Faces in the Fire (12 page)

“Yeah? What is it?” Corrine asked, staring at the back of Grace's head. At the thick, real hair.

“You're gonna think it's weird, but it's . . . I guess it's a memento of something I've been holding on to for a long time. Call it a good luck charm.”

Now Grace crumpled everything into the paper lining the top of the table, threw it into a garbage container somewhere out of Corrine's sight.

Well, it had to happen, didn't it? Everyone felt sorry for the Poor Cancer Victim at some point, decided they needed to offer advice or comfort. Corrine looked at the wonderful fish, a symbol of strength and perseverance, on her arm, and felt a stab of guilt. Accepting Grace's lucky charm would be the least she could do.

She flexed the arm, amazed that it didn't seem sore at all. In fact, it felt stronger. Come to think of it, she felt stronger, better, all over.

“Hang on just a second,” Grace said. She left the room and returned a few moments later, clutching a small plastic sandwich bag in her hands.

“What is it?” Corrine asked, taking the bag from her. Inside, she saw a napkin with a ten-digit number written on it: 1595544534.

“It's a . . . I don't know. I've held on to it for years now, and . . . anyway, I want you to have it. Sometime, after you've beaten this cancer, you'll hand it to someone else who needs a good luck charm.”

Corrine smiled.
After you've beaten this cancer.
She liked the sound of that. “It's
Fu
,” she said, clutching the plastic bag tightly in her hands.

“
Fu
?”

“Chinese symbol for good luck. So this is your symbol for good luck—your
Fu
.”

Grace smiled. “No, it's your
Fu
now.”

44.

Corrine was shocked to discover she'd spent more than four hours inside the tattoo shop, and it had felt like nothing so much as a fifteen-minute catnap.

She decided she was going to avoid cabs for a while, and she didn't feel like riding public transit, so she ambled down the street, enjoying the sunshine.

She thought about Marcus as she walked, wondering, not for the first time, what had happened to him. She'd done a couple Internet searches for his name a year after the whole accident, and found he'd been convicted of manslaughter for the deaths of Brad Franklin and Terrance Tompkins, but he would only serve a couple of years, thanks to a plea bargain.

Corrine had been surprised at her reaction. She expected she would feel rage or hostility toward Marcus, but instead, she felt . . . nothing. Not exactly nothing; in an odd way, she felt relieved Marcus would only serve limited time. Maybe he would go on and do something useful, actually help other people. He'd said something once about being a truck driver . . . maybe he could go back to that.

In the end, she couldn't feel anything but kinship for Marcus. He was, after all, a bottom-feeder like herself. Had been the one to give her the term
bottom-feeder
, in fact. So in a way, she owed her sense of self to Marcus.

Eventually, old thoughts tired her, and she hailed a cab after all. When it dropped her off at her building, she decided against offering a giant tip. One good deed a day was enough.

Safely cocooned in her apartment, she went back to work on the script for her next e-mail message, filling in blocks of ten-digit IP addresses that would relay it. She felt good, invigorated after the tattoo session; the catfish was a symbol of power, of triumph. She'd hold on to that as long as she could. Already, she felt a sense of calm she hadn't felt for so long. Maybe not ever at all. She was comfortable in her own skin, comfortable in who she was, comfortable in her journey, wherever it may take her. Even if it meant that journey would last only a few more months, dead-ended by cancer.

Grace's
Fu
? Maybe. Maybe it was. She pushed herself away from her computer, away from the next spam mail she was composing, her mind occupied by the gift Grace had given her. She dug through her bag, brought out the plastic baggie, peered at the napkin inside.

1595544534

A ten-digit number. An IP address. Why hadn't she seen that before?

She went back to her screen, hooked to the backbone of the Catfish Compound in China, and did a search on 159.554.45.34. After a few minutes she found it. A server somewhere in New Zealand, it looked like. She did a bit of exploring, testing the security; it looked like an old Unix box running an outdated version of Apache. She knew of several security vulnerabilities that would give her an open door.

She smiled, enjoying herself. Why not embrace the
Fu
? She could use some of Grace's
good luck, after all.

Half an hour later she had control of the IP address, rerouting all the traffic to one of her own servers. She sent a message to one of her test accounts, then flipped to her e-mail client to check.

It came through perfectly, followed immediately by another e-mail.

A spam e-mail.

Odd. She'd locked this e-mail address down tight; she never used it for outside correspondence of any kind, to keep it clean. Even as a SpamLord, her accounts weren't immune to other spam; in fact, it was something of a game among the SpamLord group, trying to hack each other's addresses, flood in-boxes.

She used this e-mail address for testing only; she'd never actually sent a message from it, let it relay over the vast connections of the Internet. And yet, she'd received a spam message.
Catfish Cancer Cure!!
the mail's subject line said, stopping her cold. She'd never seen this particular e-mail before, and yet its coincidences with her current condition were . . . well, like other recent events, they didn't seem like coincidences.

She opened the e-mail, letting the message load an image. Like many spams, the entire sales pitch was contained in an image, rather than in text, to help it bypass spam-blocking software.

Amazing cancer cure breakthrough!
the image said.
New
1500 milligram tablets, manufactured with GENUINE fatty
oils and extracts from catfish—a staple of Eastern medicine for
centuries. FIRST ORDER FREE!!!

Corrine opened the header information, sent a ping to her mail server, and traced the origin of the message. It came from the IP address she'd just activated. Odd; she was the only one controlling that address.

She looked at the napkin, the numbers scribbled on it, then back at the screen. Instead of clicking on the image to follow the order link, she copied the URL, opened her browser, masked her current IP address, and pasted the destination into a new window.

The browser chugged for a few seconds, bouncing the traffic, then resolved with an order screen.

She stared for a few minutes, wondering who might be behind this. At least five people she could think of, off the top of her head. Maybe one of the other SpamLords had discovered some new back door into her world, which meant she needed to discover the back door herself. She couldn't leave herself vulnerable.

She smiled.
Couldn't leave herself vulnerable.
Her life motto, wasn't it?

After further consideration, Corrine decided the best way to find the back door was to go down this new wormhole; she filled in order information using a fake name and address and billing information from one of the many credit card numbers she had on file. She clicked on the order button, then returned to her e-mail script.

She'd see where the package came from, track the shipping label, see if she could get a handle on who might be in her system. Yes, one of the other SpamLords was trying to mess with her mind.

But she was the smartest SpamLord of all. They would find that out, because she would continue to teach them.

She would not be a victim.

46.

The next morning, as she lay in bed, Corrine heard a solid thump at her door. At first she thought it was a knock, a single rap beckoning her. Then she realized something had actually hit the front door itself.

She waited a few minutes, slipped on some shorts and a T-shirt, and went to the door. A quick look through her peephole didn't show anyone, but she kept the chain secured, opening the door just a crack.

On the floor of the concrete walkway outside her apartment she saw a small square box with a multicolored label. Odd. She never received mail or packages at her real address, always getting shipments sent to fake names at vacant addresses around the greater Seattle area. It was better to do that, because as a SpamLord you might need to pack up and change your whole base of operations with just a few hours' notice. Like the IP addresses that bounced all of her messages, Corrine had to bounce from address to address herself to stay hidden.

She undid the chain lock, opened the door, grabbed the package, and closed the door again.

Inside her apartment, she shook the box. Something shifted inside. She went to the kitchen, retrieved a steak knife from the utensil drawer, cut through the packing tape, ripped off the top of the box. Inside, buried under some packing peanuts, sat a white bottle.
CATFISH CANCER CURE!
it declared in plain block letters on the label.

No FDA warnings. No manufacturer name. No nothing.

Corrine was puzzled. Yes, she'd ordered this—just yesterday, in fact—but she hadn't given her real name or her real address. And yet, here it was.

Mentally she started cataloging the names of the other SpamLords who might have the means to pull off this level of intrusion. There really were none. She was careful—maybe even a bit paranoid—about sharing any of her information with others. Even so-called friends. Be quiet, keep to yourself, don't stand out. The great lessons she'd learned on the traveling sales crew.

So if this wasn't from one of the other SpamLords, who could it be from? Really, there was no logical explanation.

Fu.

The word came to her, instantly and suddenly. It was
Fu
, it was good luck, it was exactly what Grace had talked about. Hadn't Grace said she'd held on to those numbers for a long time, waiting to share them with someone else who needed them? Hadn't Grace known, deep down, the power of those numbers, the
Fu
they represented?

Corrine was quite sure Grace knew all that.

She opened the top of the bottle, pulled out a plug of cotton, shook out a couple of the tablets. They looked like vitamins. Probably were.

She knew better, of course, than to order anything off spam e-mail. She knew better than to actually
use
any product ordered off spam e-mail.

And yet:
Fu
.

What was the worst that could happen? She'd die? She'd been concerned about the tattoo yesterday—she admired it now, glowing brightly in the morning sun spilling through the window—and that had been a smashing success.

Be impulsive.

She went to the sink, drew a glass of water, and swallowed three of the pills.

48.

Late that morning, her cell phone rang. It was Swain's office—specifically, the woman with the tight blouses—calling to schedule an appointment and tell her to drop by the lab at the hospital for her weekly blood tests. Tight Blouse informed her that Dr. Swain had cleared an hour this afternoon to talk to her about “next steps,” and if she went in right away for blood tests, he could look at the results in time for the appointment.

Yeah. Weekly blood tests. At least she could do those. She looked at her clock and headed toward the door. E-mails could wait. E-mails could always wait.

At the hospital she jotted her name on the sign-in sheet and took a chair. She picked up a copy of the morning's
Seattle Times
. The front-page story was yet another article about the firebug roaming the Greater Seattle area. Evidently he'd hit three separate businesses down in Federal Way last night. Over the past few months the firebug had struck at least two dozen buildings, and the police didn't seem to have any leads.

A few minutes later, one of the phlebotomists came out of the room at the back and called her name. Corrine stood and followed the woman to a row of chairs in the back room.

“My name's Leslie, and I'll be drawing some blood today,” the woman said, looking at her paperwork.

Swain would be proud; the woman didn't look at Corrine's face once. Leslie had drawn her blood at least three times in the last two months, but she never seemed to recognize Corrine. Modern health care.

“Can you tell me your full name?” Leslie asked.

Corrine gave it to her.

“And
your birth date?”

Corrine gave that to her as well.

Leslie nodded, then wrapped a band of rubber around Corrine's left arm. She studied the veins on the inside of Corrine's elbow for a few seconds, poked a needle into a vein, and attached a tube to collect the blood.

At least Leslie was good at what she did. Always got it on the first try. Corrine stared at the dark liquid squirting into the collection tube, absently wondering just how many lymphoma cells were crowding out the red blood cells of her own bloodstream. The lymphoma cells, when you thought about it, were something like the spam of the blood.

The needle suddenly reminded Corrine of Grace's tattoo gun, and she looked at the fresh tattoo on her right arm. The catfish peeked out of the sleeve of her T-shirt, reassuring her. Yes, whatever else might happen now, the catfish would be her constant companion. She was comforted by its presence.

Leslie pulled the full tube of blood from Corrine's arm, put a cotton ball over the point of entry, and asked Corrine to hold the cotton over the wound while she wrote the information on the tube: patient, date and time collected, doctor, tests ordered.

Corrine knew the whole routine, had been curious enough to ask about it the first time. But her interest had faded with each subsequent draw.

A few minutes later, she was on her way, forcing herself to think about her next batch of e-mails. It was her work, after all. It needed to be done.