“That’s not breakfast.”
“It’s all I—”
“Then open the breadbox and tear off the end of the baguette in there. It’s yesterday-fresh.”
I did that.
Then I sat right across from Dolly, chewing slowly, washing every bite down with a sip of her concoction.
“What?” she finally said.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Dell, how long is it going to take you to learn? You think I can’t hear you talk just because you don’t speak out loud? I know you could sit there for hours, waiting for me to finish whatever I’m doing. I’m not going to be able to finish this for a few days,” she said, hitting a key that made her tablet beep. “So?”
Arguing with Dolly was always a waste of time, especially when she was right. “Remember when you told me about how people could pretend to be other people on…Facebook, and stuff like that?”
“Yes,” she said. She said it patiently, tapping her nails against the butcher block so I’d know she really wasn’t.
“You can do it with pictures, too? Of yourself…Well, not really of yourself, pictures of someone else.”
She made a “Get on with it” noise.
“Isn’t there a way to tell if someone stole a picture?”
“Sure,” she said, leaning a little forward. “It’s so easy that I don’t know why these kids don’t do it. Or maybe it’s that they won’t do it. I think…I think it’s like those crazy karate movies—you know they can’t really be flying around and kicking each other ten feet off the ground, but you never say that.”
“Why not?”
“Because everybody knows it. So if you say it like you’re telling them something you know, they go, ‘Like, who doesn’t?,’ ” my wife said, switching to that teenage-girl voice that comes out of her mouth as naturally as French does—Dolly’s bilingual in English. “There’s a term for it: ‘suspension of disbelief.’ You volunteer to do that when you go to one of those movies. Or read a Batman comic, stuff like that.”
“So they don’t check pictures people say are theirs because they’re afraid to spoil…whatever it is they’re doing, yes?”
“I guess that must be it. I mean…Come around behind me, Dell. I’ll show you.”
I watched as she tapped some keys. A whole bunch of photos appeared.
“Who’re they?”
“It doesn’t matter. Some girl who put her picture on Facebook.”
“So why…?”
“Wait,” Dolly said. She used her finger on the touch pad, grabbed one of the images, and moved it up to the top of the screen. “See?”
“It went into…Huh! That picture, it’s not really her. The girl on Facebook just now, I mean. Right?”
“Yes. It’s no more complicated than that. You find an image you like, then you move that image onto your own page, and, just like that, that image is your image.”
“And you could have different images for different names, then?”
“I’m not sure I—”
“That’s my fault,” I said, squeezing my wife’s shoulder gently. “What I meant was, if you can use any image you want to be ‘you,’ then you could be a whole lot of ‘you’s.”
“Sure.”
I moved Dolly’s hair off the back of her neck so I could kiss her. Then I went down to my basement.
—
I sent this:
|>Rhonda Jayne Johnson + Benton?<|
And this time, I waited.
|
Not exactly pen pals, then. But what “goods for services” did they exchange? Cash would work, but if the Undercurrents reporter was feeding info to Benton, it wouldn’t be through e-mail. So that schoolgirl photo was, what, a disguise? Not a chance. If a damn picture wasn’t good enough to fool anyone, how could she hope to pull that trick off in person?
I knew there was a time limit for keeping the line to the ghost open. Had to be. I didn’t know where the border was, so I just jumped:
|>Shares of PNW Northwest + Rhonda Jayne Johnson?<|
The response came back so quickly that the ghost must have been waiting.
|<10K U$, invested 2011. No value change.>|
The machine’s screen blinked, which I took to mean “Shut down!” I disassembled it, thinking this Rhonda Jayne Johnson had a lot to gain if that hedge fund skyrocketed. That would explain her tipping Benton to whatever was going on with the Undercurrents investigation. But what could she tell him that he couldn’t just go online and read for himself?
—
It was easy enough to find her—campus security is all about protecting schools from lawsuits, not protecting students.
At three in the morning, the parking lot was empty. The closed gate would keep cars out, but I wasn’t looking for a parking spot.
The grounds were pretty deserted, too. Most of the windows in what I knew was a dorm building were dark, nobody on the well-lit paths. One of those electric-powered golf carts the campus police patrolled in could show up around any corner, so I passed up the temptation to move in the shadows and just strolled along. My only disguise was a hooded poncho, the kind you wear if you want to be ready for a sudden shower. It was in the school’s colors, one for the body, the other for the sleeves. The entire back was covered with an image of the school’s mascot.
A cop would need to get very close to see the clear latex covering my hands, but I wouldn’t let that happen: if I let them pull in close enough to ask me some questions, they’d know I was no student.
I never considered one of the administration buildings. They’d have all their records computerized, and double-locked down. Besides, I didn’t need any medical or financial info, just an address.
The dorm I picked didn’t have a single lighted window on the second floor. I couldn’t take that to mean they were empty—anyone inside any of the rooms could be asleep. Or stoned. Or doing something that worked better in the dark.
So I held the rubber-ringed cup against the door, alert for any sound. But the burglar’s stethoscope sent only silence to my ears.
I inserted a blank plastic card with a magnetic strip correctly positioned, then tapped the little random-number generator until a green light showed.
The push-button LED flash showed that what I thought would be a room was actually some kind of suite. Four rooms, each with its own bath, and a big common area with a pair of sofas and stain-free carpeting in some bluish shade.
I turned on the tablet I’d been carrying inside the poncho, and let it search for a signal. The WiFi only took a second to connect. I plugged in the thumb drive, waited for a window to open, and typed her name into the Student Directory box.
Rhonda Jayne Johnson had an apartment just a few miles off-campus.
—
That was a lot of work for a little bit of information, but with a last name like hers, I wanted to narrow the search for when I got back home.
Oregon’s DMV sells the data it collects, so all I had to be was an insurance company registered with them. I already was that—there was only one agent in the office Dolly and I visited to ask about a “personal” letter Dolly had received, promising to beat any price offered by a company with a “national reputation.” While Dolly got the guy to come outside with her to show him her Subaru, I told them I’d wait.
Like I’d guessed, his computer was already on, so I didn’t even need the password-recovery program I always carry when I visit strangers.
Rhonda Jayne Johnson’s school address checked against a blue 2014 Audi TT. Insured full-boat, down to zero-deductible.
Driver’s license showed no tickets, no accidents.
The license photo was the same one the school’s yearbook had. No point trying to match it for other names—even if she had some kind of personal page, that same photo under another name wouldn’t help me.
—
Feeling as if I should have done better on my own, I reluctantly snapped the m
achine together.
|>Where photo obtained? Does not match target’s driver’s license.<|
I left the machine on. If the ghost was watching his screen, I wouldn’t have long to wait.
I guess he wasn’t.
—
“I apologize for just showing up,” I said to the man whose size overlapped the width of the door he’d opened at my knock.
“Mr. Dell! You never have to—”
“It’s good manners to let folks know you’re coming.” MaryLou’s sandpaper voice cut him off.
As Franklin stepped back to let me in, I said, “She’s right,” to the behemoth. What I didn’t say was that I hadn’t called because MaryLou was perfectly capable of answering his cell phone herself if he was in the backyard or someplace else. And equally capable of telling me that this wasn’t such a good time for me to drop by.
“Sit down,” Franklin said, pointing to the one armchair in the front room. It was big enough to hold even his bulk, but not him and MaryLou both—and she jumped onto the sofa a split second before the man she loved turned around and joined her.
“The reason I didn’t call first,” I started, holding MaryLou’s eyes long enough for her to understand that I wasn’t there to ask Franklin to do anything dangerous—or even to leave the house—“is because there’s things about this town I don’t understand, and I need to understand them. It’s the only way I can protect my wife.”
“Dolly?” they said, in a single two-timbre voice, ready to anaconda-wrap around the unspoken threat of whatever might make me worried about the woman they both loved.
“Yes. I can do whatever has to be done, but I have to cross some ground to do it, and I don’t want to step in a sinkhole.”
It was language they both understood, in their own ways. Before Franklin could respond, MaryLou put her power pitcher’s left hand on his forearm in some signal they’d worked out between them. “What do you need to know?” she asked.
“What’s most important here? In this village? Not some umbrella thing, like finding happiness or making money. Specifically. What counts the most?”
“There’s more than one answer,” she said. “Depends on who you ask. But if you take making money off tourists out of the mix, it’s a safe bet you’re talking about either sports or the ‘arts.’ ”
I didn’t miss the sarcasm on her last word, so I knew more was coming.
“Not pro sports,” MaryLou said, just to make sure I was paying attention. “Here, it’s college. We’ve got big-time teams in Oregon at that level. Nationally ranked, all that. But the only pro team in the whole state is basketball, and that’s way up in Portland.”
“Okay” is all I said—to MaryLou, soccer wouldn’t count.
“But when it comes to any kind of art, that’s going to get supported,” she went on.
“You mean, like, painting, or…?”
“Photography, or sculpture, or music, or acting, or…you name it.”
“And there’s money for all that?”
“They will always find the money,” the young woman said.
“Because art stuff doesn’t bring in money, and sports pay for themselves?”
“They pretty much do,” she said, just a light frosting of defensiveness over her voice. “This town may be just one of a hundred little feeder streams, but college ball, that brings in serious money.”
“Especially football, right?”
“Right,” she said, stroking her man’s forearm. “If they paid college athletes—which they should—Franklin could have made a fortune.”
“I don’t want—”
“If he wanted to,” MaryLou said hastily to squelch Franklin. “But we all know what Franklin wants to do. What he’s so good at already.”
“I just started,” the big man said. “I won’t be good at it for a long time. But I don’t care. Someday, I’m going to be good enough at it to have my own business.”
“Spyros says you’re a natural,” I told him. “He says you’ve got a special touch that you can’t learn—it’s got to be in you from the beginning.”
“He told me something like that, too,” MaryLou added.
Franklin’s face flushed. It would take him another lifetime to get used to any kind of praise that wasn’t coming from a football coach.
“I’d never go against Mr. Spyros.”
“Who said, ‘against’?” I asked him. “The man’s not going to want to work forever. And what do you think he’s training you to do?”
“You mean…?”
“Of course that’s what he’s saying,” MaryLou jumped in. “A man has a business all his life, he doesn’t just walk away. Either he sells it off, or he gets someone to run it for him, stays on as a partner or whatever.”
I nodded my head gravely, to make sure Franklin would understand I was dead-serious.
He immediately turned to MaryLou. “Then we could get—”
“This is fine for now,” she said. I could tell it was a conversation they’d had before.
“So what’s the biggest draw?” I asked her. “Of the arts thing, I mean.”
She didn’t hesitate a second. “Probably writing. Poetry, short stories, books—anything like that. It’s kind of a hold-together.” Seeing the slight raise of my eyebrows, she went on: “One guy draws comics, another one writes the stuff that goes in the balloons. Or some kid wants to make a little movie, and he needs a script. Even the ones who paint, they need…titles, like.”
“They teach this in school?”
“Some of it, sure. But most of it’s in those workshop things. Like, the library will have a night class. Learn to write your own story—that’s always hot stuff,” said the young woman who wouldn’t ever want to write her own.
“Who pays—?”
“I guess that depends on what you’re talking about,” she cut in. “They have those open-mike nights in a few of the bars. Excuse me, cafés—the places that serve hard stuff, they get their crowds from guys who want to watch the game on the big-screen, convince themselves the girls who wait on tables are shaking it just for them.”
“So the big money—say, to build that Performance Art Center—that’s all from taxes?”
“Taxes? Oh, you mean, like, property taxes? Some of it, I guess. But they’re always applying for grants. And the Town Council has money it can set aside for stuff like that, too.”
“People don’t vote on that?”
“I don’t…I don’t think so, but I couldn’t swear to it.”
“Thanks,” I said. To both of them, even though Franklin hadn’t said much of anything.
As if he realized that, the big man said, “Would you like something to drink, Mr. Dell? We don’t have liquor, but we’ve got all kinds of—”
“I’d take some apple juice in a second, Franklin. But you’ve got to stop making me feel like I’m a hundred years old first, okay?”
“What did I do, Mr. Dell?”
“That’s what he means,” MaryLou said, affectionately. “Why not just call him what I do—‘Dell’? That’s your name, right?”
“Actually, it’s Adelbert,” I said. “But that’s a tongue twister. Anyway, my friends call me Dell, you’re right about that. So…how about it, Franklin?”
“Sure,” he said, coming off the couch like a floating feather. Any fool who assumed his size made him clumsy wouldn’t stay fooled long. “Apple juice, right…Dell?”
“On the nose,” I said.
—
It’s not always about money, I thought to myself on the drive back.
Olaf didn’t have to tell me that part. Even if I didn’t know it when I started working as an assassin, I knew about it long before I walked away from that life. Jealousy, revenge—motives like that I’d probably expected. But that last job, the one where I first learned Dolly was a real person, that had been an act of mercy.
Not on my part. I did it for the money, as always. But the people who hired me, they knew it had to be done, knew it w
as their duty to a man they loved—they just couldn’t bear to do it themselves, or even to watch it happen.
So I told myself that even the slightest chance Dolly could be prosecuted was something I had to avoid. But lying to yourself never works. So—here’s the truth—just like those people who had hired me in San Francisco: I couldn’t take it.
I had never expected to die a hero’s death. Before Dolly, my greatest hope was that it would be quick one.
I didn’t need one more chance to tell her I loved her. If I hadn’t proved it by now, words would change nothing.
—
“Why didn’t you just ask me about all that?” Dolly said, after I finished telling her about my visit to Franklin and MaryLou.
“MaryLou doesn’t have all your connections here. You know what’s going on more than she ever could. But she knows some things about this town that I couldn’t get from you, sweetheart; she’s got one source you don’t—she grew up here.”
Dolly nodded her understanding, but she didn’t say a word. That was up to me, she was making it clear.
“I’ve gone as far as I can, I think,” I said. “I can maybe get more stuff”—I didn’t bother telling Dolly where, or how—“but there’s no way to…I don’t know, connect the dots, maybe?”
“Why don’t we just make a list of what we do know, first? Then at least we’ll know what we don’t know, okay?”
It was my turn to nod. Dolly snatched one of those pads she’s always writing on, the kind where the paper is crosshatched, so it’s really a bunch of little boxes. That’s the same stuff I use to work out anything I’m trying to design. Luc always made his own designer’s paper. It wasn’t something he liked doing, but it was a necessity to be precise. A tool, so no different from keeping a knife honed.
But that paper—now I could just buy the same thing. And once Dolly saw me sketching on that pad, she had to have a whole mess of them for herself.
No sitting on my lap, playing secretary, like she does sometimes. I didn’t have to tell her this job could turn nasty, and turn me into something a lot worse.
“Okay,” she said, “this is for sure. We know there’s something wrong with this Benton guy.”
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