"Screw you, Rusty," he says then. He heads out the door, then comes back, but only to grab the crate.
CHAPTER 43
Tommy, August 4-5, 2009
Tommy always wondered what would become of kids like Orestes Mauro, the PA office's evidence specialist, who dealt with digital equipment. Having lived this long, Tommy felt he should have some idea, but he really didn't think there was anybody like Orestes when he was young. The kid was smart enough and got his work done, albeit his own way. But Orestes lived a life of play. The buds to his iPod were in his ears at all times, except when he removed one to speak to somebody else. Whenever Tommy overheard Orestes talking in the hall, it was about online games and the latest releases for his Xbox. And most of his interest in computers treated the machine and the software as a multilevel puzzle, so the task at hand, whatever it was, was largely secondary to the beguiling enigma of how everything inside the box functioned. Work, as a boring necessity, was something Orestes acknowledged, as long as it did not last too long. He was a sweet, friendly kid. If he noticed you were there.
Orestes was visible in the evidence section, working over several cardboard boxes on which he was tapping out rhythms, when Tommy came through the door to the PA's office. It was close to seven p.m. He had been stuck in traffic far too long on his way back in from Morrisroe and the state work farm, and he'd finally pulled off to take surface streets the rest of the way home, which brought him past the County Building. He had already missed dinner with Dominga and Tomaso, so he decided to stop and pick up the files for his meeting at the court of appeals in the morning. He could take an extra half hour at home in the a.m. and give Dominga a little more time to sleep.
Catching sight of Orestes, he veered into the evidence room, a converted warehouse space behind the freight elevator. Evidence gathered by grand jury subpoena was required by law to remain in control of the PA's office, rather than the police, and it was boxed and cataloged here. When O saw Tommy coming, he turned a full circle on his toe, a little bit of Michael Jackson.
"Boss man!" He was always too loud with the buds in.
"Hey, O." Tommy motioned to his ears, and Orestes pulled one out. Tommy tapped his other side, too. Orestes complied but clearly expected something grave.
"T's up?"
"The Sabich case," Tommy answered.
Orestes groaned in response. "That the judge?"
"The judge," answered Tommy.
"Oh, man, that whole thing, that's just too fucked up," he said.
A fair analysis. Tommy had been thinking about Rusty all the way back. It had been completely unsettling to see him in that cell, but more to Tommy than Sabich from the appearances. Tom had anticipated that Rusty might have been depressed or goofy, like most of the guys in seg, but there was something about him that seemed freed. His hair was long and he had a prison beard, whiter than Tommy might have expected, so he looked like an island castaway. And he had the same air-you can't touch me. The worst has happened. Now you can't touch me. Even so, Sabich had remained himself. He probably hadn't lied to Tommy, but he'd spoken in his own way, careful, even cagey, about the words he was using, so he could tell himself he was being honest, but typical of Rusty, making sure only he really knew the truth. Which left Tommy in the same bind he'd been in with Rusty for decades now. What was the fucking truth, anyway?
"I'm still trying to figure out how they screwed around with the computer."
"Oh, man," said Orestes. "Can't figure that. Wasn't me, man. I know that." He laughed.
"Me neither. But I keep thinking there's something we missed. I'm wondering if maybe Sabich copped to the obstruction to protect his kid. Does that make any sense to you?"
"Okay," said Orestes. He took the extraordinary step of turning off his iPod and sat on a metal stool. "Nobody asked me, but remember that big meet we had after you all had been in court, once you knew the card was phony? And Milo was trippin about how nobody who was on the computer in Judge Mason's chambers-not Sabich or the kid or the former clerk-not any one of them had time to mess around and to do all the stuff it took to get the card on there. Remember?"
"Sure."
"And Jimmy B., he went off then about how Sabich must have snuck into the courthouse?"
"Right."
"But here's the thing. What if it was all of them? What if they were in this together, planting that card? One of them downloaded from a flash drive, and another ran Spy, and another edited the directory. Together all of them, even a couple of them, had the time."
Tommy grabbed his forehead. Of course. Maybe Orestes had a better future than he thought.
"So is that what you think happened?" Molto asked.
Orestes laughed out loud. "Dude," he said, "I don't have a clue. Computers, man, are always a trip. Ain't no one person who knows everything. That's why they're so cool."
Tommy contemplated this bit of philosophy. It was pretty sci-fi. Computers, O was saying, were already like people in the sense that you could never fully understand them.
"But if you were planting that card, is that how you would have done it?"
"Me?" O laughed again, a high-pitched musical sound. "Oh, I could have done it for sure. But that's me."
Orestes's casual confidence was slightly alarming. His job was to set up systems to ensure the evidence in his control was tamper-proof. Naturally, Tommy asked what he meant.
"Well, that's just how it rolled out. Like the night I was up there with Jimmy B. to take the wrapping off-"
"I thought that was in the morning, right before court?"
"Hey, man. Twelve p.m. to eight." Orestes laid a thumb on one of the vivid stripes in his shirt. "Gotta go to school in the a.m. Get an education. Make something of myself." Orestes did a rim shot on one of the cardboard boxes to reemphasize the point. "So I went down to Brand's office, because the PC was on the trial cart, and together we pulled off all the wrapping, which took like forever because we had initialed three or four layers, and then I get down to the components and when I looked at it all, it's like, Fuck me, this is messed up."
"Meaning?"
"Cause, you know, the evidence tape on the tower, it was across the power button. But the power button is recessed, like down? So there's like this itty-bitty space under the tape, and I tell Brand, like, 'Bad job, we done a bad job, you could power that baby up.' He's like, 'No way,' so I had one of my tools-" From his breast pocket Orestes produced a tiny driver, small enough to fix the screws in eyeglasses. "And I just run it up in there. Brand, man, he's my peeps, but he just about choked me. He's thinking I was gonna violate the tape. That was the day the chiquita showed up from the bank, and Brand was like, 'Whoa, coolio, it's way bad enough already.' I didn't do nothing. Just scared him. Gorvetich and them got all the tape off in the morning, no problem.
"But that's what I'm sayin. If I was going to mess with the computer, I'd have messed with it then."
"So you could have turned the computer on?"
"I didn't."
"I know you didn't, O. But you could have? The other components, like the keyboard and the monitor-they were still sealed, weren't they?"
"Totally, man. But the ports on the tower weren't taped. You coulda used another mouse or monitor that was compatible. There're only about a billion. That's why I was tripped out about it. But that's not what happened or nothin. It had all been wrapped up for months, anyway. The initials were there and everything, I'm just saying, since you ask, that's how I coulda done it. But I didn't, and Sabich and them-they did. But I don't know how. Rule one, man. What you don't know, you don't know. You just don't."
O had a great smile under the little fuzz that passed for a 'stache. He was a really smart kid, Tommy thought again. And as the years went on, he'd begin to realize what it was he didn't know.