“I’m not saying you can’t. I’m asking if you’re running away.”
“I’m not dumping her.”
“I’m not saying dump her.”
“You are.”
“I’m talking about keeping her safe, not your running away.”
“It’s a job.”
“I’m not talking about your job. I’m talking about you being afraid.”
“Afraid of what?” He felt cornered. Confused. Exposed. Desperate. He didn’t want to be an adult anymore. He didn’t want responsibilities, a job, people who depended on him.
“I’m right here,” Frieda said.
“I’ll take you guys wherever you want to go,” Tess said. “But I’m seeing this through.”
Henry squinted, struggling to make sense of the last two minutes.
“Do you want to go to Sarah’s?” he asked Frieda.
“No.”
His body relaxed a little, and he unclenched his jaw. He also realized just how sharp the window crank was in his back, as he pulled away from it.
“I want to stay with Tess,” Frieda said.
The stabbing pain returned.
“We need coffee,” Tess said, pointing at a little sandwich board, sitting in the middle of the sidewalk toward the end of the block.
“Sure,” Henry said, grateful for the reprieve. “But let’s find a different neighborhood.”
Several wordless blocks away, the affluent tourists of Gastown crowded the sidewalks. The trio wove between the slow-moving vacationers and settled on a table in the first café they found. Henry watched Frieda and Tess talking as he ordered.
He left the saucers at the counter, in order to manage all three mugs in a single trip. As he balanced his way to the table, he noticed a change in atmosphere.
“Tess has a plan,” Frieda said.
“Actually, Fred came up with it.”
“Do tell.” Henry’s words came out slowly.
“We don’t have to go to the police. We don’t even have to go after Keller.”
As he sipped, Henry gave an approving but dubious grunt.
“If the police caught him in the act, then it’s all over, right? So, all we need to do is lure him back to Richardson, with the police waiting for him.”
Tess continued with her pitch.
“I know, because Constable Tipton told me they are monitoring the Net-Tectives messages. We need to get him a message that we have what he’s looking for. Whatever that is. He shows up, the police show up, and bingo-bango.” She clapped her hands once in conclusion.
Henry looked at each of them over the rim of his coffee mug, his head unmoving. They were serious.
“No,” he said, setting down his mug.
“No? It’s perfect,” Frieda said.
“It’s not. One, I don’t like leading him back to the house. Two, how do we know the police are even going to see the message? Three, how do we even get the message to him? Four, Sergeant Khatri already thinks I’m some criminal vigilante. What kind of trouble are we going to be in when they see us baiting a trap?”
“Well, come up with a better idea,” Tess said. “I’m doing this.”
Henry could tell this was true. Patience didn’t appear to be in her vocabulary. If she played backgammon, her strategy would be aggressive, stretching out her pieces in fast, bold moves. It was exciting and fun to play this way sometimes, but it required luck to win. And this wasn’t a game.
“A trap?” he said.
Frieda leaned back in her chair and crossed her legs.
Where did she pick that up from?
“Tess’s certain they’re looking at the messages. We just create a new anonymous user that the police can’t trace to us, and we don’t even have to be there.”
“Shima’s there,” Henry said.
“I thought of that, and we keep him in a carrier in the car.”
Henry shook his head.
“No. It shouldn’t be at Richardson Street.” He tapped the table with the point of his index finger. “What if we ask him to meet at the pawnshop? Even then, the part that doesn’t work is the anonymous user message. Chances are the police are monitoring the messages between these two guys. Not every message on the board.”
“Then we get someone he knows on Net-Tectives to pass the message along,” Frieda said.
“Pass it along to who?” Tess asked. “To treasurehunter1971? Or to juliancaesar?”
“Now you’re assuming they’ll use these boards, so the police can intercept it,” Henry added.
“I’ve got it!” Frieda said, coffee waving over the back of her mug and onto the table as she sat forward. “We make Julian send Keller the message. Then the police have to come.”
“Sure,” Tess said. “But I think Henry makes a good point. We don’t know that Julian will pass the message on using Net-Tectives.”
“No. We make Julian send the message,” Frieda said, adding air quotes to the word “make”. “We hack in. It looks like Julian sent the message.”
Henry said nothing. He didn’t like where this was going.
“Cool, but I don’t know any hackers, Fred,” Tess said.
“Henry does.”
“You do?” Tess asked.
“No,” he said, quickly.
“He does.”
“I don’t.”
“You do.”
“I did. I don’t anymore.”
“Come on, Hen,” Frieda said. “Please.”
“Who are we talking about?” Tess asked.
Henry just looked at Frieda. Was this her revenge for his not telling her about Toronto?
Frieda answered for them both.
“Stewart.”
“Who’s Stewart?” Tess asked.
“Henry’s friend,” Frieda said.
“No.” Henry looked at Frieda. “Not anymore.”
“Please, Hen.” Frieda held balled fists against her chest.
Tess was clearly confused and yet still too polite to enquire.
“We were friends,” Henry said. “We met in university; we hung out; I got him a job at the bank. We had a falling out.”
Frieda filled in the gaps. “Stewart and Sarah are moving in together.”
Tess’s eyebrows shot up.
“He could do it, though, right, Hen? Stewart could send a message as Julian.”
He could. In university, Stewart and Alex had once taken over Henry’s email in order to ask out a series of female classmates in an uncharacteristically bold manner. In fact, it was how Henry and Sarah started dating.
Henry looked at Frieda. “No” took shape on his tongue. But before it could come out, he saw Tess in his peripheral. Her admonishment from the car still burned.
What am I running from, when I know I can make this right?
“Yeah. Stewart could do this.”
The hope in Tess’s face spoke volumes.
“So, we have a plan?” she asked.
“We have a plan,” Henry said.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Henry was taking a chance by dropping in without calling. Stewart’s apartment was in North Vancouver, a little over forty minutes from downtown, and there was no guarantee he’d even be home. Worse, there was no guarantee that Sarah would not also be there.
Henry’s stipulation was that he would go alone. Tess’s demand in return was that he should take her car. Although he refused at first, he was grateful for the little Tercel as he drove up the long, steep hills from the water that made up most of North Van.
The last time Henry was at Stewart’s was the Tuesday before he learned of the affair. Tuesdays were a longstanding poker night with the two of them, Alex, and a pair of Stewart’s neighbors. The cards hadn’t gone Henry’s way that night, and Stewart thanked everyone for their money as they left.
He punched Stewart’s apartment number into the intercom at the front door and waited. Behind him, the view of the street and the roofs of the apartment buildings, down the hill to the Fraser River, was
an awkward sort of familiar. He’d probably never be here again.
A scratchy, “Hello?” came from the slits in the metal plate next to the door.
“Stewart, it’s me, Henry. I need to talk.”
An understandable pause. Stewart would be no less weirded out than Henry by this situation.
“Why didn’t you call?”
“I couldn’t. Can we talk?”
“Okay. Talk.”
For fuck’s sake.
“Not here. Up there. Face to face.”
“Are you going to hurt me?”
A pause, this time Henry’s, but no less understandable.
“No.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
The door hummed and clicked. Henry pushed his way through and went up to the second floor.
Stewart stood, waiting in the hallway.
“You’re alone?” he asked.
Henry checked behind himself.
“Yes. Are you?”
“Yeah. What did you want to say?”
Stewart stood blocking the door, ajar, with his body. Henry didn’t want to speak in the hallway, but if Stewart was lying about being alone . . .
“Not in the hall, Stewart. Come on.”
Stewart backed into his apartment and held the door open for Henry.
Inside was chaos. Moving boxes lay open and half-filled. Clothes, books, and superhero collectibles were piled here and there. Much of the large furniture—the ugly floral print couch, and the cool green 1950s style table and chairs—was gone. The door to the bedroom was closed. Henry didn’t want to know, and he didn’t ask.
“Is there anywhere left to sit?”
They went out to the patio which still held a couple of wooden folding chairs, and from which they had a clear view of the Fraser River.
“It’s good to see you, Hen.”
Henry ignored this, diving in.
“I heard you got fired.”
Stewart nodded and swallowed. “They said that I helped you with your . . . thing. They think somehow I tried to cover your tracks.”
Henry laughed.
“Cover my tracks? The only thing that I did to cover my tracks was delete a few emails and dump my phone log. But that wasn’t for me. That was for the clients. I’m not ashamed of what I did.”
“Well, you weren’t really happy there, anyhow.”
“True.”
“I sort of think you might have been trying to get fired.”
“I was finding a way to sleep at night, you idiot.”
“Well, whatever. I was happy there.”
Henry bit his tongue so as not to share his personal thoughts about Stewart’s happiness.
“The point is, it’s not right that they’ve wrapped you in with my thing. You didn’t help.”
“I know, but they say I did.”
Henry found it hard not to feel sorry for Stewart. He was an uncomplicated guy, with limited ambition or drive. He had chosen computer science in university solely because finding a job would be easy.
“I want to help you get out from under this.”
“I don’t think I can get my job back now, Hen. They’ve already bumped Jeremy up to take my place.”
“No, the job is gone. But if you can prove that you weren’t involved, then you can at least clean things up, so that you’re not tainted goods when you apply for other jobs. Maybe you even get a wrongful dismissal suit out of it.”
The mention of legal action seemed to distract Stewart further. Maybe it was a reminder of whose side Alex had taken.
Henry continued. “Before I deleted everything from the server and my laptop, those emails were backed up. Those emails would show who I spoke to and when. They’ve got the data that the national office sent about which loans to collect. They’ve got information that I sent myself when I was reviewing specific loan histories. Essentially, they show each and every loan I chose, how I chose them, and who I contacted.”
“You backed it up?”
“Yup. And all of that would show how I did all that on my own.”
Stewart gave him a puzzled look. “And you’ve still got these?”
“I’m not saying that,” Henry said. “I don’t work for the bank anymore and, if I had access to the bank files or if I had sent them outside of the bank’s systems, that would be a serious violation of the Privacy Act.”
Stewart slumped in his chair. “Well, that does me no good, then. Does it?”
Henry stood.
“But when they found out, they went code blue. I was instantly out of the system, off the network. They flipped a switch and locked my phone. Security watched me pack, escorted me out, and if I’d had to pee, that guy would have followed me into the can.”
Nothing.
“Do you understand what I’m saying, Stewart? Instead of taking back my phone, the bank just locked it. But everything on that phone still exists. I don’t have access to what’s on it, myself, but it’s all still there.”
Stewart caught on, excited.
“Where?”
“You understand that I can’t give it to you?”
“Okay.”
“But if you were to find it, that would be something else.”
“Okay.”
“But you would need to be strategic. Give the information to your lawyer. You can’t just hand it over. You have to make sure that they can’t go back on the businesses, the borrowers.”
“Right.”
“Use it like a bargaining chip.”
“I heard you.”
Henry looked at the man he’d known for a decade and a half. He searched for the friend within the stranger before him. The uncomplicated joker that everybody liked. The relaxed guy who coasted through life with neither failure nor success in his wake. Back when they were inseparable. Before everything.
Henry had little choice. He walked into the apartment, speaking. “Could you tell Sarah that I think there is still a box of my stuff in the garage in the back? I think it’s everything that I took from my office when I got canned.”
Stewart looked back at him from the patio with eyes wide.
“Why are you helping me, Henry?”
Henry took in a deep breath. The apartment still had that musty, bachelor smell, even though this was no longer true.
“Because they’re accusing you of something you had no part in. You didn’t do this. And, I guess, I don’t want you associated with it.”
“Because it was wrong.”
“Because I know it was right.”
“Thank you, Henry.”
Stewart missed the point, but Henry moved on without missing a beat.
“Now, I need to ask you for a favor.”
Stewart paused with one foot in the apartment and foot on the deck.
“This is a trade, then?”
“No,” Henry said. “It’s not. You have everything. You don’t have to help me. You can say no, and that’s okay.”
“Are you in trouble?”
“No. Kind of. That’s not what this is about. I just need to send someone a message.” Henry pointed at Stewart’s computer and the three monitors still set up on his desk in the corner of the living room. Like any good geek, this would be the last thing he would take down in a move. It would also be the first thing reassembled in order to ensure the least amount of time possible disconnected from the rest of the world.
“And why do you need me?”
“I need this message to be sent as someone else.”
“If I do it will this help make up—”
“Don’t even go there,” Henry said.
Stewart was uncomplicated and naïve in the realm of relationships, but never stupid. He nodded his understanding and walked over to his desk. His gaming chair, with USB ports in the arms and speakers in the headrest, may have been the most expensive thing in the apartment.
“Is it hard to do?” Henry asked.
“Maybe,” Stewart said. Serious now. All business. �
�Where are we sending it from?”
“It’s a message forum on a site called Net-Tectives.”
Stewart’s body relaxed, and he flopped into his seat. His mood shifted up several notches. The screens lit up to greet him. Programs were open across the screens: email, internet, a paused game of chess, YouTube. Henry glimpsed Sarah’s hair in an image on one of the desktops, poking out above the windows. His stomach groaned.
“Is that all?” Stewart asked. “Jeez. I thought you wanted me to send a Gmail or something from a work account.” He began typing.
“It’s easy?”
“Probably. Who’s the sender?”
“Juliancaesar”
“So, we find out the email associated with this account, and it should be easy.”
After a couple of minutes, Stewart looked up. “The registered email account is hidden.”
“So, not easy?” Henry asked.
“It’s substantially harder. Maybe beyond my skills. With an email address, all I’ve got to do is check to see whether it’s been exposed in any hacks on other sites. Then, if it has, I just head over to the Darknet, find the database of stolen information from that hack, and get the password used there. Most people use the same passwords over and over for everything and never change them.”
Henry pulled out his phone and checked the Corbeau Silver & Gold website. Under Contact Us, he saw Julian’s name and an email address.
“Try [email protected],” he said.
Stewart entered the address into the database of hacked accounts.
“Nothing.”
Henry looked back at the website. There was one more address: [email protected]. He flipped back to the main page and read that the pawnshop was under new management.
“A name change explains the sign in the shop.”
“What?” Stewart asked, confused.
“Try [email protected],” Henry said, and he spelled it out.
Stewart typed. He turned and grinned.
“Three hits. This one was exposed in three different hacks. Three is the magic number.”
When Henry’s text arrived, Tess and Frieda were standing in front of the new releases of comics at Golden Age Collectibles in the shopping center of downtown. They’d been reading books from the shelves for an hour, under the increasingly darkening scowl of the shop staff. One of the employees had recognized Tess when they entered, and it was down to this and the fact that she’d signed a dozen copies of Time Doctors that they hadn’t already been tossed out.
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