“Yeah. I wondered about that.”
“The damned thing is worth millions. What interests me is key words.” He blinked, thinking back on their visit to SimTech. “For one thing, we were presented with three, pretty heavy hitters if I am not mistaken. And then they really didn’t say much, did they.”
They wanted a good long look at us.
Her eyebrows rose, although normally she was the patient sort and a good listener. Her thoughts were on home and a couple of energetic teeny-boppers who could get in all sorts of trouble without ever leaving their bedrooms.
“No, seriously. What were their key words? I mean, specifically…that crazy old man.”
“Who? You mean, Doctor Piqua?”
“Yeah—the doctor.”
She stretched out her spine, rising up in the seat. Two more hours to go.
She looked over.
“Shit. He said this is their first major malfunction.”
“Uh-huh.”
She stared at Gene.
“Well. That’s just bullshit…right?”
His eyebrows went up.
“What do you think, Francine?”
She gave a sardonic, quirky twitch of her mouth.
“Hah.”
She thought some more.
“So where’s the key word?”
“What if it’s major?”
Francine’s dark eyes glazed slightly and her gaze drifted to the window behind Gene’s profile.
Thin scrub, brightening up nicely with mid-spring temperatures and all the rain, sped by in a blur.
“A major malfunction? What else did he say, in terms of key words.”
“He said it was their first. He said they’re eager to get her back.”
Gene’s voice was soft and far away.
“Would I ever like to be a bug on the wall in one of their meetings…”
He chewed on his lower lip. A hand came up and stroked the bristles on the chin.
“And that Burch character mentioned public safety and liabilities.”
“I suppose I can see their point. I mean, they must have all the usual problems with anything wireless and computer-based these days. Constant upgrades to beat the constant attempts at hacking. A constant stream of cyber-attacks from overseas…bugs, glitches, viruses, and there were the recalls of the early household models.” Francine really only knew what she had been told, read or seen on TV. “No doubt they have to be careful what they say.”
“Yes.” The trouble was they did say it, and they weren’t real shy about it, either. “Exactly. But they have to say something.”
He thought about that for a while: they were stating the obvious.
They were being helpful, and cooperative, which was a wise policy, if it was real.
His earpiece vibrated.
Francine ignored him, sagging further in the seat and with her chin lowering perceptibly by the second.
Gene touched the tit on the side of it.
“Hello.”
He kept his voice low. A nap on company time might do her a bit of good.
Gene wasn’t wearing the Googgs as he wanted to relax. They were away from work and in an unfamiliar environment. Just this once, there was time to think. This was often conducive to some kind of inspiration, although there was little sign of it yet.
There was a bit of a crackle in the earpieces.
“Who is this, please?”
“This is Patrol Sergeant Parsons. Eighth Precinct.”
Gene’s voice picked up in volume.
“Yes.”
He sat up a little straighter, reaching for his briefcase and his notepad.
“We have a sighting of Mister Scott Nettles. He took a taxi, and it’s only about three kilometres from where our mystery couple disappeared.”
Francine made a sound Gene associated with sleep apnea and her chin bobbed up and down.
Her eyes opened, and she looked up in apparent confusion.
“Hold on, please.” He nodded at Francine. “We’ve had another sighting of Mister Nettles.”
She nodded, sitting up and mouth working.
To no one’s surprise, she looked at her phone and uttered a deep sigh.
***
Images appeared on Gene’s large tablet.
“Mister Nettles.”
Gene and Francine took a good look at the man in the back of the taxi. The sound came up and then they heard the machine ask for a destination.
Their jaws dropped when Nettles gave a series of coordinates.
“What?” Francine was alert now.
“It’s okay. It’s just GPS. We’ve located that, and it’s only about sixteen k’s up the road. They, or I should say he, headed almost due west from a rave party that was going on at that location.”
The interesting thing was that it wasn’t an address in the conventional sense. Why not just say drop me at the Seven-Eleven on Twenty-Seven Mile Road? Whatever. It meant something special.
Gene just didn’t know what.
Point A to Point B. Nettles got out of the car at an intersection, and as soon as the car moved on, he went out of the field of view of the rear-view camera. The car had turned left to make another pickup.
“That’s it?” Gene’s voice rose slightly in dismay.
“There were no live cameras at the intersection at the time. There still aren’t, incidentally. Those ones have been out for a while.” Parson’s dry voice came after he cleared his throat. “They’ve been having pretty good luck with that.”
At this stage of the game, Gene wondered if there was any real significance in Mister Nettles’ movements.
“What’s important here is that they’re not together.”
“There’s another thing.”
“What’s that?”
“The probability has dropped on our identification.”
Gene studied the readout as Francine tried to find it on her own device. Like Gene, she’d taken the Googgs off and was reluctant to put them back on as they (or something) had been giving her migraines lately.
“Sixty-seven percent.”
“What do you mean?”
Parsons hastened to explain.
“Huh! This guy hasn’t been seen in years, literally years, without the ball cap. He left the house without his dark glasses exactly two days in a row, eight and a half years ago. That was the end of February, and he must have replaced them—broken, probably, on cheque day.”
To the blind, it was part of the uniform. It made people aware of them, and drivers needed to see the white stick and the dark glasses. It opened up all sorts of doors in the pedestrian sense. It made things easier for those around them. While the stick was also practical, the white colour was a universal symbol.
Parsons went on to explain that every person’s behaviour generated a digital fingerprint. While the Nettles profile was a little sketchier than most, a regular assortment of passive sightings and archived recordings indicated that he lived his life, all of it, within a radius of less than a kilometre and a half.
He was out of his usual neighbourhood, and therefore out of character. It was akin to a person in medieval times, living barely at subsistence level, with the whole family working six and a half days a week, picking beans and dragging a plow behind an ox, and then suddenly taking a vacation at the beach.
There must be a reason for this behaviour.
Gene nodded and Francine said nothing.
The train whistled along, perceptibly bumpier now, and there were voices in the hall running along outside their compartment. Life went on all around them.
“So, who was the lady in the park, ah; is this the same guy, and why is he alone now?”
“Yes, sir.”
Francine made a noise which Gene interpreted as agreement.
He gave her a look. She shrugged.
“It does appear to be the same man.” That was as far as she was prepared to go.
“So.”
“That’s the real problem, Inspect
or. The really neat thing about Mister Nettles is how he seems to appear and disappear. He came out of the rave. If that’s him, he did change his appearance. But. Did he go in? No record of that. That’s what makes this sighting interesting. He gets in the car. He gets out of the car. Then he disappears, completely off the radar for the last day and a half so far. He paid cash for the taxi and mentioned nothing of consequence.”
Gene nodded firmly.
“Okay. I see your point.”
A day and a half was a long time. At home, in his apartment, that was one thing. But out in the world, that was another.
“Okay, Sergeant. I’ll have someone interview the landlady at the Nettles address.” He wrote that down as he still hadn’t gotten around to it. “I’ll have them share any information that they get there with you.”
“Ah, thank you.” Parsons still had a series of assaults on the books.
His mouth curled a bit and Gene grinned and nodded. The punks would forget about it soon enough, but Parsons obviously sensed an opportunity.
“And, uh, we’ll keep working on this.”
“Yes, sir.”
Gene sat back and hit the icon. Parsons was gone again, although his inbox was lit up with something additional from the sergeant.
His head twisted and he took in Francine with a glance.
She nodded.
“I’ve got a good feeling about this one.”
***
“Okay, Scott. Bingo. There’s the doorman, right in front of you. One metre.”
He spoke up right on cue.
“Excuse me. Is this the Red Dog Saloon?”
“Ah, yes, Ma’am. It sure is. What can I help you with?”
Scott stood there, wavering a bit to and fro. His hippie glasses dangled languidly from his left hand.
“It’s just that I’m blind with these contacts. I’m waiting for my date.” Betty had applied the makeup, and he had a wig and a small clutch type purse. “Nick will be along soon…I hope.”
He positively tottered there on what she said were patent leather high-heeled pumps. There were low voices all around and yet he had avoided stepping on anyone. It took fierce concentration to rule one’s emotions. Someone nearby giggled. He hoped they were taking a good look. Time hung heavy, and his pulse was still racing. He struggled to keep his breath calm and smooth, blanking out a little and just going with it. A cheap buzz, he thought.
That’s what I need right about now: an anxiety attack. He gulped and tried to sort of purge the CO2 from his system.
That’s what it was. It wasn’t the lack of oxygen that killed you, it was the CO2. It was a good thing he had the purse to hang onto. A revealing insight about women. They at least had something to do with their hands when they got a little nervous.
Listening to the chat about him settled him down. No one had accosted him, no had remarked upon him. They were just ignoring him, and he tried to locate them by sound as best he could.
This was said to be the biggest bar in the state, a real turnpike-style roadhouse, away from the city and its satellites, and set in an unincorporated township. It was open 24-7 with continuous live entertainment of an eclectic nature. The wine would flow and the blood did spill. It was like every state had one these days. The dress, a little shorter on him than it would be on Betty, would be ruined by the huge globs of sweat running down from Scott’s unshaven armpits. His girdle was killing him. It wasn’t so much about passing as a woman. It was about passing for anyone, anything other than what he was.
“Here I am, Lover.”
Betty and Scott engaged in a quick peck, Scott enjoying the fact that there was a small crowd hanging about the entrance. Oh, the irony of it all.
“Where did you park?”
“I found a good spot.”
It was a short speech, strictly for public consumption.
Scott nodded approvingly. They’d actually walked the last three kilometres, with Betty hanging back around the corner and Scott being talked into position, over the last few yards, through the earpiece. This was all for the eye-witnesses. All of this to get a hot meal and a drink. Scott also wanted a bed for the night something awful. A bed and a bath.
Betty had chopped her hair into something more resembling a page-boy cut, and was clad, according to her amused description, in a charcoal-grey zoot-suit, very androgynous as she put it.
Somebody somewhere had made a good sale.
They held hands as a couple ahead of them murmured back and forth with the doorman. The people were admitted, a blast of real sow-belly music coming out the door as they went in. She gave a quick pull and Scott stepped forward hesitantly.
Another strong hand grabbed his right elbow and gently steered him into position.
“You guys are next. You’re lucky, it’s not so busy tonight.” Apparently, the bouncer was talking to him.
Betty’s deep basso-profundo voice, put on especially for this occasion, thanked him gravely.
Scott had been thinking about all of those cameras.
If you couldn’t get away from them, then maybe you might as well join them.
Or something like that, but he’d heard of privacy freaks buying expensive masks and wearing them in any public place they went. It seemed a bit much to him at the time, hearing about it on the TV, but he could appreciate the point now.
The smell of food, real food, wafting out from the saloon, more of a head-banger, speed-metal, family-style bar and grille by the sounds of it, was driving him nuts.
More of a short putt, as someone had once said.
Chapter Eleven
“There are no guarantees in this life.”
Scott sat in what felt like a dentist chair.
Not used to being touched or handled in any way, his recent relationship with Betty notwithstanding, it was oddly arousing in the physical sense. It gave him someplace to put his thoughts. The young woman went on.
“It’s a good thing you have somebody to help you.” She had shaved his skull, and pulled a tightly-constricting latex mask over his head.
Now she was applying putty and makeup around the edges, after lifting the cheeks and putting small pads of putty in strategic locations.
“His face seems a bit lopsided.” Betty was right there with him.
Hopefully no one would notice the slight bulge in his pants.
“No one’s face is truly symmetrical.” The technician hummed softly as she worked.
He and Betty had been expected, somehow. Upon their arrival at the Red Dog Saloon, she, in her temporary disguise as a retro-metrosexual, led him to the bar. He heard her exchange brief words with someone.
A few minutes later, the result of some signal which he didn’t quite catch, she took him by the arm and led him to what must have been the hallway where the restrooms were located. The smell was a dead giveaway.
“So?”
“If you get caught, it’s a hundred-thousand dollar fine for obstructing the course of justice.”
A hundred grand! For wearing a mask. The world had certainly become a crazy place. Scott wondered if it was worth it sometimes.
A recent news story, the typical horror story put out by the mainstream media, had documented a case where someone had gotten an illicit nose-job. The lady didn’t have the money for the medical fees and the permit required from Motherland Security. She had faked the documents (badly), vanity being what it was, and the self-objectification of women being what it was…she was caught, inevitably it would seem.
Now she was doing fifteen years in a work camp. She would get out of jail by the time she was thirty-five. This was one of the northeastern states, as he recalled. Down south she’d be doing three life sentences.
Scott hoped it was worth it to her. License fees for cosmetic surgery were a major source of revenues for the state. One of many new sin, or as Scott called them, vanity taxes. Harsh penalties were an incentive to save one’s pennies—and pay your fees.
“Huh.”
Her deft f
ingers smoothed the putty around the edges of the mask. Fine sable hairs tickled his face, as she applied some kind of powder to blur the lines where skin met rubber.
Scott had never really thought about it, but he pondered the question. What about women and their makeup?
What about the female penchant for new hair styles? What about people who changed their clothes, every day, what about people who got a hair cut, or wore sunglasses?
But apparently the programming was sophisticated enough to recognize these changes, for according to the published theories—Scott called them ‘justifications,’ the facial recognition algorithms were only a part of the picture.
Biometrics included height, weight, eye colour, body type, silhouettes, and a person’s characteristic walk. Sociometrics included daily habits, the PPP, known associates, family circle, place of residence, work, license plates, make, model and colour of vehicle…social and employment status. They knew who you were when you walked past a scanner and the machine read the chip. When in doubt, suck some blood and run it for analysis.
It was all about digital characterization from records and constantly-updated documentations in the course of one’s daily peregrinations.
Nowadays crime could be predicted, even intentions could be predicted—hopefully Betty and he stood some kind of a chance. Even this present situation could be predicted to some extent, although he had the feeling he was a few steps behind Betty every inch of the way. Hopefully they were one or two steps ahead of the cops.
Much food for thought there. If only he knew where to begin.
“So, what about the I.D.?”
“Everything’s going to be fine, Scott.”
Betty was reassuring, although she was in her own chair and her own technician applied himself to the job at hand. His voice was soft and yet deep when he spoke, but that one kept the talk to a minimum.
His girl wasn’t much more talkative.
He might have been wrong about that.
“What do you think of the Mets this year?’
The Mysterious Case of Betty Blue Page 10