He walked back to the computer, replayed the video, paused it right at the critical frame. There was the face, the key to it all, reflected in green light in a glass door in the background of the scene. It was an amateur, cheap-budget mistake that hadn’t been edited out. It wasn’t much, too small to identify on this tiny screen, but clear as day in the original video. It was the uneasy face of Anthony Kaydell, reflected off a glass door. He stood off to the side of the action, watching another man give it to his girlfriend, or whatever Alesis had been. Waiting for hard drive insertion. God, that was it. Rolly looked at the scene, the action stopped just at a critical moment, with Kaydell’s face, yes, King Gibson’s face, floating above the action like some sleazy Wizard of Oz staring down at his dirty bitch Dorothy. Rolly grabbed the mouse, moved it across the screen and, holding his breath, clicked on the critical anatomical spot.
The message on the screen disappeared, the video too. The monitor screen faded to black. The face of King Gibson appeared on the left side, a picture of Anthony Kaydell on the right. The two faces crossed the screen towards the center, merging together like something from a cheap science fiction movie. The two faces became one and the same. Then the picture of Gibson/Kaydell got smaller and moved to the upper left corner of the screen. On the right side appeared several scrolling paragraphs of illuminated text.
I, Curtis Vox, Chief Technology Officer for Eyebitz.com, have recently discovered that the company I work for has become nothing more than a sham, an illegal money laundering operation for a man known as Anthony Kaydell. Mr. Kaydell has been missing since 1985, shortly after he stole millions of dollars from investors who had given their money to him. Mr. Kaydell now works as Executive Vice President for Eyebitz.com and goes by the name of King Gibson. What follows is a list of banking transactions I have found, whereby money has been transferred from Mr. Gibson’s accounts into the Eyebitz.com business account.
There followed a listing of dates, account numbers, and dollar amounts, a dozen or more. The narrative continued.
Mr. Gibson has been granted hundreds of thousands of stock shares by our fearless leader, Ricky Rogers, in return for Mr. Gibson’s investment and “consulting services” with the company. I believe it is King’s intention to sell his shares as soon as the company goes public. He will get millions in a legitimate payout in return for his investment with Ricky. The dirty money from his offshore bank account will disappear and be replaced by legal tender deposited in a legitimate U.S. bank.
I was hired to work for Eyebitz.com by Ricky Rogers, who attended a Linux User’s Group meeting where I demoed my video
player. As far as I know, he is unaware of the true source of the money supporting this company. I have come to the conclusion that Ricky is nothing but an egotistical weenie who lives under the hallucination that he is some kind of great new age business guru, when, in reality, he is nothing more than a professional shithead and a shinola salesman.
There is something that only Ricky, King Gibson, and I know about. My algorithm is fake. It doesn’t work. It’s nothing but a programming parlor trick, something I put together from bits and pieces of open source code. I’ve built my own shell around it to hide the real thing. That’s the real reason we limit access to the compression machine, so that no one gets enough time to figure out how it really works. I knew it right from the start, of course, but told Ricky and King only a few weeks ago. I thought I could program something that really works, but I can’t, not in the timeframe they’ve set for our IPO.
I have tried to convince Ricky we could spend more time and, in another six months, have a product that really works. But he will not listen to me. He keeps saying we can’t bail out on the big wave now, whatever that means.
I think some of the other programmers have begun to suspect. But no one is talking. They all want to believe. They all want to get rich. Just like I thought I did.
I realize now I have created a monster. But I do not have to continue to keep it alive. As of today, I’m going to stop working. I’m going to sit here in this house and take the paycheck they give me. Gibson knows if they fire me, I’ll make this information public. All it takes is one click of a mouse.
P.S. Gibson sent that slut secretary over to “talk” to me yesterday. I resisted this time. It’s an old movie I’ve seen too many times. Also, I bought a gun. Just in case that stupid ox Walter comes nosing around.
That was the end of the message, except for a button marked “Do It.” Rolly rolled the cursor over the button, watched it light up, wondered what would happen if he clicked it. Where would the information be sent? The newspaper? The police? Mr. Hayes and Mr. Porter from Atlantic Insurance? Curtis Vox had been one clever little geek, equal to almost anything Ricky or King Gibson could ever have thrown at him. Almost anything, except maybe murder. Rolly’s finger lingered over the mouse. Maybe he should just click the button, send the information wherever it was supposed to go, put an end to this thing once and for all.
A noise turned his head from the screen, a clunk from the direction of the bathroom. It was Fender.
There was a dark shape in the Fender’s right hand. It was a gun, raised and pointed at Rolly. Of all the stupid, unbelievable things Rolly had witnessed in the last week, this was by far the most stupid and unbelievable of them all.
The Story
Rolly didn’t move, keeping his index finger frozen above the mouse. He kept his voice low, conversational, as if Fender pointing a gun at him was not an unusual event. In a way that he couldn’t quite understand, he felt calm. Scared, but calm.
“Fender, what are you doing?” he said.
“Take your hand off the mouse.” Fender’s voice was high-pitched, barely contained. It was hard to tell which of them was more frightened.
“I know what’s going on now, Fender. There’s nothing you can do. I’ve seen what’s on the disk. I’ll have to tell someone.”
“Rolly, you don’t understand. If you tell people about this, the whole thing’s going to fall apart. Those options you’ve got won’t be worth the paper they’re written on. There’s only a month left until the IPO.”
“Someone’s going to find out someday, Fender. There were some men at the police station. They asked me questions about Anthony Kaydell. They already know something. They’re just trying to nail it down. When they do, it will all be over.”
“In a month we’ll be rich.”
“We’ll be accessories to a crime, too. What am I supposed to do about that? Just take the money and forget I ever saw this? Hope the police don’t figure it out?”
Fender’s left hand went up to his forehead. He stroked his eyebrows furiously, looked down at the carpet. If this had been a movie, it would have been Rolly’s chance to jump Fender, to leap up and knock the gun out of his hand. But it wasn’t a movie. Rolly stayed in his seat. His leaping days were behind him. He had to be patient, wait this out, just like everything else in his life. He waited. Fender’s fingers moved slower, settled in place. Fender spit out a sad little laugh.
“I’ll bet you wish I was dead, don’t you, Rolly?”
“What?”
“Just like you told me before. You wish I was dead.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Right after the accident, when they were putting you in the ambulance. That’s what you said to me.”
“Fender, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You said, ‘Why Matt? Why does a loser like you get to live?’ Do you remember that, Rolly? You looked right at me and said, ‘Why couldn’t it have been you?’”
Rolly fell silent. He remembered nothing about that night. He knew the story he’d been told by his mother, by Max, but he still couldn’t remember anything from the accident. He’d been driving. They’d all been drinking. Matt had been in the front seat, Fender in back. They spun off the road, went into a tree. Matt went through the front window. He was killed instantly. Fender walked away without a scratch.
A
nd Rolly spent three weeks in the hospital, doped up on all sorts of painkillers and drugs. He wondered how many shitty things he’d said to people when he was drunk, oblivious. How many things would he like to take back now, rewind, erase? It was probably best he couldn’t remember them all. He’d been a drunk for fifteen years. He’d been doped up and stoned and full of false ego built on a rickety structure of self-taught musical skills and self-pity.
“Fender, I don’t remember saying that. I’m sorry. It wasn’t just you. I was drunk, I was messed up because of the accident. I’ve said a lot of things in my life that I didn’t mean.”
“But it’s still what you think, isn’t it?”
“No.”
“It’s what you’re thinking right now. That I’m some butt-licking loser who’d be better off dead. That’s what you think, isn’t it?”
“No, Fender. I don’t.”
“Well, I’m in charge now. With you, with Ricky. And King Gibson, too. When I have the Magic Key, I’ll have something on all of you. Just like Curtis did. He told me I was a loser, too, but now he’s dead.”
“Where did you get that gun?”
“It’s Curtis’. He kept it in a drawer in the bathroom, under a towel.”
Rolly had a very bad feeling in the pit of his stomach, an unhappy feeling, a sadness that rumbled deep down inside him.
“You know something about it, don’t you, Fender? You know what happened to Curtis.”
“Who cares what happened to Curtis? No one liked him. No one will miss him. He was just some stupid little geek who liked to lord it over people because he thought he was so smart, because he could ruin everything for everyone by just clicking that button.”
“You knew about this?” Rolly said, tilting his head ever so slightly towards the monitor screen.
“I was in the bathroom the night of the party. While I was there, Curtis brought King in, showed it to him. I cracked the door open, peeked in at them. He laughed at King and King left the room. Curtis came into the bathroom. He found me. He was upset. He accused me of spying on him, pulled the gun from the drawer. He took me back into the room, told me how the Magic Key worked, made me watch the whole thing. He laughed in my face. He said that now I knew everything, I was as guilty as anyone else.”
“Who killed him, Fender? Who killed Curtis?”
“He killed himself.”
“No he didn’t.”
“Yes he did. He killed himself. And I’ll tell you how.”
Rolly waited, stayed quiet. There was no sense interrupting. Fender had something he wanted to say. He had a gun, too.
“After Curtis showed me the Magic Key, he put it back in his pocket. We left and went back to the party. I was in shock. I couldn’t think straight. I didn’t know if what he had shown me was true or not. I didn’t care. All I could think of was getting the Magic Key away from him, so he couldn’t use it.”
“What happened then?”
“The party broke up. Everyone left, except me. I hid in the closet in Curtis’ room. In there.” Fender sat down on the bed, waved the gun at the closet doors. “Curtis came in, took off his clothes, dropped them on the floor right in front of me. He went into the bathroom. It was my chance. I looked through his pants, found the key. I started to leave. I made it down the stairs and walked out to the patio.”
“You put the key in my guitar case, didn’t you?” Rolly said as it all became clear in his head.
“Curtis saw me. He yelled at me from up on the balcony. He had the gun. He told me to lie down on the ground until he came down. I lay down on my stomach. That’s when I saw your guitar case, under the table. It was right in front of me. While Curtis was coming down the stairs, I opened it up, put the key inside it. I closed it up just before Curtis arrived. He accused me of stealing the key. I told him I didn’t have it. I emptied my pockets, showed him that I didn’t have it. But he started screaming. He said I was just another one of King’s stooges. He jabbed the gun in my stomach. He called me a loser, said that Ricky always made jokes about me when I wasn’t around. He said Ricky called me ‘Fender Fuckup.’ He demanded the key back. He was screaming, naked. I was scared.”
Fender stopped, rubbed his eyebrows again. The gun had dropped to his side, but Rolly still wasn’t going to try any heroics. Fender wasn’t going to shoot him. Not right now, anyway. Fender continued.
“I kept telling Curtis I didn’t have the key. He was screaming so loud. He was drunk. He was crazy. He threw the gun down and started hitting me. I pushed him away, but he kept coming at me. We fell into the pool. He hit me in the stomach. Hard. It hurt. I held him down in the water to try and keep him away. He was thrashing around like a madman. I held him down. I was only trying to keep him from hurting me, that’s all.”
“What happened then, Fender?”
“He stopped moving. His body went limp. But I didn’t let go. And then I saw headlights. There was a car coming into the driveway. I got out of the pool. I grabbed the gun and ran back into the house.”
This is the turnaround, Rolly realized. It takes me back to where I started this song.
“It was you,” Fender said. “It was you coming back to pick up your guitar. I watched you the whole time. You saw the body. You ran away.”
“So you knew I was here. And you knew I had the Magic Key. That’s why you wanted Ricky to hire me.”
“Yes.”
Rolly sat, watching Fender, who stared at the floor. The song was almost complete. There were still a couple of notes missing, however, a couple of grace notes left to play.
“What about the body, Fender? How did it end up on the beach?”
“Walter did that. I saw him. He showed up right after you left.”
Rolly remembered his close encounter with the Coupe DeVille as he drove out of The Farms after recovering his guitar.
“Why did Walter move the body?”
“I don’t know. I saw him come in. He looked at the body a couple of minutes, then went back to his car. He came back with gloves on, waded into the pool, and picked Curtis up. He walked out to the deck and down to the lawn, and then he just threw Curtis over the cliff. I don’t know why he did it.”
“I think I know why.”
“What do you mean?”
“Eyebitz.com had a life insurance policy on Curtis that paid ten million dollars. For some reason, Walter thought it was better if Curtis fell off a cliff, rather than drowning in the swimming pool.”
It would have worked, too, if Rolly hadn’t called 911 on his way home, if Bonnie hadn’t stopped by the house that night to check on a report of a dead body in a swimming pool. A body that wasn’t there. If she hadn’t been called, she wouldn’t have wondered about it, she wouldn’t have stuck with the case. Perhaps then, Rolly could have tried to forget this whole thing, turned the key over to Fender. But he couldn’t do that now. He had to lay down the overdubs, finish the track.
“When you brought me over to the office that first day, Ricky said he’d received an email from Curtis that morning, telling him the key had been lost.”
“I sent the email. After Walter left, I sat here thinking about what I was going to do. I hatched a whole plan. I went upstairs to the computer and saw that Curtis still had his email program running. I emailed Ricky from Curtis’ computer. I knew it would look like the email came from Curtis. I’m in big trouble, aren’t I, Rolly?”
“Well, the insurance agents will want to talk to you. You might save them a lot of money.”
“What about the police? They’re going to say that I killed Curtis.”
“Fender, the longer you drag this out, the worse it’s going to get. You’ve got to come clean, turn yourself in. If you do that now it might not be that bad in the end. You didn’t mean to kill Curtis.”
Fender sat for a minute, the gun limp in his hand, still pointed at Rolly. There were little gears clicking inside Fender’s head.
“You know what I think, Rolly? I think you’re the one who’s in trouble he
re.”
“What makes you say that?”
“You’re here tonight, aren’t you, up in this room? You stole Walter’s key and broke into the house. And you broke into our offices. You were here the night of the party. The Magic Key has your fingerprints all over it.”
Rolly didn’t like where the conversation was going. The acid rose in his stomach again. His sore, aching muscles tensed even more.
“Maybe you killed Curtis,” Fender said, trying it out for size. “Maybe you killed him to get the key. You were going to sell it to our competitors. I know—you’re an industrial spy, that’s what this is all about.”
“It won’t work Fender. Someone will figure it out sooner or later.”
“All you have to do is give me the key, Rolly. Give me the key and keep quiet. That’s all I’m asking.”
“The police will figure it out. They’ll go over everything now with a fine-toothed comb. So will the insurance guys.”
“No they won’t. Not if they have their man already.” Fender tapped the gun on his knee. Rolly decided he didn’t have much time left. He put his hand on the mouse and clicked the glowing “Do It” button on the screen. Curtis’ message had been sent.
“No!” Fender screamed, turning his head and pulling the gun from his knee. Rolly dove from his seat towards the door. A bright bolt of flame leapt out from the gun, a huge crack of noise, followed instantly by the crash of glass and electronic circuits as the bullet smashed into the monitor screen. Sparks flew from the shattered encasement. The recoil knocked Fender off balance. He fell back off the corner of the bed. Rolly crawled out of the door, jumped to his feet, and ran down the stairs.
Black's Beach Shuffle: A Rolly Waters Mystery Page 18