Authors: Crystal Hubbard
“She was expecting you Friday night. You didn’t get back until yesterday, and by then she’d done your laundry and had her own little eviction ceremony. She was just mad because you spent the weekend in Chicago with Chiara.” George smoothed his hands over his chest. “She gave me first pick of your stuff.”
“That explains why half my laundry was gone when I got home last night.” John scrubbed a hand over his head in frustration. “Your mother really is unbelievable.”
“You should have called her and told her that you’d be coming home later,” George said.
“I’m a grown-ass man, G. I shouldn’t have to report to her.”
“Then you probably should have gotten your own apartment instead of staying at her house until you found a place of your own. It’s been three months, man. The longer you stay, the harder she’s going to fight to keep you under her thumb.”
“I didn’t want to sign a lease because I figured on finding a house once Chiara moved here, at least that was the plan,” John said. “I figured staying at home wouldn’t be so bad, since I’m hardly ever there.”
“Well, Chiara’s here now.” George looked up to see the waitress returning with their drinks. She set them on the table and told them that she’d be right back for their orders. “You guys can start moving forward with your plans.”
“Our plans have been circumvented somewhat.” John turned his glass in circles, staring at the black brew. “You know that.”
George sighed heavily. “Yep.”
“She was attacked in her apartment on Friday. She wasn’t hurt seriously, but whoever did it tore the place to bits looking for—” He grew silent when the waitress came back for their orders. John asked for the seven-ounce hamburger with mushrooms and grilled onions and a house salad.
“You’re buying, right?” George asked again, to make sure.
John rolled his eyes.
Without looking at the menu, George cleared his throat and said, “I’d like a side of toasted ravioli, onion rings, and fried mushrooms, the hickory burger—”
“Five ounce or seven ounce?” asked the waitress.
“Seven. Could I also have that with bacon and cheddar cheese? Extra bacon, if you don’t mind.” George winked at John.
“Will that be all?” the waitress asked.
“Uh…could you also get me a couple of tamales with a side order of chili, but that’ll be to go.”
“Gotcha,” said the waitress.
John leaned an elbow on the table. “You forgot dessert,” he offered wryly.
George snapped his fingers. “Oh yeah. Could I get a couple of slices of blueberry pie?”
“Sure thing,” the waitress smiled.
“I don’t want dessert,” John said.
“Oh, I didn’t order it for you,” George said.
Giggling, the waitress left to place the order.
“Man, how do you stay so damn skinny eating like that?” John asked in amazement.
“I’m like a camel.” George stretched out in the booth, his feet bumping John’s out of his way. “When I get the chance, I load the hump. Otherwise, I’m mostly on the Ramen noodles and HoHos diet.”
“If you need money, all you have to do is ask,” John said.
“Mom’s tight, and you know it,” George said. “Dad’ll slide me some here and there, but Mom keeps an eagle eye on the checkbook.”
“Ask
me,
” John said. “I haven’t asked Mom for money since I was ten. She’s worse than a loan shark.”
“She makes you pay her back?”
“Not in money, but she finds ways to collect. I asked for fifteen dollars for a school field trip to Six Flags in the fifth grade, and she gave it to me easily enough. But then I had to spend six Saturdays in a row cutting back Cecile Brunner. She said it was the way of the world, that no one gets anything for nothing.”
“So what’s this lavish lunch actually going to cost me?” George asked, only half joking.
“Just some information.” John took a long drink of his beer before he said, “Chiara doesn’t think that Emmitt Grayson was behind the attack on her, or even Zhou’s death. I’m not sure I agree with her, but it would be nice if we could find out more about…other candidates.”
George leaned forward, resting both forearms on the table. “Like who?”
“Maybe it was someone from a company Grayson’s been spying on, someone who found out what he’s been doing,” John threw out.
“Maybe…but the R-GS rootkit is so sublime. You wouldn’t know you were being spied on unless you’d been told.”
“Grayson might have a partner we don’t know about, someone who’s up to something. He looked very concerned when he saw Chiara’s face after the attack.”
“She’s okay, isn’t she?”
“She’s healing well. But her nerves are getting the better of her. This is a lot for her to take on top of being pregnant.”
George’s eyes slowly widened to the point where John thought they might just drop right out of his head. “Chiara’s going to have a baby?”
John gave him a tiny smile of pride. “That’s what being pregnant means.”
“And the baby’s yours?”
“Boy, I will smack you—”
George shook his head and raised a hand in supplication. “Man, I’m sorry, I’m just…damn. You and Chiara are having a baby.”
“Don’t tell Mom and Dad.”
George made a sputtering noise. “Don’t worry. I like living too much. Moms is gonna shit when you tell her, and then she’s gonna kill you. Then she’s gonna shit
again.
”
“You know,” John said as the waitress brought their food, “that’s an image I could have lived the rest of my life without imagining.”
It took the girl a moment to unload her tray with George’s complete order, including the bagged tamales and chili. The brothers delved into the food, John helping himself to a big onion ring before they continued their conversation.
“When’s the baby due?” George asked around a bulging cheekful of his hamburger.
“July.” John set down his burger and wiped his hands on a paper napkin. “Want to see a picture?”
George, his mouth too full to answer, shrugged his shoulder, which John eagerly took as a yes. He pulled out his wallet and carefully slipped out two squares of flimsy plastic-like photo paper. “This is at eight weeks, and this one is the most recent photo, at twelve weeks.”
John set them on a napkin to protect them from moisture and oil residues on the table, and slid them before George, whose face crumpled in confusion. “It’s all head,” George said.
“And body. But everything will catch up to everything else, in time.”
“It’s got Dad’s head,” George said.
“It’s not an ‘it,’ George, it’s a he.”
George peered closer at the photos. “I can’t even tell that it’s human. How can you tell that it’s a boy?”
“Chiara says he’s a boy. Stop calling your nephew ‘it.’ ”
George slowly set down the fried mushroom he was about to eat. “My nephew?” His lips slowly curled into a wide smile of goofy pride. “Uncle George…I like that.” He reached a hand across the table and gave his brother a congratulatory handshake. “I can’t wait to teach him how to defrag a CPU.” He chuckled. “It’ll be funny watching Mom babysit.”
“Uh uh.” John took his pictures back and tucked them safely in his wallet. “Grandma Almadine is never going to be left alone with my baby.”
“You’re thinking about the number she pulled on RoboBaby, aren’t you?” George said. “You know she wouldn’t treat a real baby, her own grandson, like that.”
There was too much doubt in John’s heart and George’s voice for him to give his honest response. “She’s not good with babies. Real or computerized.”
“Well, on the topic of computers,” George said, “who else is on your short list of suspects for what’s been going on with you and Chiara?”
“The only other possibility I can think of is a rival software company,” John said. “The R-GS is one of the bestselling security systems out there, and it’s the dominant system overseas. Someone might be willing to go to any length to discover the secret of the chip’s success, and getting their hands on a master would certainly help them reach that goal.”
“Could it be someone inside USITI?” George suggested. “When I read that
American Investors
article on Emmitt Grayson, I was like, ‘Damn, if I worked for him, I’d want a bigger slice of the pie.’ The article declared his net worth—
net
, man—at three billion dollars, and a lot of it comes from his own personal investing, not from company profits and income.”
“Of course, now we know how he got to be such a good investor,” John said scornfully. “You’ve studied the chip, right?”
George nodded, once again unable to speak as he shoved a toasted ravioli dripping with marinara sauce into his already full mouth.
“Is there a way of exposing the coding for the rootkit? Can you isolate it, and create counteractive programming that would expose it, or even disable it, once the chip is installed and activated? More simply put, can you design an alarm that alerts the user when the master is coming through the back door?”
“Yeah.” George quietly burped. “A rebound chip.”
“Never heard of it.”
“I haven’t finished inventing it yet.” George took three long gulps of his fruity beer and then used his sleeve—John’s wool cashmere sleeve—to wipe his mouth. “I have to clone the master chip I already have, decode and map it, then design the counterprogramming. The alarm, so to speak.”
John spent a moment in deep thought. “How long will that take?”
George licked ravioli crumbs from his fingers. “Hard to say. Two, maybe three days, if I burn two-four-seven. But cloning it isn’t the problem. Finding a way to test it is.”
John invited George back to his office, presumably to tour USITI’s new St. Louis facility. John introduced his kid brother to his co-workers and the director of human resources, explaining to all that George would be graduating from college in six months and was considering applying for a job at USITI.
John’s true intent in bringing George to USITI was to give him a chance to try to infiltrate the computer system, but no opportunities presented themselves where George could get on a terminal without being seen.
“It’s okay,” John said, more to himself than to George as they exited the elevator that opened into the basement level of the parking garage attached to USITI’s downtown office building. “We can try again some other time. Early on a weekend might be best, but I was hoping to have you here in plain sight. Folks would be less likely to think that you were up to something.”
John aimed his remote car alarm at the Nissan Z parked in one of the premium reserved spots near the elevator doors. George hurried ahead to the passenger side of the shiny, silver coupe and kissed the doorframe. “This is the sweetest ride, J.” He stroked his hand over the sleek line of the aerodynamically designed roof. “Can I have it when you’re done?”
John opened his door and tossed his briefcase in the backseat. “I’m glad I left it at Lambert when I flew to Chicago, or else our mother probably would have given it to you, along with my clothes.”
At the mention of clothes, George’s hands flew to his chest. “Man, I left my parka upstairs.” He jogged off toward the elevator. “I’ll be right back.”
John started to get into the car, but the scent of George’s bagged tamales on the floor of the front seat drove him back out. “That smell will never come out of the carpeting,” John complained under his breath. He was starting around to the passenger side of the car to get the bag when a shadow fell over him. Before he could turn on his own, he felt hands on him, clutching at the black wool of his Chesterfield. He was spun and thrown against the side of his car, a pair of pale, hairy hands tightly holding onto his lapels, a black-hooded face only inches away from his.
“You and your pretty girlfriend are playing with the wrong person,” John’s assailant growled, using his larger, wider body to hold John against the car. “You tell me where the master chip is, and I’ll make sure that you leave this little meeting with your face intact.”
But for his hands, the man making the threats was dressed in black from head to toe. John’s gaze locked on his blue eyes and the deep red gouges carved beneath them. John suppressed a satisfied smile at the sight of the bright red, ruptured blood vessels in the inner corners of the whites of the man’s eyes. “She got you pretty good, didn’t she?” John said calmly.
His attacker’s eyes darkened in the dimly lit recesses of the parking garage. “Not as good as I got her.” He gave John another hard shove. “Not as good as I’ll give her the next time I see her.”
A strange feeling of calm moved through John. It was akin to the acute relaxation he’d felt after taking exotic exercise classes in Singapore, a combination of yoga and martial arts. A regimen he and Chiara had maintained off and on once they’d returned to Chicago.
Ever so slightly, John smiled.
His attacker’s eyes narrowed.
John clutched the man’s wrists, keeping them in place on his coat front as he gave the man a vicious head butt. The man’s feet weakened and his hold loosened as he staggered back, but John held onto him, keeping him on his feet. John, that queer sense of peace flowing even stronger within him, drove the flat of his foot into his assailant’s left shin, driving a cry of pain from the man before doing the same to his right shin, bringing him to his knees.
John pried the man’s fingers from his coat, keeping a hold on his right hand. He bent it at a sharp angle that forced the man’s upper body to awkwardly follow the movement of his hand. “Who sent you to Chiara?” John shouted in his face, his calm falling away to expose the fury that had been fueling it. “Who sent you here?”
The man used his free hand to swing at John, who smoothly blocked the blow with his forearm before smashing his fist into the center of the man’s hood. Blood gushed through the hood, wetting John’s coat front and leaving a fine red spray on his tie.
“Who sent you?” John shouted again.
His assailant, grunting against the pain, lunged at John, catching him about his waist and bringing him down to the asphalt clear of John’s car and the neighboring vehicle. He scrambled on top of John, trying to twist his hand free and bite John through his hood. John bucked the man off and used his knees to slam him into a car. Even though his heavy coat encumbered him, John was nimble and fast enough to pin the man to the ground with a knee to his chest.
“This is your last chance!” John warned through gritted teeth, his hands at the man’s collar. “Who sent you?”
The man’s blue eyes defiantly stared at John as he breathed heavily through his hood. John’s assailant was now at his mercy, and John had none for him. John encouraged him to respond by giving him two jaw-cracking blows to his face. When that failed to loosen his tongue, John turned to a move he’d learned from his own mother. Using the hood to give himself a good grip, he grabbed the man’s ear and yanked it.
The man screamed but not before John heard the sound of tearing flesh. John was aware of people gathering around him before he realized that the man’s agonized screaming actually formed words.
“Carlton?” John repeated, lifting the man by his ear and walking him to the wall, blocking him in between two parked cars so he couldn’t escape. He let go of the man’s ear and yanked off the hood. He was unfazed by the sight of the blood smeared all over the man’s face.
“Carlton Puel!” the man said more clearly.
“All right, stop right there, boy!” hollered a voice from behind John. “Put your hands where I can see them and turn around.”
“It’s not what you think,” John said. He turned, expecting to see one of the usual garage rent-a-cops. Instead he faced one of St. Louis’s finest crouching in the middle of the driving lane, his gun aimed squarely at John’s gut. The officer leaned to one side. “You, too, back there,” he instructed.
John raised his hands. “This was an attempted mugging, officer. I was attacked.”
The officer’s tiny blue eyes peered at John, then at the man staggering forward behind him. “Yeah. Right.”
“John!”
The startled officer whipped his head in the direction of George, his gun hand following. George’s whole body flinched as though trying to outmaneuver a bullet.
“Don’t!” John said, addressing both George and the officer.
Sweat ran in rivulets down the officer’s bright pink jowls as he unclipped a radio from his belt and spoke into it. “I need backup at Lucas and 14
th
, basement level of the parking garage. I caught a two-forty in progress, I have both parties under control, and I’m taking them in.”
“John, what—” George started, thoroughly confused.
“I dropped my keys,” John said, his mind spinning with the name he’d been given. “Get them and follow me.”
“But John, what the hell happened, man?” George persisted.
“Shut up and go about your business, boy,” the officer snarled at George.
“Just do what I say,” John told his brother. “And don’t take any more of my clothes. I might be gone awhile.”
* * *
Despite having his hands cuffed to the back rungs of the hard chair he’d been shoved into two hours ago, John sat up tall and straight. While his attacker sat nearby on a wooden bench, his right hand cuffed to a chain connected to a metal ring in the floor, John had received the seat of honor right at the scuffed metal desk where his arresting officer, Conroy Jerkins, hunkered over an old keyboard. His hooked index fingers ploddingly hopped over the scrambled alphabet, pecking out the letters that spelled the words John had used to answer his questions.
John had never been arrested before, and he might have been more troubled by the experience had he not been thinking so hard on the name his assailant had given him. He stared beyond the cluttered, dingy precinct room and into the rapidly darkening sky beyond the grate-covered windows. The sky seemed too deep and too dark because of the full storm clouds that had rolled in. Deep in his own thoughts, John didn’t notice the tall, dark-skinned man in the brown suit who had appeared at the desk.
“What’ve we got here?” the man asked, snapping John out of his reverie. The man put his hands loosely on his hips, and John noticed the gold badge clipped to his belt. One word gave John a tiny bit of hope:
captain
.
“This guy beat the hell outta that guy, Cap.” Officer Jerkins threw his thumb in the direction of John’s attacker. “I’m just finishing up my arrest report.”
The captain looked John up and down, taking in John’s elegant but understated suit. Even though it was now rumpled and spattered with dried blood, it still proved a better tailored cut than the captain’s. The captain eyed John’s tie before moving down to his Cole Haans. His gaze then shifted to John’s personal effects, which sat in a plastic bin on Jerkins’s desk.
As the captain studied the contents of the box, John took yet another silent inventory of the items that had been removed from him upon his arrest. The contents of his wallet: driver’s license, American Express Gold, VISA Signature, BP gas, USITI identification, AAA membership and auto insurance cards, a photo of him and Chiara taken on a beach in St. Kitts, two sonogram images and one-hundred and eleven dollars in cash. Additionally, there were the assorted things from his pockets: forty-seven cents in loose change, an opened tin of Altoids and a silver Cross ballpoint pen that Abby Winters had given him upon his graduation from GW.
The captain, wearing a scowl as heavy as his thick mustache, turned to John’s assailant. John hoped the captain saw what he did: a burly man in black jeans, a black long-sleeved T-shirt and worn leather jacket with dried blood crusted in the creases of his face, beneath his purpling eye sockets and along the edge of his torn right ear.
The captain stepped over to him. “Where’s your ID?”
Pressing his head to the wall behind him, the man just stared at him.
“What’s your name?” the captain said more loudly, a crack of thunder punctuating his command.
The bloodstained man snorted and hawked a blood clot at the captain’s feet.
“Have it your way, John,” the captain said.
“Pardon me?” John replied.
“Not you.” The captain went back to John and picked up one of the sonogram photos from the evidence box. “I meant John Doe over there, who won’t tell us who he is.”
“It’s ’cause he’s probably got a rap sheet long as my arm,” Jerkins predicted.
The captain didn’t look up from the photo. “What about him?” He used the photo to point at John.
“I’d rather you didn’t handle my personal effects, sir,” John said. Of all the humiliation he had endured so far, he refused to add the mauling of his baby’s picture to it all.
“No record,” Jerkins said. “Mahoney’s clean.”
“Have you finished Mr. Mahoney’s statement?” The captain stared at the photo a moment longer.
Jerkins pressed a button and closed his document. “Yeah. It’s banked.”
“Give me the rundown,” the captain told him.
Officer Jerkins leaned heavily on the desk, the lower two buttons of his uniform shirt threatening to give way under the stress of his shifting bulk. “During my patrol of the parking garage at Lucas and 14th at approximately 5:45
p.m.
, I came upon these two guys going at it.”
“ ‘Going at it?’ ” the captain repeated. “What the hell does that mean, Jerkins?”
“Mahoney here says that John Doe over there attacked him and he was defending himself, but…” Jerkins shook his big round head skeptically. “Something’s hinky.”
“Something like what?” the captain asked. “You can’t believe that this man,” he indicated John Doe with a sweep of his open hand, “who has no ID, no wallet, and who won’t provide us with his name possibly attacked Mr. Mahoney, who has a clean record, clear ties to the community and a United States IntelTech identification card that establishes his reason for being in that garage? What does this look like to you, Jerkins? I’m dying to know.”
“It looks like what it usually is.” Jerkins sat back in his swivel chair, which creaked in protest. “A drug buy gone wrong.”
“For God’s sake,” John murmured disdainfully.
“Look at him, Captain,” Jerkins said, pointing at John Doe’s face. “He’s a mess, and
this
guy wants to say that John Doe attacked
him
?”
The captain spent a moment staring up at the water-stained ceiling tiles. The sky outside seemed to grow angrier along with the captain, whose nostrils flared. “Did you ever consider that John Doe picked the wrong man to target today, Jerkins? Somebody always comes off the worse in a fight, and from the looks of it, today’s not the first time John Doe got his face handed to him on a platter.” The captain used his universal key to unfasten John’s handcuffs. “Return Mr. Mahoney’s personal items and take John Doe to booking. We’ll get an ID once we take his picture and run his prints. I can’t imagine that he’s not in the system already.”
“Right, Captain,” Jerkins said.
“And one more thing,” the captain added. “Apologize to Mr. Mahoney for wasting his time.”
John rubbed his wrists where the handcuffs had gouged his skin. Grudgingly, he said, “That isn’t necessary, sir. I’m sure Officer Jerkins was just doing his job.”
Officer Jerkins’s pink face reddened as the captain said, “Trust me, Mr. Mahoney. What Jerkins did to you was not a part of his job. You’re free to go, with the apologies of this department. If you’d like to press charges against John Doe there, I’ll take your statement and file the complaint myself.”
* * *
John was halfway down the wide steps leading to the lobby of the police station when he spied George, Chiara and Cady in a huddle at the information desk. George saw him first and called the entire station’s attention to him when he shouted, “John! Man, I thought you were being sweated in a little room under a bare light bulb.”