The Answer Man (9 page)

“That's not necessary.”

She looked at the frosty roll of bills. “This would upset him. He would wonder how you got it. Just as I wonder.”

“I told you—”

“I don't believe you,” she said sharply.

Ken nodded. He had rarely seen Tina angry. She was usually so patient, so understanding.

“Tell me this,” she said. “Is there any reason we should be ashamed to use this money?”

Ken thought for a moment. “No. No one was hurt, physically or financially. Take it. You need it.”

“Yes, we do. If we didn't, I would throw it back in your face.”

“Yes, I believe you would.”

Outside Bobby and Tina's house, a man sat in a white Acura Legend sedan. Waiting. Watching.

Ken finally walked outside, climbed into his MG, and drove away. After the MG turned the corner, the Acura followed.

The driver had done his homework. On the seat next to him was a thin stack of photocopied map pages, each with highlighted routes to Ken's usual haunts. To his office. To his apartment. To the jogging trail. To Elwood's Pub. In the unlikely event that the man lost his trail, he could use the maps to guess where Ken was heading.

Now, he supposed, Ken was heading home.

But maybe not. Maybe tonight was the night that Ken Parker would make all this shit worthwhile.

The MG swerved into a side street. The man gunned the engine on his Acura and sped past. Had Parker noticed he was being followed?

The man turned at the next street and cut his lights. After a minute, Ken's MG flew past on the main road. The man sighed. He'd have to be more careful. Ken had probably spotted him. Probably thought he was being followed by a cop.

The man chuckled. Ken Parker should be so lucky.

H
ound Dog lowered her plastic tongs and moved the print paper around in the developing bath. She checked her watch. Not much longer.

She was tucked away in a corner of the mobile home she shared with Mark, her boyfriend. The makeshift darkroom was fashioned from black tarps draped over a workbench, and she huddled inside, working in the illumination of a red fifteen-watt bulb. The trailer was hot on this sunny morning. The heat was stifling under the tarps.

She could hear Mark working out with his weights, and his every rep rattled the entire mobile home and sent ripples through the photo tray chemicals. She squinted to get a better look at the print materializing before her. It was from a crime scene a few nights before. There was nothing remarkable about it except for Myth Daniels's presence.

The woman's distinct features came into view as Hound Dog stared at the print. She lifted it up, shook it, and slid out from under the darkroom's canvas walls.

Mark ended his set and wiped his forehead with a towel. “What'd you get?”

“Aah, I couldn't get a good shot of the body.”

“Too bad.”

He was being sarcastic. He claimed to support her unusual avocation, but she knew he would never understand it. Then again, she wasn't sure she understood it herself.

She showed him the photo, and his brows lifted. “Man…” He gave a low whistle. “Who is
that
?”

“You're starting to drool.”

The woman was beautiful, she had to admit. And Mark was not easily impressed. He worked with dozens of gorgeous women at the city's most popular nude dancing bar, the Gold Club. Mark was a bouncer.

Hound Dog marveled at how incredible Myth Daniels looked in less-than-ideal conditions. The grainy black-and-white photo looked like a perfume ad from a fashion magazine. Hound Dog frowned. “Does she look familiar to you?”

“Should she?”

“I don't know. I saw her in the newspaper last week, and I thought I'd seen her somewhere before.”

“And you didn't point her out to me?”

“I'm serious. I know I've seen that face.”

“Hmm. Is she a cop?”

“No. She was the dead guy's lawyer. Her name's Myth Daniels. Maybe I've seen her in someone's book. I think I'll make a low-contrast print of this and fax it out to the network.”

The “network” consisted of scores of scanner geeks all over the country who regularly sent one another their favorite shots via fax machines. Some even scanned their images into computer files, so hundreds could then be transmitted almost instantaneously. Hound Dog was saddled with a regular manual-feed fax machine, which limited her to one transmission every two minutes.

Mark made a face. “I guess this means you're gonna tie up the phone all night.”

“I told you I'd pay for another line.”

“Nah. You can't afford it. I'll make my calls now, before you start.”

He kissed her and gestured toward the photo. “You're more beautiful than she could ever be.”

Hound Dog smiled. “You lie very well, Mark.”

Ken threw the yellow pages down on his living room coffee table and thumbed through it. Although he was not up on the latest in information-age technology, he knew there were a few data-recovery services in the city that specialized in retrieving information lost on malfunctioning computer systems. If Sabini had indeed “almost lost weeks of work,” perhaps one of these services had restored Sabini's files.

If so, perhaps
they
had access to the information they'd need to rip off Sabini's company.

It was a long shot, but what did he have to lose?

He'd had a restless night, brought on by the nagging feeling that he had been followed the evening before. He thought he had twice spotted the white Acura.

Stop being paranoid, he told himself. Those cars are a dime a dozen.

He found the “Computer Repairs and Service” heading. Only six companies were listed. Ken dialed the first and listened to the receptionist's chirpy greeting.

“Infotron. We're here to help!”

“I hope so,” Ken said. “I have a laptop that died on me. There's some stuff on it I need to have. A buddy of mine was there a while back and he raves about you guys.”

“Good!”

“The thing is, I can't remember the guy's name who helped my friend. Do you have any way of telling me?”

“Sure. What's your friend's name?”

“Burton Sabini.”

Ken heard the clicking of a keyboard as the receptionist looked up the name. “I'm sorry, sir. We have no record of a customer by that name.”

Ken hung up and tried the next listing. And the one after that. And the one after that.

On the fourth listing, the cooperative receptionist suddenly turned chilly when Ken mentioned Sabini's name. “I'm sorry, sir,” she said. “Our clients' names are strictly confidential.”

Bingo.

“He
told
me he went there,” Ken said. “I'm not asking you to give me his name. I just want the guy who helped him.”

“I can't confirm anything you're saying.”

“Fine,” Ken said with an exasperated sigh. “I'm coming in with my laptop.” He chose his words carefully. “Can I make an appointment with the technician you think I'll be most comfortable with?”

The receptionist got it. “I have a feeling you'll be very happy with Dennis Keogler.”

Ken made an appointment for the next morning.

“It's around here somewhere,” Margot said as she shone her flashlight into the darkest corner of her basement.

Ken squinted to see past the furniture and boxes stacked against a concrete wall. He yanked the light fixture chain above him, but the bulb remained dark.

“That light hasn't worked for years,” Margot said. “Here. Help me move this.”

Ken lifted a box off a white wicker laundry basket, which he remembered from his married days. The basket, along with several of the other items here, came from the town house he and Margot had lived in on South Cobb Drive. Funny how a tacky piece from Pier One could take him back. Before he could get too nostalgic, Margot flipped open the lid and directed her flashlight inside.

“Ah-ha!” She reached in and pulled out her old laptop, yanking the power adapter up by its white cord.

Ken took the computer and blew away a layer of dust.

“I don't know what good it'll do you,” she said. “It's a 286. A relic. It can't even run Windows.”

“That's okay. How much do you want for it?”

“Oh, please. You're doing us a favor by carting it away. I was going to give it to the Salvation Army.”

“Thanks.” He tucked the laptop under his arm. “Is Bill at work?”

“Naturally. I'd almost rather he was having an affair. At least then he wouldn't be so stressed all the time.”

“No, but
you
would be.”

“Maybe.” Margot sighed. “Bill and I have been out of sync lately. I sometimes wonder if we're going to make it.”

It took Ken a moment to register what she was saying. “What happened?”

“Nothing happened. Nothing I can point to anyway. Sometimes I think we've outgrown each other, except…” She sighed. “I can't see that we've actually done any growing.”

“Maybe
that's
your problem.”

“I don't know what our problem is. We don't connect the way we used to. I want to work on it, but I don't even know where to start. It scares me, Ken.” He could hear a nasal pinch in her voice as she became more upset. “It makes me wonder if I'll
ever
be able to do this right.”

“How long have you felt this way?”

“A few weeks, a few months, I don't know. At first I tried to tell myself it was just a phase we were going through. But it just isn't the same. Sometimes it feels like we're just roommates who have sex.”

“And how is the sex?”

“Great.”

“Just checking.”

“When I'm with him— It's so strange. I've tried to put my finger on it. For a while it felt as if I were with another person. But that wasn't true, not really. I feel as if
I'm
someone else when I'm with him. Does that make any sense?”

He nodded.

“I don't like feeling that way,” she said. “It's not his fault. It's mine. I just don't know what I'm going to do about it.”

“Have you told Bill any of this?”

“It's not clear enough in my own mind yet.”

“It sounds like it's very clear to you.”

She shook her head in frustration. “Is there something
wrong with me, Ken? Am I just incapable of sustaining a long-term relationship?”

“You're asking
me
?”

“I don't know. Maybe I'm just running away from my problems.”

“No.”

“Then maybe you don't know me well enough.”

“I know you better than anyone.”

She looked up at him as he drew her into his arms. “You do, don't you?”

He nodded.

The hug began as a purely platonic gesture, but he began to feel something else. He thought she was feeling it too, as their bodies pressed together in the dark basement.

She looked at the knickknacks from her and Ken's life together. “We did have some fun times, didn't we?”

“We still do.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Yeah, we had some fun times.”

They went upstairs, and Margot walked Ken to the door. He waved good-bye as he headed down the driveway to his car.

Damn, he thought. Was the whole world going down the tubes?

It bothered him to see Margot so out of sorts. She was the one person he knew who seemed to have her act together; when she was off kilter, the whole world seemed slightly askew. He knew it was unfair to deny Margot the right to her own neuroses, but it still tore him up.

He leaned against his car. For the first time in a long while, he found himself wrestling with his feelings for her. His friendship with Margot was a source of pride. It had not been easy to get to this point, making that leap from husband to friend. “
I
couldn't handle that” was a popular refrain among friends and acquaintances. But he
could
handle it. Or at least he thought he could.

Today she needed him, and that stirred something.
There was a tingling, a charge, between them. The old chemistry.

Ken glanced back to make sure Margot had gone back into the house.

He threw the laptop onto the ground and stomped on it with his heel, cracking the computer's hard plastic casing. He picked it up and tossed it into his car before jumping behind the wheel.

“Man, did you drop it off a building?”

Dennis Keogler sat at his cluttered workbench, holding the shattered laptop computer at eye level. A piece of the broken casing fell to the floor.

Ken shook his head. “Airline baggage handlers. You should see what my suitcase looks like.”

“Did the airline make good with you?”

“I think so. Depends on how much you charge me.”

Keogler smiled. The guy couldn't have been much older than twenty, gangly but okay-looking. The data recovery specialist worked in the back room of the small downtown shop, where three other technicians toiled over their workbenches. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, and thunderous rap music boomed from a portable stereo.

“It won't be cheap,” Keogler said. “But I'll see what I can do.”

“If it's anything like the job you did for Burton Sabini, I'll be happy.”

“You knew Burton Sabini?”

“Yeah.”

“I read about what happened to him. Too bad. He was a nice guy.”

“Yeah, he was. He said you did a great job for him.”

Keogler shrugged.

“Tell me something,” Ken said. “In what form will you give me the data you recover from this computer?”

“Any way you want. I can put it on a new hard drive, floppies, backup cartridges, you name it.”

It was time to see what Keogler was made of. Ken leaned close and spoke quietly. “And how will you give me the information that was on Burton Sabini's computer?”

Keogler stared at Ken. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, you made a copy of his stuff, didn't you?”

“Why would I do that?”

“
You
tell
me.
”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

Ken studied the techie. Keogler swallowed hard. His eyes darted away. He began to breathe through his mouth.

Gotcha!

“Knock it off,” Ken said. “You're going to pull the files from this computer, and I'm going to pay through the nose for it. Then you're going to give me the files you pulled from Sabini's computer, and I'm going to pay you much, much more. Right?”

Keogler didn't look at Ken. He stared down at his workbench. “Let's go outside,” the kid mumbled.

Ken followed him to a small back patio next to the Dumpster. Keogler paced back and forth.

“Relax,” Ken said.

“I can't. Too much diet Mountain Dew. What do you want Sabini's stuff for?”

“A competitive edge.”

“Against who?”

“What do you care?”

“Listen, there's no memo that says ‘By the way, I hid the twelve million under Centennial Olympic Park.' ”

“I didn't expect there would be.”

Keogler stopped pacing. “Was he really a friend of yours?”

“Yeah, I knew him.”

“I can put everything of his on a couple of ZIP cartridges. How much are they worth to you?”

“A thousand.”

“Give me a break. We're talking industrial espionage. Companies pay upward of fifty grand for this kind of stuff.”

“How would you know?”

Keogler just smiled.