Dead and Gone (30 page)

And when it was all done, he could predict white’s next move as easy as black’s. But all he did was watch; he never played.

The people who followed him weren’t his partners. I mean, maybe they were, financially or something. But they were all looking for answers. And they believed that if they learned Lune’s patterning methods they could find what they needed.

It wasn’t that Lune could deconstruct assassinations of major public figures, tell you who did them, and why. Anyone can have a theory. But Lune told his people that the murders were going down
before
they happened. He could explain why Albert DeSalvo
wasn’t
the Boston Strangler. And why Xerox was going to be a dominator when it was still a two-dollar stock.

I never asked Lune what had happened in all the years we hadn’t been in touch. I didn’t
have
to ask him if he ever found his parents—he greeted me by telling me he was still looking. Getting closer all the time. But I’d been right about one thing: whatever problems Lune still had, money wasn’t one of them.

He didn’t ask me what I’d been up to. Never even mentioned Wesley’s name. I’d come all the way to that waterfront warehouse because I was looking for a roll of 8mm film. And the man who had it.

Lune treated it like a training exercise. He brought his whole crew in there. Told me to tell them everything I knew. Then he kind of vaguely pointed at the others, and they started to ask me questions. In a few minutes, I realized I knew a lot more than I thought I had. They were like a pack of starved rats, rooting through concrete to get to grain stored on the other side of the wall. Grain they
knew
was there. They sliced and diced my narrative, culling “authenticated” facts from the rest of what I told them. And then they started on “patterning,” using index cards and pushpins on a whole wall covered in cork.

When that was done, they all split. “Fieldwork,” Lune explained. I guess some of it was done on the phone, but I know some of them took off, too. And didn’t come back for a few days.

It took almost two weeks. When Lune assembled them all again, they told me there was a “high-eighties probability” that the man I was looking for would be in a rooming house in Youngstown, Ohio. Lune told me I could move the probability into the high nineties if I wanted one of his crew to make a little trip … carrying the photo I’d brought with me.

Youngstown is maybe an hour and a half, two hours from Cleveland. I told Lune I’d go look for myself. If it didn’t work out, I’d come back.

Lune told me his operation was mobile: they could be gone tomorrow. But he gave me a bunch of ways to get in touch.

The man with the film was right where they said he’d be. And he never saw me coming.

N
ow it was a lifetime later. And there was Lune. The beautiful boy had turned into a man so handsome he looked unreal. Me, I’d gone in the other direction.

“It’s me,” I greeted him.

“I know,” he answered. “What’s wrong?”

I
was in the middle of talking with Lune, heads close together like when we were kids in the crazy house. The Latina stalked into the room. She had a large photograph in her hand—color, so sharply etched it looked like it was composed of a zillion tiny crystals. Me. Holding my institutional number across my chest as the prison photographer logged me in the last time.

“This is the mug shot, hyper-enhanced, of the man you call Burke,” she told Lune, as if I wasn’t in the room. “It is absolutely authenticated. And he is recorded as ‘Deceased/Homicide/Perp Unknown’ on both local and FBI databanks.”

“This is Burke,” Lune said to her, gently.

“That is not how we have been trained,” the Latina fired back, hands on her hips.

Lune made a sound like a soft sigh. Then he nodded at the Latina. She turned and walked away, swinging her hips in triumph.

Lune gave me a “What can you do?” gesture. His matineeidol looks may have mesmerized women, but didn’t change them.

The Latina came back with some sort of scanner. Big surprise—I already had my right hand extended, ready to be printed.

“You don’t need to roll the prints,” she told me, tartly. “Just rest your hand there. And hold it
still.”

I went back to explaining what I needed from Lune. Maybe ten minutes later, the Latina walked in again.

“It’s him,” is all she said. Then she spun on her heel and walked out.

T
hat night, they showed me where Gem and I could sleep. It wasn’t as fancy as the hotel, more like a studio apartment, but so clean it looked like we were the first occupants, ever.

Heidi told us that they all ate together but, seeing as we were guests, it would be better if they just brought the evening meal in to us. She looked apologetic while she explained, but I told her I understood. I’d known Lune a real long time, and it made perfect sense to me. But I did ask her if we could have a triple portion.

“Are you very hungry?” she asked, a concerned tone in her voice.

I just nodded my head in Gem’s direction. Her blush was a sweet-pretty thing to see.

L
ong, slow days after that. Every time I gave any of the people running around the place a piece of information, they had to do their check and cross-check routine before they could add it to the “pay-out matrix,” whatever that was.

There wasn’t much point spending the waiting time catching up on things with Lune. Nothing had changed for him. He was still working the patterns. And making a living at it while he kept looking for his real parents.

As for me, Lune seemed to know everything I’d been doing since we parted that last time in Cleveland. It was spooky. Not that I had any secrets from him—except for the one his insane mind would never acknowledge that we shared—but …

Lune filled the time by explaining some of the patterns he’d been tracking. My old partner wasn’t interested in cults, conspiracies, or politics. He didn’t care whether Bigfoot was real or Nessie was in the Loch. He didn’t believe the truth was out there … not in one single place. Patterning was his religion, and he’d stayed true to it all these years, gathering disciples as he moved closer to the Answer.

I told him that Gem had reached out to a bunch of websites, trying to send a message. That pushed one of his switches:

“The Internet? You think there’s no pattern
there?
That’s what
they
think—they’re so sure it’s all unregulated anarchy. But every single keystroke is recorded, somewhere. Their sex lives, their financial records, their circle of contacts. It’s the ultimate wiretap.”

“Sure, but there must be gazillions of data-bits out there. Who could possibly go through it all and—?”

“You construct a screening device,” Lune said, patiently. “It only looks for certain words, or phrases, or even numbers. Then you tighten the mesh with combinations, until only what you want to track comes through. It’s not so difficult. All it takes is resources.”

“So the government—?”

“There is no ‘government,’ Burke. There are only institutions. Agencies. The permanent ones.”

Lune tapped a few keys, pointed an immaculate fingernail at his computer screen. “You know what that is?” he asked me, as what looked like a string of auction bids popped into focus.

“A bunch of dope dealers talking in code?”

“No. It’s the IRS.”

“Huh? I don’t get it.”

“It’s a
pattern,”
he said, spinning on his chair to face me. “You know all this talk about America’s ‘underground cash economy’?”

“It’s not just talk.”

“Exactly!
It’s authenticated fact. And that’s where the
real
money is. Not in cocaine cartels or topless clubs; it’s in flea markets, garage sales, all the ‘hobbyist’ stuff that’s being trafficked back and forth every second.”

“Flea markets? How much could—?”

“You have to watch the patterns,” he said, reciting his mantra. He turned back to the screen, beckoning me to look over his shoulder. “Look! Here’s one, right there on the screen. He’s selling a signed copy of a first-edition book by … Martha Grimes. See it?”

“Sure. The highest bidder is … forty-five bucks so far, right?”

“Right. And what
this
guy—I mean the seller, okay?—what
he
did was, he bought maybe twenty copies of that book when it was remaindered. You know, you’ve seen the tables where they sell them in bookstores, haven’t you?”

“Yeah,” I said, knowing that everybody pays, and that the currency I needed to pay Lune’s tolls was patience.

“First, you have to understand that
all
books get remaindered. It doesn’t matter if they sell a million copies, there’s
always
some left over. Well, the publisher isn’t going to throw them away, so they sell them, in bulk, very cheaply. A book you spent twenty-five dollars on when it was new, a couple of years later, you’ll see it for a dollar ninety-eight.”

“Yeah …?”

“Now the guy has all these books, so he waits until this Martha Grimes is doing a book-signing someplace. Then he ambushes her, gets her to sign as many copies as he can get away with. Some writers will just do it, some will limit the number of copies. But this … merchant, his story is always what a huge fan he is and how he’s going to give the books away to all his friends as Christmas gifts or for their birthdays or something. See?”

“I … guess so. But …”

“Look at the
pattern
, Burke. Come on. This guy buys a book for, say, less than two dollars. He gets it signed. Then he sells it for forty-five dollars on this Internet auction site. Do you think, for one single solitary
second
, that he declares that profit as income?”

“Of course not.”

“Good. Now multiply by … oh, ten million transactions per year.”

“Are you serious?”

Not a brilliant question to ask Lune. “Come closer,” he said, pulling back from the screen so I could do it. “Take a look as I scroll through for you. See how every single seller and every single buyer has to provide information just to participate? Their e-mail, a credit card, a street address … a
ton
of authentic data. What you see here is the clearest, cleanest audit trail that any IRS agent could ever dream of.”

“Damn!”

“Sure. All they have to do is
watch
. That is, if they didn’t set up the site themselves—there’s so many of them, now.”

“What a sting that would be. Jesus.”

“Net people aren’t the only ones. But they’re certainly the easiest. You know those scams where they tell you you’ve just ‘won’ something? If you use the mail, the return will be very low. But on the Net … My goodness, Burke, even the best
browsers
are free. You can get a free e-mail address from too many places to count. And never mind all those free downloads! Do you think those outfits that give away all this ‘free’ Net stuff aren’t turning around and
selling
your address to all kinds of people compiling their own sucker lists?”

“Something for nothing, huh?”

“Some ‘nothing.’ Every time you use that ‘free’ stuff, you’re making a perfect record. Of yourself. Every place you go, every site you check out, everything you buy on-line. Think about it.”

I
did
think about it. How Lune had tapped into that bizarre borderland where the Möbius strip crosses over itself. The one sure nexus between the hyper-right and the ultra-left: fear of government intrusion into their lives. That strange place where people who want to smoke marijuana in peace make common cause with the people who want to carry concealed automatic weapons. They share one great, unifying fear. It’s called Registration.

“Christ! I’m glad I don’t have one,” I told him.

“One what?”

“Computer.”

“You don’t have a computer?”

“Nope.”

Those big liquid-topaz eyes that had charmed hookers a million years ago filled with pity. I could read his thoughts like they were printed on his forehead: “And people think
I’m
crazy!”

I
n bed that night, Gem reached for me. It was no good. I kept seeing that Indian, scratching his dog behind its ears, talking to it in a language only the two of them understood. He’d want his partner to die in battle, too. I knew that. But I didn’t have centuries of tribal tradition to comfort me. I knew Pansy wasn’t in some fucking Happy Hunting Ground.

“You are so big,” Gem whispered from between my legs.

“You are one sweet bitch.” I chuckled.

She came up on her elbows. “Are you laughing at me?”

“No, little girl. I was being … grateful to you, I guess. Some women, all they live for is to chop a man’s
cojones
. If not off, at least down to size. You, all you can think about is building me up.”

“So you are saying I am lying?” she asked, crawling closer to my face.

“Not lying, honey. Let’s say … exaggerating. And it’s very—”

She interrupted me with a slap to the right side of my face. My blind side. I never saw it coming—maybe because it was the last damn thing I expected. It wasn’t a hard slap, but it got my attention. Her eyes were flaming. “I do not lie!” she whispered, harsh in the darkness. “You are not fully … engorged, are you?”

“Hell, no. Every time that window—”

“Yes! But even
partially
, you are … It is obvious that when you … when you are completely yourself, you would be huge.”

“Gem …”

“But you think that will never be again, don’t you?”

I took a deep breath. Let it out. Tried to think about it. Couldn’t. “Yeah,” is all I said.

“So what?” she countered.

“Huh?”

“It would not matter.”

“But if—”

“You are a fool, Burke. Give me your hand.”

I did it, not even trying to guess this woman anymore. She guided it between her legs.

“You see?” she said. “I am … embarrassed at how wet you make me. This never happened to me before. Look,” she said softly, “even here …,” pulling my hand down. The insides of her thighs were slick with estro-juice.