Palm Sunday (3 page)

“Oh, I see. Well mister, I don’t have a clue. This ain’t the Taj Mahal, if you know what I mean. The class of customer we get, could have been anyone.” He went back to wiping.

“I think there were two of them, maybe Latino. Ring any bells?”

The bartender looked towards the door, and at the two other customers, who seemed to be minding their own business. He lowered his voice. “What’s it worth to you?”

“You tell me who did it, and where I can find them, I’ll give you fifty.”

The bartender paused, considering. “All right, but don’t let on that you got it from me.”

“Deal.” Slocum threw two twenties and a ten on the counter, momentarily placing his hand over the bills. “The fifty keeps your mouth shut, too.”

The bartender nodded, picking up the bills as Slocum slowly removed his hand.

“The two guys are named Chico and Bobo. They’re inseparable, and they’re bad news. If they mugged you here they won’t be around for a while, but you can probably find them hanging out at the old projects. You know where I mean?”

“Yeah, I know where the projects are. What do they drive?”

“A ratty old Buick. The paint is flaking off all over, makes it look almost two-tone. Three tone if you count the rust. You can’t miss it.”

“Thanks.” Slocum got up and started for the door, then turned back. “One more thing.”

“What’s that?”

“If you tell them I’m looking for them, I’ll be back. And you won’t like that.” Slocum was smiling, but it was without warmth, and the venomous look in his eyes spoke volumes. This was a dangerous man. The bartender knew the type.

“I’m happy with my fifty. I’m not looking to buy trouble.”

Satisfied that he had made his point, Slocum nodded and left the bar. 

    Stanley was about to disconnect the palmtop from his PC when both suddenly came to life. He could hear his hard drive whir as data was downloaded. At least, he hoped it was downloading. He activated a software utility to monitor his computer’s internal data connection. It verified that the communication was one way, onto his hard drive, and produced an output file for analysis.

What Stanley didn’t know was that the palmtop had already used its own wireless communication capability to tap into the Internet and search for data relating to Stanley Whipple–the name it had extracted from his PC. The process concluded, and Stanley glanced ponderously at the palm unit.

“Let’s see what you’ve done.”

He was about to run his decryption software against the new file when he noticed that it was not encrypted at all. But what appeared on his screen stunned him.

It was biographical data–his biographical data. It was incomplete, as if certain pieces of information, mostly of a more sensitive nature, could not be isolated. The rest of it was so generic it could have been culled from any number of sources, but still, it was there, and it was his. How could this be?

He opened the log file created earlier. It revealed that data had passed between the palmtop and his PC, and that it had originated from the Internet. As he looked closer, however, his attention was drawn to the header information that accompanied the file. It was blank. He knew that files that traveled across the Internet contained the computer address of both the sender and the recipient. In this case, however, that information was not present. How then, he wondered, had this file been transported? The palmtop seemed to have some unusual capabilities.

“What are you?” He stared at it for a full minute before shutting down his PC. 

Robert Slocum had been sitting in his car, in the dark, for over an hour. The two Latinos, Chico and Bobo, or Chico and The Man, as he liked to think of them, had earlier left the Buick for a run-down apartment building, no doubt to get high with their friends. This was the night he was getting his palmtop back, thought Slocum. He checked his pistol, a silenced thirty-eight, making sure a round was chambered. This was a dangerous neighborhood. If these guys had been doing weed, they would probably be pretty mellow, easy to deal with. If they were coked up, though, they might go nuts. Either way, they would certainly require some persuasion.

He saw them–just the two of them–emerge from the apartment building. They were walking slowly and laughing loudly. Weed and beer, no doubt. Good sign. Slocum hid the handgun under his coat and moved to intercept the duo.

They staggered up to the Buick just as Slocum arrived. The timing was perfect. He loomed as a sudden shadow out of the darkness, but they were too far-gone to take heed.

“Hey guys, can you help me?”

They pulled up short, and one of them instinctively reached behind his back, as if grabbing for a weapon. Slocum pulled out his gun and shot him in the leg–a disabling, but not fatal wound.

The wounded man let out a grunt, and fell to the ground, writhing in agony. His companion stared wild-eyed as Slocum retrieved the fallen man’s weapon, then turned to face him.

“Are you Chico?” asked Slocum.

He covered his head with his arms. “Don’t kill me, man!”

Slocum repeated his question. “Are you Chico?”

“No. He’s Chico. I’m Bobo. Don’t shoot me, man. I didn’t do nothing to you.”

“Just give me back what you took,” said Slocum.

“I got nothing of yours, man. I don’t even know who you are.”

Slocum smiled. “I know it’s hard for you to remember.” He casually pointed the pistol at Bobo’s groin, which he covered by oafishly dropping his hands.

“What do you want from me?”

“You and Chico hit a man on the back of the head and robbed him at a certain downtown watering hole.” Noting the blank stare, he added, “a bar. You two mugged me last Thursday, just after midnight.”

“Oh, yeah.” Bobo paused, remembering. “That was you? Sorry, man.”

“Thanks. But what I really want, and what you’d better still have, is the device you took from my pocket.”

“Huh?”

“Think hard, now, Bobo. This information is important to you. It was black, about three inches wide, maybe five inches long. Looked like a calculator.”

Bobo’s face lit up in recollection. “Oh yeah, the calculator. I remember now.”

“Very good, Bobo. Give it to me.”

“I can’t. We don’t have it.”

“Bad answer. What did you do with it?”

Bobo looked at the gun. He was scared now. Too scared to lie. “We threw it out the window.”

“What window?”

“The car window.”

“Stupid…never mind. Where you were when you threw it out?”

Bobo had to dig down deep for this one, but then he had it. “I remember. It was on the highway next to that strip mall, you know, on the west side–a couple miles north of the bar. We just tossed it.”

“Which side of the road?”

“Same side as the mall.”

“Was that the same night that you stole it from me?”

“Uh, yeah, right after.”

Slocum sighed. What should he do with these two? Chico had stopped whimpering and seemed to be unconscious. Whether from drugs or his injury or both, Slocum couldn’t tell. He was loath to attract the attention of local authorities.

“I should kill you for what you did, but I’m feeling generous today. How much money do you have?”

“Nada.”

“That’s too bad. Give me your pants.”

“What?”

“Your pants, Bobo; Chico’s, too. Hurry up.”

Bobo did as instructed and tossed the two men’s pants on the ground in front of Slocum.

“Now your shirts.”

Bobo looked at the gun, and at Slocum’s face, then slowly removed his shirt. It was a struggle, but he managed to get Chico’s off as well. He threw them on the ground in front of Slocum.

“Anything else, man?”

“Just one more thing,” said Slocum. “Your underwear.”

“Oh, c’mon man. You can’t leave us naked out here.”

“That’s how you left me.” Slocum gestured with his gun, and Bobo reluctantly slid his briefs down over his ankles, tossing them at Slocum’s feet. Chico’s followed. “You know, Bobo, this hardly makes us even, but it will have to do. Stay warm.”

Slocum scooped up the clothes and backed away into the night. He didn’t think Bobo had it in him to offer much of a threat, but then these two had managed to sneak up on him once before. He made it back to his car without incident, and soon was hot on the trail of the palmtop. 

“What have you got? Did the file go through?” Charles Mason stood behind Norbert Green, head of the computer department, and the agency’s technology guru. Norbert had come up with the idea of broadcasting a special file to Slocum’s palmtop to ascertain whether it was being accessed.

“Yes, sir, it’s confirmed,” said Norbert. “The device processed the last message and sent back verification.”

“Did it offer any clue as to where it is?”

“Unfortunately, no. But a link was established with a computer, probably a PC.”

“How can you be sure?” asked Mason.

“The palm unit sent back verification that the instructions were processed,” said Norbert. “If no interface was attached, or if it malfunctioned, an error would be generated. We would know.”

“So someone plugged it into a computer, right?”

“Yes,” said Norbert. “And Mr. Slocum still has the original cable. It’s not a standard interface.”

“So?”

“So, whoever is using the palmtop either knew how to make a specialized interface cable, or had one made.”

Mason nodded his understanding. “The file you sent–what exactly was in it?”

“Instructions, primarily. If the palmtop were attached to a local PC it would try to grab the users name, then use its own capabilities to match that with publicly available sources on the Net. Unfortunately, it didn’t send back any data, only the verification.”

“But you’re certain that it connected to another computer?”

“No doubt about that part,” said Norbert.

Mason patted him on the shoulder and nodded his thanks, then hurried back to his office. He immediately phoned George Pampas.

“Pampas here.”

“George, I have a gift for you,” said Mason.

“A gift?”

“That’s right. Norbert has been trying to verify whether Slocum’s palmtop is active.”

“How?”

“He transmitted a file to it with certain instructions. Apparently it processed the instructions and sent back some kind of verification. According to Norbert that means it was hooked up to a PC.”

“Sounds like someone is messing around with it,” said Pampas.

“That’s right. And to do that requires a special cable. Slocum still has his, right?”

“Sure does.”

“So that’s your gift–a solid lead. Find out who had a cable made with the specifications necessary to interface with Slocum’s palmtop.”

“This might tie in with something that Slocum reported.”

“What’s that?”

“He says he has information about where the palm unit was last seen.”

“Good,” said Mason. “Then get with it. And keep me posted.”

As the line went dead Pampas considered the options. Slocum had reported that he knew from one of the Latinos where the palmtop had been discarded. Staring at the phone, Pampas wondered if there were any electronics stores in that area. 

The agency that employed Robert Slocum–National Communications–occupied a nondescript midtown office building, but its function was anything but common. It had its genesis as a government commission, but had been privatized several years after its creation. With a change in administrations and the temporary chaos that followed, it dropped off of everyone’s radar screen. Extremely well funded to begin with, those finances had been invested wisely. On more than one occasion the timing of those investments would have raised some eyebrows, had anyone been watching. The phrase ‘insider trading’ would have been entirely inadequate.

Shortly after its privatization there had been a power struggle. Charles Mason had watched as the agency’s potential was squandered by those who, in his opinion, lacked true vision, and he had led the coup that toppled his predecessor. Of course, he couldn’t have done it on his own. Such a dramatic power shift required powerful alliances. In this case, his main ally was a data file outlining some very peculiar personal preferences of the man he replaced. Nothing illegal, it was nevertheless sufficiently embarrassing to convince the man to voluntarily step down–and to name Mason as the new Director. It was a bloodless coup, but it represented a change in direction that would ultimately affect millions of people. Now Mason was in charge, and he ran the organization with an iron fist. As was the norm on Tuesday mornings, he had gathered his top managers together for a status meeting. After going over some routine departmental matters, he opened the meeting to general discussion.

“So, who has good news?” asked Mason.

Tom Snelling was the first to respond. “Profiling division is a go for the next run. Kayoko’s numbers were within range.”

“No complications?” Mason seemed to be directing the question at Snelling, though he glanced briefly at Kayoko. It was Snelling who answered.

“If we can’t get the population matrix aligned with the societal baseline, the quotient will be meaningless. The input from the computer department has been choppy.”

All eyes turned to Norbert Green. His thick glasses, unkempt, curly reddish hair, and pale lifeless eyes screamed out ‘geek’. He was, however, a brilliant computer scientist.

“Do you have any idea how complex this project is? Just storing the sheer volume of data is challenge enough, but we have to dissect it, parse it for nuance or idiomatic discrepancy, filter it for known dialectic patterns, then index the whole mess for proper presentation to our colleagues in Societal Profiling. If our efforts fall beneath the ninety-three per cent threshold, we get to do it all again.” He looked around for some sign of sympathy. He only got blank stares.

“Look, people. The repositories are filling up faster then we can shuffle the data. We either have to expand operations, or…”

“Or what, Norbert?” Mason looked quizzically at his boy wonder.

“Or, we might consider piggybacking on some of the feds hardware.”

“Norbert, the feds don’t even know we exist,” said Mason. “I doubt they’d let us use their computers.”