She looked at him, too, and wondered if life would ruin his sweetness as he got older. She felt sure it would, and got up from the bed.
"What you've got to do is call the phone company first thing in the morning," she advised him.
"Tell them you want Caller ID. This little box won't do you a bit of good until they give you that service, okay?"
He watched her, saying nothing at first. Then it occurred to him, "Is it expensive?"
"You can manage it. Who's been hitting on you at work?" she wanted to know as she moved closer to the door.
"Axel, a couple women back in composing." He shrugged.
"I don't know, don't notice." He shrugged again.
"Anybody able to get into your computer basket?" she said as more thunder cracked.
"I don't see how."
West looked at his computer.
"I'm going to move that to my apartment. I didn't have room in my car the other day," he volunteered.
"Maybe you could write your next story on it," she said.
Brazil continued to watch her. He lay back on the bed, hands behind his head.
"Wouldn't do any good," he said.
"Still has to go into the newspaper computer one way or another."
"What if you changed your password?" West asked, slipping her hands in her pockets and leaning against the wall.
"We already did."
Lightning flashed, rain and wind ripping through trees.
"We?" West said.
W Brenda Bond was sitting at her keyboard in her room of mainframes, working on Sunday because what else did she have to do? There was little life held for her. She wore prescription glasses in expensive black Modo frames, because Tommy Axel looked good in his. She imitated him in other ways, as well, since the music critic looked like Matt Dillon, and was clearly cool. System Analyst Bond was going through miles of printouts, and was not pleased by whatever she was finding.
The general architecture of the newspaper's computerized mail system simply had to be reconfigured. What she wanted was plain and not so much to ask, and she was tired of trying to convince Panesa through presentations that the publisher obviously never even bothered to look at. Bond's basic argument was this: When a user sent a mail message for the UA to relay to the local MTA, the MTA then routed the message to the next MTA, which then routed it to the next MTA, and the next, until the message reached the final MTA on the destination system. With a Magic Marker, Brenda Bond had vividly depicted this in Figure 5. 1, with colorful dashed lines and arrows showing possible communication paths between MTAs and UAs.
Bond's ruminations crystallized and she stopped what she was doing.
She was startled and confused as Deputy Chief Virginia West, in uniform, suddenly walked in at quarter past three. West could see that Bond was a cowardly little worm, middle-aged, and exactly fitting the profile of people who set fires, sent bombs by mail, tampered with products like painkillers and eye drops and harassed others with hate notes and anonymous ugly calls over the telephone. West pulled up a chair, and turned it backwards, straddling it, arms resting on the back of it, like a guy.
"You know it's interesting," West thoughtfully began.
"Most people assume if they use a cellular phone, the calls can't be traced. What they don't realize is calls come back to a tower. These towers cover sectors that are only a mile square."
Bond was beginning to tremble, the bluff working.
"A certain young male reporter has been getting obscene phone calls," West went on, 'and guess what? " She paused pointedly.
"They come back to the same sector you live in, Ms Bond."
"I, I, I…" Bond stammered, visions of jail dancing through her head.
"But it's breaking into his computer basket that bothers me." West's voice got harder, police leather creaking as she shifted in the chair.
"Now that's a crime. Leaking his stories to Channel Three. Imagine! It would be like someone stealing your programs and selling them to the competition."
"No!" Bond blurted.
"No! I never sold anything!"
"So you gave stories to Webb."
"No!" Bond panicked.
"I never talked to him. I was just helping the police."
For an instant, West was quiet. She wasn't expecting this.
"What police?" she asked.
"Deputy Chief Goode told me to." Bond confessed all, out of fright.
"She said it was part of an undercover departmental operation."
The chair scraped as West got up. It was when she called Hammer's home that she learned the terrible news about Seth and felt sick.
"Oh my God," West said to Jude, who had answered the phone.
"I had no idea. I don't want to bother her. Is there anything at all I can do?"
Hammer took the phone away from her caretaking son.
"Jude, it's all right," she said to him, patting his shoulder.
"Virginia?" she said.
W Goode was watching a videotape of True Lies, and relaxing on the couch with her gas fire lit and the air conditioning on high, waiting for Webb to call. He had promised to sneak by before the six o'clock news, and she was getting anxious. If he didn't show up within minutes, there wouldn't be time to do or say a thing. When the phone rang, she snatched it up as if all in life depended on whoever it was.
Goode was not expecting Chief Hammer. Goode was not expecting Hammer to somberly tell her that Seth had died, and she, the boss, would see Goode in Goode's office at four-thirty sharp. Goode jumped off the couch, energized and euphoric. This could mean but one thing.
Hammer was taking a long leave to get her pathetic affairs in order, and she was naming Goode acting chief.
Hammer had quite another scenario in mind for Deputy Chief Jeannie Goode. Although those around Hammer did not entirely understand how she could think of work at a time like this, in fact, nothing could have been more therapeutic for Hammer. Her mind cleared. She woke up, anger a blue flame burning through her veins. She felt she could vaporize someone just by looking at him, as she dressed in gray polished cotton slacks and blazer, a gray silk blouse, and pearls. She worked on her hair, and sprayed a light mist of Hermes on her wrists.
Chief Judy Hammer went out to her midnight-blue police car, and flicked on wipers to slough out leaves knocked down by rain. She backed out of her drive, and turned onto Pine Street as sun broke through moiling clouds. A lump formed in her throat, and she swallowed hard. Tears burned her eyes, and she blinked and took a deep breath, as she saw her street and the world around it, for the first time, without him. Nothing looked different, but it was. Oh, it was. She took deep breaths as she drove, and her heart felt bruised while her blood roared for righteous revenge. Goode could not have picked a worse time to pull such a stunt and get caught, of this Hammer was certain.
Goode was filled with confidence and self-importance, and she didn't see any point in putting on her uniform or a suit that might have suggested respect and consideration for her troubled leader. Instead, Goode drove back down town, dressed in the short khaki skirt and T-shirt she had been in all day, waiting for Webb, who was busy working in the yard, his wife keeping a close eye on him these days. Goode parked her Miata in her assigned spot, and was more arrogant than usual to all she met as she took the elevator to the third floor, where her fine office was just around the corner from the suite that soon would be hers.
She shut her door and began her usual routine of dialing Webb's number and hanging up if someone other than the handsome news reporter answered. Goode enjoyed a feature on her police line that scrambled signals and rendered Caller ID useless. She was hanging up on Webb's wife when Goode's door suddenly flew open. Chief Hammer walked in, about to live up to her name. Goode's first reaction was how sharp her boss looked in gray. Goode's second and final reaction was that Hammer did not seem to be in mourning as she strode to the desk and snatched up Goode's brass nameplate.
"You're fired," Hammer said in a voice not to be questioned