The Bad Place (31 page)

HAVING FRESHENED everyone’s coffee and, at Bobby’s suggestion, having laced Frank’s mug with bourbon in spite of the early hour, Hal went to the nook off the reception lounge to brew another pot.

After Frank had been fortified with a few sips of the spiked coffee, Julie showed the photograph to him and watched his reaction carefully. “You recognize either of the people in this?”

“No. They’re strangers to me.”

“The man,” Bobby said, “is George Farris. The
real
George Farris. We got the picture from his brother-in-law.”

Frank studied the photograph with renewed interest. “Maybe I knew him, and that’s why I borrowed his name—but I can’t recall ever seeing him before.”

“He’s dead,” Julie said, and thought that Frank’s surprise was genuine. She explained how Farris had died, years ago ... and then how his family had been slaughtered far more recently. She told him about James Roman, too, and how Roman’s family died in a fire in November.

With what appeared to be sincere dismay and confusion, Frank said, “Why all these deaths? Is it coincidence?”

Julie leaned forward. “We think Mr. Blue killed them.”

“Who?”

“Mr. Blue Light. The man you said pursued you that night in Anaheim, the man you think is hunting you for some reason. We believe he discovered you were traveling under the names Farris and Roman, so he went to the addresses he got for them, and when he didn’t find you there, he killed everyone, either while trying to squeeze information out of them or ... just for the hell of it.”

Frank looked stricken. His pale face grew even paler, as if it were an image doing a slow fade on a movie screen. The bleak look in his eyes intensified. “If I hadn’t been using that fake ID, he never would’ve gone to those people. It’s because of me they died.”

Feeling sorry for the guy, ashamed of the suspicion that had driven her to approach the issue in this manner, Julie said, “Don’t let it eat you, Frank. Most likely, the paper artist who forged your documents took the names at random from a list of recent deaths. If he’d used another approach, the Farris and Roman families would never have come to Mr. Blue’s attention. But it’s not your fault the forger used the quick and lazy method.”

Frank shook his head, tried to speak, could not.

“You
can’t
blame yourself,” Hal said from the doorway, where he had evidently been standing long enough to have gotten the gist of the photo’s importance. He seemed genuinely distressed to see Frank so anguished. Like Clint, Hal had been won over by Frank’s gentle voice, self-effacing manner, and cherubic demeanor.

Frank cleared his throat, and finally the words broke loose: “No, no, it’s on me, my God, all those people dead because of me.”

IN DAKOTA & DAKOTA’S computer center, Bobby and Frank sat in two spring-backed, typist chairs with rubber wheels, and Bobby switched on one of the three state-of-the-art IBM PCs, each of which was outlinked to the world through its own modem and phone line. Though bright enough to work by, the overhead lights were soft and diffuse to prevent glare on the terminal screens, and the room’s one window was covered with blackout drapes for the same reason.

Like policemen in the silicon age, modern private detectives and security consultants relied on the computer to make their work easier and to compile a breadth and depth of information that could never be acquired by the old-fashioned gumshoe methods of Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe. Pounding the pavement, interviewing witnesses and potential suspects, and conducting surveillances were still aspects of their job, of course, but without the computer they would be as ineffective as a blacksmith trying to fix a flat tire with a hammer and anvil and other tools of his trade. As the twentieth century progressed through its last decade, private investigators who were ignorant of the microchip revolution existed only in television dramas and the curiously dated world of most PI novels.

Lee Chen, who had designed and now operated their electronic data-gathering system, would not arrive in the office until around nine o’clock. Bobby did not want to wait nearly an hour to start putting the computer to work on Frank’s case. He was not a primo hacker, as Lee was, but he knew all the hardware, had the ability to learn new software quickly when he needed to, and was almost as comfortable tracking down information in cyberspace as he was poring through files of age-yellowed newspapers.

Using Lee’s code book, which he removed from a locked desk drawer, Bobby first entered a Social Security Administration data network that contained files to which broad public access was legal. Other files in the same system were restricted and supposedly inaccessible behind walls of security codes required by various right-to-privacy laws.

From the open files, he inquired as to the number of men named Frank Pollard in the Administration’s records, and within seconds the response appeared on the screen: counting variations of Frank, such as Franklin and Frankie and Franco-plus names like Francis, for which Frank might be a diminutive—there were six hundred and nine Frank Pollards in possession of Social Security numbers.

“Bobby,” Frank said anxiously, “does that stuff on the screen make sense to you? Are those words, real words, or jumbled letters?”

“Huh? Of course they’re words.”

“Not to me. They don’t look like anything to me. Gibberish.”

Bobby picked up a copy of
Byte
magazine that was lying between two of the computers, opened it to an article, and said, “Read that.”

Frank accepted the magazine, stared at it, flipped ahead a couple of pages, then a couple more. His hands began to shake. The magazine rattled in his grip. “I can’t. Jesus, I’ve lost that too. Yesterday, I lost the ability to do math, and now I can’t read any more, and I get more confused, foggy in the head, and I ache in every joint, every muscle. This teleporting’s wearing me down, killing me. I’m falling apart, Bobby, mentally and physically, faster all the time.”

“It’s going to be all right,” Bobby said, though his confidence was largely feigned. He was pretty sure they would get to the bottom of this, would learn who Frank was and where he went at night and how and why; however, he could see that Frank was declining fast, and he would not have bet money that they’d find all the answers while Frank was still alive, sane, and able to benefit from their discoveries. Nevertheless, he put his hand on Frank’s shoulder and gave it a gentle reassuring squeeze. “Hang in there, buddy. Everything’s going to be okay. I really think it is. I really do.”

Frank took a deep breath and nodded.

Turning to the display terminal again, feeling guilty about the lie he’d just told, Bobby said, “You remember how old you are, Frank?”

“No.”

“You look about thirty-two, thirty-three.”

“I feel older.”

Softly whistling Duke Ellington’s “Satin Doll,” Bobby thought a moment, then asked the SSA computer to eliminate those Frank Pollards younger than twenty-eight and older than thirty-eight. That left seventy-two of them.

“Frank, do you think you’ve ever lived anywhere else, or are you a dyed-in-the-wool Californian?”

“I don’t know.”

“Let’s assume you’re a son of the sunshine state.”

He asked the SSA computer to whittle down the remaining Frank Pollards to those who applied for their Social Security numbers while living in California (fifteen), then to those whose current addresses on file were in California (six).

The public-access portion of the Social Security Administration’s data network was forbidden by law to reveal Social Security numbers to casual researchers. Bobby referred to the instructions in Lee Chen’s code book and entered the restricted files through a complicated series of maneuvers that circumvented SSA security.

He was unhappy about breaking the law, but it was a fact of high-tech life that you never got the maximum benefit from your data-gathering system if you played strictly by the rules. Computers were instruments of freedom, and governments were to one degree or another instruments of repression; the two could not always exist in harmony.

He obtained the six numbers and addresses for the Frank Pollards living in California.

“Now what?” Frank wondered.

“Now,” Bobby said, “I use these numbers and addresses to cross reference with the California Department of Motor Vehicles, all of the armed forces, state police, major city police, and other government agencies to get descriptions of these six Frank Pollards. As we learn their height, weight, hair color, color of their eyes, race ... we’ll gradually eliminate them one by one. Better yet, if one of them is you, and if you’ve ever served in the military or been arrested for a crime, we might even be able to turn up a picture of you in one of those files and confirm your identity with a photo match.”

SITTING AT the desk, catercorner from each other, Julie and Hal removed the rubber bands from more than half of the packets of cash. They sorted through the hundred-dollar bills, trying to determine if some of them had consecutive serial numbers that might indicate they were stolen from a bank, savings and loan, or other institution.

Suddenly Hal looked up and said, “Why do those flutelike sounds and drafts precede Frank when he teleports himself?”

“Who knows?” Julie said. “Maybe it’s displaced air following him down some tunnel in another dimension, from the place he left to the place he’s going.”

“I was just thinking.... If this Mr. Blue is real, and if he’s searching for Frank, and if Frank heard those flutes and felt those gusts in that alleyway ... then Mr. Blue is also able to teleport.”

“Yeah. So?”

“So Frank’s not unique. Whatever he is, there’s another one like him. Maybe even more than one.”

“Here’s something else to think about,” Julie said. “If Mr. Blue can teleport himself, and if he finds out where Frank is, we won’t be able to defend a hiding place from him. He’ll be able to pop up among us. And what if he arrived with a submachine gun, spraying bullets as he materialized?”

After a moment of silence, Hal said, “You know, gardening has always seemed like a pleasant profession. You need a lawnmower, a weed whacker, a few simple tools. There’s not much overhead, and you hardly ever get shot at.”

BOBBY FOLLOWED Frank into the office, where Julie and Hal were examining the money. Putting a sheet of paper on the desk, he said, “Move over, Sherlock Holmes. The world now has a greater detective.”

Julie angled the page so she and Hal could read it together. It was a laser-printed copy of the information that Frank had filed with the California Department of Motor Vehicles when he had last applied for an extension of his driver’s license.

“The physical statistics match,” she said. “Is your first name really Francis and your middle name Ezekiel?”

Frank nodded. “I didn’t remember until I saw it. But it’s me, all right. Ezekiel.”

Tapping the printout, she said, “This address in El Encanto Heights—does it ring a bell?”

“No. I can’t even tell you where El Encanto is.”