B Larson - Spyware

Feeling a bit silly, he approached the glass doors of the ski-chalet style building. It had been built in the seventies, when bonds for library construction had been easy to come by. Now, with cut-back hours and a mostly volunteer staff, it had turned into a hangout for elderly people and the homeless.

He walked past a row of unwashed, sleeping men in the carrels. Most slept with their heads cradled on their folded arms. Ray felt sorry for them. He supposed it was better than sleeping out on the grass. Here it was quiet and air-conditioned. Perhaps they spent the nights wandering the streets. The elderly patrons were mostly clustered around the newspaper and magazine racks. There, they quietly ran out their lives. Occasionally they flipped a page or cleared a throat. For them, he supposed, it was better than sitting home alone watching TV. One thing was clear: few of the patrons studied here anymore.

He headed to the back of the library and sat in one of the reserved rooms that was unlocked. Flipping on the light as if he owned the place, he quietly plugged in his computer and set up the cell phone modem. He wondered how long it would be before his pursuers would find out about that purchase.

In no time he dialed No Carrier. There followed a few tense minutes as he had trouble getting access. At first, all he could get was a busy signal. But he kept trying and finally got in. Logging onto the system, he typed in: foghorn‹enter› leghorn‹enter›.

The system came back with a cryptic message, then a question. Ray was immediately on guard; Jake had said nothing about additional security.

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? the system asked him.

He was at a loss for what to do. His hacker days were long ago and far away. He simply hit the enter key and hoped for the best.

Actually, it was the rooster! printed on his screen. He groaned quietly. It was a joke. Jake must have set up this account to automatically fire a bad joke at you when you logged on, like a dirty fortune cookie.

Next, he ran his eavesdropping software. The program watch the connections and listed three private conversations that were currently in progress. Ray clicked on one of them, just to see if it worked.

Zelda: can’t tell you that. it would ruin everything!

WhiskeyDick: give me a break, sylvia.

Zelda: YOU give ME a break.

WhiskeyDick: i don’t care what you else you did with him, I just want to know about what happened in the car.

Zelda: ‘-) *wink* *wink*

WhiskeyDick: I’m getting really tired of your shit.

Zelda: OH COME ON!

There was a lot more like this, but he quickly lost interest and broke the connection. The two chatters continued typing to one another without a clue that he had listened in. The software worked. He made a mental note to give Jake an A for the semester-even if he had to fill out the grade sheet from behind bars.

It was time to set his plan in motion. He typed in a private message and addressed it to Santa. When he was done, he sat back and rubbed his eyes. He sighed and settled into his chair. He had no idea how long this stake out might last.

The van broke down just outside of Davis. At first, Spurlock had planned not to drive through Davis at all, it made him nervous to return to the scene of the crime, that wasn’t his style at all. He was a highway-flier, a man who hit a place, did his deed, whatever it was, then was back on the freeway and cruising before the local cops had even been alerted. He stayed small-time and he stayed close to the highways. It had worked like a charm and kept him out prison with only two six-month exceptions. Up until now, that was.

But in order to cross the Sacramento Delta, one almost had to use the I-80 causeway. He could have detoured up through the side streets for miles in either direction hunting for another bridge, but that would have eaten up time, gas and increased the risk of something going wrong. All he wanted to do right now was blow right through Davis and make it to the other side.

He had reached the mid-point in the long, low causeway when white smoke suddenly exploded from the rear of the van in a great, looming cloud. Spurlock’s first thought wasn’t of his engine. What worried him was the smoke. All he needed now was another over-zealous cop out to clean up the environment by giving him a fix-it ticket. That would mean checking his plates, which would bring up his record, then this morning’s incident would be played out all over again.

“You bitch!” he yelled, beating the steering wheel. “You whore!”

It was right then that the headache struck him. An ice-pick drove itself into his skull directly behind his right eye. He screwed it shut and drove with his left for the time being. He had gone too long without a fix, and his body was close to a revolt. It couldn’t take on a new source of stress, a new frustration. It was rebelling like a lathered horse. He knew the headaches would get worse later, far worse. By tomorrow they would be like a pounding herd of horses, galloping through his head, throwing up soft pink clumps of tissue and leaving crescents of pooling blood behind them.

Signaling to switch from the center lane to the right lane, he watched the signs for the next exit. The first exit after the causeway was Milton. It would have to do. A young couple in an Audi pulled up to look at him and his explosive van curiously. Spurlock flipped them off.

He felt his skin crawl with the scrutiny of every driver on the narrow two-lane causeway. In his mirrors, every car looked like a black-and-white. It was harder to tell these days, the cops were buying all makes and models it seemed. He’d even seen a Camaro cop car once, down in Modesto. What bastards they were. Who would ever think to slow down because there was a Camaro in your mirror?

He made it to the Milton exit and rolled into a Chevron station. The engine still ran, but it chugged out smoke like a mother. He switched off the ignition.

“You whore,” Spurlock muttered again as he slammed down the stubby, weird-looking hood that vans always had. A blown head gasket, he figured, or a cracked block. Either way, he was through with this thing. Even if he had the money, fixing it would be a real pain. He didn’t have the tools to do it himself and mechanics just might become curious about the kid in the cage.

He thought about hoofing it, right then and there. Sure, after a half-hour or so the kid would get up the balls to beat on the wall of the van. Then, maybe tonight before quitting time, somebody would check it out. By that time he could be over to the bus station and out of this shit-eating burg. Sure, the kid could ID him, but he looked like a thousand other losers in this state, and he knew it.

Although it was no more than eighty degrees, he mopped sweat from his brow. His hand shook while he did it. The flaw with this plan, of course, was that it didn’t get him his money. He hated leaving money behind, especially when he needed it so badly.

He eyed the phone booth at the edge of the gas station’s blacktop. Growling to himself, he walked over to it and dropped a quarter.

This time, the phone picked up right away.

“Hello?”

“Hello, Santa,” he said, “I’m back in town and I’ve got a problem.”

“Did you lose the package yet?”

“Nope, but I’m about to, and I’m about to spill the beans all over the evening news.”

“What are you talking about, are you crazy?”

“No shit. I’m a fucking one-hundred-percent loon, bud,” he said, his voice rising. Santa sounded scared, and that gave Spurlock the first happy feeling in his gut he’d had all day.