The Readymade Thief

by Augustus Rose

  Lee looked carefully at his face, wondering if he really knew as little as he seemed to. She pulled her bag close and rifled through it until she found the photo of the woman. She tossed it to him. “Who is she?”

  Tomi squinted at the woman’s face. “She looks just like you. Is she a relative?”

  “You’ve never seen her before?”

  Tomi turned the photo over to the cryptogram on the back, and his face changed, but just for a moment. “Where did you get this?”

  “I got it exactly where you left it for me.”

  As he met her eyes, he shook his head; he really didn’t know, she could tell.

  “What about that photo of me, with the eyes, surrounded by men—‘What do you see through your windows?’”

  He handed the photo back. “I swear to you, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  Lee scrutinized his face. “Tell me what you were doing at the Silo that night.”

  “Implying what?”

  “I’m just trying to figure out why you’re always just a couple of degrees away from all of this shit that keeps happening to me.”

  Tomi looked as though he was about to say something, but then he stopped himself. “Look, I get that you don’t trust me. But I can help you. You can’t keep staying here.”

  “Why not?”

  “Jesus, Lee, don’t be an asshole. Look at this place. Look at yourself. You look like a little broken bird in here.”

  Lee felt her anger flare. “Don’t ever call me that.”

  Tomi deflated. “Okay. But I can’t go home knowing you’re sleeping here.”

  Lee looked around her home of the past week. She was getting used to it, and that scared her a little. “I’m not coming back to the apartment with you.”

  “I get that. But maybe I can help you go underground. Not like this. For real.”

  “Underground.” The word sounded like an actual place when he said it, but she knew there was no underground. There was only wherever she happened to be, when she happened to be there. “How?”

  “Leave that to me.”

  “I want to know what’s going on. Who these people are that are following me. And what they want from me.”

  “Maybe I can help with that, too. I will try if you tell me more. But we need to get you out of here first. Please.”

  “For real, Tomi, how did you find me?”

  Tomi laughed. “Pure chance. I saw you come out of an Aldi yesterday.”

  “And you followed me back here? Why didn’t you say something then?”

  “Obviously you did not want to be found. I’m sorry, but I couldn’t give you the chance to just vanish again. Now I get it. But I can help you disappear.”

  She could see gears moving in Tomi’s head. “How?”

  • • •

  The next day Tomi returned with a twenty-some-page sheaf of paper. Lee squinted at it in what light came in through the boarded window. Just a long list of names, addresses, and dates.

  “Okay,” Tomi said. “You said you were squatting the home of some family on vacation.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, it occurred to me that there must be hundreds of people like that leaving their homes vacant every week.”

  “It was just dumb luck I found one of them.”

  “Okay. But what if . . . ” he said, reclining back on the room’s mattress with a self-satisfaction that Lee couldn’t help but find a little irritating, “you were able to know when they were going out of town?”

  “I wouldn’t lie on that,” she said. “I wouldn’t get near that thing.”

  “The mattress?”

  “God knows the junkie juice it’s soaked up over the years.”

  “Where do you sleep?”

  Lee gestured toward a rolled-up foam mat she’d found in one of the rooms. “Right behind you, that big stain on the wall?” She waited for him to crane his head. “I think that’s where someone shot himself.”

  Tomi got up and moved to the floor. He nodded at the paper in her hand. “Take a look at that list.”

  “What are these?” she said.

  “My work, it gives me certain accesses.” Tomi day-jobbed as a data recovery technician, spending his work hours digitally spelunking into damaged hard drives, salvaging what could be salvaged. “One of our clients is a travel agency. Not many people use them anymore, but folks with money still want someone else to do their shit for them. So this agency brought in its server a few months back. The thing was totally fried. Someone spilled coffee onto it, and the dummies never had a backup.”

  “So?”

  “So I was able to restore eighty-three percent of it.”

  “So?”

  “So we keep backups of all the data we restore. I went through it last night and hey! Logins and passwords there for the taking. So I took a peek at their current database of airline and hotel bookings. I set parameters to grab trips one week or longer, with two or more travelers from the same address. That way it’s pretty much all vacations, no business trips leaving the wife and kids behind. Shall we go house hunting?”

  • • •

  The first home on the list was a two-story brick colonial in the south-west suburbs, pushed far back along a grass walkway, and they circled back around to check it out. “Keep your eyes open,” he told her, and jogged up to the front door and peeked in through the mail slot.

  “No good,” he said when he got back.

  “How could you tell?”

  “Mail is stacked up on a table, nothing on the floor. It means someone’s been coming in to check on the place.”

  “You’ve thought this through, haven’t you?”

  Tomi blushed a little as he checked his list for another residence. He took her hand and started walking. “Come on, we’re a couple on a stroll.”

  The next house was a stone and wood two-story Tudor with a peaked roof, and Tomi let go of her hand and picked up a rubber ball that had rolled to the edge of the driveway. He bounced it a few times, took a few steps, then kicked it into the yard.

  Lee watched as he ran to get it, taking his time about it, checking through the mail slot, then going around the side to stare up at the windows.

  When he got back, he told her, “I think this is the place.”

  • • •

  They went around the side of the house to the back. Tomi showed her the cracks in the magnetic tape around the windows, which told him the alarm system was likely old and defunct. He pulled a thin strip of steel from his bag and used it to get under the window pane and jimmy the latch, which fell open easily.

  “How do you know this stuff?” Lee asked.

  Tomi shrugged. “The Internet.”

  Lee felt her heart race, not unlike the rush she used to get shoplifting. She climbed in feetfirst and dropped to the floor.

  In the gunmetal light they moved past a furnace and water heater. Stacked all around was the detritus of someone else’s life: rusty bicycles and boxes stuffed with camping gear and old clothes, gardening equipment and tools and a stack of board games in torn cardboard boxes, an orange kayak hung from the rafters. Lee followed Tomi across the basement to another set of stairs. At the top was a door that Tomi jimmied open with a crowbar.

  The owners had been good enough to leave a few lights on, and Lee left Tomi to investigate upstairs. The rooms were spare and decorated in cool grays. Each was a showroom, nothing out of place. In a tidy little office she picked up a metal comb from a shelf and ran her fingers along its teeth. She went into the bedroom and lay down, trying to get a feel for the place, but there was nothing. Even in the hotel she’d felt the presence of people who’d been there before her. The people who lived here were blanks. It made Lee feel very alone. When she returned to the living room, Tomi was on the couch, eating peanut butter from a jar an
d reading a magazine.

  “So what do you think of your new digs?” he said. “Okay for a week?”

  She took the peanut butter from him and ate it from the knife. “I guess so.”

  He pulled the list from his back pocket, smoothing it over the coffee table next to the map. “There’s enough food in the kitchen to last you that at least. There’s no pet bowl, no house plants, which means no one’ll be coming by to feed or water anything. I went through the list, and check this out: Mr. and Mrs. Lunske—that’s these good folks—they get back next Friday. But if you leave on Thursday, you can stay at the Gilberts’, here”—he pointed to a dot on the map—“or here, at the Talbots’.”

  Lee stared at the map, tried to imagine the houses of these people, but all she could think about was the mutilated eyes of her own photo staring back at her. “You said you’d help me find out what’s going on. Why these people are harassing me.”

  Tomi folded the map. His eyes went to her face. “Okay,” he said. “But you have to tell me everything first. Start from the beginning.”

  Lee hesitated.

  “I can’t help you if you don’t.”

  She had confided so little to anyone about what had happened to her since the JDC it felt strange talking about it now, like she was repeating someone else’s story. But she stumbled through it, starting with her high school arrest, then gaining momentum as she described the JDC and her escape, the man in the park, finally taking Tomi to the Crystal Castle. She told him about Ester, the Station Master, and how he’d talked to her. She told him about sneaking into the Station Master’s room. When she told Tomi about what she’d seen upstairs, she felt the familiar sickness and rage run through her.

  “What did you find in his room?”

  “There was an old ledger. Numbered subjects—I think he was recording the kids there. I was one of them.”

  “What else?”

  “That photo. The woman I showed you. I first saw it there before I found it left for me at the aquarium. Who is she?”

  “I can try to research her. Anything else?”

  Lee hesitated, then plunged forward. “I took something. Someone delivered something to him that night. It was a work by Duchamp.”

  “Why did you take it?”

  “I was holding the bag, but I didn’t know what was in it. When I heard him coming back, I panicked. Later, I saw it had been stolen from the museum . . . what kind of coincidence is that?”

  It sounded more and more fantastic the further she went. If Tomi was skeptical, he didn’t show it. “Where is it now?” he asked.

  Lee shook her head. “I can just return it. Maybe they’ll leave me alone if I do.”

  Tomi frowned. “Maybe.”

  “But I want to know who they are,” she said.

  They went upstairs to the office, and she sat beside him as he powered up the computer. When he got a private browser window up, he said, “Where should we start?”

  “I want to know about the Société Anonyme. The Station Master’s connected to them somehow. But I already tried that. The only mention is of some old artists’ salon founded by Duchamp in 1920. They disbanded ages ago.”

  “Well, maybe they’ve re-banded,” he said.

  “And now they throw raves and push drugs?”

  Tomi shrugged.

  “You think Derrick’s involved? He had at least two of those invites, for two different parties. The one he gave you and the one he left in your book.”

  Tomi shook his head. “Derrick’s a scenester. Whatever the cool thing to do is, he wants to be there. But he’s not a joiner. He hooks up with girls where he can, but mostly he just sticks to himself.”

  Tomi scrolled down the search pages, one after another, coming up blank.

  “I told you,” she said.

  Tomi pulled a keychain out of his pocket. The ring was attached to a blue rabbit’s foot, which he pulled off to reveal a USB stick. He inserted it into the computer’s port, opened a folder, and then clicked on an icon. A different browser opened. He laid into the keyboard with a burst of typing.

  “What are you doing?” she said.

  “Have you heard of the Darknet?”

  “Is that one of those underground Internet sites where you can buy drugs and hire hit men?”

  Tomi laughed. “You can also order stolen organs. But that’s just a small part of it.”

  “So are we going to order a kidney or have someone knocked off?”

  Tomi smiled. “Neither. Most of that is scammers, anyway. How do you think Derrick makes his money? How do you think he affords all that gear—that SLR camera, that watch? As a barista?”

  Lee thought about his webcam offer in the stairwell. “Derrick traffics in human organs?”

  “He’ll pose as a doctor in the Ukraine, or Mumbai, tell his customer he has access to kidneys and livers, lungs, even hearts. Or he’ll be an ex-marine mercenary willing to kill anyone for a fee. He gets husbands and wives paying to get rid of their spouses. Then he just takes their money and disappears.”

  “How does he get away with that?”

  “Anonymity, and knowing how to navigate. The Darknet isn’t a site; it’s more like an area. And it’s part of an even larger area called the Deep Web, which is like a hidden Internet. The Deep Web runs beneath the public Internet, but you have to know how to access it. It’s huge, maybe five thousand times as big as the World Wide Web. Most of it is just forgotten information stored on servers in governments and institutions around the world. But within the Deep Web are areas like the Darknet, which is both hidden and anonymous. And embedded within the Darknet are different sites and groups and organizations. It’s like a termite hill. We’re going to a site called the Subnet right now. A lot of the urbex crews communicate via the Subnet. Aside from housing the main urbex forum, the Subnet serves as a kind of trading outfit. It’s how we trade maps and locations, post photos without being found out. When I need something, I contact this guy in the Subnet and he finds someone who has it. We agree on a fair trade, and the Subnet gets a broker’s fee. Everybody’s happy.”

  To reach the Subnet, Tomi told her, he had to log in through a special browser that was cloaked to hide his identity and keyed in to access Darknet sites. Once in, he clicked on an icon of a door, which sent an electronic knock to the Subnet site.

  A window opened on the desktop. Below it was a little avatar of a flying turtle monster that Lee remembered watching on TV as a kid, and the name H3rm3s beneath that.

  “Is that you?” Lee asked. “Hermes?”

  “Messenger of the gods. Protector of thieves, travelers, and border crossings. Guide to the underworld, bitches.”

  Below Tomi’s avatar, another avatar came up, a hostile-looking troll holding a key, the name Papoola beneath it.

  “Papoola’s a gatekeeper,” Tomi explained. “Everyone who logs on to the Subnet needs to provide a visual to the gatekeeper first. It’s more secure than a password.”

  Tomi typed: subnet access, which was followed by an immediate response:

  [Papoola]: Ready for vid-ver.

  Tomi adjusted himself within the monitor’s webcam. No image of the person on the other end came up, but a voice, modulated to eliminate all hints of gender, said, “Hello, Hermes. How can I help you today?”

  “Just research,” Tomi said.

  “You realize your account is currently two months in arrears.”

  “You know I’m good for it.”

  “And who is that behind you?”

  Tomi grinned. “A new friend.”

  Lee stepped back into the shadows and lowered her head.

  “Why is she hiding?”

  “She’s shy.”

  Tomi turned the desk lamp on her, and suddenly there was no place for Lee to disappear. She didn’t like being looked at when she couldn’t tell
who was looking.

  “I want to authorize her full access on my account,” Tomi said.

  “You are vouching for her?”

  “Of course.”

  “Very well. Sit in front of the webcam, please. Pretend I’m taking a passport photo.”

  Tomi stood so that Lee could sit down. Lee thought about Ester taking her photo in the cafeteria. “That’s okay,” she said.

  Tomi looked at her, confused. “What’s okay?”

  “I don’t want my picture taken right now.”

  Tomi spoke to the computer: “Could you give us a second?” He turned off its microphone.

  “Listen, I’ve already vouched for you. I let you see me access the Subnet. You can’t just walk away now.”

  “Why not?”

  Tomi was silent, as though considering how to put it. “You know how, in a movie, if drug dealers want to test whether someone is a cop, they make them try some drugs first? It’s like an insurance policy.”

  “But I’m not a drug dealer. Or a cop.”

  “But you understand what I am saying. If you say no now, it looks bad. For both of us.”

  Everything in her gut was telling her not to do this. But if she was going to trust Tomi as far as she already had, she had to trust him with this, too. When she sat, the face she saw in the monitor stared back at her, eyes dark and tired but cheeks flushed. She heard a click, and her image froze for a moment.

  “You are now L2 authorized,” the voice said. “You will give her an orientation, Hermes?”

  “Of course,” Tomi said.

  “And assume responsibility for her presence on the Subnet?”

  Tomi looked at Lee. “I will,” he said. Lee felt as though they were getting married.

  “If she wants unsponsored access, she will have to set up an account of her own, which will require a monthly bitcoin deposit. Is there anything else?”

  “Nope.”

  “Proceed,” the voice said, and the troll avatar disappeared.

  Tomi brought up a browser window. It looked exactly like a Google home page, except for a tiny “s” attached to the bottom of the first “G” in Google. He typed in “Société Anonyme,” and suddenly the screen was full of hits that hadn’t been on the normal browser. “You see—the Subnet’s even got its own subWikipedia.”