Reed Coleman - They Don't Play Stickball in Milwaukee

“Who did it, Klein?” he asked, turning away. “Who killed her?”

“It was either the desk clerk or the ski dude or both. I was thankfully unconscious at the time. What am I going to do, John?”

He didn’t answer and before I could push him for a response, Guppy came through the hatch with some beers in tow. MacClough said he preferred whiskey, but Guppy had none. He did not believe in alcohol. It clouded the mind, weakened concentration. The only reason he had beer was to appease Zak. It wasn’t a religious issue with him.

Finally, after Guppy had explained himself to death, MacClough begged for him to shut up and wondered if Gupta had ever met an indirect answer he didn’t like?

“No,” was all he said.

When the beers were finished, I bit my lip and asked Guppy to help us understand exactly what he and Zak were up to. It was all well and good, I said, that Zak disappeared, but what significance could that possibly have to a drug distribution ring. Why would a college kid’s dropping out of sight lead to three deaths and the destruction of a ski resort? Possibly out of fear of another long-winded explanation, MacClough spoke up.

“Zak knows something and the drug dealers know he knows. What’s more, Zak’s got proof of what he knows. That’s what they were looking for when they tore up Zak’s rooms and Caliparri’s house.”

Guppy’s face brightened: “That is essentially correct, but there is solidity at the center of your conclusions. At the center of our plan is smoke and void.”

So much for direct answers. MacClough and I found dread in each other’s eyes, but neither of us could see our way around asking the question.

“Can you run that by us in something akin to English,” I pleaded. Gupta pointed at MacClough. “Mr. MacClough-”

“John,” he interrupted. “It’s shorter.”

“Very well, John. John said that Zak knew something and that the drug dealers knew he knew. Furthermore, he said that Zak could obviously back up with physical proof these things he knew. But the truth is that Zak and myself know nothing about these drug operations. We only have guesses and we could no sooner prove any of those guesses than I could prove that this chair is what it seems.”

“What?” MacClough was agitated. “Klein, you’re fucked worse than I thought.”

“Perception,” I told John, “is everything. Perception is reality.”

“What have you two been smokin’? You sound like a couple of escapees from a bad philosophers convention.”

“Zak knows nothing,” Guppy said while laughing at John’s bad philosophers comment. “And I know even less. But through a certain dexterity with computers and a carefully planned timetable, Zak and I have been able-”

“-to leave a certain impression.” MacClough was catching on. “You mean you guys really don’t know anything.”

“Nothing. We only know that what we have done is working. The fire at Cyclone Ridge, the break-ins, the murders, and the attempt to frame Mr. Klein tell us that. We have stirred up the beehive, but we have only felt their sting. What we need to know is the bees themselves.”

“How’d you manage it?” I wondered.

Guppy sat down at the computer, got his system quickly up and running. His lithe brown fingers fairly glided along the keyboard, hesitating only briefly to afford him the opportunity to scan the monitor. Apparently satisfied, he turned his attention back to MacClough and myself.

“Do you know the Internet, gentlemen?”

We both nodded our heads that we did, but both Johnny and I were quick to point out that we knew very few of the details. MacClough didn’t even own a typewriter. Christ, he still used a rotary phone. And I pounded out my work on a temperamental Smith Corona word-processor. Neither of us had the hi-tech sensibility of a Generation X-er.

Guppy correctly figured this meant we didn’t know shit about the Internet. He therefore gave us a brief rundown on web sites, chat rooms, and the like. It all seemed pretty detached and dehumanizing to me. MacClough was less put off, but failed to see the point.

“The point, John,” Guppy said, “is that you can pick any subject, not nearly any subject, but any subject and you will find someone, maybe thousands of people on-line interested in the same subject. Pick a subject.”

“Men who have sex with barnyard animals,” MacClough blurted out.

“And the women who love them,” I added.

Guppy was too busy massaging the keyboard to laugh. “There. Please, watch the screen.”

As he scrolled the list of alternative sex discussion groups by us, John and I stared in amazement at the seemingly endless variations. And while scanning the section on barnyard animals, Guppy stopped the scroll and pointed out a particular group.

“There, Mr. Klein, are the women who love them. Would you like to go into a chat room?”

“So,” I interrupted, “what’s the point? What’s any of this got to do with the price of potatoes in Yemen?”

“Isotope, Klein,” MacClough answered.

“Exactly, John,” Guppy praised. “Though not so many as alternative sex groups, there are many many drug-related sites on the Internet. And out of these, many deal exclusively with Isotope. And what is the one tangible fact Zak and I had to work with?”

“That Valencia Jones was arrested for carrying a very large quantity of Isotope.”

“Exactly, Mr. Klein, exactly. And because the quantity was so huge, Zak and I assumed the people who had planted these hallucinogenics in Miss Valencia’s car were not, I believe the phrase is, nickel-and-dime dealers. In these times, smart business people, sophisticated business people-criminal or legitimate-are heavily tapped into the worldwide net. Careful monitoring of the Internet is crucial for the success of any enterprise which services people thirty years of age and under.”

“You set them up,” MacClough interjected. “I don’t know how you did it, but you set them up. You knew they’d be watching.”

“We hoped so,” Guppy aped Zak’s earlier sentiment. “And now we know they were.”

Over nearly a tenth-month span, Guppy and Zak had spent several hours a day, seven days a week, leaving cryptic messages in every drug-related chat room on the Internet. The early messages were fairly brief, meant simply to attract attention:

We know. Love Valencia.

And they would repeat the messages over and over again, whenever they had the opportunity to interact. Gradually, they had expanded the length and the depth of their messages:

We know the truth. Love Valencia. P.S. You pay one way or the other. Have figured out your system. Love Valencia. Have downloaded. Have disc. You will pay either way.

Clock is ticking. Tick. .Tick. .Tick. Paying me is the trick. Love Valencia. Will testify to sink your ship. Will need six figures to seal my lips.

They carried on like this, never knowing whether anyone was there to listen. But since Jeffrey had turned the case down and Zak saw no other alternative to taking things into his own hands, he and Guppy kept it up. Then, as the trial date approached, they went on the offensive, hinting as to their identity:

You will see I am real when myself I will conceal. Love Valencia. When a Riversborough student disappears you will know your greatest fears. Remember, ships and lips and figures times six.

Zak and Guppy had an accomplice that we hadn’t figured on: Valencia Jones’ lawyer. To protect her client, the lawyer had even kept her complicity a secret from Valencia Jones. That explained the lawyer’s absence when MacClough and I went to see Valencia Jones in the Mohawkskill jail. But her most important contribution to Zak and Guppy’s plan was to add Zak’s name to the defense witness list the day after he was reported missing. Only then, after revealing himself, could Zak know if anyone had been reading their messages.