Evil Genius

by Rice, Patricia

  I didn’t want to go back to the house until I had something more concrete than a piece of paper, but computers are my right hand. I couldn’t work without one.

  I returned to Kinko’s. The public ones were full. Totally focused on my goal, aware my time was running out, I simply walked behind the counter, appropriated an unmanned PC, called up the Internet, and looked up Rose’s campaign headquarters in the white pages. Then I called up a map of the location and had it printing before anyone thought to question me. I am so much part of a computer that I looked as if I belonged there, I suppose.

  Ripping the map from the printer, I apologized, offered to pay them for the use, and walked out without anyone calling the cops.

  I was developing a healthy respect for the Metro. Although I’d learned how to drive in deserts and jungles, I’d never owned a car and had never wasted time with a driver’s license. The Metro relieved me of the hassle of car ownership and traffic, and I could be an environmental paragon in EG’s eyes.

  Rose’s campaign headquarters were a bit of a disappointment though. Plastered with red, white, and blue posters, stickers, and buttons, staffed by volunteers, it only needed a Sousa band to be a political version of Chuck E Cheese’s rah-rah carnival. Some of the geeks behind the desks didn’t even need funky costumes to complete the image.

  My eyes widened as I realized I fit right in. I had some vague notion that political campaigns operated on the bronzed and beautiful, but those were the people in the front lines. Back here on Ground Zero were the outcasts, the bitter, and the idealists who earnestly thought that seeing their candidate nominated was of earth-shaking relevance. Geeks, like me.

  I could have told them that if Senator Rose disappeared tomorrow, there were a dozen more wealthy snake-oil salesmen to take his place, but I resisted. I merely watched for one of the geeks to leave his desk to get coffee. Then I appropriated his PC. Since the computer was already on, I didn’t need a password to call up Windows Explorer—the campaign was obviously using old computers with ancient versions of Windows, but I know my way around them all.

  Within minutes I was perusing Rose’s complicated list of campaign contributors. I didn’t fool myself into believing it contained all of them, but it would contain enough hard money to cover up the soft, and Edu-Pub was legitimately allowed to contribute a certain dollar amount. I e-mailed the list to myself and was busily accumulating names and addresses to be used immediately when the geek returned to his desk.

  “Hey, what are you doing?” he cried with amazing originality. “Who are you?”

  Looking up, I saw him turn to shout to a bulky guy who would make three of me. Desperation called up a Magda-ism. “Why hello there, big boy, how did I miss you when I came in?” I purred deep in my throat, twirling a loose strand of hair and rising to step between him and the thousand-pound gorilla.

  To give the guy credit, he didn’t look old enough to legally drink alcohol, and his nondescript dishwater-blond hair was already receding. He blinked at me from behind a pair of lenses that would have done an old-fashioned Coke bottle proud. And I was channeling Magda, the vamp. He didn’t stand a chance. It didn’t matter if I was short and wore braids. I was female. I had always thought it unfair to take advantage of that fact, but experience will tell, and Magda was my teacher.

  His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as I stepped further away from his desk. I wished I was wearing shorts instead of the ankle-length jumper, but it didn’t seem to matter that I could wiggle only a bare ankle in funky sandals. He stopped shouting.

  “Paul will be delighted to hear he has such diligent workers,” I cooed. “It’s people like you who make his efforts worthwhile. Thank you.” Still channeling Magda for all I was worth, I patted his cheek and sashayed past.

  I could never have pulled this off with anyone possessing a modicum of self-confidence, but I knew geekdom well. I’d lived there for many, many years. I was older now, with years of therapy behind me.

  I strode out as if I were five-ten and wearing French heels.

  No gorilla came roaring after me.

  Chapter Twelve

  Ana accomplishes her task, blows up a building, and meets an Oracle.

  My Magda persona evaporated, and I morphed back to a nonentity by the time I turned the corner at the Metro station. Since it was nearing noon, the crowd was hustling. People would walk right over me if I didn’t slide between them in my haste.

  Every single, solitary officer and board member of Edu-Pub had contributed to Rose’s campaign. The file had neatly marked their addresses and even the address of the contribution from Edu-Pub. All perfectly above board and prepared for public examination. I couldn’t imagine Graham investigating Edu-Pub because of a politician. Of course, I couldn’t imagine a high-ranking politician having anything to do with a company that harbored a fanatic like Pao, so obviously my imagination lacked creativity.

  According to Google, the address on the donations for Edu-Pub’s headquarters was in a sleazy warehouse district—not precisely the classy company one would expect to support senators. Or that would have senators on their board.

  I had no idea what I was doing or how I would do it, but I hopped the first train heading southeast while I pondered. As blind as I might be about politics, even I knew the sky was the limit when it came to cash and campaign funds. I had assumed the large amounts of unexplained cash in Edu-Pub’s accounting statements were illegal contributions to Pao’s cause, but what if Pao wasn’t the only one laundering cash?

  The opportunities for blackmail and fraud were rife. And if Mindy Carstairs had been investigating textbook companies, she might have been in a position to know all about it. Tex was dead meat if the cops found out. If we really owned stock in the place as Johnson claimed, I wanted it sold immediately.

  I got off at the Metro stop closest to the Edu-Pub warehouse and looked around warily. With my white skin, I’d stick out like jam on rye. I’d been in far worse parts of the world than the slums of D.C. , but American thieves are bigger and have more powerful weapons. I could eliminate a knife fairly easily, but kickboxing didn’t work on AK-47s. I wasn’t channeling Magda anymore. I was channeling an idiot.

  But I couldn’t go back to the house empty-handed. I wanted visible proof that I had Pao nailed so I could ask for another assignment and an extension of our stay. We could have Brashton within a week. Once we had our money, anything was possible. The dream of owning Grandfather’s mansion shimmered like a beacon of temptation—or like Circe on a pile of rocks.

  I needed camouflage. I located a Goodwill on the corner and my eyes lit up. Just call me an urban cockroach. If I can find my way around the dusty alleys of Marrakesh, I can survive in the modern streets of D.C. It just takes a modicum of common sense.

  I couldn’t change the color of my skin, but I could look less like a victim. If I were as tall as my sister Patra, I’d head for a police or military supply store. But no one would believe a five-two cop. I’m not proud. I’d shopped Goodwill before. If this one was similar to the others, they’d have what I needed.

  I lucked out. I found a khaki long-sleeved shirt with Dave on the pocket name tag. It was too big, naturally, but the bulk added to my figure. For ten bucks I bought the shirt, a cap to pull over my eyes, khaki pants, and a belt to hold the mess together, plus cool metal-toed shoes. I tucked my trusty sandals and jumper into my shoulder bag, slung it around me like a backpack, and covered my braid with the cap. I looked dumb, but not out of place where I was going.

  Walking the blocks to the derelict industrial center where Edu-Pub was headquartered, I saw no one suspicious on the steamy street, and no one gave me a second glance.

  It was rather liberating retreating to invisibility. I was free to roam where I pleased. This couldn’t be said of many of the other countries where I’d lived growing up. If the good ol’ US of A had problems, I wasn’t complaining. I knew the alternative.

  I hurried down cracked and filthy sidewalks with my head down
, my billed cap pulled over my eyes. I knew the city dweller defense mechanisms well. Brisk, purposeful tread, and I was outta there. I succeeded in reaching my destination without interference.

  Instead of going in the front, I circled behind the warehouses to check out the rear. I needed some way of circumventing any clerk at the front desk.

  I didn’t know how a crap joint like this could be the corporate headquarters of anything except Flyspecks Anonymous, but I’d seen a million dollars of hashish thrown in a broken basket in the back of a Bedouin tent before. Poverty is the best disguise for wealth.

  The industrial center didn’t even have a Dumpster. I encountered nothing more dangerous than broken glass, cracked blacktop with weeds growing through it, discarded rags that might once have been clothing, and accumulated trash. I counted doors until I guessed the peeling orange one belonged to Edu-Pub. There weren’t any delivery hours posted.

  I still had no idea what I would say: Hi, I’ve come to pick up my textbook order?

  Spurred by my earlier success of rifling computers, I had some foggy notion of locating more open computer files if I could get inside. Was stealing information from unlocked computers illegal? I didn’t have a clue and didn’t want to press my burgeoning integrity with questions I wasn’t prepared to answer.

  I know next to nothing about security systems, although that was a topic I was hot to research. I studied the door and walls and saw nothing resembling wires or cameras. Maybe if I tried to open the door, an alarm would sound, causing much confusion, and I could run around front and slip in there unnoticed?

  Well, nothing ventured, nothing gained. Using a Kleenex from my pocket, I reached for the dented aluminum knob.

  The door swung open soundlessly.

  Maybe I should have checked the front. Maybe the place was empty. Stupid, Ana, stupid.

  Figuring this was my first attempt at real-world spying, and that I was entitled to be dumb, I stepped inside the dark interior. The air-conditioning didn’t appear to be working, so the atmosphere inside was thick and hot, but not as bad as it would be later in the day. This back room was undoubtedly an office.

  The light from the open door was sufficient to reveal that the filing cabinets had been ransacked. Papers from the desk drifted across the floor with a meager draft from an inner door leading into the warehouse. The Edu-Pub staff had absconded, leaving everything behind. Why?

  The question alone should have terrified me into backing out. Instead, the empty office gave me confidence that I could work undisturbed. All I needed was an address. And maybe a peek at their textbooks, for the sake of curiosity.

  I rifled through the filing cabinet first. Drawers of orders from schools across the country. Invoices of textbooks shipped. Correspondence that would put a dead man to sleep. If there had been anything in here to link Edu-Pub with Pao and the Cambodian websites, they had taken it. I slipped an order list of current publications into my bag.

  My check for textbooks mailed to this address had yet to clear the bank. Who had the deposits?

  I hadn’t bothered with the computer first because I figured if they’d left it behind, it was worthless. To my utter amazement, I accessed Windows without a password. Who in hell abandoned operating computer equipment? That was damned eerie, and if I stopped to think about it, I’d scare myself.

  Instead, I plugged in my thumb drive. I had a random password program in it, but someone didn’t much care if the computer was accessed. It must have no essential information.

  But what I found tickled me into grinning hugely. Within seconds, I had discovered the cable system was still on-line, and I’d forwarded the list of contract employees to my own e-mail address and stored a few stray items that might be useful. Since no one had arrived to stop me, I figured could explore some more.

  I followed the flow of air through a cheap wooden door into the warehouse. Dusky light filtered through the filth of the high windows. Metal shelves lined with neat stacks of textbooks filled the enormous space. To my inexperienced eyes, it looked like a perfectly legitimate publishing company warehouse.

  I was walking up and down the aisles, picking up textbooks to check copyright pages, wondering how one got a job writing this gibberish, when I heard a noise in the front office—the area I hadn’t checked. I froze.

  At the approach of murmured male voices, I moved as quietly as I could toward the shoddy door I’d entered through—the only one I’d seen in the warehouse. I’d been living in my insular world too long. I knew better than to enter a building without planning an escape route.

  I had mental pictures of me stepping into the back office just as men in black entered through the swinging doors from the front and Pao sauntered in the back.

  I’d almost reached the warehouse door when my toe caught in the hem of my overlong khaki uniform. I stumbled, grabbed a shelf, and a stack of books tilted and slid to the concrete floor before I could catch them.

  A voice shouted.

  Oh, shit. I gave up silence in favor of speed. Still holding one of the textbooks I’d grabbed, I sprinted out of the warehouse, aiming for the open door to the alley.

  Bursting past the filing cabinets, I came eyeball to eyeball with a brown teenager no taller than me. He shouted something incomprehensible to his companion in the front room and grabbed my arm.

  I’m not much on being manhandled, or kidhandled. And the pungent smell of gasoline shot off my internal alarms. Not stopping to contemplate whether the kid was a Cambodian relative of Pao’s or just the usual run-of-the-mill gang arsonist, I acted on automatic. I whacked his wrist with a swift downchop of the book in my hand and kicked his shins with my metal-toed shoe. I’d learned from kickboxing that the pain from a kick to the shins can cripple.

  He released me with a wail of agony. I skirted around him, leaped over the desk, and fled out the back door.

  I was half way down the block and running for home when I crashed full-length into a black suit stepping out of a doorway in front of me.

  High on adrenaline, I raised my knee so fast he had to spin me around before I emasculated him. And I didn’t even know the guy.

  “Crap,” he shouted, grabbing my waist from behind. “What the hell are you doing down here? ”

  That was all I heard before I jammed my elbow backward. I aimed for the solar plexus, hit abs of steel, and almost shattered my funny bone. I wasn’t laughing.

  Releasing my waist, the goon grabbed my braid, wrapped it in his fist, and held me far enough way to keep my deadly elbows out of his midsection. “I’m one of the good guys, dammit,” he said as I flailed with arms and legs.

  If I’d had a knife, I would have sliced off my braid to get away. As it was, I twisted in his grip, ignoring the pain of pulled hair to get in a good side kick to his kneecap and a karate chop at his jugular. He grabbed my arm before I connected.

  Grabbing an arm like that is strictly amateur stuff. Any professional would have thrown him half way across the street for a sorry-ass move like that. I’m a lightweight, but with the right leverage, even I could have humiliated him by flinging him over my shoulder and into tomorrow.

  The explosion half a block away was the only thing that saved him.

  The blast rocked the street, and we both dived for the shelter of a storefront doorway. Bricks, glass, and flying pieces of concrete whipped through the air in a tornado of dust and textbook pages. I heard shouts in the distance and hoped the stupid kids had escaped. Silly of me, but I didn’t want body parts raining down with the other debris.

  Now I knew why they’d left the computer and everything behind. They’d planned on destroying the evidence.

  ~

  “You can’t sit there with your head between your knees forever,” Nick said in a harsh whisper while black police shoes worked around me.

  “I can if it means they won’t question me because they’re afraid I’ll barf all over their shiny shoes,” I retaliated, but he was right.

  Black suit had disappea
red into the woodwork with the first sirens. And I’d immediately gone into adaptive mode. Just replaying that moment when the guy in a black suit had asked what was I doing there—as if he knew who I was—had practically stopped my heart.

  I’d frantically called Nick’s cell phone, then blended with the scenery until he arrived. Honest citizen that I was, I’d felt compelled to stay as a witness.

  “Is your sister feeling better yet?” a bluff police sergeant asked impatiently. “We really need to ask her a few questions.”

  “I’m better, thank you.” I held out my hand to Nick who hauled me up from the concrete block I’d been sitting on. I was totally freaked by the smoking remains further up the street, but I’d had time to give thanks that no one would be able to find my fingerprints inside. They’d be lucky to find an entire finger. The street was littered with textbook ashes.

  The book I’d stolen was now in my essential bag. I wasn’t good citizen enough to tell the cops that. I was too shaken to think clearly enough to explain it away.

  “We verified the address you gave us, Miss Devlin. You want to tell me what the hell someone who lives up your way was doing down here?” The sergeant was black and probably royally ticked to have to deal with an uptown white girl. I couldn’t blame him.

  Nicholas started to step protectively in front of me, but I squeezed his hand. I’d had time to think this out, and he hadn’t. “I’m a virtual assistant,” I told him, wishing I could channel Magda again but still too shaken for sexy. Besides, geekdom seemed the best tactic here. “I can provide credentials, if you like. I was working on a story for one of my clients on textbook companies.”

  The policeman towered a foot over me and was probably glaring down at my shiny braids with disbelief. I’d changed my disguise before the cops arrived so I didn’t look too insane, but I wasn’t certain my jumper over the khaki shirt was an improvement. The trousers had joined the textbook in my bag. I hoped I looked appropriately humble and scared.