Dr. Neruda's Cure for Evil (81 page)

I gathered the ball and said, as I passed it, “It was Stick’s idea for him to concentrate on Unicorn, right?” This was a pure guess. Gene hadn’t discussed the details of his work in our handful of phone conversations during the previous year.

“Yeah,” Andy laughed at a private thought, so my pass bounced off his hands. He quickly gathered it. “I guess I should ask you if what I say is going to be repeated. Nah,” he shot again, missed again. I didn’t move for the ball, nor did he. It bounced until reaching the grass, where it rested, a dimpled pumpkin in the sun. “Stick knows what I think. That’s why he likes me. I’m not scared of him.”

“Do you think it was fair to fire Gene?”

“I got his job, you know.”

“I know,” I said. “Do you think it was fair?”

“No.” Andy’s expressive face certainly belied the racist cliché of Chinese inscrutability: he frowned, looked down and his lips trembled. He trotted onto the grass, picked up the basketball, and dribbled awkwardly back to the same spot. He stared at the basket and let it fly. For the first time, the pumpkin went right through the hoop. “Gene taught me that,” he said, eyes still on the rim.

“How to shoot?”

“No,” he said and smiled at me. “To keep trying no matter what.”

I walked over to Andy. Although his brow was dry, his hair unmussed, the large glasses were spotted by perspiration. “He was very proud of you,” I said softly.

“He didn’t give me a hard time,” Andy said, his expression impassive. “Everybody does, sooner or later. Gene never gave me a hard time. Not even when I got his job. He said, ‘Congratulations. You deserve it.’ He must’ve hated me. Must have wanted to kill me. But he sure didn’t show it.”

I allowed a silence, a respectful silence to prevail for a while. Voices drifted from the parking lot while we stood and looked at each other solemnly. Finally I said, “I first met Gene when he was fifteen. While he was coming to me, he discovered how much he loved computers. I’ve never had a chance to see where he worked. I know you’re all a little paranoid about who goes in—”

“I’m in his office,” Andy interrupted. “They gave me his office. I didn’t want …” He sighed, held up a finger to signal I should wait. He walked over to the basket, picked up a green polo shirt I hadn’t noticed, neatly folded on the ground. He put it on in what seemed like a single movement. “Come on,” he said.

We entered West Building through one of the rear emergency doors. This wasn’t surreptitious, merely Andy’s normal route to the court. The half-hour practice shooting was a ritual, he told me, when he was stuck on something or just bored. Contrary to the central glass building’s cold elegance, and my own expectation of what a computer lab would be like, the halls and open central rooms for the technicians were sloppy and old-fashioned. They were drearily lit by fluorescent ceiling panels; the gray or green or black metal work tables were arranged without a pattern; the springs in the swivel chairs were often broken, their upholstery ripped; and everywhere were empty paper cups of coffee, crumpled cans of soda or fruit drinks, balled-up bags from McDonalds or crushed boxes from Pizza Hut. Even the odd personal possession was either old-tech or dilapidated: a radio with its antenna snapped off halfway and tinfoil balled at the end; a dusty plant, the edges of its drooping leaves black with disease; an attaché case with its handles amputated. The biggest surprise was the computers themselves. Few were housed in cases. Most were open circuit boards stacked into jumbles, thin wide gray cables crossing every which way, connecting them. The keyboards were stained by coffee. I noticed a dented one lying askew under a table, although still connected by a long curlicued cable.

“Welcome to Centaur team,” Andy said. “It’s messy ’cause we kick out the cleaners when we’re on a deadline.” They worked without a set schedule, some staying all night, sleeping all day, others arriving at dawn, leaving at four in the afternoon. The key men, like Andy, were there at least twenty hours of the day’s twenty-four. And they were all men. Boys really, living in a barracks. Gene, I knew, had spent most of his waking life since college in this hellhole, or another just like it: the windows closed to preserve the machines from dust and changes of temperature, the Venetian blinds shutting out the sun and the moon, presumably to thwart industrial spies armed with binoculars, but really to block out the temptation of daytime or the desolation of night. They exchanged colds, they shared a deathly pallor, they addressed each other with the rude, exasperated familiarity of siblings. That last quality of their lives was illustrated immediately.

As we neared his office, Andy was accosted by a fat, prematurely balding man I later learned was named Tim. Dirty blond hair draped from the hairless center of his head in tangled clumps. His torn stretched jeans hung well below his navel, the distended hole appearing quizzically whenever he raised his arms. “What did you do to the IO board?” he demanded. “It’s fucked.”

Andy ignored him, going into his cheerless office. Tim followed him so closely, I was cut off and entered last. Gene’s old work place was medium-sized, furnished with another of those metal tables. It was covered by a jumble of circuit boards and wires in no apparent order, as if someone had dropped a computer from the ceiling and we were looking at the smashed result. There were no files, no cabinets, no posters, no photographs, no personal possessions, except for an expensive chess set, lying on the once white linoleum floor, the pieces in a complicated position that I recognized as arising from a dynamic line of the Sicilian Defense. A terminal connected to Black Dragon stood in the corner under the covered window.

Andy mumbled a reply to Tim’s complaint. Tim answered in incomprehensible computer talk, working himself up into a scary rage, his fair skin reddening. His blue and white rugby shirt climbed higher with the gesticulation of his thick arms, until it settled on a ridge above his ballooning stomach and he appeared to be a comical belly dancer in male drag. While Tim ranted, Andy looked down at the dissected computer on his desk, his glasses gradually slipping to the end of his nose, showing no reaction.

“You fuck with my shit again and I’ll break your head!” Tim shouted at the conclusion of his monologue, the first sentence I understood. He breathed loudly through his nose for several seconds, waiting. Andy, eyes on the machine, chewed his lips, apparently in deep thought. Finally, Andy reached into the jumble of boards, pulled off a cable from a raised ridge of copper wires, removed a circuit board smaller than his hand, moved it to the top one (later I was told that was the motherboard) and plugged it into the right corner. He yanked another cable from below and connected it to the tiny circuit. “Piggyback,” he said. “That clears the serial for a modem.”

“We’re doing an internal modem!” Tim screamed. And I mean screamed, so desperately that I reacted involuntarily, saying, “Whoa. Take it easy.”

They ignored me. Andy shook his head. “Modem’s frying the board.”

“’Cause the chips are shit!” Tim screamed again. His face was splotchy with red dots of rage. “Fucking Japanese shit!”

“Shit is what we’ve got. So start eating it.” Andy looked up at him for the first time. He pushed his glasses up to the bridge of his nose. “Piggyback,” he said softly.

Tim pulled his shirt down over his belly. Until then, I thought he was unaware of the exposure. He dropped to his wide knees to stare at the new arrangement. He rubbed his bloodshot eyes and squinted. Groaning, a hand on the floor to power himself, he got to his feet. He looked at Andy. “I ain’t doing fuck-all until you tell the softies.” He walked out without waiting for an answer.

I laughed nervously, unsettled by Tim. Andy still didn’t seem bothered; he was focused on the prototype. “The softies?” I asked.

“Programmers. Operating software. He’s right. They might throw a shit fit and cry behind my back to Stick. If he takes their side …” Andy fell into his chair. The sudden drop propelled a white curl of stuffing into the air. Andy caught it, quick to protect the exposed boards.

“It’s wasted effort?” I tried to finish his sentence.

“Worse,” Andy said, carefully disposing the tiny feather into a plastic trash container that was filled to the brim by Coke cans. “It’s wasted time. We’re late. We’re designing, debugging and programming all at once. Doesn’t make sense. Gotta do it in stages.” He opened his hands to encompass the boards. “And it’s too big. You need a truck to carry this thing.” He laughed. Naturally, and with good humor, he laughed at the prototype.

“You handle stress well.”

“Thanks. But maybe I’m just cracking up. Anyway, this was Gene’s office. Pretty fancy for a VP, huh?”

“Are you a VP?”

“No. It’s a bullshit title,” he said with contempt. He seemed immediately embarrassed and added apologetically, “Meant something to Gene, I guess.”

“More money?”

Andy looked down modestly. “Not necessarily.”

“You make more than Gene did,” I said, not a question.

“I don’t know what Gene made,” Andy said. He covered his mouth with his left hand and looked at me as if checking whether I believed him. I didn’t. His mannerisms and answers had been straightforward until this conversation about salary.

“Did Gene have to stay in this office?”

“No. He liked it here. So do I.” He relaxed again, the hand uncovering his mouth, smiling easily. “Seems incredible to you? We’re nerds, Doctor. As kids, we were unpopular. As teenagers, we were hated. But here—this is home. We’re safe here.” Andy leaned forward, peering into his tower of circuits and wires. His glasses began another slide. “That’s why Gene didn’t move to the Glass Tower.”

“Would Tim scream at Gene like that?”

Andy peeked over his glasses at me. “You trying to make me feel bad?”

“I’m trying to understand why losing all this would make him want to stop living.”

Andy cocked his head, eyes straying to the fluorescent panel thoughtfully. “I never saw Gene lose his temper. He killed his wife, didn’t he? I mean he finally lost his temper—big-time. And
then
he killed himself. Right?”

“Did Tim scream at Gene like that?” I asked again. Andy ignored my question for the second time, leaning back in his chair. His glasses remained stuck on the end of his nose. “Did
you
scream at him?” I asked.

Andy laughed, again easily, enjoying the thoughts my question provoked. He swiveled in his chair, head thrown back, chuckling. When his amusement died out, he adjusted his glasses and then commented, “If someone fucked up, Gene came in and fixed it. He covered everybody’s ass. And he listened.” Andy straightened, sobering up. “He listened to everybody. He listened too much. He wasted time, he gave everybody too much slack. Part of the reason Tim screams at me is because Gene didn’t make the command chain clear. I’ve only been boss for six weeks. Some people haven’t accepted it.” He nodded at me earnestly. “They will.”

“I’m supposed to report to Stick what I find out from talking to you.”

Andy nodded as if that were a banal fact. “Me too.”

“I’m not going to,” I said. “You said something important, at least, important to a nutty shrink like me. It explains Gene’s grief at being fired. That’s what I came for. I’m not going to share it with Copley. And I’m certainly not going to tell him you’re in trouble—”

Andy shifted his weight forward abruptly. The spring squealed faintly and his chair thudded to an upright position. “I’m not in trouble—”

“—But I have a piece of advice for you,” I cut him off. “I know you think you’re shrewder than Gene, and maybe you think you’re stronger too. I made a mistake with Gene, I see that now. I assumed he would be rewarded for years of service. I assumed a talented man would always be valuable to a company. You see, my uncle was a businessman and he remained loyal to the people who did good work, well past their prime. My uncle wasn’t a sentimental man. That wasn’t why he was loyal. He knew that loyalty inspires the younger ones to work hard. Stick doesn’t believe that.”

“Nobody believes that anymore. This is the nineties. Haven’t you heard of downsizing?” Andy stood up. “Listen, I’m not in trouble.” He pointed to the smashed machine. “This may look like a mess to you, but it’s normal—”

Again, I interrupted. “I didn’t mean with the machine. I know nothing about it. I mean you can’t handle these men and you’re scared. You’re still a kid. You miss Gene. He controlled their egos so you could be the star. Now you’re having to do both jobs at once and you’re floundering.”

Andy stared at me through his spotted glasses, eyes half-closed. Their Asian slant lent the look a cold withdrawn aspect. In fact, he was furious. “I can build this machine alone,” he said in a whisper. He wasn’t attempting to conceal the remark. He was so clenched with anger he couldn’t give it volume. “I don’t need them.”

“You’re wrong,” I said. “You told me so yourself. They’re your family. They make you feel safe. You need them as badly as they need you.”

Andy was still. He watched me watch him for a while. A man with a high squeaky voice entered behind me, talking without introduction, something about access time to the hard drive.

Andy greeted him with a shout, “Not now!”

“We can’t piggyback—”

“Tell Tim to go home and stop causing trouble,” Andy said. “Get out and close the door.”

“Fuck you,” said the voice, but the door shut in a moment. Andy continued to stare at me through the glistening spots on his glasses. Finally, he turned, moving to the black terminal by the window. He flipped a button and it whirred, the monitor flashing awake. Rather than pull his chair over, he squatted on his haunches and typed at Black Dragon’s keyboard. “Come here.”

I moved beside him. A heading across Dragon’s screen said, COPLEY’S OUT BOX. Below was a list of dates and subjects. A bar of white color skipped down them, stopping at, “RE: Kenny Termination.” The screen blipped. The text of a memo from Copley to Minotaur’s comptroller appeared: “Since Gene Kenny is no longer an employee, the no-interest loan on his residence can be called as of July 1st, provided he is notified at least four weeks in advance. Do it today and confirm to my box.” The date of Stick’s memo was May 10th, two days before Gene’s suicide.