They Don't Play Stickball in Milwaukee (19 page)

“Not before I left, but I'd say the picture from your investigator's license is probably hitting the airwaves all over North America about now. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume it wasn't you that whacked the whore. Who did it?”

“She wasn't a whore, MacClough. She was my fiancée.”

“Maybe we better back up.”

I agreed. “Maybe we better.”

Johnny sat down on the lower cot and listened carefully to what I had to say. He showed emotion only once, wincing at my description of Kira's body—inert, nude, battered—hanging off the bed. It wasn't the description of her body per se that pained him. I knew that. As a beat cop he'd seen human remains in all manner of horrific states. He used to say he'd found bodies that would make Jack the Ripper's butcher puke. It was the loss at the chance for love that hurt him. Having let the one true love in his life slip through his fingers decades ago, he could not abide the loss of love. Sometimes, I thought, it was MacClough, not me, who possessed the soul of a writer. As an Irishman, he was born with it.

“Who did it, Klein?” he asked, turning away. “Who killed her?”

“It was either the desk clerk or the ski dude or both. I was thankfully unconscious at the time. What am I going to do, John?”

He didn't answer and before I could push him for a response, Guppy came through the hatch with some beers in tow. MacClough said he preferred whiskey, but Guppy had none. He did not believe in alcohol. It clouded the mind, weakened concentration. The only reason he had beer was to appease Zak. It wasn't a religious issue with him.

Finally, after Guppy had explained himself to death, MacClough begged for him to shut up and wondered if Gupta had ever met an indirect answer he didn't like?

“No,” was all he said.

When the beers were finished, I bit my lip and asked Guppy to help us understand exactly what he and Zak were up to. It was all well and good, I said, that Zak disappeared, but what significance could that possibly have to a drug distribution ring. Why would a college kid's dropping out of sight lead to three deaths and the destruction of a ski resort? Possibly out of fear of another long-winded explanation, MacClough spoke up.

“Zak knows something and the drug dealers know he knows. What's more, Zak's got proof of what he knows. That's what they were looking for when they tore up Zak's rooms and Caliparri's house.”

Guppy's face brightened: “That is essentially correct, but there is solidity at the center of your conclusions. At the center of our plan is smoke and void.”

So much for direct answers. MacClough and I found dread in each other's eyes, but neither of us could see our way around asking the question.

“Can you run that by us in something akin to English,” I pleaded. Gupta pointed at MacClough. “Mr. MacClough—”

“John,” he interrupted. “It's shorter.”

“Very well, John. John said that Zak knew something and that the drug dealers knew he knew. Furthermore, he said that Zak could obviously back up with physical proof these things he knew. But the truth is that Zak and myself know nothing about these drug operations. We only have guesses and we could no sooner prove any of those guesses than I could prove that this chair is what it seems.”

“What?” MacClough was agitated. “Klein, you're fucked worse than I thought.”

“Perception,” I told John, “is everything. Perception is reality.”

“What have you two been smokin'? You sound like a couple of escapees from a bad philosophers convention.”

“Zak knows nothing,” Guppy said while laughing at John's bad philosophers comment. “And I know even less. But through a certain dexterity with computers and a carefully planned timetable, Zak and I have been able—”

“—to leave a certain impression.” MacClough was catching on. “You mean you guys really don't know anything.”

“Nothing. We only know that what we have done is working. The fire at Cyclone Ridge, the break-ins, the murders, and the attempt to frame Mr. Klein tell us that. We have stirred up the beehive, but we have only felt their sting. What we need to know is the bees themselves.”

“How'd you manage it?” I wondered.

Guppy sat down at the computer, got his system quickly up and running. His lithe brown fingers fairly glided along the keyboard, hesitating only briefly to afford him the opportunity to scan the monitor. Apparently satisfied, he turned his attention back to MacClough and myself.

“Do you know the Internet, gentlemen?”

We both nodded our heads that we did, but both Johnny and I were quick to point out that we knew very few of the details. MacClough didn't even own a typewriter. Christ, he still used a rotary phone. And I pounded out my work on a temperamental Smith Corona word-processor. Neither of us had the hi-tech sensibility of a Generation X-er.

Guppy correctly figured this meant we didn't know shit about the Internet. He therefore gave us a brief rundown on web sites, chat rooms, and the like. It all seemed pretty detached and dehumanizing to me. MacClough was less put off, but failed to see the point.

“The point, John,” Guppy said, “is that you can pick any subject, not nearly any subject, but any subject and you will find someone, maybe thousands of people on-line interested in the same subject. Pick a subject.”

“Men who have sex with barnyard animals,” MacClough blurted out.

“And the women who love them,” I added.

Guppy was too busy massaging the keyboard to laugh. “There. Please, watch the screen.”

As he scrolled the list of alternative sex discussion groups by us, John and I stared in amazement at the seemingly endless variations. And while scanning the section on barnyard animals, Guppy stopped the scroll and pointed out a particular group.

“There, Mr. Klein, are the women who love them. Would you like to go into a chat room?”

“So,” I interrupted, “what's the point? What's any of this got to do with the price of potatoes in Yemen?”

“Isotope, Klein,” MacClough answered.

“Exactly, John,” Guppy praised. “Though not so many as alternative sex groups, there are many many drug-related sites on the Internet. And out of these, many deal exclusively with Isotope. And what is the one tangible fact Zak and I had to work with?”

“That Valencia Jones was arrested for carrying a very large quantity of Isotope.”

“Exactly, Mr. Klein, exactly. And because the quantity was so huge, Zak and I assumed the people who had planted these hallucinogenics in Miss Valencia's car were not, I believe the phrase is, nickel-and-dime dealers. In these times, smart business people, sophisticated business people—criminal or legitimate—are heavily tapped into the worldwide net. Careful monitoring of the Internet is crucial for the success of any enterprise which services people thirty years of age and under.”

“You set them up,” MacClough interjected. “I don't know how you did it, but you set them up. You knew they'd be watching.”

“We hoped so,” Guppy aped Zak's earlier sentiment. “And now we know they were.”

Over nearly a tenth-month span, Guppy and Zak had spent several hours a day, seven days a week, leaving cryptic messages in every drug-related chat room on the Internet. The early messages were fairly brief, meant simply to attract attention:

We know. Love Valencia.

And they would repeat the messages over and over again, whenever they had the opportunity to interact. Gradually, they had expanded the length and the depth of their messages:

We know the truth. Love Valencia. P.S. You pay one way or the other. Have figured out your system. Love Valencia. Have downloaded. Have disc. You will pay either way.

Clock is ticking. Tick . . .Tick . . .Tick. Paying me is the trick. Love Valencia. Will testify to sink your ship. Will need six figures to seal my lips.

They carried on like this, never knowing whether anyone was there to listen. But since Jeffrey had turned the case down and Zak saw no other alternative to taking things into his own hands, he and Guppy kept it up. Then, as the trial date approached, they went on the offensive, hinting as to their identity:

You will see I am real when myself I will conceal. Love Valencia. When a Riversborough student disappears you will know your greatest fears. Remember, ships and lips and figures times six.

Zak and Guppy had an accomplice that we hadn't figured on: Valencia Jones' lawyer. To protect her client, the lawyer had even kept her complicity a secret from Valencia Jones. That explained the lawyer's absence when MacClough and I went to see Valencia Jones in the Mohawkskill jail. But her most important contribution to Zak and Guppy's plan was to add Zak's name to the defense witness list the day after he was reported missing. Only then, after revealing himself, could Zak know if anyone had been reading their messages.

They were unfortunately underwhelmed by the response; there wasn't any. But having never truly entertained the possibility of failure, they had painted themselves into a rather precarious corner. Zak and Guppy had no way of knowing whether their months of messages had gone unread by the people for whom they were intended. That prospect was difficult enough to swallow and meant Valencia Jones was as good as convicted. There was, however, a second possibility, a possibility far more bone-chilling. It dawned upon them that their messages might very well have been received, but that their adversaries were simply lying in wait. After all, now the Isotope dealers knew Zak's identity, but Zak and Guppy were still fumbling around in the dark, tilting at shadows without faces.

That's where their plan had gone awry. They had hoped to somehow set up a meeting with the dealers and alert the police. But when there was no immediate response to Zak's name mysteriously showing up on the witness list, they supposed they were dead in the water. Zak, his life now possibly in danger, thinking his bluff had been called, had no reasonable choice but to remain in hiding until the completion of Valencia Jones' trial. Brave and resourceful as he and Guppy were, they failed to see the value in Valencia Jones' conviction and getting themselves killed.

Instead of completely giving up the ship, they continued to fill up the Isotope chat rooms with their messages:

Revealed and still concealed. Love Valencia. Don't be shy, I won't be. I'll bring your house down, you will see.

You've called my bluff. You think I am not tough. Love Valencia. Six figures is no longer enough.

Think I'm scared, we shall see. That disc is what's important, silly, not me. Tick . . .Tick . . .Tick.

Still nothing. Then Zak remembered a weird thing from a trial he'd seen on TV. Evidence for possible future use was handed to the court in a sealed envelope. It wasn't actually entered into evidence, but was kept by the court for later introduction. Whether the evidence was admissible or not would be argued if and when the envelope was unsealed and its contents offered to the court. The next day, Valencia Jones' lawyer delivered a sealed brown envelope into the trial judge's hands. That night Zak and Guppy put out the following message:

Going once. Going twice. No more playing nice. Love Valencia. Disc in envelope is a fake. Mine is real. Make no mistake and make the deal. The clock stops ticking soon.

It worked, though Zak and Guppy didn't know it, not right away. On the night they sent that message, Detective Caliparri left Riversborough for the second and final time. His visit hadn't gone unnoticed. Although his visit had been basically innocent and completely fruitless, the Isotope dealers remembered Caliparri's first visit and his nosing around about Valencia Jones on behalf of Jeffrey Klein. Much to Caliparri's eventual detriment, the dealers had put two and two together and come up with five. Apparently, they had found the timing of Zak's message about the disc, the delivery of the mystery envelope to the judge, and Caliparri's brief return to Riversborough too great a coincidence to dismiss. Somehow, they had gotten the misguided notion that Zak had passed the real evidence—which, of course, was not real at all—on to Caliparri for safekeeping. And when Caliparri could not produce the disc, he was whacked for his trouble.

“You see, gentlemen,” Guppy said, “once the detective was killed, there could be no turning back. We knew then that they had been reading our messages all along. What we hadn't counted on was murder.”

“What did you think they were going to do if you ever had a meeting,” I sneered, “kiss you on the lips?”

“We hadn't thought things out that far.”

“They would've tortured the truth out of the one of you they got and killed the pair of ya,” MacClough shook his head disapprovingly. “You two guys were real smart about this plan. I mean that. But this ain't the kinda game with rules and it's been my experience that civilians don't fare well against killers in those games. And just in case you haven't been keeping score lately, it's them that got us by the balls. Remember, my old pal here,” he slapped my shoulder, “is facing the hangman's needle.”

“The hangman's needle?” I was incredulous. “The soul of a writer and the syntax of a refugee.”

“There's nothing wrong with my syntax that bringing back the electric chair wouldn't fix.”

“I don't understand,” Guppy seemed perplexed, “truly. How do they have us by the balls?”

“Because the manhunt and the murder charge against Klein are real,” MacClough said, “but the evidence and testimony we have to bargain with are phony as a three-dollar bill. There are limitations to what you can do with smoke and void.”

Guppy, suddenly looking quite ashen, stood and excused himself. He mentioned needing some time to meditate before talking to Zak. Like Zak before him, it had dawned on Guppy that play time was over, but that killing time might have just begun.

Abraham Lincoln

I don't know how Zak had made it through his weeks of seclusion. I was three days into my life in the bunker and I was ready to turn myself in. MacClough was dealing with it better than me, but he wasn't the current poster boy for
America's Most Wanted.
Ma Barker and Pretty Boy Floyd had nothing on me.