And, although I related the story of the strange IM I had received through Joker just before the riot at the Muny, I didn’t tell him about the phone call I had received in my apartment just before the ERA raid. I didn’t want him to think I had gone around the bend, even if I could explain how I might have heard my own voice and Jamie’s over the phone. When Pearl asked me why I hadn’t returned to my apartment after I was released from ERA custody, I told him I was too frightened to go back to my place but had simply fled to my ex’s house in Webster instead.
Everything else came out, though, and when I was through he simply gazed at me, his fingers knitted together above his lap. After a few moments he picked up his phone and pushed a couple of buttons. “Craig? This is Dad … yeah, come up right away, I want you to do something for me.”
He put the phone back on its cradle and stood up. “When he gets here, I want to give him Joker so he can run some tests on it. The bastards might have messed with it somehow, and I don’t want you running around with a Trojan horse in your PT.”
The same thought had already occurred to me, so I pulled Joker out of my pocket. “I take it this means I’m not fired yet,” I said as I typed in the “chickenlegs” password.
“I don’t fire people, Gerry. I just make ’em quit.” Pearl walked around his desk and opened the door. “Now let’s go upstairs and see if that disk is still where you hid it.”
We met Jah outside Pearl’s office. He took Joker and went back downstairs to the photo lab, then Pearl and I climbed the stairs to the third floor.
My apartment was much as I had last seen it. The door was ajar; the desktop computer and the phone were still AWOL; along with the manuscript of my novel. I imagined some ERA officer at the stadium diligently reading the novel, trying to find hidden references within its pages. It would probably be the only audience the book would ever find; I hoped he liked the sex scenes, at least.
“I can’t tell whether this place has been ransacked or not,” Pearl murmured as he looked at my habitual mess.
“It’s a do-it-yourself job.” I walked into the bathroom, knelt on the tile floor, and peered beneath the toilet tank. The thin plastic case had gone undiscovered; it was still taped beneath the porcelain pony. I peeled away the tape and let the mini-disk drop into my hand, then held it up for Pearl to see. “We’re lucky,” I said.
“No luck to it,” he muttered. “They just didn’t have a containment suit at hand.” Pearl took the plastic case from my hand and gazed at it thoughtfully. “All that, to find what’s on this thing.”
He gave it back to me. “Give it to Jah and let him take a look at it,” he said quietly, folding his arms together. “He might be able to make something out of this sucker. Meanwhile, we’re going downstairs and see if we can get a line on those people from Tiptree.”
“Okay. Right …” Suddenly, I felt exhausted. For the last two days I had been punted from one side of the city to the other, and I didn’t have any real clues as to what was going on. I gazed at the unmade bed near the broken window. Only about twelve hours earlier I had been lying there dead asleep, more or less innocent of all that had been occurring just beyond my range of vision. And now …
“I’m like you,” Pearl said. “I don’t buy this story about one of their scientists going schizo and shooting people. If there’s some other reason why John was killed, then we’re going to get to the bottom of it.”
“Uh-huh. Yeah …”
He looked down at the floor, absently kicking aside an old beer bottle. “You’re assigned to this story, Gerry. I want to find out who killed one of our reporters, what he was trying to find out when he was killed, and why someone is shooting people in the street. You’re relieved of all other editorial responsibilities until then, understand?”
I nodded. “You want me to bring down the guy who killed John.”
He gave me a sharp glance. “Listen, kid: the worst thing a reporter can do is go out on story carrying a vendetta. I know John was your best friend, but you’ve got to put that behind you right now. You’ve got to-”
“Yeah, right. Remain objective.”
Pearl shook his head. “No. Objectivity is what you do when you’re writing the story itself. Keeping your head is what you do before that. If this is some sort of conspiracy, then the people who are involved are way ahead of you. They’ve got their tracks covered. Your only advantage right now is that they assume you’re stupid. Don’t give them a chance to think otherwise …”
He grinned. “At least until you come up from behind and take a bite out of their ass.”
I looked up at him. In that moment our eyes met, and we were for that instant completely simpatico. All talk of journalistic objectivity aside, there was only one thing we both wanted.
“C’mon,” Pearl said as he turned to walk toward the door. “Let’s go to work.”
15
(Friday, 10:21 A.M.)
We began by trying to get a lead on Beryl Hinckley.
We didn’t have anything to go on at first; her number wasn’t listed in the phone book. Ditto for Richard Payson-Smith, our alleged laser sniper, and although there were four Jeff Morgans listed in the white pages, phone calls placed to three of the numbers quickly established that none of them belonged to our man.
The fourth didn’t pick up, but when the answering machine came on after the second buzz, a still picture appeared on the screen; it was the same person in the photo Barris had showed me. “Hi, this is Jeff” the recorded voice said. “I’m not available right now, but if you care to leave your name and number, I’ll get back to you as soon as I can …” I hung up before the beep. If Morgan was on the run, then he wouldn’t be calling me back, but any message I left could tip off the bad guys that I was searching for him.
I then made three successive calls to the Tiptree Corporation, asking the switchboard to connect me with Hinckley, Payson-Smith, or Morgan; I switched off my phone’s camera when I made these calls. On each try, the computer-generated woman on the screen informed me that none of the three were “available at this time.” Remembering that Tiptree employees wore smartbadges that would pinpoint someone’s location in the complex, every time I called I made up a different excuse for being adamant: a relative phoning Hinckley to tell her about a sudden death in the family, an insurance claims adjuster for Payson-Smith, a dental assistant calling to tell Morgan that next week’s appointment had to be changed. On each occasion, the computer put me on hold, only to come back a few moments later to tell me that none of the three were at the company offices today.
This confirmed my suspicion that the three surviving members of the Ruby Fulcrum team had taken a powder. I didn’t accept the virtual receptionist’s invitation to leave voice-mail messages for any of them; I had a hunch that none of them would be coming back to work anytime soon.
Not long ago, this might have signaled a dead end for a reporter on the trail of a missing person, but Pearl had his own resources. While I was taking the slow boat to China, he had already boarded an SST.
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