Practice to Deceive (6 page)

Guys like Levering Field infuriate me. He’s a part of that growing class of people who have no conception of the pain they cause others through their carelessness, indifference, neglect; who refuse to accept responsibility for their actions. Our streets are literally teeming with them, too. Individuals who cry, “Don’t blame me, it’s not my fault” at every mishap. A guy falls from the top rung of a ladder the label says not to stand on, he sues the manufacturer. Woman smokes for forty years and dies of lung cancer, the family blames the tobacco company. Man embezzles a million bucks from a charity, claims he’s not responsible because he’s suffering from brain atrophy that makes him impulsive. I remember serving paper on a couple that had owned an advertising agency in St. Paul. They had ripped off their suppliers to the tune of $1.2 million before locking their doors and walking away. They were packing for a trip to Epcot Center when I’d found them, absolutely mystified that anyone would be upset. It wasn’t their fault they never paid their debts. Blame the economy.

Well, Levering Field wasn’t going to get away with it. I was going to crush him like a grape, core him like an apple. I found myself chuckling at the images—for some reason I thought of him as produce. How to go about peeling him like a banana wasn’t an issue, either. I had conceived my plan on the spot, marveling at its simplicity. The immense risk did not occur to me until much later.

But I did not want to be angry when I went after him. Angry people make mistakes.

I emptied the pop can and tossed it at my waste basket. It clanged on the metal rim, then fell in. Two points. I pushed myself out of the chair and went back to the refrigerator. Before serving myself another can, however, I ran my finger along the top of the refrigerator and regarded the grit and grime it had collected. I decided the place needed a good scrubbing.

Retrieving a roll of paper towels and a jug of liquid cleaner with a spray nozzle from the bottom drawer of my desk, I started to clean. I clean a lot. Cynthia often ridicules my “neat freak” ways, but she’s not one to talk—she hires a woman to clean her house every week. Besides, cleaning is good therapy; it relaxes me.

I dusted my hockey stick, the one Wayne Gretzky broke against the North Stars back when he’d played for Edmonton. I dusted my framed “homer hanky” that, like a lot of people who won’t admit now, I waved like a damn fool when the Minnesota Twins won the 1987 World Series. And I carefully dusted the framed photograph of me and Kirby Puckett. He’s wearing his baseball uniform; I’m wearing a stupid grin. He had written on the photograph:
To a good guy, best wishes, Kirby Puckett
. People who see it invariably ask, “Do you really know Kirby?” I always cross two fingers and hold them up. “We’re like that,” I say. Truth is, I met Kirby Puckett twice, once at Camera Day when the photo was taken and the second time outside the players’ entrance to the Metrodome, where I begged him to sign it. He seemed like a nice guy.

Next to it is another photograph in which I look even more ridiculous. It was taken for the Minneapolis newspaper and shows me dressed in a trench coat and fedora and leaning on my personal computer.
HAVE PC
—
WILL TRAVEL,
reads the headline of the accompanying article. The story was all about how detectives find missing witnesses, untangle insurance frauds, search for hidden assets, screen potential employees, and investigate business rivals by scouring computerized databases—and how I used my PC to discover damaging information about the key officers of a Chicago-based high-tech firm attempting a hostile takeover of August-Crane, a much revered local firm.

It had been simple enough. I merely followed the social security numbers of Datatron’s CEO, CFO, and president until I uncovered several hidden bank accounts in Nevada and Nassau where the three men had quite illegally squirreled away nearly fifty million bucks. I turned the information over to August-Crane, which in turn gave it to the FBI, SEC and IRS, who fell on Datatron like the wrath of God. The takeover was aborted, the officers were indicted, Datatron was forced into Chapter Seven, and John Crane personally handed me a bonus check for twenty-five thousand dollars. Even Steve VanderTop had been impressed.

Yeah, Steve
. I paused in front of the photograph.
If I’m going after Levering Field, I’ll need his help
, I told myself.

T
HE MAIL ARRIVED
while I was cleaning. I sorted the batch: bill, junk, bill, junk, bill, junk, junk, junk, junk—hey, a check. It was from Sullivan, Shea, Rock, and Engler. Forty-eight hundred bucks and a note from David Shea: “Without the eleventh-hour information you uncovered, the plaintiff would have ripped off our client for half a million. Thanks for saving our ass. If you ever need a reference, I’m the guy to call. Thanks again.”

That was nice of him, I told myself as I did the paperwork, recording the check in my ledger, then folding it and stuffing it in my wallet. Of course ten percent of the five hundred thousand would have been nicer. Or five percent. Or even two and a half. Still, when I left my office, I wasn’t angry anymore. Money will do that. Something else. You have a pocketful of money, you start thinking about getting more.

FOUR

S
TEVE
V
ANDER
T
OP HAD
lived much of his third decade in poverty. And it had made him happy to do so.

Five dollars for food for a week, nights spent sleeping in his car because he didn’t have an apartment, clothes from the Salvation Army: these indignities hadn’t bothered him a bit. He’d embraced them. Unlike the rest of us who live two paychecks away from homelessness, Steve had enjoyed the precariousness of his lifestyle. It hadn’t been poverty to him, it was “the simple life.” He’d had his friends, an extended social circle that included nearly anyone except those who have actually known real poverty. He’d had his freedom. And he’d had his philosophy, which, loosely translated, proclaimed: I’m going to live my life now!

Of course, it had helped that he was a VanderTop—one of
the
VanderTops of North Oaks. When times became really tough, his family could always be counted on to provide a square meal, a change of clothes, a Jeep, a membership in a health club.… Steve’s nourishment for the day might have consisted of a half loaf of French bread off the day-old shelf, but thanks to Mom and Dad, in the evening he’d be going to see the San Francisco Ballet at Northrop Auditorium and then catch “the artist formerly known as Prince” at Glam Slam. The way Steve saw it, he had done his family a favor by mooching off of them.

“It made my parents feel better to give me things,” he once told me. “They hated to think their son was living like a dog. Besides, they never really expected me to pay my own way.”

However, two separate events during his twenty-fifth year dramatically altered Steve’s plan to live blissfully and irresponsibly among the privileged poor—at least until he received his inheritance. His parents gave him a personal computer for his birthday. And he discovered Sara.

S
TEVE
—
AND
S
ARA
—lived in a warehouse across the tracks from downtown Minneapolis, about twenty minutes walking time from my office. A sign above the front door announced that twenty-seven thousand square feet were available to lease on the first floor. To gain entry, I had to identify myself through an intercom.

“Hey, Taylor, come on up,” Steve said happily, buzzing me in.

The elevator was little more than a large metal box with thick pads covering the walls—the kind of quilted blankets movers use to keep furniture from banging the side of their trucks. It shuddered and shook, and when the doors finally opened on the third floor, I literally jumped out, half expecting the box to fall, surprised when it did not.

Steve’s place was behind a large steel door that slid sideways on a metal track when you released a spring. It did not have a lock. I pounded on the door, and he yelled, “C’mon in!” The door squealed painfully when it opened.

Steve’s loft was decorated in early industrial: Metal beams supported steel girders overhead, huge factory windows made up an entire wall, the wood floor was stained and warped. It was about the size of a junior high school gymnasium; if it wasn’t for the beams, there would have been more than enough room for a full-court basketball game.

The only area enclosed behind walls was the bathroom. Steve’s kitchen, bedroom, guest bedroom, library, and living room were arranged like galleries in a furniture store, with only empty space separating them. His possessions now included computers, stereo system, big screen TV, aquarium, pool table, golf clubs, and a ten speed. Also in plain sight were their clothes, which hung on racks bought at a department store’s going-out-of-business sale. A red silk dress cut down to there hung on the end of one rack. Sara’s, I presumed.

Steve was sitting in front of a computer screen, his back to me, long delicate fingers flying over a keyboard. Actually there was a bank of four screens, but only one was on. There was a lot of other equipment, too: hard disk drives, printers, modems, and systems I was not literate enough to identify.

“How the hell are ya, Taylor?” he said, turning his head slightly—one eye on me, one on the screen. “I haven’t seen you in ages. Where you been keeping yourself?”

“Here and there,” I said.

Steve gave the computer screen his full attention again. He was wearing a University of Minnesota sweatshirt and jeans torn at the knees, no socks or shoes. Thick, silken hair fell in a golden sheet over his shoulders—he usually wore his hair in a ponytail to keep it out of his eyes as he bent to the keyboard, but today he kept brushing it back with his hand. I knew women who would kill to have his hair, as well as his eyebrows and lashes.

“Give me a minute, I’m almost done with this,” he said. “Why don’t you put on some tunes?”

I took his advice and wandered to his CD/stereo system. He had a huge selection of jazz recordings, half on CDs, half on vinyl. “Nice,” I said soft and low, picking up an ancient record.

“What?” he called from across the room.

“Coleman Hawkins with the Mound City Blue Blowers, nineteen twenty-nine,” I called back. “Hawkins on tenor sax, Glenn Miller on trombone, Gene Krupa on drums, Pops Foster on bass—oh, man, Pee Wee Russell on clarinet …”

“Put it on,” Steve urged. I did, as carefully as I could, what with the way my hands trembled with anticipation. I set the needle ever so gently on the rim of the record and was immediately surrounded by sound coming from a dozen speakers. It was an original recording with all the pops, clicks, rumbles, and surface noise you’d expect, but none of it could detract from the pure power and soulful majesty of Hawkins’s sax or Russell’s clarinet. You just don’t get that kind of beauty with fully equalized, digitally mastered CDs, I don’t care what the tech heads say.

I continued to search Steve’s collection as I listened. Jack Teagarden, Red Nichols, Earl Hines, Duke Ellington, Bix Beiderbecke: all original recordings. I stepped back. The things money could buy.…

“Where did you get these?” I called to Steve across the room.

“What? Oh, the Victors. Old guy in New York had a huge collection; some Verve, some Blue Note. He died, left his collection to his son. Son moved to Duluth. Then he died, and his wife sold the records at a garage sale.”

I was appalled at the idea and looked it.

“Yeah. Me, too,” Steve said, recognizing my expression. “Anyway, a woman from Stillwater bought the collection. She was impressed by the dates, not the names—thought they were antiques. She sold them on consignment at an antique mall on Lake Street. A buddy of mine who knew I liked jazz told me about it. I hustled down and bought up all the old Victors from before 1930, before the label merged with RCA. I was just in time, too. While I was writing the check, another guy came in and bought everything that was left.”

“Can I ask how much you paid?”

Steve grinned. “A lot less than if the woman had known what she was selling. Hey, if you like that, I have
Jazz at the Philharmonic
from 1946; Charlie Parker, Lester Young, Willee Smith.…”

“Isn’t that the first Verve release?”

“Yeah,” Steve said. “What became the Verve label, anyway. Back then it was called Clef.”

I found it and put it on, listening to “Oh, Lady be Good” by the Gershwins. That’s how Steve and I met, listening to jazz. We had seats side by side at a Sonny Rollins concert. The next day we bumped into each other at the Electric Fetus, a record store in Minneapolis.

By then Steve had become thoroughly infatuated with the Orwellian world of computers, by the notion that the most intimate information about any individual or company could be revealed to him with the stroke of a key. Phone records, utility records, credit card charges, arrest records, IRS returns, medical records: He delighted in obtaining all this data and more. He learned to intercept electronic mail, invade voice mail and smoke a PC in minutes—computers yielded their secrets to him like spinsters confessing to a priest. He began to think of himself as the Garry Kasparov of computer wizards, for a time even using the chess master’s name as a handle. When he was on his game, no program could beat him.