“Slide one of the cards into the imprinter,” I said to her as my eyes shifted to the left-hand screen.
She watched as I burrowed through Petri’s email. She grabbed one of the Prox cards from the stack on the desk and slid it into the slot of the imprinter. “Okay,” she said.
I turned to the middle monitor, and the name flashed again. The light on the front of the imprinter blinked a few times and went dark. “Another,” I said and turned back to Petri’s email.
She pulled out the first card and slid home a second. “Okay.”
I shifted my attention back and forth between setting up the Prox cards and reviewing Petri’s emails. The name flashed for the card, the imprinter light blinked, and I turned back to the email. “One more.”
We repeated the process, and when the lights on the imprinter stopped blinking, I slapped the desk, yelling “Yes!”
Rachel jumped.
“What?”
“Rule number two,” I started, and then I got a thoughtful look on my face. “Well, more like rule ninety-something. Finance execs everywhere … and marketing execs, too, for that matter … are usually lazy when it comes to IT security. I figured Ricky was one of them, and I guessed right. Look,” I said, pointing to an email.
“What’s it say?”
“It’s an email from one of their junior network guys telling Ricky that his bridge to one of their inner networks is complete, plus how to access it. According to this, the guy’s director would kill him if he found out.” I grinned like a big kid. “Hang on a minute,” I said and focused back on the monitors. “Swap screens left and middle.” The two monitors flickered and their images switched places.
An icon flashed On Ricky’s desktop, then an interface filled the screen with a login prompt. I pulled the keyboard again, typed in PETRIR in the user field and then Ricky’s password. The UI changed to a standard drive listing with a series of enumerated folders. “Shit,” I said quietly. “File count?” I asked. A small box appeared in the upper right-hand corner, and a count scrolled by rapidly, stopping at over eighteen million. “Hmmmm …” I said, leaning back in my chair and thinking furiously. I snapped my fingers and leaned back in intently. “Search left: molecule for cocaine.” The left hand monitor flickered, and sixteen boxes appeared on the screen, each with an internet page. “One and nine,” I said. Two of the screens expanded and filled the screens. One was text about the chemical chain for cocaine, the other a diagram of the molecule. “Capture data.” The characters and images flashed briefly green. “Search middle: match captured data to files.” The number on the upper right-hand corner scrolled back to zero. “Shit,” I said, frustrated.
“What does it mean?” Rachel asked.
“Well, we know that Mister Shao goes there frequently and that he’s a drug maker. We know that Ricky has access to the internal network. We have to assume that Shao uses a computer to do at least part of his work. What does that add up to?”
“Shao has either a separate network,” she said slowly, “a stand-alone computer, or he uses an abacus like no one else alive,” she added, smiling.
“That’s right. Looks like we’re going in.”
“When?”
“Still not sure yet. I think I want to take Xen along for this particular ride, so we’ll have to ask him.”
“Where is he?”
“He’s in a safe place. In fact, we’ll be going there shortly. But first, let’s see what we can find out about our friend in the black Audi.”
“Thank god. That’s really been bugging me.”
“Clear screens,” I said. They went back to the strange-looking desktop. “Okay … middle screen … Los Angeles Department of Motor Vehicle … search on three fields.” A box appeared in the middle of the screen with three text boxes and a blinking cursor. I typed in the license number, hit tab, typed in the date of purchase, hit tab again and then typed in the engine ID and hit the ENTER key.
A second later a small box appeared with the words “No data.”
“Damn, I was afraid of that. He just bought it. It hasn’t been processed yet.”
“Can this thing search LAPD records?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Well, you’re assuming that he’s a law-abiding citizen. Maybe the guy’s a lead foot.”
“Hunh?”
“Maybe he speeds a lot.”
I looked at her, impressed again. “Good idea. Search middle: LAPD, same three fields.” A second later one record popped up with a name, date, and city in it, and the violation had occurred the previous week.
“See?” Rachel said with a knowing grin. “Widen the search.”
I looked at her with a What for? expression on my face.
“Maybe he’s from out of town,” she offered.
I looked at the screen. “Same search: all of California.”
Two more records showed up, but these were in Sacramento, one each in the previous two months. “Sacramento?” I asked. “So he’s not from around here.”
I looked at the screen, blinked at the most recent record, and it expanded to fill the screen. I read out loud, “Six-point ticket issued to Albert Zajac. Eighty-four in a sixty-five … this guy drives like you do.” She punched my shoulder, and then I continued. “Weird, he’s a Polish national on an international driver’s license. Sacramento address. He’s on an extended travel Visa that checked out.”
I leaned back, looking at the data with a confused look on my face. “Now that just don’t figure … Polish?” I looked at Rachel and asked, “You piss off anyone from Poland lately?”
“Not that I know of,” she said, equally confused.
“Me either.”
My phone rang. I pulled it out and recognized the Costa Rican prefix but didn’t recognize the number. I opened the phone. “Hello?”
“Justin! It’s Xen!” Xen had to holler over the sound of slot machines ringing and gamblers talking in the background. “I’m in trouble, and I need your help.”
“Are you okay?” I asked, immediately concerned.
“I’m fine, I’m fine!” Xen said over the noise.
“You burned through all the money, didn’t you?” I said, smiling. I figured he would. Xen really is a shitty poker player.
“Well, about that …” Xen said a bit evasively. “I have a little problem, and I need your help. Can you meet me at the casino?”
“Sure. Right now?”
“As soon as you can. I can sit tight till you get here.”
“I’ll be there in thirty or forty minutes, okay?”
“Sounds good. Thanks!” Xen hung up.
“What was that all about?” Rachel asked.
“Xen. He says he has a little problem. So we have a change of plans … well, an acceleration of them. Lock console,” I said, and the screens went black. I took the circlet off my head. “Feel like taking a little trip south of the border?”
“How little?” she asked suspiciously.
“Oh … I don’t know … about …” I paused and did a quick calculation in my head, “three thousand miles.”
“What?” she blurted. “I’ll need to go get some clothes … and my passport.”
“No you won’t,” I said simply, a subtle grin blooming on my face.
“Justin, three thousand miles south of the border is Central America!” she clarified, speaking as if I were an imbecile.
“Trust me,” I said.
***
Secrets
“Follow me,” I said as I walked over to the kitchen. Rachel followed closely but with a curious hesitation in her step. I opened a cabinet and pulled down a bottle of tequila and a shot-glass. I topped the glass off and handed it to her. “Shoot it.”
She looked at me with a bewildered look on her face. “Why?”
“Shoot it,” I insisted.
She grabbed the shot glass and downed it easily, not showing any reaction at all. We’d spent a number of evenings doing shooters of the stuff, so she was accustomed to i
t. She looked at me expectantly. I took a deep breath, preparing for the worst.
“You know when I say I’m not from around here?” I asked quietly.
“Yeah?”
“I really, really mean it. And that story about having Lazarus syndrome that I told you last year, and how I don’t appear to age like normal people?”
“Yeah?” she asked, clearly wondering where I was going with all this.
I shook my head.
“Come on.” I grabbed her hand and walked to the front door, stopping before it and grabbing her gently by the shoulders. I looked squarely into her eyes. “After we go through this door, nothing changes between us, okay? Promise.” For the first time in nearly a hundred years, I had butterflies in my stomach. I didn’t know what I’d do if she freaked out on me.
“What is this all about, Justin?” She sounded confused, with a tinge of fear.
“Promise me. Nothing changes.”
She looked into my eyes, and I could see something there … for me … something she had kept pushing down. She kissed me gently on the cheek. “I promise,” she said sincerely.
I stared at her for a handful of heartbeats, suddenly afraid that I might lose her but desperately wanting to trust her for reasons I was only just beginning to understand. I wanted to kiss her then, kiss her and hold her. But I didn’t know how things would go. Maybe after, I thought.
“Okay,” I said a little nervously. She’d never seen me act like this, perhaps even a little vulnerable. I walked back to the kitchen, grabbed the bottle of tequila, and returned to her, putting my hand on the palm reader and running through the combination. My eyes never left hers as I pushed the door open. “Go on.”
She peered through the doorway and saw the living room. She got a confused look, her head cocked sideways, and disbelief gradually replaced the confusion. She stepped in and looked around a living room three thousand miles away. It slowly dawned on her that it simply could not exist where it was. She looked to her right and saw a window that looked out onto a tall, verdant-green hedge spotted with orange flowers highlighted in silvery moonlight. She looked around the door to her left and saw another window exposing a crushed seashell driveway leading to a wide gap in the shrub. A dirt road intersected the driveway, and she watched in disbelief as a flatbed truck drove down the road out of sight.
She stepped back into my loft and looked for the windows where they should be in the wall. All she saw was a blank wall full of coats on one side and my TV screens on the other. Her mind struggled with the impossible. She looked at my face, wide-eyed, not really comprehending. I handed her the bottle. She uncapped it and took a healthy swig, this time coughing as the tequila went down her throat.
“Go on,” I said, motioning her to go through. My face was immobile, a gently hopeful look frozen there. Is that fear I’m feeling? My insides felt like a tornado as she stepped through the doorway once again and walked all the way to the middle of the living room. I stepped through the doorway behind her and closed the door. She slowly turned around, taking in the rattan furniture with burgundy cushions, the walls lined with bookcases. She saw a statue of a matador and bull on an old wooden coffee table, an empty coffee cup beside it. There were two rattan end tables, both with lamps on them, and a hanging basket chair in a corner with the chain bolted into the dark-brown rafters exposed on the pale, textured ceiling. She could see a kitchen down the hall with a light on, and a closed back door—all where my alley should be.
“It’s impossible,” she said quietly. I opened the front door. She turned and watched me step onto a brick porch and walk out into the middle of a coarse, dark green lawn. I turned my gaze up to the sky, my back to her.
She followed me out, hesitating briefly at the door, and then stepped up beside me, looking at a full moon and a dark sky dotted with bright stars she would never be able to see in a Los Angeles sky.
I put my arm around her and looked into her eyes. She took a long pull from the bottle of tequila and stared up at me.
“Welcome to Costa Rica,” I said. “I hope you can you keep a secret.”
***
Wonderland
Having left Rachel on the beach with the bottle of tequila to sort out her new reality, I handed the keys of my old, gray Land Cruiser to the casino valet and slipped the claim ticket into a pocket. I walked up the stairs into the wide, red-carpeted entrance of the hotel and was bathed in a cacophony of dings, buzzes, claps, cheers, yells and every other sound that comes out of a well-populated casino. I scanned the crowd, hoping for the long shot of spotting Xen amongst the throng. I walked towards the cashier’s booth straight back from the entrance. I figured I could have Xen paged, but then a motion caught my eye.
Under the entrance to the baccarat room, holding four trays of chips in one hand and waving wildly with the other, stood an excited, almost frantic Xen wearing my clothes. I waved unenthusiastically and then just stood there watching as he walked up to me, cradling the trays in both hands like they were nitroglycerin. As he approached, I took note of the winnings, and my eyebrow went up. All three bottom trays and one row of the fourth had yellow chips, which I knew were thousand-dollar chips. The rest was a mixed bag of smaller increments. I also noticed rectangular bulges in the pockets of the shorts Xen wore.
Xen’s face split into the largest, shit-eating grin I have ever seen on a human. It even rivaled one of Magdelain’s best smiles.
Calmly I said, “I may be a terrible judge of situations, Xen. Lord knows I’ve missed the mark more than once in my time, but I seem to distinctly recall you saying that you were in some sort of trouble.… something about a little problem, if memory serves, and it usually does. That,” I pointed at the chips, “does not look like a little problem to me, unless you took a million out of the bag and that’s all that’s left. Still not really a crisis, as there’s more where that came from, but I’m wracking my brain here to see where the problem is. How much is there?”
“Three hundred and twenty-three thousand dollars!” Xen tried to whisper it, but it still came out loud enough for passers-by to hear him over the noise of the casino.
The thought occurred to me to place a bet with the casino on whether or not Xen would simply explode right there on the spot. I figured I could get even odds. I’d never seen him, or anyone else for that matter, so excited.
“Oh, here, hold this,” he said, almost calm, and handed over the chip trays. “I have your money.” I barely grabbed the chips in time as his hands shot into his pockets. He pulled out five stacks of hundreds and jammed them into my coat pockets. I could only smile at him.
“What’d you do? Rob the place?” I looked around to see if any security guys were edging in to make a grab for us. I’d been in a South American jail before—long story—and it wasn’t a place I wanted to return to.
Xen took the chips back and cradled them like a newborn. He stepped in close, his eyes going wide, and looked around, as if he had the secret of the ages. “Baccarat,” he whispered into my ear. “I’m a natural.”
“No shit?” I asked a bit dubiously. He was the worst card player I’d ever seen, no exceptions, but the proof was there in his hands and my pockets.
“I play steady and make a slow grind on betting on the bank. When it gets near the end of the shoe, I hit the stand-offs three out of five times. I can see the cards, Justin. They’re all in my head. At eight and nine-to-one, I clean house,” Xen whispered. “They finally asked me to leave the table.” Xen calmed down a bit and looked thoughtfully at me. “The trick is not giving a shit, isn’t it?”
“That’s right,” I said a bit more seriously. “Well, sorta’. At least not caring about yourself.” I clapped him on the shoulder. “I’m proud of you.”
“Thanks!”
“But you haven’t answered the original question.”
“What?” he asked with a confused look on his face.
Slowly, I asked, “Where’s the problem?” I looked at him expectantly.
&nb
sp; “Oh, yeah,” he said, finally coming at least a little bit back to the real world. “There were these guys watching me … big guys in suits. I didn’t want to walk back to your place with a bag full of money and get robbed or something. I’m a little drunk and would have gotten my ass kicked.”
I started to fire up a snappy comeback, but upon thinking about it said, “Good thinking. You’re absolutely right. Come on. Let’s cash you out and head home … unless you want to hit the tables some more?”
“No,” he said, almost relieved. “I think I’m done for the night. Besides, I don’t think they’d let me come back.” He chuckled like a villain.
I nodded, smiling. “You’re probably right.” We turned and walked towards the cashier’s booth.
“Wait a minute,” I said, grabbing Xen’s arm. “Let’s go next door.”
“For what?”
“You’ll see.” Around the corner from the cashier’s booth stood a small shop that sold all sorts of expensive vices, two of which were my favorites. We walked in and wove our way through a smattering of tourists looking at imported bottles of liquor and boxes of cigars.
“Julio!” I yelled over the noise towards the back of the shop. A small Hispanic man, well past sixty, and wearing a white button-down under a blue apron, looked up from an Aficionado magazine.
“Hola, Señor Case! Good to see you again, amigo!” Julio looked at Xen’s stack of money, did a fast calculation in his head and gave Xen a raised eyebrow with an impressed smirk.
“Good to see you, too, Julio,” I replied. “Could you please get us three boxes of Esplendido’s, the real ones, not the counterfeits, and two bottles of Elegancia?”
“Mui bueno!” Julio said enthusiastically. “Watch the shop for me while I get the cigars from the back, okay?”
“You bet,” I said and turned around to watch the tourists.
A minute later, Julio came out with three boxes of Cohiba cigars and two boxes with scotch bottles in them. He set them on the counter.
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