“Hmm? Oh, this …” I glanced down at the camera. “Sort of a new gig. I’m working for the Big Muddy Inquirernow. Switched over to photojournalism.”
“Uh-huh. I see.” He frowned and made a show of looking closely at my badge. “You must have changed your name, too … or does Craig Bailey write columns under your byline?”
I felt my face grow warm. He grinned at me. I had made a big lie and he had caught me in it. I made a sheepish, well-shucky-darn kind of shrug and changed the subject. “So … how’s everything in Massachusetts these days?”
Huygens looked me straight in the eye. “I wouldn’t know, Gerry,” he said. “I quit CybeServe and moved to St. Louis about six months ago.”
“Oh, really?”
“Oh, really.” He nodded his head. “I’m working for Tiptree now. Director of public relations.” The grin became a taut, humorless smile. “Remember what I told you? We’re from the same hometown.”
More surprises, and just a little less pleasant than the first one. Yeah, Huygens had told me that, two years ago when I had first spoken to him on the phone, back when he had held the same job for CybeServe Electronics in Framingham and I had been a staffer for an alternative paper in Boston. Back then, of course, I hadn’t known what sort of eel I was dealing with, or how he’d eventually try to destroy my career. Damn near succeeded, too.
“Well, well,” I said. “Like a bad penny …”
The smile disappeared altogether. Huygens cocked his head sideways as he peered closely at me. “Excuse me? I didn’t quite get that-”
“Never mind. Just a passing thought.” I coughed into my hand again. “So … what high school did you go to?”
It’s an old St. Louis line, akin to asking a New Englander about the weather, but Huygens didn’t bite. Over his shoulder, I spotted John halfway across the room, making his way through the crowd with a drink in his hand. Probably a ginger ale, which was unfortunate; I could have used a shot of straight whiskey right then. He caught my eye, gave me a one-finger high sign, and started toward us.
“Hmm.” Huygens’s thick lips pursed together. “Y’know, Gerry, to be quite honest, if I had wanted you to be here, I would have sent you an invitation-”
“Things were tight at the office,” I began. “Craig was sort of busy, so I-”
“Covered for him, right.” He pretended to rub a dust mote out of his left eye. I recognized the gesture; it was something he always did just before he asked you to bend over and drop your britches. “Well, I might have overlooked it, us being old acquaintances and all, but you see … well, I just received a complaint from one of our guests.”
“Oh?” John was still making his serpentine way through the mob; the cavalry was taking forever to get here. “From whom?”
“Steve Estes. He said …” He shrugged. “Well, you know these politicians. They don’t like to be photographed without prior permission. That’s what brought me over here in the first place.”
“Oh, no,” I said. “Of course not. After all, if just anyone was able to take their picture, they might actually be accountable to the public.”
Huygens nodded agreeably. “Well, yes, there’s that … but nonetheless, Mr. Estes is an invited guest and you’re not …”
I shrugged off-handedly. “Sure, I understand, but Steve shouldn’t worry about the shot I took of him. It probably won’t come out anyway.”
Huygens blessed me with a blank, mildly bewildered look. “After all,” I continued, “old Transylvanian legends claim that vampires can’t be photographed.”
Assholes are always the best straight men: they don’t have a good sense of humor. As his expression turned cold a few moments before John arrived at my side, I raised the camera to my face. “Let’s test that,” I said, focusing on Huygens’s wattled chin. “Say cheese …”
Applause from the audience as McLaughlin wrapped up his speech. It could have been an appreciation for my jab. Now it was Huygens’s turn to make like a boiled lobster.
The gag didn’t last long. The picture I took was of him reaching into his breast pocket to pull out his PT and tap in the codes that negated the electronic passwords embedded in our smartbadges. John walked right into the middle of the whole scene.
“Hey, Gerry,” he said. “Did you get something to eat?”
“The crow’s good,” I murmured as I lowered the camera. “Just ask my friend here.”
Huygens simply stared at me. A moment later, two plainclothes security guards materialized behind John and me; they must have been hovering nearby, waiting for Huygens’s signal. They were on us before I had a chance to compliment Huygens on his choice of catering service.
“Get ’em out of here,” Huygens said to the large gentlemen who had descended upon us. “See you around, Gerry.”
He didn’t even bother to look at me before he turned his back on us and waddled back into the crowd.
John looked confused as a pair of massive hands clamped onto his shoulders. “Excuse me, but is there a problem?”
“Yes, sir,” one of the mutts said. “You are.” No one at the reception noticed our sudden departure. They were too busy applauding the videowall as the Endeavour,spewing smoke and fire, rose from its launch pad into a perfect blue Floridian sky.
7
(Thursday, 12:05 P.M.)
Tiptree’s rent-a-goons escorted us out the front door, where they confiscated our smartbadges and pointed the way to the road. John and I didn’t say anything to each other until we reached his car and had driven out of the company parking lot. When we had passed through the front gate and were heading back down Clayton Road toward the highway, though, the first thing John wanted from me wasn’t an apology.
“Okay, what was that all about?” he asked. “I thought you were just talking to that guy.”
He wasn’t pissed off so much as he was bewildered. I felt a headache coming on, so I lowered my seat-back to a prone position and gently rubbed my eyes with my knuckles.
“He said it was because I had taken a picture of Steve Estes,” I said, “but he was just looking for an excuse. I could have complained about the catering and he would have tossed me out just the same.” I let out my breath. “He had no problem with you. You just happened to be with me, and that made you an accessory. Sorry, but that’s the way it is.”
“Hmm … well, don’t worry about it. What’s done is done.” He stopped to let a mini-cat rumble across the road in front of us; the machine was carrying a load of broken cinderblocks away from a collapsed convenience store. The flagman waved us on, and John stepped on the pedal again. “So you think he did that just to get rid of us? I don’t-”
“For the record,” I went on, “the jerk’s name is Paul Huygens.” I hesitated. “He used to work for CybeServe, maker of the fine line of CybeServe home VR products … specifically, the VidMaxx Dataroom. Ring any bells with you?” John’s face was blank for a moment, then Big Ben tolled the midnight hour. He cast a sharp look at me. “I’ll be darned,” he said slowly. “Is that the guy who got you canned at the Clarion?”
“One and the same, dude.” I gazed out the window at the ruins of a collapsed subdivision, remembering an unsigned note that had been faxed to me only a few years ago. “One and the same …”
Time for another history lesson. Today’s lecture is how Gerry Rosen, ace investigative reporter, once again tried to get a good story and, not incidentally, save a few lives, but instead ended up losing his job. Take notes; there will be a quiz on this at the end of the postmodern era.
Three years before, I was working as a staff writer for another weekly alternative newspaper, this one the Back Bay Clarion,a muckraking little rag published in Boston. I had been assigned by my editor to follow up on a number of complaints against a medium-size electronics company based in Framingham, a Boston suburb that has been the heart of the East Coast computer industry since the early eighties. As you may have guessed, this was CybeServe.