Timothy Hallinan - Everything but the Squeal

“System operator,” he said. “We probably didn't write to the disk on the other end because we didn't ask for anything, but if the sysop was on the line, you know, sitting there watching the computer, he knows that someone calling himself Turkey tried to get in.”

I got up off the bed, shoved my hands into the rear pockets of my jeans, and paced the messy little room. Woofers followed anxiously, cocking her head up at me to see where I was going next. Unless I was badly mistaken, the sysop was sitting in West Hollywood in the center of a baroque coil of intestines. “So there's something missing,” I said.

“I wasn't thinking.” Morris looked shamefaced. “We need the sysop's code name. Without it, we're just some schmuck trying to place an unauthorized order.”

“And with it?”

“Are you kidding? With it, we can fool around with everything. The computer on the other end will think we're the boss.”

“Morris,” I said, “let's assume we can solve the problem. Here's what I want. I want everyone who dials his computer into the data base to get something other than the menu. First thing when they connect, I want them to get the picture we're going to put into your scanner. What's more, I want a message to go with the picture you're going to scan. And I don't want just one picture, I want four, and I want them to follow each other at twenty-second intervals, with a different written message under each one. Now, tell me, can you do it or not?”

“Piece of cake,” he said. It was one of his favorite phrases, “But only on these disks.”

“You've got the phone number,” I said. “With the phone number you could do it on the other end.”

“But I haven't got the sysop's code name.”

“If you had the code, you could do it?”

“Sure. Like I said, if I had that, the system would be open to me. I could rewrite the whole applications system.”

“I think you've got it,” I said.

“The sysop's code name?”

“Think about it,” I said. “I could be wrong, but think about it.”

He concentrated hard enough to look middle-aged. “I don't know,” he finally said. “I don't know what it could be.”

“What was missing?” I asked.

He had looked puzzled before; now he looked bewildered. “Missing from what?”

“The lyric. The lyric to Turkey in the Straw.’ ”

He squinted at the ceiling. “We had Turkey,’ ” he said. “We had ’Inthe.’ We had ‘Straw.’ ”

“Jessica's lyric,” I said.

He hummed for a moment, and then, for the first time in my hearing, he said, “Oh, shit.” He looked down at the keyboard and said, “Worth a try. Should I dial the number?”

“Code name?” I said.

He gave me a big teenage grin.

“Chickie,” he said.

Morris was at his house writing code and working on the scanner, and I was at home fighting down the impulse to dive into a bottle of Singha. Woofers was under the couch worrying at a flea. As tempting as the Singha sounded, some tiny vestigial Puritan remnant of conscience was suggesting that I needed a clear mind to make sure that what I was doing wasn't just plain crazy.

On the face of it, the problem was simple. With Birdie dead, I needed someone else to take me to Aimee. That part was easy. Where we began to get into trouble was the fact that the only remaining possibility was Mrs. Brussels.

Unless I'd read her completely wrong, Mrs. Brussels wasn't going to open up the way that Birdie had. She'd just deny everything I confronted her with and then, as soon as she could, she'd cut her losses, pull money out of the bank, and disappear. Judging from what Birdie had told me and from the volume of orders in the data base, she had enough money to disappear to someplace very far away.

And whatever I did couldn't point directly at Aimee. If it did, she'd be dead in a minute-assuming that she wasn't dead already. As far as I could see, there was no reason why she should be dead; the kidnap note and the ransom had been Birdie's idea, his endearing way of getting some of what he saw as his by right. The little weasel wouldn't have told Mrs. Brussels anything about it.

So I was looking at a teenage sidekick who blew his nose in polysyllables and a plan that was technical and complicated, and I distrusted it for both reasons. But I couldn't think of anything else, so I was stuck with it.

I gave up and went to bed. The moment I turned the light off, Woofers climbed up on the bed and nestled on my chest. Swell. I couldn't even turn over. This was going to be the longest night's sleep I'd had in months, and I was going to spend it flat on my back with a Yorkshire terrier listening slavishly to my heartbeat. To my surprise, I fell asleep instantly.

I forced myself to doze until eleven the next morning. Upon arising I made and actually choked down about a pound of pasta covered with tomato sauce. Eleanor would have called it carbo-loading. I ate it anyway because I had a feeling I might need endurance. Woofers ate the leftovers. She liked them better than I did.

At one, I made my first call.

She answered herself, as I'd anticipated she would. “Brussels' Sprouts,” she said, sounding harried and snappish.

“Mrs. Brussels?” I said. “This is Dwight Ward.”

“Mr. Ward,” she said, warming slightly. “You certainly dropped from sight, didn't you?” There was a trilling sound from the other end of the phone. “Damn,” she said, “there's my other line. Will you hold on for a moment?”

I said I would.

“Mr. Ward?” she said less than a minute later. “Excuse me. I'm handling the phones myself. My secretary seems to have decided to take the day off. How's our sweet little Jewel?”

“She's fine.”

“Her flu is better?” Her voice was full of matronly concern. “She's such a pretty little girl.” She paused.

“Well,” I said into the silence, “that's why I'm calling. I'm ready to sign those papers.”

“Wonderful. I think I can put her right to work. Did you say you objected to her traveling?”

“No,” I said.

“We've got a lot to do,” she said. “You and I have to have a good talk first, of course, and then if we come to an agreement we'll have to get some pictures taken. I'm sure she'll photograph beautifully.”

“We'll come to an agreement,” I said. “Don't worry about that.”

“That's grand, just grand. Can you come today?”

“Is fourish all right?” It would begin to get dark at five.

“Let me check my book.” I held on, regulating my breathing, as she left the line again. Four had to be all right. By tomorrow she might know Birdie was dead.

The line clicked. “Four's fine,” she said.

“Swell,” I said heartily, “that's great. See you then.”

The pay phone at the Oki-Burger was busy. Five minutes later it was still busy. At ten till two I was ready to get into Alice and drive down there, but I dialed the number one more time as I went out the door, and this time the Mountain answered.

“Christ,” I said, “what the hell have you got, a party line?”

“I got one of them to call home,” he said proudly. “Guess which one.”

“I don't want to guess,” I said. “I haven't got time.”

“Apple,” he said.

To my surprise, I found myself grinning. “I'll be damned,” I said. “How’d you do it?”

“Donnie didn't come back,” he said. “She was scared to death.”

“But she was afraid to go home.”

“She's got some aunt in Utah. They talked for two hours. Apple was a mess, you should’ve seen her, crying and laughing at the same time. I got her nose blown and her face dried and loaned her the money for a bus ticket and got her into a cab, and she's gone.”