Long Way Down (12 page)

“He’s a creep!” I said.

“Who’s that?” Skeli asked, turning from her conversation with Roger.

“Haley. He’s every bit as nuts as the rest of them.”

“You don’t remember any of this?” Savannah asked.

Two years before, I had been in prison. The reading matter had been strictly limited. What was truly frustrating was that, in all my Internet research on Haley, I had ignored the scandal sheets and thereby missed the more revealing story.

“No. And how come you remember it so well?” I asked.

“I was a junior in college. I ate this stuff up.”

“Thank god for the free press.” I scrolled through more of the noxious headlines. “And what the hell was this Jolene thinking?”

“I’d say that thinking had very little to do with it.”

I
woke from a recurring dream—the one where I have to go back to prison—and knowing that I wasn’t going to get back to sleep until the adrenaline rush subsided, I got up for a glass of water. New York may be the city that never sleeps, but Broadway at three in the morning, midweek, looks at least a bit drowsy.

Philip Haley was not a nice man. But that didn’t make him a criminal. And what did I care if another man was unfaithful to his wife. It wasn’t jealousy. It wasn’t anger or regret over my first wife’s infidelity. No, it just indicated that the man was not entirely reliable. That what you see might not be exactly what you get. Deeter was right. Haley may have been brilliant, but it was best not to be blinded by the glare of his self-assurance.

I rinsed the glass and put it in the dishwasher. Carolina, our invaluable undocumented housecleaner from Central America, emptied the dishwasher whenever she came—that was once a week. Who emptied the damn thing the rest of the week? I couldn’t remember the last time that I had done it. If ever. Or did the Kid and I use only one load’s worth of dishes in a week? I doubted that Heather, the Kid’s justifiably expensive shadow, would have done
it, but maybe I wasn’t giving her enough credit. I was too much a coward ever to ask her, however. Suppose she had been doing it and stopped when I asked?

The soft glow of reflected light from the Kid’s bedroom ceiling gave his pale face and hair an elfin glow. I was struck again, for the hundredth or thousandth time, how much he resembled his mother. He was beautiful. He might transition into handsome at some point, but I thought a bit of androgyny would always be retained in his features. Middle-school girls would go nuts for him. In high school, there was a good chance he would be picked on. In college, he would be dangerous—killer. He’d have coeds, grad students, MILFs, and cougars all lined up to stare into those perfect blue eyes.

Of course, first he would have to learn that it was okay to be touched. One step at a time.

It was all right to dream for a bit. Dreams weren’t all bad. I lived with the reality all day, every day.

I thought of Mrs. Stewart from the eleventh floor who, whenever we got on the elevator with her, stood as far from us as possible, as though the Kid were contagious, and always managed to say something so back-assed rude, in the kindest way, that I congratulated myself each time for not murdering her.

“But he’s
sooo
cute, you would never know.”

My son was not cute. Beautiful, yes. Cute was like that round-faced kid on the Oscar Mayer wiener commercial. Cute was approachable. It was not the monster who, in the time it took me to go to the bathroom, managed to climb up the front of the bookcase and bring the whole thing down on top of himself, transforming an antique sake set of near museum quality into porcelain gravel. By some miracle the Kid had not earned as much as a scratch in the process. Cute does not bite when told to eat some green vegetable. Cute does not wet himself in a diner rather than use the facilities,
because the bathroom is “icky,” the state of which he somehow knows even though he’s never been in one. I wasn’t complaining. I applauded my son’s growing ability to engage the world and make decisions about his wants and needs. His life was going to be hard, much harder than mine, and he would need to be strong. But some days I did wish that it was all just a bit easier.

I went to the bathroom, relieved myself, and as I was washing my hands I noticed that all of the toothbrushes had been removed from the plastic cup that always sat just to the right of the cold water faucet. Someone had laid them carefully on a hand towel on the side of the low cabinet that held spare toilet paper, cleaning supplies, and other necessaries. The Kid’s four brushes, variously colored to match his specific outfits for that day; my two brushes, because I could never throw away an old one until I had well-broken in a new one; and Skeli’s single bright red toothbrush that could never be mistaken for anyone else’s.

My first instinct was to check to see if the brushes were wet, as if they had possibly fallen into the toilet and been rescued. Only the Kid’s black one and my new one were even slightly damp. So at some point, after I had brushed my teeth and gone to bed, some person had come into the bathroom and taken the brushes out of the cup and laid them out very carefully.

Where was the cup? The mystery of who had done this might be revealed if I had the cup. I looked around. No sign of it at eye level—at adult level. I looked around as though at a diminutive six-year-old’s level. Success. The cup was on the floor between the toilet and the tub, tucked back and hidden by the curve of the bowl.

I reached down and realized that it was almost full of liquid. I picked it up and sniffed. Urine. It appeared that my son was now saving his piss. My little Howard Hughes. I imagined a closet full of mason jars, each holding a quart of this golden liquid.

That was the moment when the television sitcom dad would smile ruefully at the outraged sitcom mom and say, “I’m sure there’s a perfectly logical explanation for this.” Not in my world.

I poured the urine into the toilet and flushed. There might be recriminations for this in the morning, or it might all be forgotten. Who knew? Each day was different. I rinsed the cup and placed it in the dishwasher.

I went back to bed.

T
he first sneeze took me by surprise. I turned my head to the side and exploded. I had a cold.

One of the odd advantages of being the parent of a germophobic, asocial child is that one misses many of the colds and viruses that plague nursery and elementary schools, traveling through whole families with the speed and chaos, if not the full destructive power, of a hail of bullets. This can lead to a myopic sense of invulnerability. As other parents coughed into elbows or rubbed at chapped red noses, I maintained a smug aloofness. My son and I did not get colds. Usually.

I had no time for a cold.

An hour later, my cell phone rang.

“Hello,” I croaked. I was wrapped in a down comforter, lying on the living room couch with a cooling cup of jasmine tea on the end table. I wished that I had a television. The Kid and I had now survived sixteen months without one and I was long rid of any withdrawal symptoms, but there is something about being home alone and sick that demands a
Law & Order: SVU
marathon.

“Jason Stafford?”

“Hello, Ms. Sharp. I recognize your voice.”

“I barely recognize yours. Are you all right?”

“It’s a cold.”

“Can you meet with Dr. McKenna?”

“Today?” I tried to keep the reluctance out of my voice. Penn had agreed to meet me for dinner in Florida if I could make it. I had a miserable cold and a three o’clock flight to catch.

“If you can.”

“Where and when?”

“Noon. The Starbucks at Astor Place.”

—

I didn’t like the Starbucks
at Astor Place. Usually, I don’t develop strong likes or dislikes for something as inconsequential as a coffee bar, but both the staff and the clientele there were too tribal, too insular for my tastes. The customers were all either overprivileged NYU students with serious entitlement issues busy cutting class, or wannabe authors nursing a single coffee all day long and ultra-protective of their usual stool and place along the window. The real authors were always over at the Second Avenue store, and the less idle NYU students grabbed their mocha lattes at Washington Square, where it was possible to place an order and get it within a reasonable amount of time. Astor Place got all the losers.

I took the express down to Forty-second and switched to the R train. Door-to-door, I was at Astor Place in just over twelve minutes. How could I ever live anywhere other than New York?

A tall, thin bald man in a long black puffy nylon parka was coming down the wrong side of the street on one of those blue bikes the city provided, yelling at the pedestrians in the crosswalk to “Clear aside! Clear aside! Coming through!” Sometimes I just hated New York City.

“I’d like a tall green tea.”

“Latte?” She made it sound like a requirement.

“No, just a tall green tea.”

“Small? You’ll have to speak up.”

“Tall.” I raised my voice as much as I was able and tried to pack as much displeasure into the single word as I could.

“Two-seventy.”

I gave her three singles. She handed me my change. A quarter and a nickel. I put the nickel in the tip jar. My phone rang before my drink arrived.

“A change in plans. I need to see if you’re being followed. Go outside and walk down Waverly to the park. I’ll follow you to check for tails. When we get to the park, take a seat and wait. I’ll go on and you check for anyone following me.”

He was gone before I had time to respond.

I did not want to play
I Spy
in Washington Square. I did not want to change plans. I wanted to be back home, sipping my own green tea, wrapped in a blanket, saving up my energy for the flight to Florida that afternoon.

The baristas were backed up—or just slow. My tea wasn’t ready yet. I abandoned it and walked back out into the cold. Across the street were a drugstore and a gym. There used to be a bookstore there. My city was dying. Watching for wrong-way riders on blue bikes, I crossed over and walked west, down to the corner of Broadway. I managed not to look over my shoulder.

The first bench in the park was empty. Most of the benches were empty. Those that weren’t were occupied by homeless men and women all dressed in shades of gray. It wasn’t the kind of day to hang out in the park. I was wearing a full-length camel’s hair overcoat from Burberry, a little tight in the shoulders and more than comfortably loose around my middle, a relic from my pre-prison days. It had the hidden buttons and the shallow V profile, and with it I wore a paisley silk-wool blend scarf that Skeli had picked out for
me. I couldn’t have been any less conspicuous if I had set myself on fire.

I almost greeted McKenna as he walked past, head down, hands jammed into coat pockets, the wind whipping his ponytail. I didn’t think I was suited for this kind of work. I let McKenna get to the middle of the park before I stood up. Then I sat back down.

A man in his early forties, dressed in layers of sweatshirts, a down vest, jeans, and workboots walked by speaking into his sleeve. A pale beige wire ran from a small device in his ear down inside his collar. His jeans were worn but not stained. The workboots were new. I let him pass and waited. Seconds later, a second man, outfitted by the same tailor, ran across the intersection and down University.

I couldn’t see McKenna anymore. I pulled up Recent Calls and rang him.

“Where are you?” he hissed.

“Still here on the bench. You have two men following you.” My mouth was suddenly very dry.

“Where?”

“One is coming through the park. The other was hustling down University to take the long way ’round.”

“The construction workers?”

“You’ve seen them before?”

“Yeah. Not a problem. Cross the park and meet me at the library in ten minutes. Wait inside the main doors.”

It didn’t seem to be the time to tell him that I had a plane to catch. I checked my watch. As long as I was in a cab to the airport in less than forty-five minutes, I was fine. I walked to the library. I went inside, blew my nose, and watched the park across the street.

Five minutes later, McKenna ran out onto the sidewalk facing Fourth Street, screaming and waving his arms. He looked like a raving lunatic in the midst of a mental seizure, a picture not that unusual in Washington Square Park. He looked around wildly and
ran toward University Place, plowing into and knocking down the faux construction worker waiting for him on the corner. McKenna was up first and darted through traffic across the street. For a big man, he could move. He sprinted down the sidewalk next to the library and disappeared.

The tail picked himself up and yelled something into his sleeve. A split second later, the second man ran down the path from the Garibaldi statue. I watched a dumb show of recriminations, denials of responsibility, and the exchange of very little information—the first man pointed in the direction in which McKenna had run. They were still exchanging last-gasp accusations when a black car pulled to the curb beside them. A black Crown Victoria with no decorative trim and a nonmetallic paint job. Standard government issue. It couldn’t have been more identifiable if it had
“
FBI
”
on the side in white eighteen-inch block letters. Then a second came up behind it, swerving to the right to block traffic. Two men in suits jumped out of the back and began running after McKenna, though he was already out of sight. He had a team of eight FBI agents tailing him. The two construction workers hopped into the back of the second Crown Vic and the two cars raced toward Mercer Street—the first place to make a right.

McKenna walked in the door of the library a minute later, coming up West Fourth Street from the other direction. He wasn’t even winded.

“Here, take this,” he said, handing me a thin plastic card.

It was a student ID for one Amanda Blair. Amanda was round-faced, sad-looking, and had long black hair parted in the middle.

“What do I do with this?”

“It gets you past security.”

“Where did you get this?” I said.

“Guys sell them in the park. They steal purses, or find them. Let’s go.”

“Do you realize that you have a full team of FBI agents following you? I just saw eight with two cars.”

“Yeah.”

“This doesn’t terrify you?”

“It did at first. But they’re watching me, not arresting me. They found me at a flophouse over on East Third Street, so I don’t stay there anymore, but I still pay for the room. When I want to take them out for some exercise, I walk around First Avenue or Alphabet City until I pick up a tail. That way they think I’m still downtown all the time.”

McKenna walked in front of me, gave a salute to the two security guards behind the desk, and swiped his card. He went right through and turned to me. “Make your own rules.”

What could they do to me if it didn’t work? Suspend me from school? I followed close behind.

One of the guards frowned at me as I went through, and for a moment my heart stopped. I forced a smile and nodded. He nodded back. I was in.

“It’s not exactly CIA headquarters, is it?” I whispered as we moved away from the lobby.

“Come on. I know you’ve got a plane to catch.” He walked to the elevators and hit the call button.

“How the hell do you know that? Are you hacking into my private files again?”

“I act with benevolence and virtue. Besides, I had to check that your new computer was clean. It is. You’re welcome. Okay?”

The elevator doors opened.

“Whatever,” I said, recalling some bit of an adage about how people who made deals with the devil had best not object to the smell of sulfur on their hands.

“We need a study room with a mainframe portal. There’s usually one free.”

There was. There were a few free. The semester was over and the only people around were older grad students who saw us and scowled us away, protecting their lonely turf. We took a room with four desks and settled in.

McKenna opened his backpack and took out a laptop and a rat’s nest of wires. “I’ll show you what I’ve got and where I’m headed. You’ll make your plane.”

“Why are we here?”

“Because I can use the university computers to do things that would take too long otherwise. I’ve got the programs set up on my laptop, but I’ll let the mainframe do the searches. You follow?”

I followed in that I understood all the words he used. The verbs seemed a little vague.

“All right. Show me.”

“The first thing I looked at,” he said, typing quickly, “was the bank. Harken and Cromarty is an unusual choice for someone who wants to hide their activity.”

“Why’s that?”

“Bermuda is relatively transparent. Much more so than Switzerland, and as you probably know, there are even better places—the Caymans, Panama, and so on. Bermuda will cooperate with U.S. courts without much trouble. Also Harken and Cromarty is a very old firm. Very conservative. Few clients. I looked back through their files. For the last five years, two-thirds of their new accounts were for offspring of current account holders.”

“I see. So why would someone pick them?”

He grinned at me in triumph. “Because their security systems are so old and simple, a room full of chimps could break in.” He typed again and a fresh screen popped up. “You see? I’m in.”

I felt like I was watching Roger make hard-boiled eggs appear out of his ear.

“Why would Haley pick a bank with such a feeble security system?” I said.

“I thought our operating premise was that Haley didn’t do it.”

Roger would pull out three of the eggs before his assistant—Skeli, when I saw the act—would give the audience a big wink and start aping the trick. Only, she would turn sideways so that everyone could see how it was done. Roger’s reaction—anger, frustration, amazement, and chagrin all rolled into one—always brought down the house. “But this is how it was done, wasn’t it?”

“Yup. From here I can change profiles on accounts, buy and sell securities, authorize wire transfers. Wanna try it?”

“No, I’m content to watch and be amazed,” I said, remembering an afternoon some years ago when a friend, newly licensed as a pilot, took me up from Teterboro in New Jersey for a trip around New York Harbor. While I thoroughly enjoyed the view, his persistence in offering me the opportunity to take the controls dampened my exuberance considerably. He topped it off with a laugh and, crossing his arms, put both hands under his armpits, expecting that I would grab the wheel and save us. I did not. Nor did I laugh about it anywhere near as much as he did. “Can you tell if someone has tried this before?”

“Here? Yes, but I’ll get caught. Do we care? Is that important?”

“How do we get caught?”

“Not
caught
, but they’ll know I’ve been there. They have a second-level security system, an IDS, that tags anyone who gets in. I ran an SQL injection to see all the bank files, but if I try to search the security system itself, I’m going to leave a trace.”

“SQL?” I said.

He looked at the ceiling for divine assistance. “Do you want me to explain?”

I didn’t have to think about it very hard. “No. But haven’t you already left a trail? Just by going in?”

“No. I tread lightly.”

“Even so, this is all highly illegal, am I right?”

“It’s only illegal if I leave a trace.”

“How much will they know about you?” I said.

“Nothing. But they’ll know some entity from the university was in there. They can probably trace it to the library, maybe even this portal, but they can’t read my laptop.”

I thought about it. We may have been burning our single bridge into and out of the system, but it would be worth it to see what clues the other intruders had left behind.

“Go ahead. If we have to, we’ll switch to Columbia. There’s plenty of college libraries to choose from.”

“They’re not all this easy, but okay.” He tapped for a moment, then pulled a big flash drive out of his backpack. “My password cracker. I wrote the code when I was fifteen. It still beats Brutus or any of the other programs available out there.” He sat back. “This may take a minute or two.”

It took four.

“Oh, that’s not right. Look at this. The only reason these guys aren’t being robbed blind is that no one knows who they are.” A list scrolled down the page. “These are all break-ins.”