know how she got it. Couldnt be nobody but that no-account junkie Byron Leopold, she says. "

  "Whereupon the husband or brother or whatever he is goes out and hires somebody to kill Byron. "

  "Or does it his own self. Either way Byrond be a stranger to him an he might axe him his name to make sure he didnt kill the wrong person. Mr. Leopold? Byron Leopold? "

  "Pop pop. "

  "All she wrote," he agreed.

  "What about This is for Sheila, you dirty rat? The way he did it, Byron wouldnt even know why he was dying. "

  "If Sheilas brother was doin it hisself, youd spect him to say somethin. If he only hired the shooter-"

  "The shooter might not bother with the oratory. Even if the brother did it himself, he could have a speech planned and be too nervous to deliver it. " I drank some coffee. "I dont buy any of it," I said.

  "Who takes that kind of revenge on a man with one foot in the grave? Byron Leopold was a bag of bones, his idea of a big day was sitting in the sun with his newspaper. No matter what he did to you, one long look at him and the resentmentd go right out of you. "

  "Whats that leave? Suicide?"

  "I thought of that. "

  "Huh?"

  "Say he didnt want to live anymore but he couldnt bring himself to take action. So he hires somebody to do it for him. "

  "Hes afraid to stick his head in the oven, but hes cool with the idea of waitin for somebody to sneak up and shoot him. "

  "I said I thought of it. I never put it high up on the list. "

  " Sides, hows he hire somebody who never met him face to face? You hire me to shoot you, I aint gonna have to ask you your name. "

  "Forget it," I said. "It never made any sense in the first place and it makes less sense now. Byron Leopold was murdered by someone who had a reason to kill him, and he himself was the only person in the world with a reason to want him dead. There ought to be a financial motive. Thats what it feels like, but theres no money in it for anybody. "

  "Theres whatever he had. Forty kay? But you said some charity gets that. "

  "And its not enough anyway. "

  "Not enough?"

  "Not enough to kill for. "

  "Dudes up on Washington Heights, they killed three people and only got half that much. "

  "They were lowlife dipshits," I said. "They probably killed for the hell of it. They already had the money. Why kill the girl? To keep her quiet? She couldnt tell anybody, and her mother and brother were asleep in their beds, for Christs sake. They killed three people for no reason. "

  "Guess you aint likely to be a character witness for them. Anyway, wasnt no lowlife shot Byron. Said, Mr. Leopold. Polite, you know? Showed some respect. "

  "Its little things that make all the difference. "

  His pie had arrived while we were talking, and now it was mostly gone. He held a bite balanced on his fork and said, "Funny about the forty kay. First it was too much and now it aint enough. "

  "He cashed in an insurance policy," I said, "and that would have brought him only a fraction of what he had in the bank. So in that sense the forty thousand was too much, but…"

  "Somethin wrong?"

  "No. "

  "Way you just broke off an started starin. "

  "Too much money," I said. "Glenn Holtzmann had too much money. It was in his closet when he died. And I dreamed about him, and thats what the dream was trying to tell me. Too much money. " I looked across at TJ, who still had the last bite of pie on his fork. "I thought the dream was about Will. But it wasnt. It was about Byron Leopold. "

  13

  It still didnt have to mean anything. It had been a dream, after all, and not a message from Glenn Holtzmann in the spirit world. (If his shade had indeed contacted me from beyond the beyond, hed probably have had more on his mind than some guy who got himself shot on a park bench in the Village. "Hey, Scudder," he might have murmured, "whats this I hear about you and Lisa?") The dream was my own self talking to me, and I wasnt necessarily all that much sharper while I slept.

  Anyway, sometimes its just a cigar.

  * * *

  "If," TJ said, and stopped himself. "No," he said, holding up his hands as if to stop himself from running into a wall. "No, I wont say it. "

  "Good. "

  "But if we did, be no stoppin us. "

  If we had a computer. That was the phrase hed agreed not to say, and not a moment too soon, because those five little words played a key role in every sentence out of his mouth. I seemed to have two cases, the shooting death of Byron Leopold and Wills string of homicides. (What I didnt have was a client, unless you wanted to count Adrian Whitfield, whod paid me some money a while back and encouraged me to extend the umbrella of my investigation to cover both cases. ) Whichever one I wanted to fool with next, TJ seemed certain a computer would make all the difference.

  Insurance records? Just boogie on into the insurance companys data base. Airline records? Do the same for the airlines. The whole world was on-line these days, and a well-schooled hacker could reach out with ease and touch someone, anyone, and pick his brain while he was at it. All you needed was a computer and a modem and a phone line to plug into and the world would whisper all its secrets to you.

  "You also need someone who knows what hes doing," I said. "It took the Kongs to crack the NYNEX computer. Im willing to believe you could learn how to do all that, but not fast enough to do us any good now. "

  "Take a while," he admitted. "Meantime, the Kongs could talk me through it. "

  "If they happened to be in the neighborhood. "

  "They aint the only hackers could do it. Be easy to use them, though, an they wouldnt have to come down from Boston to do it. All theyd have to be is near a phone. "

  "How do you figure that?"

  "Nothin to it," he said. "Id be on the computer, and be on the phone with them at the same time. Youd need two phone lines is all, one for the modem and one for the phone. Or you could use a cell phone to talk to them if you didnt want to run a second line in. "

  "In where?"

  In wherever you got the computer. Your apartment, most likely. Or the shop. "

  "Elaines shop?"

  "Sos she could use it for keepin books an takin inventory. I could do all that for her. "

  "If you took a course or two. "

  "Well, it aint rocket scienc
e. I could learn. "

  "Theres not a whole lot of spare room in the shop. "

  He nodded. "Be better off settin up in the apartment. "

  "We had to set up in a hotel room with the Kongs," I remembered. "Had to rent one, so that our little invasion of the phone company computer couldnt be traced back to us. "

  "So?"

  "Because what the Kongs did," I went on, "was illegal and traceable. If we pulled anything like that from the apartment, or from Elaines shop, wed have guys with badges knocking on the door. "

  "Hackers has learned some tricks since then. "

  "And what about the cyber cops? Dont you think theyve learned anything?"

  He shrugged. "Way it works," he said. "Build a better mousetrap, somebody else gonna build a better mouse. "

  "Anyway," I said, "technology only takes you so far, even if youre the Kongs. They couldnt get into the system, remember? No matter how many keys they punched, they couldnt find the combination. "

  They got in. "

  They talked their way in. They put technology on hold and called up a human being on the telephone. "

  "Some girl, wasnt it?"

  "And they sweet-talked her into giving up the password. They used that technique routinely enough to have a special phrase for it. " I groped around in my memory and came up with it. "Social engineering, thats what they called it. "

  "What you gettin at?"

  "Ill show you/ I said.

  * * *

  "Omaha," Phyllis Bingham said. "To think there was a time when I booked you and Elaine to London and Paris. And now its Omaha?"

  "How the mighty have fallen," I said. "But I dont want to go there. I just want to find out if somebody else did. "

  "Ah," she said. "Detective work?"

  "Im afraid so. "

  "And if he went there you have to chase after him?"

  "I think he went and came back. " I handed her a slip of paper. "Probably flew out there on either of these dates, and returned on either of these. "

  "From New York to Omaha, and-"

  "From Philadelphia. "

  "From Philadelphia," she said. "I was just going to guess who flies nonstop from New York to Omaha, and I know America West used to, and I dont know if they still do, but it doesnt matter if he flew from Philadelphia. But who flies Philly to Omaha nonstop?" She flexed her fingers, frowned, tapped away at the keys. "Nobody," she announced. "You can get there on USAir via Pittsburgh or you can fly Midwest Express through Milwaukee. Or United if you dont mind changing at OHare. Or any airline, just about, but those are the logical ones. I dont suppose you know which airline he used?"

  "No. "

  "And his name?"

  "Arnold Wishniak. "

  "Well, if we find him," she said, "well know its him, wont we? Because how many Arnold Wishniaks could be going from Philadelphia to Omaha?"