The Secret Life of Damian Spinelli

by Carolyn Hennesy

  She started gettin’ a little wild-eyed and her hands were grabbin’ at the edge of the table.

  “Hang on, Doc. Hang on. I know what you need,” I said. “Candy!? An order of onion rings with a side of ranch, pronto!”

  “You got it,” Candy called from behind the counter.

  “Easy now, okay?” I said. I reached across the table and she clutched at my hand like it was a life preserver. I wasn’t used to touchin’ anyone but Maxie in that strong-but-silent way, but this dame needed a little human contact.

  “I was with Emma in the park,” she said. Her jaws were clamped together and she was spittin’ out the words like she’d just gone twelve rounds and they were broken teeth. “And he walked out from behind a tree. He’s gotten gray. And he’s really skinny. I almost didn’t recognize him at first. And then I realized who it was. He told me his life became a complete wreck after I left him. He didn’t go back to France, couldn’t get a teaching job here, was arrested for lewd behavior, spent six months in jail, and ended up working behind the counter at Lottaburger outside of Albuquerque. Then he told me he’s never forgotten his promise: Now that I had a baby, he was going to destroy me.”

  “Why now? What’s the baby connection?” I ask.

  “He said he felt that, without a child, he could always win me back. But a child ties two people together . . . and if I wasn’t tied to him, he was going to ruin me.”

  “Makes sense. In bizarro-land,” I said. “But what can he do? He flips burgers in the Southwest.”

  “That’s just it! I was standing there and I realized this guy shouldn’t have any power over me. He was nothing . . . and a skinny nothing at that. So I laughed in his face and walked away. And then . . .”

  The onion rings arrived and Candy, God bless her, just set ’em down with another Nehi and scuttled away. A good waitress knows when a table wants to be left alone.

  “Slow down. Have a ring.”

  She ate in silence for a minute. Then she reached into her purse and pulled out a piece of paper.

  “A week ago I got this,” she said, handin’ the paper to me.

  It was official lookin’, like my draft papers or a warrant. Had a seal and everything. It said that after a review of her med school transcripts, it had been determined that she had actually failed her ECG interpretation class. Therefore, her residency was now null and void, and steps were being taken to revoke her medical license.

  “Two more arrived a few days ago,” she said, her mascara runnin’ down off her chin. “One said that I was no longer board certified and the other said that all my grades are being reviewed, beginning with kindergarten! I have one week and unless I can show proof that I actually got an A in that one stupid class, I won’t be able to . . . to . . . be a doctor . . .”

  “Wait a minute,” I said, startin’ to get all tingly. “You mean to tell me that all you need is proof on a piece of paper?”

  “It has to be a printed school transcript. And now everything is computerized. Somehow, Phinneas hacked in and changed my grade. What do I do?”

  I smiled . . . real big. And I thought this job was gonna be hard.

  “Sister, you are talkin’ to the master hacker, the wizard of the Web, and the bigshot of binary code. I am the king of cryptology and the ace of apps. In fact, I’m the one who put the ‘i’ in iMac. I am the scourge of the SEC, the interloper of the IRS, and the Pentagon’s perennial pain-in-the-ass. My physical mastery of the martial arts is nothing compared to my cyber kung fu, and I have never met a firewall I didn’t love. I’m on it. Gimme a day and a half at most. I’ll call you when I have news.”

  I left her sittin’ over a plate of cold onions. And the bill. But she was smilin’. When I leave ’em, they always are.

  I went back to Maxie’s and gave her a little tickle. I left her a few hours later, gigglin’ in her dreams, and went to my place. By morning, I had cracked this wise guy’s code . . . or so I thought.

  The first few hours gave me exactly the kind of malarky I’d expected: generic passwords, common phrases, and such. It was pretty obvious; this maroon had taken a couple of night courses in computer programming . . . probably just to make Doc Scorpio’s life hell, and now he thought he was . . . well . . . me. But it’s the amateurs that usually write the uncrackable code . . . because they make a mistake. Only one, and they usually don’t know they’ve done it or what it is . . . and that’s the reason it can never be undone. It’s the little finger comin’ down on the wrong key . . . or the extra number . . . or it’s a wrong number that they think is the right one . . . or the cat walkin’ across the keyboard when nobody’s in the room. Well, this joker hit something he shouldn’t have and the possible combinations were endless.

  I did discover one thing, though. Somehow, Xavier had hacked into Robin’s files on a computer back in Monadnock . . . there were screens I shoulda been seeing that I wasn’t . . . things that told me her files had some serious network protection. This guy’s one stupid mistake was keepin’ the firewall up, and my only chance of breakin’ through was to get onto a computer at the school and hack into the network at the source.

  At six o’clock that night, Robin called.

  “I . . . I haven’t heard from you,” she said. “Is everything okay?”

  “It will be,” I said. “I just need to take a little trip, is all.”

  “What? Why? Where?”

  “Monadnock . . .’cause ol’ Phinny slipped up somewhere. It’s kinda technical, but the only place I can make it right is at the source. I’ll be in touch in a . . .”

  “I want to go with you.”

  “Not necessary, Doc. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  I got my shavin’ kit together and headed toward the car. Now, usually I stand behind the Ford Motor Company all the way . . . it’s like cherry pie and baseball . . . like we’re raisin’ the flag for America on Iwo Jima or somethin’. But lately I’d been havin’ trouble with the alternator, and tonight of all nights, the damned car wouldn’t start.

  “Robin,” I said, on the squawker back in the apartment, “I been thinkin’. Maybe it’s a good idea you do come with me, y’know? I’ll bring the car around in about ten minutes.”

  “Why don’t we take my car?” she said . . . like I was hopin’ she would, otherwise I was gonna have to hot-wire somethin’ in the neighborhood. “I know the campus and I don’t mind the drive at all. I would insist on paying for gas anyway. It would be easier, don’t you think?”

  “Well . . . okay, if you really wanna,” I said, leanin’ back in the Barcalounger.

  “I do,” she chirps . . . like a little bird. “I’ll be there in ten.”

  I could barely see Robin behind the wheel of her SUV.

  “Nice getaway car,” I said, climbin’ up the side and into the passenger seat.

  “We’re just trying it out for a few days,” she said. “We needed a bigger car now that we have Emma. That’s really why I wanted to drive; I want to see how she does on the open road. Mileage and stuff.”

  “Let’s open her up,” I said.

  Turns out that an SUV doesn’t exactly qualify for LeMans, and Robin and I had some time ahead of us on the road. After a bit, she came clean about just what it was like livin’ with a could-be-fatal disease and the strain that put on damn near everything she did. If I hadn’t known it before, I got to realizin’ that this was one swell dame. Smart, a looker, and enough courage to lead the Cavalry up San Juan Hill; I hoped Patrick knew just what he had.

  We pulled onto the Monadnock Community College campus just after 4:30 the next mornin’.

  “Where do we start?” she asked.

  “Administration,” I said. “That should be the biggest stash of computers, and all the sensitive dope, like grades, should go there. But we’re gonna ditch the ride.”

  She wheeled the SUV back behind the Student Union Dumpsters, and we hoofed it to the Harriet Tubman Administration building. My skeleton key got us in the side door without a hitch. Pla
ce was dark as Rickles’s sense of humor.

  “Do you want some light?”

  “Do you wanna flash a big sign for the coppers sayin’ ‘We’re breakin’ in . . . bring the Black Mariah!’?”

  “Oh, right. Sorry. What should I do?” Robin asked.

  “Keep quiet and look pretty.”

  “All right.”

  I disabled the security systems and started casin’ the cubicles for a decent place to work. Robin and I both saw the green glow at the same time.

  “What’s that?” she whispers.

  “Stay here, Doc.”

  I made my way toward the center of the room. The cubicles were like a maze, and I started feeling like I was one of those lab rats lookin’ for a piece of cheese. I turned a corner and there it was: a computer screen lit up with two words in big, green letters.

  WELCOME JACKAL

  I started smellin’ cheddar.

  That’s when the lights went out.

  When I came to . . .

  “Hold it,” I said. “Do you mean to tell me that somebody got the drop on you?”

  “To use the strictest parlance of the moment and atmosphere, I do, Sassy Solicitor.”

  “I don’t know why, but I find that shocking.”

  Spinelli grinned a funny, sideways grin and, for just a moment, I understood utterly why Maxie loved him.

  When I came to, I was tied to a chair like roadkill on a bumper. Robin was trussed up in a chair next to me, except she had a gag around her cake-hole. Right in front of us, leanin’ real casual like against the wall of the cubicle, was a skinny mook with long gray hair. He had something in his hand, but I couldn’t make it out.

  “Jackal, I presume?” he said. “I am Phinneas Xavier, but then you already know that.”

  This chump was channelin’ Sydney Greenstreet. And I never liked Sydney.

  “Such a pleasure to meet you,” he went on. “I assumed my little bird would go to you for help. And naturally you would come here to undo all my hard work. Right into my trap. I just didn’t expect to see my darling Robin again so soon. I thought I would simply kill you and continue to have the pleasure of seeing her fall from grace into poverty and despair for at least another few weeks.”

  “Sorry to bust up your plans, Cugat,” I said.

  Next thing I know, he sticks me real quick with that thing he’s holdin’ and I gotta ’lectric current runnin’ through me that had to measure over two hundred volts if it measured one. I heard Robin screamin’ and then it all stopped. I damn near took a tumble to the floor, almost takin’ the chair with me. The rat had a cattle prod. He laughed and hit me again. I jerked around like a freshwater trout in a bucket.

  “Au contraire, mon ami,” he said. “You have sped them up quite nicely. Now I can kill you and plant the entire thing on the fair physician here, accelerating her demise most wonderfully.”

  “You always talk like you get your words from a florist?” I said. That bought me another two hundred volts.

  “ ’Op ihhh!” Robin tried to scream through the gag.

  “Don’t worry about me, Doc. I’m okay. It’s Cugat you gotta feel sorry for.”

  Another shock.

  “It’s Xavier!”

  At that moment, I knew Cugat had seen every action flick to come outta Tinsel Town. He’d tied these ropes himself, probably thinkin’ he knew what he was doin’. Lucky for me, I’d seen those movies too. And my hands started twistin’ the sappy knot behind my back. Just as I suspected, the ropes started to move . . . just a little . . . but it was enough.

  “Tell me something, funny man,” I said, movin’ my hands real slow. “How’d a palooka like you go from slingin’ sliders in A-bee-que-que to knowin’ how to turn on a computer?”

  “I left the Southwest years ago. I have been takin’ night classes in computer programming.”

  “I thought so,” I said.

  “At MIT.”

  “Okaaaay,” I said. “I gotta admit, I didn’t see that comin’.”

  “I knew the best way to destroy my little scorpion was to go after the thing she loved the most: her damned career! So I have been planning this for some time. Naturally, all anyone talked about at MIT was you and your particular genius for . . . everything. It became so annoying that I developed a singular hatred for you. I discovered I was not alone in this; we formed a club. When I realized that you were acquainted with my darling, it was an easy matter to devise a plan to destroy her and you.”

  “With a cattle prod?” I said. “The both of us? And then you’re gonna pin it on her? So she commits suicide, but first she kills me? And we’re both tied up . . . which will leave marks on the skin, case you didn’t know. Perhaps you ain’t thought this through like you shoulda.”

  “The cattle prod is simply to disable you until I have time to make my getaway.”

  “Headin’ back to the Blue Parrot?”

  “What?”

  “Nothin’,” I said. The thing I loved most about evil-doin’ mooks is that they loved to hear themselves talk. Tellin’ you all about their plans, which, o’course, gives you time to figure out how to beat ’em at their own game. “Go on. I’m real interested.”

  I got my hands free, but kept ’em behind my back.

  “Once I’m safely away,” he said, pullin’ a little box the size of a pack of ciggies out of his Members Only jacket, “I will press this little red button right here. And . . .”

  He stepped away from the wall. Right behind him, sittin’ pretty as a picture, was an alarm clock with ten sticks of dynamite taped to it.

  “You went to MIT and that’s the best you could do?”

  “I prefer old-fashioned things,” he said, then he bent real close to Robin. “That’s why I love you so much, my little scorpion. Nice old-fashioned girl with old-fashioned values. Which is why I know now that you’ll never leave your husband and your baby. So sorry it had to end this way.”

  “One bomb isn’t going to cover up what you’ve done.”

  “No,” he said. “But ten will. I have them strategically placed all over the building. This one goes off, which will trigger the rest. The ensuing conflagration will destroy any evidence that I was here. And, if anything happens to me and I am unable to press this button, although that’s highly unlikely, this bomb is on a timer. It’s foolproof. Now it will simply look like she murdered you when you couldn’t help her, and then decided life was no longer worth living. And now, I think one more shock ought to knock you out until the big kaboom.”

  “That’s right, Cugat,” I said. “That’s all it’s gonna take.”

  He made his move, but I sucker-punched him in the jaw with my right as I grabbed the cattle prod with my left. Xavier fell back, but not out of reach, and I zapped him, but good. Now, all that juice was flowin’ right back into laughin’ boy. He shook like someone fresh off the Green Mile. Smoke started comin’ outta his ears. Finally, when I sensed he was nearly done, I let him go. He fell back like a rotted oak. I finished untyin’ myself, then Robin. Then . . . I took a look at the bomb.

  “Can I help?” Robin said, a little shake in her voice.

  “You can clam up, doll,” I said. “And if you do say anything . . . you might wanna make it a prayer.”

  I took the trigger device off of Xavier. That just left the clock and the detonator.

  “You’ve got less than a minute,” Robin whispered.

  “No foolin’ Doc?” I said. “Really? All that, huh?”

  “Sorry.”

  The whole works was so crude it was almost brilliant; I hadn’t seen anything like it since my fourth-grade field trip to that big museum in D.C. . . . lots of antiques there, too, walkin’ around and behind glass. This contraption has two wires, one red and one blue. I had to cut one, and fast.

  Thirty seconds.

  I flipped open my Swiss Army knife and went for the red wire. Then I thought about Cugat . . . what he assumed I would cut if ever given the chance. But maybe he knew that I would know. And if I
knew that he knew . . .

  Seven seconds . . . six . . . five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . .

  I cut the blue wire.

  Silence.

  Until Robin threw her arms around me and damn near burst my eardrum with a whoop.

  Then I made a phone call.

  The cops took their own sweet time in gettin’ to us, but once they were there, they were pretty interested in what we had to say. Phinny was still out, but by the time the dean of students at Monadnock arrived, he was comin’ around. He really woke up when the paramedics tried to pry his melted Timex offa his wrist. He confessed to everything and the dean promised Robin that, come twelve o’clock high the next day, the lady doc would be in the clear: license safe, board certified, and no one would be lookin’ into any kindergarten shenanigans.

  Starbucks was just openin’ up as we hit the road back to Port Charlie. She drove, so I bought.

  “How’d you know which wire to cut?” she asked.

  “C’mon,” I said, sippin’ my joe. “That’s like askin’ Houdini how many minutes he gave the crowd before he stuck his head outta the milk can. Or like askin’ Da Vinci how he knew the Mona Lisa was done. Or how you and Patrick know when Emma’s really gone down for the night and you two can finally get some shut-eye. You just know, y’know?”

  She smiled.

  “Yeah . . . I know,” she said.

  “I know you know.”

  “I know.”

  (pause)

  (pause)

  (pause)

  “I know.”

  (Sometimes . . . nobody needs to know that you didn’t really know. That, for that one moment, you were fumblin’ in the dark just like a regular Pete, and you only walked away because God was on your side. That much, and only that much, you knew . . . y’know?)

  Chapter 10

  Damian Spinelli

  and the Case of the Dame Who Knew Too Much