Catalyst

by Steve Winshel

  The more immediate problem was how to find out if delivering Helen her prize would get Josh off the hook for killing Crawford. There was only one way to find out. He checked his email. Nothing from Helen. Josh started planning what he would say at Jerry’s Deli when he suddenly felt his phone vibrate. The cell reception in his neighborhood was miserable, so he never knew when someone was calling because it didn’t ring. But when someone left a message, the phone vibrated. Using the office phone, Josh picked up the message from Helen. She wanted to meet at Zuma beach just after sunset, at the northern end. Big, public beach near Malibu. Not too many people likely to be there, open space so she’d know if Josh brought anyone but enough solitude that she could have some new partner pretending to be a jogger on the deserted beach kill him. Perfect for her. Lousy for Josh. But she didn’t give him a list of options. Zuma it was. He started to think about what he would tell her.

  * * *

  Helen sent an email to her employer that she wasn’t happy about having to send.

  Ventrica delayed. Crawford dead. More information tonight.

  This made her look incompetent, something she had spent a lifetime avoiding. But there was no choice. The only thing worse than telling her boss bad news was not telling him when there was bad news. At least, she thought it was a he. They communicated only through email. Three years earlier she had been approached by a proxy, an attorney who showed up at her door with a request to stop by the offices of a white-shoe law firm downtown. It wasn’t actually Helen’s house where the attorney had rung the bell; it was the 14,000 square foot Bel Air mansion of the Internet-rich guy Helen was about to marry and kill off in a hunting accident when he went to his brand new lodge in Park City to show off his new trophy wife to all his other pals who had cashed in on some foolish on-line idea during the boom-boom times of the late 90’s. Helen had been working him for about six months and he was convinced he couldn’t live without her. She had insisted on a prenup and he refused – true love couldn’t be governed by laws, etc. It took some convincing, but he finally got her to accept the marriage proposal and the distribution of money in the case of dissolution or death. Helen had earned pretty well over the previous half dozen years, doing the occasional well-paying odd job requiring tenacity and cold-bloodedness for her half-cousin who claimed he was in the mob but really just brutalized people into giving him money. But her calculations showed it would take her eleven years at this rate to reach critical capital – the amount of money that would allow her to live the rest of her life as comfortably as she deserved. Eleven years was too long. Cash-rich Syl Purdy would cut that time down to nine months inclusive of courting, marriage, death, and disposition of the estate. Plus Syl had cashed out his holdings and there was no risk Helen would put in the effort then get screwed when his stock plummeted. As a bonus, Syl was worth six times Helen’s minimum amount of critical capital. It was a great deal all the way around. But the attorney at the door mentioned a much bigger number and Helen did not hesitate to arrive for the appointment later that afternoon.

  At the meeting, a different attorney – older, grayer, smarter – described the proposition. He had a very important client who wished to hire her. She would perform services and be paid through wire transfers. The attorney would not be involved after the initial transaction, which was a deposit of one million dollars into an account in the Cayman Islands. He handed her a white index card containing a series of numbers and the address of a web site.

  “You may verify the amount. It will remain in this account until midnight tonight, then be transferred out unless you enter the code at the bottom of the card. Entering the code constitutes acceptance of the position. Failure to enter the code results in a rescinding of the offer.”

  Helen fingered the card, flicking the edge with a sparkling white nail. She looked at the attorney across his desk. He did not blink.

  “And what exactly are the terms of this offer? What is the work? And why me?”

  The attorney said nothing for a moment, then sighed as though he were going to confide in her. Helen knew this was bullshit; this guy was in complete control of everything he said. Lacing his fingers together to form a little tent, he settled back in his chair.

  “Miss Kent, I do not know the nature of the work. I do not know the details of the terms other than what I have told you. I do not know why you were selected, except to assume you have displayed the necessary skills. My client engages in many types of business with this firm, and probably with a number of other firms. My client is willing to advance you one million dollars against future work. My client requires only that you perform satisfactorily and discreetly. Beyond that, I have no answers.”

  That was all he was going to say. She had plenty of questions, but she had the one answer that mattered – a one followed by six zeroes. She would take the money and see what the guy wanted. Either he was very, very desperate to get laid or had some extremely dirty work to be done and someone had turned him on to Helen. It didn’t matter to her. The price of finding out was nil and if it didn’t work out, she’d at least have an adventure. She smiled broadly and stood. The attorney eased out of his chair and shook her hand warmly. Not another word passed between them.

  Helen verified the amount in the account using the large-screen monitor and wireless Internet connection back at Syl’s house while he played an unplugged electric guitar in preparation for his new band’s first gig the next night. Too much time and money on his hands. Helen entered the code to accept the money, then connected to her own private account in Luxembourg. Less than five minutes later she received an email notification confirming the transfer of one million US dollars into her account. Car keys still in her pocket, she walked out the door empty-handed, Syl calling to her as he tried to pick out a melody and flail his head around like a rocker.

  “Hey, babe! You heading to the store? Grab me some Ben & Jerry’s, okay? Chunky Monkey, and some chocolate fudge or Hershey’s sauce. Okay, babe?”

  Helen left the front door open and gave only a flicker of thought to the clothes and knickknacks she was leaving behind. Without turning around, she slipped into the late-model BMW 530i in the driveway and burned a little rubber as she headed to her house to sweet talk the owner into giving her another month to move out. She had given notice and now that Syl was out of the picture, she’d need a little time to find out what this new work was and find a new place to stay.

  She found out the next morning when an email was waiting for her. It was a private address she kept that no one knew about – she thought. The subject of the email was: Instructions. She opened the message:

  In the future, payment will be made after completion of the job. You will continue in my employ until I conclude our arrangement. You may ask questions about logistics but nothing else. At all times, you will remain as discreet as possible, but the ultimate requirement is to follow instructions as I provide them for each job.

  If you ever cheat me, you will pay the price. If you ever attempt to discover my identity, you will pay the price. If you ever involve anyone in your activities without my consent, you will pay the price.

  I will contact you shortly with validation of the seriousness of this arrangement. Provide me the name of someone you dislike.

  Okay, Helen thought, this is bizarre. But for a million bucks, she could put up with bizarre, at least for a while. This guy was going to ask her to do some kind of illegal, dangerous, profitable stuff. As long as his money was good, she was fine with that. But the tough guy act seemed a little much. Having money and being greedy didn’t make you dangerous. And what kind of validation was he going to provide? And why the hell did he want the name of someone she didn’t like? Still, a million dollars was pretty convincing and she was intrigued. Helen’s reply to the anonymous email was simple:

  Okay, as long as your money is good, I’m in. And I don’t like a cop in Boston named Patrick Cauliff.

  Now seemed like a good time to go house hunting and to get in touch wit
h her portfolio advisor about where to put the bulk of the million dollars to work.

  Three days later, a FedEx package arrived at the door. No signature was required and by the time she opened the door, the delivery woman was already back in her truck after knocking and leaving the package on the Welcome matt. Helen felt the heft of the package. Ripping it open, she caught a slip of newsprint as it fluttered toward the ground. It was a headline from the Boston Globe: Officer Shot by Unknown Assailants. She skimmed the three-column article. A cop had been killed during a routine traffic stop. Two bullets in the head, one in the chest. The assailant or assailants had escaped and the car found deserted behind some fencing off the freeway that was under construction as part of the Big Dig. The car had been stolen from a home in Cambridge two hours earlier. Police were following up on leads and were confident the perpetrator would be found. Services for the hero, slain in the line of duty, were for the following afternoon. Donations in lieu of flowers were encouraged.

  When Helen was in grad school for English lit, she had been out drinking with some friends one night looking for a little fun and trouble. They were driving home too fast, Helen at the wheel, and a cop pulled them over at two in the morning on a side street in Cambridge near the school. Usually the cops gave students a hard time just to put them in their place and that was it, but Helen mouthed off a little. The cop who asked her for her license made her get out and put her hands on the roof of the car, legs spread-eagle. Instead of patting her down, he had groped between her legs and squeezed her breasts. She didn’t really care about the violation, but it pissed her off he had made her feel helpless, out of control. She had remembered the cop’s name, Patrick Cauliff, in case she ever came across him or had the chance to look him up one day.

  Helen upended the FedEx package and a shiny brass object slipped into her hand. The badge said Boston Police Department around the rim and the name across the center was Cauliff. One corner had been freshly bent. She knew it was by a bullet clipping the edge as it went past and into the wearer’s chest. Helen hefted the badge, a blank stare on her face. This was the validation. Her new boss was telling her something. A couple of things, really. He knew details of Helen’s life. And he could get to anyone – and would do anything.

  Three years later and she still only communicated with her boss through email. But she had learned to trust him to be good to his word. After each job, the amount he promised appeared in her account. Once, early on when she had started to feel cocky about this gig, she had tried to negotiate a larger fee. Not because the job was any harder, but just to push the envelope. She didn’t hear back from him for three days. Very little scared Helen, but she spent those three days looking over her shoulder. Her email to him on the fourth day was a form of apology – she had completed the job in record time, using pain and intimidation with the client instead of the subtle mind games she usually started with. She emailed her boss to say this job didn’t require payment, she was glad to have the opportunity to work for him. The full amount appeared in her account within two hours. She never questioned him again.

  Now Barnes was upsetting her plans. This wasn’t the first time there had been delays, but this was the first time Helen thought there might be real complications. She didn’t want her boss to think she couldn’t handle it. Two more years of this work and she would retire with ten times the amount she originally thought was her minimum critical capital. No way this one was going to jeopardize her plans. She would deal with Josh tonight and get the design. She didn’t care about Crawford, but she had a point to prove with her boss: she was in control. Josh Barnes and his sister would have to pay the price to ensure her future.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Josh asked himself, what would I do if I were Helen? This seemed like a ridiculous question; he had no experience in extortion and murder, though last night’s events were a start. She had been willing to kill his sister just to prove a point. As Josh sat on the couch with CNN playing in the background and the thought that Allison was safe for the moment, he put away distractions and false optimism. What would he do if he were Helen? The answer was obvious: he would get the design and get rid of the guy who had caused all this trouble. She and Crawford must have been smart and successful up to now. Josh probably wasn’t the first person to cause a problem, if you could call beating a man to death a problem, and since they were still in business it meant they knew how to handle troublemakers. He’d never seen himself as much of a threat to anyone, but he understood that killing Crawford, even in self-defense, made him more than a nuisance. Helen was going to get the design and kill him.

  Josh couldn’t accept that as an outcome. The part of him that had surged to the surface in fighting Crawford knew the answer, knew what he needed to do. But the sane part that had been in control for forty-two years struggled. He didn’t believe he could just kill Helen in cold blood – no matter the danger, that wasn’t part of him. But as he pictured Crawford in Allison’s room and imagined what might have happened there, he knew this was all part of defending his sister’s and his own life. He began to justify what was coming. He wouldn’t spend the rest of his life looking over his shoulder.

  Josh flipped off the T.V. and went to his office. The hard copy of the Ventrica design was under a corner of the carpet behind the desk, his feeble attempt to hide it. He pulled it out and started feeding it into the scanner connected to the computer. It took just over thirty minutes to convert the 100+ pages into an electronic file on his laptop. He put a thumb drive into his computer and copied the Ventrica file onto it. Three minutes later he had erased any trace of the design from his computer. Most people didn’t know erasing something from your computer didn’t really make it go away, it just marked as available the spot on your hard drive that still contained the erased files. That meant the computer could store something else there if need be. But the file you thought you erased was still there until something new was “written” onto that same space. Josh knew how to delete every remnant of a file and made sure he did this time. Considering the path he was on, someone eventually would be looking at his computer and he didn’t want any trace of this crime – corporate espionage – to add to his problems. The scanner had no memory in it, so the only evidence was the hard copy and the thumb drive. He used the shredder to turn the Ventrica design into a thousand strips of paper, then filled a cleaning bucket with bleach and turpentine and soaked the pages until the ink had faded and the paper turned to sludge. This was more effective than burning; forensic cops could pull words off of what looked like ashes. He flushed the muck down the toilet, though it took twenty flushes to empty the entire bucket. Josh had covered his tracks as best he could.

  Plenty of time to do what he needed to do and still get to Zuma beach. Josh quickly dressed in jeans and a pullover, laced up the sneakers he always wore when not at the office, and slipped the drive in his back pocket. Ten minutes later he was at the Kinko’s on Ventura Blvd. in Encino. He had a plan in mind and was energized. But as he walked up to the store, Josh caught a glimpse of himself in the full-length glass door. He looked haggard, but focused. It was a look he got when in the middle of a project that consumed his thinking. It hit him hard, standing there with his hand on the door. This wasn’t some intellectual exercise or huge project he was running. This was serious in a way he had never experienced. Despite the seeming cleverness of the plan, the confidence from past successes, Josh felt inadequate. Who was he to play this kind of dangerous game? He didn’t even really know if Allison was safe, right now, this minute. He had dispatched her to a safe place and moved on, but how did he know Helen hadn’t been waiting, hadn’t followed her and kidnapped Allison at the gas station or at a stop light? He thought about calling the police, standing there frozen. Suddenly the door swung open and almost clipped Josh in the forehead. A kid with a nose ring, carrying a bunch of flyers with a picture of a guitar spun through the gap to avoid cracking Josh’s head open with the door and said “whoa! ‘scuse me, dude.” Stil
l holding the door, Josh watched him walk away. Goddamnit, goddamnit, goddamnit. He tried to concentrate and went into Kinko’s.

  Josh sat down in front of one of the dozen computer terminals they rent out by the minute and signed in using a bogus name. Connecting to the Internet, he went to www.hotmail.com and created an email account. If anyone ever tried to trace it, all they would know was that someone who called him or herself H. Crawford created it at 12:47 p.m. on Saturday, September 23rd on this computer. He took the drive from his back pocket and slipped it into the port on the computer. For the next thirty minutes, Josh surfed a dozen Internet sites containing warez, illegal software programs created by hackers who took pride in breaking copyright law and writing nasty viruses for fun and profit. He found what he was looking for and downloaded a complex but elegant program created by a high school student in Indonesia. It took him another hour to pour through the code and make the changes he needed. Warez programs didn’t come with user guides and how-to instruction books. Josh relied on his early training as a programmer and his more recent experience tracking down and catching hackers for clients to modify the program. As a last step, he combined this new program with the Ventrica design file. It would take a fairly sophisticated expert to know there was now a virus lurking in the file containing the document.

  Using the new Hotmail account he had set up, Josh emailed the Ventrica design to himself at this same account. It showed up instantly in the In-box, sitting there waiting for someone to open it. He didn’t.

  Logging out of the computer, Josh paid cash to the kid at the counter and left. Before he got to the car, he twisted open the plastic case with the tiny thumb drive in it. The solid-state piece of technology had no moving parts. He picked up a chunk of cement that had fallen off the parking spot divider and hammered the drive until it was just a tangle of flattened metal. The only illicit copy of the Ventrica design was now sitting on an anonymous Hotmail account known only to Josh.