I bought an iced tea at the counter and headed for an available personal computer. It took me only a few seconds to access the Tartan corporate website. I looked at the site index. There were pages listed with the information you would expect: financial reports, recent acquisitions, profiles of James and other corporate officers. What wasn't there was what I was looking for: a sub-index with names and addresses of clients and other people and organizations important to Tartan and James.
Of course this was confidential information and wouldn't be made available to the world. But I knew it was on the website because the night Ned was murdered James had accessed the telephone numbers of Ned's hotel and the police from it. I had been looking over his shoulder when he did it.
Then he had made another phone call he had later denied making. Was that call to the Chinese lady? From James' side of the conversation I had gathered that the caller had seen Ned that evening. My recollection was that James didn't look up her phone number on the website; he knew it by heart. But still, it could be there.
What had James done to get to the private part of the website? He had gone to a certain page and entered a password. That page wouldn't be in the index but now I could remember James entering the Tartan URL and the word "private."
I typed in the Tartan URL followed by a slash and "private." The page I remembered seeing came up, containing a place to enter a password. What was the password? Of course the password had appeared as x's on the screen when James had entered it, but maybe I could reconstruct it.
I didn't have a computer program like you see in the movies that tries every possible combination of characters until it finds the correct password. The technology wouldn't allow me to do that, anyway. That was fiction. But most passwords were made simple so they would be easy to remember. And apparently all Tartan staff members knew it.
Now what? I could actually see James type in the password. I'm a nosy guy and I had watched him. And James wasn't a fast typist so it was possible to follow the keys he struck. I remembered at the time thinking that the password was an actual word and too obvious.
Except I couldn't remember what word it was. Six characters, I thought. I tried "tartan" and received an error message. Those weren't the keys James had pressed, anyway. He had started with the forefinger of his left hand, but not the "t." I checked the keyboard. That finger is used to type seven different letters. Great.
What words started with those letters? I drew a blank on all of them until I got to "c." "Casino." Of course. I typed "casino" and clicked Enter. Another error message. Damn.
The more I recalled the night of Ned's murder the more I was sure that "casino" was correct. So why was I getting an error message? Persnickety computer. I tried "casino" again. Same result. Think, Patterson. I thought about smashing the computer, which was not logical. And computers are logical, if nothing else.
I typed in "casino" again but didn't click Enter. Why wasn't this correct? It seemed so right. But of course memories can be self-fulfilling. I stared at the word and noticed that there was still a space remaining in the password box. Another character was needed.
I typed in a "1" after "casino" and clicked Enter.
Error.
I poured ice from the bottom of my glass into my mouth, crunched on it and froze my mouth.
Then it came to me; I remembered how awkward it had been for James to type an "s" because the tip of the fourth finger on his left hand was missing. And he'd had to use that finger twice when entering the password.
"I typed in "casinos" and clicked Enter. No error message. The index page of organizations and people that I had seen James refer to appeared, in alphabetical order. It was many screens long. I scrolled down and scanned the names, looking for Chinese-sounding names.
I wrote one down and kept going. I came to my own name, "Patterson, Karl." I clicked on it and went to my page. It contained my address, telephone number, email address and the fact that I was Richard Patterson's son. It noted that I drank iced tea and that I was a card counter. So James did care about that, even though he pretended indifference.
I continued down the list and wrote another name. I finished the list, went back and clicked on the first of the two names. A personal page appeared. The woman lived in Paso Robles, well south of San Francisco.
I clicked on the other name, Flora Sung. Her address was San Francisco, but I didn't recognize the street, so I looked it up on my map. It was just two blocks from Grant Avenue and less than a block from where Ned had parked his car. And close to the spot where he had been murdered.
I walked up a few steps to the front door of the row house, into a sheltered entryway. There were two buttons beside the intercom. Evidently, the house contained two apartments. I matched one of the buttons to the street address I had and pressed it.
The house had been here for a while, but it was freshly painted and well cared for. A green plant grew out of a pot on the landing.
"Who is it?" a female voice asked. I detected a slight accent, probably Chinese, even through the questionable sound quality of the intercom.
"My name is Karl Patterson," I said. "I'm a friend of James Buchanan."
"What do you want?"
That could be the stopper. However, I had nothing to lose. "I…I'd like to talk to you about Ned Mackay."
Silence. It appeared that I had struck out. Then, "Are you from the police?"
"No, ma'am. I am…I was a friend of Ned's." Better not say anything more.
Finally, the welcome sound of a click and the voice saying, "Come up the stairs."
I opened the door and found the stairs directly in front of me. They creaked as I ascended them. The dark brown color of the wooden stairs and paneled walls didn't lighten the gloom. Nor did several dim lights mounted on a wall.
The door at the top of the stairs opened, letting out welcome light from the room beyond. In the doorway stood a small woman with short, dark hair and bangs, wearing a skirt and blouse. I couldn't see her face clearly because her back was to the light, but it was round and could be Asian. The sound of opera emanated from beyond the doorway, featuring a man and woman dueling with their exquisite voices.
"How did you find me?" the woman asked as I climbed the steps toward her.
"Uh, it's a long story," I said, "but James didn't give me your name, if that's what you're thinking."
"I wouldn't expect him to," the woman said, holding the door open so I could precede her inside. "He wouldn't want to identify anyone who could bring him into this."
That was an interesting statement. I walked into a beautifully decorated room, with expensive furniture and trappings. The voices of the opera singers filled the parts of the room not occupied by furniture.
"I'll turn that down," the woman said, going over to a cabinet and twisting a button on an amplifier. "Would you like some tea, Mr. umm…"
"Patterson. Yes, if it's no trouble. And you are Flora Sung?"
"I am she." She gave me a smile that lit up her face and then disappeared into the next room. Her small size tempted one to describe her as cute, a word that is overused, but in her case it fit. I guessed that her age placed her in the same generation with Ned and James.
When she returned she caught me looking at a somewhat abstract painting on the wall.
"That's a Joan Miro original," she said. "I bought it one time when I was feeling giddy."
She ushered me to a seat on a large sofa, sat down beside me and poured tea into china cups.
"So, do the police know about me?" she asked.