And when the memories hit the original, he'd had a coronary of his own. But the "real" Harford didn't die.
* * *
It was an interesting report, but it didn't have the sort of information I needed. So I went to Gold's and worked out on the Nautilus equipment, then sat in the sauna and cooked out what remained of the tension. When I left, I knew what I was going to do next. I called Buddy Ballenger from a pay phone outside Morey's. I doubted he had a program he could trace the call with through our deadwall, but why take a chance?
A receptionist answered. "I need to speak with Reverend Ballenger personally," I told her.
Her sweetie-pie voice dripped Georgia honeysuckle. "Whom may I say is calling?"
"Mr. Smith." It wasn't a complete lie. In Finnish, a seppanen is a smith.
"And what may I tell him this concerns?"
"It concerns a young woman named Misti. And a Life-Tex mask in a Pussycat Theater. He'll know what I'm talking about."
She didn't answer, just put me on hold. The recorded music was of the McArdle family singing something about letting Jesus hold you in his loving arms. Love was foreign to the arms that had held Misti Innocenza. After a minute or so, Ballenger's appointments secretary came on the line, his voice challenging. I repeated what I'd told the receptionist, which got me Ballenger. I repeated myself again.
"I'm sorry," Ballenger said, "but I don't know anything about any Life-Tex mask, or anyone named Misti. If you're an attorney, I recommend you get in touch with my lawyer."
He didn't hang up though, which validated that he was our masked man. "Interesting," I said. "I have the mask. It was found in the Pussycat Theater on Hollywood Boulevard last October. The feature was In Hiding, starring Misti Innocenza. And I have a computer reconstruction of the face the mask was made for. Your face." I paused, then added, "Masks always pick up epidermal cells when they're worn; handy for DNA matches.
"But more important, I've spoken to Ms. Innocenza, and she knows you very well. Better than she wanted to."
There was a long lag before he answered. "That's impossible."
"You mean because she's dead? You're a religious man, reverend. You believe in souls. And some souls come back, looking for vengeance. If you're smart, you'll meet with me, and we'll talk about what it'll take to square things with her."
For about a minute, all I could hear was breathing. I think he hyperventilated. Finally he spoke again. "There's a restaurant at Marina del Rey, called Leon's, on Eton just west of the yacht club. We could meet there."
"What time?"
"I don't know your name."
"You don't need to. Not now, anyway. I'm six-one, 235 pounds, mean face, sandy hair. Thirty-two years old. You'll recognize me. What time?"
"Eight this evening," he said.
I told him fine, then hung up, walked to our building, and took the stairs to our floor, the ninth. It's a good leg/lung/heart workout, if you don't mind a damp tee shirt. I half expected Ballenger to unknowingly give me a lead that afternoon. If he did, I'd probably stand him up that evening. Let him sweat a little. He'd earned it.
8
I waited a bit, then used our case access to get into the Data Center's statewide phone records. It seemed to me Ballenger would have phoned someone after my call, asking for advice. At least. And sure as hell, immediately after we'd talked, he'd phoned someone named Charles A. Scheele.
The name meant nothing to me, but that was correctable. The California Data Center is Prudential's major information source, but its data are mostly in-state governmental and utilities records; stuff you don't find in libraries. Beyond that, virtually everything in paper libraries worldwide, along with an enormous amount of government and university information never otherwise published, has been scanned into the huge interlibrary public "Data Ocean." Some of it's restricted, requiring various authorizations and often cross-requirements for access, depending on the nature and degree of confidentiality. But a lot of what I found on Scheele was open—in newspapers for instance, and his high school and college yearbooks.
He was the son of a wealthy Bay Area corporate executive and his socialite wife, and like Ballenger, Scheele had grown up a caricature. In his case a caricature of a nerd. His IQ was 179, he'd gotten his BS in physics from Cal Tech at age eighteen, summa cum laude, and at twenty his MS from Stanford in electronics. Two years later he'd completed most of his work toward a Ph.D. in physics at Stanford, when he was accused of injecting a coed with an illegal aphrodisiac, Take Me. The drug hadn't worked as intended. Instead, interacting with psychological factors, it had filled the young woman with rage and strength, and she'd clawed, punched, and kicked the snot out of him—then knocked him unconscious with a heavy vase, and called 911. While waiting for the police, she'd trashed Scheele's living room.
The police lab verified the injection, and Scheele, in the hospital with his injuries, was charged with attempted chemical rape. Meanwhile the local and university media had a ball with the story, making him a laughingstock. Taking advantage of Scheele's injuries and humiliation, his lawyer had gotten him off with a suspended sentence and two hundred hours of community service. Scheele was already wealthy by ordinary standards, from playing the stock market with money his father had given him, and he'd paid the coed an unknown sum to settle her civil suit out of court.
He'd dropped out of school then, and over the years since, had gotten or applied for seven major patents for industrial processes. Which presumably added considerably to his wealth, because he'd built a home on five acres in a very expensive, high-security development near Montecito. I knew the area from the Arthur Ashkenazi murder case.
I couldn't help wondering what Scheele might have invented and kept secret.
* * *
So I sent a weasel into the Web again, to learn who Scheele communicated with besides Ballenger. I was particularly interested in scientists and engineers, but anything was welcome. The Web, of course, has botphages circulating constantly, to destroy bots in restricted areas, but they'd ignore my weasel with its instantly verifiable forensic code. Someone like Scheele, though, would probably post cyberpickets to detect, report, and/or destroy bots interested in him, at the same time letting Scheele know someone was snooping him. Really sophisticated pickets could even trace their origins.
On the other hand, if a picket did intercept my weasel, I'd know where, in the convoluted "space-time" of the cybermatrix, it had happened. Which would give me a good idea of whether the picket was actually Scheele's.
9
Meanwhile Scheele seemed to be the man who somehow or other could split time lines to order. Or whatever had been done; I had a real problem with the concept of splitting time lines, and memories jumping from one to the other. If I was susceptible to headaches, this case would give me one.
I went to Carlos' office and told him what I'd learned. Then he called Joe, and I went over it again. We didn't have anything either the police or Haugen could go to court with, and none of us could see any prospects, but you never know. So Joe applied to the Justice Department for a contingency contract, on the basis that the Defense Department's William Harford might have been the victim of a criminal conspiracy.