Enzi makes a decision and buys a brick from Pascal. The Aether and the Lie is a story of greed, art, and murder. 1911 is a name for a handgun.
Visit MontanaVoice.com for more information and to listen to additional episodes.
Enzi makes a decision and buys a brick from Pascal. The Aether and the Lie is a story of greed, art, and murder. 1911 is a name for a handgun.
Visit MontanaVoice.com for more information and to listen to additional episodes.
A Brick, An episode of the novel, "The Aether and the Lie," by Steve S. Saroff
It was ten on Saturday morning when I drove to Suzzy’s house. I parked, put the daypack with the 1911 over my shoulder, and walked to her front door.
Suzzy was married to another woman, Rachel, who worked as a white-water river guide during the spring and summer, a hunting guide during the autumn, and, as Suzzy laughingly has said, “a beer drinker all year long.”
I had been inside Suzzy and Rachel’s house twice for parties that Suzzy had hosted. The parties were dress-themed for the season Rachel was in. Almost everyone who I worked with in Missoula would be there, as well as several dozen of Suzzy and Rachel’s friends, many with their children. And almost everyone wore the themed clothing. At the hunting party a year before, the theme was plaid with orange vests. At the river party, three months earlier, it had been shorts and flip-flops. But each time, I dressed as I usually do.
I knocked on the door, Rachel answered, said, “Hey Enzi, the black tee shirt is appropriate today,” and invited me in. Suzzy was sitting on a couch, a box of tissues near her. Her eyes were red from crying. She looked at me and said, “Enzi, do you know anything?”
I said that I only knew what the police had told me, that O’Neill had been killed. I asked her if she knew more. She nodded yes and said, “We were woken up this morning by police, and they asked questions about how to find you, then they asked me to go with them to let them into the office. That is when they told me that Nate was dead. It was awful. That’s when I saw you. But, while I was gone, Nate’s neighbor called and talked to Rachel.”
Rachel looked at me and said, “My friend Carl lives next to Nate. He’s the one who called the police. Carl called me two hours ago. Freaked out. He told me that he was woken last night when Nate turned on his hot tub. They had an agreement that Nate won’t run jets at night. The tub is by Carl’s bedroom window. But the jets kept running. Carl told me he got angry, yelled out his window, and then went out there and found Nate floating in the hot tub.”
Rachel looked at Suzzy, then back at me, then continued, “Carl told me that Nate’s face was battered. Carl said that that he thought a red light was on in the tub but then realized that the water was red because of blood. Carl also said there was a juggling club floating there. The sort that Nate used.”
Three months before, O’Neill had shown up wearing a Hawaiian shirt and carrying his bag of juggling balls and clubs at the summer party. He juggled in Suzzy’s and Rachel’s back yard, surrounded by kids and dogs. I remember that O’Neill had also been teaching people how to juggle. Rachel and Suzzy had been interested in the clubs, and O’Neill had them start by tossing a club straight up from one hand and then catching it in the other. But Rachel was holding a beer in her left hand, and had said to O’Neill, “You’re asking a lot for both hands,” and then told O’Neill, “I don’t get to use this line often enough, ‘here, hold my beer.’” And everyone had laughed.
“We were juggling last night,” I said. “Less than twelve hours ago.” I paused and looked at Suzzy. I was thinking that other than our work interactions about who was trying to reach me, and discussions about new hires and times for meetings, I had only spoken with Suzzy at her parties. And I realized that I had never seen Suzzy look sad and rarely had seen her looking serious either. And now she was both.
“Last night,” I said, “a man with a British accent, tattoos on his neck and hands, he took one of Nate’s juggling clubs. A stocky, short guy, shaved head. He was watching us juggle in the lot at work. Came up and stole a club and walked away.”
“What??” Suzzy exclaimed, “Did you tell the police this?”
“I had never seen him before,” I lied. “I didn’t think it mattered. I thought he was a drunk from the bars. Didn’t think much about it.”
Rachel said, “You need to call the police and tell them this, now.”
“I will,” I answered, “but there’s more. Maybe not related. But you need to know. After the police dropped you back home, here, they took me to my house.”
Rachel was standing next to where Suzzy was sitting. They were both looking at me intensely, waiting.
I continued, “My place was torn apart.” Then I lied, “my house was searched. I don’t know why or for what. I don’t know who did it.”
“Is this about the work you all do?” Rachel asked angrily, “Nate gets killed the same night someone searches your place? That’s messed up.”
I say, “The police told me that after they found Nate, they looked for me. Then they must have come here, and then you,” I nodded towards Suzzy, “found me sleeping in my office.”
“Why would they look for you right away?” Rachel asked. “What is the connection?”
Lying again, I answered, “I don’t know.” I didn’t mention anything about the thin detective or how he had been trying to connect me with Kaori’s murders.
Rachel asked, “Should we be worried? Someone going to break in here because of Suzzy working with you and Nate?”
I wanted to tell them not to worry, but I said, truthfully, “I think maybe. I think we need to be worried.”
Suzzy’s look shifted between sad, serious, and confused. She quietly started shaking her head back and forth. As Suzzy was doing this, Rachel walked into another room and returned moments later, holding a shotgun by its barrel. She walked to the front door and leaned the gun against the wall. She said, “I think ‘Big Blaster’ will stay here for a while.” Then she looked at me and said, “I need to listen to you call the police right now.” She said this with a sternness that I imagined she used with her white water and hunting clients when they were behaving dangerously stupid.
With Rachel watching, I called 911 and explained to the emergency operator that I was calling about last night’s homicide and had new, important information for either Larson or the thin detective. The 911 operator took my name and number and said they would call me back. When I hung up, Rachel said, “as soon as you talk with someone, you let us know,” then she said, “I think you need to go now.” I heard her locking the door behind me as I left.
As I was driving, the phone rang. I pulled over and answered. It was the thin detective. I told him that I had just visited Suzzy and her partner, who told me how O’Neill was found. I also told him what O’Neill’s neighbor told them about the juggling club floating in the hot tub with O’Neill’s body.
Thin said, “Everyone talks about the dead when they aren’t supposed to.” Then he asked, “And?”
I told Thin what I told Suzzy and Rachel about the Brit. About him walking up to O’Neill and me last night, taking a juggling club, and then leaving.
I said, “It might be connected.”
“Might be?” Thin asked angrily. “Why didn’t you mention this earlier?”
“It didn’t seem relevant,” I said. “Drunks from the bar watch us when we juggle. The bar is next to the parking lot. The Rhino. They come out. I would have told you if you had told me that O’Neill was beaten to death with one of his own clubs.”
Thin asked me to describe the Brit. He then told me to come to the police station. Said, “We need to make this formal. Right now.”
I told him that I would, then we hang up. I knew I might be arrested or detained, but I still headed downtown. I parked the Subaru a few blocks from city hall, putting the daypack, with the loaded .45, next to one million dollars of cash. Half the money in the other school daypack, the other half being the loose bundles I had dumped out. I covered it all up again with the blanket. One million, minus the forty thousand I had given to Pascal, still rounded to a big pile of problems. Then I walked into city hall.
Thin met me at the police desk and asked if I would talk with him. Then he escorted me into a bleak interview room where the walls looked like they had absorbed decades of tears and lies. I asked, “no timelines?” but he didn’t reply. Instead, he turned on a recorder and told me to repeat what I had just told him on the phone, everything about the man from the night before. He asked me several times to repeat my descriptions of the Brit and his actions. Several times he asked if I had ever seen or talked with him before, and each time I lied and said “no.”
I told him that the man had a lot of tattoos. Thin asked me to describe them. I told him about the “X” on each of his knuckles. Thin asked, “You saw each of his knuckles? How close to you was he? How much light was there?”
I answered, saying, “Yes. Close. A lot.”
But I wanted to stop the questions, stop my talking, so I asked Thin a question. “Do you think the person who killed O’Neill also vandalized my house?”
Thin answered, “You tell me.” Then, when I don’t answer, Thin asked, “Your Texas buddy know this British sounding character?”
I forgot my right, and instead of staying silent, I asked, “Why would he?”
Thin shrugged, then said, “The lines will tell me. Mater of time. When they do, I’ll let you know.” He then turned off the recording device and walked out of the interview room without telling me to stay or go. I got up and left, and no one stopped me.
I drove to my house, again parking the Subaru a few blocks away. I walked past my neighbors’ homes. Someone I recognized was checking their mailbox and said hello to me. Children went past on their bicycles, capturing some of the autumn weather before the coming of more snow. The sun was shining, and the air was clear. It was a good place to live. But my house was never a home. It was a ruin even before XX’s visit.
At my house, I opened all the doors and windows. Then I went into the backyard, where there was a view of the hills. I wanted to yell, to scream. Or I wanted to be very, very quiet. What I didn’t want to do was figure out what to do.
Believing that we are doing the right thing, even when it is wrong, that is a big part of the lie.
Kaori’s one love is dead. And if I hadn’t bailed her out of jail, he and his new girlfriend would still both be alive. I listened to Tsai, and then Dave Cheat died. Then I ignored Tsai, and now O’Neill is dead.
How do I unbend the wheel?
The best literature teaches. I wondered if a book or a story that I had read could show me a direction out of my predicament. I thought of books. I thought of graphic novels. I thought of movies. And then I remembered the scene in the film ‘Blade Runner’ where the ‘super genius’ got his head crushed because he wanted to show everyone in the room how smart he was.
In the film, androids had been bioengineered to live only four years, and then they were enslaved in deadly work. Several androids escaped, and one, “Roy,” made it into the bedroom of his creator, the ‘super genius’ Tyrell. Roy tells Tyrell that he wanted just one thing: to live. But Tyrell told Roy, “Nope, not possible. Four years is all you get.”
Instead of Roy thinking, “Well, this was a wasted attempt,” Roy offered ideas to modify his programmed genetics. Roy was technical and specific because, as an engineered android, he was also brilliant. Tyrell, though, shot down Roy’s suggestions one after another, saying, “Nope. We tried that. Nope. That won’t work.”
So, Roy’s response to the ‘super genius’ was to kiss Tyrell goodbye and then crush his eyes and skull with his two hands, the hands which Tyrell had bioengineered.
Tyrell could have responded to any of Roy’s ideas with, “Wow! That’s interesting. That could work!” Then Roy might have let Tyrell live longer. Or at least until the two of them went into a lab someplace to collaborate on the idea. A lab where Tyrell might have found a convenient brick to bash Roy with and escape. Instead, the ‘super genius’ died while trying to be the smartest person in the room.
And then I remembered what Tsai had said to me: “Say ‘yes’ to everyone who wants to hear a ‘yes.’ Never say ‘no.’ You can always get out of a ‘yes’ later, but when you say ‘no’ you will never be asked in again.”
Then I knew what I would try to do. I would say ‘yes.’ I would turn on the backdoor again so Tsai and his partners would keep stealing the early financial reports and making their multi-million-dollar trades. But my ‘yes’ would not last. I would also build a backdoor to their backdoor. And as I had never wanted to be the smartest person in any room, the doors I would try to build would close quietly as I left, hopefully unnoticed.
I would also try to make sure that I had a good brick within reach.
Precisely at noon, I called the number that XX left in the daypack on my keyboard. The phone clicked into silence, but I talked anyway. I said, “You’ve made your points. Tell our mutual friend that I am doing what he wants. But then tell him that I am done.”
I waited, listening to the phone’s silence. Then I heard XX say, “Do it fast, Mate. Watching you,” then the line clicks dead.
I called Tsai’s burner, which rang with no answer, not even a voice mail prompt. I went back inside my house, stepping over the wreckage of my possessions, sat down at the computer, and turned it on.
I did a scan for spyware that XX might have installed, and I found some. They were tracking my actions closely. XX was not just a thug. He was dangerously technical. I was more sure that he was involved with killing Dave Cheat.
It took me an hour to determine how to disable the spyware secretly, but I left it running while I logged into SLAM and did the first steps of re-installing the backdoor. In the same way, as I had started to do while in Seattle a few days before. But then, before I check-in the code, which would turn the backdoor on again, I disabled XX’s spyware and started pounding.
Fritter had given me access to every computer on his sprawling company network. I used that access to create fictitious users and daemon programs to run on the company servers in Seattle and London constantly. I modified the ownership and the touch-dates of the files that I created and used Dave Cheats credentials for some of them, Fritters for others. My new code then used those new access points to look for the network paths to install itself on every computer that would ever go through the backdoor; anyone who used it would then get infected.
As I did before, I hid the new code in SLAM’s corporate logos, as well as in the smiling photos of executives. The sort of photos that people who strive to be the smart ones save onto their computers and copy into their resumes and social media profiles. Executives, like Fritter, who might be partners with Tsai, and who might be the ones looking for easy ways to ‘smart money.’
I pounded the rest of the day and all through the night. Then I check-in the code in a way that made it appear exactly as Fritter had asked me to do. Code that was now becoming part of the BGT deal.
It was seven in the morning, just turning light. It had taken nineteen non-stop hours of “pushing buttons” to create a trap that might topple an ongoing, billion-dollar heist.
Each time anyone, no matter where their computer was located, accessed the backdoor, they would turn on code which would then start copying and streaming their files and logging their keystrokes to remote cloud servers. Those files and logs could become easy proof to let any good cyber security cop start investigations to find out who had been accessing data illegally. Investigations would be triggered when the files and the logs started being delivered through SLAM’s email systems to everyone on SLAM’s huge mailing lists of employees, vendors, media outlets, and competitors. The email would start being delivered after I sent a text of one small message to an automated bit of “pushed buttons.” Pound. Code. Math. Recurse.
Then I emailed a formal letter to Suzzy, cc’ing the HR department at SLAM, explaining that the death of O’Neill had been so upsetting to me that I could not return to work and that I was resigning and was leaving for an extended road trip. Then I began a wipe-erase of my computer’s hard drive.
That was the end of my technical work. After that, I left the house to look for the rest of the “good brick” that needed to be in reach.
I went into Walmart and bought a tent and other camping gear, some groceries, and a large bag of potato chips. I also bought soft clothing. A warm puffy jacket, and an extra-large, bright purple, pull-over fuzzy hoodie, which was decorated with a big, yellow smiley face. The hoodie had a loose uni-pocket, the type where you can put hands in on either side. I bought a pair of sweatpants, with stripes on the side, and a folding camp chair, with a woodsy design like the ones retirees use to sit on next to their camper trailers while they catch up on reading. I also bought a box of white plastic trash bags, a pair of thin leather gloves, and sneakers.
I drove east along the interstate to Clinton and got off on the frontage road when I was done. After several miles, I turned and drove into the woods and onto a forest service road. A mile further, there was a camping spot where I had been before, one where I knew there was cell reception. There was no snow left on the road. There was no close by house.
I set up the tent, but I didn’t plan on sleeping in it. I unfolded the camp chair and placed it near the tent. I opened the bag of potato chips and put it on the ground near the chair. I changed clothes, putting on the fuzzy sweatpants, the sneakers, the puffy jacket, and then over that, pulled on the hoodie with the smiley face. Wearing gloves, I dumped the contents of the full daypack of money, all its ten-thousand-dollar bundles, into a plastic garbage bag which I left in the back of the Subaru.
I took the 1911 out of its daypack, flipped off its safety, and put the gun into the hoodie’s pocket. I put one of my boots into each of the now empty daypacks and put both daypacks on the ground under the chair.
Nine on Sunday morning, I called XX, and the same as when I called him the day before at noon, there was another click and then silence. I spoke to the silence and said that I had done what the mutual friend demanded. I also told the silence that I didn’t want the last “presents” that I was given. I said, “You can have it all in exchange for leaving my friends and me alone. No one needs to know about this. Take it all. But I’m going.” Then I hung up.
A few minutes later, I received a text with a new phone number, which I called.
“Hey Mate,” XX answered and then said, “Keep this brief.”
I said to him, “I did it. It’s done. But I’m not doing anything else. And I’m leaving.” I tried to sound frantic and scared, which was easy because I was frantic and scared.
He said, “Listening….”
“You can have everything that was in both the bags you gave me. No one needs to know. Just take it all, then leave me alone.”
He said, “Interesting. Stay where you are. I’ll come to you.”
“When? I’m not at my house. I don’t want to go back there.”
“I know where you are, Mate. See you soon.”
Then the phone again clicked dead.
I took off the gloves and sat down in the camp chair with a thick, hardback book. I checked again that both the flip and my legit phones are on and that I still had cell coverage. Then I waited. I did not touch the potato chips. I did not read the book. I did not fall asleep. I waited.
(c) 2021 Steve S. Saroff
Contact information at http://www.montanaVoice.com