Steve Martini - Double Tap

“You sure you can’t do dinner tonight?”

“No. Wish I could.”

He takes the business card and shifts the leather portfolio to his other arm so he can keep his left hand on my shoulder as we walk, like I’m leading the blind. Nathan is one of those people who can never talk to you unless he has at least one hand on you, invading your private space. I used to watch him do this outside of court with opposing counsel. I came to the conclusion that it was an acquired social tool, like LBJ thumping other pols in the chest with his finger when he talked to them. There is something subconscious and discomforting in its effect. I often wondered how many people were forced to cop pleas by their lawyers and ended up in state prison because Nathan hadn’t used mouthwash that morning.

He shakes his head as he’s holding me back with his hand on my shoulder. “Jeez, where does all the time go? And I suppose you don’t own a telephone to call a friend, tell him that you’re picking up sticks and leaving town?” To Nathan all telephones work in only one direction: incoming to Kwan.

“I didn’t know I had to ask permission before leaving.”

“You don’t have to apologize. Just get your ass back up north.” He laughs. With anyone else you might resent it, but Nathan has a gift, a kind of Asian blarney-Chinese father and Irish mother-that allows him to roll back the clock with impunity.

“How’s Nikki and your daughter. .” He finally drops the hand from my shoulder, snapping his fingers lightly as we walk, struggling for Sarah’s name. “Don’t tell me, I’ll get it.”

“Sarah,” I say.

“That’s right. I remember. A cute little girl,” he says.

“ She’ll be eighteen in three months .”

“No!”

“And off to college in the fall.”

“I don’t believe it. And that gorgeous wife of yours. .” We keep walking. “The only woman I knew who took pity on your bachelor friend. I remember,” he says. “She must have had me over for dinner every Tuesday night for a year.”

“I don’t remember that.”

“You weren’t there,” he says.

We both laugh.

“I just have to see Nikki. I owe you guys a dinner or two.”

“I don’t know how to tell you this, but Nikki passed away.”

He stops in mid-stride, a half-smile on his face like he’s waiting for the punch line to a bad joke. Then he realizes that I’m not kidding. Suddenly a dour expression falls over his face. He is flushed all the way to the ears. “No.”

“I’m afraid so.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know. When did it happen?”

“Almost nine years ago.”

This seems to stagger him: that Nikki has been dead this long, that he has without guarding himself stepped on this land mine, knocks him off stride. “I didn’t realize. Nobody told me.”

“Cancer. She was sick for quite a while.”

“That explains why I didn’t see you. Jeez, I’m sorry. Must have been hard. Difficult on your daughter. On Sarah.”

“It was. They were close.”

“Why didn’t you call and let me know?”

“What could I say? There was nothing anyone could do.”

“I could have been there,” he says. “I’m sorry.” It is one of the few times I have seen Nathan at a loss for words. We walk in silence for a couple of seconds as we move toward the door. “We have to get together,” he says.

“Yeah.”

“Talk about old times.”

“I’d like that.”

We finally make it to the door.

“Listen, I’ll give you a call. Next time I’m in town. We’ll do dinner. On me.”

“You got it.”

I shake his hand. He gives me a hug, something I hadn’t expected, his portfolio digging in my back. Then I turn and head for my car. Knowing Nathan-and life being what it is-unless he gets arrested on a felony, it is not likely that I will see him again, in this life or the next.

If the experts are to be believed, Madelyn Chapman and her minions have perfected software that allows the government to monitor its people and their activities in ways that would cause most of us to shudder. The stated purpose, at least publicly, is to do what geologists cannot do when it comes to earthquakes: predict with accuracy the tremors of terrorism.

This morning Harry and I have made arrangements to be briefed by one of the few people outside of government and Chapman’s own company who have knowledge of the Information for Security program-IFS-and how it works. We are huddled in the conference room of our office in the far bungalow behind Miguel’s Cantina on Coronado Island.

James Kaprosky is in his sixties, tall, slender, stoop-shouldered, and from all appearances frail. Every few minutes he has to pause to cough up a lung.

If what I have read in news accounts on Nexis is accurate, a good part of Kaprosky’s current physical state is the result of more than a decade of litigation against the federal government. During this time Kaprosky, his company, and his family have been ground into dust by a bureaucracy with bottomless pockets and legions of government lawyers. He has been at war with Uncle Sam in a series of civil suits that have worn him to the nub and that two years ago sent his company, a once prosperous software manufacturing firm, reeling into federal bankruptcy court. From all appearances he is a walking, breathing warning label that litigation will kill you and that legal tangles with the federal government will most likely follow you into your grave.

This morning Kaprosky stands in front of us, a pointer in one hand and the remote control to an overhead projector in the other. He is giving Harry and me chapter and verse on the IFS system while his wife looks on.

Jean Kaprosky has driven her husband to this meeting because he no longer has a license. His doctors have had it revoked because of his failing health. If I am any judge, Mrs. Kaprosky is perhaps ten years younger than her husband. If I had to pick the dominant expression readable in her eyes, it would not be weary but worried, as if she long ago realized that the war with the government was over but still cannot steel herself to tell her husband. So she drives him and comes along for moral support.

“The heart of the system,” says Kaprosky, “is the Primis software. Primis is what makes it all work. Without it you have nothing. I know because I wrote it.”

Kaprosky is here today not because we are paying him but because he is now at the point of desperation where he will talk to anyone willing to listen. Like everyone else, he has read about Ruiz’s case in the papers. Unlike everyone else, Kaprosky sees a link between Madelyn Chapman’s murder and the IFS program, the government’s proposal to monitor everything that is now digitized in American life. He is convinced that Chapman’s murder and his own battle against the government are somehow linked.

While Harry and I have to weigh our suspicions that maybe Kaprosky has gone around the bend and finally snapped under the pressure, what is undeniable are his professional credentials. He has been writing software and designing programs-some of them for Fortune 500 companies, and most of them for large mainframes-for more than forty years. Regardless of his faltering finances, he is an icon in the industry.

“Jim. . You don’t mind if I call you Jim?” I say.

“Why should I? It’s my name.”

“Why don’t you have a seat? Let’s just talk.”

For a second he looks bemused, as if without the pointer and slide show he might be lost. Then he breathes a deep sigh, sets the pointer and the controls on the table, and slumps into one of the swivel chairs at the other end of the table.

“Tell us a little bit about Primis. We don’t need to know all the technical details.”